# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
"Women Reckon with a Changed World as Roe is Threatened"

# data[].attributes.body
Supreme Court looking to overturn Roe v. Wade.  Legislation to prohibit a specific abortion procedure, the so-called “partial-birth” abortion procedure, was passed in the 108th Congress. The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act appears to be one of the only examples of Congress restricting the performance of a medical procedure. Legislation that would prohibit the performance of an abortion once the fetus reaches a specified gestational age has also been introduced in numerous Congresses. As for the executive branch, Joe Biden and the Democratic party have stood beside the legal right for abortions.

# data[].attributes.body
The federal government wanted authority to make plans to restart or reset the economy .the state governors were banding together to create their own plans with the economy(group 4)

# data[].attributes.headline
Federalism in the news(group 4)(updated with members names)

# data[].attributes.subject
Federalism in the news(group 4)(updated with members names)

# data[].attributes.body
Group 4 members- Wema Imoite, Donya Evans, Desante Rush, Capriella Covin, Shacarah Heath, Jamil Williamson
The federal government wanted total authority on making plans on how to restart the economy but state governors were banding together to create their own plans. Trump jumped in and declared total authority and said states simply cant have independence.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
President Donald Trump has declared his latest "us vs. them" war - portraying himself as the valiant captain overseeing insurgent governors.

The battle lines were drawn as governors started banding together to create their own plans on restarting their economies amid the coronavirus pandemic. Trump jumped in to declare "total" authority over those decisions, mockingly comparing any resistance to "Mutiny on the Bounty" and proclaiming that states can't simply have "Independence."

To many allies, the president is merely asserting his crisis powers during an economically crippling pandemic that demands a strong response. But to governors, mostly Democrats, Trump is beating his chest about authorities that even some conservative legal scholars agree he doesn't have, frustrated he might lose the spotlight, especially before November's election.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Trump takes back spotlight in 'us vs. them' war with states

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
President Donald Trump has declared his latest "us vs. them" war - portraying himself as the valiant captain overseeing insurgent governors. The battle lines were drawn as governors started banding together to create their own plans on restarting their economies amid the coronavirus pandemic.

# data[].attributes.headline
Federalism in the news group 2(jaila,Reese,octavious )

# data[].attributes.subject
Federalism in the news group 2(jaila,Reese,octavious )

# data[].attributes.body
Due to the lack of national leadership cities and states our taking the covid cases into their own hands . Some cities are starting to figure out other ways to help people by food etc . Also the lack of federal help with covid a lot because of low income family are struggling since a lot of jobs laid off people and they still have bills to pay. There has been many complaints that the federal government has behind in times like this .

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
EDITOR'S NOTE:&nbsp The Nation believes that helping readers stay informed about the impact of the coronavirus crisis is a form of public service. For that reason, this article, and all of our coronavirus coverage, is now free. Please subscribe to support our writers and staff, and stay healthy.

In the absence of national leadership, states and cities have stepped up to take charge of the coronavirus crisis and its unfathomable economic fallout. San Francisco early on took steps to mitigate spread among the city's highly vulnerable homeless population. New York state has enacted a 90-day moratorium on evictions. Cities like Seattle and Columbus are issuing emergency vouchers to help people buy food. It has largely been up to mayors and governors to decide how seriously to take the threat and how strenuously to respond. Even some Republicans, like Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, have won praise for their decisive actions. "This has been mostly a state and local effort," one county health official explained to Politico. "The federal government has been sort of behind the times." Indeed, Washington has essentially abandoned the states to their own devices.

Conservatives have cheered this as a triumph of federalism, proof that the founders' model of splitting responsibility between the states and the central government still works. The coming weeks will reveal the shortcomings of such an approach. Far from encouraging competition and thwarting authoritarianism, the ambiguous division of powers has effectively fractured the country. In the United States, Polly Price of Emory University explained, immediate responsibility for handling the pandemic rests not with the federal government but with "2,684 state, local, and tribal public-health departments." The Centers for Disease Control only offers nonbinding guidance for these smaller agencies. Though states and cities can take important steps to limit contagion, this patchwork of competing jurisdictions and overlapping authorities is too creaky and cumbersome for this crisis.

Conservative celebrations of federalism have also served to obscure the fact that their authors' own preference for candidates who seek to weaken the national government has undoubtedly had a hand in enfeebling the federal response and making the actions of states and cities necessary. Some say that if the federal government is ineffective, it's good to have power in the hands of the states-but the federal government is ineffective precisely because the ideology pushed by the right for at least 50 years has made it that way. During one of his terrifying news conferences last week, President Trump expressed his reluctance to invoke the Defense Production Act to force companies to manufacture ventilators, personal protective equipment, and other necessities. Trump said he didn't want to use it because "governors are supposed to be doing a lot of this work." Such reliance on state action is about to get us into big trouble.

It is hard to imagine anything ever going fully back to normal, and that includes our current fluid division of powers between the federal and state governments. In the near term, states and cities have to continue to step up to fight both the virus and the economic disruption that has already begun. But when the emergency is over, it will be necessary to take a hard look at the naive assumptions that prevented this country from mounting a timely and effective response. A political system that can be brought to its knees by a virus emanating from an obscure city in the Chinese hinterland-and with two months' notice to prepare-is perhaps not a system worth preserving.

At the very least, we should be raising difficult, long-postponed questions about how well the present constitutional system is fitted to the exigencies of contemporary life. Our inexcusably delayed response to the virus is not simply a failure of the Trump administration. The encounter with Covid-19 is a perfect case study in America's deep-seated dysfunction. The Atlantic 's Derek Thompson described the pandemic's effects in the United States thus far as "a kind of grotesque caricature of American federalism." We continue to worship the founders as far-seeing, even divinely inspired, political philosophers and constitutional craftsmen. But because the document they bequeathed to posterity nearly two and a half centuries ago is never clear, on almost any subject, about which powers and responsibilities belong to the states and which to the federal government, American politics ever since has been one extended debate-occasionally tipping over into violent struggle-over just what they actually meant.

The United States wouldn't be alone in seizing on the coronavirus outbreak as an invitation to reconsider long-accepted assumptions about the value of decentralized government. Switzerland is a much looser confederacy than the United States. But "in the face of a global pandemic," one Swiss paper argued, "federalism is definitely an outdated remedy." A similar debate has begun in Germany over the country's commitment to the principle of subsidiarity-the idea that decisions should be made as close to the local level as possible.

Some have tried, as the Harvard scholar Archon Fung recently did in Politico, to put a positive spin on the wholesale abdication of leadership by the federal government. "Just as the trauma of fighting World War II laid the foundations for a stronger American government and national solidarity," Fung wrote, "the coronavirus crisis might sow the seeds of a new civic federalism, in which states and localities become centers of justice, solidarity and far-sighted democratic problem-solving." Another way of putting this would be that America's postwar solidarity-such as it was-has definitively come to an end and the "stronger American government" it supported will soon be a thing of the past. If the worst-case scenarios come true, it may not be a "new civic federalism" that takes the place of our discredited mid-century mythologies, but something darker, more anarchic, less democratic-and far from progressive.

Current Issue

Absent federal leadership, New America's Anne-Marie Slaughter recently wrote in the Times, "America will save America" from the pandemic. She cheered evidence of a "horizontal, open society" working as it should, far preferable to a closed, top-down autocratic society like China. To Slaughter and others, the pandemic offers a war-like wake-up call to once more rally 'round the flag.

"We can use this crisis to create a better America," Slaughter suggested. Maybe. But if the crisis offers a one-time opportunity to rebuild the American political system, perhaps we should consider options other than focusing power in a single radically unrepresentative national government or the 50 wildly unequal states, the often-senseless creations of Gilded Age railroad interests and 17th-century royal decrees.

Instead of prematurely celebrating the leadership shown by states and cities as some kind of triumph of the American system, we ought to recognize it as a desperate grasping for the usual exceptionalist narrative at a time of systemic, world-historical national failure. Juliette Kayyem, a Homeland Security official under Obama, wrote in The Atlantic that Trump's abandonment of the states calls to mind the weaker union of the Articles of Confederation, under which states constantly put up trade barriers with one another. States are already vying over precious resources-competition that raises the costs for everyone. It's not inconceivable, once the virus spreads widely through Red State America-where denialist political and media figures have been consistently downplaying the seriousness of the pandemic-that armed checkpoints will go up on roads between states. It is almost as if the union is effectively dissolving before our eyes into its 50 component parts.

Our once widely admired federal system is obviously not up to the challenges of the modern world, or what will be left of it when all this is over. When the dust settles, rethinking the fundamental geography and architecture of government ought to be near the top of the agenda. Yet, while Trump's ham-handed leadership has slowed the national response, we should be equally wary of a turn toward erratic and autocratic solutions, state-of-emergency "exceptions" that might prove difficult, or even impossible, to repeal.

We are genuinely fortunate that some states and localities have been able to partially fill the vacuum left by national political dysfunction and the Trump administration's appalling mismanagement. But it has also become clear that action at the state level is too limited to really have a significant effect. That is why New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey have teamed up to contain and mitigate the outbreak. It's possible that further regional arrangements will transform in the months and years ahead into more formal interstate compacts or "consortiums," which band together to work out long-term arrangements regarding not only public health but also transportation, infrastructure, and climate change. That would be a good thing, suggestive of an alternate federal framework that could allow for both the scale of medium-size nations and the human-level responsiveness of smaller republics, without dangerously further empowering an already unstable national regime.

As with Trump, if there is any upside to this virus it is that it has revealed so much of what was already wrong with our country. It's "the disease that divided us," suggests one Bloomberg pundit-as if we were not deeply divided already. Bipartisan resistance to thoroughgoing constitutional reform has for far too long prevented us from adequately reckoning with the manifold crises besetting 21st century America. If a badly outdated political system is hindering our response to this unprecedented crisis, maybe the time has finally come to rethink it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
When Confronting the Coronavirus, Federalism Is Part of the Problem

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
EDITOR'S NOTE:&nbsp The Nation believes that helping readers stay informed about the impact of the coronavirus crisis is a form of public service. For that reason, this article, and all of our coronavirus coverage, is now free. Please subscribe to support our writers and staff, and stay healthy.

# data[].attributes.body
The Texas attorney general Ken Paxton agrees with Donald Trump to stop the ballots in the election between him and Biden (legislative branch) CNN calling it a huge stress test for no reason. The court dismissed the challenge indicating that Trump has no chance of overturning it in the courts (Judicial branch).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
supreme court rejects texas' and trump's bid to overturn election - cnnpolitics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Supreme Court rejects Texas' and Trump's bid to overturn election

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Supreme Court rejected a bid from Texas' attorney general -- supported by President Donald Trump -- to block the ballots of millions of voters in battleground states that went in favor of President Elect Joe Biden.

# data[].attributes.body
Shekniah newby
Isaac Moody

Jerica Jackson

Neri Humphrey

Luther Woullard

THE 28th AMENDMENT

Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman introduced the first version of a equal right amendment to congress in December 1923.  Its been in the making for nearly one hundred years according to Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney.  The 28th amendment is designed to to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex. It seeks to end the legal distinctions between men and women in terms of divorce, property, employment, and other matters. Anne T. Barron a trailblazer for women’s rights in the 1970’s following the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment died on Jan. 21 she was 100. Due to the efforts of Anne and other activist women, many women were assigned to the board of directors in major corporations.  There were also some major strides made in childcare and She also pushed for women to become firefighters and police which was at first unheard of.Some have argued that adding the equal rights amendment as the 28th amendment to the Constitution could pave the way to greater abortion access. This amendment would make it unconstitutional to deny access to abortion because it is denying healthcare.Jan. 26, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) helped clear the way for the Equal Rights Amendment, according to leading ERA advocates. Jan. 27, Reps. Speier, Maloney and 154 cosponsors announced the introduction of a resolution before the U.S. House affirming that the Equal Rights Amendment has been validly ratified and is now in effect as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.Which states Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
1970s relic no more: The Equal Rights Amendment is about to take effect. Or not.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Better late than never is an excellent principle when writing thank-you notes or repaying debts – but does it apply to amending the U.S. Constitution?

# data[].attributes.body
MAGA is seriously affecting federalism. It caused a lot of unwanted politic issues involving the separation of powers . It used to be where governments had the own powers over certain things. However, since MAGA has became a thing, a lot has changed over the time. This article stated that due to the republican governors ignoring/sabotaging their states basic health, this isn’t what federalism is supposed to be. This type of federalism has cost people their lives. The federal government may be held accountable for this pandemic since it is not considered a local problem. Republicans have also changed the election procedures and voting right with the type of federalism they use. It used to be a state matter ,however, they are working towards giving Republican state legislatures more power over the elections. The broken federalism now all comes back to the republicans and what they think is right.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Opinion | MAGA politics has broken federalism. For the country's sake, we need to repair it - carefully. - The Washington Post

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Progressives are seeking national correctives to state excesses. But minority influence needs protecting, too.

# data[].attributes.body
The CDC Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky told Reuters in an interview published on Tuesday , that now is not the time for states to discard mask mandates and that schools and other public places need to continue following mask mandates and protocols. The CDC goes hand and hand with Executive branch of government they help put in place these mandates for the Executive branch of government to carry out.

Gabrielle
Honor
Rodney
Ahmed

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Feb. 8 that local school districts should make decision on mask mandate based on "the science and data." (The Washington Post)
| Updated today at 4:02 a.m. EST
The Washington Post is providing this news free to all readers as a public service.

Follow this story and more by signing up for national breaking news email alerts.

The Biden administration on Tuesday stressed it does not object to decisions by New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and Oregon to soon lift mask mandates in schools - noting that the Democratic-led states still allowed decisions on face coverings to be made by parents and local school districts.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the four states permitted school districts to follow guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which continues to recommend universal masking in schools. The administration's "great concern" was political leaders stopping students from wearing masks even if school districts or their parents require them to do so, she told reporters.

"Our goal remains continuing to ensure that there is guidance that helps school districts stay open ... Ninety-eight percent of schools are open," she said. Her remarks came as the director of the CDC on Tuesday said "now is not the moment" to end masking requirements, after a major teachers union called for a review of CDC guidance as cases decline.

Here's what to know

While the number of new coronavirus cases is dropping in the United States, the seven-day average of deaths during the omicron surge has reached2,600 in recent days, the highest level the country has seen in a year.

Global coronavirus deaths increased for the fifth week in a row, with the number of fatalities increasing by 7 percent last week. World Health Organization officials called the trend tragic at a time of effective vaccinations.

Hawaii is in discussions about eliminating all restrictions on travel in the coming months - barring any more covid surges. Currently, travelers have to quarantine for five days unless they provide proof of vaccination or a negative test result.

The public health officials responsible for crafting the United States' covid-19 response will brief the public at 11 a.m. local time from the White House.

Coronavirus: What you need to read

The latest: California joins growing numbers of states saying mask mandates will end in coming weeks.See the latest coronavirus numbers.

Vaccines: Pfizer and BioNTech have sought emergency authorization of the first coronavirus vaccine for children under 5. FDA says it will review.

At-home tests: Medicare to offer free at-home tests from pharmacies, starting in early spring. Here's how to use at-home covid tests, where to find them and how they differ from PCR tests.

Mask guidance: The CDC has recommended better masks to protect against the omicron variant. Here's why N95s are so effective and how to safety reuse your N95 and KN95 masks.

MORE ON THE OMICRON VARIANT

HAND CURATED
For the latest news, follow our coronavirus live updates or sign up for our free newsletter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Covid-19 live updates: White House says no rift with blue states dropping school mask mandates

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Updated today at 4:02 a.m. EST The Washington Post is providing this news free to all readers as a public service. Follow this story and more by signing up for national breaking news email alerts.

# data[].attributes.body
The federal government wanted total authority on making plans on how to restart the economy but state governors were banding together to create their own plans. Trump jumped in and declared total authority and said states simply cant have independence.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
President Donald Trump has declared his latest "us vs. them" war - portraying himself as the valiant captain overseeing insurgent governors.

The battle lines were drawn as governors started banding together to create their own plans on restarting their economies amid the coronavirus pandemic. Trump jumped in to declare "total" authority over those decisions, mockingly comparing any resistance to "Mutiny on the Bounty" and proclaiming that states can't simply have "Independence."

To many allies, the president is merely asserting his crisis powers during an economically crippling pandemic that demands a strong response. But to governors, mostly Democrats, Trump is beating his chest about authorities that even some conservative legal scholars agree he doesn't have, frustrated he might lose the spotlight, especially before November's election.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Trump takes back spotlight in 'us vs. them' war with states

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
President Donald Trump has declared his latest "us vs. them" war - portraying himself as the valiant captain overseeing insurgent governors. The battle lines were drawn as governors started banding together to create their own plans on restarting their economies amid the coronavirus pandemic.

# data[].attributes.body
The U.S Senator Harry Byrd, declared the ruling " the most serious blow that has yet been struct against the rights of the states". (Legislative Branch)
President Joe Biden recommended that all students should wear mask in schools to protect themselves and others from COVID-19 (Executive Branch)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When the U.S. Supreme Court issued its 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision that struck down segregated public schooling, white Southern politicians responded to the decision with ferocity.

Although preservation of states' rights was at the heart of their resistance claims, it was the racist practice of segregation that they sought to uphold.

U.S. Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia declared the ruling " the most serious blow that has yet been struck against the rights of the states." Thomas P. Brady, Mississippi circuit judge and future state supreme court justice, called the day of the ruling " Black Monday." Brady also claimed that racial integration was a communist plot to unify the country around one common culture.

Over 100 Southern House and Senate members signed a Southern Manifesto, vowing to stop school integration in what Byrd called a "massive resistance." The governor of Virginia, Thomas Manley, appointed a commission to explore legal options in the wake of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. The Gray Commission, as it was known, recommended that no child in Virginia "be required to attend a school wherein both white and colored children are taught."

I don't bring up this Southern resistance to federal mandates that affect U.S. schools merely to recount history. As a researcher who focuses on the role of federalism in U.S. education, I believe this resistance helps shine light on why several Southern states today are pushing back against federal guidance for teachers and students to wear masks in schools to lessen the risks of contracting the more dangerous delta variant of COVID-19.

Defiance in spite of risks

In late July 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and President Joe Biden recommended students wear masks in schools to protect themselves and others from COVID-19.

Subsequently, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order that banned schools in the state from requiring masks, claiming that the masks are unproven to be effective and might cause harm to children. The governors of Texas and Arizona took similar measures, leaving schools, concerned parents, teachers and vulnerable students few options and with little time before the school year began to decide how to respond. The Texas legislature is considering legislation that would make public mask requirements illegal.

A history of resistance

Southern states ignoring federal educational guidance is not new.

For instance, rather than integrate schools, Virginia elected to close many school districts and instead offer white students vouchers to attend private schools. The state legislature enabled this in 1956, when it passed laws that stripped local school boards of their power and put it in the hands of committees appointed by the governor.

When Lindsey Almond took over as governor of Virginia in 1957, he warned that integrated schools would lead to the " livid stench of sadism, sex, immorality, and juvenile pregnancy " that he claimed existed in nearby Washington's integrated school system.

Other acts of resistance

In Mississippi, things were little different than in Virginia. Gov. Hugh White thought that he might avoid integration by convincing Black residents to voluntarily agree to continue segregation. He promised more money for schools. He met with 90 Black leaders and asked for voluntary segregation. The plan failed when only one person at the meeting agreed to the proposal. As a result, the governor called a special session of the state legislature.

The legislature passed a bill that led to the closure of public schools in the state. Public schools would be mostly private and segregated. It took 16 years for Mississippi schools to comply with the Brown decision and fully integrate.

Other states resisted integration in similar ways, with various policies that privatized public schools, leading to the modern civil rights movement. The civil rights movement opened the door for a larger federal government role in educational policy. The Justice Department has the authority to investigate and prosecute schools under the Title IX provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that mandates civil rights protection for students.

Fight against federal government continues

Fast forward to 2021 and governors and lawmakers in states such as Florida, Texas and Arizona are clamoring with a similar states' rights argument as their predecessors.

Like Virginia and Mississippi in the 1950s, these states are attempting to undermine federal intervention in schools. The U.S. Constitution creates a federal system where the national government shares power with states. Any power not explicitly listed in the Constitution is left to the states, per the 10th Amendment. As a result, educational policy is largely left to the states, so long as civil rights are protected.

Read more: Federal role in education has a long history

Within states, power is shared with local governments in whatever way state constitutions and law decide. Florida Gov. DeSantis has threatened retaliation against schools who defy his order by cutting superintendent salaries. Yet, a state judge stopped his order. DeSantis claims that he will win on appeal.

Texas and Arizona officials have threatened consequences, such as loss of funding and lawsuits, to school districts that mandate masks. Threatening localities with retaliation did not prevent the eventual integration of schools in the South. Considering that local school districts are following federal health guidance, threats from governors to browbeat localities into submission have stirred community outrage from parents and lawsuits from concerned citizens.

Nevertheless, federalism makes power-sharing between the states and federal government complicated. The Constitution gives states the power to create their own educational and health policies, but the federal government can enforce civil rights laws in schools, making educational policy political whether people like it or not.

[ Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation's newsletter to understand the world. Sign up today.]

This is why, on Aug. 30, 2021, the U.S. Department of Education announced that it would investigate whether statewide mask bans deny civil rights to students with disabilities.

Like school integration in the past, policies that require or encourage masks have become the new arena for the ongoing American argument about Southern states' rights.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
State efforts to ban mask mandates in schools mirror resistance to integration

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When the U.S. Supreme Court issued its 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision that struck down segregated public schooling, white Southern politicians responded to the decision with ferocity. Although preservation of states' rights was at the heart of their resistance claims, it was the racist practice of segregation that they sought to uphold.

# data[].attributes.body
Find an example of an issue in the news that deals with a question of federalism. How does each level of government deal with the issue?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Georgia governor made the announcement during the annual Eggs and Issues Legislative Preview Wednesday.

ATLANTA - Governor Brian Kemp is proposing the Peach State provide a $250 to $500 tax credit to Georgians. During the annual Eggs and Issues Legislative Preview Wednesday, Kemp joined several other leaders in the state to touch on economic success and look forward to the future.

Kemp said his administration intends to provide a $250 refund credit to single tax filers and $500 to those who are filing jointly. The $1.6 billion in income taxes is from a surplus of $2.2 billion from Georgia's last budget year.

Fearing revenue would tank amid the COVID pandemic, Georgia lawmakers cut 10% from the spending plan while developing the budget for the 2021 fiscal year in the summer of 2020. Once it became clear revenue wouldn't plummet, the state government then restored hundreds of millions of dollars back into its education budget. However, other agencies across the Peach State were still under a 10% cut, leaving a surplus of funds from the previous fiscal year.

Lawmakers were left with extra cash to plan for 2022 fiscal year. Now, Kemp has now made a decision on what to do with that left over money.

"Last fiscal year, because we kept Georgia open and fought alongside you all in this room to keep businesses and communities afloat, the state collected a record budget surplus. I believe that when government takes in more money than it needs, surplus funds should be sent back to the hardworking men and women who keep our state moving forward," Kemp said during the address.

According to the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, the 2022 fiscal year budget still leaves several state agencies underfunded by millions compared to pre-pandemic numbers. There are cuts to spending in Pre-K through 12th grade, higher education, health services and programs, and the Departments of Human Services and Labor among others.

Kemp is in the middle of a difficult primary campaign as he seeks re-election, as well-known opponents like Stacey Abrams and former Senator David Perdue have also thrown their hats in the ring to become Georgia's governor.

He's been on a roll recently, penning a letter encouraging a $5,000 pay bump and other benefits for state employees and pushing for a new law that would loosen the state's handgun requirements in just the last week.

Kemp said he now wants to "empower" people in the state using the surplus of last fiscal year's funds to provide a couple hundred dollars in tax return credit for Georgia residents.

"As Georgians seek to recover from the economic impact of a global pandemic, we as state leaders should do everything we can to empower families to keep more of their money in their own wallets," Kemp said.

Included in that legislation is to exempt retirement income for veterans in the state, and ensure that at least 90% of tuition for HOPE Scholarship recipients is covered by the program, according to the governor.

"Because that is your money. Not the government's," Kemp said.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Gov. Kemp proposes tax refunds of $250-500 to Georgians out of budget surplus

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Georgia governor made the announcement during the annual Eggs and Issues Legislative Preview Wednesday. ATLANTA - Governor Brian Kemp is proposing the Peach State provide a $250 to $500 tax credit to Georgians. During the annual Eggs and Issues Legislative Preview Wednesday, Kemp joined several other leaders in the state to touch on economic success and look forward to the future.