Morning, y’all! More moisture in the air means a relief from that dry weather fueling wildfires in the region. Buuut, it also means other types of weird weather, which you may have noticed last (very blustery) night. Hope everyone’s safe! Let’s get to it.
ATLANTA GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS MAY BE SOLD
Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC
Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC
The federal government is considering selling 17 office complexes, courthouses and other operations centers across Georgia as part of an ongoing swarm of budget cuts.
The list includes two historic buildings in downtown Atlanta: the Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center and the Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Building. Together, they’re two of the largest government buildings in the Southeast. Other buildings the GSA is looking to offload include:
- The IRS Services Center in Atlanta
- The IRS Annex in Chamblee
- The FEMA Regional Center in Thomasville (which has multiple buildings)
- The Juliette Gordon Low Federal Building in Savannah
- The Federal Building/Post Office/Courthouse in Valdosta
“Non-core:” The General Services Administration said it evaluated federally owned assets on whether they were “needed for critical government operations.” They then identified 440 “non-core” assets across the country, including the ones on the list above. The GSA said those locations represent $8.3 billion in asset value and $430 million in annual operating and maintenance costs.
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MARTA RIDERSHIP DOWN
Credit: Ben Hendren/AJC
Credit: Ben Hendren/AJC
MARTA train ridership fell significantly in 2024. In fact, it had one of the worst drops of any transit agency in the country, outside of Cleveland and Los Angeles.
According to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis:
- In Atlanta, ridership fell 4% in 2024.
- Nationwide, ridership actually rose 24%.
- MARTA ridership is now back to less than half it was before 2019 when the pandemic put our lives in a cosmic martini shaker.
- Dip or not, MARTA still provided more than 31.5 million trips last year.
Transportation officials say they’re working on ways to improve the MARTA experience, like fixing broken fare gates and expanding service.
PRESIDENT TRUMP’S CONGRESSIONAL ADDRESS
President Donald Trump delivered the first joint congressional address of his second term last night.
🔎 Here’s a chronological, topic-by-topic recap from Capitol Hill
Among many other things, Trump discussed the newly passed Laken Riley Act and promised more reciprocal tariffs for Mexico and Canada. Our two neighbors have already promised retaliation for the first round of steep tariffs that went into effect this week.
Some Democrats held small signs reading “Musk Steals” “Save Medicaid,” or “This is not normal.” Texas Rep. Al Green (D) was removed from the room after standing and raising his voice during the address. As he was being escorted out, some Republican lawmakers chanted, “na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye.”
Trump also cheered the formation of the Department of Government Efficiency and ongoing cuts to the federal workforce. The department’s leader, Elon Musk, was in attendance.
Trump told the crowd “the days of unelected bureaucrats are over.” As Republicans cheered, Democrats pointed to Musk.
OCONEE LATEST
Spelman College instructor Joycelyn Wilson appeared to have taken photos before her phone stopped transmitting Feb. 9 and before her body was found near her fiancé Gary Jones’ boat. Jones is still missing.
Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills said the U.S. Secret Service is trying to unlock her phone and that the photos most likely won’t point to anything specific. They could help give investigators more details about the couple’s location on the lake before the tragedy.
However, the emerging timeline already begs many questions: The last photograph Wilson took was at 4:59 p.m. Jones’ phone last pinged off an AT&T cell tower at 5:01 p.m. People in a passing pontoon boat called 911 to report seeing their empty vessel at 5:24 p.m. That’s less than half an hour during which so much happened that is still unknown.
🔎 Read more on where the investigation stands now.
MORE FORT NAME CHANGES AFOOT?
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC/TNS
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC/TNS
North Carolina’s Fort Liberty is Fort Bragg again. Georgia’s Fort Moore is Fort Benning again. Could Augusta’s Fort Eisenhower be next for a re-renaming?
- The Biden Administration changed the names of nine military bases nationwide because they honored Confederate generals. Now, the Trump Administration has changed several back.
- Fort Gordon’s name was changed to Fort Eisenhower in 2023.
- John Gordon was a Confederate general and slave owner generally recognized as the head of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia*.
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower served as supreme commander during World War II, leading Allied forces on D-Day and helping defeat Nazi Germany.
Critics of the un-renaming say the Trump Administration is trying to use a sleight of hand to create unnecessary division. The White House says, for instance, that Fort Benning now honors a different Benning than the famous Confederate general.
🔎 Read more about this meaningful intersection of military history, politics and social justice
*Weirdly enough, John Gordon’s full name was John Brown Gordon — an interesting foil for the other famous John Brown of the Civil War, the abolitionist who tried to initiate a slave revolt known as John Brown’s Raid in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, two years before the war began.
MUST-KNOW POLITICS AND BUSINESS
🚰 The Supreme Court has made it harder for environmental regulators to limit water pollution. The ruling was on a case out of San Francisco about the discharge of raw sewage and how far the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority can go.
🎤 House Republican leaders are discouraging GOP lawmakers from holding in-person town halls. Party members like U.S. Rep. Rich McCormick of Georgia have faced viral public backlash for supporting Trump’s downsizing of the federal government.
Mark your calendars: Tomorrow is Crossover Day, the do-or-die halfway point of this year’s Georgia Legislative Session. Hope you’re ready from some serious law talk in the morning.
NEWS BITES
Runners with frying pans took to the street to mark National Pancake Day (Shrove Tuesday)
It was a lot more ... orderly than I’ve made it sound.
This is definitely the plot of a future science fiction horror movie.
People who take drugs such as Ozempic and Mounjaro are spending less at the grocery store
And what are they skipping? Snacks.
Wait, no, THIS is the plot of a future science fiction horror movie.
ON THIS DATE
March 5, 1983
Credit: File photo
Credit: File photo
From the front page of The Atlanta Journal: Unless Gov. Joe Frank Harris vetoes the bill, a passage will be strick from state law that now reads, “The husband is the head of the family and the wife is subject to him; her legal and civil existence is merged with her husband.”
This one’s for us, ladies! Look at that, we’re whole people. This language was aped directly from the Bible, by the way, from Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians. It describes an English legal concept called coverture, where a woman had no independent legal standing outside of her husband. And there it still was in 1983! Remember, the past wasn’t that long ago.
ONE MORE THING
I’m super excited to be heading to the Capitol this morning to check in with Habitat for Humanity as they host Georgia’s inaugural Capitol build. They’ll assemble the beginnings of a Habitat house on Capitol grounds in a nonpartisan gesture to support affordable housing awareness. They’ll also honor Georgia’s own Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, who were big Habitat supporters.
Thanks for reading to the very bottom of A.M. ATL. Questions, comments, ideas? Contact me at AMATL@ajc.com.
Until next time.
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