ATLANTA – While there’s been an uptick of COVID-19 cases heading into the fall, help is on the way, Dr. Mandy Cohen, the new director of the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said Wednesday.
A new booster shot will be available as early as next week, Cohen said at a luncheon at downtown Atlanta’s Commerce Club hosted by the Atlanta Press Club.
“COVID is here with us,” she said. “We’re going to have to continue living with it.”
Cohen, who has been at the CDC for about six weeks, was wearing a mask, a practice a growing number of Americans are starting to resume four months after the national public health emergency was declared at an end. She said she was exposed to someone who has come down with the virus and donned the mask as a precaution after testing negative.
Cohen, who took off the mask while delivering her remarks, said COVID-19 hospitalizations this summer have only been half as high as last summer despite the recent rise in cases. That’s because a lot more tools to fight the virus are available now than during the pandemic’s early stages, including vaccines, masks, and COVID tests, she said.
Cohen said those tools have put the U.S. in a better position to deal with the virus.
“We have to use those tools we’ve built up over the last number of years,” she said. “These viruses continue to change. We have to keep up with them.”
Cohen said another new vaccine for treating the respiratory virus RSV in older adults is now available for the first time, as is a new RSV immunization for infants under the age of eight months.
With the Thanksgiving holiday approaching in a couple of months, Cohen urged Americans to get caught up on their vaccinations and testing, so they can enjoy time with their families.
“We still need to live our lives and enjoy ourselves,” she said. “[But] we have to use the protections we have.”
Cohen said one of her top priorities as she starts her new job is educating members of Congress about the damage a planned $1.3 billion cut to the CDC’s budget could do to the agency.
“Most of the funding to the CDC goes right back to the states and localities,” she said.
After finishing her speech, Cohen set an example for the rest of the nation by getting a flu shot.
ATLANTA – A federal judge has lifted a preliminary injunction that was blocking a new state law limiting medical care for transgender minors in Georgia, allowing enforcement to resume.
U.S. District Judge Sarah Geraghty issued the injunction two weeks ago in a lawsuit filed by four Georgia families and a national organization of parents with transgender children, ruling the plaintiffs likely would succeed on the merits of the case.
But Geraghty changed course on Tuesday, citing a decision by a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals the day after her earlier ruling. The appellate court reversed an injunction that had been imposed in the Alabama case.
“It is undisputed that this court’s preliminary injunction order rests on legal grounds that have been squarely rejected by the panel in [Alabama],” Geraghty wrote in Tuesday’s decision. “This court’s injunction cannot stand on the bases articulated in the order.”
However, the judge rejected Georgia’s request that the preliminary injunction be quashed permanently. Instead, she stayed the injunction pending the final outcome of the Alabama case.
Georgia’s Republican-controlled General Assembly passed Senate Bill 140 in March, and Gov. Brian Kemp signed it the following day. It took effect July 1.
The legislation bans hormone replacement therapy for the treatment of gender dysphoria in adolescents.
During the debate on the bill, supporters argued the law would protect minors from making life-altering decisions at such a young age. Opponents maintained delaying hormone replacement therapy or surgery for transgender youths until after age 18 could pose mental health risks.
The lawsuit claims Senate Bill 140 violates transgender minors’ equal protection rights under the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
ATLANTA – A Korean automotive parts company will build a manufacturing plant in Metter to supply Georgia’s Kia facility and the new electric vehicles plant under construction west of Savannah, Gov. Brian Kemp announced Wednesday.
DAS Corp. will invest more than $35 million in the project, which will create 300 jobs.
“Suppliers for the Hyundai Metaplant resulted in over $2 billion in investment last fiscal year alone, helping Georgia achieve a third straight year of record-breaking economic growth,” Kemp said.
“Our logistics assets, including a reliable network of rail lines and highways, connect companies like DAS to key business partners in all corners of the state and to markets across the world, providing direct benefits to Georgia communities.”
Established in 1987, DAS specializes in designing and manufacturing seating systems, safety seating components, and seating structures.
“The strategic location near prominent cities like Savannah and Macon, facilitating convenient access, played a pivotal role in our decision-making process,” said Sean Kim, the company’s chief operating officer.
“Looking ahead to future expansion prospects, we deemed Metter to be an ideal location in anticipation of its role as a global electric vehicle production hub thanks to its close proximity to Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America.”
The new DAS facility will primarily produce automotive seat structures. Operations are expected to begin in the last half of next year.
During the next five years, the company will be recruiting assembly technicians. Information about employment opportunities can be found at www.i-das.com or by emailing hr@dasnorthamerica.com.
The Georgia Department of Economic Development’s Global Commerce team worked on the project in partnership with the Candler County Industrial Authority, Georgia Ports Authority, Electric Cities of Georgia, and the Technical College System of Georgia’s Quick Start program.
ATLANTA – More than five dozen activists have been indicted on racketeering charges for violence associated with attempts to stop the construction of a controversial police training center by the city of Atlanta, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr announced Tuesday.
The 61 defendants, including 13 from Georgia, are accused of violating the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), the same law being used to prosecute former President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.
Some of the 61 also face separate charges of domestic terrorism, attempted arson in the first degree, and money laundering.
The indictment cites nine incidents going back to July 2020 in which the defendants allegedly committed violent acts at the construction site of the planned training center in DeKalb County – derided by opponents as Cop City – and other locations, including the state Department of Public Safety headquarters, the offices of the Atlanta Police Foundation, and the home of a state trooper.
Attacks against police officers guarding the site and other first responders resulted in two injuries, according to the indictment, while police vehicles, construction equipment, and buildings were damaged.
In the most highly publicized incident, a young protester was shot and killed and a state trooper was shot and seriously wounded last February during a cleanup operation law enforcement officers conducted to break up a tent encampment at the construction site.
“As this indictment shows, looking the other way when violence occurs is not an option in Georgia,” Carr said in a prepared statement. “If you come to our state and shoot a police officer, throw Molotov cocktails at law enforcement, set fire to police vehicles, damage construction equipment, vandalize private homes and businesses, and terrorize their occupants, you can and will be held accountable.”
The training center’s opponents also have sought to defeat the project by organizing a voter referendum.
A group of opponents, the Cop City Vote coalition, condemned the indictment Tuesday as “blatantly authoritarian.”
“Carr’s actions are part of a retaliatory pattern of prosecutions against organizers nationwide that attack the right to protest and freedom of speech,” the group wrote in a statement issued Tuesday. “We will not be intimidated by power-hungry strongmen, whether in City Hall or the attorney general’s office.”
But Carr said the indictment isn’t about protest or free speech.
“People do have a constitutional right to peacefully protest,” Carr told Capitol Beat Tuesday. “But protesters use words. These are all acts of violence.”
The Atlanta City Council approved $31 million in initial funding for the training center in June after hearing more than 14 hours of public testimony from the project’s opponents.
ATLANTA – A federal court began hearing legal challenges Tuesday to congressional and legislative redistricting maps the General Assembly’s Republican majorities drew two years ago based on the 2020 Census.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU’s Georgia chapter sued the state early last year, claiming the maps violate the federal Voting Rights Act by denying Black Georgians an equal opportunity to participate in the political process by electing candidates of their choice.
U.S. District Judge Steve Jones dismissed the cases in March 2022 but only because the May primaries were approaching and he considered it too close to change the maps before voters went to the polls.
In July of this year, the same judge rejected a bid by the state for a summary judgement dismissing the suits and ruled the cases may move forward.
Georgia’s Black population during the last decade increased by 13%, according to the census, while the state’s white population declined by 1%. The two suits argue Republican state lawmakers failed to draw district boundaries that reflect those demographic changes.
According to the plaintiffs, the General Assembly should have drawn three new state Senate and five new state House districts that would have provided Black voters an equal opportunity to elect their preferred candidates. Instead, the GOP lost only two seats in the House and one in the Senate in last year’s elections.
Georgia Republicans added one seat to their majority in the state’s congressional delegation last year by redrawing the district of U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Marietta, in Atlanta’s northern suburbs into heavily Republican Forsyth, Dawson, and Cherokee counties. As a result, McBath ran and won in an adjacent district then served by fellow Democratic Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux of Lawrenceville.
“When districts are drawn to minimize the voices of Black voters in Georgia, it damages our democracy,” said Rahul Garabadu, senior voting rights staff attorney for the ACLU of Georgia. “We look forward to presenting our case at trial.”
Republicans countered that they followed the law in redrawing the maps after the 2020 Census.
“Georgia’s maps are fair and adhere to traditional principles of redistricting,” GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said last year when the lawsuits first came up in federal court. “I look forward to defending them.”
Voting rights advocates also are challenging redistricting maps drawn by Republican lawmakers in other states. On Tuesday, a three-judge federal court panel in Alabama indicated they will have a special master draw a new congressional map for that state after twice rejecting maps drawn by Alabama’s Republican-controlled legislature.
In Georgia, a ruling against the state could force the General Assembly into a special session this fall to redraw the congressional and legislative maps.
