Georgia
Georgia activists eager for federal bill protecting same-sex marriage to become law
ATLANTA – A invoice that might shield same-sex marriage is working its manner via Congress. The U.S. Senate handed the proposal with bipartisan help Tuesday evening, and it’s anticipated to change into legislation.
The Senate invoice would guarantee same-sex and interracial marriages are protected beneath federal legislation.
Jeff Graham, is the Govt Director of the LGBTQ advocacy group Georgia Equality. Graham mentioned the measure would supply stable ensures to guard marriage equality right here in Georgia.
“It’s an amazing invoice,” Graham mentioned. “We might not lose these federal protections. It does shore up that the federal authorities will all the time acknowledge same-sex and interracial marriages.”
The proposal gained final summer time when the U.S. Supreme Court docket overturned the federal proper to an abortion. Justice Clarence Thomas, in his concurring opinion, recommended same-sex marriage could possibly be beneath menace.
Timothy Holbrook, a legislation professor at Emory College, says the laws wouldn’t power states to permit same-sex {couples} to marry. However the invoice would require all states to acknowledge all marriages that had been authorized the place they had been carried out even when the excessive court docket had been to overturn the Obergefell v. Hodges choice, which grants marriage equality.
“If it’s signed into legislation, it does create protections for his or her marriages, present ones and future ones within the occasion the Supreme Court docket decides to overrule same-sex marriage equality,” Holbrook mentioned. “If a pair will get married in a state the place same-sex marriage is authorized, each state should acknowledge that marriage inside their very own territory.”
Rashaun Lemp, who raises a teenage son and a toddler daughter together with his husband Chris, is gratified the senate handed a invoice.
“It additionally offers us consolation that our union shall be acknowledged,” Kemp mentioned. “It offers is a way of safety and reduction.”
The invoice strikes onto the home, the place it’s anticipated to move. It could them go to President Joe Biden’s desk for his signature.
Georgia
Georgia man sentenced to death seeks clemency on grounds of intellectual disability
A Georgia man should not be executed because he is intellectually disabled and feels remorse for killing his former girlfriend three decades ago, his lawyers wrote in seeking clemency for him.
Willie James Pye, 59, is scheduled to be put to death Wednesday using the sedative pentobarbital in what would be the state’s first execution in more than four years. Pye was convicted of murder and other crimes in the November 1993 killing of Alicia Lynn Yarbrough.
A clemency hearing is set for Tuesday. In Georgia, those hearings are conducted in secret, with the result announced afterward.
CALIFORNIA DEFENDANT ON TRIAL FOR MURDER ALLEGEDLY STABS HIS ATTORNEY WITH PEN, CHARGES TOWARD PROSECUTOR
“Had defense counsel not abdicated his role, the jurors would have learned that Mr. Pye is intellectually disabled and has an IQ of 68,” Pye’s public defenders wrote in their clemency application.
“They also would have learned the challenges he faced from birth — profound poverty, neglect, constant violence and chaos in his family home — foreclosed the possibility of healthy development,” they wrote. “This is precisely the kind of evidence that supports a life sentence verdict.”
Pye’s lawyers also cited severe problems in the Spalding County justice system in the 1990s and said that Pye has been a positive influence on those around him while he’s been in prison.
Pye had been in an on-and-off romantic relationship with Yarbrough. At the time she was killed, Yarbrough was living with another man. Pye, Chester Adams and a 15-year-old boy had planned to rob that man and bought a handgun before heading to a party in Griffin, prosecutors have said.
The trio left the party around midnight and went to the house where Yarbrough lived, finding her alone with her baby. They forced their way into the house, stole a ring and necklace from Yarbrough and took her with them when they left, leaving the baby alone, prosecutors have said.
They drove to a motel, where they took turns raping Yarbrough and then left the motel with her in the teenager’s car, prosecutors have said. They turned onto a dirt road and Pye ordered Yarbrough out of the car, made her lie face down and shot her three times, according to court filings.
Yarbrough’s body was found a few hours after she was killed. Pye, Adams and the teenager were quickly arrested. Pye and Adams denied knowing anything about Yarbrough’s death, but the teenager confessed and implicated the other two.
The teenager reached a plea agreement with prosecutors and was the main witness at Pye’s trial. A jury in June 1996 found Pye guilty of murder, kidnapping, armed robbery, rape and burglary, and sentenced him to death.
Pye’s lawyers have argued in court filings that other statements the teen made are inconsistent with what he said at Pye’s trial. Those statements, as well as statements Pye made during trial, indicate that Yarbrough left the home willingly and went to the motel to trade sex for drugs, the lawyers said in court filings.
Pye’s lawyers also wrote in court filings that Pye was raised in extreme poverty in a home without indoor plumbing or access to sufficient food, shoes or clothing. His childhood was characterized by neglect and abuse by family members who abused alcohol, his lawyers wrote.
His lawyers also argued that Pye suffered from brain damage, potentially caused by fetal alcohol syndrome, that harmed his ability to plan and control his impulses. They also argue that he is intellectually disabled and is therefore ineligible for execution, citing the findings of several experts who evaluated him.
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Pye’s lawyers have long argued that he should be resentenced because his trial lawyer didn’t adequately prepare for the sentencing phase of his trial. A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Pye’s lawyers in April 2021. But the full federal appeals court overturned that ruling in October 2022.
Adams, now 55, pleaded guilty in April 1997 to charges of malice murder, kidnapping with bodily injury, armed robbery, rape and aggravated sodomy. He got five consecutive life prison sentences and remains behind bars.
Georgia’s last execution was in January 2020.
Georgia
Biden sees worrying signs in Georgia
President Biden is facing worrying signs in Georgia — the state he flipped blue for the first time in decades back in 2020 — including low primary turnout and a lack of big down-ballot races to energize his base.
Biden beat former President Trump by fewer than 12,000 votes in the Peach State last cycle, and polls suggest the former president now has the edge as the pair head toward a 2024 rematch.
Democrats acknowledge that Biden has work to do to mobilize voters, with the state poised to once again play a pivotal role in November.
“The bad news [for Democrats in Georgia is] an enthusiasm gap between Democratic voters and Republican voters,” said Atlanta-based Democratic strategist Fred Hicks. “The question for Democrats is not for whom you’re going to vote in November; it’s whether or not you’re going to vote.”
Biden trounced his long-shot challengers in Georgia’s Democratic primary last week, scoring more than 95 percent of the vote — but total turnout for the contest was just below 290,000 voters, according to the latest counts from Decision Desk HQ.
On the Republican side, Trump scored roughly 85 percent of the vote, and the race saw nearly double the opposing party’s turnout, with nearly 590,000 Georgians casting ballots in the GOP contest.
Though strategists note the primary electorate isn’t exactly indicative of how Georgians will vote in the general, turnout will be key in the state that Trump won in 2016 — and where, four years later, Biden narrowly won by one-quarter of 1 percent.
“It is a complete toss-up right now,” said Democratic strategist Abigail Collazo, who has done work in Georgia. “There’s nothing that can be taken for granted in a year like this one, particularly with the Black and minority voters that the Biden campaign will need to win.”
Last cycle saw record turnout in the Peach State, when Biden challenged then-incumbent Trump with the benefit of other major races down ballot that helped energize voters.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Georgia Democrats turned out in big numbers to oust Trump, but also to elect Democrat Jon Ossoff as the state’s first Jewish senator and Rev. Raphael Warnock (D) as the state’s first Black senator.
That year, Georgia notably combined its presidential preference primary and general primary into a June election, while this year, it’s back to separate dates.
“The question is: Can and how can Biden-Harris get the Democratic turnout to match 2020 without the historic nature of other races on the ballot?” Hicks said.
Biden’s reelection bid will have to energize the state’s significant Black population, which makes up roughly a third of the battleground state, while facing polls that show the incumbent struggling nationally with the demographic.
Amid a progressive push in several states to cast protest votes over the administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, roughly 6,000 Georgians left their ballots blank in the Democratic primary, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Biden will also have to handle persistent concerns about immigration after the recent death of Georgia student Laken Riley thrust the state into the center of an already raging partisan debate on the issue. A Venezuelan citizen was arrested and charged with murder in connection to Riley’s death, prompting many on the right to link the tragedy to Biden’s handling of the border.
“Laken Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal. That’s right,” Biden said during his State of the Union address earlier this month, after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) heckled him to mention the Georgia student. “But how many thousands of people being killed by legals? To her parents I say, my heart goes out to you, having lost children myself.”
A survey from Emerson College Polling and The Hill recently found Trump up 8 points over Biden on the issue of immigration in Georgia. And in a general election rematch, polling averages from Decision Desk HQ/The Hill showed Trump leading Biden by 5 points.
Biden would need to get “really aggressive on the border” to come closer to a win in the state, said Georgia-based Republican strategist Jay Williams.
But there are “rays of hope” for both White House hopefuls, said Ben Taylor, a professor of political science at Kennesaw State University in Georgia.
“Today, if I were operating either of these campaigns, I would probably rather be in the Trump campaign’s position, I think. But it’s very tenuous,” Taylor said.
Trump faces his own hurdles in the state, where he’s been criminally indicted over alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 results in the state. A judge last week notably dropped some charges related to Trump’s infamous call asking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to “find” enough votes to overturn Biden’s win, but Trump still faces 10 counts in the case.
“This is going to be a high-stakes election where a few votes really matter. And problematically, if Trump does the same old thing and he loses, I mean, I don’t know what’s gonna happen,” said Audrey Haynes, a professor of political science at the University of Georgia.
“Will it be the nail in the coffin? … Or will it be: ‘It’s rigged’ again, and then ‘we’re going to throw the whole country into chaos’ again?” Haynes said.
And though Trump easily extended his string of early wins in the GOP primary, his former opponent Nikki Haley brought in around 13 percent support. That’s notable because some of the roughly 77,000 ballots in her column likely came in after Haley dropped out of the running on March 6, making those votes a possible protest against Trump.
In a state that Biden won last cycle by just 12,000 votes, the tens of thousands of Haley voters present an opportunity for Biden’s reelection bid to persuade disillusioned Republicans to join the Democratic camp.
But even if those voters aren’t drawn across the aisle, they could still pose a problem for Trump by sitting out, said Taylor.
“The closer the Biden folks can keep Georgia, the more competitive Georgia is in the long term, I think the better it is for the Biden campaign, not just for the Electoral College votes, but particularly, from a strategic perspective, of making the Trump campaign spend money that they, by the end, may not have,” Taylor said.
Mark Rountree, a Republican pollster based in Georgia, said that the Haley votes would be “very problematic” for Trump if the general election were held today, but countered that another six months of advertising and messaging could likely pull many of those back into the former president’s column.
With respective wins in Georgia, Washington and Mississippi last week, Biden and Trump have both locked up the delegates they need to win their party nominations, teeing up a rematch in November that observers say could come down to the wire. The pair held dueling campaign events in the Peach State last week.
“This is a competitive place, and Republicans cannot win without Georgia,” said Keron Blair, the chief organizing and field officer of the progressive New Georgia Project Action Fund.
“And Democrats would be remiss if they abandoned the investment in Georgia and abandoned the work of forcing a meaningful competition for the electoral votes that are up for grabs in Georgia,” Blair said.
Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Georgia
Georgia grapples with nation's second worst nursing shortage
ATLANTA – A nationwide nursing shortage is hitting Georgia especially hard. Right now, there just aren’t enough nurses to go around. The state is expected to have the second-worst shortage in the nation over the next decade. Experts say low pay and high stress are causing more nurses to leave Georgia, even abandon the field altogether.
Andrea Castellano, a student at Emory University’s nursing school, has heard the stories of long hours and tough conditions for nurses, especially during the pandemic. “Just nurses realizing there wasn’t a safe environment for them to continue their profession,” Castellano said. “Although there isn’t maybe the best support, there is always going to be a need for nurses in hospitals.”
Georgia will need more students like Castellano who want to become nurses to make up for a big shortfall. “I realize that this is where I want to dedicate my time,” Castellano said.
According to the federal Health Resources Service Administration, Georgia has more than 20% fewer registered nurses than it needs.
That is “pretty acute,” said Chelsea Hagopian, an Assistant Clinical Professor at Emory School of Nursing and Executive Director of the Georgia Nursing Workforce Center. “We’re certainly feeling it.”
Many nurses complain of low pay. “When looking at the difference between employed versus licensed RN’s when compared to other states, we do see a difference,” Hagopian said.
Others point to burnout from the pandemic, some calling it quits. “We saw accelerated retirement,” Hagopian said. “We saw nurses in their early career leaving the profession altogether.”
The nursing shortage could grow far worse if that trend doesn’t improve. “We need to consider the context of faculty shortage. Nursing schools need faculty to be able to educate the next generation of nurses,” Hagopian said.
Hagopian says the health care system needs to look at launching nurse-residency programs, improve work conditions and make nurses feel more valued overall.
The challenges don’t discourage Castellano. “Regardless of the shortage I still really want to consider this pathway,” she said.
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