Georgia Governor Kemp says, "Special session to impeach Willis is 'not feasible and may be unconstitutional'.”

Echo report published in the Georgia Recorder by Stanley Dunlap and Ross Williams: Georgia Governor Brian Kemp chastised a state lawmaker for demanding a special legislative session in order to impeach the Fulton County Georgia prosecutor leading a sweeping election collusion case against the former guy Donald Trump and his inner circle.

Kemp joined state House Speaker Jon Burns on the list of Georgia GOP elected officials who have rejected Trenton Republican Sen. Colton Moore’s calls for a special session to punish Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for prosecuting the former president and 18 co-defendants on allegations that they illegally conspired to overturn the 2020, presidential election results in Georgia and several other states.

Holding a special session by the end of the year has always been a long shot that not only would require the governor’s support but it would have required three-fifths of both the House and Senate to sign on. Some of Georgia’s Democratic state lawmakers would have to go along with a proposed special session, making it a political non-starter.

Former buy US President Donald Trump and all 18 of his co-defendants in Georgia’s election interference case have turned themselves in to face charges, meeting a deadline for their surrender.

Kemp cast Moore’s effort as misguided, comparing it to calls in 2020, to call a special session to overturn Trump’s narrow election loss to Democratic President Joe Biden, which Kemp also rejected.

“Fast forward to today, nearly three years later, memories are fading fast. There have been calls by one individual in the General Assembly and echoed outside of these walls by the former president for a special session that would ignore current Georgia law and directly interfere with the proceedings of a separate but equal branch of government.”

Moore is taking criticism for using dangerous language colleagues have characterized as inciting violence and posting contact information for Republicans who have spoken against his plan to call for a special session.

The former mayor of New York City, (aka, the drunkard friend of "the former guy" Trump) who also previously served as Trump’s personal lawyer, Giuliani faces the same number of charges as Trump – more than any other co-defendant. Prosecutors have accused Giuliani of spearheading the effort in Georgia by making false statements and soliciting false testimony, conspiring to create phoney paperwork, and asking state lawmakers to violate their oath of office.

He has denied any wrongdoing. He surrendered on Wednesday and was released on $150,000 bond.

Brietbart "Barfcart!"

(😏Ugh!- Paleeze!) "We need to be taking action right now, because if we don’t, our constituents are going to be fighting in the streets,” he said Tuesday, on an episode of Steve Bannon’s (barf-cart!) War Room. “Do you want a civil war?"- "OMG"  "I don’t want a civil war. I don’t want to have to draw my rifle. I want to make this problem go away with my legislative means of doing so, and the first step to getting that done is defunding Fani Willis.”

On Tuesday, Burns called for a lowering of the political temperature, writing in a letter to the Republican caucus that attempts to punish Willis “flaunts the idea of separation of powers, if not outright violates it.”

Other Republican senators have floated the idea of using the state’s new prosecutor oversight commission to investigate Willis, including Sen. Clint Dixon, who said he would submit a formal complaint on October 1, the first day the oversight group will be accepting complaints.

“Once the Prosecutorial Oversight Committee is appointed in October, we can call on them to investigate and take action against Fani Willis and her efforts that weaponize the justice system against political opponents,” the Gwinnett Republican wrote in a social media post. “This is our best measure, and I will be ready to call for that investigation.”

But Governor Kemp also casted doubt on a plan that has also been promoted by Senate Majority Leader Steve Gooch, the chamber’s third ranking member behind Butts County Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a potential defendant in the election case.

Governor Kemp said the new oversight board gives the public some legal recourse against local prosecutors who they believe are acting unethically.

“Up to this point, I have not seen any evidence that D.A. Willis’ actions or lack thereof warrant action by the Prosecuting Attorney Oversight Commission, but that will ultimately be a decision that the commission will make,” Kemp said. “Regardless, in my mind, a special session of the General Assembly to end run around this law is not feasible and may ultimately prove to be unconstitutional.”

A special prosecutor is supposed to be appointed to decide whether or not to prosecute Jones, who as a state senator in 2020, served as a false GOP elector and also urged lawmakers to hold a special session in order to contest Biden’s nearly 12,000 vote victory over Trump. Earlier this year, a judge disqualified Willis from pursuing any charges against Jones since she raised money for the eventual Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in 2022.

In an interview published Tuesday in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Gooch said he is open to holding legislative hearings to consider punishing Willis after the regular session resumes in January. The prosecutor’s oversight process is another option, he said.

In August, Jones appointed three prosecutors to serve on the oversight commission that could be asked to investigate Willis.

“She’s politicizing this and we want to make sure these people get a fair trial and a fair shake,” Gooch told the AJC (Atlanta Journal Constitution).

Willis defended her decisions in the case as being an unbiased prosecution of concerted efforts to disrupt the election processes in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and other states. On August 14, she unveiled a 51-count indictment accusing Trump and his co-defendants of racketeering.❗

Also, Trump asked a judge to waive his upcoming arraignment as he entered a not guilty plea on 13 charges that allege he was a key ringleader in an election collusion criminal enterprise.

On August 14, Fulton grand jury indictments resulted in multiple felony counts against 19 defendants, including Trump and his former personal attorneys Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, ex-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and several false Electoral College voters, including freshman Georgia state Sen. Shawn Still, a Norcross Republican, and David Shafer, a former Georgia Republican Party chairman and state legislator.

Read the 98-page indictment here.

Pushing back on revisionism: Teaching American racial history in the nation's National Parks

Echo report by Ariana Figueroa published in the Georgia Recorder newspaper:

WASHINGTON, DC — On what would have been the 82nd birthday of Emmett Till (born on July 25, 1941 in Chicago, Ill.), a Black boy kidnapped and murdered by two white men in Mississippi (died August 28, 1955, in Drew, MS), President Joe Biden on Tuesday designated a new national monument at sites connected to the lynching that became a catalyst for the civil rights movement.

The Emmett Till historical marker outside the Tallahatchie County Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, where Emmett Till’s murderers were tried by an all-white jury and acquitted. (Photo courtesy National Parks Conservation Association)

“Telling the truth and the full history of our nation is important,” Biden said. “For only with truth comes healing, justice, repair, and another step forward toward forming a more perfect union. We’ve got a hell of a long way to go.”

The proclamation establishes 5.7 acres for the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument across three separate sites. Before signing it, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took aim at states dominated by Republican state legislatures that have passed laws banning the teaching of certain lessons related to race and diversity, as well as conservative campaigns to ban books about Black history in public schools and libraries.

The Tallahatchie County Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, the site of Emmett Till’s murder trial. © Alan Spears/NPCA. The courthouse was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2007 for its role in the Till story and its Richardsonian Romanesque architecture. That same year, the Emmett Till Memorial Commission issued a public apology on behalf of the residents of Tallahatchie County to the Till family.

Vice-President Harris called out Florida, where the State Board of Education rewrote African American history standards to conclude that Black people benefited from slavery because they learned skills.

“Today there are those in our nation who would prefer to erase or even rewrite the ugly parts of our past, those who attempt to teach that enslaved people benefited from slavery, those who insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, who tried to divide our nation with unnecessary debates,” she said. “Let us not be seduced into believing that somehow we will be better if we forget. We will be better if we remember.”

Harris visited Jacksonville, Florida, last week, where she slammed the new guidelines and told a crowd that Florida’s book bans, LGBTQ+ rights restrictions and Black history revisions are part of a coordinated national right-wing agenda.

Since 2021, thousands of books have been banned and removed from library shelves and classrooms after campaigns by conservative activists, particularly by Moms for Liberty. The White House named a book banning coordinator in response.

“At a time when there are those who seek to ban books, bury history, we’re making (it) clear, crystal, crystal, clear how darkness and denialism can hide much, (but) they erase nothing,” Biden said. “We can’t just choose to learn what we want to know, we have to learn what we should know … the good, the bad, the truth of who we are as a nation.”

Three sites:

Biden, who was 12 at the time Till was murdered in 1955, at the age of 14, said the three sites not only tell the story of Till, but his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who was an educator and activist. She died in 2003.

One of the sites is at Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in the historic Black neighborhood of Bronzeville on Chicago’s South Side, where Till-Mobley demanded an open casket funeral to show how her son was brutalized.

The images of his unrecognizable face ran in newspapers and magazines, and his lynching became a driving force for the civil rights movement. Biden also commended the Black press for its work in reporting and deeply covering Till’s murder.

The other two sites are in Mississippi, one in Graball Landing, outside of Glendora on the banks of the Tallahatchie River, where it’s believed that Till’s body was found. The other site is the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner, where the trials for the men accused of his murder were held.

Till was lynched after a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, accused him of whistling at her and she told her husband, Roy Bryant, about it.

The two white men accused of his murder and torture, Roy Bryant and his brother J.W. Milam, were acquitted by an all-white jury.

In 2008, the community of Graball Landing established a sign, known as the Emmett Till memorial, to mark where it’s believed his body was found, but the sign has been replaced several times due to people vandalizing the sign and even shooting at it. The sign is now bulletproof, made of steel and weighs 500 pounds.

The National Park Service will manage the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument.

The state where two sites will be dedicated to Till in 2022, passed a law banning the teaching of critical race theory in K-12 education, reported Mississippi Today. CRT is a theoretical method in higher academic settings that is used to explore how the legal system can be used in perpetuating and remedying inequality.

Telling the story:

The national monument is an opportunity to tell the story of Emmett Till, said Eboni Preston Goddard, the Southeast Region Associate Director for the National Parks Conservation Association, which advocates for the protection of national monuments.

“It’s not about necessarily who killed Emmett Till, but what killed Emmett Till,” she said in an interview with States Newsroom.

Preston Goddard said it’s important to understand the inequity, injustice and racism that led to Till’s murder.

“Maybe today will be a new day for us to have these deeper conversations, for people to see just how hard and rough and difficult things like this have been as it’s impacted communities for generations,” she said, adding that her grandmother is 90 and “this is in her lifetime.”

Preston Goddard said it’s also important that Till’s mother is honored for her determination to have an open casket. The decision to show her son’s body was in defiance of Mississippi officials, who wanted Till quickly buried in Mississippi.

The president said Tuesday’s announcement is part of the Biden administration’s commitment to racial justice.

Last year (2022), Biden signed into law a bill to make lynching a federal crime, and named the bill in Till’s honor.

There have been more than 200 attempts to make lynching a federal hate crime, with the first effort starting in 1900, by U.S. Rep. George Henry White, a North Carolina Republican. More than 6,500 Black Americans were lynched between 1865 and 1950, according to the Equal Justice Initiative, which has tracked racial violence since the Civil War.

The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument is Biden’s fourth national monument designation. The other three are the Castner Range National Monument in Texas, Avi Kwa Ame National Monument in Nevada and Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument in Colorado.

A national monument can either be established by Congress or the president through the Antiquities Act of 1906.

The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument will also be near another national monument, the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument in Jackson, Mississippi, which honors the life and work of husband and wife civil rights activists.

Medgar Evers established an NAACP office in Jackson, Mississippi, and worked to integrate the University of Mississippi in 1962, before he was assassinated outside his home.