Ga. gov slaps back over criticism of GOP vote law
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp came out swinging Saturday after Major League Baseball joined a growing chorus of outrage over the newly passed restrictive Republican voting law.
The chief architect of the controversial law accused America’s pastime of bowing to liberal “cancel culture” by criticizing the bill, which is part of a nationwide GOP effort to make it harder to vote.
“Secure, accessible elections are worth the threats,” Kemp said at a press conference that doubled as a rally for supporters. “They are worth the boycotts as well as the lawsuits.”
He mocked MLB for moving the All-Star Game from Atlanta and suggested Republicans would not back down from the law, which makes it tougher to vote by absentee ballot and bizarrely outlaws giving water to voters waiting on line at polling places.
“What are they gonna do if the Braves get in the playoffs?” he asked, posing a question that Mets fans hope is purely rhetorical. “Are they gonna move the damn playoff games?”
Kemp, who hopes the new law will help him win reelection next year, is seeking to regain the upper hand after days of damaging attacks on the restrictive law.
Baseball won widespread praise from Black Americans and prominent Democrats for moving the planned Midsummer Classic from Atlanta, a stand it took after some of Georgia’s biggest corporations like Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola also denounced the law.
“There’s no better way for America’s pastime to honor the great Hank Aaron, who always led by example,” former President Barack Obama tweeted, naming the Braves’ home run king who died in January.
President Biden also praised the move, saying he’s proud of sports and athletes for playing a greater role in social issues such as the right to vote.
Former President Donald Trump, on the other hand, trashed baseball as a dying sport and called on his #MAGA supporters to switch their channels in protest.
“Boycott baseball and all of the woke companies that are interfering with Free and Fair Elections,” Trump said in an emailed statement. “Are you listening Coke, Delta, and all!”
The Georgia law and similar ones moving forward in GOP-run states around the country came in direct response to Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen from him or that there was widespread fraud.
Those allegations infamously led the pro-Trump mob to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6 in a failed effort to block Biden’s win from being certified. for its weeklong Easter cruise, with 2,000 of its 6,000-passenger capacity and stops planned in Naples and Valletta, Malta, before returning to its home port in Genoa.
Passengers welcomed the semblance of normalcy brought on by the freedom to eat in a restaurant or sit poolside without a mask, even if the virus is still a present concern.
“After a year of restrictive measures, we thought we could take a break for a week and relax,” said Stefania Battistoni, a 39-year-old teacher and single mother who traveled overnight from Bolzano, in northern Italy, with her two sons and mother to board the cruise.
The pandemic has plunged global cruise ship passenger numbers from a record 30 million in 2019 to around 350,000 since July 2020, according to Cruise Lines International, the world’s largest cruise industry association representing 95% of oceangoing cruise capacity. Currently, fewer than 20 ships are operating globally, a fraction of CLIA’s members’ fleets of 270 ships.
The United States could be among the last cruise ship markets to reopen, possibly not until fall, and not until 2022 in Alaska. Two Royal Caribbean cruise lines that normally sail out of Miami opted instead to launch sailings in June from the Caribbean, where governments are eager to revive their tourism-based economies