ATLANTA – Nearly two dozen alleged gang members have been charged with racketeering, drug trafficking and firearms violations in a 12-count federal indictment.
The 23 defendants allegedly are members of the Sex Money Murder gang. They are accused of taking part in an extensive criminal enterprise inside the state prison system, often using contraband cellphones to orchestrate crimes including murder, attempted murder, and drug trafficking, both inside and outside prisons.
Eleven of the defendants were inmates, either at Autry State Prison in Pelham, Hancock State Prison in Sparta, Smith State Prison in Glennville, Ware State Prison in Waycross, or at the Georgia Department of Corrections’ Special Management Unit.
“Gang activity inside correctional facilities throughout our state continues to be a challenge, and we are using every resource at our disposal to combat this issue,” state Corrections Commissioner Tyrone Oliver said Monday. “As one of Gov. Kemp’s initiatives is to fight gang activity, our agents work non-stop with our law enforcement partners statewide, and this is another example of that vital collaboration.”
The 23 defendants were indicted last week in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
“For more than a decade, these gang members and their associates allegedly orchestrated a criminal enterprise within and outside of multiple prisons to earn money for, boost their status in, and impose discipline required by a gang,” U.S. Attorney Ryan Buchanan said.
“This indictment is the culmination of a lengthy and carefully coordinated federal and state law enforcement investigation aimed at dismantling this violent group.”
According to Buchanan and information presented to the court, the Sex Monday Murder (SMM) gang is a national gang and a subset of The Bloods, which originated in the early 1970s in Los Angeles. The SMM subset spread from The Bronx in New York City to states along the East Coast including Georgia.
Nine of the defendants were arrested last Wednesday and appeared in federal court in Atlanta and Albany that day. Eight additional defendants were arraigned in Atlanta last Thursday.
“With the creation of Georgia’s first statewide Gang Prosecution Unit, we’re working with all levels of law enforcement to investigate and prosecute criminal gang activity wherever it occurs,” state Attorney General Chris Carr said.
“Alongside our partners at the Georgia Department of Corrections, we will continue to hold accountable those who use a contraband cellphone to direct further violence from behind bars.”
ATLANTA – In the category of election campaigns starting earlier and earlier, Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones launched an attack ad Monday against GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
In the ad, Jones slams Raffensperger for being a no-show on the job and missing budget hearings and a recent state Senate committee hearing on election integrity.
Jones, who presides over the Georgia Senate, and Raffensperger, the state’s chief elections officer, appear to be on a collision course ahead of the 2026 elections even before the 2024 voting. With Republican Gov. Brian Kemp term limited, the 2026 GOP gubernatorial primary field could get crowded, with state Attorney General Chris Carr another possible contender.
Jones’ ad starts by depicting a milk carton carrying Raffensperger’s photo, with the female narrator stating he is missing. She goes on to claim the secretary hasn’t attended a Senate Appropriations Committee meeting since 2020 despite the panel exercising control over his agency’s budget.
The ad also brings up Raffensperger’s failure to appear at a Senate Ethics Commission hearing on election integrity two weeks ago because he had a speaking engagement elsewhere. Raffensperger sent the agency’s general counsel instead to the meeting, where some Senate Republicans complained the secretary of state’s office was taking too long to implement an upgrade to the state’s touch-screen voting machines.
The ad continues by charging Raffensperger with working only 42 days this year and missing 70% of work days since 2021.
“If you or I did that, we’d be fired from our job,” the narrator states.
A key member of Raffensperger’s staff responded to the ad by saying her boss is focused on next year’s elections.
“While desperate politicians and election deniers work to discredit the outcome of next year’s election, we will continue to focus on preparing our counties for a smooth, secure and successful election,” Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs told The Hill, a Washington, D.C.-based newspaper that covers Capitol Hill.
Raffensperger and Jones are in opposite camps in Georgia’s Republican Party. Raffensperger famously refused to go along when then-President Donald Trump urged him to “find” 11,780 Georgia votes for Trump in the November, 2020, election, one more than Democrat Joe Biden had won in carrying the Peach State over Trump.
Jones was the only statewide Republican candidate endorsed by Trump in Georgia last year to win his election. Shortly after the 2020 election, then-state Sen. Jones was among a group of state Senate Republicans who called for a special session of the General Assembly amid allegations of widespread voter fraud in Georgia that turned out to be unfounded.
ATLANTA – The Georgia Department of Education is launching a literacy initiative aimed at both improving literacy among students and training educators on the science of reading.
The Georgia Literacy Academy, a partnership between the state and the Atlanta-based Rollins Center for Language & Literacy, will be rolled out in nine school districts and three charter schools for its first two years.
Participants will include the Colquitt, Dooly, Grady, Lowndes, Muscogee, Seminole and Thomas county school districts; the Pelham and Valdosta city school districts, the International Academy of Smyrna, The Kindezi Schools, and ZEST Preparatory Academy.
In addition, courses developed by the academy will be available to all K-5 teachers and educational leaders free of charge.
“It is our fundamental responsibility to ensure students learn to read, and then- for the rest of their lives – can read to learn,” State School Superintendent Richard Woods said Monday. “This partnership will strengthen early literacy instruction for students across the state.”
Gov. Brian Kemp and the General Assembly have made improving Georgia’s literacy rates a priority. This year, lawmakers passed and Kemp signed two literacy bills introducing two related approaches to literacy instruction: “the science of reading” and “structured literacy.”
The science of reading bundles together instruction on phonics with reading comprehension and vocabulary.
“Structured literacy,” as defined by one of the new laws, refers to an “evidence-based approach to teaching oral and written language … characterized by explicit, systematic, cumulative, and diagnostic instruction.”
More than 125 leaders from school districts and individual schools will receive both in-person and virtual coaching during the next two years. The first course is set to launch this month.
The initiative builds on the success of the Rollins Center’s successful collaboration with Marietta City Schools. Marietta Superintendent Grant Rivera, school board member Jaillene Hunter and several Marietta teachers gave a presentation on their school district’s literacy efforts last month to the Georgia Council on Literacy, which the General Assembly created this year to work on improving literacy in the Peach State.
“The stars are aligned in Georgia around literacy,” said Amy Denty, the state Department of Education’s director of literacy. “We are thrilled to implement this proven model of structured literacy coursework and coaching on a greater scale, extending its positive impact to districts, teachers, and students across the state.”
ATHENS – A U.S. senator and a former senator traveled to the University of Georgia Friday to tout the benefits of political civility at a time extreme partisanship in Congress threatens to shut down the federal government.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and former Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., highlighted the first annual Johnny Isakson Symposium on Political Civility, held to honor the legacy of the late Georgia Republican senator Manchin called “the most civil public servant I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Isakson, who died nearly two years ago of Parkinson’s disease and other health issues, was widely respected as a voice of reason and compromise on Capitol Hill while other members of Congress were busy pushing partisan agendas that got in the way of achieving results.
Both Manchin and Blunt served with Isakson in the Senate. They, too, built reputations as moderates willing to work with members of both parties in pursuit of common ground on issues that needed addressing.
“He liked to get things done,” Blunt said of Isakson. “That takes a bipartisan approach.”
Manchin and Blunt gave the audience gathered at the UGA Chapel examples of legislation they worked to achieve that wouldn’t have happened without the bipartisanship only made possible by political civility.
For Manchin, it was the $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending bill Congress passed two years ago this month. He said he had to make deals with other lawmakers to get the measure through after 30 years without significant congressional action to improve the nation’s infrastructure.
“We had to work together,” he said. “You can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
For Blunt, it was increasing federal funding of the National Institute of Health (NIH) for the first time in a decade. He said it was only possible by getting Senate Democrats to agree to eliminate funding for 36 other NIH programs.
“You had to take funding from someplace to do this in a bipartisan way,” he said.
Manchin said Republicans and Democrats also worked together late last year to pass the Electoral Count Act clarifying that the role of the vice president in certifying presidential election results is purely ceremonial.
He said it was critical for Congress to do something following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol during the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s electoral victory over incumbent Republican President Donald Trump.
“We knew we had a serious problem,” Manchin said. “We never wanted an insurrection to happen again.”
Blunt said the sharp partisanship now rampant in Congress isn’t just the lawmakers’ fault. He also blamed a political climate shaped by the media that has left Americans unable to see eye to eye on the most basic facts.
“Everybody wants to bring their facts to the table,” he said. “Everybody has their very narrow view of what’s going on.”
Both Manchin’s and Blunt’s brand of political civility is being lost to Congress. Blunt retired from the Senate earlier this year, and Manchin is about to leave. He announced Thursday his decision not to seek reelection in 2024, although he didn’t mention it during Friday’s symposium.
After retiring from Congress in 2019, Isakson founded the Isakson Initiative to raise awareness and funding for research related to neurological diseases. On Friday, Heath Garrett, who served as Isakson’s chief of staff, announced the initiative has raised more than $57 million.
John Isakson, the senator’s son, said the Isakson Symposium on Political Civility, will continue in the coming years at different sites around the country.
ATLANTA – State and local economic development officials have closed on the bonds issued to help finance the $5 billion Rivian electric vehicles plant to be built near Interstate 20 east of Atlanta.
The Georgia Department of Economic Development and the Joint Development Authority of Jasper, Morgan, Newton, and Walton Counties also have executed a rental agreement giving Rivian long-term rights to the project.
“Renting the site to Rivian is the next step in delivering this generational opportunity,” the two agencies wrote in a statement issued late Thursday. “Georgians in Jasper, Morgan, Newton, and Walton counties and beyond look forward to $5 billion in investment and 7,500 good-paying jobs that this innovative, American manufacturing company will bring.”
When it was first announced late in 2021, the Rivian plant was the largest economic development project in Georgia history. But it was superseded last year when Hyundai Motor Group broke ground on a $5.5 billion EV plant west of Savannah that has grown another $2 billion with this year’s announcement of an expansion of the project in partnership with LG Energy Solution.
Grading work will be completed at the Rivian site in the coming weeks, and construction will begin by early next year.
Rivian recently opened a “spaces” presence at Atlanta’s Ponce City Market as part of its marketing strategy, the company’s first physical presence in Georgia.
