Whew; a really news-y Friday. The Georgia Senate cranked out a batch of 'red meat' for election denialists, but it should be noted that, the day before, a much ballyhooed bill to define antisemitism in a statutory sense passed with bipartisan support. Most of the nays were Democrats, and if I'm being honest, I can understand their rationale. I'll explain.

Back to the red meat: first a bill to investigate Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and ban ranked choice voting; then Sen. Greg Dolezal's bill to form an investigative committee - with subpoena power - to investigate Fulton D.A. Fani Willis passed along party lines. It remains to be seen what - if anything - comes of it substantively when it's hard to find anything in written law that substantiates assertions her alleged personal decisions has some negative bearing on any of the defendants' prospects, but .. okay.

Seeing how some football fans reacted to the Atlanta Falcons' hiring their first black head coach sort of bowties with recent remarks TPUSA head honcho Charlie Kirk made about black airline pilots. Not that black pilots and Raheem Morris need defending, but ...

Yikes. Donald Trump was ordered to shell out $83.3 million for running his gelatinous, purse-lipped mouth to defame the woman he's been found guilty of sexually assaulting. Even Fox News had a guest imploring the moron to just. shut. up. about her.

The vultures are circling around Fani Willis - and to hear columnist Jay Bookman put it - maybe she brought it on herself. Then again, maybe there's a way out of this that protects the case against Donald Trump. There'll be plenty more to discuss about all this tomorrow with so many late headlines dropping today.

Locally, some good news after Decatur city schools announced plans to serve kids behind on their lunch tabs cheese sandwiches and milk - the cafeteria version of the "scarlet letter." Well, a corporate donor wiped out the lunch debt of $88,000 for the entire system, and a local entrepreneur fundraised nearly enough to have done that, as well.

In Washington, Republicans aren't even hiding the fact that the "border crisis" they've been pearl-clutching about all this time isn't important enough to deal with now - or at least not more important than saving it for Trump to tackle, should he win. The problem is, THEY tied action on the border to Israel and Ukraine aid - and Ukrainians need it badly; so no what? Hear what Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney and Ted Cruz had to say - with my advance apologies for the nausea that'll induce.

I caught up with 'Jerica Richardson for Congress' senior advisor Andrew Heaton to get an idea how (if at all) adversarial the race for the Democratic nomination for the 6th Congressional district will be. Why'd Richardson decide to stay in once the maps were settled and Rep. Lucy McBath opted to run for the seat, herself? Will there be forums or debates? How'd the state Democratic Party react to Jerica staying in?

Yesterday I sort of unloaded on y'all, exasperated as I (and my neighbors in Old Fourth Ward) have been about the unhoused. Perhaps its just the bitter cold of late bringing homelessness to the forefront. In any event, it just so happens advocates for the unhoused, along with city leaders, have been out getting a census of sorts and advancing a strategy already in action. Hear their press conference from this morning.

Then, with former President Donald Trump securing his second batch of GOP delegates over he last of this challengers, President Joe Biden accepted the endorsement of the United Auto Workers (UAW), which makes a lot of sense given his being he first-ever U.S. President to join a picket line. Hear his acceptance-and-stunp speech.

America's unhoused population is disdained even by those on the left inconvenienced by them. There; I said it. The problem is, like most of this country's major issues, the right chooses demonizing and finger-pointing, leaving the left with few options for political collaboration. This hit close to home for me, literally, so I felt like venting a little.

Atlanta's pro-public training facility faction tried to slip one by city council last night, and they almost succeeded. Almost.

I'm joined today by Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, immigrant advocate and owner/CEO of Texas-based Lincoln-Goldfinch Law, to discuss U.S. immigration policy, the Biden/Harris "damned if they do/don't" conundrum and the utter heartlessness on display along the Texas border.

Lastly, MTG seems to want the Nikki Haley types to vacate the GOP. I mean, what if that happened? Marge and her kind would become politically irrelevant fast.

It's so delicio-awkward watching as the remaining two GOP presidential candidate contradict one another. In particular, as Nikki Haley blithely spouts nonsense about the U.S. never being a racist nation, her opponent - the former U.S. President, with his noted civil rights mis-steps, refers to her by her ethnic birth name in a not-so-subtle dogwhistle to his base. He's also gone "birther" in her direction. This all has me hoping she's able to stay in the race awhile - and goodness knows now that she's the last non-Trump option for establishment Republicans to back (monetarily), why not?

A Cobb County judge put the brakes on an eager divorce attorney looking to politicize the Wade divorce by deposing Fulton D.A. Fani Willis. Also, there's one way Fani can shut this noise down and stay on the Trump case ... if she's even able to.

Vice President Kamala Harris spoke before Wisconsin voters today on the anniversary of 'Roe v Wade' being codified into law by the Supreme Court 51 yers ago. I've included the audio, followed by my routine reminder that abortion rights - lost the last time the mosaic of liberal voters weren't united and energized in an election year - is but one of many issues at stake this cycle.

Fulton district attorney Fani Willis has twice tried to respond to allegations of impropriety levied against her and special prosecutor Nathan Wade ... except she's yet to respond to the most salacious part of the allegations ... that she and Wade are (allegedly) in a romantic relationship. Illegal? No. Improper? Debatable. A bad look? Indisputable.

Also, how are two of the brightest legal minds in metro Atlanta not smart enough to buy separate flight and cruise tickets?

Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson is out of the GOP presidential primary, but still making the media rounds, and on today's Politically Georgia podcast, made some salient points about candidates doling out pardons on the campaign trail and Nikki Haley's inability to speak about racism & slavery.

Remember "it's the economy, stupid?" Well, the economy keeps plugging along (despite Trump's wishing it tanks). I want ya to hear how Fox News & Fox Business react to the S&P hitting a record hight today. You'd think Larry Kudlow needed antacid. I mean, maybe he did. Call it 'Bidenomics' if you must; it's working - and they hate that, but consumers seem to be feeling it.

So we've been waiting (and waiting) for Fani Willis to respond to those 'salacious' allegations a Trump co-defendant's attorney dropped last week, and whew, today we got a (filed) response. First, it turns out Nathan Wade's marriage is coming apart because his wife (not he, with Fani) had strayed from the marriage. Bomb. Shell.

Okay, so that answers to Fani needing (she doesn't) to testify in their divorce, but it still leaves unanswered the question "was there a romantic relationship?" No evidence, yet, but a date's been set for everyone to find out.

There's also some pretty nasty e-mail exchanges between Trump attorneys and the D.A.'s office (and herself), according to the New York Times. Accusations of racism came up. Yikes.

The family of a deceased church deacon felled by Atlanta Police activity launched a suit today ... one that might've been unnecessary had the city offered to settle - which they didn't.

Meanwhile, just eight days after some solid rain drenched metro Atlanta, flooding roads and property surrounding the future Atlanta Public Safety Training Facility ("Cop City"), a federal judge dismissed a local environmental group's attempt to pause construction because of runoff affecting Entrenchment Creek negatively. Make that make sense.

There's also the new revelation that the facility's price tag has ballooned A G A I N. Oh, and on the one-year anniversary of the death of 'Tortugita,' a local NPR radio station unearthed personnel files of the state troopers involved in the fatal shooting. It's not a good look.

Governor Brian Kemp has been in Davos, Switzerland, looking to score some business action for the state, and had a somewhat awkward Q&A with the Bloomberg crew, so naturally I'm all for eavesdropping and chiming in. He loves to tout that $16 billion surplus, for example, but wouldn't ya know, the same Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) he openly dismisses, along with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) amounts to nearly the same amount in federal investments in the state to address needs the state long could have been.

The First House Immigration hearing took place today and Democratic Reps. Jared Moskowitz, Jamie Raskin and Jasmine Crockett and AOC took Republicans to task - somewhat echoing a point I made yesterday: the GOP has no interest in solving immigration; they want to keep issues afloat so they can run on it.

New AJC polling indicates state Republicans are wildly out of touch with what voters actually want, namely no money for school vouchers and affirming Medicaid expansion. Why ask "when will they listen?" when they can just gerrymander their way out of harm's way from repercussion?

I am not a religious person, but I grew up in a Southern Baptist Church, so it's not as if I don't have a decent grasp of the values of the white evangelical voting bloc. So how do we square Donald Trump taking 53% of Iowa's white evangelical voter support last night - and since that's actually being a dip from his 2020 and 2016 numbers, is that a harbinger for his prospects this November?

That got me to wondering just how we are where we are - in an era where the white evangelical voter supports politicians who come nowhere near their moral realm? Like when Texas' governor defends letting migrants die as his forces block federal border patrol agents from doing their job.

With that taking the conversation towards immigration (and how the Bible commands God's children to treat them), I had to share what I learned yesterday: that the Biden/Harris administration has been quietly working on addressing 'root causes in migration' from Central American countries. Dealing with root causes vs slapping band-aids (like walls & detention)? What a concept!

But get this: also quietly, in Guatamala, where a progressive just won that nation's presidency, a former Trump Cabinet official has been down there stirring up near-insurrectionist obstacles to that inauguration even occurring. Could it be that Republicans want to keep the invigoration crisis going because it's a useful problem to drum up votes?

It was eight years ago the audio of a speech Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave to a London audience was unearthed. On December 4, 1964, Dr. King spoke before the British group "Christian Action," days before receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo later that month.

Dr. King spoke of the American civil rights struggle, economic, educational, police & judicial injustice and South African apartheid as well.

What's stunning is how relevant his words then are today.