by Ty Tagami | Jun 16, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Georgia Tech is losing Ángel Cabrera, who shepherded the campus through a pandemic and into an era of feverish growth as the institute’s 12th president.
Cabrera will leave for the Aspen Institute at the end of October, after the global nonprofit’s board of trustees voted unanimously to hire him as their next president and CEO, the organization said in a statement Monday.
Cabrera, appointed to lead Tech in 2019, oversaw record growth in enrollment and funding, as well as development on the Atlanta campus.
Cabrera brought “energy, warmth, and engagement” to campus, Chancellor Sonny Perdue said in a statement.
“That personal touch has made a profound difference,” Perdue said.
During Cabrera’s tenure, Tech enrolled more in-state undergraduates than ever while raising graduation rates and pushing total enrollment to the highest in the state, Perdue said.
Enrollment grew 55% to more than 56,000.
Annual sponsored research awards surpassed $1.4 billion, boosting Tech to No. 1 nationally in research expenditures among universities without a medical school and No. 2 in federal research funding, according to Tech.
The institute also advanced the development of three “innovation” districts under his watch, called Tech Square, Science Square and Creative Quarter.
Cabrera was the first native of Spain to lead an American university.
After earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer and electrical engineering from Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Cabrera attended Tech as a Fulbright scholar, earning an M.S. and Ph.D. in psychology and cognitive science.
Before leading Tech, he served as dean of the IE Business School in Madrid and then as president of the Thunderbird School of Global Management, now part of Arizona State University.
He will succeed Dan Porterfield at the Aspen Institute after Porterfield leaves to become CEO of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.
Cabrera will lead the Aspen Institute amid a major fundraising push. The nonpartisan organization, founded in 1949 to convene leaders and address societal challenges, said it had raised $340 million toward a $450 million campaign.
Cabrera will remain at Tech until he starts his new job Nov. 1.
Tech had no immediate word on a succession plan for its campus of more than 5,700 faculty and staff.
by Ty Tagami | Jun 15, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A nuclear power plant in Georgia that predates the presidency of Jimmy Carter got a new lease on life to operate for an additional two decades, Georgia Power announced Monday.
The licenses for the reactors at the Edwin I. Hatch Nuclear Plant near Baxley were set to expire in the 2030s. The two reactor units will be 79 years old when the renewed licenses issued by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission expire in 2054 and 2058.
Georgia Power Chairman, President and CEO Kim Greene said in a statement accompanying the announcement that the company’s nuclear portfolio provides reliable energy at a stable cost.
“This license extension is great news as our state continues to grow and demand for electricity continues to increase,” she said.
Plant Hatch’s first reactor unit came online in 1975, two years before Carter took office as president. Unit 2 entered service in 1979.
Together they produce about 1.8 gigawatts of power, or about 40% of Georgia Power’s nuclear energy.
Altogether, Plant Hatch and Plant Alvin W. Vogtle near Waynesboro produced nearly 30% of the company’s energy last year.
The larger Vogtle has four reactor units, two that date to the late 1980s and two that began generating power in 2023 and 2024. It produces a total of about 4.7 gigawatts.
Both plants are co-owned by Georgia Power, Oglethorpe Power Corp., the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia and Dalton Utilities. The plants are operated by a Birmingham-based subsidiary of Georgia Power’s owner, the Southern Company.
Over the past two decades, the partnership replaced the Unit 2 cooling tower at Plant Hatch and replaced transformers, water pumps and feedwater heaters.
The federal renewal was based in part on safety and environmental reviews and on aging management programs.
by Ty Tagami | Jun 14, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — With less than two days to go until polls close in the Republican runoff election for governor Tuesday, Gov. Brian Kemp threw his support behind Lt. Gov. Burt Jones to succeed him.
“Over the last eight years, we’ve accomplished a lot and we’ve had a strong ally in Burt Jones. Burt knows how to get things done,” Kemp said in a 36-second YouTube Short video released Sunday night.
The endorsement aligns with President Donald Trump’s pick for Georgia governor.
Trump has been backing Jones since August, when he posted an endorsement on social media. The president has been promoting Jones in public telephone calls since then, each cast as a “tele-rally,” including one on Thursday.
Jones’ opponent, Rick Jackson, has run ads that some construed as promoting an endorsement by Kemp. Kemp subsequently posted a clarifying video on social media saying he had endorsed neither candidate.
Sunday’s post clarified where Kemp stands now.
Although Kemp and Trump are now aligned on their candidate for governor, the two leaders are at odds over who should win the GOP race for U.S. Senate.
Trump announced on social media just before 1 a.m. Sunday that he had decided to back U.S. Rep. Mike Collins as the GOP nominee who can take on incumbent Democrat U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff in November.
Kemp has been publicly backing Derek Dooley for about a year as his candidate to topple Ossoff, appearing with Dooley in August at Sanford Stadium before a University of Georgia football game.
In his Sunday YouTube video, Kemp, standing with his wife Marty, said Jones will give voters “a clear choice” this fall against the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms.
“Let’s get the vote out for Burt on Tuesday,” Marty Kemp said.
Jones said in a statement afterward that “it is my privilege today to receive his full endorsement.”
Democrats said in a statement that Kemp’s endorsement of Jones “adds even more chaos to this already-messy GOP primary.”
by Ty Tagami | Jun 14, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — With two days to go before the runoff election, President Donald Trump has sided with U.S. Rep. Mike Collins in his race for U.S. Senate against Derek Dooley.
Trump said in a 12:56 a.m. post Sunday on Truth Social that Collins “has my Complete and Total Endorsement.”
The support came weeks after Collins beat Dooley 40.5% to 30.2% in the May primary.
Collins posted a brief reaction on X later in the morning, saying he would be the one to unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff in November.
That is also the goal for Dooley, who posted on X a half hour after Collins that he respected Trump but still expected to beat Collins in Tuesday’s runoff. The former football coach touted his own support from Gov. Brian Kemp.
It is not the first disagreement between Kemp and Trump over a pick for U.S. Senate.
Differences over Kemp’s appointment of Kelly Loeffler to an open U.S. Senate seat in 2019 triggered years of attacks by Trump, which were exacerbated by Kemp’s refusal to call a special legislative session over Trump’s 2020 election loss.
(Trump had wanted Kemp to appoint then-U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, who is not related to Mike Collins, according to an interviewwith the latter first published by the Jackson Progress-Argus in 2022.)
Trump said Mike Collins had been with him “from the very beginning” and offered a genteel critique of Dooley, basically calling him a carpetbagger.
“I don’t know Derek Dooley, and neither does anyone else, but he seems like a nice person. Unfortunately, he has lived outside of Georgia for most of his life,” Trump’s post said. Trump also dinged Dooley for saying Trump had lost the 2020 election.
Dooley has been careful not to alienate Trump supporters, publicly praising the president while bashing his opponent.
“Donald Trump is doing a great job trying to make change,” Dooley said at a debate in April, adding that Congress had not done enough to support the president.
Late on Sunday morning, Ossoff responded with his own social media post, calling both Collins and Dooley “Trump puppets” who had “made themselves both unelectable and terminally inseparable from the toxic president.”
by Ty Tagami | Jun 12, 2026 | Capitol Beat News Service
JEKYLL ISLAND — An election on the Republican ballot Tuesday goes to the core of two overarching concerns during this election cycle: affordability and data centers.
The five-member Georgia Public Service Commission does not decide whether technology companies can build their data centers, which consume land to house their computer servers, often use water to cool them and consume copious amounts of electricity to power them.
But the elected commission members’ decisions can affect the companies’ cost of doing business by controlling electricity rates and, by extension, the amount of money that regular customers pay to cool, heat and power their homes and businesses.
Candidates on both sides of the aisle have talked of the need to contain rising consumer bills after a half dozen increases in recent years were blamed for Republicans’ loss of two seats on the commission last year.
The commission can control electricity rates through its regulatory authority over Georgia Power, a monopoly energy producer.
The challenge for affordability-minded voters: how to pick the candidate commission for District 5 who can do more than talk a good game.
Democrats have already settled on their choice, sending Shelia Edwards of Cobb County to the November general election.
Republicans have more work to do, after two of their candidates emerged from a field of three in the May 19 primary.
Engineer Josh Tolbert and businessman Bobby Mehan won the most votes, but neither had the majority required to avoid a runoff.
Tolbert came close, with about 47% of the vote to Mehan’s 31%.
Mehan, of Haralson County, has pitched his executive resume as the right preparation to deliver affordability, saying his former leadership of a small global health care technology company and his current roles as managing partner of a local private equity firm and state mediator have conferred the skills to deliver on an unequivocal promise.
“Throughout this campaign, I have cast a clear vision: no new rate increases,” Mehan said at a Georgia Public Broadcasting debate with Tolbert in late May, repeating a prior promise.
Tolbert has positioned himself as a technical expert, saying his four engineering degrees, including a doctorate in mechanical engineering, combined with his professional experience, including as chief technology officer of a small nuclear power company, make him the best choice to rein in costs.
“I’ve designed power plants. I’m a small business owner that can connect technical choices with economic outcomes. This is expertise the Public Service Commission needs,” Tolbert said at that same debate.
Tolbert said Mehan was offering more of the same policies that allowed Georgia Power to increase costs for its customers in recent years.
The commission approved a half dozen rate increases when all five members were Republican, which may have precipitated the ouster by two Democrats last year.
“My opponent says that what we need is more non-technical people on the commission. But if we approach the problem in the same way we always have, we should expect the same result,” Tolbert said at the debate. “This job is technical. It’s time we send an engineer to do it.”
He said his expertise would empower him to ask insightful and hard-hitting questions that the commission could use in negotiations with Georgia Power to push back against pressure to let the company increase customer bills.
Tolbert said Mehan’s hard line against any rate increase was unrealistic, an empty slogan to win the election.
Mehan said his executive decision-making skills would allow him to judge guidance offered by the commission’s own experts, which he said he would rely upon, and that Tolbert’s approach would be slower than a blanket denial on rate increases.
“If technical scrutiny is what Josh is saying that we require to keep the Republicans in power in this seat, then that sounds like to me, that’s going to be more time. Time is money,” Mehan said. “If affordability is the number one issue to voters, then I think we’ve got to figure out how to do this and do this quickly. … If there’s anything that I’m good at, it’s the top-line growth.”
Both said they like nuclear power as a clean and reliable energy source, but they said new plants would be too expensive to build for the foreseeable future. Both said they back solar power and other renewables, but both also say fossil fuels must remain part of the mix due to their large share of Georgia Power’s portfolio.
Whoever wins the runoff will face an opponent who took nearly 56% of the vote during the three-way Democratic primary. Edwards said her background in writing technical documents for NASA had prepared her to help the commission contain customer costs.
Were she to win, she would flip a longtime Republican seat, joining the other two new Democrats to establish a Democratic majority on the commission.
Edwards said at a Georgia Public Broadcasting debate in April that a commission led by her and the other two Democrats would discourage Georgia Power from requesting unreasonable rate increases.
“We’re taking mothers and children off welfare, but we’re steadily giving these corporations corporate welfare and that needs to stop,” she said. “We have to have those conversations with Georgia Power. And I think they’re going to turn around to be reasonable people when I’m on the PSC as the third vote.”
