Georgia lawmakers have nearly passed legislation that could lead to hefty fines against businesses, colleges and nonprofits when they accept contributions or donations funneled from countries deemed to be foreign adversaries.
The debate fell along party lines before Senate Bill 177 passed the House 98-65 Monday with only two Democrats in favor.
It returns to the Senate for agreement on a few changes.
“All this does is require transparency,” said Joseph Gullett, R-Dallas, who presented the bill on the House floor.
The measure requires recipients of support by agents from hostile nations to register with the state ethics commission.
Among the House amendments was language identifying those hostile nations. The Senate version targeted North Korea, Iran, China and Russia.
The House changed that to whichever countries were designated by the U.S. commerce secretary.
Rep. James Burchett, R-Waycross, the majority whip, said the current countries on that list are those four, plus Cuba and “and the Venezuelan politician Nicolas Maduro.”
Violations could lead to a $10,000 fine, or as much as $200,000 for “willful” or repeat violations.
The only Republican to raise concerns was Rep. Mike Cameron, R-Rossville, who went on to vote for the bill.
He said a company in his district asked questions because it is owned by a former subsidiary of General Electric that was sold to a Chinese conglomerate. He said another major company asked about constitutional issues.
Democrats said they agreed that the countries on Burchett’s list were a risk. But they also offered critiques that have become common with similar legislation in other states.
They said SB 177 could violate constitutional protections for speech, it could conflict with federal law containing similar requirements, and it would add bureaucracy, perhaps discouraging companies from locating in Georgia.
“It creates heavy compliance costs,” said Rep. Long Tran, D-Dunwoody.
Rep. Jasmine Clark, D-Lilburn, noted that House members were issued laptops by the Chinese company Lenovo, and she wondered if Amazon shoppers could be implicated.
Others said exemptions in the registration requirement seemed political.
SB 177 exempts TikTok per a September executive order by President Donald Trump. It also exempts trade associations and advocacy organizations founded before Jan. 2, 1950, leading one Democrat to note that the National Rifle Association, founded in the 19th century, would not have to comply.
Rep. Gabriel Sanchez, D-Smyrna, said the legislation was a distraction.
“If you want to talk about foreign influence, how about the fact that Israel, along with the military industrial complex, just dragged us into an unnecessary war that no one wants and no one voted for,” he said.
Several states have adopted legislation like SB 177 and at least a half dozen more are considering it this year, according to the International Center for Not-For-Profit-Law headquartered in Washington, D.C.
The group noted that such legislation had been rejected or allowed to die in more than a dozen states.
Some of the concerns raised in the past include lack of foreign policy expertise at the state level, and a patchwork of schemes among the states that could undermine U.S. foreign policy and complicate compliance for organizations.
“It is still unclear how states will enforce these types of laws,” the organization said in an analysis last summer, “but for now they create a regulatory minefield for nonprofits and others.”
SB 177 now returns to the Senate for agreement to the House changes. Should the Senate agree, the bill would head to the desk of Gov. Brian Kemp for his signature. He vetoed a similar Senate bill in 2024 involving foreign adversary political contributions, noting they were already prohibited under federal law.
ATLANTA — Georgia taxpayers are getting some of their money back.
With a unanimous vote Monday, the state Senate gave final approval to a bill that will distribute tax rebates worth $250 to individuals and $500 to married couples.
Gov. Brian Kemp proposed the rebates, guaranteeing that he’ll sign them into law.
Giving money back to Georgians is part of a bipartisan focus on affordability. The General Assembly’s Republican majority emphasized tax savings, including rebates and pending bills that would reduce income tax rates and curb property tax increases.
“It’s the taxpayers’ money. Give it back to them,” said state Sen. Bo Hatchett, R-Cornelia. “Gov. Kemp’s policies have been working, and they work on both sides of the aisle.”
The Senate voted 53-0 to approve House Bill 1000 after it passed the House 172-0 earlier this month.
The rebates will cost nearly $1.1 billion, funded by the state government’s $14 billion surplus.
Democrats have mostly opposed deep, long-term income tax cuts, but they supported this partial refund of income taxes paid in 2024 and 2025.
“It’s good, commonsense legislation,” said Senate Minority Leader Harold Jones, D-Augusta. “We were proud to vote for it.”
This will be the fourth time in the last five years that the state government has distributed tax rebates. Last year, the government began sending rebates in the summer months.
Rebates will be sent either by direct deposit or by check based on how Georgians paid their taxes this year.
Everyone who filed income tax returns for the 2024 and 2025 tax years and paid taxes in those years is eligible to receive a refund.
ATLANTA — Four words added to legislation that targets mugshot mills have free speech advocates worried the public could lose access to videos that hold police accountable for their conduct.
Legislation that started in Georgia’s Senate as a solution to the reputational harm caused when booking photographs circulate online after charges are dismissed has evolved into a much broader measure.
Senate Bill 482, supported by sheriffs across Georgia, pits personal privacy of the accused against the public’s right to examine government use of force.
Blake Feldman, senior policy counsel with the Southern Center for Human Rights, said it raises a red flag when “a law enforcement agency that wields incredible authority to stop and detain people and discharge firearms at people” seeks to withhold footage from body-worn cameras.
He and advocates for free speech and for newsgathering operations, including broadcasters and the newspaper industry, argued that the requirements would pose a barrier to such access.
The legislation started as a requirement for anyone who wants a mugshot to obtain it in person, with a notarized statement that they would comply with existing law intended to protect people in those images.
In 2013, Georgia made it illegal for websites that publish mugshots to make subjects who were not convicted pay to take their picture down.
But that law did not solve the problem, so the next year Rep. Brian Strickland, R-McDonough, pushed through a law requiring operators to promise in writing that they would abide by the takedown requirements.
That still didn’t fix the problem.
So, this year Strickland, now a state senator, introduced SB 482, intending to make it harder to get mugshots in the first place.
Along the way, he added the four words to his bill that have the free speech advocates concerned: “or law enforcement video.”
Sen. Brian Strickland, R-McDonough, on the Senate floor in the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta on Friday, March 6, 2026, the day his legislation to restrict access to mugshots and law enforcement videos passed to the state House. (Ashtin Barker/Capitol Beat)
Not only would news organizations have to drive across the state to get an official copy of a police video from a far-flung community, but they arguably could be forced to identify everyone in the video they are seeking, said Sarah Brewerton-Palmer, a lawyer with the Georgia First Amendment Foundation.
“In order to get this footage, you have to name everybody who’s in it,” she said. But there could be bystanders in a video of an altercation between police and a suspect, she said, “and before you see it, you don’t know who those people are.”
Brewerton-Palmer said bodycam videos of a shooting by police during a protest would effectively become exempt from the state open records act.
She and others are less concerned about the proposed restrictions on releasing mugshots because of the way their enduring presence online has upended the lives of innocent people.
At a Feb. 18 Senate committee hearing on Strickland’s bill, a representative from the Georgia Justice Project, which helps people reintegrate into their communities after tangling with the criminal justice system, said it remains a common issue among their clients.
It was at that hearing where videos entered the conversation.
(The Georgia Press Association was among the news organizations that raised concerns. Capitol Beat is a project of the association.)
Forsyth County Sheriff Ron Freeman, president of the Georgia Sheriffs’ Association, told senators on the committee that his colleagues across the state complain about bulk requests for mugshots and videos that are then exploited for profit.
Ashley Henson, the sheriff in Paulding County, said the accused who have their cases dismissed go on to get “destroyed” on social media. He said that when he tried to intervene to ask for removal of material, the publishing organization did not respond.
“Monetization of someone else’s misery is not right,” Henson said. “We are not here to give these YouTubers content.”
Strickland said in an interview that he was moved to action against mugshot mills by a teacher who noticed her students passing around her booking picture of her. The charges against her had been dropped, so she had contacted the publisher and paid to take it down, he said. But then the photo popped up on another site.
Strickland described it as a “whack-a-mole” problem.
Publishers were not honoring the takedown requests they had submitted in writing per the 2014 law. And even when they did, out-of-state or even international actors beyond the reach of Georgia law enforcement were republishing them.
“Once the image is there, it’s there forever,” he said.
So, now he is proposing to restrict supply by forcing those who want mugshots — and police videos — to request them in person. Requiring requesters to identify the subjects in those images would cut down on the number of bulk requests, which tend to be by profiteers, he said.
At that February committee hearing, he agreed with another senator who said the public could still obtain pictures and videos, they just had to “go through the legwork” to get them.
The committee passed SB 482 unanimously, sending it to the Senate floor, where it also passed unanimously on March 6, and now awaits hearings in the House.
The Senate floor vote occurred on “crossover” day, the deadline to move bills from the Senate to the House and vice versa. It is an exceptionally rushed time during any legislative session, when mountains of legislation are getting votes, giving lawmakers little time to read the language.
Democrats backed the measure without question, except for one raised about an unrelated part of the bill. That might have been due to the backing by Democrats. They had voted it out of committee, and two had co-signed it back when Strickland had introduced it — before he added those four words about videos.
Reached by phone, one of those two co-sponsors, Sen. Kenya Wicks, D-Fayette, said she was unaware of the new language.
“I don’t think I can comment because there are a lot of amendments to this bill,” said Wicks, who voted for SB 482 with the other Democrats when it reached the full Senate.
Strickland said he is willing to work with advocates to address their concerns, perhaps by changing his bill to require that those seeking a video must identify only the officer who took it or the time and location where it was shot.
But it is unclear whether a compromise can be reached, at least on the video language.
Brewerton-Palmer said she sympathized with Strickland’s concerns. The internet and, now artificial intelligence, have stripped away privacy, she said.
But the public’s right to know outweighs that harm, she said. “There needs to be a thumb on the scales in favor of access.”
Feldman said his organization supports the new restrictions that Strickland wants to impose for access to mugshots, but he said applying those same obstacles to the release of law enforcement videos would be an indirect way to erode the state open records law, something his organization opposes because of the erosion of transparency around police encounters with the public.
ATLANTA — Forget paper money. Georgia senators want to legalize using gold and silver for everyday purchases.
The Senate passed a bill last week that would set up a system for Georgians to buy gold, store it in a depository, and use a debit card to spend it on items such as fast food or milkshakes.
Senators are selling gold as a hedge against inflation of the U.S. dollar, but skeptics say gold doesn’t necessarily protect hard-earned cash from rising prices.
Sen. Marty Harbin, R-Tyrone, the sponsor of Senate Bill 424, said making gold legal tender will bring “financial freedom” to Georgians.
“It’s really true money, because paper money is currency that we have the faith of the government in it,” Harbin said. “This is hard currency that we can own.”
The bill passed on a bipartisan 29-21 vote Friday and now advances to the House.
Under the legislation, a politically appointed “Bullion Depository Commission” would contract with a private company, such as Brinks, to provide vault and electronic payment systems for gold and silver.
Critics say the idea doesn’t make financial sense.
For Georgians are trying to avoid inflation, investing in gold also comes with risks, said Campbell Harvey, a finance professor at Duke University with expertise in decentralized finance and investment management.
“Gold is as volatile as the stock market. There is no guarantee that it will provide a hedge for inflation in the short term,” Harvey said. “What if inflation surges and the price of gold goes down? This is not, in my opinion, the business that a state should engage in.”
Instead of buying gold directly, Georgians could instead purchase it through an exchange-traded fund, which has lower costs and security issues, Harvey said. Gold is near record-high values today, but he said buying at a high point is often an investing mistake.
The bill calls for the costs of gold storage to be paid in the form of storage fees charged to Georgia residents who choose to use it. Harbin said public money wouldn’t be used to run the depository.
Several other states recognize gold as legal tender, including Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, Texas, and Utah.
Legislators also moved forward with another bill that would change transactions.
The price of products sold in-person in Georgia would be rounded down to the nearest five cents, according to House Bill 1112, which passed the House on Friday. The bill is a response to the Trump administration’s decision to stop making pennies.
ATLANTA — Georgia has some of the loosest gun laws in the nation, but a bill to remove the state’s restriction on silencers tested lawmakers’ limits.
The gun silencer bill fell four votes short in the House on Friday, a rare defeat for pro-gun proposals in Georgia.
Other bills that expand protections for gun owners advanced, including legislation strengthening Georgia’s “stand your ground” law and a measure banning cities from passing local gun storage laws.
Meanwhile, a proposal to provide Georgians a tax credit worth up to $300 for the purchase of gun safes stalled in the Senate this year. The latest version of House Bill 79 creates a tax holiday for the purchase of firearms and only allows the tax credit to pay for gun safety classes, not for gun safes.
“They’re very much ignoring the problem” of gun violence, said Heather Hallett, director for Georgia Majority for Gun Safety. “They haven’t adjusted to this reality where we know the majority of people support our principles. They can vote on gun safety.”
Georgia Majority for Gun Safety supports universal background checks for gun purchases, secure storage requirements, red flag laws that take guns from those whom a judge deems to be a threat, and funding for secure storage education.
Gun rights advocates said they’re disappointed the bill lifting Georgia’s limits on silencers fell short in the House. A similar bill passed the Senate.
State law bans possessing silencers unless Georgians pass a federal background check.
James Rankhorn, president of the gun rights group GA2A, said if the courts rule the federal requirement is illegal, silencers would then become prohibited for everyone in Georgia.
Rankhorn said lawmakers shouldn’t try to restrict firearms or silencers to address gun violence, including school shootings such as the killing of two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Barrow County in 2024.
“I don’t think there is an answer in state law. Anytime there’s a catastrophe, people bounce these proposals around,” Rankhorn said. “When you look at the situation and look at the law they proposed and compare it to the event that sparked the discussion, they law they proposed would not have stopped the incident.”
A jury found the Colin Gray, the father of the teenager accused of the Apalachee school shooting, guilty last week of second-degree murder and several other crimes.
Gray said he bought his son the rifle used in the shooting for Christmas, and witnesses in the trial said he allowed his son to keep the rifle in his bedroom. Prosecutors said Gray ignored years of warnings from mental health professionals, the kind of concerns that gun safety advocates say could have triggered a “red flag” law if Georgia had one.
Rep. Michelle Au, D-Johns Creek, said in the House on Friday she resented that Georgia legislators were seriously considering a bill to loosen restrictions on gun silencers.
“A gunshot is loud by design, and that sound is not just a fun noise, right? It’s a critical warning sign that alerts people nearby that something is wrong. It prompts witnesses to call 911, it prompts bystanders to run away, it helps police to identify the location of a threat,” Au said of House Bill 1324. “I cannot believe how stupid it is that I need to make these points.”
Sen. Frank Ginn, R-Danielsville, said silencers help hunters without disturbing animals as much, and they stifle noise that leads to hearing loss. He said Senate Bill 499 would safeguard the ability of law-abiding gun owners to continue using silencers.
“It makes sure that the 270,000 folks in Georgia who have a silencer will be able to keep that, regardless of what changes in federal law,” Ginn said.
Although SB 499 passed the Senate, its prospects are uncertain after the House rejected its own silencer legislation, with Democrats opposed and numerous Republicans skipping the vote.
Everytown for Gun Safety, a pro-gun control group, ranked Georgia as having the 44th-weakest gun safety laws in the United States.
In the wake of the Apalachee shooting, the General Assembly approved a bill last year that requires public school districts to identify and mitigate potential threats from students, implement panic alert systems, and create student behavioral health plans.
ATLANTA — With legislators running for higher office, longtime lawmakers retiring, and many challenges to incumbents, the Georgia General Assembly is set for high turnover after this year’s elections.
Control of the state House and Senate is at stake as Republicans are defending the majorities they’ve held in both chambers for over 20 years.
Eighteen senators and representatives signed up to run for higher offices before candidate qualifying ended last week, leaving behind districts where they would have been incumbents seeking reelection. In the contest for lieutenant governor alone, five senators are competing against each other.
And many new challengers entered the fray. A total of 537 candidates are running for 236 seats in the General Assembly.
To take control of the House, Democrats need to flip 10 seats. Republicans currently hold a 99-77 advantage, with four Democratic-leaning seats vacant. Democrats have already secured two of those seats because no Republicans are running.
“The wave is building, and Georgia can feel it,” said House Minority Leader Carolyn Hugley, D-Columbus. “We are within striking distance of the majority, and this qualifying period has made one thing absolutely clear: House Democrats are not just competing — we are coming to win.”
Republicans hold firmer control of the Senate, where they have a 32-23 advantage, with one GOP-leaning seat vacant.
Republican Party Chair Josh McKoon said Georgia remains a center-right state, but no election can be taken for granted.
“Republicans have been great stewards of the public trust. When you look at the Republican record, it’s really striking how they’ve made Georgia such an engine of economic growth,” McKoon said. “Voters will continue to reward Republicans for that record.”
Despite the flood of candidates, some incumbents lack any challengers, especially in deeply conservative or liberal districts.
There are 54 seats where only one candidate filed to run for election, effectively winning their races before a vote is cast.
Besides candidates running for higher office, retirements and resignations also created openings.
The nine retiring legislators include House Speaker Pro Tem Jan Jones, R-Milton; House Natural Resources Chair Lynn Smith, R-Newnan; Sen. Ed Harbison, D-Columbus; and Sen. Elena Parent, D-Decatur.
Three Democrats left the House after facing federal charges for COVID-19 unemployment fraud. Reps. Karen Bennett, D-Stone Mountain, and Dexter Sharper, D-Valdosta, resigned from office. Rep. Sharon Henderson, D-Covington, was suspended from the House by Gov. Brian Kemp, and she’s running for state Senate.
