State Senate to tackle growth of artificial intelligence

State Sen. John Albers

ATLANTA – The Georgia Senate is working to come to grips with the ramifications of the growth in artificial intelligence (AI) technology for public policy.

Two Senate committees announced plans Monday to hold a joint hearing on AI this fall. The Public Safety and Science and Technology committees will take up the issue at the state Capitol on Nov. 1.

“Artificial intelligence is evolving rapidly, and it is important for us to analyze current and future AI practices” said Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who presides over the state Senate. “We must look at the pros, cons and potential unintended consequences of AI, and I look forward to the work of this Senate joint committee.”

Artificial intelligence has caught the attention of government leaders at all levels. U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., called the growth of AI an “existential threat” on multiple fronts during a Senate subcommittee hearing in June.

Ossoff said AI can be used to invade Americans’ privacy, disrupt labor markets by replacing jobs now being done by humans, influence the future of warfare, destabilize politics, and threaten the nation’s cybersecurity. On the other hand, the technology promises to increase economic productivity, help diagnose cancer, and produce life-saving drugs, he said.

The use of AI in political ads has raised alarms over its ability to mislead voters into believing candidates said and did things they did not.

“AI may be one of the greatest disruptors in history, providing significant advancements and monumental risk,” said state Sen. Jon Albers, R-Roswell, chairman of the Senate Public Safety Committee. “We must address this head on to protect our citizens, businesses, and state.”

The joint committee will hear from industry experts in an effort to design policies for coping with the growth of AI technology across a multitude of platforms.

Federal court blocks state ban on hormone therapy for transgender minors

ATLANTA – A federal judge has granted a preliminary injunction prohibiting the state from enforcing a portion of a bill limiting medical care for transgender children.

Judge Sarah E. Geraghty ruled late Sunday that four Georgia families and a national organization of parents with transgender children likely would succeed in a permanent challenge to a provision in Senate Bill 140 that bans hormone replacement therapy for the treatment of gender dysphoria in adolescents. The legislation also prohibits Georgians under 18 from receiving gender-affirming surgery.

Sunday’s ruling will allow the lawsuit challenging the ban on hormone therapy for minors to move forward.

The Republican-controlled General Assembly passed SB140 last March, voting along party lines. The law took effect July 1.

Supporters characterized the law as a measure to protect children from irreversible physical changes. Opponents, including parents of transgender youth and major medical societies, argued that delaying hormone replacement therapy or surgery until after age 18 would harm vulnerable transgender youths’ mental health.

“This law unapologetically targets transgender minors and denies them essential health care,” civil rights groups representing the plaintiffs wrote in a statement. “The ruling restores parents’ rights to make medical decisions that are in their child’s best interest, including hormone therapy for their transgender children when needed for them to thrive and be healthy.”

The plaintiffs are represented in the case by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Georgia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation and the law firm O’Melveny & Myers LLP.

The state will appeal the ruling, said Kara Richardson, spokesperson for Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr.

“We are disappointed in the judge’s decision and plan to immediately appeal to protect the health and well-being of Georgia’s children,” Richardson said.

The Georgia ruling was the seventh in federal court blocking a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth, joining courts in Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Arkansas.

Both sides score partial wins in Georgia elections lawsuit

Voters wait in line outside a polling place in Atlanta during the primary election on June 9, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)

ATLANTA – A federal court judge has handed both sides in a lawsuit over a controversial election reform bill the General Assembly passed two years ago a partial victory and a partial defeat.

Judge J.P. Boulee granted a preliminary injunction Friday to civil rights and voting rights groups temporarily blocking portions of Senate Bill 202 that restricted volunteers from providing food and water to voters waiting in long lines at the polls. In a partial win for the plaintiffs, the judge declared the ban would apply only within 150 feet of a polling place.

Boulee also threw out a provision requiring voters to include their birthdate on absentee ballot envelopes.

“Today’s decisions remove some of SB202’s barriers to absentee and in-person voting in the 2024 election cycle,” said Rahul Garabadu, senior voting rights staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Georgia chapter. “The court recognized that voters should not be disenfranchised for forgetting to write their birthdate on their absentee ballot envelope, or arrested for offering food or drink to voters in line outside the 150-foot zone around polling locations.”

But the judge also gave Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger reason to celebrate. Boulee upheld portions of the legislation banning ballot harvesting – the gathering and submitting of absentee ballots by third parties – and limiting the number of absentee ballot drop boxes.

“Georgia has one of the best absentee ballot systems in the country,” Raffensperger said. “We have no-excuse absentee ballots, with voters verified with photo ID and who are given an opportunity to cure any discrepancy prior to their ballot being rejected. It’s a system that works well.”

The plaintiffs had brought the lawsuit before last year’s elections. But the judge declined to issue a ruling last August, arguing that changing election laws close to an election would confuse voters.

The General Assembly’s Republican majorities passed SB202 in 2021 after Democrats had scored major gains in Georgia in the 2020 election cycle, including Joe Biden’s victory over incumbent GOP President Donald Trump and the capture of both of the Peach State’s U.S. Senate seats.

With the COVID-19 pandemic going strong, absentee voting played a major role in the 2020 elections, with drop boxes being used for the first time.

Georgia case against Trump just beginning

ATLANTA – The indictment of former President Donald Trump in Fulton County Aug. 14 on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia was the culmination of two and a half years of investigation.

But in another sense, the case is only beginning and is likely to drag out beyond a 2024 election that could pit Republican Trump in a rematch with Democratic incumbent Joe Biden.

That’s because Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis cast a wide net in putting together a racketeering case against not only Trump but 18 other defendants and 30 unindicated co-conspirators. Each one of the defendants is accused of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), a charge that carries a minimum prison sentence of five years.

“RICO trials are legendarily long affairs,” said Christina Harvey, executive director of Stand Up America, a New York City-based progressive nonprofit founded during the 2016 presidential campaign.

In 41 counts, the 97-page indictment charges Trump and the other defendants with participating in a “criminal enterprise” that tried to convince high-ranking state and federal officials – including then-Vice President Mike Pence – to throw out the Electoral College results in favor of Biden in Georgia and a half dozen other swing states and declare Trump the winner of the electoral votes in those states.

Three of Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia case are accused of participating as “fake” electors and casting their electoral votes for Trump even though Biden carried the Peach State. Another participant in that meeting, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, could face separate charges because of a court ruling prohibiting Willis from investigating him due to a conflict of interest.

The scheme allegedly included filing false statements, lying to members of Georgia’s General Assembly, harassing and intimidating two rank-and-file Fulton County election workers, illegally accessing voting machines and data in Coffee County. and committing perjury to cover up the conspiracy.

The indictment alleges 161 criminal “acts” committed by the defendants, beginning with Trump’s nationally televised speech the night of the 2020 election claiming victory stretching to September of last year, when one of Trump’s lawyers was accused of lying to the special grand jury Willis formed to investigate the case.

Trump struck back against the indictment, labeling Willis on the former president’s social media site Truth Social as a “rabid partisan” out to sink his hopes of winning back the presidency.

“Willis has strategically stalled the investigation to try to … interfere with the 2024 presidential race and damage the dominant Trump campaign,” Trump wrote. “These corrupt Democrat attempts will fail.”

Even Republicans who have accused Trump of promulgating lies in an effort to steal the election have accused Willis of overreaching.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a former Trump ally now seeking the Republican presidential nomination, said indicting Trump in Fulton County was unnecessary in that it duplicates many of the federal charges brought against the ex-president by Special Counsel Jack Smith.

“The conduct is very disturbing,” Christie said. “[But] Jack Smith charged the case weeks ago. … The double charging of Donald Trump complicates things in a way that makes administration of justice much more difficult.”

Lawyers for Trump’s chief of staff and co-defendant Mark Meadows have filed a motion to move the state case into federal court. One advantage to the defendants of going to federal court would be to expand the jury pool from heavily Democratic Fulton County to other counties with more Republican voters.

But Willis argued during a news conference the night of Aug. 14 that state court is a proper venue.

“All elections in our nation are administered by the states, which are given the responsibility of ensuring a fair process and an accurate counting of the votes,” she said. “The states’ role in this process is essential to the functioning of our democracy.”

Meadows’ lawyers are expected to cite a federal law that allows defendants to be tried in federal court if the acts they are accused of committing took place as part of their official duties as federal officials. The same argument presumably would apply to Trump and former U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, another co-defendant.

But Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, is skeptical of that argument.

“You’re going to have to assert that an attempted coup is part of the official duties of a president or chief of staff,” he said. “No court would swallow that.”

Svante Myrick, president of the progressive advocacy group People for the American Way, said an advantage of a trial in state versus federal court is that it could be televised. Cameras are not allowed in federal court.

“People believe what they can see on their screen,” he said.

Another advantage to the prosecution of pursuing the case in state court is that neither Trump nor any other future Republican president could pardon anyone convicted of state crimes.

Lawyers for the defendants also are expected to argue statements their clients made that are being charged as crimes were asserting their First Amendment rights to free speech.

But former DeKalb County District Attorney Gwen Keyes Fleming said free speech has limits.

“Those rules stop at filing false and frivolous claims,” she said.

Fleming said the key to the prosecution will be proving the defendants knowingly lied in claiming the Georgia election was rigged despite numerous investigations that dismissed the allegations as false. While no one can get inside the defendants’ heads, she said there are plenty of texts and emails that go to intent.

“There were admissions folks did not believe this was true, but they were pursuing it anyway,” she said.

Finally, Trump’s critics pushed back on the argument that he is being pursued out of political motivations.

“This is not about getting Donald Trump,” said Joanna Lydgate, CEO of States United Democracy Center, a Boston-based group that advocates for safe and accurate elections. “It’s about taking every possible step to protect democracy and the rule of law.”

Here is a list of the 19 defendants indicted by a Fulton County grand jury:

Donald Trump, former U.S. president

Rudy Giuliani, former New York City mayor and Trump’s personal lawyer

John Eastman, Trump lawyer

Mark Meadows, former Republican congressman from North Carolina and former White House chief of staff

Kenneth Chesebro, pro-Trump lawyer

Jeffrey Clark, former U.S. attorney general

Jenna Ellis, Trump campaign lawyer

Ray Smith, Trump campaign lawyer

Robert Cheeley, lawyer accused of promoting false election claims

Mike Roman, Trump campaign official

David Shafer, former Georgia state senator and former Georgia Republican chairman, fake elector

Shawn Still, Republican state senator from Norcross and fake elector

Stephen Lee, pastor connected with alleged intimidation of election workers

Harrison Floyd, leader of Black Voices for Trump

Trevian Kutti, publicist connected to alleged intimidation of election workers

Sidney Powell, Trump campaign lawyer

Cathy Latham, fake elector tied to Coffee County voting equipment breach

Scott Hall, bail bondsman tied to Coffee County voting equipment breach

Misty Hampton, Coffee County elections supervisor

Here is the timeline of the case thus far:

Dec. 3, 2020: A Georgia Senate subcommittee hears from witnesses including Rudy Giuliani, then-President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, on allegations concerning the state’s voting machines and watch a video claiming ballot-counting irregularities that state election officials have dismissed as unfounded.

Dec. 10, 2020: A Georgia House committee hears a second presentation from Giuliani airing claims of fraud in Georgia’s presidential election.

Dec. 14, 2020: A group of Republican “fake” electors meets at the Georgia Capitol to cast the state’s 16 electoral votes for Trump at the same time the real electors – Democrats – are certifying Biden’s victory over the incumbent president one floor above.

Jan. 2, 2021: Trump calls Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger urging the secretary, who heads the state Elections Division, to “find” 11,780 votes, one more than Biden’s margin of victory in Georgia.

Feb. 10, 2021: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis announces she is launching an investigation into alleged attempts to influence Georgia’s 2020 elections, including Trump’s January call pressuring Raffensperger to overturn the results.

Jan. 20, 2022: Willis requests authorization to form a special purpose grand jury to hear testimony in the case because potential witnesses are refusing to cooperate without a subpoena to compel their testimony.

May 2, 2022: The special grand jury is selected, consisting of 23 Fulton County residents and three alternates. Over the next eight months, the panel hears from a host of high-profile witnesses including Raffensperger, Gov. Brian Kemp, Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, Giulliani, then-Georgia House Speaker David Ralston, and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

July 25, 2022: Willis is disqualified from including then-state Sen. Burt Jones, R-Jackson, in the investigation. A Fulton County judge rules Willis has a conflict of interest because she hosted a fundraiser for Jones’ Democratic opponent in the race for lieutenant governor. Jones wins the election in November.

Jan. 9, 2023: Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney announces the special purpose grand jury has completed its work and delivered its report.

Feb. 16, 2023: McBurney allows a portion of the report to be released to the public showing the panel is recommending that one or more witnesses be indicted for perjury.

April 24, 2023: Willis says she will announce “charging decisions” resulting from the investigation between July 11 and the beginning of September.

July 17, 2023: The Georgia Supreme Court rejects a bid by Trump’s lawyers to quash the investigation.

Aug. 14, 2023: After a marathon session and hearing from at least four witnesses, a Fulton County grand jury indicts Trump and 18 others on felony charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.

Fuel loading starts at Plant Vogtle Unit 4

Unit 3 at Plant Vogtle began commercial operations on July 31.

ATLANTA – Fuel loading has begun at the second of two new nuclear reactors being built at Georgia Power’s Plant Vogtle.

The first of the new reactors – Unit 3 – began commercial operations late last month seven years behind the original schedule.

The start of fuel loading at Unit 4 marks a major milestone toward getting it into commercial service late this year or early in 2024. It comes after the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission certified the new reactor has been constructed and will be operated in compliance with regulations.

Once fuel loading is complete, startup testing will begin. Operators will bring the reactor from cold shutdown to initial criticality, synchronize the unit to the electric grid and gradually raise power to 100%.

“On the heels of Unit 3 reaching commercial operation, today’s good news of fuel load at Unit 4 continues the site’s positive momentum … at the Vogtle construction project, which represents the first advanced commercial nuclear project in the U.S. in more than three decades,” said Mike Smith, president and CEO of Oglethorpe Power, one of four utilities partnering on the Vogtle expansion.

Originally expected to cost about $14 billion, the estimated price tag has more than doubled. The work was complicated by the bankruptcy of Westinghouse Electric, the original prime contractor, and a workforce shortage brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Once Unit 4 goes into commercial operation, the Georgia Public Service Commission will hold “prudency” hearings and decide how much of the project costs will be passed on to customers and how much will be assigned to the utilities’ shareholders.