ATLANTA — Residents in and around Jackson County in northeast Georgia will have access to more than 1,400 new jobs if Siemens Corp. can follow through on a new manufacturing plant expected there.
State development officials announced the 550,000-square-foot manufacturing near Pendergrass Friday, with buildout expected to begin in November pending final approvals.
The plant, which would take three years to complete, would produce low-voltage electrical components.
Barry Powell, North America president of the Siemens Electrical Products business unit, explained the minimum $185 million investment decision in a statement, saying Georgia offers a highly skilled workforce and close proximity to the company’s Southeast supply chain network.
“Building this facility strengthens our ability to serve customers more efficiently while expanding advanced manufacturing capacity in a region that is already home to many of the technicians, suppliers, and industry expertise that support our business,” Powell said.
Siemens Corp. is a U.S. subsidiary of Siemens AG, a tech and manufacturing company involved in everything from infrastructure and transportation to healthcare and industrial artificial intelligence.
For the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, Siemens Group USA had more than $24.4 billion in revenue, with 25 manufacturing sites and more than 50,000 employees serving customers in every state and in Puerto Rico.
Gov. Brian Kemp visited the company’s headquarters in Munich last year during a trade trip to Germany and Poland.
“German companies excel in industries like life sciences and automotive manufacturing, and Georgia serves as a strategic gateway for them and other European businesses entering the U.S. market,” Pat Wilson, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, said at the time.
Siemens has had a presence in Georgia for 140 years and already employs more than 1,700 at two manufacturing plants and six offices in the state, Kemp said in a statement Friday. He welcomed the expansion as “another testament to the strong economic partnership between our state and Germany.”
ATLANTA— Statewide scores on the Georgia Milestones tests continued to rise in math as teachers adapted to standards that were updated several years ago.
The 2025-26 results for every subject but English were released Thursday.
The Georgia Department of Education said it needs until November to assess the English Language Arts scores before a public release because the teaching standards for that subject were recently updated, with students taking their first tests on them this past school year.
Georgia began rewriting its math standards in 2019, with the first testing after implementation coming during the 2023-24 school year.
Scores in that subject have been climbing ever since, reaching record highs in grades four through six and in high school Algebra.
State School Superintendent Richard Woods attributed the gains to hard work.
Experts pointed to other positive trends, such as the use of data from other types of testing throughout the school year to tailor instruction to each student’s evolving needs.
“Since the pandemic, districts have been paying a lot more attention to individualized learning plans — how we use data throughout the year to assess where students are and how we can bring them forward,” said Mary-Kate Starkel, chief of staff for redefinED Atlanta, an education advocacy group that promotes data analysis in education.
Matt Smith, policy and research director for the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education, pointed to Georgia’s ongoing success at reducing chronic absenteeism.
The chronic rate, defined as missing at least 10% of the school year, fell in Georgia to 17.7% in 2025-26, down from a peak of 23.9% in 2021-22.
Unlike many other states, Georgia’s chronic absenteeism rate has continuously declined since then, but it remains above the pre-pandemic rate of 12%.
Despite the record gains in math, about half of Georgia students were performing at levels that are considered not proficient.
The state divides students into four categories based on their scores. From highest to lowest score, the categories are distinguished, proficient, developing and beginning.
The highest rate of students who scored proficient or distinguished was in fourth grade, at 50%. Third and sixth grades had the largest increases, with the rate of students scoring proficient or better rising 4 percentage points in each from 2024-25 — to 48% and 41% respectively.
In high school Algebra, the increase was 3 points, to 48%.
Gains in other subjects also were accompanied by large groups of underperforming students.
For instance, the proportion of students scoring proficient or better in high school physical science rose 4 points to 61%, meaning 39% were not proficient. High school biology rose 3 points to 47%, and U.S. history was flat, at 39% proficient or better.
Many students may be scoring above pre-pandemic levels, but that is not a high bar, Starkel said. “We still have a long way to go for many kids in the metro area and the state.”
Smith warned that the reporting of average statewide scores can mask poor performances in some school districts and also within school districts.
Like they did with the math scores during the 2023-24 school year, state education officials will assess the recent results in English Language Arts to determine where to set the scoring thresholds for placing students in one of those four performance categories.
English has not been a highlight for Georgia, with scores falling in all but two of the seven grade levels that were given a Milestones exam on the subject under the old standards in 2024-25.
Smith attributed that at least in part to the “swirl” of rapid changes, after the Georgia General Assembly began mandating new teaching methods for English. After many years of unsatisfactory literacy scores, lawmakers decided it was time to shift to more phonics-based instruction, especially in the lower grades.
Teachers in kindergarten through third grade were trained in the new methods. The release of the exam results in November will be the first to put that training to the test.
ATHENS — Georgia’s two candidates for governor showcased their competing plans for healthcare, jobs and other top issues at a business-focused gathering Wednesday.
Gov. Brian Kemp also gave his full-throated support to fellow Republican Rick Jackson, saying Jackson was the most likely candidate to continue his business-friendly policies.
The Democrat in the race, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, spoke of government solutions for problems such as the shortage of affordable housing and healthcare.
The two candidates did not confront each other directly, outlining their platforms instead from a ballroom stage and in a hallway with reporters.
But the event, hosted by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce at The Classic Center in Athens, offered a rare opportunity to see them at the same venue, talking about many of the same issues.
Bottoms touted developer agreements for affordable housing reached during her tenure as mayor. And she said she would push for Medicaid expansion to confront rural hospital closures and the growing number of Georgians without health insurance.
Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Democratic candidate for Georgia governor, talks to reporters at The Classic Center in Athens on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026. (Ty Tagami/Capitol Beat)
Kemp, meeting with reporters with Jackson by his side, said he had decided to back the wealthy healthcare staffing entrepreneur because Jackson had succeeded despite a tough childhood in foster homes, a story that Jackson has repeatedly shared while campaigning.
Kemp also said he believed Jackson would build on his business-friendly legacy as governor, which Jackson quickly confirmed.
Jackson said he would seek to cut taxes while continuing to recruit companies to locate in the state, adding that he would steer economic development and jobs to rural Georgia as Kemp has done.
He said he would help small businesses and farmers.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp tells reporters he is backing Rick Jackson, the Republican candidate for governor, as Jackson watches, at The Classic Center in Athens on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026. (Ty Tagami/Capitol Beat)
From the stage, before an audience of hundreds in suits, Jackson said he planned on “increasing a huge amount of investment dollars for venture capital, early-stage development and PE just for Georgia companies. Atlanta is too big not to have more capital.”
Bottoms also said she would cater to small business, but her approach included government money. She said she would establish a state agency for small business and change contracts for services.
“I’d like to break up some of these mega-contracts in our state … to give small businesses an opportunity to compete for those contracts,” she said.
Bottoms also said she wanted to end Georgia’s Pathways to Coverage program, Kemp’s approach to Medicaid, which she called wasteful.
A federal review last year found that most of the money went to administrative overhead rather than to medical assistance. The program was set to expire last September, but the administration of President Donald Trump granted a one-year extension.
Jackson told reporters that he believed in “intelligent” Medicaid expansion. By that, he meant a federal block grant with few strings attached, for a program designed to transition recipients into jobs and onto private insurance.
Pathways already has a work requirement.
Bottoms and Jackson also had divergent views on data centers.
Bottoms reiterated an earlier call to “pause” data center approvals, while Jackson said he would leave it up to communities whether to allow them to build, noting the potential local tax benefits.
ATLANTA — A water utility that serves 300,000 homes and businesses in metro Atlanta is still investigating whether a hacker caused a service outage last week.
That July 27 shutdown in northern Clayton County occurred the same day that water utilities in at least seven states started reporting incidents to the federal government involving the computers that automate their processes.
On Thursday, the FBI and Environmental Protection Agency issued a joint announcement that “malicious cyber actors” had been attacking utilities’ programmable logic controllers, or PLCs, sometimes degrading water operations.
The attacks reportedly caused flooding and loss of water pressure, which can allow untreated groundwater to seep into service pipes.
That is what happened for three hours after midnight in Clayton County, when the water authority had to issue a boil-water advisoryfor several communities after a pump station failed.
“We’re still investigating what exactly caused the outage,” Erin Thomas, the spokeswoman for the Clayton County Water Authority, said Tuesday. “Some of our equipment just lost power, so we can’t confirm that somebody hacked into it. “
Thomas said that kind of failure had never happened before.
“Most of the time when you have any type of outage of that sort, it’s typically due to a main break,” Thomas said, adding that the authority’s technology experts were trying to determine whether the PLCs were involved.
The joint announcement by the FBI and EPA last week did not identify the hackers, but a previous advisory from another federal security agency blamed Iran.
The July 22 bulletin from the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency updated an original warning from April. The agency warned that “ongoing Iranian-affiliated cyber targeting of internet-connected operational technology,” including PLCs, had been disrupting “several U.S. critical infrastructure sectors.”
The agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, advised U.S. organizations to “urgently review” their systems for indications of intrusion.
The FBI recommended last week that operators lock down their PLCs with firewalls, strong passwords and restrictions on who can access them.
The potential connection between Iran, multi-state infrastructure hacks and Clayton County was first reported Monday by WSB-TV in Atlanta.
The news station reported that a Georgia Tech professor and his researchers had identified thousands of programmable logic controllers that had been configured in a way that made them vulnerable to online hackers. The professor, a cybersecurity expert, told the news station his lab had alerted 7,000 institutions.
A spokesman for the FBI in Atlanta told Capitol Beat by email Tuesday that the agency was aware of the security concerns about water service.
“The FBI and our interagency partners are fully engaged to protect critical infrastructure and we remain well-equipped to protect against cyber threats of all varieties,” he wrote.
ATLANTA — Social media posts by Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike Collins and his associates have become a target of Sen. Jon Ossoff and his allies.
U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, who hopes to unseat Ossoff, the Democratic incumbent, has a history of edgy online posts.
The people around him have sometimes crossed a line in their own posts.
During the GOP primary, Collins fired a campaign staffer who had mocked the wife of an adviser to a PAC supporting one of Collins’ Republican opponents after she said she had been sexually assaulted.
In 2024, Collins himself acknowledged “potentially inappropriate behavior” in a video he had shared about anti-Israel protesters. A counter protester is on screen making ape-like gestures and noises at a Black woman, and Collins later said it was not his intent to “glorify” such behavior.
Now, Ossoff is turning the spotlight on Collins’ family.
David Alan Scheer II, Collins’ son-in-law, is a prolific online poster who has amassed a significant following on multiple platforms.
Last month, CNN reported that many of Scheer’s posts promoted white nationalism and antisemitism, including one last year about the financial influence of Jews on the U.S. government. Scheer wrote in his Telegram post that the included infographic had been prepared by his wife, Collins’ daughter.
“This man is a known bigot and antisemite,” Ossoff said in a virtual interview with reporters late last week. He called on Collins to apologize “for his extensive and well-documented ties to white nationalists and neo-Nazi ideology.”
Later that day, during a news conference about health care, Collins faced a flurry of questions about the issues raised by Ossoff and abruptly canceled the event.
On Monday, two Black ministers held another news conference to demand that Collins clarify where he stands on white supremacy.
Rev. Gerald Durley, a retired pastor who marched with Martin Luther King Jr., said he would never claim Collins supports white nationalist ideology.
“However, I do join with countless others for him to publicly denounce the political position of white nationalists,” Durley said outside Big Bethel AME Church in Atlanta. “Georgia cannot send a man to Washington to represent all of the people of Georgia who will not disclaim the allegations that he is a white nationalist sympathizer.”
Rev. Timothy McDonald III, senior pastor of First Iconium Baptist Church, said that as a native Georgian he knows racism when he sees it.
He said Ossoff had his vote, yet he called on Collins to clarify “what you think about white supremacy or Christian nationalism or black folk or anybody non-white … . Tell us what you believe so that all of Georgia can make an intelligent choice come this November.”
Rev. Timothy McDonald III spoke to reporters outside Big Bethel AME Church in Atlanta on Monday, Aug. 3, 2026 after Rev. Gerald Durley to his left. (Ty Tagami/Capitol Beat)
Scheer’s online life brings the controversy to Collins’ doorstep. CNN noted that Collins’ daughter lives with her husband on property owned by Collins.
Scheer has promoted the group Patriot Front, according to CNN.
Last year, Scheer called Benjamin Netanyahu a “satanic warmongering Zionist piece of garbage” for bombing Iran and trying to draw America into the conflict. Scheer said in his June 17, 2025 video on Instagram that the Israeli leader was trying to “pull the Holocaust card and say he’s preventing a nuclear Holocaust because the Jewish people are victims of everything, apparently.”
The next day, Scheer posted an image of a couple embracing three young children as a statue of an eagle enfolds them. The picture is overlaid with the words, “I want to make babies Not die for Israel”
Scheer wrote in his accompanying post: “If you haven’t noticed, we all have a common enemy.”
The image matches a Nazi propaganda poster published between 1933 and 1940, according to the Library of Congress. The title, “Die NSDAP sichert die Volksgemeinschaft,” roughly translates to “the Nazi Party protects and secures the national community.” The word “Volksgemeinschaft” has racial overtones.
Collins set the record straight Monday, saying in a statement to Capitol Beat that no one speaks for him, including Scheer.
“He has had no role in my campaign whatsoever,” Collins said, “and I don’t believe or support those views and I have always condemned racism and antisemitism regardless of the source.”
Collins said he is for safer cities, affordable gas and groceries and more opportunities for hard-working Georgians. He called Ossoff a “trust fund socialist” pushing a “far left extreme agenda.”
