Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Kemp's judicial election cancellation heads to Georgia appeals court

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp

A judge ruled this week that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has the authority to appoint someone to fill a judicial vacancy that does not yet exist.

Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

The two politicians who want to be candidates for the next opening on Georgia's highest court are appealing a judge's ruling that there doesn't have to be an election.

Their trips to the courthouse Wednesday and Thursday are the latest moves in what has rapidly become a flashpoint in the world of good governance: Republican Gov. Brian Kemp's declaration that he, not the voters, will decide how to fill a not-yet-empty seat on the state Supreme Court.

The law seems to have provisions supporting him as well as those desiring the special election the governor has called off. But the reality is that Kemp's motives are under heightened suspicion since he narrowly won the governorship in 2018 amid evidence that, as secretary of state, he was complicit in an array of voter suppression efforts.


Justice Keith Blackwell, whose six-year term ends in December, told Kemp last month that he was dropping his re-election bid and would resign six weeks early, on Nov. 18. Kemp's office then told the new secretary of state, fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, that Kemp would fill the seat by appointment so the position should be dropped from the May 19 judicial election ballots. Raffensperger complied.

A former Democratic congressman from Athens, John Barrow, and a former Republican state legislator from Atlanta, Beth Beskin, then sued in state court to get the election back on the ballot on the grounds it had been illegally canceled. They asked a judge to order Raffensperger to put it back on the calendar and allow candidates to qualify.

The two candidates lost the first round on Monday, when Judge Emily Richardson ruled that state law and the Georgia Constitution dictate the seat became vacant Feb. 26, when Kemp signed a letter accepting the justice's resignation.

Even though the effective date of Blackwell's resignation is six months after the election, the judge said, Kemp has the authority under the state Constitution to name his successor.

Barrow's request for the Georgia Court of Appeals to reverse that ruling says the judge is flat wrong. "The Constitution clearly requires a vacancy as a condition precedent to the Governor's power to appoint," his petition says, and the state Supreme Court itself has ruled "a vacancy occurs when the office is unoccupied and when there is no incumbent lawfully qualified to exercise the powers of the office."

Blackwell, 44, says he's returning to private practice to make his family finances cushier before his children go to college — abandoning a rapid rise in conservative judicial circles that put him on the state's highest court when he was 36 and on the list of 21 potential Supreme Court nominees Donald Trump produced during the 2016 campaign.

Read More

Is Bombing Iran Deja Vu All Over Again?

The B-2 "Spirit" Stealth Bomber flys over the 136th Rose Parade Presented By Honda on Jan. 1, 2025, in Pasadena, California. (Jerod Harris/Getty Images/TNS)

Jerod Harris/Getty Images/TNS)

Is Bombing Iran Deja Vu All Over Again?

After a short and successful war with Iraq, President George H.W. Bush claimed in 1991 that “the ghosts of Vietnam have been laid to rest beneath the sands of the Arabian desert.” Bush was referring to what was commonly called the “Vietnam syndrome.” The idea was that the Vietnam War had so scarred the American psyche that we forever lost confidence in American power.

The elder President Bush was partially right. The first Iraq war was certainly popular. And his successor, President Clinton, used American power — in the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere — with the general approval of the media and the public.

Keep ReadingShow less
Conspiratorial Thinking Isn’t Growing–Its Consequences Are
a close up of a typewriter with the word conspiracy on it

Conspiratorial Thinking Isn’t Growing–Its Consequences Are

The Comet Ping Pong Pizzagate shooting, the plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and a man’s livestreamed beheading of his father last year were all fueled by conspiracy theories. But while the headlines suggest that conspiratorial thinking is on the rise, this is not the case. Research points to no increase in conspiratorial thinking. Still, to a more dangerous reality: the conspiracies taking hold and being amplified by political ideologues are increasingly correlated with violence against particular groups. Fortunately, promising new research points to actions we can take to reduce conspiratorial thinking in communities across the US.

Some journalists claim that this is “a golden age of conspiracy theories,” and the public agrees. As of 2022, 59% of Americans think that people are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories today than 25 years ago, and 73% of Americans think conspiracy theories are “out of control.” Most blame this perceived increase on the role of social media and the internet.

Keep ReadingShow less
We Can Save Our Earth: Environment Opportunities 2025
a group of windmills in the sky above the clouds

We Can Save Our Earth: Environment Opportunities 2025

On May 8th, 2025, the Network for Responsible Public Policy (NFRPP) convened a session to discuss the future of the transition to clean energy in the face of some stiff headwinds caused by the new US administration led by Donald Trump. The panel included Dale Bryk, Director of State and Regional Policy at the Harvard Environmental and Energy Law Program and a Senior Fellow at the Regional Plan Association, and Dan Sosland, President of the Acadia Center. The discussion was moderated by Richard Eidlin, National Policy Director for Business for America.

 
 


Keep ReadingShow less