Morning, y’all! More than 2 million Georgia motorists will grace our lovely interstates this Thanksgiving week. Here’s when roads will be the busiest. Or, go with your Atlanta-bred instinct: They will always be busy, especially when you think they won’t be.
Let’s get to it.
GEORGIA COLLEGES CONSIDER CONTROVERSIAL SAT ALTERNATIVE
The University System of Georgia seems open to allowing its 26 public institutions, including the University of Georgia, to allow a controversial standardized test in lieu of the SAT or ACT.
- The Classical Learning Test, or CLT, has ties to the very conservative Heritage Foundation and other institutions that tread in American Christian nationalism and make heavily veiled use of phrases like “Western intellectual tradition.”
- CLT founder Jeremy Tate wants the test to usurp the SAT and ACT and thinks modern education doesn’t center enough around the Catholic church.
- The College Board says the test does not meet industry standards.
- USG Chancellor Sonny Perdue is in favor of including the CLT, and says the University of North Georgia is “actively exploring this possibility.”
🔎 READ MORE: Other people with ties to the CLT, plus more on its methods
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RIVIAN CEO CHATS WITH THE AJC
Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe sat down with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s editorial board last week to talk about the EV startup’s future. Here are some takeaways:
- He thinks the switch to electric vehicles really sticks: “The more people that experience an EV, it’s like a one-way door,” he said. “It’s hard to go into an EV and then back to a (gas-powered) vehicle.”
- Rivian’s Atlanta-area factory will be key to the company’s future: “This is an investment you don’t make for one product cycle,” Scaringe said of the planned $5 billion facility. “You make the investment for many product cycles. It’s a multidecade, multibillion-dollar investment.”
🔎 READ MORE: How tech figures into Rivian’s strategy, what it would take to rival Tesla
STATE ELECTION BOARD DRAMA, PART 536
Members of Georgia’s self-described “dysfunctional” State Election Board hired their former executive director’s wife amid intense infighting, according to internal emails obtained by the AJC.
- The board hired Hope Coan as their paralegal earlier this year despite her having no prior legal experience.
- Coan is the wife of former Executive Director Mike Coan.
- Records show current Executive Director James Mills appears to have changed both the qualifications of Coan’s future job, as well as the salary, which was bumped up a few thousand dollars.
🔎 READ MORE: Board members squabbled about this decision and many, many others in emails the AJC reviewed
MUST-KNOW POLITICS AND BUSINESS
🫏 Democratic state Reps. Ruwa Romman and Derrick Jackson, both running for Georgia governor, discuss how they’d bring costs down for Georgians ahead of the 2026 election.
🗳️ Who will replace Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene when she leaves Congress in January? The first decision falls to Gov. Brian Kemp, who will set a special election for the spot.
NEWS BITES
Pentatonix, Brad Paisley, Charlie Brown and more new Christmas music just out
Can we talk about how iconoclastic Vince Guaraldi’s music for the 1965 “Charlie Brown” special was? Bossa nova for Christmas, now that’s actually groundbreaking.
‘New Year’s Rockin’ Eve’ co-hosts are Chance the Rapper, Rob Gronkowski, Julianne Hough and Rita Ora
Maybe they pulled the names from a bingo cage.
Keep your pet out of the ER with these Thanksgiving safety tips
Don’t let the dog near the fruitcake unless you want to pay hundreds of dollars so the vet can make him barf up six raisins. Ask me how I know.
Quiet cracking: The workplace burnout trend that’s hitting women harder
Don’t be quiet about it! If you must crack, scream the whole way down.
ON THIS DATE
Nov. 25, 1994
Izzy and the band play on in New York. A half hour before the start of the 68th annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade Thursday morning, Atlanta Olympic Band drum major Lori Tanner could only smile at the surreal scene unfolding around her. … “This morning, someone said, ‘Happy Thanksgiving,’ and I thought, ‘My God, I’m going to be in the Macy’s parade,” said the Georgia State University sophomore, who was one of the 243 Georgia high school and college musicians making their Big Apple debut.
Awww! “Izzy” here was, of course, a 6.5-story balloon of Atlanta’s 1996 Summer Games mascot. (Aaaah!)
ONE MORE THING
I’m listing some AJC-related things I’m grateful for this week. Yesterday it was you, our AM ATL family. Today it’s local journalism in general.
I worked in national and international news my entire career before coming to the AJC. I’ve never felt more connected to Atlanta, or to my neighbors and nearby communities, than I have in the past year. Local news is incredibly empowering because it grounds us to where we are, where we can make a difference. It’s reported by people who genuinely care about where we live, because they live there too. Quite simply, I’ve come to learn, it’s the news that matters most.
Oh, and thank you for reading local. 💙
Thanks for reading to the very bottom of A.M. ATL. Questions, comments, ideas? Contact us at AMATL@ajc.com.
Until next time.
About the Author
AJ Willingham is an National Emmy, NABJ and Webby award-winning journalist who loves talking culture, religion, sports, social justice, infrastructure and the arts. She lives in beautiful Smyrna-Mableton and went to Syracuse University.
