Gov. Brian Kemp speaks at a roundtable meeting on human trafficking in Atlanta on Sept. 30, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Georgia officials have launched a new hotline for alerting authorities to instances of human and sex trafficking as part of Gov. Brian Kemp’s crackdown on trafficking cases in the state.
Suspicions or information on human trafficking in Georgia can be reported to law enforcement agents, advocates and first responders by calling 1-866-ENDHTGA.
The hotline’s launch figures among work to reduce human and sex trafficking in Georgia that has been spearheaded by Kemp and First Lady Marty Kemp, whom the governor tapped to lead the trafficking-focused GRACE Commission.
“By using this hotline to report suspicious activity, all Georgians can play a role in advocating for those who are at risk and those who are exploited,” Marty Kemp said Wednesday. “All Georgians can help save lives.”
The state Criminal Justice Coordinating Council is funding the hotline via federal grants.
The hotline was announced during a roundtable meeting Wednesday with the Kemps, state and federal law enforcement officials and trafficking victim advocates.
They discussed new Georgia laws aimed at curbing trafficking, efforts by police to rescue victims and federal funding meant to boost services like recovery housing.
Georgia saw more than 400 human trafficking cases in 2019, marking an increase from the prior year, according to the most recent federal data.
“It’s recent and it’s continuing,” said U.S. Attorney Byung J. “BJay” Pak, who attended the roundtable. “I would like to be out of this business where there’s no more cases and there’s no more victims, but we all know that’s not happening.”
State officials have handed the Georgia Bureau of Investigation more funding this year to set up a task force for investigating human trafficking cases. That funding, on top of a sharper focus on trafficking prosecution brought by the governor, has already yielded dividends.
Last month, the agency worked with the U.S. Marshals Service, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s office and local law enforcement to rescue nearly 40 missing children in Georgia, many of whom were considered at high risk for trafficking.
“You’re not going to sell a human being in this state,” said GBI Director Vic Reynolds. “If you do, we’ll find you, arrest you and prosecute you.”
An advisory group mulling whether to rename buildings and academic colleges on the University System of Georgia’s 26 campuses has whittled down to a list of 840 buildings and nearly 40 college and university names for further research.
Albany State University President Marion Ross Fredrick, who chairs the advisory group, said at a meeting Wednesday the group had culled those names from more than 3,000 buildings that dot Georgia’s university system.
Fredrick said the group has also brought on board two historians to research the roughly 880 building and college names and is eyeing an early 2021 date to wrap up work after forming in June.
The group has also fielded more than 1,700 public comments about the renaming project, Fredrick said.
“We want to make sure we do have a product at the end of this that was well-thought through,” Fredrick said at Wednesday’s meeting.
The advisory group was created amid a backdrop of protests across the country over centuries of racial injustice in America that have been marked by the removal of statues of Confederate leaders and public calls for renaming buildings honoring historic figures connected with the South’s history of slavery and racial discrimination and violence.
Lisa Tendrich Frank, a Florida-based historian who is one of the two historians conducting research, said her team has started pouring over encyclopedias, newspapers, alumni magazines and other sources to identify the names that grace the selected campus buildings.
Working with two PhD students and historian Joshua Butler, Frank said the plan is to create one or two-page summaries on the histories of each name that appears on the roughly 880 buildings and colleges highlighted by the project.
“We’re trying to find out exactly who these individuals were,” Frank said Wednesday. “Why was the building named for these people.”
The advisory group will produce a final report once the research work wraps up.
Coronavirus has sickened hundreds of thousands people and killed thousands more in Georgia. (Image: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Gov. Brian Kemp has extended social distancing and sanitization restrictions for businesses, gatherings and long-term elderly care facilities in Georgia amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a news release sent late Wednesday, the governor’s office announced Kemp signed an order extending the restrictions through Oct. 15. The order keeps restrictions that have been in place for months largely the same.
Kemp’s public health emergency, which allows him to continue issuing executive orders, has also extended until Nov. 9. Georgia’s emergency status has been in effect since mid-March when the virus began spreading in the state.
The latest order keeps in place a ban on gatherings larger than 50 people in Georgia and continues to make wearing a mask voluntary at the statewide level, not mandatory.
Cities and counties have been allowed to impose their own mask mandates since August so long as their local requirements do not apply for businesses and residences.
Residents of long-term care facilities and Georgians with chronic health conditions have been under stay-at-home orders since March, though Kemp has moved in recent weeks to start relaxing some restrictions on visitors at elderly care facilities depending on how well a facility has fought the virus.
Restaurants, bars and other popular gathering spots remain under occupancy limitations and cleanliness requirements that have been in place for several months.
Bars have been limited to no more than 50 customers or 35% of occupancy, whichever is greater. Restaurants must keep at least six feet of space between seated groups.
Kemp’s latest order does allow workers at restaurants and bars who have been symptom-free for 24 hours to return to work after showing symptoms or testing positive for the virus.
As of Wednesday afternoon, roughly 318,000 people in Georgia had tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel strain of coronavirus that sparked a global pandemic. It had killed 7,021 Georgians.
U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler (left), U.S. Rep. Doug Collins (center) and Rev. Raphael Warnock (right) are competing in the Nov. 3 special election.
Former Georgia governors are weighing in with endorsements in the campaign for U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s seat ahead of the Nov. 3 special election.
Former Gov. Nathan Deal, a Republican who served two terms from 2011 to 2019, is backing U.S. Rep. Doug Collins for the Senate seat over Loeffler, who current Gov. Brian Kemp appointed to hold retired U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson’s seat in December.
The endorsement pits Georgia’s most recent governor against its current one in a campaign that has emphasized intra-party schisms between many of the state’s most powerful Republican political leaders.
On the Democratic side, former President Jimmy Carter, who served as Georgia’s governor from 1971 to 1975, handed his support Tuesday to frontrunner Rev. Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, who has collected a pile of endorsements from top Democratic leaders and groups.
The endorsements come as the hotly contested Senate race heads down the final stretch with roughly a month left until Election Day, when nearly two dozen candidates from all parties will compete on the same ballot for Loeffler’s seat.
Loeffler, an Atlanta businesswoman, has waged an intense campaign against Collins, the four-term Gainesville congressman, preacher and fellow Republican who has polled neck-and-neck with Loeffler in recent weeks as each seeks to woo conservative voters.
Collins’ campaign has jabbed often at Loeffler’s use of her wealth to buy campaign ads and travel, a sentiment Deal echoed in his endorsement.
“I know that the governor had to make a tough choice, but I’ve made my choice too, and that’s Doug Collins,” Deal said in a statement. “A Senate seat representing the state of Georgia cannot be bought.”
Deal’s backing followed the endorsement of Georgia House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, for Collins earlier this month.
Loeffler’s campaign has previously dismissed criticism of her wealth and attacked Collins over his stint as a criminal defense attorney and record of voting in step with former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams on certain issues when both served in the state legislature.
More recently, Loeffler’s campaign drew headlines for releasing a pair of ads calling herself “more conservative” than the 5th-century warlord Attila the Hun. She has also pledged to vote in favor of President Donald Trump’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Warnock, who has climbed in the polls in recent weeks, also released a new ad Tuesday in which he urges Georgians to “try something different” and vote him into the Senate. He has vowed to vote against Trump’s court nominee and sought to elevate health care as among the top issues in the race.
The endorsement from Carter looks to solidify Warnock’s standing even further as the Democratic frontrunner amid calls for other Democratic candidates in the crowded race to drop out and consolidate support around him.
“Reverend Warnock knows the struggles Georgians are facing in this unique crisis — families losing health care, shuttered rural hospitals and record unemployment — all in the middle of a pandemic,” Carter said in a statement.
Health-care consultant Matt Lieberman, who is the son of former U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, has rejected calls to exit the race.
A runoff will be held in January if none of the 21 candidates including Loeffler can win more than 50% of the vote in the Nov. 3 special election.
Voters wait in line at a precinct in Cobb County on May 18, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Georgians planning to vote by mail in the Nov. 3 general election have a new way to track the status of their absentee ballots after requesting one.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office has launched a new online tracking system called BallotTrax that lets voters sign up for text or email alerts on their ballot status.
“Creating this new absentee ballot tracking and notification system will provide Georgia voters with greater clarity and increased confidence that their votes are accepted,” Raffensperger said in a statement.
The new system comes after Raffensperger’s office launched an online portal to request absentee ballots last month. More than 200,000 people had used the request portal as of last Friday, Raffensperger said.
Around 1.2 million Georgians have been sent absentee ballots so far, marking a surge in vote-by-mail amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
With the tracking system, voters will receive a message when their absentee-ballot application is accepted, when the ballot itself is sent to a voter and whether the cast ballot is accepted or rejected, according to Raffensperger’s office.
Anyone whose mail-in ballot is rejected will be given instructions on how to correct the issue and make sure their vote is counted, Raffensperger’s office said.
Georgia is poised for record voter turnout in the Nov. 3 general election with a presidential contest, two U.S. Senate seats, congressional, state and local offices all on the ballot.
The new absentee-ballot online tools, combined with a push to recruit more poll workers and a separate online tool to track wait times in line on Election Day, aim to ease problems seen in the June 9 primaries when Georgians faced long lines and technical hiccups with voting machines.
Raffensperger in recent weeks has repeatedly expressed confidence the upcoming election will run as smoothly as possible despite the challenges of high voter turnout, new voting machines and the ongoing pandemic.
“We have a very robust plan of action for the November election cycle,” Raffensperger said last week. “I think we’re much better prepared.”
