Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025
Good morning! Welcome back from the holiday weekend. In today’s abbreviated edition of Soundings, we look at Coastal Georgia Congressman Buddy Carter’s widely discussed bill on Greenland. We then note eight things for your radar. Questions, comments, or story ideas? You can reach me at craig.thecurrent@gmail.com
NEWS: POLITICS
‘Monumental deal’
Coastal Georgia Congressman Earl “Buddy” Carter wants people to know he really means it when he says the U.S. should buy Greenland, the largest island in the world, and rename it “Red, White and Blueland.”
That proposal, contained in a bill that Carter introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives last week, authorizes President Donald Trump to enter negotiations to purchase the island, a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark that is more than 14 times the size of Georgia with roughly the same number of people — 57,000 — as Valdosta.
Never mind that the prime ministers of Greenland and Denmark say the island isn’t for sale and never will be. Carter is bullish.
In Carter’s view, it’s only a question of when — not if — the “Negotiator-in-Chief inks this monumental deal” and Greenlanders are welcomed to “join the freest nation to ever to exist.”
It’s all heady stuff, even in the face of ridicule from some Coastal Georgia Republicans, who are deriding Carter’s proposal to rebrand Greenland “Red, White and Blueland.”
“It’s embarrassing,” said a Glynn County Republican who voted for Trump. “Every Republican I talk to about it is embarrassed.”
Carter, however, is undaunted, The Current’s Craig Nelson reports.
NEWS: POLITICS AND UPDATES
8 things for your radar
- The Georgia Senate passes a bill creating a tax holiday on guns and related items. Republican Senators Ben Watson of Savannah and Billy Hickman of Statesboro were among the 21 lawmakers who co-sponsored the measure.
- Ron Stephens (R-Savannah) is one of six sponsors of a bill, introduced last week, to ban school-zone cameras.
- The Trump administration’s jobs cuts have reached Georgia’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is expected to lose about one-tenth of its workforce. That’s a problem for among other things collecting data on flu and other public health threats.
- Federal job cutbacks imperil a lifeline to the American dream, Capital B’s Brandon Tinsley writes.
- Rep. Anne Allen Westbrook (D-Savannah) took to the floor of the state House in Atlanta to challenge a Republican colleague’s praise of Trump’s record on women.
- The last of three Savannah City Council hearings on the homestead exemption will take place at the next Savannah City Council meeting on Thursday, Feb. 27 at 2, 4:30, and 6 p.m. Previous hearings haven’t all gone smoothly.
- The Savannah Pride Center says its “deeply disappointed” by the decision by Memorial Health to cancel all gender-affirming top surgeries. Hospital officials tell WSAV-TV the decision was in direct response to the Trump administration’s executive order.
- Infant mortality increased along with births in most states with abortion bans in the first 18 months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, according to new research.
Rename and buy Greenland? Carter says he’s serious
U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter has introduced a bill to negotiate for and rename the Arctic island of Greenland.
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Support independent, solutions-based investigative journalism without bias, fear or favor on issues affecting Savannah and Coastal Georgia.
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