You can tell when a president would rather not be identified with a decision he's about to make.
The White House has scheduled an 11 a.m. announcement of President Donald Trump’s plan to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that has shielded from deportation nearly 800,000 people who were brought here illegally as children.
But it will be Attorney General Jeff Sessions who will deliver the news. And he won’t be taking any questions.
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According to the 2010, the Hispanic population in Hall County, home to many a poultry plant, stood at 26 percent. And so it was significant that the name of the Rev. Jentezen Franklin, senior pastor at Free Chapel in Gainesville, appears on the front page of the Washington Post this morning. Franklin was in the Oval Office last week:
“I know these kids,” Franklin recalled telling Trump.
“They are good kids?” Trump asked, according to Franklin.
“Yes, sir,” Franklin said he replied. “They are.”
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President Trump is expected to put a six-month deadline his repeal of the DACA program, which is being interpreted as an attempt to shift the burden (and responsibility) to Congress. We have not heard from U.S. Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., but his legislative partner on immigration has signaled that he's open to a "dream kids" deal. Also from the Washington Post:
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), an immigration hard-liner, suggested that he would be open to giving the dreamers legal permanent residence provided that any deal also include his legislative proposal, called the Raise Act, which would slash legal immigration levels by half over a decade.
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The AJC's Jeremy Redmon was at the Labor Day rally for "dream kids" in Atlanta:
The demonstrators marched from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s office building on Ted Turner Drive to the Atlanta City Detention Center, where some immigrant detainees are held. Chanting “Undocumented, unafraid,” the marchers carried signs that said “Defend DACA” and “Dump Trump.”
Asked what she would say to Trump if she could have a conversation with him, [Mariana] Aguilar said she would point to how she is working at Chick-fil-A, supporting her family and paying state and federal income taxes, just like U.S.-born citizens. She is also studying to become a medical assistant at Georgia Gwinnett College.
“Just give all of us a chance,” she said. “We are all equal. And we should all get the opportunity to work. We are not doing anything bad here. We are helping out the economy.”
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Last July, former President Jimmy Carter got a little over-enthusiastic during an introduction of Stacey Abrams, a Democratic candidate for governor, and said that "hopefully," he would see her become governor next year.
When the video surfaced weeks later, Carter denied his remarks constituted an endorsement. In an apparent attempt to further demonstrate his neutrality,the former president hosted the family of Abrams' rival, state Rep. Stacey Evans of Smyrna, down in Plains over the weekend:
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GPB's Emily Cureton has a stellar piece on a place where the control of Civil War history is more than symbolic:
In South Georgia’s Wiregrass Country, a plaque in the town of Quitman marks a hanging place. It’s where, in August of 1864, four men were executed for plotting a slave rebellion. Over the next century, mob violence against African-Americans often erupted in South Georgia…
Over the next 70 years, mobs in Brooks County killed at least twenty-four people. That’s more documented lynchings than in any other county in the United States during the same time period.
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We've told you that broadband access in rural Georgia has already become a hot topic in 2018 races for governor and beyond. To that end: Larry Hanson, the city manager in Valdosta, has been appointed to serve on a "broadband deployment advisory committee" by Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
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We're told that a 7 p.m. forum of Atlanta mayoral candidates will be held this evening, sponsored by One Music Fest and hosted by Killer Mike. All candidates are threatening to attend. The locale is Loudermilk Center, 40 Courtland St. By the way, here's your list of city of Atlanta candidates, top to bottom:
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Doug Jones, the low-profile Democrat running for U.S. Senate in Alabama, is no Jon Ossoff. He's raised little cash and he's made little mention of Donald Trump. And he's just fine with that. His model might be Archie Parnell, the South Carolina Democrat who came closer than Ossoff to winning a special election in June, according to Politico: "Jones' role as a pillar of his community speaks for itself — and stands in stark contrast to Ossoff, who was easily caricatured for residing outside of his district. Any cash or manpower from the DSCC or Democratic National Committee risk turning the race into another referendum on Trump."
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The elections for a spate of open legislative seats will be held on Nov. 7 - the same day as mayoral contests around the state - with runoffs set for Dec. 5. Secretary of State Brian Kemp's office on Friday scheduled the elections to replace state Sen. Vincent Fort and state Reps. Stacey Abrams, Regina Quick and Chuck Williams. Fort is running for Atlanta mayor and Abrams is running for governor. Quick was tapped to a judgeship and Williams is the incoming head of the Georgia Forestry Commission.
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Former Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney is back. The six-term Democrat, who was defeated by Hank Johnson in 2006 and went on to run for president as the Green Party nominee two years later, is embarking on a nationwide bus tour "to restore truth and integrity to governance."
A tsunami of support is unlikely.
McKinney is looking to build support for legislation that would nationalize the country's central banks, enact universal voter registration and open primaries while mandating the use of paper ballots in elections. The tour, which is being coordinated by the nonprofit Earth Intelligence Network, is meant to highlight the concept that political parties are rigged and the media is colluding with them.
The bus tour stopped in Atlanta over the weekend and also has plans to stop in Colorado, Oregon and Ohio.
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