ATLANTA – Georgia’s recently enacted ban on transgender athletes participating on school sports teams that align with their gender identity discriminates against a group of students who already are victims of prejudice, transgender students and their parents said Wednesday.
The Georgia High School Association’s executive committee approved the ban unanimously last month. The association had been authorized to take up the issue by legislation the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed in April.
The Georgia Youth Justice Coalition addressed the issue during a news conference Wednesday, three days after canceling a planned rally because one of the group’s student organizers had received an anonymous death threat that included details on the time and location of the event.
“Hatred and anti-trans extremism will not deter us in the fight for equality for trans students,” said Zeena Mohamed, the coalition’s communications director.
Peter Isbister, parent of a transgender student from metro Atlanta, said there was no groundswell of support in Georgia schools in favor of a ban on transgender athletes before the legislature and the association acted.
“This ban solves a problem that does not exist,” Isbister said. “This ban does, however, make life more dangerous for our children and families.”
“Transgender students have become targets of bigotry and persecution,” student organizer Abigail Mathew added. “Transgender students deserve much better from our leaders.”
Mathew said the push to ban transgender athletes was politically motivated during an election year.
In fact, the issue has become campaign fodder for Republican candidates. State Senate President Pro Tempore Butch Miller, R-Gainesville, ran a TV ad defending the ban during an unsuccessful bid for the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor.
Miller and other Republicans have argued that allowing transgender males to compete in girls’ sports gives them an unfair advantage over girls born female because transgender males tend to possess both greater strength and speed.
But Ang Stephan, a student organizer from Cobb County, said the state of California has been allowing transgender students to participate in school sports that align with their gender identity for eight years with no complaints.
“I want to participate in sports in a place where I feel welcome and included,” Stephan said. “The recent ban … keeps [transgender students] from wanting to participate in sports.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – President Joe Biden has named former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms to join his administration as senior advisor to the president for public engagement.
Bottoms, who decided not to seek reelection last year after serving one term as mayor, will oversee the White House Office of Public Engagement, which works at the national, state, and local levels to make sure the president maintains open communication with community leaders with diverse perspectives.
“Mayor Bottoms understands that democracy is about making government work for working families, for the people who are the backbone of this country,” Biden said Tuesday.
“Keisha is bright, honorable, tough, and has the integrity required to represent our administration to the American public.”
Bottoms was an early supporter of Biden during the presidential primary campaign that led to his winning the Democratic nomination in 2020. Her name was among those floated as a potential nominee for vice president until Biden chose then-U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris of California.
Biden praised Bottoms for her leadership of Atlanta during the pandemic, including protests during the summer of 2020 following the fatal shooting of Rayshard Brooks by an Atlanta police officer as well as the mass shooting last year of eight people, including six Asian American women, at three spas in the metro area.
Bottoms served on the Atlanta City Council representing a district in Southwest Atlanta before being elected mayor in 2017. After leaving city government at the beginning of this year, she joined CNN as a political commentator.
Bottoms will succeed Cedric Richmond, who represented the New Orleans area in the U.S. House of Representatives before joining the Biden administration early last year. Richmond is leaving to serve as a strategist with the Democratic National Committee.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Monkeypox rash (photo credit: Georgia Department of Public Health/CDC)
ATLANTA – Fewer than 10 children in Georgia have been diagnosed with pediatric hepatitis, State Epidemiologist Cherie L. Drenzek said at the state Board of Public Health’s (DPH) monthly meeting Tuesday.
The pediatric hepatitis outbreak began in Alabama in October 2021.
So, far 245 children in the United States have had the mysterious disease. Most needed to be hospitalized and nine have died.
It’s unclear what causes the disease. None of the children diagnosed so far had hepatitis viruses, but 45% did test positive for adenovirus type 41, a common childhood infection that is usually mild and causes gastrointestinal upset.
“[The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] is casting a really wide net to look at what potentially could be involved, other cofactors, previous infections,” Drenzek said.
Some staff members at Atlanta children’s hospitals are helping with the studies, Drenzek added.
Prior to this outbreak, public health officials did not closely track hepatitis in children, so it’s hard to determine whether the recently identified cases are much higher than typical rates, Drenzek said.
She emphasized that the disease remains very rare.
Monkeypox
Two Georgians have been diagnosed with monkeypox, Drenzek said. The Department of Public Health confirmed the first Georgia case earlier this month.
Drenzek said most of the approximately 65 known monkeypox cases in the United States have been among adult males between 23 and 76 years old, with a median age of 38.
The cases appear to have been transmitted through very close personal contact with someone else who had the lesions, Drenzek said.
Often the monkeypox infections have been found in people also infected with chlamydia, HPV, or syphilis and many of the people with the disease identify themselves as men who have sex with men, Drenzek said.
Most of the people with diagnosed cases had traveled recently – but not to the western and central African regions where monkeypox is endemic
People diagnosed with monkeypox in the current outbreak are not reporting the initial fever and gland swelling usually experienced at the start of the infection.
The rash also differs from that seen in typical monkeypox cases, with fewer lesions that are less pronounced than those usually seen. In the current outbreak, the rash often begins in the genital and perianal region and the disease tends to progress more rapidly than in usual cases.
COVID-19
Reported COVID-19 numbers in Georgia have increased about 20% in the last week. Hospitalization and death numbers have also increased slightly, Drenzek said.
Those numbers are likely an undercount because many people are testing at home and not reporting the results to public health agencies, she added.
Drenzek said the rates of infection in what she called the “sixth wave” of the virus are nowhere near what they were during the height of the pandemic.
More waves of COVID are expected this year, Drenzek said. She encouraged people to get vaccinated and boosted and to remain careful.
Infant formula
Sean Mack, the state’s WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) program coordinator, provided an update on the infant formula shortage that began earlier this year when manufacturer Abbott recalled its infant formulas and shut down one of its formula factories.
Though Georgia’s WIC program did not have a contract with Abbott, the state’s supply of formula has also been impacted by the nationwide shortage. Georgia’s WIC program has loosened restrictions to allow participants to purchase different brands of formula, not just the Mead Johnson formula that is typically the only one allowed.
It has also loosened rules that prevented the return of formula to community food programs so that other families can use the precious formula.
Around half of infants born in Georgia rely on the WIC program for formula, Mack said.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – A letter from U.S. Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger has exonerated U.S. Rep. Barry Loudermilk from accusations that he led a tour of the Capitol the day before a mob of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the building.
“There is no evidence that Representative Loudermilk entered the U.S. Capitol with this group on January 5, 2021,” stated the letter to Loudermilk, dated Monday. “We train our officers on being alert for people conducting surveillance or reconnaissance, and we do not consider any of the activities we observed as suspicious.”
The letter from Manger came almost a month after the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol asked Loudermilk, R-Cassville, about the tour.
According to the letter, a review of security video footage from Jan. 5 showed a group of a dozen of Loudermilk’s constituents, which later grew to 15, entering the Rayburn House Office Building and being greeted by a congressional staffer. The group was then seen heading toward Loudermilk’s office inside the Rayburn building.
About two hours later, the group was again captured on camera entering the basement of the Cannon House Office Building, which features a series of exhibits. During the five minutes the group spent at the exhibits, Loudermilk left them and departed alone.
“At no time did the group appear in any tunnels that would have led them to the U.S. Capitol,” the letter stated. “In addition, the tunnels leading to the U.S. Capitol were posted with USCP (United States Capitol Police) officers, and admittance to the U.S. Capitol without a member of Congress was not permitted on Jan. 5, 2021.”
“The truth will always prevail,” Loudermilk posted on Twitter Tuesday after receiving the letter. “As I’ve said since the Jan. 6 committee made their baseless accusation about me to the media, I never gave a tour of the Capitol on Jan. 5, 2021.”
The committee held televised public hearings last Thursday and again on Monday. A third hearing scheduled for Wednesday has been postponed until Thursday.
Loudermilk represents Georgia’s 11th Congressional District, which includes all of Bartow and Pickens counties and portions of Cobb and Cherokee counties.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia Power would retire two coal-burning units and two gas-fired turbines at two power plants by the beginning of August under an agreement filed with the state Public Service Commission (PSC) Monday.
But the Atlanta-based utility also would put the brakes on a proposal to develop 1,000 megawatts of energy generating capacity through battery storage by 2030.
Representatives of Georgia Power and the PSC’s Public Interest Advocacy Staff signed off on the 14-page agreement.
If approved by the commission, it would form the framework for an updated Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), which the utility submits to the PSC every three years indicating where it plans to get the power-generation sources necessary to meet the needs of its 2.7 million customers for the next 20 years.
The original IRP update Georgia Power filed last January called for retiring nine coal-burning units, leaving only two of the four units at Plant Bowen near Cartersville. The utility has been phasing out coal for the last decade amid tighter government regulation of carbon emissions.
Under the new agreement, Georgia Power would close two coal-burning units at Plant Wansley near Carrollton, one gas turbine at Wansley and a second gas unit at Plant Boulevard in Savannah by Aug. 1.
Most of the remaining units slated for retirement would be closed by the end of 2028. However, the amended IRP would leave the decision whether to retire the two coal-burning units at Plant Bowen up to the PSC.
The agreement filed Monday also would deny approval of the 1,000-megawatt battery storage project Georgia Power requested in the January IRP. It raised concerns over whether the potential benefits of the project would justify the cost.
However, the IRP still would “provisionally” authorize the company to develop, own and operate the proposed 265-megawatt McGrau Ford Battery Facility in Cherokee County, subject to the PSC approving procurement and construction agreements for the project.
Georgia Power’s plans to step up its investment in renewable energy would remain intact under the agreement. The utility is planning to develop an additional 2,300 megawatts of solar power.
The updated IRP also retained Georgia Power’s plans to test “tall wind” technology by building two wind turbines 140 meters to 165 meters high capable of generating 4 megawatts each. Under the agreement, the PSC would approve the costs of the project but retain the right to decide later whether to allow the utility to recover those costs from ratepayers.
The commission is expected to vote on the updated IRP next month.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
