Author Archives: Tom Baxter

It’s a sign of just how much novocaine we’ve injected into the jaw of American politics over the past few years that the gutting of the Grand Old Party was received last week with such numbed indifference.

Georgia has placed itself squarely in the cockpit of the new, electrified economy. So far in 2024, it’s been a bumpy ride.

It could have been a lot worse. When you can say that about Crossover Day, especially in an election year, you’ve said a mouthful.

Jimmy Carter has lived long enough to mark the 50th anniversary of an act which literally changed the American landscape. It began with a canoe ride down the Flint River.

Recently there was a study which predicted that by the end of the century, “about half” of American cities will lose a significant amount of their population. But not us.

Joe Biden walks and talks like an old man, but every now and then he thinks like a young one.

When I was a teenager, a fellow member of my high school writer’s club, an earnest young man, recommended I read “Justine,” by the Marquis de Sade. I did. “Justine,” is the story of an 18th-century French girl whose every effort to be decent and kind is rewarded with the sort of sexual cruelty to […]

o hear him tell it, with most of his second term still ahead, Gov. Brian Kemp remains laser-focused on the state’s business. He’s raised a lot of money, and it’s been widely speculated he might challenge U.S. Sen. John Ossoff in 2026, but after his run-in with former President Donald Trump he has no national ambitions. So, if all that is true, what are we to make of Kemp’s State of the State speech last week?

Surveying prospects for the stock market in the coming year, financial expert Ed Yardeni recently used a twist on the old FDR line about there being nothing to fear but fear itself.

It’s such a classic Florida tale that the first reaction to the story of Bridget and Christian Ziegler might be just to stuff it into an already thick folder full of Sunshine State craziness and pay it little mind. It deserves more attention than that.

Last week the Republican-majority General Assembly got up on its hind legs and passed a couple of maps that seemed to dare a federal judge to strike them down, and this week it seems set on doing the same thing with the congressional map.

Last week there were a couple of court rulings which, if nothing else, change the context for the special redistricting session which begins Wednesday under the Golden Dome.

As they were both aware, Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter improved each other.

This is not Nikki Haley’s day in the sun. Barring something miraculous, she’s not going to overtake Donald Trump in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. But when you try to imagine a path forward after the election for each of the candidates, she stands alone in clearly having one.

It stands to reason that if we forgot to hold an election, it would be a race for a seat on the Public Service Commission. That’s not exactly what has happened in Georgia, but it’s too close for comfort.

The headline over last week’s ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Steve Jones was that the legislature has to draw a new congressional map with another black or near-black district before next year’s election. But what’s under the hood in this ruling may be the bigger story.

To the Citizens of the state of Georgia:
Many people have said that MAGA means never having to say you’re sorry. I may have said that myself, a time or two.

It may only have been a delaying tactic, but U.S. Rep. Austin Scott’s brief dalliance with the spotlight Friday afternoon illuminated one of the ironies of the predicament Republicans in Congress have found themselves in.