public safety
Glynn County residents meet police chief nominee
Battiste hasn’t been officially confirmed by the county commission, but as the sole finalist of the high-stakes search, it’s likely he will be. The evening event, his first time to meet the community reeling from Ahmaud Arbery’s killing last year, held the potential to help or hurt the county’s reckoning with racial tensions.
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HEALTH CARE ACCESS
HCA trauma centers lead Georgia in high ‘activation’ fees
$10,000 reward set after Savannah mass shooting
Buddy Carter joins Marjorie Taylor Greene in attack on Fauci
Let’s get there together.
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georgia
Georgia hits bottom on rankings for senior health care, access to overall health care
Georgia tourism springs back to life, businesses struggle to regain staffing
Poll worker lawsuit turns up flawed felony records system
REFERENCE POINTS
Georgia COVID-19 daily statistics
Today’s cases, change, deaths, hospitalizations, testing, vaccination tracker
Georgia U.S. House District 1 Watch: Buddy Carter
Follow key votes, funding sources, speeches, social media, legislation
Georgia U.S. Senate Watch: Ossoff, Warnock
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Georgia Legislature: Daily press releases, announcements
Follow a running list of links regarding Legislative committees, budgets, bills and appointments.
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ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE
Golden Ray blaze creates new pollution threat off Georgia’s coast
Plastics, fuel, petroleum products and fire chemicals may combine for dangerous mix at wreck site for years to come.
Coastal counties struggle with persistent flood threats
Coastal Georgia counties look for ways to protect communities from a steady flood pattern that doesn’t stop: rising seas and catastrophic weather.
Brunswick residents living next to a Superfund site worry about cleanup 40 years later
Brunswick is surrounded by toxic industrial sites that threaten humans, fish and waterways. Residents want more accountability.
Long-delayed Camden Spaceport decision nears final countdown
Some coastal areas are more prone to devastating hurricanes – a meteorologist explains why
Atlantic hurricane season starts June 1 – here’s what forecasters are watching right now
Judge blocks dredging during sea turtle nesting season
elections
New ‘leadership committees’ promise to change political funding in Georgia
Conservative Heritage group takes credit for Georgia voting overhaul
An update: All the lawsuits challenging Georgia’s new voting law
Research: Tighter Georgia voting access may not change election results much
Georgia AG denies discrimination in state’s controversial new election law
Candidates launch 2022 campaigns in Georgia against Raffensperger, McBath
PUBLIC HEALTH
Facing ‘worst ever’ demand for nurses, some hospitals offer unprecedented bonuses
CDC director: Low vaccination rates put Georgia at risk of COVID-19 spikes
Study: Medicaid expansion would benefit more Georgia workers
politics
Your County Officials, Services
Want to give cheers or a complaints or a suggestion? Want to attend council or commission meetings, or just find out about garbage services or complain about potholes? Click on your county to get started.
DATA
Follow News Through Data with 538
Fivethirtyeight.com is a website that tells stories and news through statistical analysis using reliable, credible data to do it. Click here each day for new stories in politics, science, economics and more.
GOVERNING
Find Out What’s on the Agenda
Click here to see this week’s lineup of what’s being proposed and what’s up for discussion on various committees, boards and councils that represent you.
EDUCATION
Attempts to ban teaching on ‘critical race theory’ multiply across the U.S.
After a tumultuous year, teacher ‘thank you’ bonuses gain steam, spark debate
Georgia college athletes set to earn compensation in Kemp-signed bill
Savannah State’s interim president steps into job permanently
Georgia’s juvenile detention struggles with staggering correction staff churn
Georgia colleges wade into ‘vaccine passport’ debate in new COVID clash
The Tide: Carter’s role in Revenge of the Nays
Carter finds uphill challenges for opioid treatment bill following his support for overturning the November election.
The Tide: Separating pork from bull
Buddy Carter stakes out his earmarks while his party disapproves, district looks for funds for projects.
The Tide: Census shows Georgia gained weight, but not representation
Our neighbor Florida gets a new Congressional seat and Texas gets two, but an additional rep wasn’t in the cards for the Peach State.
The Tide: Mumps, measles – what are the odds?
College students in Georgia university system must take a number of immunizations before entering class but a vaccine for COVID-19 isn’t one of them.
The Tide: Carter casts a Senate net
Coastal Georgia’s sole representative looks to move to the Senate.
The Tide: Pecans with a side of horse racing
The Tide: A fight to save the legacy of Savannah’s Virginia Kiah
The Tide: Mallow bill looks for change through education
EDITOR’S CHOICE
Journalism’s longstanding Achilles’ heel: partisans who cry bias
For half a century, crying bias has been a strategic communication tactic used against newspapers and broadcasters who strive to adhere to professional norms of dispassionate objectivity. It’s like kryptonite for responsible news organizations: the stronger their piety to journalistic ethics and the ideal of objectivity, the more vulnerable they are to accusations made in bad faith.
After Capitol riot, some states turn to civics education
While lawmakers and educators often deeply disagree about the best approach, especially when it comes to teaching about slavery and institutional racism, many see civics education as key to starting to knit the country back together.
How to make city traffic safer? Remove left turns
Approximately 61% of all crashes that occur at intersections involve a left-hand turn. Algorithms help find solutions to worst crossings.
Zero-trust security: Assume everyone, everything on the internet is out to get you – and maybe already has
There were at least 2,354 ransomware attacks on local governments, health care facilities and schools in the U.S. last year. Although estimates vary, losses to ransomware seem to have tripled in 2020 to more than $300,000 per incident. And ransomware attacks are growing more sophisticated.
Working together
FROM THE CURRENT
Thiokol explosion: 50 years later, families seek to be remembered
Those killed and maimed weren’t wearing uniforms like the thousands of Georgians deployed aboard during the war. They were mostly poor, Black women who worked for $1.65 an hour assembling trip flares for the U.S. Army at the Thiokol Chemical Corp. plant in Woodbine.
Some Georgia tax credit scholarships go to anti-LGBT schools
Websites of 100 SSO scholarship schools in Georgia and found 15 with explicitly anti-gay policies. Many others assert religious stances but do not specifically mention homosexuality.
Red flags about Savannah’s concrete industry reveals wrongdoing
Ten years ago a Savannah whistleblower alerted federal authorities to a cartel costing Georgia taxpayers millions of dollars. This month, U.S. attorneys won their first admission of guilt.
Savannah Weighs Value of Art and History Amid COVID-19 Crisis
Savannah City Council needs a way to fund city services in a budget crunch, but hasn’t figured the value of assets selected for auction.
Glynn County Police, residents wrestle with racism
Long before Ahmaud Arbery’s killing put Brunswick and Glynn County on the national map, Black residents felt targeted by local law enforcement. A lack of laws in Georgia to monitor racial profiling by police prevents them from quantifying that perception.
Scholarship Tax Credit Program: $600M with Little Oversight
With no data or complaint process to guide, Georgia’s School Scholarship Organizations have shifted more than $600 million from state coffers to scholarships at private schools around the state – including more than 40 in the Savannah area.