A.M. ATL: Gassed up

Morning, y’all! Did you catch the big, fat full moon last night? The October full moon is called the Hunter’s Moon. Mysterious! Sounds like the title of a romantasy book.

Let’s get to it.

DOJ TO SEND ELECTION MONITORS TO GA

The U.S. Department of Justice has notified several Georgia counties it intends to station monitors there on Election Day.

• Bibb, Cobb, Chatham, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties all received notifications, and it’s not escaped public notice that all of those counties are Democrat-heavy locales.
• Several of those counties also had monitors sent ahead of the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections.
• This is not a presidential election, however, and despite such dispatches being fairly routine, the Trump administration’s attempts to assert more federal control over elections have raised concerns over election monitoring — not just in Georgia, and not just among Democrats.

🔎 READ MORE: What happens during election monitoring, and what shouldn’t happen

Meanwhile, recent AJC polling shows Democrats have a fighting chance to break the GOP’s grip on Georgia’s state government for the first time in a generation.

Early voting in Georgia has already busted records. More than 1.5 million people have cast in-person ballots. Interestingly, mail-in voting numbers have plummeted compared with the same period during the 2022 midterms.

Not signed up yet? What’re you waiting for? Get A.M. ATL in your inbox each weekday morning. And keep scrolling for more news.

ROAD AND RAIL NEWS

Gov. Brian Kemp announced the state is extending a suspension of the gas tax through Nov. 30, giving drivers relief through the Thanksgiving holiday.

Average price of fuel in Georgia this weekend (per gallon)

• regular gas: $3.67
• diesel: $5.73

Average price of fuel in Georgia this time last year

• regular gas: $2.80
• diesel: $3.48

💡 Excise taxes and you: Normally, the state collects an excise tax of 33.3 cents per gallon of gasoline. That money goes to fund road maintenance. Unlike sales taxes, excise taxes apply to very specific products and are usually charged per unit of something (a gallon, for instance) rather than as a percentage.

🔎 READ MORE: More about Georgia’s current fuel situation

On the rail side of things, MARTA’s critical renovation of Five Points station will take longer and cost more than planned.

• How much more? MARTA’s not saying, but General Manager and CEO Jonathan Hunt recently made an “off the top of my head” $100 million budget increase estimate to Atlanta City Council members.
• Since extemporaneous ballparking doesn’t usually fall in the nine-figure range, leaders had a lot more questions after that.
• The Five Points project is one of many that have led to criticism over MARTA’s ability to deliver projects on time and on budget.
• The controversial, stopped-and-started-again station transformation will replace the leaky concrete canopy with a translucent roof and an improved street-level plaza.

🔎 READ MORE: Why the station renovation has drawn criticism

GEORGIA GETS MILLIONS TO HIRE TEACHERS

Good education news! The Georgia Department of Education scored two big federal grants to expand teacher apprenticeships statewide.

• The first grant is almost $6 million, and will expand paraprofessional-to-teacher apprenticeships and strengthen teacher preparation, mentoring and support for new educators.
• The second is about $4.3 million, and will expand registered apprenticeship opportunities for aspiring special education teachers.

Georgia, like many states, is struggling to retain and recruit teachers.

🔎 READ MORE: What the department is doing to get people to ‘Teach in the Peach’

MUST-KNOW POLITICS AND BUSINESS

🐘 President Donald Trump held a campaign rally for Georgia GOP midterm candidates in Perry this weekend. It was Trump’s second campaign rally in Georgia in eight days, both in deep-red parts of the state where GOP leaders are increasingly anxious about sluggish early voting.

🚗 Audi will build an automobile plant in Georgia, Trump announced during this weekend’s rally. The German automaker will commit $4.2 billion in Macon to begin construction on a plant that will produce 200,000 cars a year.

⚖️ Brant Frost IV, founder of defunct lender First Liberty Building & Loan, will face sentencing today for his part in what federal prosecutors say was a nine-figure Ponzi scheme with deep political implications. He could face years in prison.

🦺 Six Flags is adding seat belts to the Goliath roller coaster and coasters with “similar restraint” systems after an area educator died when he was ejected from the ride at Six Flags Over Georgia.

SHAQ ON MONEY

O’Neal may be a multi-hyphenate magnate now, but he wasn’t always so savvy. The NBA legend said he didn’t understand how a credit score worked until … wait for it … he already had enough money to buy his mom a house.

O’Neal and former NFL star Rob Gronkowski discussed credit, saving money and financial discipline during a recent visit to Georgia State University. More from UATL

NEWS BITES

The Falcons beat the previously undefeated 49ers in a very pretty win

Whew, that felt good.

After weekend loss, Atlanta Dream are 2-2 in the WNBA Finals

They’re back at it tonight on the Golden State Valkyries’ home turf.

Halloween candy sales are slow amid affordability concerns

Raw turnips it is! The children yearn for root vegetables.

The SS United States will be sunk to become the world’s largest artificial reef

“Oooh, this is nice! It don’t smell like roaches in here or nothing.” — the fish, probably

ON THIS DATE

Oct. 26, 1958

Face of Georgia edition could girdle the globe. If you took all the papers printed of this Face of Georgia edition of The Atlanta Journal and Constitution and laid the pages end to end they would circle the world at the 33rd parallel. Appropriately enough that would girdle it between Atlanta and Savannah. … Marking this birthday year — 75th for The Journal and 90th for The Constitution — it is the largest single issue ever published by these newspapers.

🥲

ONE MORE THING

Just checking re: today’s intro, everyone knows what romantasy is, right?

It’s romantic fantasy, a fairly new (and very fraught) literary genre. Many romantasy books are very good, and you’ll know you’re reading the genre if the hero has some impossible name with a high-value Scrabble letter in it. (Xaden, Rhysand, Hawke, etc. No, I’m not making any of those up.)