Early voting kicked off Tuesday in Georgia and voters turned out in big numbers across the state. Also happening Tuesday:
- A pivotal hearing in a lawsuit alleging the state Election Board overstepped its authority when it passed a series of new rules, including one mandating hand counts of paper ballots on election night. The judge in the case appeared skeptical of the hand-counting rule.
- In a separate case involving a Republican election board member who argued she could refuse to sign off on the results from the presidential primary earlier this year, the judge ruled that certification is mandatory in Georgia.
Now, the attention moves to two events featuring former President Donald Trump.
Follow along live.
Former President Donald Trump wrapped up his rally at the Cobb Energy Center. He excoriated his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, and other Democrats for what he described as an out-of-control immigration system, leaning heavily on an issue that helped propel him to the White House for the first time in 2016. Read more about what he said there, and at an earlier town hall sponsored by Fox News, here.
As he and other Republicans have done for months, former President Donald Trump brought up the death of Athens nursing student Laken Riley to attack Democratic immigration policies under President Joe Biden.
Riley’s February death has become the example for conservatives of what they perceive as Biden’s failure to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.
The man charged with murder in Riley’s death, 26-year-old Jose Antonio Ibarra, is a Venezuelan migrant who authorities say entered the country illegally in 2022.
In October 2023, Ibarra and his brother Diego Jose Ibarra were issued citations after being accused of shoplifting in Athens-Clarke County, but they were not deported.
Trump called the suspect a “savage monster” and renewed a pledge to “launch the largest deportation program” in the nation’s history if he’s elected.
“I will rescue every town across the country that has been invaded and conquered.”
A judge stopped a planned hand count of ballots on election night in Georgia, ruling Tuesday that it would create “administrative chaos” if poll workers were required to handle millions of ballots without being trained.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney put the State Election Board’s hand-count requirement on hold primarily because it was approved so close to Election Day. The manual review would have counted the number of ballots but not votes.
Keep reading here.
Former President Donald Trump drew some of his loudest applause when he said illegal immigration should be a bigger factor in the November vote than the economy and inflation.
“We don’t want them in this country,” Trump said of migrants who enter the U.S. illegally. “We’re getting them out of this country fast. I think it’s bigger than the economy.”
The latest signal the yearslong feuding between Donald Trump and Gov. Brian Kemp has been put to rest came moments after the former president took the stage at the Cobb Energy Center.
“Brian Kemp has done a really good job,” Trump said of the governor he blamed for costing him Georgia in the 2020 election.
During Trump’s last rally in Atlanta, he spent 10 minutes tearing apart the governor, his allies and his wife, Marty. But since that Aug. 3 event, the two have brokered a truce. And Kemp has cemented their alliance by directing his political machine to go all-in for Trump.
"Radical left lunatics." "Sick." "Stupid." "Evil."
Former President Donald Trump continued his trademark name-calling on Tuesday during a town hall event that will air on Fox News at 11 a.m. Wednesday.
Federal Emergency Management Agency workers were "radical left lunatics."
Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is "sick" and "evil."
And many Democrats are the true "threat to democracy."
Trump's quips mostly elicited laughs and applause as he answered questions from the all-women audience.
When asked about his recent comments about there being enemies both within and outside of the country, Trump said Democrats are just as dangerous.
"We have China, we have Russia, we have all these countries," Trump said. "If you have a smart president, they can all be handled. The more difficult - the Pelosis, these people, they're so sick and they're so evil. If they would spend their time trying to make America great again, we would have - it would be so easy to make this country great."
During a Fox News town hall in Cumming, Donald Trump was asked to respond to comments made by U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock earlier in the day ahead of the former president's visit.
During a press conference, Warnock said that choosing not to vote is the same as voting for Trump and said it was dangerous to send him back to the White House.
"I don’t know this guy, but he got lucky as hell to win, I’ll tell you that much," Trump said.
Trump endorsed failed Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker, who was defeated by Warnock in 2022.
Former President Donald Trump, again, falsely claimed during a town hall in Forsyth County that most legal scholars and most people in the country did not want the federal government regulating abortion.
Trump was in Georgia on Tuesday evening to participate in a FOX News town hall before an audience of about 100 women who support the former president. The town hall was framed as being about "women's issues."
A woman who identified herself as Pamela from Cumming asked Trump to explain his position on abortion. Attendees were instructed not to share their last names.
"Women are entitled to do what they want to and need to do with their bodies, including their unborn," she said. "That's on them, regardless of the circumstance. Some are necessary to save their own lives. Why is the government involved in women's basic rights?"
Trump said some states have loosened regulations, but FOX News anchor Harris Faulkner pointed out that some states have made it difficult to get an abortion.
"It's going to be redone," he said. "You'll end up with the vote of the people. And some of them, I agree, they're too tough. Too tough. And those are going to be redone because already there's a movement in those states."
Every state where abortion has been on the ballot, voters have supported allowing the procedure to be done. In Georgia, constitutional questions can only be placed on the ballot if they make it through the the Legislature with two-thirds support in each chamber. That is unlikely to happen here since Republicans control both chambers and the governor's office.
More than 300,000 Georgians cast ballots on the first day of early voting - far surpassing the previous record.
Gabriel Sterling, the chief deputy to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, confirmed the total had topped 300,000 late Tuesday. In 2020, about 136,000 people voted on the first day of early voting, and about 134,000 people voted on the same day in 2022.
Every Donald Trump rally also doubles as a preview of the battle for his favor in Georgia’s next statewide campaign. And the former president’s event in Cobb County on Tuesday was no exception.
Insurance Commissioner John King, former U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, former U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lt. Gov. Burt Jones were among the speakers who could be jockeying for Trump’s endorsement – and against each other – in the next election cycle.
“This man loves his country. He loves the people of the country, and he wants to see what’s in the best interest of his country,” Jones said of Trump.