ATLANTA — The year started with news about presidents past and present, as Donald Trump was sworn in for a second term and Georgia mourned the loss of Jimmy Carter.
The Trump administration implemented major changes to immigration and trade policy that reverberated across the country and in Georgia. Developments driven by technology companies also rocked the state, as the words “data center” came into common use.
The Peach State also made its own news, from a shooting at a military base to a split between a high-profile Republican and Trump and a surprising statewide election outcome that threatened the status quo.
Here is a look at the top Georgia stories of 2025.
Jan. 7: The celebration of the life of a native son and former president, Jimmy Carter, moved from Atlanta to the nation’s capital for a memorial service in the Capitol Rotunda.
Feb. 12: The state economist warned that Trump’s tariffs would probably drive up prices for Georgia consumers while suppressing exports.
March 21: The Georgia General Assembly passed Gov. Brian Kemp’s top priority — an overhaul of tort law to create a friendlier environment for insurance companies.
March 25: Lawmakers pushed back against big tech, passing a law that will prohibit student cellphone use in public elementary and middle schools starting next fall.
March 31: Reacting to the mass shooting at Apalachee High School last year, the legislature passed a sweeping school safety bill that sought to identify malevolent students before they could do harm and to bolster mental health services.
July 25: About 8,500 students secured approval to begin the school year in private schools, their tuition covered by a new state-funded voucher program that was expected to cost taxpayers $55 million.
July 28: State authorities announced an investigation of a company accused of operating a Ponzi scheme that bilked investors while funding Republican political campaigns. The announcement by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger followed the filing of a lawsuit by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission against First Liberty Building and Loan and its operator Edwin Brant Frost IV.
Aug. 6: Four soldiers and a civilian were shot by a gunman at the U.S. Army’s Fort Stewart near Savannah. All survived and a sergeant was charged with attempted murder
Aug. 25: Kemp announced his decision to deploy about 75 military members across the state to aid U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Sept. 4: Federal agents detained 475 workers at Hyundai’s electric vehicle battery plant near Savannah, most of them Korean nationals, causing friction with the South Korean government.
Sept. 5: Kemp announced plans to send 316 members of the Georgia National Guard to Washington, D.C. to support Trump’s use of troops to patrol the nation’s capital.
Nov. 4: Republicans felt a chill as voters soundly defeated two GOP incumbents on the Public Service Commission, choosing two Democrats instead. The monopoly regulator had raised electricity rates several times, leading to a backlash that pushed “affordability” to the top of the political agenda.
Nov. 21: U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Rome Republican who forged a political brand as a staunch ally of Trump, solidified her break with the president by announcing her resignation a year early, in January. She disagreed with Trump on several issues, including artificial intelligence, military action overseas and release of the federal files concerning deceased sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein.
Nov. 26: A Fulton County judge granted dismissal of the criminal election conspiracy charges against Trump and his remaining co-defendants after a prosecutor took the case from District Attorney Fani Willis when the courts sidelined her over ethical concerns.
Dec. 19: The state Public Service Commission, with less than two weeks to go in the terms of two Republicans ousted by voters in November, granted a controversial expansion of electrical generation capacity for Georgia Power. The monopoly secured approval to build five gas-powered plants while sourcing other power to supply speculative demand by future data centers. The expansion raised concerns about the environmental impact of burning more fossil fuel and the cost to current customers if the nearly 10 gigawatts in new capacity proved unnecessary.
ATLANTA — Like just about everything, the cost of insurance has been rising, fueling frustration that state leaders say they want to address.
Policy holders complain of expensive insurance that does not pay out as promised. At the same time, insurers see an unattractive market in Georgia.
Georgia ranked 50th in profitability for insurance companies last year among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, said Robert Hoyt of the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business.
Hoyt, speaking at the final hearing last week of a committee of lawmakers concerned about insurance costs, said low profits can drive insurers from the market, reducing competition.
Profits were down 8.7% in the state versus 7.8% average gains nationally, he said. That kind of imbalance encourages companies to take their business elsewhere.
“Less availability can lead to higher prices,” he said.
The House of Representatives’ Blue-Ribbon Study Committee on Insurance Rates met for a final time in Gwinnett County on Thursday after holding hearings in Atlanta, Savannah and Macon.
Despite the discouraging statistics from last year, the lawmakers heard some positive news.
Three companies recently announced reductions in their auto policy premiums, according to state Insurance Commissioner John King.
Safeco Insurance Company of Illinois is cutting rates 5.1%, Safeco Insurance Company of Indiana is reducing them 4.9% and Liberty Mutual Personal Insurance Company is lowering rates by 5.7%.
King attributed the reductions to the state’s anti-fraud efforts and to the “lawsuit abuse reforms” lawmakers adopted earlier this year, a reference to tort law changes that were a priority for Gov. Brian Kemp during the last legislative session.
The legislation passed largely along party lines, with Democrats arguing it shielded insurers from liability and denied claimants adequate legal redress.
Lawmakers on the House committee heard complaints about insurers who refused to pay claims because, the critics said, state laws did not hold them to account.
“Insurance companies expect policyholders to pay their bills on time, every time,” said a woman who sued her insurer after months of battling over repair costs from a fallen tree. “When it’s their turn to pay, there are often no real consequences for delay or denial.”
Auto repair companies talked of insurers who refused to pay the full cost to repair cars to manufacturers’ standards.
They shared stories about owners who fought insurers for months and finally paid out of pocket, desperate to get their vehicles back.
“The insurance company will drag their feet,” said Frankie Johnson, owner of Styles Auto Care in Cartersville. He said his customers had shared hundreds of their email threads with insurers that illustrated their predicament.
Companies want to delay the repair process, he said, “hoping that everyone will just give up.”
Johnson sized up the situation: “The current rights of the consumer are not much.”
There were similar stories about tactics in medical care.
Rachael Auyer, of the Georgia Society of Orthotists and Prosthetists, had a client who lost her leg below the knee in an automobile collision. An avid marathoner, the 39-year-old teacher was denied a running prosthesis, Auyer said, because it was not deemed medically necessary. Auyer said the Rome woman, a special education teacher, also had to hop to the bathroom because the insurer did not deem a shower prosthesis to be medically necessary.
“Physicians don’t determine medical necessity,” Auyer said, “insurance companies do.”
Rep. Matt Reeves, R-Duluth, chaired the study committee. He said in an interview that lawmakers will be scrutinizing prices, profits and the way claims are processed.
Reeves, who serves as vice chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the state needs to review its fines for insurance companies that act in bad faith to ensure penalties are significant enough to deter misbehavior.
Insurance affordability will likely inspire legislation during the legislative session that starts in January, he said. “I think it’ll be a robust session on insurance.”
The Georgia Public Service Commission, with member Tim Echols attending remotely, voted Friday, Dec. 19, 2025 to let Georgia Power add nearly 10 gigawatts of capacity, a massive expansion that will cost billions of dollars. (Ty Tagami/Capitol Beat)
ATLANTA — State regulators granted Georgia Power the authority for an historic expansion of its capacity to generate electricity in a unanimous vote Friday.
The decision by the five elected members of the Public Service Commission, all Republicans, allows the privately-owned monopoly to build five gas-powered plants and supporting infrastructure while contracting for additional power from other suppliers.
Critics said the expansion, equivalent to five times the power output of the Hoover Dam, could cost up to $60 billion, saddling generations of Georgians with the bill.
The company asked for and got permission to add nearly 10 gigawatts of generating capacity, close to a 50% increase of its capacity. It said its forecasts showed voracious future demand from tech companies that will be building server warehouses to power the internet and artificial intelligence.
In a statement after the vote, Kim Greene, chairman, president and CEO of Georgia Power, called the demand “projected unprecedented growth,” noting that the company had filed customer contracts with the commission this year for three gigawatts in new demand.
Critics contended that the forecast revenue, based on “trade secret” information that the public cannot see, was overly optimistic. If the demand does not materialize, they said, Georgia Power’s other customers would be left with the bill for the construction of that unneeded capacity.
To offset those concerns, the company pledged to shield existing customers from the cost of the expansion but only through 2031. Thereafter, the agreement allows for amendments to hit the brakes if demand does not materialize.
“Large load” customers, such as data centers, will pay for the expansion through the rates they are charged, the company said, but there remains a risk that the data centers do not come.
So Georgia Power addressed that by signing a “stipulated agreement” to allocate costs based on the current revenue forecasts that assume the demand will be there.
This “downward pressure” on rates will equal $8.50 a month for the typical residential customer, the company said.
Lawyers for opponents, including environmental organizations and renewable energy advocates, said there were undisclosed assumptions in Georgia Power’s calculations that they contended could create a countervailing “upward pressure” on residential bills.
They wanted the company to enter its calculations into the public record, so the commission could more easily hold it to account for its pledge in the future.
Lawyers for the Southern Environmental Law Center filed motions calling for the disclosure and for a 30-day delay on the vote.
“The point of this motion is not about whether it’s a good deal or a bad deal,” said Jennifer Whitfield, one of the lawyers. “It’s about … Georgia Power showing its work for the conclusions that are in the agreement so that we can enforce that agreement down the road.”
Her colleague, Bob Sherrier, added later: “We have a problem with the stipulation putting a number on the downward pressure but not a number on the upward pressure.”
Jason Shaw, chairman of the commission, denied the request, saying his agency already had all the necessary information from Georgia Power.
Then the commissioners voted for the expansion, with audience members shouting “shame,” “disgusting” and “sell out!”
Before the vote, members of the public got time to speak.
Some extolled the benefits of reliable power, saying big companies will not bring jobs to Georgia if the state cannot stay ahead of demand.
“It’s about being proactive rather than reacting too late,” said Susanne Reynolds, director of the Development Authority of Early County in southwest Georgia.
But most were furious about the expansion because of the potential cost for customers and the impact on the environment of burning more fossil fuel.
They also were unhappy with the timing of the vote, less than two weeks before January.
That is when two new commissioners, both Democrats, will take over the seats of the two Republicans they beat decisively in an election last month
Julie Jabaley said she would work hard to unseat the remaining three Republicans.
She was among the protesters escorted out of a similar hearing last week after they were told they had violated the commission’s rules on “decorum,” a word that Jabaley mocked.
“If you vote on this proposal today as is you demonstrate an utter lack of respect for thousands of petitioners who have tried to decorously convince you that there’s a better way to fulfill your mission that consumers receive safe and reasonably priced services,” she said.
Jabaley said she wanted “clean, smart energy for the future” and was concerned about the cost of the expansion.
“If you proceed,” she said, “you will absolutely not be decent to the tens of thousands of Georgia Power customers on fixed or low incomes.”
ATLANTA — Advocates for the environment and renewable energy say in a formal filing with the state utilities regulator that Georgia Power’s pledge to hold down homeowners’ utility bills during a proposed expansion of capacity for data centers is an empty promise.
The monopoly utility wants permission to increase its electricity generation by 10 gigawatts ahead of an anticipated surge in demand by tech companies that are developing power hungry artificial intelligence. The massive expansion now has the blessing of the Public Service Commission’s public interest advocacy staff despite earlier concerns.
The agency’s staff had judged the company’s demand forecasts to be unrealistic and had said normal ratepayers would end up footing the bill for the expansions if data center companies did not ultimately come to Georgia to use all the new power.
They recommended in November that the commission certify only three new gigawatts “to protect customers from having to pay for unnecessary capacity costs.”
Then, last week, the staff pivoted, recommending approval of Georgia Power’s request in exchange for a pledge to put “downward pressure” on billing. For the typical residential customer, the company said, that amounted to $8.50 a month from 2029 through 2031.
It was a sudden announcement, on the morning of the final public hearing before Friday’s vote. Lawyers for expansion opponents lacked time for thorough review before the hearing. This week they filed formal rebuttals that call for a delay on voting by the five-member commission to give time to rewrite the contracts.
The Southern Environmental Law Center’s filings on behalf of Georgia Interfaith Power & Light and the Southface Energy Institute say the contracts need clearer language to ensure the ratepayer protections are enforceable, given the 45-year lifespan of the methane gas power plants that Georgia Power wants to build.
“If Georgia Power’s load forecast doesn’t materialize, certifying costs limits the tools available to the Commission,” the lawyers wrote in a brief filed with the commission Tuesday. Georgia Power wants to add $50 billion to $60 billion to customers’ bills, it said. “Once these costs are certified, state law severely restricts the Commission’s ability to disallow these costs in the future.”
The lawyers wrote that the $8.50 reduction is a “phantom promise” that does not ensure ratepayers will see it in their bills.
One reason is the “trade secret” deference given Georgia Power to withhold information, which opponents’ lawyers say they need to calculate details of that downward pressure. They wrote in an accompanying petition that numbers provided verbally last week were “concerningly high.”
The tentative agreement that commission staff reached with Georgia Power last week, called a “stipulated agreement,” assures only one piece of a three-part equation involving revenue and benefits, they wrote. “Without transparency as to the assumptions underlying the promised ‘downward pressure,’ future enforcement of that promise will be elusive.”
Two of the five commissioners were handily beaten by Democrats in last month’s election, an outcome that had Republicans worried about next year’s general election. GOP candidates in other races characterized it as a backlash against recent increases approved by the full commission.
All of the current commissioners are Republicans. They are scheduled to vote on Georgia Power’s expansion Friday, including the two defeated Republicans who will hold their seats through the end of the year.
The hearing starts at 9:30 a.m. at the commission’s offices in downtown Atlanta. But the lawyers for the opponents petitioned for more information from Georgia Power about the “actual impact” of financial promises in the stipulated agreement “and to support enforcement of those promises” in the future.
They asked for at least 30 days to review any response. By then, the two Democrats would be seated. Both oppose the Georgia Power’s expansion.
But on Thursday a lawyer for Georgia Power asked the commission to deny the petition, writing that the company had submitted “ample” documentation already and that no additional hearing was required before the vote.
ATLANTA — After more than a year of rebuffing Republican attempts to compel her testimony before the Georgia Senate, Fani Willis went to the state Capitol Wednesday to give three hours of often combative testimony to a special committee that she deemed to be a political farce.
Senate Republicans created the committee to investigate “alleged and admitted” misconduct by Willis, whom they have been pursuing since her decision to indict Donald Trump and 18 alleged co-conspirators in the wake of the 2020 election.
The hearing featured questions about her use of public funds as Fulton County district attorney, whether she had coordinated with the administration of President Joe Biden, her handling of open records requests and her payment to a subscription service she used to track the value of the media coverage of her and her office.
It also featured Georgia’s last Democratic governor, Roy Barnes, as her attorney, who frequently interrupted to advise her not to answer questions.
Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, led the committee in the place of Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, whom Dolezal said was recuperating from surgery.
When Barnes cut Dolezal off after dismissing the relevance of some of his questions, Dolezal said they were about the investigation while Barnes said they were merely to infer wrongdoing.
Willis then added, “also to divide the country.”
Each side accused the other of political grandstanding. Dolezal asked about a $10,000 a year subscription service that reported media coverage worth tens of millions of dollars, according to a projected slide of an email to Willis from her media relations staffer.
Dolezal also offered documents that indicated the same staffer had worked as a Democratic political consultant and that Willis had contributed to the political campaign of Charlie Bailey, now chairman of the state Democratic party, when he ran for lieutenant governor in 2022. (She pointed out that the money was for his primary campaign against another Democrat.)
Willis, in turn, had handed out photocopies of social media posts that showed both Dolezal, who is running for lieutenant governor, and Cowsert, who hopes to be attorney general, using the investigation for political messaging.
She repeatedly insulted Dolezal, telling him at one point that he had asked “a really ignorant question” about whether she had considered investigating Trump before his infamous phone call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
She also insulted the premise of the panel itself, calling it a “QAnon committee.” She said white senators were pursuing her because she is Black and she had indicted white and influential people. She said repeatedly that they wanted to be “daddy.”
After the hearing, Sen. Harold Jones II, D-Augusta, the Senate minority leader and a member of the committee, questioned the purpose, as well. He said Dolezal, who by committee rules was the only one besides Jones who got to ask questions, had simply rehashed old information about billing while raising “esoteric” questions about Willis’ handling of open records requests.
He said none of the questions got to the core issue of why Willis chose to indict. He said that was because the defendants had tried to overturn the election and she had done the right thing.
Although four defendants took plea deals, the rest avoided trial. Last month, Peter Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, asked a judge to dismiss the case and the judge agreed.
Skandalakis had taken over as special prosecutor after the courts sidelined Willis on ethical grounds because of her romantic entanglement with a contract lawyer she had hired to help her with the case.
Dolezal said the committee would have to cut through the “theatrics” and name calling in her testimony to determine what to do next. He said the committee should look at Willis’ handling of state funds and open records and at her use of a special purpose grand jury to investigate the defendants before indicting them.
He also said he was glad to finally force her to answer questions on behalf of “my friends who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending themselves against these politically motivated charges.”
