ATLANTA – Manufacturers that use the cancer-causing chemical ethylene oxide face new restrictions in Georgia under legislation Gov. Brian Kemp has signed into law.
Senate Bill 426 was among a flurry of 40 bills Kemp signed on Wednesday, the legal deadline for the governor to sign or veto measures the General Assembly passed during this year’s session.
Ethylene oxide is used primarily to sterilize medical equipment, a need that has garnered a great deal of attention during the coronavirus pandemic.
The bill, which was introduced by Sen. Brian Strickland, R-McDonough, requires manufacturers that use ethylene oxide to report any waste spills or gas releases to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) within 24 hours. The director of the EPD then must post the information on the agency’s website.
The need for tighter regulation of ethylene oxide became apparent last winter after public concerns were raised over unreported releases of the chemical at a Sterigenics plant in Smyrna and a facility in Covington operated by BD Bard.
The bill passed overwhelmingly in both the state Senate and House of Representatives, with strong support from the Cobb and Newton county legislative delegations.
Also on Wednesday, Kemp signed a constitutional amendment calling for a statewide referendum in November on whether to require that dedicated state funds be spent on their intended purpose.
Committing dedicated state money such as Georgia’s Solid Waste and Hazardous Waste trust funds to their intended use was a longstanding priority of the late state Rep. Jay Powell, R-Camilla, who died unexpectedly last November.
Another measure Kemp signed on the final day for bill signing will reserve a permanent slot in annual state budgets for the funding of freight rail improvements.
Opponents had urged the governor to veto the bill, sponsored by Sen. Steve Gooch, R-Dahlonega, because it could be used to put state funding toward privately owned “short-line” freight railroads, not just those owned by the state.
While the legislation authorizes the Georgia Department of Transportation to fund freight rail projects, this year’s tight state budget doesn’t contain any money for that purpose.
U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler (left), U.S. Rep. Doug Collins (center) and Rev. Raphael Warnock (right) are competing in the Nov. 3 special election.
Battle lines are being drawn in the race to fill the remaining two years of retired U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson’s Senate term with less than 100 days left until Election Day in November.
U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., who was appointed to hold the seat in December, has squared off with Republican challenger U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., over criminal justice issues and their personal backgrounds.
Meanwhile, Democratic candidate Rev. Raphael Warnock has homed in on health care and voting rights issues, both figuring as major policy areas for Democrats across the country.
Above all looms the coronavirus pandemic, which has prompted tough debate on how to keep Georgians safe without wrecking the economy.
Nearly two dozen candidates have thrown their hats in the ring for the Senate special election on Nov. 3, a free-for-all contest in which candidates from all parties will be on the same ballot.
On the Republican side, candidates Loeffler and Collins are hustling to scoop up marquee endorsements from conservative groups and political leaders as they jab each other with campaign attacks.
Loeffler, an Atlanta businesswoman running her first political campaign, has cast herself as an outsider candidate compared to the four-term Congressman Collins – though both have grounded their campaigns in supporting gun ownership, opposing abortion and backing President Donald Trump.
“With significant advantages in resources, infrastructure and grassroots support, our campaign is continuing to build momentum toward a big win,” said Loeffler’s communications director, Stephen Lawson.
Collins, a U.S. Air Force Reserve chaplain who served in the Georgia House before joining Congress, has embraced his legislative experience while lobbing criticism at Loeffler’s use of her wealth in the campaign and fending off attacks on his record as a former criminal defense attorney.
“I’ve stood for the Constitution as a military officer,” Collins said Thursday. “I’ve stood for the Constitution as an attorney representing the values of this community and representing the values of this state.”
Warnock, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, quickly drew endorsements from a slate of top Democratic state and national lawmakers and party favorites like former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.
He has sought to emphasize popular Democratic stances on expanding health-care coverage and voting-rights protections in recent weeks as COVID-19 continues battering Georgia and months of protests over police brutality and racial injustice carry on.
“It’s not about the personalities who are running,” Warnock said recently. “We’re seeing a moment unlike anything we’ve ever seen in our lifetime that whoever you decide to vote for can literally decide who lives and who dies.”
As the race steams ahead, differences have emerged between the candidates on how to best tackle the health and economic burdens of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Among the most pressing issues amid the pandemic is what to do about the $600 weekly federal unemployment benefit millions of out-of-work Americans have received since March, which is set to expire this weekend.
Loeffler and Collins have echoed congressional Republican leaders who oppose keeping the $600 benefit as is, arguing many businesses have struggled to bring employees back to work amid unemployment benefits that may be higher than their regular paychecks.
And both candidates have said they would prioritize sending more federal aid to schools, hospitals and businesses struggling to rebound and purchase protective equipment.
But while Loeffler has not said whether she would support a reduced weekly benefit, Collins has been unequivocal.
“If the unemployment insurance is something that is still there, make it as small as possible and make it end as quickly as possible,” Collins said at a recent campaign stop.
For her part, Loeffler has said she wants to weigh proposals on benefit amounts before taking a position and emphasized the need to bolster state unemployment trust funds.
“That’s the first thing, how do we help states make sure that they can meet the need at that level,” Loeffler said on Monday. “And then I think we’d have to look at what that additional federal level of funding would be needed.”
Warnock has urged extending the $600 benefit going forward and called for helping prop up unemployed workers via expanded health-care coverage, particularly for Medicaid in Georgia.
He has also tied the issue to bids by Republican lawmakers to trim federal spending and shrink taxes, framing those moves as “an effort to renegotiate the social contract to starve the government to death” that he argues has hamstrung the long-term pandemic response.
“This idea that you wouldn’t have resources, a social safety network, to respond in a crisis like this is the logical outcome of that kind of move,” Warnock said recently. “And so I will absolutely stand up as United States senator and argue that working people, middle-class people, deserve their fair shake.”
The race looks to intensify in the coming weeks as the candidates begin pouring campaign funds into television ads and social-media spots.
Loeffler will have the largest bank by far to pay for ads and other marketing, having already loaned her campaign $15 million from her own personal money. Warnock raised around $4.4 million through June, while Collins reeled in roughly $3.8 million.
In mid-July, Loeffler unloaded a campaign ad criticizing Collins’ stint as a defense attorney in Gainesville, noting his firm took on several clients facing gang, drug trafficking and assault charges.
Collins dismissed the ad, stressing his firm was appointed by the courts to defend the indigent clients shown in the ad.
A week later, Collins released his own ad highlighting controversial stock transactions Loeffler made following a closed-door briefing on the coronavirus in January.
Loeffler has said those trades were done by a third-party advisor without her input and noted the U.S. Justice Department did not produce evidence of insider trading before closing an investigation into her transactions.
And Warnock, who has held off so far on in-person campaigning due to the virus, has leaned on social media to air his views on voting rights and health care.
In recent videos, Warnock has pressed both Loeffler and Collins to state their positions on restoring certain election oversight rules to the Voting Rights Act taken away by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 2013 ruling, and on proposals to repeal a key coverage requirement in the Affordable Care Act.
The weeks ahead may also settle whether any of the 17 other candidates in the race drop out to help boost chances for Loeffler, Collins or Warnock to nab more than 50% of votes in the Nov. 3 election.
Among prominent Democratic candidates still in the race are Ed Tarver, a former U.S. attorney and state senator from Augusta, and Matt Lieberman, son of former U.S. senator and 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman.
Lieberman turned heads by polling higher than Warnock by 5 percentage points in a poll released Wednesday by Monmouth University.
If no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote in November, a runoff will be held in January between the top two vote-getters.
ATLANTA — The battle over voter confidence in Georgia’s election machines flared up after the Legislature decided last month to keep them until 2028.
Weeks after lawmakers voted to postpone their prior ban on the machines’ use of QR codes to tally results, the U.S. Department of Justice planned to surge into Atlanta with 260 FBI analysts. They were coming to help investigate the 2020 election, after the agency’s January raid of the Fulton County election warehouse to seize more than half a million ballots.
And the Federal Emergency Management Agency threatened to withhold anti-terrorism funds from states that do not start moving toward hand-marked paper ballots.
But the Trump administration also suffered a serious setback in its efforts to expand the 2020 election probe of Fulton, the most populous county in Georgia and a Democratic bastion.
A federal judge in Atlanta denied the administration’s demand for the personal information of thousands of Fulton election workers and volunteers.
The statute of limitations on any crimes in 2020 had long since expired, U.S. District Judge William M. Ray II ruled on July 7, denying the Justice Department’s grand jury subpoena.
Disclosing addresses, phone numbers and other sensitive information “threatens to chill participation in future elections, which will surely impact Fulton County,” the judge’s order said.
The FBI executed a search warrant for ballots from the 2020 presidential election at the Fulton County elections warehouse on Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. (Mark Niesse/Capitol Beat)
Ray decided the administration’s subpoena was unreasonable, calling it an “arbitrary fishing expedition.”
Fulton Commissioner Dana Barrett said the ruling by a judge who was appointed by President Donald Trump should put the 2020 election to rest.
“The conspiracy theory that the election was stolen and there was wrongdoing, that needs to now recede to the corners of the internet where conspiracy theories live,” Barrett said. “Go into the corner where the Jewish space lasers are and Area 51 and the JFK assassination.”
Barrett, who ran unsuccessfully in the recent Democratic runoff for secretary of state, said the Justice Department, the State Election Board and the “election deniers of the world” were using fictions about 2020 to sow doubts about Fulton and its ability to run clean elections.
She said it was a pretext for intervention in the county elections operations in 2026 and 2028: “It’s about trying to continue the narrative that Fulton County doesn’t know how to run elections and therefore either take that ability completely away from the county and put it in the hands of the MAGA-controlled state election board or put monitors in.”
The election board establishes the rules by which elections operate. Four of its five members are Republicans, and several are critical of Georgia’s electronic voting machines and of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who selected the system.
This week, the board adopted two rules, one banning the use of optical character recognition to tally votes even though the state’s election machines do not use that technology. The other rule would require that Raffensperger allow board members into his election center when county-level vote counts are aggregated on election night.
That rule passed even though Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr told the board it lacked legal authority to implement it, since Raffensperger was elected by voters.
The board also initiated a public comment process on a rule that would disqualify the current voting machines over privacy issues.
Salleigh Grubbs, the author, cited several concerns, including the “huge” displays on the machines.
Sara Tindall Ghazal, the lone Democrat, called it a ruse to force election officials to use the paper ballots they keep for power outages and other emergencies.
Board Chairman John Fervier, a Republican, expressed a similar suspicion.
“This isn’t just about ballot secrecy,” said Fervier, who was appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp. “It’s all part of a larger agenda to get to hand-marked paper ballots.”
Fervier said that if the current machines were disqualified over secrecy concerns, it would cause “massive” problems for election officials, who are already busy recruiting and training poll workers on the current system. Local election leaders have repeatedly said they lack the time to switch systems before the general elections in November.
The measure passed, setting it on course for adoption.
Democrats have been dubious about the ongoing assault on Georgia’s voting machines.
Two years ago, Republican lawmakers pushed through a ban on the use of QR codes to tally votes, which would have made Georgia’s current system illegal effective July 1.
But they failed to approve and pay for an alternative system, so Kemp called them back to the Capitol last month to address the looming deadline.
They postponed the ban until 2028.
Just before the special session, Democratic lawmakers from across the South gathered in Atlanta to strategize ahead of the special session. With them was Rep. Carolyn Hugley, D-Columbus, the minority leader of the state House.
“The QR code is a manufactured issue to begin with because a certain person could not accept the fact that he did not win Georgia,” Hugley said at that event, referring to Trump.
Raffensperger has consistently pushed back against his GOP critics, asserting that his machines are all but flawless.
This week, his office announced the results of a review of all 91 contests in last month’s runoffs. The audit of all 1,111,856 ballot images found 23 discrepancies with hand-marked ballots and none with the digital voting machines.
“We run elections with nearly perfect accuracy, and we will never stop reminding the public their machines are accurate, their counts are accurate, and that elections in Georgia are accurate,” Raffensperger said in a statement.
His office calculated that the hand-marked error rate would create about 3,500 discrepancies in a presidential election year with 5 million ballots cast.
The state Republican Party and many GOP lawmakers, dismiss such audits as window dressing, saying flaws in the system make errors difficult or impossible to detect.
The national fight over elections has taken a toll on voter confidence.
A PBS News/NPR/Marist poll in March found that two-thirds of Americans are confident in fair and accurate elections, down from 76% in late 2024.
Georgia GOP voters had a different take.
A survey in late April of likely Republican primary voters by the firm Cygnal had more than 78% expressing confidence that their votes would be counted fairly in 2026, with 28% “very” confident and more than 50% “somewhat” confident.
The poll was commissioned by the bipartisan Democracy Defense Project, which is trying to counter “false narratives about ‘stolen elections'” that it blames on a “proliferation of politicians” who are trying to bolster their own campaigns.
The project’s Georgia board members include former Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes and former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin. On the Republican side are former U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss and former U.S. Rep. Drew Ferguson.
Ferguson and Franklin appeared at the DeKalb County elections center during the runoff last month to push back against doubters.
They pointed to record turnout in recent years.
“What we have found is 80% of voters on a bipartisan level feel very strongly that the elections are being run fairly and safely here in the state of Georgia,” Ferguson said.
But the Democracy Defense Project’s own polling indicates lingering suspicion.
That April survey by Cygnal found that nearly 76% of likely GOP primary voters approved of the FBI raid on the Fulton elections warehouse, more than 61% strongly approving.
ATLANTA — Most of Georgia’s statewide primary races have been settled on either the Democratic or Republican ticket, but the race for leadership of the state Senate remains up for grabs on both sides of the aisle.
While not a senator, the lieutenant governor presides over the chamber and can control committee assignments and the flow of legislation. The lieutenant governor also fills in for the governor when necessary.
The partisans who survived last month’s primary election for the job will face each other in a June 16 runoff. On Sunday, they squared off in person in a studio at Georgia Public Broadcasting in Atlanta, for what will likely be their final debate.
It can be difficult to find daylight between candidates from the same party, so in the first debate the remaining two Republicans attacked each other’s leadership skills, pitching themselves as best able to execute on policy.
The Democrats followed a similar script in their subsequent debate.
Both Republicans, Sen. Greg Dolezal of Cumming and former Sen. John F. Kennedy of Macon, said they want to cut taxes further than the GOP-controlled Legislature did this year.
Dolezal said that could be done without reducing services.
“For far too long, the Republican Party has been the party of crony capitalism,” said Dolezal, blaming his own partisans for approving budget-eating tax giveaways. “And if we get rid of these crony capitalist tax cuts, we can reduce and ultimately eliminate the state income tax here in Georgia.”
Kennedy resigned in early December because Georgia bars lawmakers from raising campaign funds during the legislative session. So he did not have to shoulder responsibility for the Senate’s failure to abolish income taxes as planned or the House’s similar failure to eliminate property taxes.
Kennedy said he could reduce taxes further if he were lieutenant governor.
“The Legislature was not able to get relief to hard-working Georgians,” he said. “I come in with a good reputation of working with all people, working with folks across the aisle, excellent relationships with those in the House and the governor’s office. And that’s what it takes.”
Kennedy noted that he was elected Senate president pro tempore, the highest leadership office for a senator.
Dolezal never made it into one of the top six Senate leadership spots for Republicans after serving a similar amount of time.
Dolezal described himself as a loyalist to President Donald Trump, noting that he was among a handful of senators who called for a special legislative session to investigate Trump’s 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.
“If a close friend came to you and said, ‘I’m looking for a conservative fighter,'” Dolezal said. “Who would you recommend? The one who goes along to get along or the one who has a record of standing and fighting?”
He echoed fears voiced in Texas where some Republicans contend that parts of the state are at risk of falling under Islamic legal influence.
“I’m fighting to ban Sharia law,” Dolezal said.
The Democratic debate featured bitter exchanges between Sen. Josh McLaurin of Sandy Springs and Nabilah Parkes, a former state senator from Gwinnett County.
Parkes had initially planned to run for insurance commissioner, but she abruptly changed course in March to join the contest for lieutenant governor.
Like Kennedy, she resigned her seat in the Senate so she could raise money for her campaign.
Unlike Kennedy, she waited until the legislative session had already started, leaving her seat vacant from mid-March into the busiest period of lawmaking.
Kennedy was succeeded by a Republican in February after a special election. A special election to fill the remainder of Parkes’ term is set for June 16, the same day as the primary runoff in the race to succeed her next year.
McLaurin called Parkes a quitter, and she called him a feeble campaigner, an insult he returned. Parkes, who is Muslim, has pointed to Dolezal’s campaign ads about Islam as her reason for breaking ranks with Democratic leaders to run for lieutenant governor.
Parkes described herself as a fighter from a working-class family who attended public schools and qualified for the free and reduced-price meals there before she attended Georgia State University.
McLaurin attended a private K-12 school in Buckhead, then the University of Georgia and Yale Law School, though he said his parents came from hardscrabble backgrounds.
McLaurin described himself as a “skillful” operator, able to ridicule Republican lawmakers for supporting Trump while earning enough of their respect and trust to pass legislation. He cited a bill to regulate car booting and one another for therapies for veterans.
Parkes attacked McLaurin as a Democrat who “coddles” Republicans.
“We don’t need a candidate that goes along to get along, like my opponent,” she said.
McLaurin said the Senate would likely remain under GOP control after the November general election and that Republicans would almost certainly strip the lieutenant governor of power if a Democrat were to win the office.
He characterized Parkes as ineffective, noting that scores of Democratic lawmakers have endorsed him, as has Stacey Abrams, who twice won Georgia’s Democratic gubernatorial nomination. On Monday, Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock added his endorsement.
“I imagine that my bipartisan work probably does look like coddling Republicans to somebody who hasn’t done any of it,” McLaurin said. “So, the bottom line is this: I am a fierce fighter. I have stood up to MAGA Republicans. I’ve called them narcissist coddlers to their face, but I get stuff done, and that’s why I can win in November.”
ATLANTA — Federal prosecutors charged the founder of a Georgia investment vehicle with wire fraud Thursday in connection with an alleged Ponzi scheme.
Edwin Brant Frost IV, owner and president of the defunct First Liberty Building and Loan, allegedly scammed those in his orbit in what the FBI and prosecutors described as a “classic” Ponzi scheme, using new investor funds to pay earlier investors while concealing significant financial losses.
“Frost abused the trust of his clients, family, and friends by allegedly soliciting investors with promises of sizable returns, while knowing the money raised would instead be used for his personal expenses and to pay early investors to maintain the illusion of profits,” U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg said in a statement Thursday after Frost IV was arraigned in federal court in Atlanta.
Frost IV, 68, of Newnan, was released on bail after entering a plea of not guilty.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Office of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger investigated.
Frost IV is accused of steering over $570,000 to political contributions. Last year, Raffensperger’s office called on recipients to return the money.
Frost’s son, Brant Frost V, was chairman of the Coweta County Republican Party.
Hertzberg said Frost IV “represented” to investors that they would be compensated by borrowers who paid fees on “bridge” loans.
Instead, prosecutors said, First Liberty used investor money to pay off early investors and to fund more than $5 million of “personal and sometimes extravagant expenditures.”
Frost IV spent over $230,000 to rent a vacation home in Maine, over $140,000 to buy jewelry, $20,800 for a Patek Philippe watch and over $2 million on credit card bills, prosecutors claimed.
They said Frost IV did not disclose that borrowers had defaulted and that he continued to finance at least one of the defaulted companies.
Herztberg’s office said Frost IV raised at least $140 million from at least 300 investors.
