Washington appears ready to celebrate the first anniversary of President Donald Trump's inauguration by shutting down the federal government. The 7 a.m. Tweet from the White House:
In today's Wall Street Journal, one of Georgia's senators said he's amenable to working through the weekend to avoid one:
Lawmakers are considering ways to avoid a shutdown. [Democrat Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.] and some Republican senators have said they would support a spending bill that stretched for just a few days to provide for more time for negotiations.
"I can support anything that will get us to the table working, I don't support anything that keeps us away from the table working," said Sen. Johnny Isakson (R., Ga.).
Augusta would be one of the harder-hit areas of Georgia should the federal government stop handing out paychecks – something to think about as it blossoms into a national cybersecurity hub, drawing even more workers connected to D.C. From the Augusta Chronicle:
In metro Augusta, about four percent of the workforce is federal workers, twice the national average, and that number does not include the thousands of government contract employees and military personnel who also pump money into the area's economy.
Should a shutdown go as 2013's 16-day partial shutdown, which saw about 850,000 government employees furloughed nationwide, military personnel will be exempt. But nonessential civilian workers on post could see their jobs put on hold.
***
This is quite the turnabout: Hall County's election board voted this week to reverse an April vote that would have required the county to provide ballots in Spanish. The 3-2 vote was split along party lines: The two Democrats voted against rescinding, while its two Republicans joined with nonpartisan chair Tom Smiley to scrap the idea.
The Gainesville Times reported that the Tuesday reversal came after more than a dozen speakers supported the bilingual ballots, with many arguing that the county's growing Hispanic population deserved it. Among them was Jerry Gonzalez of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, who said other local governments that made similar moves had been hit with voting rights lawsuits.
Smiley, meanwhile, said at the meeting the decision to adopt bilingual ballots last year was a "gross error" because the board didn't have the authority to spend the money for those types of decisions.
Roughly a quarter of Hall County’s population is now Latino.
***
The Atlanta Business Chronicle reports that MARTA has a $50 million plan in the works to establish a nine-mile bus rapid transit line that would connect its midtown Arts Center to the Turner Field acreage soon to be dominated by Georgia State University.
***
A trio of Georgia judicial nominees has survived another round of Senate hearings.
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted in executive session to back the appointments of Stan Baker, Elizabeth Branch and Billy Ray to federal judgeships.
They supported Baker’s nomination to be a district judge for the south Georgia-based federal circuit by voice vote, while Branch was approved 19-2 for a seat on the federal appeals court in Atlanta.
Ray faced a more narrow tightrope walk: He was approved for an Atlanta-based federal judgeship by an 11-10 vote along party lines.
