Georgia Today: DOJ sues Fulton County over 2020 election records; Senate rejects health care bills

Orlando Montoya: Hello and welcome to the Georgia Today podcast. Here we bring you the latest reports from the GPB newsroom. On today's episode, the U.S. Department of Justice sues Fulton County over records relating to the 2020 presidential election. The U.S. Senate rejects two bills addressing rising health care costs, and 90 new citizens are sworn in at a naturalization ceremony in Atlanta. 

Cindy Reynos Aguilar: People have been so kind — just, they're all so kind and welcoming and make things easy. So it's it's been a good journey. 

Orlando Montoya: Today is Friday, Dec. 12. I'm Orlando Montoya, and this is Georgia Today. 

Story 1:

Orlando Montoya: The U.S. Department of Justice is suing the Fulton County Board of Elections in the federal agency's pursuit of records relating to the 2020 presidential election. When Georgia's State Election Board subpoenaed Fulton County records related to the election, which, under state law, must remain sealed, county officials did not comply. Now, in a lawsuit filed in an Atlanta federal court today, the department says a provision of the Federal Civil Rights Act, originally meant to preserve and make available to the U.S. Attorney General documents related to Jim Crow-era practices like poll taxes, also makes the Fulton County records fair game. The records sought are all used and void ballots, stubs of all ballots, signature envelopes, and corresponding envelope digital files from the 2020 general election in Fulton County. The Trump administration also is suing Colorado, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Nevada for access to their voter rolls. 

Story 2:

Orlando Montoya: The U.S. Senate yesterday rejected two competing partisan bills aimed at addressing rising health care costs. Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the U.S. House is tackling that same concern by taking aim at pharmacy benefit managers. Those companies, often referred to as prescription drug middlemen, are accused of inflating drug prices. Two Georgia members of the U.S. House yesterday joined other colleagues in announcing the reintroduction of the quote "Pharmacists Fight Back Act." Pharmacist and Southeast Georgia Republican Buddy Carter spoke before Southwest Georgia Democrat Sanford Bishop. 

Buddy Carter: We want accessible, affordable, quality health care. That's what Rep. Bishop wants, that's what I want, that's what every member of Congress wants. We can bring drug prices down by reining in the PBMs. 

Orlando Montoya: Companies blame drugmakers for high prices and say they help control health care spending. 

Story 3:

Orlando Montoya: Around 90 new citizens were sworn in today at a naturalization ceremony in Atlanta, but as GPB's Sarah Kallis reports, not all those scheduled to be there attended. 

Sarah Kallis: Cindy Reynos Aguilar came to the U.S. in 2019 from Ecuador. She says she's feeling excited to finally become a U.S. citizen and she's hopeful for the road ahead. 

Cindy Reynos Aguilar: It's been good. People have been so kind as the man that — just, they're all so kind and welcoming and make things easy. So it's it's been a good journey. 

Sarah Kallis: The ceremony came at a time of heightened scrutiny around immigration. Earlier this month, President Trump suspended some immigration activities for people from 19 countries, including Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela. Court officials say three immigrants' ceremonies were canceled at the last minute, but they would not say why. For GPB News, I'm Sarah Kallis in Atlanta. 

Story 4:

Orlando Montoya: Savannah is banning new hotels in certain neighborhoods. The city's council voted yesterday to approve the ban in three neighborhoods just south of the city's most-visited area, the downtown historic landmark district. The move comes amid complaints from residents about over-tourism in Georgia's first city. Savannah Mayor Van Johnson says the measure balances a major economic driver with quality of life. 

Van Johnson: Everybody wants to visit Disneyland, but nobody wants to live in Disneyland. And so what makes us the city we are is because we're a great place to visit, but we're even a more phenomenal place to live. 

Orlando Montoya: The hotel ban applies to the Victorian, Streetcar, and Kyler Brownsville neighborhoods, but only to lodgings with 16 rooms or more, so inns and B&Bs are still permitted. 

Story 5:

Orlando Montoya: Southwest Georgia's Albany is to a large extent a company town, and that company is Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital. A new five-part investigative series by ProPublica investigates why, in a place like Albany, vast disparities in access to health care persist and have persisted for a long time. Reporter Ginger Thompson spoke with GPB's Peter Biello about her reporting. 

Peter Biello: So this series of stories is broadly about inequalities in health care access. Specifically, it's about how that works in the city of Albany. How did that become the place for you to crack open that topic? 

Ginger Thompson: I first went to Albany in 2020 when a lot of other reporters were thinking about Albany. The pandemic had hit the country, and out of nowhere, Albany became the fourth biggest hotspot in the world behind like Wuhan China China and New York City. And I think the world was a surprise by it. Albany was surprised to have found itself in that position. And I'm a longtime foreign correspondent. I parachute into places that are in crisis all the time. And so when I saw this happening in Albany, that's exactly what I intended to do: to go to this place and write about COVID and this community's response to COVID. 

Peter Biello: But when you got there you found that Albany to some extent acted as a microcosm for the rest of the country's relationship to healthcare. How so?

Ginger Thompson: So as I, you know, went in with my foreign correspondents, I I looked as much at the place as I did at the pandemic. And when you start to just look at Albany and say, "What is this place?" You learn quickly that it has some of the highest rates of chronic conditions in Georgia. So COVID was terrible, epic and devastating. But the reason that the community was so vulnerable to COVID was because it had been so sick in the first place. And then you see that it, you know, the dominant institution in Albany — politically, economically, and certainly as it concerns healthcare — is a hospital, Phoebe Putney Memorial, which had grown in the last three decades from a small sort of county run facility into the flagship of a sprawling health system. And so while so much about Albany had been on a decline for three decades, Phoebe Putney Memorial had been on an ascent. And what I wanted to know was how are those two things connected? And I thought if I could answer some of the questions, they were questions that went beyond Albany, and that would speak to the health care system writ large. 

Peter Biello: This series has a lot of experts and community leaders passing through it, a lot of history, and one story stands out in your reporting. The constant is the story of Dr. Anthony Parker and his wife, Sandra. Sandra shares a little bit about their experience. 

Sandra Parker: We still have questions, no doubt. He went in for an ablation and he's not here with us anymore. He would want to make sure that whatever happened doesn't happen again. So I hope that the problems can be fixed because Phoebe's all that Albany has. 

Peter Biello: What is the problem that she is referring to there?

Ginger Thompson: What was so moving to me about the Parker family and what happened to the Parker family is that if anyone should get good care at Phoebe Putney Memorial, it is Dr. Anthony Parker. He was a part of the Phoebe family. He was one of the few African Americans invited to be on the board of the health system. He and his family had long years of a very close relationship with Phoebe and had every faith in it when they went through, when they went to this, to have this procedure, even though over the years they, too, had heard numerous horror stories from people that were close to them, their own, you know, close friends, co-workers. And so Phoebe is a very powerful institution in town. Albany is, as you described, a company town. And it, Phoebe, is sort of the GM of of Albany, just the way that GM was in Detroit. And so, you know, very few people who have felt that they didn't get the care that they or their loved ones should have from Phoebe didn't have the power to fight it, didn't have the power to stand up against it. And Mrs. Parker did. And so telling her story was sort of you know — the reason she stood out to me. Is because she, unlike so many others, could actually fight and did. And she allowed me to sort of follow her as she went through that fight. 

Peter Biello: You reached out to the CEO of Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, Scott Steiner, and had conversations with him. I wanna play a little bit of what he told you about why Phoebe approaches things the way that it does. 

Scott Steiner: I think there's always a dilemma of "How do we continue to serve our community if you can't pay for it?" That is part of our mission statement, that we provide that service regardless of race, religion, and the ability to pay. But we're always trying to balance that out to paying the bills because we don't get anything for free. 

Peter Biello: So what do you make of his comments about how Phoebe runs the business? 

Ginger Thompson: It's one of the most important parts of my many years of conversations with Scott Steiner and who I'm really grateful for how responsive he has been over the years to our reporting. You know, we — and I say this in the story — we as Americans, we cling to this idea of our health care system as a public service. And in many wealthy countries, it is just that. But in the United States, it's a business. First and foremost, it's a business. And while it's not like, you know, Home Depot, it's not selling 2x4s, it is a business. And, you know, another thing that Scott Steiner told me in that interview is that, you know, at a supermarket, if you're hungry, you can't just go into the store and fill up your cart and walk out without paying. And the same is true for hospitals. You know, you go in and get services and sure, the mission is real. Providing care for everybody who walks in without, you know, regard for whether they can pay is a real thing. But even that has its limits if you, as a hospital, have bills to pay as well. And so what he is saying there is that: that this is a business and it has to, you know, make decisions that are good for the business if it's going to keep its doors open and serve anyone.

Peter Biello: Well, Ginger Thompson, reporter for ProPublica, thank you so much for speaking with me about your reporting. Really do appreciate it. 

Ginger Thompson: Thank you for your time. Really appreciate it. 

Orlando Montoya: That was GPB's Peter Biello talking with ProPublica's Ginger Thompson. Her five-part series is called "Sick in a Hospital Town."

Story 6:

Orlando Montoya: The Georgia Ports Authority's Appalachian Regional Port moved a record number of containers in November. The agency on Thursday said the facility in Northwest Georgia's Murray County moved nearly 4,000 containers last month, a 35% jump from a year earlier. The Appalachian Regional Port, connected by rail to the port of Savannah, opened in 2018, taking freight traffic pressure off of Atlanta area highways and contributing to job growth in the region. 

Story 7:

Orlando Montoya: Joshua Roman picked up the cello as a toddler and by his 20s was celebrated for his music. But in 2021, he caught COVID and never recovered. His album, Immunity, traces his Long COVID journey through pieces for cello, some he composed. Now he's on tour to connect with other people with Long COVID and to help them find community in each other. Joshua Roman spoke to GPB's Sarah Zaslaw ahead of his performance Saturday at Atlanta's ABV Gallery. 

Joshua Roman: The main thing was that I just didn't get better. My COVID itself didn't have the flu-like symptoms. It was mostly the weird symptoms like loss of taste and smell, the incredibly intense fatigue, the brain fog, very strange neurological things. And when I got my sense of taste and smell back, other things just didn't quite come back. I still couldn't go up the stairs. I still couldn't walk very far. I couldn't read. 

I stopped after a couple of performances that I had. These performances were the only performances on the calendar, generally because of COVID. Everything was canceled. And so I pushed through and I crashed really hard. And you know, when I'm talking about a crash, I'm somebody who used to run the mile in under six minutes and then go off and play a concert the same day. And a crash looks like me not being able to open my eyes, not being able to speak, sometimes not even being able to get off the ground or lift my arm to indicate what I might need in that moment. 

And I thought, well, like, what's the point anyway? Is music so important to me that I should brute force my way and further harm myself? But what that actually allowed me to do was face questions and doubts that I think I had pushed away prior to that. And eventually I pretty much had decided to leave music. And then I picked up the cello because I'd promised a friend I would play for her party, and it was actually the cello that brought me back. It was holding it again, feeling the vibrations. 

The cello is the size of a human. And you put it against your chest, you hold it between your knees, you're using both arms. Its people have described it as like a hug. And when I felt those vibrations again, it was one of the few times in my life that I've been moved to tears — just by the feeling of music moving through me with no one else around. And in that moment, I was reminded that it's important for me to have a place, and that that place is not perfect and that it's very human, and actually that's part of why it's good. So now I'm back, and now I have a new tool as I continue my recovery from perfectionism, as it were.

Orlando Montoya: That was cellist Joshua Roman and his composition "Immunity." Roman performs on Saturday at 1 p.m. at ABV Gallery in Atlanta's East Atlanta neighborhood. The concert and its live stream are free. 

Caption

A portion of the Atlanta BeltLine is shown. Funding for the 22-mile path was secured in May 2022.

Credit: File photo

Story 8:

Orlando Montoya: Atlanta's popular walking and biking destination, the Beltline, has unveiled initiatives aimed at preparing for the FIFA World Cup. Soccer's biggest event, next summer in 16 North American cities, including Atlanta, promises to spur economic growth. The Beltline's Vice President for Economic Development, Kelvin Collins, said yesterday the organization is rolling out a small business toolkit. 

Kelvin Collins: This toolkit is designed to help small businesses prepare, position and profit. 

Orlando Montoya: The initiative includes training on attracting customers, applying for grants, and complying with regulations. In a Q&A, Beltline CEO Clyde Higgins said his No. 1 priority for the games is public safety on the Beltline. He said he's working with the Atlanta Police Department on the goal of zero incidents on the trail, which attracts about two and a half million visitors annually. 

Story 9:

Orlando Montoya: After a losing season, the Atlanta Braves are making personnel moves as they prepare for the 2026 season. GPB's Chase McGee has more on some of the changes. 

Chase McGee: The Braves picked up pitcher Robert Suarez as well as outfielder Mike Yastrzemski for a $23 million, two-year contract. Yastrzemski addressed the media about the move in a Thursday press conference. 

Mike Yastrzemski: I want to be a part of an organization that wins and with them showing me the commitment to giving me a two-year guaranteed deal, that gives me the availability to a 100% buy-in, be the best teammate I can and try to find any given way to to help them out. 

Chase McGee: Adding Yastrzemski to the outfield gives the team flexibility with some of their other stars in the outfield, like Ronald Acuña Jr., Michael Harris III, and Jerrickson Profar. The team's new manager, Walt Weiss, also has a decision to make about who he'll play at shortstop. For GPB News, I'm Chase McGee. 

And that's it for today's edition of Georgia Today. If you'd like to learn more about these stories, we have many of them up on our website, GPB.org/news. We always encourage you to hit "subscribe" on the podcast. That helps you and it helps us because you stay current with us in your feed just by hitting "subscribe." We love feedback. Send that to us at GeorgiaToday@GPB.org. I'm Orlando Montoya. I hope you have a great weekend. 

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For more on these stories and more, go to GPB.org/news