Republicans on Cobb school board vote to end broadcast of public comments
Why it matters: The school board's move is the latest in a series of decisions critics say reduces transparency and limits public feedback of elected officials and the Cobb County School District.
The latest: The board's four Republicans — David Chastain, John Cristadoro, Brad Wheeler and Randy Scamihorn — voted in favor of the policy change.
Democrats Becky Sayler, Nichelle Davis and Leroy "Tre" Hutchins opposed it.
What they're saying: Superintendent Chris Ragsdale, who proposed the policy change, said during Thursday's meeting it will remove the liability of broadcasting comments that could potentially be defamatory or slanderous.
Ragsdale said the district will still have public comment opportunities for its work sessions in the afternoon and evening meetings and will continue to live-stream both sessions.
But the district won't broadcast or publish the portion of the meeting that's reserved for public comment.
Ragsdale said the district has had to edit recordings over concerns about copyright infringement and "tortious" comments.
"The risk is not necessarily attached to what is said, but the risk is attached to the fact of broadcasting what is said."
Reality check: Richard T. Griffiths, president emeritus of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation, told Axios that Ragsdale's comments about copyright infringement are a "red herring."
Griffiths also said anyone who brings legal action against the school district over comments made by a member of the public would have to prove that the board and school system organized, promoted or scripted the remarks.
"What they appear to be doing is totally disrespecting and disregarding those comments and saying to the public, 'we really don't care what you say,'" Griffiths told Axios.
The other side: Several members of the public also spoke in opposition of the rule change. Democratic board members said they were concerned about the message this would send to Cobb parents, students, teachers and stakeholders.
"I think that public comment being broadcast gives a unique pressure and urgency that gets people a response that sometimes emails have proved unable to do," Sayler added.
Context: Thursday's action is the latest in a series of steps taken by the Republican-led school board to limit how the public can address them, as well as what board members can discuss.
In 2019, the GOP majority voted to scrap a portion of the meeting where they could talk freely about anything due to concerns that some of the topics were "political."
In 2021, the GOP-led board limited how many people could speak during public comment and how long they could speak for.
In 2022, the board started requiring people to sign up in person if they wanted to speak and mandated in 2023 that speakers line up outdoors — rather than inside the lobby — if they wanted to speak.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
8 minutes ago
- New York Post
How the Hunter Biden cover-up continues to this day
In the same week that Hunter Biden burst back onto the public stage to play the victim and lash out at Democrats, we also heard from his one time protector turned reluctant nemesis, Special Counsel David Weiss, with similarly self serving and disingenuous testimony to Congress. Weiss, the former US Attorney in the Bidens' home state of Delaware who presided over the troubled five year investigation into the former First Son, told the House Judiciary Committee that there just wasn't enough evidence to justify charging Hunter under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). His investigators 'couldn't put together a sufficient case,' he said in June testimony released last week. Advertisement That's pretty rich, considering that those very IRS investigators complained bitterly about the obstruction and slow walking they faced on Weiss' watch every time they pursued an investigative trail that led to Joe Biden and the lucrative foreign lobbying Hunter did in his father's name. That's why IRS Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley and Special Agent Joseph Ziegler blew up their successful careers and became whistleblowers. Hunter's business model during his father's vice presidency and beyond revolved around foreign lobbying — including for the corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma that was paying him a million dollars a year, Chinese government-linked firms BHR and CEFC, and an oligarch client in Romania. Advertisement In fact, the very first email this newspaper published from Hunter's infamous laptop was from a Burisma executive, thanking him for arranging a meeting with his father the previous night. It wasn't just any old meeting, either. Hunter had invited VP Biden to a private dinner at Georgetown restaurant Cafe Milano in April 2015 to meet his partners from Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan, as his former 'best friend in business' Devon Archer told Congress. In their upcoming tell-all book, 'The Whistleblowers v the Big Guy,' Shapley and Ziegler point out that, along with that Burisma bombshell, emails and communications they recovered from the laptop showed that Hunter's relationship with DC lobbying shop Blue Star Strategies was tied to his position on the Burisma board and that the firm had been hired 'to influence U.S. government officials on Burisma's behalf.' Advertisement 'These connections raised red flags about potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act FARA and any comprehensive warrant would naturally include references to individuals who may have been involved, even tangentially.' And so, when their team drafted a search warrant related to potential FARA violation, Weiss' top U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf ordered them to remove all references to 'Political Figure 1,' the DOJ pseudonym for Joe Biden. 'Please focus on FARA evidence only. There should be nothing about Political Figure 1 in here,' Wolf wrote in an August 2020 email, according to their whistleblower testimony to Congress. Advertisement Every morning, the NY POSTcast offers a deep dive into the headlines with the Post's signature mix of politics, business, pop culture, true crime and everything in between. Subscribe here! Whenever their investigations might lead to Joe Biden they found subpoenas were denied, interviews were canceled or not allowed, and Hunter's lawyers were tipped off before search warrants could be executed. Prosecutors cited bad 'optics' or questioned whether the 'juice was worth the squeeze' For instance, Shapley testified that Wolf refused to approve a search warrant for a guest house Hunter had been staying in on Joe's palatial Delaware estate as part of FARA-related evidence collection. When they discovered incriminating WhatsApp messages Hunter wrote to a business partner at Chinese energy company CEFC on July 30, 2017, citing his father, the investigators were blocked from using phone location data to confirm that Joe really was in the room. 'I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,' Hunter wrote, demanding $10 million. 'I am very concerned that the Chairman has either changed his mind and broken our deal without telling me or that he is unaware of the promises and assurances that have been made have not been kept.' Advertisement Hunter also threatened that his father would retaliate if the Chinese did not do as he commanded: 'I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.' Here was Hunter explicitly claiming his father was involved in his business negotiations. Apart from the fact that Joe claimed that he knew nothing about his son's overseas business dealings, Shapley and Ziegler decided there were serious tax implications to the conversation, but they were blocked from pursuing them. They weren't even allowed to find out if Hunter had sent the message from Joe's house. 'The message was clear,' Shapley and Ziegler write in 'The Whistleblowers v. the Big Guy.' 'Although we were investigating Joe Biden's son — who, it seemed, had often involved his father in his shady overseas business dealings — none of our materials were supposed to mention Joe Biden. Advertisement 'Even when we needed material that might be in one of Joe Biden's homes or storage units, we couldn't mention him. The document might leak to the press, and that would make the Biden campaign look bad. 'And in the summer of 2020, there was nothing that the leadership of the FBI wanted less than to make Joe Biden look bad. Doing so might help elect Donald Trump for a second time.' How different was the way the FBI handled Donald Trump compared to Joe Biden. Whether it was the fake Steele Dossier the FBI treated as if it were legitimate evidence, or the raid on Mar a Lago, there was no concern about the 'optics' of investigating a sitting president or presidential candidate when it was Trump. Advertisement As for FARA, the once little-used law against lobbying the US on behalf of foreign interests has been selectively used to target Trump allies and Democrat enemies. For example, Paul Manafort, former chairman of Trump's 2016 campaign, was charged with FARA. So, too, was Gal Luft, the original Hunter Biden whistleblower, who told FBI and DOJ officials in a March 2019 secret meeting in Brussels that Hunter and his uncle Jim Biden were on the payroll of the Chinese. His accurate information was buried and then, one week before Republicans took back the House in 2022, Luft was charged with FARA and other violations. He is currently languishing in jail in Cyprus while Hunter escaped scot free. Advertisement In the last days of his presidency, Joe issued a uniquely tailored pardon for his son, stretching back 11 years and covering Hunter's conviction on gun charges and guilty plea on felony tax evasion charges that Weiss was forced to press after the sweetheart plea deal he'd stitched together with Hunter's lawyers fell apart in the wake of Shapley and Ziegler's revelations. In the end, Weiss forced the IRS to remove Shapley and Ziegler from the investigation as soon as he suspected Shapley had blown the whistle. The Office of Special Counsel last year determined that the IRS had illegally retaliated against the pair by removing them from the investigation after they made protected disclosures to Congress about DOJ interference in the probe. All the obstruction and interference and slow walking past statutes of limitation happened under the benign leadership of David Weiss. So spare us his mealy mouthed justifications for squibbing what should have been the most consequential political corruption investigation in history.
CBS News
9 minutes ago
- CBS News
Transcript: Sen. Chris Van Hollen on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," July 27, 2025
The following is the transcript of an interview with Sen Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on July 27, 2025. MARGARET BRENNAN: And we're joined now by Maryland Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen, who is one of those appropriators we were just speaking about with the budget director. You just heard everything he laid out. There were no specifics on when these clawbacks could be coming, but they're on the table. He says they don't want to shut down. He didn't seem to say they want, you know, a continuing resolution. Do you know what's coming? SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: Not really. The one thing we know, and you asked Russ Vought about this, was he says that the process is too bipartisan right now, meaning that they want to use this process just to ram through the agenda and the overall agenda we saw when they passed the so-called Big, Beautiful Bill, which was beautiful for billionaires, but not really for anybody else, which is to provide tax cuts for very wealthy people at the expense of everybody else. And I do want to say Margaret, I heard him deny that that bill increased the deficit and debt. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office just said it increased our debt by 3.5 trillion before added interest. MARGARET BRENNAN: He's using an accounting gimmick in regard to the benchmark. SEN. VAN HOLLEN: As- and Republicans have called out this accounting gimmick, so when-- MARGARET BRENNAN: --And it was accepted-- SEN. VAN HOLLEN: Well, they sort of unilaterally imposed it, it was not accepted by Democrats, and it was a departure from previous efforts. But you know, then they come back and they say that they want to cut these important programs, NIH and other things to reduce the deficit, when, in fact, what they're doing it for is to help try finance those tax cuts for very wealthy people. MARGARET BRENNAN: So it's just heading us towards pretty unchartered territory and very unclear whether we will be able to avoid a government shutdown. Democrats are going to be blamed if there's a shutdown, don't you think? I mean, how do you sidestep this? SEN. VAN HOLLEN : We certainly don't want a government shutdown. And I think everybody has heard Russ Vought say that they want a less bipartisan process. What that tells me is they're willing just to use their powers to try to shut down the government if they don't get their way. And what's ironic about this Margaret is you have Russ Vought calling for these deep cuts to education NIH, when he has asked for an increase for his OMB budget. He asked for a 13% increase for his OMB budget. He's asked for more people to join the OMB staff, while he's talking about RIFing people at other departments, like the Department of yeah- getting rid of firing people at the Department of Veterans Affairs and other important priorities. So it's hard to take the OMB Director seriously when he says that they didn't increase the debt and when he says he wants to cut things except for his own budget and staff. MARGARET BRENNAN: But if they do head towards a government shutdown, why would there be any benefit unless it is to prioritize funding certain agencies and de-prioritizing other agencies. Well, that goes back to the executive, doesn't it, that authority? SEN. VAN HOLLEN: Well, that ultimately, though you need, for example, four Republican senators to stand behind what he's calling for. And what they've called for is sort of just a double cross on the process, right? That's what the so-called rescissions, is just a Washington name for double cross. They support one thing, one day, President even signs off, and then they come back and say they changed their mind. And what we're asking is for four Republican senators just to publicly declare that when they say they're going to fund the Veterans Affairs Department that they actually mean it. MARGARET BRENNAN: That they won't later agree to claw that money back. SEN. VAN HOLLEN: Exactly MARGARET BRENNAN: Right. So one of the things the Trump administration is clear and did get clawbacks of is foreign assistance. However, there's an exception. In June, the administration announced it would give $30 million to this Israeli-backed organization called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the GHF, I know you're familiar with it. It delivers aid through armed military contractors who stand behind the Israeli military in four designated zones that Gazans then have to get themselves to in order to receive the aid. The State Department says they're sending this money. Have they? SEN. VAN HOLLEN: To my knowledge, they have, although we've asked for the details, we haven't gotten them. In fact, just today, I'm sending a letter to Secretary Rubio, signed with 20 of my colleagues, calling for more information, but also calling for defunding this. American taxpayers should not be spending one penny to fund this private organization backed by mercenaries and by the IDF that has become a death trap. Over 1000 people have died from being shot and killed as starving people crowd to try to get food at just these four sites. MARGARET BRENNAN: The- just to be clear here, the State Department says they're going to send $30 million. Reuters had reported that there were documents they obtained showing 7 million had already been sent to these, what you call, armed mercenaries. But the Trump administration says this is the best way, this is the only way, to keep money- to keep food out of the hands of Hamas, which financially benefits off reselling it to desperate starving people. Is there another way to feed desperate starving people? SEN. VAN HOLLEN: Yes. And this is a- a big lie, the claim that when the UN organizations were delivering food to Palestinians civilians, that it was being systematically diverted to Hamas. I want to say loudly and clearly, this is a big lie. Trump is-- MARGARET BRENNAN: The systematic part of that. SEN. VAN HOLLEN: The systematic, but that is their claim. They claim that essentially, large amounts of aid are being diverted to Hamas. What we know now, from testimony of American officials, Cindy McCain, and just this week, high level Israeli military officials, is that there's no evidence to support that. AID, USAID, just released a report saying there's no evidence to support that. So what the Netanyahu government did was scrap a delivery system that was working at delivering food and assistance in favor of this other effort. That was a pretext, this claim that Hamas was systematically diverting food. The real goal of this other effort is to use food as a weapon of war and population control. MARGARET BRENNAN: That's a violation of international law. SEN. VAN HOLLEN: Yes, it is. MARGARET BRENNAN: That's a human rights abuse. Senator Lindsey Graham was on "Meet the Press" this morning, and I want to ask for your reaction to something he said, because he was very strong in his words. He said, because the ceasefire talks fell apart, Israel is reassessing. He said to expect a full military effort by Israel to take Gaza down, quote, "like we did in Tokyo and Berlin. They're going to do in Gaza what we did in Tokyo and Berlin, take the place by force, start over again, present a better future." The United States is a huge supporter of the State of Israel. Is there anything that could prevent what he says is about to happen? SEN. VAN HOLLEN: Well, the United States should make very clear that it's unacceptable to use U.S. weapons to target or indiscriminately fire on civilians and civilian infrastructure. So-- MARGARET BRENNAN: Because this sounds like an occupation. SEN. VAN HOLLEN: Well, we also know, just this week, members of the Netanyahu coalition, in fact, government ministers, called for essentially erasing Gaza, and they said, it will become a Jewish state, statelet. And part of- so- this was one of the-- MARGARET BRENNAN: Netanyahu did say he didn't agree with his statement. SEN. VAN HOLLEN: Well, here's the problem though, Margaret, we continually see that Netanyahu, at the end of the day, does cater to his most far right wing of his- of his government, people like Ben Gvir, people like Smotrich. That is what has allowed him to stay in power, and so at the end of the day, he takes the most extreme positions. MARGARET BRENNAN: Senator Van Hollen, thank you for your time today. We'll be right back with a lot more "Face the Nation." Stay with us.
CBS News
26 minutes ago
- CBS News
Senate Democrats urge U.S. to stop funding GHF, resume support for U.N. food distribution in Gaza as more starve
A group of Democratic senators led by Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland is urging the Trump administration to suspend American financial support for the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a private food distribution organization that has been heavily criticized for the way it delivers food aid to Gazans and because so many have been killed trying to reach its distribution sites. The U.S. and Israel have advocated for the recently established GHF to replace the United Nations, which has built an extensive network of humanitarian workers inside Gaza over decades. Israel accuses the U.N. of bias and collusion with Hamas. In a letter sent to Secretary of State Marco Rubio Sunday, the 21 senators expressed "grave" concerns about "the U.S. role in and financial support for the troubled GHF." "We urge you to immediately cease all U.S. funding for GHF and resume support for the existing UN-led aid coordination mechanisms with enhanced oversight to ensure that humanitarian aid reaches civilians in need," the letter reads. The U.N. warns that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is growing increasingly dire as more Palestinians are in danger of starvation after a months-long Israeli blockade, and recent military operations complicated humanitarian efforts to help. The IDF claims there is no starvation. Van Hollen, who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as well as the powerful Appropriations Committee, told CBS News "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" Sunday, "American taxpayers should not be spending one penny to fund this private organization backed by mercenaries and by the IDF that has become a death trap," noting that scores of Gazans were shot and killed as starving people crowded the GHF sites to obtain food. The letter focuses on a $30 million pledge from the State Department, announced last month, and on GHF's operations, particularly its use of armed contractors who stand behind IDF soldiers at food distribution sites in four designated military zones. Starving Gazans must travel to those areas, which is difficult for those too weak to move. "Blurring the lines between delivery of aid and security operations shatters well-established norms that have governed distribution of humanitarian aid since the ratification of the Geneva Conventions in 1949," the letter says. U.S. allies have also been critical of the tactics used by the U.S. and Israeli-backed GHF. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot told Margaret Brennan Sunday on "Face the Nation" that Gaza is on the "brink of food catastrophe" and that France expects "the Israeli government to stop the operations of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation that has caused [a] bloodbath in humanitarian health distribution lines in Gaza." U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said Friday that a thousand Palestinians have been killed trying to access food since May 27. "We hold video calls with our own humanitarians who are starving before our eyes," Guterres said. "We will continue to speak out at every opportunity. But words don't feed hungry children." The U.N. human rights office said 1,054 people were killed while trying to obtain food since late May, and of those, 766 were killed while trying to reach sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The others were killed when gunfire erupted around U.N. convoys or aid sites. The group of senators led by Van Hollen are seeking answers about whether necessary oversight is being bypassed to benefit the GHF. Their letter cites public reports that the Trump administration authorized the funds under a "priority directive," which meant it could avoid "a comprehensive audit that is usually required for groups receiving USAID grants for the first time." The senators want to see the GHF's "complete funding application and all supporting documentation" and demand to know whether any statutory and regulatory requirements were waived. They also asked Rubio about the procurement mechanism that resulted in the $30 million in funding, and they want to know who signed the agreement, who might be liable for compliance violations and whether officials were aware of potential concerns raised by USAID about "GHF's ability to protect Palestinians while delivering food aid." The State Department has not responded to a CBS News request for comment about the senators' letter. A department spokesperson said Friday that the funding has been allocated, but it has not yet been disbursed to GHF. On Saturday, amid international outcry, the Israel Defense Force began airdrops of humanitarian aid into Gaza and said it would establish humanitarian corridors to "enable the safe movement of UN convoys delivering food and medicine to the population." The U.N. has said the airdrops are insufficient. Past airdrops have fallen on Gazans and killed them. Now the approximately 2 million people live in Gaza and have been herded into an even more limited zone that lacks extensive open space where air-dropped pallets can land. Israel's announcement came after extensive international outcry at images of starving children, and reports of death. Leaders in Europe, including French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Fredreich Merz, coordinated Saturday by phone. A readout of the call released by the UK said the three leaders said the situation in Gaza is "appalling" and "emphasized the urgent need for an immediate ceasefire, for Israel to lift all restrictions on aid and urgently provide those suffering in Gaza with the food they so desperately need." On Friday, two Jordanian officials said they were considering airdrops and the United Arab Emirates sent a 7,000-ton aid ship to Gaza's shores. But it has not been determined who will distribute the food once it arrives. The GHF says it has distributed more than 91 million meals to Gazans, but there have been almost daily reports of civilians being injured or killed as they try to reach one of the group's four distribution hubs, all located in southern Gaza. In an interview with BBC News this week, Anthony Aguliar, a U.S. Army veteran and former contractor for GHF, detailed what he says he saw on the ground behind IDF lines during humanitarian aid distribution, calling the operation "amateur." "I witnessed the Israeli Defense Forces shooting at the crowds of Palestinians. I witnessed the Israeli Defense Forces firing a main gun tank round from the Merkava tank into a crowd of people," Aguilar said. "In my most frank assessment, I would say that they're criminal. In my entire career, I have never witnessed the level of brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population, an unarmed, starving population." In a statement to CBS News, the GHF called Aguilar's claims "materially false" and said he had been terminated from his position for "misconduct." The group has also been criticized by the U.N., which said GHF's tactics are neither adequate nor safe and make it more difficult for Gazans too weak to travel to military zones to secure food. Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, which provides support for Palestinian refugees, condemned the GHF in June, calling it "an abomination" and "a death trap costing more lives than it saves." As the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza deteriorated further this week, the GHF and U.N. groups continued to blame each other. In several public statements and social media posts last week, GHF said the responsibility for the mass starvation lies with the U.N. for allowing their full aid trucks inside Gaza to sit untouched and undistributed. "The U.N. cannot deliver this humanitarian aid to the people who need it most, and I'm not sure what the reason is," said GHF spokesperson Chapin Fay in a video posted to X, which showed him standing in front of U.N. aid trucks. "Whether it's looters, safety or whether they're playing politics, it just doesn't matter. The people of Gaza deserve better." The executive chairman of GHF, Reverend Johnnie Moore, in an interview with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro this week accused the U.N. of "playing politics with people's lives." "They're actually basically a willful participant on the Hamas side of the negotiating table in the ceasefire negotiations, by refusing to distribute aid and spreading this narrative around the world that the people of Gaza are going to starve if Hamas doesn't, in effect, get its demands at the negotiating table," Moore said. The U.N. World Food Programme says hundreds of aid trucks are ready to move, but the approval needed from the Israeli military to transport and distribute that aid is not coming quickly enough. In a statement Friday, they said just over half of their requests to collect cargo were approved and convoys were typically delayed, sometimes up to nearly two days, awaiting permission to travel within Gaza. Meanwhile, a UNICEF spokesperson confirmed to CBS News that their supplies of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food or RUTF — used for treating severely acutely malnourished children — is expected to run out in mid-August if more is not allowed into Gaza. "We are now facing a dire situation that we are running out of therapeutic supplies," said Salim Oweis, a spokesperson for UNICEF in Amman, Jordan. "That's really dangerous for children as they face hunger and malnutrition at the moment," he added. Oweis said UNICEF had only enough RUTF left to treat 3,000 children. In the first two weeks of July alone, UNICEF treated 5,000 children facing acute malnutrition in Gaza. The UNICEF spokesperson said the agency is unaware of whether GHF is distributing this type of specialized food and emphasized that it must be given to children after they are assessed by professional health workers to be suffering from acute malnutrition. GHF did not respond to CBS News when asked if the foundation also distributes specialized high-nutrient food for acutely malnourished children. UNICEF is the main procurer of RUTF in the world. Read the full letter sent by Senate Democrats to Secretary of State Marco Rubio here:Camilla Schick and Margaret Brennan contributed to this report.
