Crossover Day Chaos: Georgia’s Legislative Deals, Power Plays, and Political Fights

This pod­cast on Georgia’s leg­isla­tive Crossover Day—dives into the flur­ry of bills mov­ing through the state leg­is­la­ture as they must clear com­mit­tee to advance. It high­lights deal-mak­ing dynam­ics, spot­light­ing SB1 (bar­ring boys from girls’ sports), a late Trump-backed push for paper bal­lots in SB303 to ditch for­eign-made elec­tion machines like Domin­ion. Key issues to watch include tax refunds mask­ing mas­sive bud­gets, SB57 (anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion law­suits against banks) fac­ing bank­ing lob­by resis­tance, and sports bet­ting pro­pos­als (tied to casi­no risks and high school ath­lete pay­ments) advanc­ing while paper bal­lot efforts lag. HB268, expand­ing DFCS pow­ers for child wel­fare, passed the House despite over­reach fears, along­side Kemp sign­ing a record-break­ing bud­get. The pod­cast cri­tiques GA GOP chair can­di­dates Josh McK­oon and Salleigh Grubbs for lack­ing vision against the Democ­rats’ “2030 Project” to flip state­hous­es, accus­ing Repub­li­cans of rely­ing sole­ly on ger­ry­man­der­ing rather than robust strate­gies, sig­nal­ing a par­ty adrift.

• • Today is crossover day. Things have to come out of com­mit­tee today. Watch what is mov­ing across. The deal mak­ing is in, although it starts on day one of ses­sion. If SB1 was stop­ping boys in girls sports, then SB 2 should have been Trump’s request for going to paper bal­lots, but it came in late SB303 is unplug­ging for­eign made elec­tion machines. The domin­ion machines increased our vot­ing sys­tems by 400%. And bal­lot mark­ing devices are not 22000 they are 800 each. We are not fin­ished with SB303, cit­i­zens can move the bill. 
  • Deals are made all through the leg­isla­tive ses­sion. Deals are made today with­in the cham­bers. The pow­er bro­kers are hav­ing the deci­sions and deals on the bills to move through oppo­site cham­bers. 
  • What to watch for today. Tax­es and refunds to tax­pay­ers, they keep giv­ing us $500 checks so you will shut up about the $500M water deals and enor­mous bud­get; de-bank­ing the bank­ing indus­try is try­ing to stop SB57 allow­ing peo­ple and busi­ness­es to sue banks for dis­crim­i­na­tion. The bank­ing lob­by is push­ing hard to stop this, the peo­ple want SB57 to be passed; pro­pos­als to let peo­ple bet on sports and reg­u­late the pay­ment to high school ath­letes have both cleared house com­mit­tees. If you allow sports bet­ting you are allow­ing casi­nos. Now the sen­ate has already vot­ed on it, it has now passed the house. Now we can’t pass the direc­tive to go to paper bal­lots but we can pass sports bet­ting and pay the high school quar­ter­back.; then there is HB268 for school safe­ty. 
  • Done and over with Bri­an Kemp signs the largest bud­get in state his­to­ry. 
  • GA DFCS aims for expand­ed pow­ers, while law­mak­ers raise con­cerns about over­reach. There are sit­u­a­tions where the envi­ron­ment that kids are in and shouldn’t be there. Don’t fall for con­cerns of over­reach. The agency wants to have more pow­ers for judges to have arrest war­rants that cross coun­ty lines and to have fed­er­al grant funds to beef up inves­ti­ga­tions into sex­u­al­ly exploit­ed fos­ter chil­dren. Now the bill that we want to die has passed the house, HB268. In this bill the growth of DFCS gains enor­mous pow­er. 

• Geor­gia GOP Adrift: Lead­er­ship Lacks Vision Against Democ­rats’ 2030 Project

• GA GOP chair can­di­date, Josh McK­oon, and 1st vice chair can­di­date, Salleigh Grubbs, don’t have a plan for the GOP to move for­ward. They are only con­cerned with their polit­i­cal sta­tus and the next pho­to op. In the last 5 years there has been a down­ward turn in los­ing majori­ties. 
• Democ­rats have the 2030 Project, the plan to flip more state hous­es over sev­er­al years and grab the majori­ties and flip con­sti­tu­tion­al offices. 
• We need a chair­man that has a plan to com­bat the 2030 Project as the democ­rats have a year round orga­niz­ing to flip the state leg­is­la­ture. 
• The only thing that the repub­li­cans have is to draw lines in ger­ry­man­der­ing. Repub­li­cans used to have real plans. The only thing we have is to rig elec­tions and alter the out­comes.