Politics

Armed female Black Panther leads her comrades including a white recruit on a march through Georgia

• New Black Panthers were spotted at Black Lives Matter protests in Georgia
• The were seen carrying guns while marching arm-in-arm with protesters
• The New Black Panthers were seen at protests in Atlanta and Decatur this week
• They were peaceful and talked about ‘love and respect’ during the marches 

Earlier in the week, many of the same people were spotted carrying guns at a protest in Decatur, Georgia. 

There, on June 3, they also marched arm-in-arm alongside protesters and addressed the crowd as part of their efforts to protect the rights of the demonstrators, according to Decaturish.  

The organization – founded in 1989 and distinct from the original Black Panthers – has engaged in armed protests against alleged police brutality, but its Atlanta chapter did not have a hand in organizing this particular grassroots protest, which was put together by a Georgia State University student.  

Decaturish reported that protesters at the march had expressed concern about their presence.  

The Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League have both categorized the New Black Panthers as a hate group. 

“The bad news is we are not seeing a reduction in transmission, but I don’t see a spike in transmission,” said Dr. Gerardo Chowell, professor of mathematical epidemiology at Georgia State University’s School of Public Health. Data from the Georgia Department of Health shows that the seven-day moving average of coronavirus cases steadily declined from late April until mid-May, a reflection of the earlier stay-at-home order. The moving average of cases then flattened at just over 500 new cases per day, and the totals have risen slightly since May 12.

Last month, after weeks of stay-at-home orders, Georgia allowed businesses like gyms, hair and nail salons and restaurants to reopen with certain restrictions in an attempt to restart its economy. Georgia was the first state to move so aggressively to reopen its economy and as such has come to represent the broader reopening movement.

So far, that fear has not been borne out. The preliminary data suggests that reopening has not led to a spike in cases — but the virus has continued to steadily infect people and shows no signs of waning.

“I’m proud of what we accomplished over the last several weeks, but we cannot rest on our laurels,” Republican Gov. Brian Kemp said last week. “We need to further expand access to testing and we need to encourage Georgians to make it a priority.”

by Jason Schaumburg
 
After President Donald Trump took to Twitter to threaten pulling the Republican National Convention out of Charlotte, N.C, other southeast states with Trump allies as governor have offered to host the convention.
The GOP convention is scheduled for late August in Charlotte. North Carolina entered phase two of its reopening plan amid the coronavirus pandemic last week under Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who has been cautious in lifting restrictions.
“I love the Great State of North Carolina, so much so that I insisted on having the Republican National Convention in Charlotte at the end of August,” Trump tweeted Monday. “Unfortunately, Democrat Governor, @RoyCooperNC is still in Shutdown mood & unable to guarantee that by August we will be allowed full attendance in the Arena.”

I love the Great State of North Carolina, so much so that I insisted on having the Republican National Convention in Charlotte at the end of August. Unfortunately, Democrat Governor, @RoyCooperNC is still in Shutdown mood & unable to guarantee that by August we will be allowed…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 25, 2020

Trump’s four-tweet thread went on to say that without an immediate answer about attendance, the Republican Party will be forced to find a new location.
Enter Florida and Georgia.
A little more than four hours later Monday morning, Republican Party of Florida Chairman and state Sen. Joe Gruters responded.
“America’s #1 Governor @GovRonDeSantis and the state of Florida would welcome @realDonaldTrump and the 2020 convention with open arms,” Gruters tweeted. “Florida is open for business. @FloridaGOP”

Two out of five people in Georgia — 40.3 percent of its workforce — have filed for unemployment since the state reopened its economy on April 30, the first to do so. But people are still staying close to home, making it harder for jobs to come back, according to a report in Politico on Thursday (May 21).

Georgia had more filings by percentage of its workforce than any other state, Politico’s review of data indicated. New jobless claims for loans in Georgia have varied since the state reopened, going up 243,000 two weeks ago and dropping to 177,000 last week. The state had commented that the increases in claims were due to jobs lost in retail, social services and health care.

“It’s nothing significant enough to say, ‘Oh, there’s a huge surge,’ — but certainly nothing to signal there’s any return to economic stability or recovery happening right now,” Alex Camardelle, a senior policy analyst with the nonprofit Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, told Politico.

Aside from being the first state to re-open, Georgia was also one of the last states to close its economy and impose stay-home mandates.

More layoffs are coming down the pike in Georgia as the state makes plans to eliminate over 1,000 jobs — educators, counselors, social services, administrators, clerks —  in a move to cut state budgets by 14 percent, according to an AJC report on Sunday (May 24). Revenue decline brought about by the pandemic was cited as the reason.

Further, some state employees not laid off will see their paychecks slashed.

Among the departments laying off or furloughing employees are the Georgia State Patrol and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Welcome to Good Day, UGA, your one-stop shop for Georgia football news and takes. Check us out every weekday morning for everything you need to know about Georgia football, recruiting, basketball and more.
A deeper dive into Georgia football recruiting efforts in the metro Atlanta area
Since Kirby Smart took over as Georgia’s head coach in December of 2015 and including the 2021 class, the state of Georgia has produced 202 blue-chip recruits, which are defined as 4 or 5-star prospects using the 247Sports Composite database.
Of those recruits, 118 —58 percent — of them have come from nine counties that make up the metro Atlanta area, defined as the counties of Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, DeKalb, Clayton, Coweta, Douglas, Fayette and Henry per the Georgia State of Tourism website. 
On average the metro Atlanta area produces more blue-chip recruits than the likes of Alabama, Louisiana and Ohio. Alvin Kamara, Derrick Brown and the Atlanta Falcons’ 2020 first-round pick AJ Terrell all came from the area. It is one of the best recruiting areas in the country from both a high-end and volume standpoint.
But in recent seasons Georgia is relying less and less on the Atlanta area to add to its recruiting haul, even as it continues to sign elite recruiting classes. In the 2019 and 2020 cycles, Georgia signed just five prospects from the area and just one of the 10 5-star prospects. Over that same time span, Clemson and Tennessee have also signed five prospects with Alabama landing six.
So should Georgia be doing a better job recruiting the metro Atlanta area, or is it just too unrealistic to expect one school to dominate the area? Does Georgia need to re-prioritize how it recruits the area?

President Akufo-Addo set up the “National Covid-19 Trust Fund” to mobilise res towards the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Researchers on the Harvard World Well being Institute say the US must conduct 900,000 assessments a day by Might 15 to even take into consideration slowly reopening the economic system.
• The US is at the moment conducting round 250,000 COVID-19 assessments a day, up from 150,000 in mid-April.
• 4 states which can be already reopening — Florida, Georgia, Texas, and Colorado — are usually not conducting the naked minimal variety of assessments needed to soundly achieve this, researchers say.
• “Finally, I’m deeply apprehensive that 4, six, eight weeks down the street we will discover ourselves in the very same place we have been in in early March, and we should shut the economic system down once more,” Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard World Well being Institute, mentioned in a press release.

The US has simply over per week to extend its each day coronavirus testing capability by almost 400%, at a minimal, if states want to proceed with a leisure of bodily distancing necessities, in line with new information from researchers at Harvard College.

“As of this week, nationwide testing continues to be stalled at round 250,000 each day assessments,” the Harvard World Well being Institute reported Thursday. That is up from 150,000 COVID-19 assessments a day in mid-April — however nonetheless half of what the institute deemed needed two weeks in the past. 

The nation is falling behind, the institute declared, whilst some states are starting to reopen. “In accordance with our up to date calculations,” it mentioned in a new report, “we are going to want upwards of 900,000 each day assessments nationally by Might 15.”

On this broadcast of The National Conversation, three essential workers share their experiences working through the pandemic. We’ll also answer your questions about graduations and new treatments.

The authorization, announced by President Trump, comes days after preliminary results from a study of the drug showed it can help patients recover faster.

Of more than 3.2 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 globally, more than a million people have recovered — including some 154,000 in the U.S.

Dr. Fauci’s testimony had been requested by the House Appropriations Committee as part of an investigation into the the COVID-19 response. The White House called the request “counter-productive.”

North Korean media, cited by South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, said he attended a ceremony marking the completion of a fertilizer plant in a town just north of the capital, Pyongyang.

Emerging data suggest that though people altered their habits during the first month of America’s response to the pandemic, that cooperation has since leveled off and — eventually — decreased.

State leaders implemented sweeping measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Many are now deciding when and how to lift various restrictions.

‘We can live in fear for a long time or we can trust that everything is going to be OK…’

(Liberty Headlines) Georgia, Oklahoma and Alaska began loosening lockdown orders Friday on their pandemic-wounded businesses.
Republican governors in Georgia and Oklahoma allowed salons, spas and barbershops to reopen, while Alaska opened the way for restaurants to resume dine-in service and retail shops and other businesses to open their doors, all with limitations. Some Alaska municipalities chose to maintain stricter rules.
Though limited in scope, and subject to social-distancing restrictions, the reopenings marked a symbolic milestone in the debate raging in the United States — and the world — as to how quickly political leaders should lift economically damaging lockdown orders.
Similar scenarios have been playing out worldwide and will soon proliferate in the U.S. as other governors wrestle with conflicting priorities.

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Georgia has become one of the first states to ease coronavirus lockdown restrictions, as Governor Brian Kemp cast CDC cautions and even President Trump’s criticism aside today, to allow some non-essential businesses to re-open.
But while anti-lockdown protests have gathered momentum nationwide, the scenes in Georgia today were far from the enthusiastic uptake for which Kemp must have hoped.
Instead many stores remained shuttered and business owners and employees who spoke with DailyMail.com today told of their confusion, conflict and fear that this was a move made too soon.