Protests in Georgia

Happy Friday! Did we pick our two main stories today solely for the headline wordplay possibilities? Who’s to say.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• The Russian military launched a large-scale missile attack on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities Thursday, deploying a more sophisticated class of weaponry capable of evading defense systems and killing at least six civilians. Ukrainian officials said their forces intercepted just 34 of the 81 missiles fired—and four of eight Iranian-made exploding drones—resulting in hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians losing heat and electricity. The barrage also reportedly knocked out power at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant for several hours, raising the specter of a meltdown.
• Citing “two people familiar,” the Washington Post reported Thursday Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has “indicated privately” he will launch a bid for the Republican nomination—likely after Florida’s legislative session wraps up in May. Former Virginia attorney general and Trump administration official Ken Cuccinelli launched a Super PAC yesterday to “encourage” DeSantis to enter the race, and it will likely “serve as an approved outside spending vehicle for his campaign,” according to the Washington Post report. DeSantis is scheduled to visit Iowa and Nevada—both early primary states—this weekend as part of his book tour.
• The New York Times reported Thursday Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has invited former President Donald Trump to appear before the grand jury investigating his business practices, including hush money payments to an adult film star. The invitation may signal a looming indictment from a probe launched in 2019.
• The Mexican drug cartel suspected of kidnapping four Americans and killing two of them last week in Matamoros issued an apology Thursday and turned over five of its members to local authorities. “We decided to hand over those directly involved and responsible for the acts,” the letter—which authorities believe is authentic—reads. “[They] acted under their own determination and indiscipline and against the rules in which the [Gulf Cartel] always operates.” The remains of the two Americans killed were transferred to U.S. diplomatic authorities yesterday.
• France’s Senate on Thursday approved a controversial pension reform bill raising the country’s retirement age from 62 to 64, beating a Sunday legislative deadline. The proposal—which has sparked months of strikes and protests across the country—will go to mediation between the Senate and National Assembly next week before its likely final passage later this month.
• Suspected members of the ISIS-affiliated Allied Democratic Force killed at least 40 people late Wednesday and early Thursday in an eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo beset with militia violence. DRC officials said the attack—which occurred just before a planned visit by a United Nations Security Council delegation—was likely retaliation for a military crackdown on rebel groups.
• The Senate voted 54-42 on Thursday—with six Republicans joining most Democrats—to confirm Daniel Werfel as commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service after he was nominated by President Joe Biden late last year. Werfel will serve a five-year term atop the agency.
• Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia confirmed Thursday the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight will launch a probe into the now-dissolved House January 6 Select Committee and security failures during the riot at the Capitol. Loudermilk, who chairs the subcommittee, will lead the investigation, which may also touch on the treatment of January 6 defendants.
• A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell confirmed Thursday the Kentucky Republican is being treated for a concussion after tripping and falling at a dinner event in Washington, D.C. Wednesday night. McConnell, 81, is expected to remain in the hospital for a few days for observation.
• The Department of Labor reported Thursday initial jobless claims—a proxy for layoffs—rose by 21,000 week-over-week to a seasonally-adjusted 211,000, the largest such increase since October. Despite the jump, the figure remains near historic lows.

Clashing Over “Cop City”

In 2015, Atlanta’s police department asked the Atlanta Police Foundation—a nonprofit devoted to fundraising for and developing the city’s law enforcement—to sketch out ideas for a new training center. Eight years later, controversy surrounding the project—now dubbed the Atlanta Police Training Center—has led to arson and Molotov cocktails, one dead activist, and dozens more detained and charged with domestic terrorism.

Despite entrenched opposition from a coalition of conservationists, anti-police activists, and others, city officials are forging ahead with a plan they say will give the city’s first responders much-needed training facility updates. Planned for 85 acres of a 380-acre tract the city of Atlanta owns in DeKalb County, the center would replace the rented—and in some cases rundown—buildings first responders have been using to train. The design calls for a firing range, driving track, kennel, and stable, as well as classrooms and other mock city locations. “We need to make sure officers are prepared for real-life scenarios, like if you have a shooting in a nightclub or a gas station,” a spokesman for Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said. The presence of those buildings—as well as 30 acres set aside for green space and walking trails—has prompted opponents to dub the planned facility “Cop City.” The Atlanta Police Foundation has agreed to raise $60 million of the expected $90 million price tag, with the city picking up the rest of the bill.

After 17 hours of largely negative public comments, the Atlanta City Council greenlit the plan in September 2021—and opposition has only grown since then. Activists argue the project will remove green space that helps cushion Atlanta from rising temperatures and that the training facility will foster police violence. Opponents have held marches and camped in the area in an effort to slow development, but some have also sabotaged equipment and vandalized construction areas. In January, during an attempt to clear a protest site, police shot and killed an environmental activist who had allegedly shot and injured an officer—a claim activists dispute. Days later, about 100 people descended on downtown Atlanta in protest of the killing, and a handful of them—dressed in all black—smashed bank windows, set off fireworks, and lit a police car on fire. Several explosive devices were recovered from the scene, and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp declared a state of emergency and activated 1,000 National Guard troops.

Fast forward to last weekend, a group of protesters and agitators approached the Atlanta Police Training Center construction area and, according to Atlanta police, “began to throw large rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks at police officers,” and ultimately “destroyed multiple pieces of construction equipment by fire and vandalism.” Though the police department said no one on the force was injured, video of the encounter last weekend appears to show officers frantically trying to lock a gate while a mob of agitators—again dressed in all black, several equipped with riot shields—lob fireworks at them from behind a fence.

Police allege the group used a larger, more peaceful gathering as cover for a coordinated attack, changing their clothing and returning to the peaceful music event after attacking the facility. All but two of the 23 arrested Sunday and charged with domestic terrorism weren’t from Georgia, officials said, bolstering the police’s case they were outside agitators seeking anarchy. At least 35 people total have been arrested at the training site on similar charges, which carry a sentence of up to 35 years in prison. Human Rights Watch and other groups have criticized the charges, arguing they’re intended to deter protests and rely on an overly broad interpretation of domestic terrorism as any felony intended to “disable or destroy critical infrastructure, a state or government facility” to “coerce the policy of the government.”

Atlanta’s decision to invest in police training has frustrated activists pushing for reduced police funding following a spate of high-profile police killings, including the 2020 shooting of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta. But city officials have long touted the planned facility as a potential antidote to those problems, helping the city retain good officers and train them effectively. “This training facility will not only help boost morale, retention and recruitment of our public safety personnel,” said Keisha Lance Bottoms, Atlanta’s former Democratic mayor, when the center was approved. “[It] will give us physical space to ensure that our officers and firefighters are receiving 21st century training, rooted in respect and regard for the communities they serve.”

But many activists don’t buy that line. “Less people with guns, more actually interacting with the community,” Kamau Franklin, protest organizer and founder of Community Movement Builders, told ABC News. Groups opposing the facility have claimed the mockup city will be used to train police in “urban warfare.” 

While the overwhelming percentage of police interactions with civilians are peaceful, when incidents like the recent fatal beating of Tyre Nichols still dominate the news, it’s easy to understand why residents might be leery even of touted reform efforts. Just this week, the Department of Justice released the searing results of its two-year investigation of Louisville, Kentucky’s police department after the police killing of Breonna Taylor in a no-knock raid gone wrong. The report revealed aggressive and illegal policing tactics—officers hurled racist insults, used unnecessary neck restraints, and filmed themselves throwing drinks at pedestrians. The DOJ also found public scrutiny of a special anti-crime unit led not to real reform but to rebranding and continued use of aggressive and unlawful policing tactics.

Yet, as we noted just this Monday, sweeping promises to diminish police presence in many cities made in 2020 have since given way to renewed efforts to crack down on crime. The Senate has now voted to overturn Washington, D.C.’s long-pending criminal code overhaul, and President Joe Biden—who in 2020 resisted calls to “defund the police” but supported conditioning federal funding on force diversity and “decency”—has pledged not to veto the measure. In Chicago, rising crime rates helped sink Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s reelection bid. 

Even in the face of the vehement and sometimes violent opposition, Atlanta’s new training center has the support of the heavily Democratic city government and garnered little political criticism elsewhere. While Rep. Nikema Williams, who represents the area in Congress, pledged to “stand on the side of protesters” as well as law enforcement, Georgia’s two Democratic Senators were more circumspect when approached by Axios. Sen. Raphael Warnock argued protest “needs to be non-violent” and called on local officials to “work with the citizens of Atlanta,” while Sen. Jon Ossoff was more blunt. “Peaceful protest and the expression of opposition or support to a land-use plan or the siting of a specific facility somewhere is a sacred constitutional right,” he said. “What is not constitutionally protected speech is Molotov cocktails.”

Georgian Protesters Stave Off Putin-Style Reforms

You’re at a protest downtown with thousands of other people when police begin blaring sirens and demanding you go home. Do you disperse? Or do you use the sirens as a soundtrack for a street rave?

If you chose the latter option, you’d fit right in in Georgia—the other one—where demonstrations continued into their third day on Thursday over a proposed law that opponents argue would give the government more power to scrutinize civil society groups. Georgia’s ruling party, Georgian Dream (GD), cracked under the pressure and announced their intention to withdraw the law and release the people detained during the protests, and lawmakers formally voted down the bill this morning.

Why did the proposed law prompt such a strong response from Georgian citizens? For starters, it closely resembled a 2012 Russian foreign agents law that provided the pretext for a government crackdown on civic organizations. If enacted, the Georgian law would’ve scrutinized media and non-government organizations that receive 20 percent of their funding from foreign sources, requiring the groups to register as a foreign agents. Critics of the legislation argued the law was designed to sow distrust in civil society organizations that seek to hold the government accountable. 

Georgian citizens have seen how this can go very wrong. Russia significantly expanded its “foreign agents” restrictions last December, further enabling the government to silence critics and undermine dissent. “For more than a decade, Russian authorities have used ‘foreign agents’ laws to smear and punish independent voices,” said Rachel Denber, deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. 

“The arguments that the government used for this law were practically, not even similar, but identical to those arguments that Vladimir Putin himself used when he introduced this law in Russia,” Giorgi Kandelaki, a former member of the Georgian parliament, told The Dispatch. “With the introduction of this law, the Georgian drift towards the Russian orbit was considerably accelerated.”

Georgia was invaded by Russia in 2008, and the Russian military still controls approximately 20 percent of the country’s territory. Public opinion polls demonstrate an overwhelming majority of Georgians view Russia as a political threat, which helps explain why the new law became such a flashpoint. “People who have never ever demonstrated, never ever taken part in political events, went to the streets,” Kandelaki said. 

But in recent years, the country’s ruling GD party hasn’t always reflected the people’s anti-Moscow sentiment. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Georgian government has waffled on joining European Union and U.S. sanctions despite popular support for Ukraine’s defense.

The ruling party has in recent years consolidated political power, taking steps to undermine the independence of the judiciary and restructuring election proceedings to benefit the incumbent party. “The four- or five-year trend is the accumulation of power by Georgian Dream,” Ian Kelly, the former U.S. Ambassador to Georgia, said in an interview. “The way the election law is now really favors the party in power, so [GD] has many more seats in parliament than was reflected in the overall vote.”

A central figure in GD is Bidzina Ivanishvili, a Georgian billionaire who made his wealth through Russian investments in the 1990s. Ivanishvili founded GD in 2012, served as prime minister between 2012 and 2013, and served as GD party chair until 2021. While Ivanishvili has officially retired from politics, some observers believe he remains a guiding force in the government. A former State Department official told The Dispatch that there are no big decisions made without Ivanishvili’s approval, and that he dislikes non-government organizations and independent media he views as favorable to Western interests.

But the wave of opposition to the foreign agents law has highlighted the gap between popular opinion and Ivanishvili’s party. “What they’ve realized in the last few days is that there is another threat to their power,” said Kelly. “And that’s the people.”

Worth Your Time

• In his latest Politico column, National Review’s Rich Lowry picks up on a theme John Hart explored in a recent contribution, noting how Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign is positioning itself in opposition to Ronald Reagan. Lowry writes: “Once upon a time, pretty much every Republican wanted to be a Reagan Republican. If the Trump camp gets its way, Reaganism will have gone from passé in 2016 to an affirmative vulnerability in 2024,” he writes. “Trump wants to tempt DeSantis to try to follow him in his ‘Maga More Than Ever’ messaging, but the governor can only go so far down this path. He’s not going to peel off enough Trump voters to beat Trump. To win the nomination, DeSantis is going to need to win over a segment of Trump populists at the same time he locks down Republican voters who like Reagan more than Trump. (He presumably reached these types of voters with his speech to a packed auditorium at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library while Trump was at CPAC.) The Trump forces are going to try to make DeSantis’ roots in the party of Reagan disqualifying. Instead, played correctly, it can be a strength.”

Presented Without Comment 

Also Presented Without Comment 

Toeing the Company Line

• In the newsletters: Nick asks whether (🔒) Gov. Gavin Newsom of California crossed a line by openly retaliating against Walgreens for its refusal to sell abortifacients in certain states.
• On the podcasts: Steve and Jonah join Sarah on the Dispatch Podcast to recap the Tucker Tapes, break down the Senate vote on the D.C. crime bill, and discuss the rising Chinese threat. 
• On the site: Bennett Murray reports on Russia’s ongoing offensive from Ukraine’s Bakhmut region, Charlotte covers the prospect of rapprochement between two key U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific, and Price examines gain-of-function research and its implications for Congress’ probe into COVID-19’s origins. 

Let Us Know

Are the battles over Atlanta’s police facility a preview of the coming political fights over crime during the 2024 election cycle?