Fulton County charges Donald Trump with racketeering, other felonies – a Georgia election law expert explains 5 key things to know

  An Atlanta, Georgia grand jury indicted former President Donald Trump on Aug. 14, 2023, charging him with racketeering and 12 other felonies related to his alleged attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the state.

  Eighteen of Trump’s allies and associates, including former Trump attorney Rudolph Giuliani and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, were also indicted for racketeering and other felony charges for their alleged involvement in the scheme.

  This marks Trump’s fourth indictment in five months – and the second to come from his efforts to undo the election results that awarded the presidency to Joe Biden. Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, started investigating Trump’s involvement in this alleged scheme, as well as that of Trump’s colleagues, in February 2021.

Confederate symbols have no place in public spaces. Stone Mountain is no exception.

  Stone Mountain is the world’s largest monument to white supremacy. The enormous landform – the centerpiece of a state park that draws more than 4 million visitors a year, some 15 miles northeast of Atlanta – is marred by a massive carving commemorating the hateful legacy of the Confederacy.

  The carved surface depicts Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson in a reverent light across three acres. The men sit on horseback, hats over their hearts, in a tableau that cannot be interpreted as anything other than a celebration of the Confederacy and the values – white supremacy and the enslavement of Black people – for which it stood.

Voting rights advocates prep for perfect storm in 2020

  Carla Duffy and Janet Savage waited nearly three hours in the hot sun outside the George Ford Center in Powder Springs, Georgia to cast ballots in the state’s June 9 primary. Masked up to ward off the coronavirus, they were determined to vote despite lines that snaked down the street.

  After about 90 minutes in line, voters at the predominately Black precinct were told the state’s new voting machines were not working. In a scene that played out across the state, they were given paper ballots. The ordeal left Duffy and Savage with little confidence in Georgia’s ability to conduct a fair election in November’s presidential contest. The primary, for example, was originally scheduled for May 19 but was pushed back due to concerns about the pandemic, a delay that appeared to have little effect on the state’s readiness once voters arrived at the polls.

The killing of Ahmaud Arbery highlights the danger of jogging while black

  Unsteady cellphone footage follows a jogger – an apparently young, black man – as he approaches and attempts to run around a white pickup truck parked in the middle of a suburban road. Moments later he lies dead on the ground.

  The killing of Ahmaud Arbery took place on Feb. 23 after the 25-year-old was confronted by Gregory McMichael, a 64-year-old former police officer and investigator for the Brunswick, Georgia district attorney’s office, and his 34-year-old son, Travis. It took 10 weeks to gain widespread attention with the circulation of video footage on social media, prompting revulsion and calls for justice.

As businesses reopen, a salon owner finds herself ‘on the front line’ of COVID-19

  With the COVID-19 pandemic still raging, Lauren Reyes is more than a little apprehensive about reopening her hair salon, located in an Atlanta shopping mall. But she said Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s (R) April 20 decision to allow some nonessential businesses in the state to reopen leaves her no choice.

  “If we choose to stay closed for the sake of our health and our families’ health, we risk losing our clientele. If we reopen for our clients, we put ourselves at risk,” she said, explaining the dilemma she and other Georgia small-business owners face.

SCOTUS should preserve workplace protections for LGBTQ people

  Soon after Y.B. took the night shift as a forklift operator, her boss started harassing her because she is a lesbian.

  “I want to turn you back into a woman. I want you to like men again,” he said. “Are you a girl or a man?”

  Y.B. endured the harassment for weeks, but eventually complained to the company’s human resources department. The next day, she was fired.

Long lines, broken machines, voter ID laws: Welcome to the neo-Jim Crow

  Felon disenfranchisement was designed to “preserve the purity of the ballot box,” or in other words, the whiteness of the electorate.

  By the time the Alabama Supreme Court issued that opinion in 1884, Florida had already beaten it to the punch. Florida outlawed voting for anyone convicted of a felony in 1868, at the very same time that it began to convict more black people of felonies.

  Exactly 150 years later, Florida voters finally overturned that discriminatory policy, re-enfranchising 1.5 million people in a single stroke last Tuesday. The news that Florida had passed Amendment 4, giving as many as 40 percent of the state’s black men the right to vote, was cause for celebration around the country and certainly here at the Southern Poverty Law Center, where we invested heavily to support its passage.

Executed for committing war crimes — then honored with a Confederate monument

  We’ve seen the monuments to Jefferson Davis. We’ve seen the ones to Robert E. Lee. But why is there a monument to a Confederate captain executed for war crimes?

  Captain Henry Wirz took command of a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp in Andersonville, Georgia, in 1864. The camp was originally intended to be a temporary holding pen for prisoners who would be exchanged with the Union. It was nothing more than an open-air stockade.

  But within six months of its establishment, Camp Sumter was holding 32,000 Union soldiers. Technically, it was the fifth largest city in the Confederacy.

Charles C. Haynes: Without LGBT rights, religious freedom fails

  Last week Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina scrambled to contain the damage caused by the passage of a state law limiting bathroom access for transgender people and eliminating local anti-discrimination ordinances based on sexual orientation.

  Under mounting pressure from civil liberties advocates and business interests, McCrory made what critics called cosmetic changes, notably issuing an executive order expanding the state’s employment policy for state workers to cover sexual orientation and gender identity.

  Opponents of the law say McCrory’s actions are too little, too late. Absent repeal of the legislation, North Carolina will likely face more boycotts, protests and pushback from businesses threatening to cancel investments in the state.

Mayor: Confederate Flag at rural county courthouse ‘must come down’

  A large Confederate battle flag snapping in the wind at the top of a pole in front of the county courthouse in the small rural Georgia town of Summerville must come down and “it shouldn’t have been put up there in the first place,” the city’s first black mayor told the Southern Poverty Law Center today.

  “It certainly sheds a negative light on the city and the county,” Mayor Harry Harvey said. “We have a lot of positive things going on in the area, a lot of progress, and this distracts from it. It’s not something we want to be known for.”

Charles C. Haynes: Fifty years later, schools still struggle with religion

  A lawsuit filed in Swainsboro, Georgia last week uncovers yet another rural school district living in a time warp – a 1950s world where teachers still lead children in daily prayer and send dissenters into the hallway.

  Some of the teachers at Swainsboro Elementary School not only lead prayers in the classroom, but also embarrass and proselytize children whose parents oppose school-sponsored prayers, according to the complaint filed by the Freedom From Religion Foundation on behalf of two families.

Gene Policinski: Our core freedoms are put to use – and put to the test

  Our First Amendment freedoms have been put to use – and put to the test – in recent weeks.

  In the U.S. Supreme Court chambers in Washington, D.C., an angry ex-husband sought to overturn his conviction for making threats over the Internet, claiming the violence-laced language and the vile visions he conjured up on Facebook were just “therapeutic efforts to address traumatic events,” even akin to some song lyrics.

Charles C. Haynes: Gay marriage, religious freedom and the need for civil dialogue

  In recent months, legislators in more than a dozen states — from Hawaii to Georgia — have attempted to enact laws they describe as necessary to protect religious freedom.

  Some are broad "religious freedom restoration acts" very similar to laws already on the books in many states. Others are amendments to existing laws aimed at allowing businesses to deny wedding services to gay couples on religious grounds.