Shortly after Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) admitted in a Friday court filing that she had a personal relationship with the lawyer she appointed to lead the investigation into former president Donald Trump — and had taken vacations with him — the judge overseeing the case dashed off an email to the defense attorney who had first accused Willis of misconduct.
Georgia
What happens next in Trump’s Georgia election interference case?
In her filing, Willis asked Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee to cancel an evidentiary hearing on the accusations, saying that the relationship did not create a conflict of interest, did not financially benefit her and should not be used by those she says criminally conspired to try to overturn the 2020 election to evade justice.
McAfee quickly turned to Ashleigh Merchant, who represents Trump co-defendant Mike Roman, and through his staff emailed her this request, Merchant told The Washington Post: File a response explaining why I should still hold that hearing.
Merchant did so late Friday, claiming to have evidence to dispute some of Willis’s assertions. She accused the prosecutors of trying to “escape accountability” in a case where “freedom and lives are at stake.”
Now, it falls to McAfee to decide what comes next. Canceling the hearing could allow the case to proceed, but it would also prompt outrage from Trump, who has used all four criminal cases against him as a rallying cry as he marches toward the Republican nomination for president. Moving ahead guarantees more salacious headlines about Willis’s personal life and finances that could undermine the public’s — and a future jury’s — faith in her judgment and the merits of the case.
More important, holding the hearing leaves open the possibility that McAfee does what Merchant asked him to do when she first raised the allegations last month: remove Willis and her entire office from the case, which would almost certainly delay and potentially even scuttle the prosecution.
McAfee’s office declined to comment on the case.
Roman, Trump and another defendant in the sprawling election interference case have asked McAfee to disqualify Willis and her office from pursuing this case and drop the charges against them. Roman alleged in a court filing nearly a month ago that Willis financially benefited from appointing a lover, Nathan Wade, as the special prosecutor and then allowing him to pay for “lavish” vacations. The district attorney’s office has paid Wade’s law firm more than $650,000 since his appointment in November 2021.
Wade, in a sworn affidavit, said that the personal relationship did not start until 2022, once the investigation against Trump was already underway, and that the two split expenses when traveling together. The filing did not say whether the relationship is ongoing.
Even if McAfee decides to cancel the hearing or not take action, the scandal is unlikely to go away.
A Georgia Senate committee with subpoena power is investigating the allegations, and a member of the Fulton County governing board has suggested he might also launch an investigation. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has referred the matter to the state ethics commission for potential sanctions and has also requested that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp or Attorney General Chris Carr, both Republicans, launch a criminal investigation. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who has been critical of Willis and the Georgia case against Trump, subpoenaed the district attorney Friday while questioning her use of federal funds.
Even the case’s defenders concede that Willis has damaged her credibility.
“Even those of us who understand that Georgia law does not require disqualification are acutely sensitive to the fact that this matter is not being tried merely in the court of law,” said Norm Eisen, who served as special counsel to the House of Representatives’ first impeachment of Trump. “It’s also being tried in the court of public opinion.”
Merchant told The Post she was already planning a response to Willis’s filing when McAfee’s request landed Friday afternoon. She quickly filed an initial reply, claiming she will call witnesses who will testify that Wade and Willis were indeed romantically involved before he was appointed to the case. A disputed fact could be reason enough to proceed with the hearing.
Roman gave formal notice through Merchant on Wednesday that he had subpoenaed a dozen witnesses, including Willis and Wade and several of their associates, to testify at the Feb. 15 hearing. Merchant has also subpoenaed documents from Atlanta-area travel agencies and financial records tied to Wade and his law firm. Willis’s Friday motion noted that she plans to file a motion to quash the witness subpoenas — a move that could require its own evidentiary hearing.
Willis’s office declined to comment on the case, but in her filing, Willis called the accusations “meritless,” “distasteful” and “malicious.” She said that they are irrelevant to the case and that there is no basis in Georgia law for removing her from the prosecution or dismissing the charges. She argued that defendants’ plans to delve into prosecutors’ personal lives amount to a “ticket to the circus” designed to “garner more breathless headlines” rather than settling any matter of law.
There is also the matter of Willis’s highly publicized speech at a historically Black church in Atlanta shortly after the allegations became public. Framed as a talk with God to commemorate the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday, Willis questioned why Wade was targeted and not the two other private attorneys appointed as special prosecutors in the case, who are White. Willis and Wade are Black. She did not mention Roman or any other defendants by name, and she neither confirmed nor denied any of the specific accusations.
Trump’s defense lawyers, led by Steve Sadow, seized on the speech in their own motion to disqualify Willis and dismiss the case, accusing her of making racially charged accusations against the defendants that could prejudice a future jury. They wrote that Willis’s remarks amount to a violation of Georgia’s rules of professional conduct, which state that the prosecutor in a criminal case shall “refrain from making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused.” They noted that the maximum penalty for such a violation is disbarment.
Willis wrote in her response Friday that her remarks “neither reference this case nor these defendants,” so to cite that as a basis for disqualification “is transparently meritless.”
“Much like the motion advanced by Defendant Roman, Defendant Trump’s motion appears designed to generate media attention rather than accomplish some form of legitimate legal practice,” Willis wrote. “It should be dismissed out of hand.”
McAfee will decide the future of the Trump case
It will fall to McAfee, who has not yet set a trial date, to decide what to do. There is precedent to allow the case to continue, but some argue there is also precedent to do the opposite — a previous ruling that blocked Willis and her team from investigating Burt Jones, a 2020 Trump elector who is now Georgia’s lieutenant governor.
The July 2022 ruling came from Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special purpose grand jury that spent months investigating the efforts by Trump and his allies to try to overturn Joe Biden’s win in Georgia.
Jones, then a state senator, was one of the 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate falsely claiming that Trump had won the election in Georgia. He was informed by the district attorney’s office in 2022 that he was a “target” in the investigation.
Jones asked McBurney to disqualify Willis, arguing that she had a conflict of interest because she hosted a fundraiser for Jones’s eventual Democratic opponent for lieutenant governor, Charlie Bailey. Bailey, a former prosecutor, previously worked with Willis and is married to her spokeswoman, Pallavi Bailey.
In a hearing on the issue, McBurney criticized Willis, describing her decision to host a fundraiser for a likely opponent of a target in an investigation as a “what are you thinking moment” and “problematic” to efforts to “maintain confidence that this investigation is pursuing facts in a nonpartisan sense no matter who the district attorney is.”
“The optics are horrific,” McBurney said.
Anna Cross, one of the three special prosecutors on the election case, unsuccessfully sought to change McBurney’s mind, arguing that Jones’s attorney had not proved that Willis’s behavior had legally compromised the case or was an actual conflict — an assertion similar to the arguments raised in Willis’s Friday response to the latest efforts to disqualify her from the case.
“Appearance of a conflict isn’t enough,” Cross told McBurney. “Under Georgia law, the disqualification of a prosecuting attorney or entity requires an actual conflict. Not speculative, not conjecture, an actual personal interest. … While optics in this case may be more front and center than in some others, optics doesn’t carry the day. It’s an actual conflict.”
McBurney ultimately disagreed. In his ruling he acknowledged that Willis had done nothing illegal and that elected district attorneys may engage in political activity. But he also concluded that Willis had compromised public trust in the investigation.
“An investigation of this significance, garnering the public attention it necessarily does and touching so many political nerves in our society, cannot be burdened by legitimate doubts about the District Attorney’s motives,” McBurney wrote. “The District Attorney does not have to be apolitical, but her investigations do.”
Three of the 16 Republican electors were charged alongside Trump in August.
Three people close to the district attorney’s office, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the ruling, criticized McBurney’s decision, saying he had legally overstepped. But some wonder now if McBurney’s caution in seeking to protect the public trust in the case could provide an avenue for his colleague, McAfee, to take the same route — finding that Willis and Wade may not have done anything legally wrong but that their actions have undermined public trust in the case.
At least one Trump co-defendant is pointing to McBurney’s decision on Jones as precedent. Attorneys for Bob Cheeley, an Atlanta-area attorney facing multiple charges in the alleged election scheme, joined Roman’s motion last month and cited McBurney’s ruling that the mere “appearance” of conflict disqualified Willis from investigating Jones and that the “appearance of impropriety” now “requires disqualification.”
“The fact that the District Attorney has engaged in multiple, ongoing conflicts of a political and financial nature evidences a disregard of her oath to impartially and fairly exercise the enormous power vested in her office,” Christopher Anulewicz and Richard Rice, Cheeley’s attorneys, wrote.
In her Friday response, Willis argued that McBurney’s ruling on Jones should not be “binding precedent.”
“The elevated standard applied in that analysis was, respectfully, inconsistent with the actual legal standard Georgia appellate courts have applied for decades” and “sheds no light” on the current motions in the case, Willis wrote.
If Willis and her office were to be removed from the Trump case, the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, a state agency that advises local prosecutors, would be asked to find another prosecutor to take on the case. The agency has already been looking for a district attorney to take on the investigation into Jones. Peter Skandalakis, the group’s executive director, said he still has not found a prosecutor to take the Jones case — a fact that does not bode well for the Trump case should it meet the same fate.
Willis under investigation
If McAfee allows the case to continue — and Willis’s team to stay on it — her troubles wouldn’t be over. The state Senate committee that will investigate the controversy, composed of six Republicans and three Democrats, has subpoena power that it is expected to use to examine Willis’s and Wade’s financial records. The goal, the committee’s boosters said, is to examine whether Willis misused taxpayer funds by appointing Wade while having a personal relationship with him.
The committee does not have the power to remove Willis, but it could generate uncomfortable headlines for her. And it is expected to issue recommendations that could lead to new laws affecting her position.
Georgia lawmakers also created a commission last year to police — and remove — prosecutors for misconduct, and some are calling on the commission to remove Willis. The panel is in limbo, however, because the enabling law required its rules to be approved by the Georgia Supreme Court. The court declined to approve the rules, citing separation of powers. The legislature is expected to rework the law and get the commission on its way sometime this year, after which Willis is expected to be one of its first targets.
The state ethics commission — formally known as the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission — will be responsible for weighing Greene’s ethics complaint, in which she accuses Wade of failing to file required paperwork as a government vendor. Potential penalties for such violations include fines but not removal from office.
It’s not clear what will come of Greene’s demands for a criminal investigation. Spokespeople for Kemp and Carr did not respond to requests for comment. Both resisted demands from Trump and his allies to reverse the 2020 election results, and they could be called as witnesses at trial.
Bailey reported from Atlanta.
Georgia
A Georgia Wildlife Haven Forged by Fire and Peat Nears UNESCO Recognition – Inside Climate News
FOLKSTON, Ga.—The world’s smallest heron hops from blade to blade in a patch of tall grass, testing its footing above the dark water as it searches for an evening meal.
“This was already worth the trip out today,” Joshua Howard said earlier this month from a gray flat-bottomed tour boat just a few yards away. The tiny creatures, called Least Bitterns, are secretive birds, not easy to spot.
With one quick movement of its neck, which seems to take up most of its body, the tiny heron plunges into the water and comes up with a fish. Howard and his guide continue down the swamp between walls of Spanish moss-adorned cypress trees and alligators, hoping to find more of the birds and wildlife that call the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge home.
By July, the vast swamp Howard has visited since childhood and still tries to reach at least once a week could be internationally recognized as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site.
The Okefenokee, on the Florida border in southeast Georgia, hosts the largest blackwater swamp in North America, a slow-moving wilderness roughly five times the size of Atlanta. It began forming hundreds of thousands of years ago, as the Atlantic Ocean retreated and left behind Trail Ridge, a long, low fossilized beach dune, and a shallow depression that trapped water between the ridge and higher uplands to the west.
The Okefenokee is a blackwater swamp, meaning its dark waters are stained by tannins released from decaying vegetation and cypress trees. Beneath the dense canopy, the water takes on the color of steeped tea, reflecting cypress trunks and drifting lily pads like dark glass.
The refuge was established in 1937 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, following a series of visits from Cornell biologist Francis Harper. Harper had come to admire both the swamp’s landscape and its people, but it was his wife—who had once tutored Roosevelt’s children—who ultimately helped push the president toward protecting the land.
The refuge’s latest conservation effort now depends partly on another layer of federal and international politics. The Okefenokee’s UNESCO nomination comes amid renewed uncertainty over the United States’ relationship with the organization.
Earlier this year, President Donald Trump moved to again withdraw the United States from UNESCO, though the withdrawal would not take effect until December—months after a decision on the Okefenokee nomination is expected. The United States also remains part of the World Heritage Convention, the international agreement governing World Heritage Sites.
In addition, World Heritage designations have continued in the United States during previous periods when the country was formally withdrawn from UNESCO, including under both Trump and President Ronald Reagan. The Okefenokee effort has also received support from prominent Republicans, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, who served as Trump’s agriculture secretary.
Still, regardless of shifting politics around UNESCO, the landscape at the center of the nomination remains largely unchanged.
Today, the Okefenokee stands as a protected wilderness of blackwater channels, peat and dense wetland forests, supporting a rich array of wildlife and plant life.
A great blue heron and a barred owl perch among Spanish moss in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. Credit: Ryan Krugman/Inside Climate News
As Howard floated through the swamp at the refuge’s eastern entrance for about an hour and a half, he saw nearly 200 alligators, owl fledglings, hawks, herons and more. What he somewhat incredulously called an “above average” number of encounters was partly driven by drought conditions that pushed animals toward remaining water, though abundant wildlife sightings are far from unusual.
Across the swamp, an estimated 15,000 alligators inhabit the blackwater alongside almost 250 bird and 64 reptile species. Black bears and bobcats move through the uplands, and there are rumors of Florida panthers wandering the refuge. It is also a stronghold for endangered species, including red-cockaded woodpeckers, wood storks and eastern indigo snakes.
To fully experience the Okefenokee, visitors often paddle deep into the backcountry by canoe or kayak, traveling through areas inaccessible to motorboats. Along the way, they pass open prairies filled with lilies, wildflowers and carnivorous plants, including the Okefenokee giant pitcher plant, which can grow more than four feet tall and traps insects inside its tubular leaves.
Some visitors spend nights on raised wooden platforms scattered throughout the swamp, with multi-day trips carrying paddlers far into the blackwater wilderness. Yet even with those routes, only about 5 percent of the Okefenokee is currently accessible to humans.
Despite being one of the best-preserved wetlands in North America, and especially on the eastern seaboard, the Okefenokee has repeatedly faced pressure from industry and development. Before it became a wildlife refuge and federally designated wilderness area nearly a century ago, logging companies cut through vast cypress forests, disrupting habitats and the natural systems that shaped the swamp.
Later, the Suwanee Canal Company attempted to drain the Okefenokee to clear the way for development. The company planned to carve a canal through Trail Ridge and connect the swamp to the Suwannee River, but water repeatedly flowed back into the basin. The project ultimately collapsed, driving the company into bankruptcy before the canal could be completed.
More recently, the Okefenokee has faced renewed pressure from a high-profile mining dispute near Trail Ridge and continued development across the Florida border. Yet the swamp’s beauty and biodiversity continue to draw roughly 800,000 visitors each year—and now the attention of UNESCO.
The Okefenokee was first placed on the United States’ tentative UNESCO World Heritage list in 1981, but the nomination stalled for decades. In 2023, the Department of the Interior authorized work on a formal nomination, a push driven in large part by advocates including Kim Bednarek, executive director of Okefenokee Swamp Park.
The nonprofit, which runs tours and educational programs near and in the refuge, helped lead the campaign and raise money for the years-long nomination process. To qualify, researchers and advocates had to demonstrate the swamp’s “outstanding universal value,” the central standard for World Heritage designation.
The nomination was formally submitted in January 2025. Later that year, scientists with the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which advises UNESCO on natural sites, visited the swamp as part of the evaluation process. Advocates are now awaiting a recommendation from the organization ahead of a final decision expected this July at the UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting in Busan, South Korea.
UNESCO’s standard of “outstanding universal value” is reserved for places considered significant not just to one country, but to humanity. Advocates and scientists argue the Okefenokee qualifies because of its biodiversity and the remarkable condition of its peatlands, which have remained largely intact for thousands of years and are a natural carbon sink.
Peatlands form when organic material builds up faster than it decomposes. In the Okefenokee, still blackwater, low oxygen levels and acidic conditions—created largely by tannins from cypress trees—slow decay enough for layers of plant matter to accumulate over thousands of years.
“We do not have a similar peatland in the world in the subtropics,” said Hans Joosten, one of the world’s leading peatland experts. According to Joosten, the swamp’s location—sandwiched between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic—provides the humidity and rainfall needed to sustain this rare subtropical peatland.
An inch of peat can take more than 50 years to form. In parts of the Okefenokee, those layers reach more than 15 feet deep, storing an estimated 124 million tons of carbon and forming one of North America’s most significant peat systems.
Many of the estimated 15,000 Alligators in the Okefenokee are tagged as part of research initiatives. Credit: Ryan Krugman
The swamp’s Muscogee Creek name, often translated as “land of the trembling earth,” reflects what lies beneath its surface. Deep peat can shift, swell and occasionally rise toward the top, where visitors may see methane bubbles break through the blackwater or floating mats of peat drifting at the surface. Those peat mats can become platforms for new plant growth, reshaping the swamp as they move and settle.
The biodiversity hotspot is supported by another cycle, one much faster than peat formation. The swamp is frequently reshaped and renewed through natural wildfires. The fires clear dense vegetation and invasive species, return nutrients to the soil, and maintain the open conditions needed for fire-dependent ecosystems like the longleaf pine, one of the most endangered forest types in North America.
“To be put on the same list as places like the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone would just be amazing,” Howard said with a Southern drawl as he floated along the remnants of the Suwannee Canal.
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Howard, tall and broad with silvering hair and an easy smile, had arrived at the swamp after a long day working as a school administrator in Charlton County. “You want to know why I think this place deserves to be on that list?” he asked. “Because when I got here this evening, I was stressed and now I am not.”
Howard has been coming to the swamp for almost 50 years and has spent the last seven serving as president of Friends of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, a nonprofit that helps raise money for its preservation. While the group is not directly involved in the UNESCO bid, Howard said its members strongly support the designation.
If approved in July, the designation would make the Okefenokee Georgia’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site and the first national wildlife refuge in the country to receive the status.
For Bednarek, the recognition would do more than honor the swamp’s ecology. It could fundamentally change how the Okefenokee is seen internationally. National wildlife refuges typically operate with far less tourism, funding and global visibility than national parks.
“They have this iconic brand that refuges don’t,” Bednarek said. UNESCO World Heritage status, she said, functions differently. “It’s a global brand that people travel far and wide to see.”
For now, though, the Okefenokee remains what it has long been: a slow-moving wilderness of blackwater, peat and cypress.
As dusk settled over the swamp, Howard’s guide cut the boat motor and the sounds of insects and distant birds filled the blackwater again. Methane bubbles continued rising quietly to the surface, signs of the trembling earth beneath the water.
In July, delegates in South Korea will decide whether the Okefenokee receives World Heritage status. But the swamp itself will keep moving at its own pace.
About This Story
Perhaps you noticed: This story, like all the news we publish, is free to read. That’s because Inside Climate News is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We do not charge a subscription fee, lock our news behind a paywall, or clutter our website with ads. We make our news on climate and the environment freely available to you and anyone who wants it.
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Two of us launched ICN in 2007. Six years later we earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, and now we run the oldest and largest dedicated climate newsroom in the nation. We tell the story in all its complexity. We hold polluters accountable. We expose environmental injustice. We debunk misinformation. We scrutinize solutions and inspire action.
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Ryan Krugman is a recent graduate of Columbia University’s Climate School focusing on climate change reporting and communications. He also holds a Bachelor’s degree from St. Lawrence University where he studied Environmental Science and Sociology. As a former Inside Climate News fellow, he is now reporting on climate and environmental issues in New England and Georgia.
Live updates from Athens, Georgia as the Bulldogs take on Liberty in game two of the Athens Regional.
The Georgia Bulldogs are back in action this afternoon as they are set to take on the Liberty Flames for game two of the Athens regional. The Dawgs are coming off a dominant victory over Long Island =, in a game that concluded earlier this morning following a rain delay.
With a win, the Bulldogs will advance to face the winner of a matchup between Liberty and the victor of Boston College and Long Island. First pitch for that game is scheduled to take place this Sunday at 5 p.m. As action continues in Athens, stay tuned with Bulldogs on SI for more updates from today’s game.
Georgia Bulldogs vs Liberty Flames Live Updates:
Editor’s Note**: This article will be updated periodically as action continues throughout today’s game
Top of the First (UGA at Bat)
- Tre Phelps singles to left center field for his first hit of the afternoon.
- Daniel Jackson homers to right center field. Georgia leads 2-0.
- Rylan Lujo flies out to right field.
- Brennan Hudson is walked on a 3-1 count.
- Kenny Ishikawa flies out to right field.
- Ryan Wynn grounds out to second base to retire the side. Georgia leads 2-0.
Bottom of the First (Liberty at Bat)
- Tanner Marsh singles to the pitcher.
- Riley DeCandido strikes out swinging.
- Tanner Marsh steals second to put a runner in scoring position.
- Jordan Jaffe singles to right center field. Tanner Marsh scores. Georgia leads 2-1.
- Jaxon Sorenson is walked on a full count. Jaffe advances to second.
- Nick Barone reaches first on a fielder’s choice. Sorenson is tagged out at second. Jaffe advances to third and scores on a throwing error. Game is tied 2-2.
- Nick Barone is tagged out trying to steal second to retire the side. Game is tied 2-2.
Top of the Second (UGA at Bat)
- Jack Arcamone flies out to right field.
- Kolby Branch is walked on a full count.
- Ryan Black fouled out to the catcher.
- Tre Phelps is walked on a full count. Branch advances to second.
- Daniel Jackson is walked. Tre Phelps advances to second. Kolby Branch advances.
- Rylan Lujo grounds out to third to retire the side. Game is tied 2-2.
Bottom of the Second (Liberty at Bat)
- Easton Swofford grounds out to shortstop.
- Landon Scilley is walked on a 3-1 count.
- Kyle Hvidsten is walked on a 3-0 count. Scilley advances to second.
- Josh Campos lines out to right field.
- Tanner Marsh strikes out swinging to retire the side. Game is tied 2-2.
Top of the Third (UGA at Bat)
- Brennan Hudson flies out to right field.
- Kenny Ishikawa homers to right field. Georgia leads 3-2.
- Ryan Wynn homers to center field. Georgia leads 4-2.
- Nick Arcamone singles to right field.
- Kolby Branch pops up to shortstop.
- Ryan Black flies out to right field.
Bottom of the Third (Liberty at Bat)
- Riley DeCandido flies out to left field
- Jordan Jaffe grounds out to the pitcher.
- Jaxon Sorenson flies out to center field to retire the side. Georgia leads 4-2.
Top of the Fourth (UGA at Bat)
- Tre Phelps grounds out to shortstop.
- Daniel Jackson strikes out swinging on a full count.
- Rylan Lujo singles to left field.
- Brennan Hudson singles through the right side. Lujo advances to second.
- Kenny Ishikawa is walked on a full count. Hudson advances to second, Lujo advances to third.
- Ryan Wynn reaches first on a fielder’s choice. Ishikawa is tagged out at second to retire the side. Georgia leads 4-2.
Bottom of the Fourth (Liberty at Bat)
- Nick Barone grounds out to shortstop.
- Easton Swofford strikes out swinging.
- Landon Scilley grounds out to shortstop to retire the side. Georgia leads 4-2.
Top of the Fifth (UGA at Bat)
- Nick Arcamone strikes out swinging.
- Kolby Branch strikes out looking on a 1-2 count.
- Ryan Black singles to first base.
- Tre Phelps grounds out to third base to retire the side. Georgia leads 4-2.
Bottom of the Fifth (Liberty at Bat)
Top of the Sixth (UGA at Bat)
Bottom of the Sixth (Liberty at Bat)
Top of the Seventh (UGA at Bat)
Bottom of the Seventh (Liberty at Bat)
Top of the Eighth (UGA at Bat)
Bottom of the Eighth (Liberty at Bat)
Top of the Ninth (UGA at Bat)
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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Storm activity is expected to fire up around midday, starting inland from the Gulf sea breeze. From there, storms will track eastward at 20-25 mph, and that faster movement is actually good news for flooding concerns.
Some minor, temporary flooding is possible through tonight, especially in low-lying areas and spots that typically flood during heavy rain events.
The best chances for stronger storms and heavier rainfall will be north and near I-10 during the afternoon and evening hours.
The Weather Prediction Center has placed roughly the northern two-thirds of the area under a marginal risk of excessive rainfall.
What to expect through the night
Rain chances will stay elevated into the evening but should taper off after midnight. However, inland Northeast Florida could see a late round of showers or storms develop due to enhanced west coast sea breeze.
Gusty winds and frequent lightning can’t be ruled out. Always have your indoor plan ready to go for shelter access.
Cooler temperatures, patchy fog round out the forecast
High temperatures will run below average, topping out in the mid-to-upper 80s. Overnight lows will range from the upper 60s to near 70 degrees across inland Southeast Georgia, with mid-70s expected closer to the Atlantic coast.
Patchy fog is expected early this morning and again Sunday morning. Brief periods of dense fog are possible, so drivers should use caution on the roads during those early morning hours.
Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.
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