ATLANTA – Atlanta has been selected to host eight World Cup matches in the summer of 2026.
Mercedes-Benz Stadium in downtown Atlanta will be the site for five group stage matches, a round of 32 contest, a round of 16 match and a semifinal, the international soccer organization FIFA announced Sunday.
The dates for the group stage matches will be June 15, 18, 21, 24, and 27. The round of 32 contest will take place July 1, the round of 16 contest on July 7, and the semifinal on July 15.
The tournament draw won’t be announced until December of next year.
Atlanta landed the games following a competition among 22 cities in 2018, with 16 cities awarded games in 2022.
“With world-class venues, accommodations and our unmatched Southern hospitality, Georgia is ready to to welcome the world to our capital city,” Gov. Brian Kemp said. “With a strong record of hosting major sporting events, the people of our state are prepared and capable to meet the needs of this once-in-a-lifetime event.”
Atlanta’s history of hosting major sporting events includes serving as the host city for the 1996 Summer Olympics. The city also hosted pro football’s Super Bowl in 2019 and has been the site of five NCAA men’s basketball Final Four tournaments.
Atlanta also is building a reputation as a soccer center. The city’s Major League Soccer team – Atlanta United – won the league championship in 2018, and the U.S. Soccer Federation chose Fayette County in December as the site of a first-of-its-kind National Training Center.
But those pale in comparison to the World Cup. An analysis by the Boston Consulting Group forecasted the 2026 World Cup will generate $5 billion in new economic activity, including $415 million in net economic benefit.
The semifinal game will take place at AT&T Stadium in the Dallas area. The championship game will be decided at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.
ATLANTA – The state of Georgia and the federal government remain at loggerheads over Gov. Brian Kemp’s limited expansion of the state’s Medicaid program.
The state filed a lawsuit in federal court in Brunswick Friday seeking an extension of the five-year program being denied by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
The agency approved Georgia Pathways in October 2020 during the Trump administration. The program provides coverage to Georgians with incomes up to 100% of the Federal Poverty Level – a lower threshold than the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which covers those with incomes up to 138% of the poverty level.
Unlike the federal Medicaid program, Georgia Pathways also requires enrollees to participate in at least 80 hours per month of “qualifying” activities, including work but also education, job training, or community service.
In 2021, after Democrat Joe Biden succeeded Republican Donald Trump in the White House, CMS rescinded its approval of Georgia Pathways because of the work requirement. The state sued, and in a 2022 ruling won the right to proceed with the program.
The Georgia Department of Community Health (DCH) launched Georgia Pathways last July and requested an extension of the program – now due to expire next year – citing the delays in implementation caused by CMS’ change of course under the Biden administration.
Last October, CMS denied the request for an extension of the end date, prompting the lawsuit filed Friday.
“After the Biden administration’s lengthy, failed attempt to interfere with Georgia’s innovative plan to afford thousands of Georgians the opportunity to receive quality health care, they are back at it again,” Kemp said.
“We beat them in court then, and now we are again asking for the federal government to adhere to the terms they agreed to rather than play politics by refusing to give us back the time they stole from delaying the Pathways rollout and implementation.”
Democrats in the General Assembly have pointed to sluggish enrollment in Georgia Pathways in arguing the state should fully expand Medicaid coverage instead through the ACA, as 40 other states have done.
In a news release Friday, Kemp said the DCH has ramped up efforts to enroll eligible Georgians in Georgia Pathways and noted the timing of the rollout has been complicated by coinciding with the Medicaid eligibility redetermination process required by the expiration last spring of the COVID-related federal public health emergency.
ATLANTA – Five years ago, the General Assembly’s Republican majorities passed legislation providing for a paper backup to electronic ballots, a move aimed at giving Georgians more confidence their votes are being counted correctly.
But legislative leaders aren’t content with that election reform measure. This year, they’re pushing a series of bills aimed largely at paper ballots responding to election watchdog groups clamoring for more tools to ensure accurate outcomes.
“It will bring more confidence,” state Rep. Steve Tarvin, R-Chickamauga, said on the House floor Jan. 31. “It’s something we need to restore.”
The 2024 crop of election bills includes:
Senate Bill 89 and House Bill 975, requiring use of the text portion of paper ballots in tabulating votes rather than QR codes.
House Bill 974, requiring Georgia’s secretary of state to develop and implement a statewide system allowing members of the voting public to scan paper ballots.
House Bill 976, requiring a “visible security device” in the form of a watermark on paper ballots.
House Bill 977, expanding the number of races subject to “risk-limiting” audits.
The QR codes bill already has cleared the Senate Ethics Committee but remains pending before the House Governmental Affairs Committee. Republican lawmakers have cited numerous complaints from constituents about the use of QR codes.
“There’s been a lot of doubt surrounding the QR code, voters questioning whether the QR code is interpreting their vote accurately,” said Rep. John LaHood, R-Valdosta, chairman of the House Governmental Affairs Committee. “Having the actual text they can see and interpret themselves … is the right correction for us to go in.”
Former Republican Rep. Scot Turner of Cherokee County told members of the House panel he tried unsuccessfully to amend the 2019 bill to get rid of the QR code.
“Nobody’s going to trust the QR codes,” he said.
Senate Ethics Committee Chairman Max Burns, R-Sylvania, said the Dominion touch-screen voting system the state uses is capable of allowing the text portion of paper ballots to tabulate votes instead of the QR code.
“We’re going to leave the details and technical requirements up to the secretary of state,” he said.
But those technical requirements are giving the House committee pause. The panel has yet to act on the House version of the legislation amid questions surrounding the cost and who’s going to pay for it.
“This could require a heavy purchase of equipment,” LaHood said.
“I’m opposed to any unfunded mandates on counties until we have more information,” added Rep. Shea Roberts, D-Atlanta.
The House hasn’t hesitated on the watermark bill, the only one of the four measures that has cleared a legislative chamber. The House passed House Bill 976 Jan. 31 with only one “no” vote.
LaHood told his House colleagues before the vote the legislation would require a one-time cost of $110,000.
“This is a low-cost, high-value measure,” he said.
The other two bills – House Bill 974 and House Bill 977 – have passed the Governmental Affairs Committee but not yet reached the House floor.
House Bill 974 would expand to a statewide program an existing pilot project giving voters the ability to scan paper ballots online.
“This is something that can be implemented right away,” LaHood said. “(The secretary of state) is making provisions to do this.”
House Bill 977 would expand the number of election contests subject to audits from just the race at the top of the ballot to a second race involving one of the statewide races. The second race to be audited would be chosen by a committee of five officials: the governor, lieutenant governor, the speaker of the state House of Representatives, and the House and Senate minority leaders.
Anne Herring, policy analyst for Common Cause Georgia, raised concerns about the latter provision.
“The governor and lieutenant governor get to vote on whether their own races will be audited,” Herring told LaHood’s committee. “That’s a little concerning to me in terms of public confidence in elections.”
LaHood said including the two minority leaders and bringing the membership to five should allay those concerns.
“One or two people couldn’t sway that decision,” he said. “We need three people to vote together.”
The full House and Senate are expected to act on all of the election reform bills this month.
ATLANTA – Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was involved in a “personal relationship” with the special prosecutor she hired in the election interference case against Donald Trump, Willis disclosed Friday.
But in a response filed in Fulton County Superior Court, Willis argued her relationship with Nathan Wade does not constitute grounds for dismissing the racketeering indictment against Trump and 18 co-defendants or disqualifying her from the case.
“While the allegations raised in the various motions are salacious and garnered the media attention they were designed to obtain, none provide this court with any basis upon which to order the relief they seek,” Willis wrote.
A motion filed last month on behalf of Michael Roman, one of the defendants charged in the case, alleged Willis was engaged in an improper relationship with Wade. The motion also questioned Wade’s qualifications to prosecute Trump and raised concerns over Wade being paid nearly $654,000 in legal fees since January 2022 to pursue the case.
Willis asserted Friday that she has no financial or personal conflicts of interest that constitute a legal basis for disqualifying either her or the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office. She also claimed the criticism of Wade’s qualifications “demonstrates basic misunderstandings of rudimentary county and state regulations, and provides no legal basis for dismissal of the indictment or disqualification of any member of the prosecution.”
Allegations surrounding Willis’ relationship to Wade have provided ammunition to Republicans who argue the case against Trump is politically motivated. The Republican-controlled Georgia Senate passed a resolution last week along party lines creating a special committee with subpoena power to investigate the allegations.
State Rep. Charlice Byrd, R-Woodstock, has introduced a resolution calling for the Georgia House of Representatives to vote impeachment proceedings against Willis.
Fulton Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee has scheduled a hearing on Roman’s motion Feb 15.
Willis sought and obtained a grand jury indictment last August charging Trump with orchestrating an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia that saw Joe Biden become the first Democrat to carry the Peach State since 1992.
Plant Vogtle’s Unit 3 nuclear reactor was completed last summer.
ATLANTA – A malfunction within the cooling system at the second of two additional nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle is forcing Georgia Power to delay the unit’s in-service date until the second quarter of this year.
Georgia Power announced Thursday in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that vibrations associated with certain piping within the cooling system at Vogtle Unit 4 were discovered during start-up and pre-operational testing. The problem has been fixed.
Both the vibrations and the methods used to fix them were similar to those experienced before Vogtle Unit 3 went online last summer.
Before discovery of the vibrations, completion of Unit 4 had been expected to occur during the first quarter.
The new schedule isn’t expected to affect the total capital cost forecast for the project. However, any slippage in the timetable for completion beyond March 31 would reduce Georgia Power’s return on equity to zero, which would reduce earnings by about $30 million for each month until the work is finished.
The state Public Service Commission (PSC) voted in December to let Georgia Power pass on to customers almost $7.6 billion of its costs in building the two additional nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle, the first built in the United States since the 1980s.
The project, originally expected to cost $14 billion when the PSC approved it in 2009, has more than doubled due to a series of cost overruns and delays in the construction schedule. The project will increase the average residential customer’s bill by $8.95 per month.
Environmental groups critical of the Plant Vogtle expansion argue nuclear energy is a bad investment and that Georgia Power would be better off more aggressively pursuing the development of renewable energy sources.
Georgia Power officials say the project is a sound long-term investment that will provide safe, reliable, and emission-free energy for up to 80 years.
