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In 2020 no other state produced as much election drama as Georgia. In the end it gave Democrats slender victories that helped them win both the White House and a majority in the Senate, though not before Donald Trump, unsuccessfully, implored Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find 11,780 votes”, the number needed to overturn the swing state’s results in his favour. In 2024 Georgia will again find itself taking centre stage—for three reasons.
The first is Mr Trump. After a big win in Iowa, the former president looks as politically robust as ever. Though his legal woes have not alienated Republican voters (rather the reverse), they could yet cause him trouble, not least in Georgia. Last August a grand jury indicted him for running a criminal ring that conspired to overturn the state’s 2020 election. Unlike in the federal cases pending in Washington and Florida, if re-elected Mr Trump could not pardon himself from the Georgia charges (though, according to long-standing policy, he would have immunity while in the White House). Nor could Brian Kemp, the state’s Republican governor, nix them.
But the case has taken an unexpected turn. On January 8th Fani Willis, the district attorney prosecuting Mr Trump, was accused by one of his co-defendants of having a fling with a special prosecutor she hired. Though the salacious claim is unlikely to disqualify her from litigation, it opens her to allegations of corruption (Ms Willis denies acting improperly in hiring him). Her foes are calling for her to go. That plot twist is unlikely to be the last.
Second, there is the matter of election security. Though Georgia is not home to the country’s loudest election-deniers—its Republican statewide politicians have staunchly asserted that its contests have been fair—fierce debates over election safety are playing out in the courts. A case that has been dragging on for over six years is reaching its end. An Obama-appointed judge will decide in the coming weeks if Georgia must scrap its electronic voting machines. Left-wing plaintiffs argue that the touchscreen ballot-markers are eminently hackable and make paper audits impossible. They point to a breach in Coffee County, where Trump allies copied election software from a rural polling station in January 2021, as proof that bad actors have all they need to do damage in 2024.
Good on paper
To the dismay of the cyber-security professors making the case for a switch to hand-marked paper ballots, Georgia’s most infamous conspiracy-theorists have taken their side. During opening statements the courtroom was packed with Trump apostles keen to tell your correspondent about the counterfeit ballots that flipped elections past. The office of Mr Raffensperger, the defendant, says it refuses to negotiate with election-deniers of left or right, noting that the trial is sowing unsubstantiated distrust of the state’s elections.
On 11 criteria for “fair, accessible, secure and transparent” elections—including, for example, whether a state has early voting and conducts audits—the Bipartisan Policy Centre, a think-tank based in Washington, DC, ranks Georgia best in the country (tied with Colorado). Even some who do not see it that way reckon it is too late to change the voting system before November. “It would cause mayhem,” says Cianti Stewart-Reid, the head of Fair Fight Action, a voting group started by Stacey Abrams, a Democrat who ran for governor in 2018. The case plants the seeds for fights over the validity of the results in November.
Third, voting rights: Georgia’s increasingly diverse electorate makes the state a laboratory for the demographic changes expected across America—and the fights over voter access that come with them. That has catalysed a movement to get unlikely voters registered and to persuade national campaigns to invest in Georgia. The Abrams machine spent $400m doing so in the decade to 2022. But since 2013, when the Supreme Court struck down the pre-clearance regime that gave the federal government authority to monitor election rules in places with historical injustices, Georgia’s Republicans have also been tightening voting laws.
After Joe Biden won Georgia in 2020 the legislature passed SB202, a bill that, among other things, made it illegal to pass out water and snacks to those queuing to vote and allowed individual citizens to challenge the voter registrations of neighbours they suspect are unlawfully registered. Though the law has had a more muted effect than some expected, it has forced Democrats into new battles. According to ProPublica, an investigative outlet, in two years nearly 100,000 registrations were challenged (oddly, 89,000 challenges were filed by just six people). Those who fail to respond to the notices can get kicked off the rolls. In early January Democrats lost in court to True the Vote, a conservative group leading the challenge crusade. Following the decision, its leaders announced the launch of new automated mass-challenge software.
All this amounts to the most dynamic political tug-of-war outside the capital. “Without a doubt there was some sore-loser politics involved, but SB202 addressed real issues as well,” says a Republican who took part in its deliberations. The handful of Georgia judges making decisions on the Trump trial, election security and voting-rights cases have the hard task of distinguishing between political high-jinks and good-faith arguments. Their rulings will matter for all Americans. ■
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The European Union is preparing further countermeasures against U.S. tariffs if negotiations fail, according to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.
U.S. President Donald Trump had imposed 20% tariffs on the bloc on Wednesday.
Von der Leyen’s comments come after retaliatory duties were announced by the bloc after the U.S. imposed tariffs on last month in a bid to protect European workers and consumers. The EU at the time said it would introduce counter-tariffs on 26 billion euros ($28 billion) worth of U.S. goods.
Industrial-grade steel and aluminum, other steel and aluminum semi-finished and finished products, along with their derivative commercial products, such as machinery parts and knitting needles were set to be included. A range of other products such as bourbon, agricultural products, leather goods, home appliances and more were also on the EU’s list.
Following a postponement, these tariffs are expected to come into effect around the middle of April.
This is a developing story, please check back for updates.
Attendees check in during a job fair at the YMCA Gerard Carter Center on March 27, 2025 in the Stapleton Heights neighborhood of the Staten Island borough in New York City.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images
Private payroll gains were stronger than expected in March, countering fears that the labor market and economy are slowing, according to a report Wednesday from ADP.
Companies added 155,000 jobs for the month, a sharp increase from the upwardly revised 84,000 in February and better than the Dow Jones consensus forecast for 120,000, the payrolls processing firm said.
Hiring was fairly broad based, with professional and business services adding 57,000 workers while financial activities grew by 38,000 as tax season heats up. Manufacturing contributed 21,000 and leisure and hospitality added 17,000.
Service providers were responsible for 132,000 of the positions. On the downside, trade, transportation and utilities saw a loss of 6,000 jobs and natural resources and mining declined by 3,000.
On the wage side, earnings rose by 4.6% year over year for those staying in their positions and 6.5% for job changers. The gap between the two matched a series low last hit in September, suggesting a lower level of mobility for workers wanting to switch jobs.
Still, the overall numbers indicate a solid labor market. Recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that the level of open positions is now almost even with available workers, reversing a trend in which openings outnumbered the unemployed by 2 to 1 a couple years ago.
The ADP report comes ahead of the more closely watched BLS measure of nonfarm payrolls. The BLS report, which unlike ADP includes government jobs, is expected to show payroll growth of 140,000 in March, down slightly from 151,000 in February. The two counts sometimes show substantial disparities due to different methodologies.
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The U.S. government is set to increase tariff rates on several categories of imported products. Some economists tracking these trade proposals say the higher tariff rates could lead to higher consumer prices.
One model constructed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston suggests that in an “extreme” scenario, heightened taxes on U.S. imports could result in a 1.4 percentage point to 2.2 percentage point increase to core inflation. This scenario assumes 60% tariff rates on Chinese imports and 10% tariff rates on imports from all other countries.
Price increases could come across many categories, including new housing and automobiles, alongside consumer services such as nursing, public transportation and finance.
“People might think, ‘Oh, tariffs can only affect the goods that I buy. It can’t affect the services,'” said Hillary Stein, an economist at the Boston Fed. “Those hospitals are buying inputs that might be, for example, … medical equipment that comes from abroad.”
White House economists say tariffs will not meaningfully contribute to inflation. In a statement to CNBC, Stephen Miran, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, said that “as the world’s largest source of consumer demand, the U.S. holds all the leverage, which means foreign suppliers will have to eat the economic burden or ‘incidence’ of the tariffs.”
Assessing the impact of the administration’s full economic agenda has been a challenge for central bank leaders. The Federal Open Market Committee decided to leave its target for the federal funds rate unchanged at the meeting in March.
“There is a reason why companies went outside of the U.S.,” said Gregor Hirt, chief investment officer at Allianz Global Investors. “Most of the time it was because it was cheaper and more productive.”
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