Author Archives: Tom Baxter

Donald Trump has trash-talked a lot of American cities, including his hometown of New York. But he seems to have a particularly dim view of Atlanta.

Way down on the to-do list of the U.S. House Agriculture Committee’s Subcommittee on Conservation and Forestry sits a bill introduced in 2021 called the Trillion Trees Act

For more than five decades, the Almanac of American Politics has set the standard for political reference books. Once again, Saporta Report is offering the almanac’s chapters on Georgia and Gov. Brian Kemp.

I think she will, and you probably do, too. But in the hot minute before we find out what’s really going to happen, let’s consider this intriguing twist. What if Fani Willis doesn’t bring charges against Donald Trump?

When you listen to what she had to say at the Turning Point Action conference over the weekend in West Palm Beach, it’s easy to understand why Marjorie Taylor Greene is Joe Biden’s favorite Republican House member.

Last week marked the culmination of a couple of years of intense scrutiny of the way we vote in Georgia. The upshot wasn’t nearly as intense as the election which touched it off.

Earlier this month, a Supreme Court ruling in an Alabama redistricting case touched off a brief flurry of speculation that maybe the court which overturned Roe v. Wade hasn’t swung as far to the right as some thought. On closer inspection, much of that speculation seems premature.

At the beginning of the Georgia Republican state convention in Columbus Friday afternoon, a chorus line of Republican statewide officials, legislators and members of Congress took the stage to greet the party faithful.

So what has all the money Ron DeSantis has raised bought him so far? A glitchy audio announcing his campaign on Twitter which drew more attention for its technical difficulties and Elon Musk than anything DeSantis said.

n Jan. 24, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis told Judge Robert McBurney that decisions on possible charges related to the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election were “imminent.” Since then, the clock has ticked, crickets have chirped, but there’s been only silence from the DA. Last week, the sphinx cleared her throat.

For the past two years, the effort to have a statue of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas erected on the Capitol grounds has been one of those late-session dramas the General Assembly is known for. What now?

Donald Trump’s arraignment was supposed to be the nation’s big story last week, but it was old news the day before it happened. When the arraignment was over, a little-noticed but more significant story rose to be the lead item on national news shows in the space of 48 hours.

George Soros’ name gets dropped a lot in Georgia, but seldom with much elaboration. For Republicans, like those in the General Assembly promoting the new law banning outside groups from contributing any money to help fund local elections, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, or former U.S. Sen. David Perdue, just the words “Soros-backed” evoke an ominous effort by shadowy outsiders to control voters’ lives. For Democrats, the mention of Soros’ name amounts automatically to an anti-Semitic insinuation, linking the 92-year-old Holocaust survivor with a host of conspiracy theories.

A test of wills involving some of the state’s most powerful figures briefly threatened to derail this year’s General Assembly session last week. It was a brief storm, but it made a stark contrast with what our neighbors in North Carolina were doing.