Tuesday, June 23, 2026
Good Morning! In the news today: special session standoff, Coastal Georgia Republicans ponder the post-runoff path, and Congressman Carter talks about the Iran deal. Finally, we note some things for your radar.
Questions, comments, or story ideas? You can reach me at craig.thecurrent@gmail.com.
NEWS: ELECTIONS
Hand recounts
The Georgia legislature’s special session entered its fourth day on Monday, having kicked its main task — redrawing congressional and legislative boundaries — down the road. That followed protests by Democrats that any redistricting effort would disenfranchise non-white voters and concerns by Republicans that it would galvanize opposition in the upcoming general election.
That leaves two other tasks for the GOP-dominated General Assembly: addressing a state law that bans Georgia from using QR codes for official or final ballot counts after July 1 and providing relief from homestead taxes.
At the center of the QR code issue is an amendment approved by Senate Republicans over the weekend that would require a full hand recount of the two races at the top of ballot. In this November’s election, that would be the race for governor and U.S. Senate.
Whether each of Georgia’s 159 county election offices could conduct such a hand count securely and efficiently to avoid sowing doubts about the results is a question, state Rep. Anne Allen Westbrook, a Savannah Democrat, told The Current late Monday.
If lawmakers don’t resolve QR code issue, however, it will end up in litigation and the courts. “We’re in a difficult position,” Westbrook said.
As for property tax relief, the state Senate is scheduled to take that issue up again Tuesday. Democrats argue that Republican proposals to offset decreases in property taxes with increases in sales taxes shifts the burden of paying for local services from homeowners to lower income Georgians.
On Monday, Republican lawmakers went to the House floor to blast their Democratic counterparts for blocking local governments from putting the tax issue on the ballot in November.
Rep. Rick Townsend (Brunswick) accused House Democrats of voting against local control for the sake of “arguing about the extra penny” and thus denied Republicans and Democrats alike in his district the right to vote.
NEWS: POLITICS
Bruised GOP
In the Republican race for governor, Burt Jones defeated Rick Jackson in Coastal Georgia by 7.6% of the vote, showing his strength across rural Georgia (read “not metro Atlanta”). In the GOP race for U.S. Senate, Mike Collins won the region by a whopping 35.8% of the runoff vote over Derek Dooley, as first-round supporters of his fellow “MAGA warrior” — 1st District Rep. Buddy Carter — appear to have migrated by and large to him, not Gov. Brian Kemp’s pick, in the second.
Of course, while Collins also won statewide, Jones did not, losing by 5.23% of the vote overall despite endorsements from President Donald Trump, Kemp, and Carter, as well as the support of local Republicans.
Five days before the runoff, state Sen. Ben Watson, state Reps. Ron Stephens and Jesse Petrea, and GOP congressional nominee Jim Kingston hosted the lieutenant governor in Savannah. Earlier in the day, state Rep. Buddy DeLoach of Townsend stumped for Jones at a reception at Skippers’ Fish Camp in Darien. Meanwhile, Reps. Steven Sainz (St. Marys) and Lehman Franklin (Statesboro) had thrown their backing behind Jackson.
The support for Jones helped him in all but four of Coastal Georgia’s 15 counties, losing in Bryan, Camden, Effingham, and Liberty. He prevailed in heavily populated Chatham by 1.8 percent of the vote and Glynn by 6.4 percent. He also won four of the region’s five most Republican and heavily Trump voting counties — Brantley, Pierce, Wayne, and Appling. All to no avail.
Whether the intraparty resentments accumulated during the two rounds of primary voting fester into the general election campaign remains to be seen.
Holly Kesler, a local Republican who avidly supported Jones, bemoaned campaign slurs against the candidate and his family (“What occurred during this cycle was not simply the criticism of a good man—it was the unfair and degrading portrayal of an entire family as part of some extreme, corrupt cabal determined to harm our state.”) and urged those calling for immediate party unity to give “people the time and space they need to thoughtfully process what has just happened.”
Likening party primaries to arguments at a dinner table, candidate Kingston urged unity (When dinner’s over, you’re still family. And when you go out into the world, you stick together.”).
Still, a weekend effort aimed at forging party unity went flat. Collins attended the state Republican Party’s “first-ever America 250 Rodeo Celebration” on Saturday in Perry; Kemp, who went 0-2 on runoff day, Jackson, Attorney General Chris Carr, and Insurance Commissioner John King did not.
NEWS: POLITICS
‘WIP’
On his birthday earlier this month, President Donald Trump declared on his birthday that “the Deal” with Iran was “complete” and urged “Ships of the World” to “start their engines” and “let the oil flow.”
Less than three hours later, Coastal Georgia Congressman Buddy Carter weighed in, posting on X, “President of Peace!”
Over the weekend, Carter walked back his initial exuberance over the agreement, which he took pains not to describe as a “deal.”
“There are a lot of [U.S.] concessions, but let’s keep in mind that this is a work in progress. And keep in mind that this memorandum of understanding is laced with performance enhancements. And it depends on what Iran does,” Carter told NewsNation in an interview on Father’s Day.
Other Republicans, including U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, were less sanguine. “I think it’s going to fail,” he told CBS News.
NEWS: UPDATES
7 things for your radar
- ‘Freedom, heritage, unity’: Coastal Georgians mark Juneteenth, The Current’s Sarah Harwell, Daneen Khan, Kelley Lu, Gracie Nelson, Giulio Gnash, Justin Taylor, Robin Kemp report.
- Let’s talk: Savannah Mayor Van Johnson, City Manager Jay Melder and other city officials to host a town hall to field questions and concerns from city residents. The event — “Savannah at Night” — will be from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday at Kingdom Life Christian Fellowship Church, 425 W. Montgomery Cross Road.
- Coming to Savannah: U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms to hold rally in Savannah on Saturday. Doors open at 1 p.m. Rally starts at 2 p.m. To attend, click here.
- CAT fireworks: Port Wentworth officials say they are “deeply disappointed” by the decision of Chatham County Commission Chairman Chester Ellis to bar the municipality from joining the Chatham Area Transit, Savannah Agenda reports. A day earlier, at a commission budget meeting, Ellis accused CAT CEO Stephanie Cutter of not being “truthful in what you’re saying and doing.” Replied Cutter: “Mr. Chairman, what you’re saying is not the truth…. The county has always gotten details from CAT, and I’m not gonna stand here and allow you to do that anymore.”
- ‘Miserable’ Democrats: “As America marks our 250th anniversary, an interesting phenomenon is playing out: World Cup tourists are falling in love with a nation that the Left increasingly disdains,” Coastal Georgia Congressman Buddy Carter writes in an op-ed. “Our forefathers once fought tyranny; now, our country caves to it in a different form — wokeness. . . . Simply put, [Democrats are] miserable, and they want you to be miserable, too.”
- ‘Opposition works’: Officials in Social Circle say they have been notified by GOP U.S. Senate candidate Mike Collins that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has dropped plans to build a 10,000-bed ICE detention facility in the city, 45 miles east of Atlanta. Officials thanked Collins and U.S. Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock for their help in quashing the plan. “This news proves yet again that public pressure and opposition works, Ossoff said.
- One Big Beautiful Bill: Some 3.5 million people nationwide have been booted from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, Politico reports. And “as the law’s new eligibility terms take effect this year, more are likely to follow, while others will be abruptly sent back into a workforce for which they are unprepared. Parents of teenage children and adults in their 60s will now be expected to find a job and prove they are working.”
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The Georgia Senate passed a bill to extend the deadline to remove QR codes from ballots to 2028, and to require hand recounts of the top two races in every election, despite opposition from Democrats.
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House Republicans are attempting to pass local property tax measures during a special session, but Democrats have blocked the effort, arguing that it would shift the burden of paying for local services from homeowners to lower income Georgians.
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Georgia lawmakers advanced a bill to pause the mandatory voting machine changes and introduced legislation to reduce property tax bills for homeowners.
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