By Jill Nolin | Editor
We have new commentary today from columnist Jay Bookman, who attempts to square the policies of the newly minted Republican nominee for governor with the candidate’s pledge to remember “the families that are working harder than ever but are still falling behind.”
Rick Jackson, who is the Republican nominee for governor, has made his difficult childhood the centerpiece of his campaign. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder
COMMENTARY
By Jay Bookman
By now, anybody who owns a TV set in Georgia knows that Rick Jackson came up the hard way.
He’s proud of his rise out of poverty, and he has every right to be. His story of personal triumph – and the hundreds of millions of dollars that came with that triumph – have been central to his climb out of political obscurity and his victory in the Republican primary for governor.
“When you grow up the way I did, you never forget where you came from,” Jackson told us repeatedly on the campaign trail and in TV ads. “You never forget the families that are working harder than ever but are still falling behind.”
That’s a popular sentiment, but what does it mean?
Erika Christensen, left, with her husband, Garin, and her daughter in New York in 2018. Christensen and her husband founded Patient Forward, a nonprofit organization that advocates for later abortion access, after she had to fly to Colorado from New York to terminate a pregnancy with severe complications in 2016. (Photo courtesy of Erika Christensen)
REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
By Kelcie Moseley-Morris
In the four years since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, access to all abortion in more than a dozen states has dramatically decreased. During that same time, some clinics have expanded later abortion offerings, and advocates are pushing for many of the 21 states that have bans after 18 weeks to drop them.
Some project optimism about the support for repealing gestational bans, while others are taking a more incremental approach based on their assessments of political realities and general discomfort about the subject even from abortion-rights advocates. Other abortion-rights advocates continue to focus on expanded access earlier in pregnancy, including ballot initiatives to reverse abortion bans.
Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol on June 24, 2026. The hall was set up for a ceremony in which President Donald Trump would sign into law a broadly bipartisan housing bill, but Trump abruptly canceled the event. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
DC BUREAU
By Jacob Fischler and Jennifer Shutt
President Donald Trump derailed a housing overhaul that he was set to sign into law Wednesday, canceling a signing ceremony for the broadly popular bipartisan bill until Congress passes an election security measure.
Trump had been scheduled to sign the bill, which passed the Senate Monday and House Tuesday with wide margins, during a Capitol ceremony.
But in a pair of social media posts prior to the event, he derided the overhaul aimed at lowering housing costs as “minor” before refusing to sign it entirely.
A 250th anniversary flag on the Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building, location of the vice president’s office, on 17th Street NW in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, May 5, 2026. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
DC BUREAU
By Ashley Murray
Parties, protests, displays of historic documents, odes to the Founding Fathers — and a massive political rally by the president — will mark a deeply polarized nation’s 250th anniversary on this Fourth of July.
Pomp and circumstance will abound for the semiquincentennial as the similarly named America250 and Freedom 250 offer different slates of programming on Independence Day and beyond.
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ICYMI FROM THE RECORDER
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