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Georgia is hosting the 1st presidential debate. Its voters could decide the election

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Georgia is hosting the 1st presidential debate. Its voters could decide the election

A stack of stickers sits atop a ballot scanner during the midterm elections on Nov. 8, 2022, in Tucker, Georgia. In 2024, Georgia is poised to play a pivotal role in the outcome of the presidential election.

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Just under 12,000 votes separated Joe Biden and Donald Trump when they last appeared on the ballot in Georgia. Four years later, the rivals are preparing to share a debate stage this week in Atlanta as they fight for the slice of Georgia voters who could swing the presidential election.

Some of those voters with outsize influence live in Alpharetta, a suburb of Atlanta where new subdivisions keep sprouting and have helped turn this formerly Republican stronghold purple. Reading a novel on a lounge chair in the sun at Alpharetta’s Wills Park Pool, Kerry Webster is the kind of voter Biden and Trump need to persuade.

Webster says she is unhappy with her choices for president. And though she voted for Trump in 2020, he has since been convicted on 34 felony counts and faces more charges, including in Georgia.

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A grand jury indicted Trump just a few miles from the debate stage on charges that he attempted to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election result.

“He’s a conniver. He’s not really a good person — he’s really not,” Webster said. “But the economy was better, and Biden, I don’t know if he does a lot for us, hate to say.”

But Webster does not plan to watch Thursday’s debate. Despite living in a state and a suburban community that helped decide the presidency in 2020, she says she feels unmotivated about her options and has wondered whether her vote matters much anyway.

Many people are cooling off in the light-blue Wills Park Pool in Alpharetta, Georgia. The pool has a twisty yellow water slide and a sign near the slide saying that you must be at least 48 inches tall to ride it.

The Wills Park Pool in Alpharetta, Ga., has given families a break from the heat, but with the presidential debate in Georgia on Thursday, voters can’t get a break from politics in this pivotal state.

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Prasad and Mansi Vichare are keeping an eye on their kids splashing nearby as a DJ bumps Taylor Swift on repeat and older kids leap from a tall diving board for prizes. The Vichares identify as political independents. And though they definitely plan to vote, they think debates are a mostly useless exercise.

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“To be honest, they’re a waste, but that’s just my opinion,” Prasad said. “I’m indifferent,” added Mansi, who believes the candidates just tell people what they think they want to hear. “I feel like it’s somewhat fake, and so I don’t know if it’s really that helpful.”

A few lounge chairs away, Madalyn Ford is concerned that some voters have not internalized the stakes.

Ford says she has voted for both Republicans and Democrats, but never Trump. At 73, she worries about the U.S. that her grandkids will inherit and says she will not miss the debate.

“This is really important for Biden,” Ford predicted. “He better get a good night’s rest. I don’t think he’s got dementia, but he’s old and this is super-important.”

Polls suggest that Biden has gained ground with older voters, particularly women. But support from younger voters of color, who have long been Democrats’ bread and butter, appears to be softening.

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Millennial Deanna McKay says she has struggled with whether her vote matters. McKay voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020. She says she will watch this debate with an open mind.

“Socially Biden, but financially Trump, and that’s kind of a tough place to be,” she explained. “But it’s a little frustrating because these aren’t the two candidates I would choose.”

McKay says she cares most about affordable housing and reproductive rights. She says she does not directly fault Trump for the overturn of Roe v. Wade, despite his three appointments that cemented a conservative majority on the Supreme Court.

Field operations take shape as voting nears

This month, the Trump campaign opened its first Georgia field office in a tidy brick building that’s 20 miles south of Atlanta and shared with an insurance agency. On a recent weekday, staffers invited supporters to tour the campaign’s inaugural field office, grab coffee and doughnuts and sign up to volunteer.

Ben Carson wears a suit and holds a microphone as he speaks at a ceremony to open Donald Trump's first Georgia campaign office on June 13. Behind Carson hangs a blue campaign banner.

Ben Carson, who was the U.S. secretary of housing and urban development during Donald Trump’s administration, speaks at a ceremony to open the Republican presidential candidate’s first Georgia campaign office, in Fayetteville, on June 13.

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Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development under Trump, traveled to Georgia for the grand opening and described the choice that voters face in November with an analogy.

“Would you rather have the surgeon who has a bad bedside manner but saves everybody, or the one with a very sweet personality who kills everybody?” Carson asked. “Which one would you take?”

The Trump campaign says it now has more than a dozen staffed field offices in the state, though Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, recently raised concerns that the Trump campaign’s ground game in Georgia may be lagging.

“This year it will be clearer than ever that Georgians are ready to help send their state’s sixteen electoral votes to the GOP column this fall,” Henry Scavone, the Republican National Committee’s communications director in Georgia, said in a statement.

After Biden managed to flip Georgia blue in 2020, becoming the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since 1992, Republicans swept nearly every statewide office in the midterm elections that followed. Democratic U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock won reelection that year in a runoff, the one exception.

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Democrats still believe Georgia is winnable and see a strong ground game as crucial to notching more wins. Ahead of the debate, the Biden campaign says it will hold 200 events in Georgia, looking to leverage the national spotlight and the side-by-side view of the two candidates.

Jonae Wartel, the Biden campaign’s senior adviser in Georgia, says deploying a presence statewide, not just in the Democratic stronghold of metro Atlanta, is a key feature of the campaign’s Georgia strategy. The campaign says it has 14 Georgia field offices and will hit 100 staffers here by the end of the week.

“Right here in our backyard, the world is going to be watching how President Biden is fit to lead us into another four-year administration and Donald Trump is continuing to be a threat,” Wartel says. “That contrast is going to be on full display. It’s the campaign’s job to take advantage of that.”

“I’m very nervous, I’ll be honest”

People eat food outdoors under blue patio umbrellas at a Juneteenth block party to mark the opening of the Biden campaign's Atlanta office.

The Biden campaign opened an Atlanta campaign office with a Juneteenth block party joined by Vice President Harris.

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Vice President Harris has traveled to Georgia so often that she says people have started jokingly asking whether she is moving there.

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“I said maybe!” she recently joked during a Juneteenth block party to celebrate the opening of a coordinated campaign office in Atlanta.

“We’re never going to let anybody take our power from us — we will never let anybody silence us. That’s what this election is about,” Harris told members of the crowd as they enjoyed barbecue and snow cones. “The people of Georgia are going to make the decision, and the decision will be four more years.”

Wearing sunglasses, a straw hat and a sleeveless white shirt, Val Acree attends a Juneteenth block party. Behind her is an outdoor stage, with many people standing in front of the stage, facing it.

Val Acree attends a Juneteenth block party with Vice President Harris and says she’s excited to vote for Harris and President Biden again in 2024.

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Voter Val Acree said she is unabashedly supporting Biden and Harris. Even so, she does have some trepidation about the next few months.

“I’m very nervous, I’ll be honest,” Acree said. “There’s a lot of disinformation and disengagement out there, so I’m doing everything on my part that I can to get people engaged.”

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That’s why Acree says she will be watching when Biden and Trump meet on the debate stage just a few miles away.

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Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

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Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

Three more people have been criminally charged with destruction of property at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Officers say they detained Cameron Thiers, Sophie Dennison-Gibby and Justin Carreno one Saturday afternoon in June and described in court documents witnessing them peeling and removing pieces of blue paint from the Reflecting Pool.

One officer “witnessed Carreno reach down into the reflecting pool and pull up a piece of the blue paint,” according to the court documents.

The officer who detained Dennison-Gibby “found 1 additional piece of the reflecting pool liner” in her purse, the documents said.

All three incidents were recorded on the officers’ body worn cameras, they said in the court documents.

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Several “partnering law enforcement agencies assigned to the Reflecting Pool” working with US Park Police were involved in detaining the two men and one woman — including officers from Texas, Oklahoma, Montana and California.

One of the officers said in court documents that Thiers “admitted to removing a piece of blue sealant from the Reflecting Pool and still had it in his hand when I made contact with him.”

The three defendants were arraigned in court Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor charges of destruction of property with a value less than $1,000. The judge ordered them to stay away from the Reflecting Pool.

Lawyers for Thiers and Dennison-Gibby declined to comment. CNN has reached out to Carreno’s attorney.

If found guilty of destruction of property, the defendants could be fined up to $1,000 and face a maximum of 180 days behind bars.

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The New York Times first reported that three additional people had been charged with damaging the Reflecting Pool.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that vandals caused major damage to the pool by gashing the lining after his administration spent more than $14 million on renovations, though he has not provided evidence to support that claim. The officers who charged Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby did not accuse them of gashing the lining.

Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn was indicted by a grand jury in Washington, DC, last week for allegedly damaging the Reflecting Pool. Hearn — unlike Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby – was charged with destruction of property with a value of more than $1,000 which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, if convicted. He is set to be arraigned in court Thursday.

Crews began draining the Reflecting Pool over the weekend to make repairs, according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, for the second time in three months.

The move comes after weeks of problems – algae blooms, green-hued water, a chipping bottom and the administration’s allegations of vandalism – that have plagued the iconic landmark, making its woes the subject of national interest.

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Reagan Library on Sept. 9, 2025, in Simi Valley, Calif. Barrett discussed and signed copies of her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.

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Even as the Supreme Court was handing down one legal thunderbolt after another last week, the justices were quietly releasing their annual financial reports. Justice Samuel Alito was the only sitting justice to request an extension, which he has done for 15 years. The disclosures do not give a complete account of the justices’ total income and wealth, but they give insights into their concertgoing, guest professorships and even their involvement in youth sports.

In addition to their salaries, much of the justices’ reported income came from their book deals. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson led the pack earning more than $1.1 million last year for a total of roughly $4 million since her memoir, Lovely One, was published in 2024.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy also reported income from published books. Earnings from their books ranged from $849,000 for Barrett, to $300,000 for Gorsuch and $88,000 for Sotomayor, whose books include her 2013 autobiography and five children’s books. Justice Clarence Thomas, who previously earned $1.5 million for his 2007 memoir, listed no publisher payments last year, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of 13 co-authors of a 2016 legal treatise, also received no payments last year. Kavanaugh is said to be working on a memoir but he listed no payments for the anticipated book. Alito does have a book coming out in the fall, but with his financial report still outstanding, there is no data on how much he was paid for the work in 2025.

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The only two sitting justices who have not written books are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan.

Many justices also earned income from teaching at law schools. Roberts reported income from New England Law, located in Boston, and Gorsuch reported teaching income from George Mason University in Virginia. Thomas taught classes at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and Barrett and Kavanaugh taught at Notre Dame Law School. Barrett graduated from the school and began teaching there 23 years ago; Kavanaugh has family connections to Notre Dame.

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.

A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.

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City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”

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Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.

Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.

“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.

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Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.

Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.

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“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.

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The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.

Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.

“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.

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Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”

He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.

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Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.

On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.

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