Boston, Georgia
 — 

Franz Rowland has heard President Donald Trump endlessly brag about a roaring economy, but he’s seen few signs of it from his cotton farm here in southern Georgia.

“Trump says, you know, be patient. The farmer is going to be better than ever,” Rowland said, standing on the edge of his field about a dozen miles north of the Florida-Georgia state line. “Well, you better hurry up because we can’t stand this much longer.”

Rowland voted for Trump, hoping a stronger economy and better trade deals would follow. He doesn’t entirely blame the president’s policies for one of the worst years he’s ever had farming, but he said the administration hasn’t made it any easier to make a living.

“The economy may be doing better for some people, but on the farm it ain’t,” said Rowland, 72, speaking slowly and measuring his words. “With the prices like they are today, we’re not going to make any money, we just try to figure out a way to not lose so much.”

As the president begins his second year back in office, 58% of Americans call the first year of his second term a failure, a new CNN poll finds, with 55% saying Trump’s policies have worsened economic conditions in the country.

Similar sentiments came alive during conversations this week with voters in Georgia, a state critical to the fall’s midterm elections.

One of the most closely-watched Senate races in the nation, a wide-open contest for governor and competitive state legislative races are already shaping up here as a referendum on Trump’s agenda and how the state has fared over the past year.

“We’re still treading water,” said Florence Allen, the owner of a toy store in Macon who has ridden a yearlong roller coaster of the Trump administration’s trade policy. “My economy is not hot. My costs have not gone down on anything, not here at the store and not at home.”

Inside William’s Fun Smart Toys, which Allen has run for 20 years, the fallout from the president’s on-again, off-again tariffs are apparent on shelf after shelf. She has stopped carrying some items, swallowed the duties on other goods and passed along rising costs to customers when she feels like she has no other choice.

“Something that was $15 on my shelf suddenly went to $30,” Allen said. “One of my philosophies when I’m looking at new toys, if I wouldn’t buy it to give to my own grandchildren, I don’t need it here.”

When Trump visited Macon two days before Election Day in 2024, he pledged to “handle inflation” and “get energy costs so low.” A week earlier at another campaign stop in Georgia, he pledged: “I will cut your energy prices in half within 12 months — 50 percent, half, 5-0.”

Asked whether those promises had been fulfilled and her energy bill was now half, Allen said: “No, it’s gone up.”

High energy costs have emerged as one of the most contentious political issues in Georgia, largely attributed to a rising demand for electricity to power new data centers. Last fall, voters expressed their anger by knocking off two Republican members of the public service commission and electing two Democrats, the party’s first statewide wins to state-level offices since 2006.

Georgia has long stood as a leading barometer for Trump’s performance.

He won the state in 2016. He lost it in 2020, which placed it at the center of unfounded claims of widespread election fraud and an unprecedented attempt to overturn a presidential race.

He won it again in 2024, defeating Kamala Harris by 115,000 votes after falling 11,779 votes short to Joe Biden.

Along the way, Trump also flipped Baldwin County for the first time, ending a 20-year winning streak for Democratic presidential candidates in the central Georgia county about 100 miles southeast of downtown Atlanta.

“He gets an A+ from me,” said Janice Westmoreland, a retiree and longtime Republican activist, adding that she feels more secure with Trump in office. “He’s working hard. He has a plan and he’s implementing that plan.”

She embodied a sustained sense of excitement reflected in interviews with several loyal Trump supporters in downtown Milledgeville.

“I think he’s doing great,” said Tony Agee, who works as a grading contractor. “I’m tired of the United States getting pushed around.”

Elinor Carrick, a military veteran, said she believes Trump has restored stability to the White House and law and order to American cities. Asked about his handling of the economy, she said: “Looking at where my 401k is, I’m going to give him an A. It’s done pretty well.”

Carrick said she gave Trump credit for his policies at home and abroad, but added that she was closely watching the foreign policy of his second term.

“I don’t want us to be the world’s police force, however, I do want us to take care of our own and I think by what they did in Venezuela was a very good step,” Carrick said. “I do not want any long drawn-out entanglements, but at the same time I recognize that there are times you have to go on offense. You can’t always play defense because it does nothing but weaken you.”

For all of the many challenges facing Trump as he enters his second year back in power, the ability to keep his winning coalition together will be at the center of the fight for control of Congress as voters give their verdict on the actions of the first half of his second term.

Sweeping cuts made across the federal government, including about one-third of the workforce at the Atlanta-based CDC, are expected to be at the heart of political arguments in the midterm elections as Democrats seek to make Republicans accountable.

“It just felt like someone came in and just knocked all the pins over and just left, without any consideration to what they were doing or what they were cutting,” said Vi Le, who lost her job in violence prevention. “Many of us have been working at CDC for decades through multiple administrations, Republican and Democrat, and it didn’t matter.”

She added: “I don’t think that voters voted for this.”

‘Somebody wasn’t looking out for us’

For 48 years, Rowland has worked his family’s farm in Thomas County, which sits on the state’s southern border with Florida. He grows cotton, oats and corn, hoping a diversified portfolio helps him weather a financial crisis that is looming over wide swaths of rural America.

“We’re going to try to plant the crops that’s going to allow us to lose less money,” Rowland said. “Not make money.”

From his home nearly 800 miles away from the nation’s capital, he has watched the Trump administration’s trade policy with bewilderment.

“I don’t know who dropped the ball in Washington, to allow these prices – this trade – to diminish like it has, but somebody dropped the ball,” Rowland said. “Somebody wasn’t looking out for us.”

He is among the farmers who will soon receive a payment from the government, part of an $11 billion Farmer Bridge Assistance Program, which is intended to help offset losses from 2025 and projected losses for this year. He’s grateful for the assistance, but he echoes the sentiment of many farmers who call for fair trade, not more aid.

“I’m not against tariffs,” he said, “but right now, they’re not helping us.”

As he thinks about whether his two sons and grandsons will be able to make a living farming in the next generations ahead, he sounds as disappointed as he is dismayed.

“I thought by now, we would have some really good trade. I thought it would be better,” Rowland said. “I don’t see that light at the end of the tunnel and I’m worried about what’s going to happen out here.”

With schools closed for Election Day 2025, Mallerie Shirley’s 6-year-old son was riding his electric scooter to and from the local playground—about a third of a mile away—on the bike trail just outside their Atlanta house. On his way home, a woman in a car stopped him and, according to the boy, asked rapid-fire questions in an elevated voice: What’s your name? How old are you? Where do you live?

Shirley is a software engineer and mom of two—but she also holds a master’s in social work and was a caseworker for four years in Minnesota. She and her husband, Christopher, believe in childhood independence and had prepared their son for such an encounter. He did not tell the lady his name, age, or where he lived. He later told his parents he was afraid she would try to pull him into the car, so he sped home, but he believes she followed him.

Two days later, a caseworker from the Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) showed up at their house. Shirley wasn’t home, but the caseworker told her husband that a report had been made that their son was seen on his scooter unsupervised. She informed him that she would be going to both their son’s and their 3-year-old daughter’s schools to interview and photograph the children.

Shirley’s husband asked if there was a problem with letting their son go to the playground by himself. The caseworker said he was too young to go alone until he was “about 13.” When asked if that was the law, she said, “They will consider that inadequate supervision,” adding that “he is extremely vulnerable at that age.…Anything could happen.” Shirley’s husband again asked the caseworker what the law said, and she replied that she would follow up with her supervisor, who eventually answered that DFCS policy is that a child cannot be left unattended for any amount of time until they are 9 years old. 

In 2025, Georgia passed Senate Bill 110 (with help from my nonprofit, Let Grow), which revised the definition of neglect as putting a child in “real, significant, and imminent risk of harm that would be so obvious…that a legal custodian acting reasonably would not have exposed the child to the imminent risk of harm.” It further specifies that “independent activity…shall include, but shall not be limited to, playing indoors or outdoors alone or with other children, walking to or from school, running errands, or traveling to local commercial or recreational facilities.”

The law received bipartisan support following the case of Brittany Patterson, who was handcuffed in front of her family after her 10-year-old walked to town without telling her.

 “Because of SB110 we felt confident that [DFCS] would not find us to be negligent,” Shirley wrote in Let Grow’s Facebook Group, Raising Independent Kids. “We knew, and made clear to the social worker, that we ensured our six-year-old had the maturity, physical abilities, AND mental abilities to be safe,” wrote Shirley.

A few hours later, the caseworker returned. (Shirley would later learn that the caseworker had asked her son if his parents loved him and if they had drugs in the house.) During this visit, Shirley and her husband cited the law and asked how they were neglecting their child. According to Shirley, the caseworker couldn’t give a single example, but she did produce extremely unlikely hypothetical events, including that the boy could have been kidnapped or broken his leg.

The caseworker was not applying the new law’s standards, says Let Grow’s legal consultant Diane Redleaf. “DFCS has not taken sufficient steps to inform its staff” of what the new law allows kids to do—including traveling alone to playgrounds. 

On December 16, the caseworker called to say she was trying to close out the case and asked if Shirley and her husband were “still doing that free-range parenting or whatever they call it?” Shirley responded that her son had become too afraid to go out anymore after being reported.

A few weeks later, a letter arrived from DFCS saying the department had “substantiated” the finding of neglect “based on the preponderance of evidence.” Shirley requested to see their file and asked how to appeal the decision. She was told by the caseworker’s supervisor that much of the case file would be blacked out. When Shirley asked for the specific policy that says children under 9 cannot be unsupervised for any amount of time, the supervisor said, “That’s something you can Google.”

Young kids have been riding around their neighborhoods for eons. That this has become less common is not due to a sudden reversal in evolution or a giant spike in crime. Kids are the same as ever, and today’s murder rate is on track to be the lowest in 65 years. What has changed is the ability to see 6-year-olds as reasonably competent young humans.

The 1981 book, Your Six-Year-Old: Loving and Defiant, provided a checklist of milestones for neurotypical kids, including traveling “alone in the neighborhood (four to eight blocks) to store, school, playground, or to a friend’s home”.

David DeLugas, founder and executive director of ParentsUSA, a nonprofit that provides pro bono legal help to parents in situations like this, has taken on Shirley’s case. He has filed a request for an administrative review to contest the ruling, and ParentsUSA has created a donation page to help cover legal expenses for this and similar cases.

In the meantime, Shirley and her husband are living under a DFCS “Safety Plan,” which they were told they had to sign or DFCS would escalate its response and label them as noncompliant parents. The plan states that they must ensure both children are supervised at all times.

DFCS has an important job to do: Save children who are truly being neglected and abused. When she was a caseworker, Shirley said she saw “unthinkable things.”

A kid riding his scooter to the park was not one of them.

ATHENS — The deadline to declare for the 2026 NFL Draft has passed for Georgia, with four Bulldogs electing to forgo their final season of eligibility to head to the NFL.

Zachariah Branch, Monroe Freeling, Christen Miller and CJ Allen join the host of seniors such as Oscar Delp, Daylen Everette and Micah Morris moving on to the NFL after finishing off their college careers.

Georgia will have to replace all of those meaningful contributors. But with such a talented and deep roster, the Bulldogs will have plenty of options to replace those moving on.

Below is a way-too-early guess at who might replace all the pieces Georgia is losing from its 2025 roster.

Cash Jones: Nate Frazier

Jones filled an extremely important role as Georgia’s third-down running back. The Bulldogs could use his departure as a way to get Frazier more touches, provided he improves as a pass blocker.

Josh McCray: Dante Dowdell

Georgia replaces one bruising running back it acquired from the transfer portal with another, as the Bulldogs pulled Dowdell in from Kentucky. Dowdell scored 15 touchdowns in the past two seasons.

Zachariah Branch: Talyn Taylor

Sacovie White-Helton bears mentioning here, especially as he is likely to take on Branch’s punt-returning duties. But Georgia made it a point to get Taylor involved in the passing game when he was healthy this year. We expect that to happen in a much more meaningful way in 2026.

Colibe Young: Isiah Canion

Georgia went into the transfer portal to land Canion from Georgia Tech. Georgia did not have a player on the roster who best resembled Young from a physical standpoint.

Dillon Bell: Landon Roldan

Bell emerged as a gadget player for the Bulldogs, wearing a variety of hats for Georgia. We’ve already seen the coaching staff try and use Roldan in a similar way, such as the fake punt he ran against Ole Miss in the College Football Playoff.

Noah Thomas: CJ Wiley

Wiley could’ve been an answer as Georgia’s replacement for Young, especially given his experience in the Georgia system. It’s not implausible to see Wiley having a bigger season than Thomas did in 2025, which would be significant for Georgia’s 2026 offense.

Oscar Delp: Elyiss Williams

Lawson Luckie isn’t going anywhere, as he’s likely to be a top tight end option for Georgia next season. But Delp moving on creates an even bigger role for Williams. It will be interesting to see how the Bulldogs use him as a weapon in the offense, given his impressive size.

Monroe Freeling: Juan Gaston

Earnest Greene could very take over as the team’s starting left tackle, but Gaston now has a chance to step into a starting role. His upside is as immense as his physical frame. The big question will be how far Gaston goes in changing his body, as Georgia will want him to be in even better shape this coming year.

Micah Morris: Michael Uini

Georgia will have to replace its starting left guard. The Bulldogs could move Dontrell Glover from right guard, but don’t be surprised if one of Uini or Daniel Calhoun steps in for Morris. The battle between Uini and Calhoun will be one of the more contested position battles in 2026.

Christen Miller: Elijah Griffin

Jordan Hall will play a good amount on the interior, as will Xzavier McLeod. But if next year’s Georgia team is going to reach its ceiling, it needs Griffin to take a sizable step forward. Griffin impressed as a freshman, especially with what he was asked to do on the offensive line.

CJ Allen: Justin Williams

Raylen Wilson and Chris Cole played a ton this past season and it wouldn’t be a shock for them to have similar roles in 2026. Williams stands to really benefit from Allen’s departure. The Georgia coaching staff also loves what Williams brings to the table from a leadership standpoint.

Daylen Everette: Ellis Robinson

Robinson finished the season as a starter and you could make the case that Demello Jones should be the answer. But Everette never came off the field for Georgia this past season. That should be the case for Robinson, who could be the best cornerback in the country in 2026.

Jacorey Thomas: Zion Branch

How Kyron Jones recovers from his foot injury has this selection up in the air. You could also see ECU transfer Ja’Marley Riddle slide in for the veteran safety, but we think with a second season in Georgia’s system, Branch takes a step forward as a starting safety.

Brett Thorson: Drew Miller

This is an easy one, with Miller having already filled in for Thorson as he recovered from his ACL injury. Georgia did sign Wade Register as a part of the 2026 recruiting cycle, but Miller has real college experience that shouldn’t be overlooked.