Repeat after me.

No ice, no ice, no ice.

No.

No murders, no murders, no murders.

My name is Josh McLaurin.

Thank you again.

Anti-ice protesters join a press conference by Senate Democrats to announce legislation aimed at regulating Ice in Georgia.

Welcome to Lawmakers.

On this day, two of the Georgia legislative session, I'm Donna Lowery.

More on ice bills introduced by Senate Democrats.

Coming up, Senate Republicans also had news for the press today as they announced their 2026 caucus priorities.

On the show tonight, we'll hear from the leaders of both parties about what they discussed at the Capitol today.

Georgians, like the rest of the country, have a multifaceted relationship with A.I.

It's new and exciting, but it can also be frightening, especially when it comes to children.

We're going to talk with lawmakers who will discuss both aspects of A.I.

We'll get to all of that after a wrap up of the day of the Capitol.

From our correspondent Sarah Kallis.

Hi, Donna.

Lawmakers looked into state approaches to national immigration enforcement questions on day two, the Senate jumped to a quick start today when they passed the first bill of the session, SB 204 was originally a Democratic bill from 2025 that allowed certain nonviolent felonies to be charged by district attorneys without the involvement of a grand jury.

During last year's legislative session, the House gutted that bill and inserted language from Senate Bill 163, which would allow individual gun owners to bring legal action against local governments who they feel infringed on their Second Amendment rights by fining or confiscating guns that owners left in their unlocked vehicles.

But the bill didn't get back to the Senate with the changes before the session ended, Senator Colton Moore, who authored SB 163, made his case for why the new version of the Pro gun Rights bill should be adopted.

Right now, there are 41 Georgians in Savannah who were victims of a crime, who were now being made criminals because some municipality like Savannah has passed gun legislation that is more stringent than what this General Assembly has already passed, it gives those preemptive powers to the citizenry.

So any citizen can sue a place like Savannah for violating their gun rights at a tune of $25,000 per occurrence.

That puts teeth into it, and they don't have to depend on some bureaucracy like our attorney general, to take care of their rights.

But the Democratic senator who represents Savannah disagreed not only with the bill, but with the premise as well.

The city of Savannah has passed, regulates the car and not the gun, and this has reduced gun thefts by over 30% in one year.

In the city of Savannah alone, the city overwhelmingly supports the Second Amendment.

But they also believe that public safety is at risk when guns are stolen from unlocked cars.

The bill was adopted by substitution 32-21 along party lines, but failed to garner the two thirds majority needed to be sent to Governor Brian Kemp immediately.

Meanwhile, the House gaveled in and gaveled out without passing any bills.

On day two, but they gave special recognition to the Korean American community in Georgia.

At an afternoon press conference, Democratic lawmakers announced legislation affecting immigration enforcement.

Senate Bill 389 would require I.C.E.

Agents to remove their masks while making arrests and wear proper identification.

We have men who are unidentifiable, roaming our streets, snatching up people and taking them, and then they are able to commit crimes and hide because we don't even know their identity.

So my bill will call for I.C.E.

Agents to take off their mask to show their face.

We have men who show up in tactical equipment, but nothing that identifies them as federal agents.

I don't know if they are a part of a vigilante group.

That's just a deputize themselves to go and steal.

My friend.

Or if they're an agent of Ice.

So my bill demands that they put on a badge, that they have something on them that tells us, undeniably, that they are a federal agent.

My friends, it's time to unmask Ice.

Democrats also propose bills to allow civil lawsuits against Ice and require a warrant for arrests in schools, hospitals and churches.

When Ice overreaches, they need to face real accountability in courts of law.

Yes, yes, but accountability is not necessarily justice because Renee Good will not get justice, and there's no way to give her justice, real justice, making sure this never happens in the first place.

The legislation comes days after I.C.E.

Officers in Minnesota fatally shot a woman.

But Republicans say the bills are unnecessary and lawmakers reacted too quickly to the Minnesota shooting.

As far as wearing tactical gear, whether it be a mask, a helmet or anything else, that is a decision made based case by case, and the supervisors make those determinations, not a group of legislators sitting in an air conditioned and heated room in the middle of Atlanta, Georgia.

That's the responsibility of law enforcement leaders to make that decision.

The Democrats also proposed a bill requiring National Guard deployment in Georgia to receive legislative approval.

Also today, Governor Brian Kemp and legislative leaders in the House and Senate gathered at the annual Faith and Freedom Coalition legislative luncheon.

Tomorrow, lawmakers will start their day early at Georgia Chambers annual Eggs and Issues legislative Breakfast.

There, they will hear from Governor Kemp about his priorities for his last legislative session.

That's my Capitol report, Donna.

Thanks, Sarah.

We're going to get deeper insight into what to expect during this 2026 legislative session from two leaders in the Senate.

Here in the studio is the newly elected Senate president pro tem, Republican Senator Larry Walker, the third of Perry.

He has served in the Senate since 2015 and is former chair of the Insurance and Labor Committee.

So we're so glad he's here.

Also joining us is the Senate minority leader, Democratic Senator Harold Jones, the second of Augusta.

He's been in the Senate since 2014, and his committees include judiciary.

Welcome to Lawmakers.

Both of you, with your.

Thank you, Donna.

Your end of your names, the second.

Third.

Okay.

All righty.

Pro Tim Walker, you led the Senate caucus press conference today, and the caucus calls for a focus that is says, reignite the American dream.

You broke down priorities into three areas the cost of living, quality of life, and the next generation.

So let's start with cost of living, which looks at taxes.

Tell us a little bit about that.

Sure, Donna.

So everywhere we all the constituents we hear from, whether it's Blue Ridge down to Bainbridge they're straining under the rising cost of living.

And we hear that and we're going to focus on that cost of housing, cost of groceries, cost of childcare.

And the American dream.

This is the 250th anniversary of America and Georgia.

And sadly, the American dream seems out of reach for too many people.

And so our focus is going to be on affordability.

Yeah.

So I know one of them has to do with the state income tax rate.

You mentioned that.

And then the stop it says stop skyrocketing, skyrocketing local property tax bills by capping home valuations.

So I have the press have your your little flier here.

Tell us about that.

So under Lieutenant Governor Jones's leadership we had a study committee over the interim to look at our income tax situation.

And we have a plan to eliminate state income tax on the first 50,000 of earnings for a single filer, or 100,000 for a married, married filing jointly.

So that will eliminate the state income tax on two thirds of Georgians.

And we're very excited about that.

We also hear from our constituents on a regular basis that their skyrocketing property tax.

And we've got we've already dropped a bill to address that, which would be a floating homestead exemption that would limit the increase on property tax to the rate on your home, to the rate of inflation.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any comment on any of that?

I know you, the income tax you've spoken out about that.

We've spoken out about the income tax.

But I think one of the things is affordability, of course, is the buzzword of the year.

And one of the ways we're going to be attacking that particular issue is through Medicaid expansion.

And also actually having tax credits for people actually bring their premiums down as far as their health insurance is concerned, because that is a major crisis within Georgia health insurance.

And so, number 1, we'd have Medicaid expansion, which can actually help get more people insured.

And over 1 million Georgians right now were dependent on those federal tax credits.

So what some states have done even before what's recently happened is they created their own tax credits so people could actually afford those premiums or deductibles.

And so what we've been proposing, we actually started it last year with SB 192, and it will continue this year to actually have our own tax credits to address that particular issue.

So when we talk about affordability, the question really becomes what issues are you looking at?

And then secondly, how do you actually make those things affordable?

The thing is you're both talking affordability.

That's that's the main thing I want to focus on you for a little bit because I want to make sure we get you spoke at the press conference today about Ice and Senate Democrats presented three bills.

You have one that is SB 390.

And it is to put limits on the National Guard.

Tell us about it.

Right.

What it basically says out of state National Guard cannot come in unless it has the permission of the governor.

And so other states have actually done this to South Carolina being one, Kansas being another, Washington just actually pass a similar law.

So it's not anything particularly unusual.

And so what the press conference was today about was number 1, we were focusing on ice.

I think we saw that.

But then secondly, it's actually a larger issue.

And that issue is the fact that a lot of people are actually concerned and scared about the overreach that this administration is doing.

And quite frankly, after the last event that we had in Minnesota, it almost seems like death was actually normalized to some extent by this president.

The way the callous way they kind of looked at what had taken place.

And so people are nervous and they're scared about what's going on.

And we wanted to address those particular issues.

Okay.

I didn't know whether you want to comment on that or we can move on to quality of life.

Let's talk about quality.

Tell us what the quality of life, what you're talking about in terms of that.

Well, we know we have to have safe communities.

And so we're going to continue to invest in safe communities.

We also know that part of your quality of life is having opportunities to enjoy the great outdoors.

Georgia is a beautiful state, and we're going to look at ways to further protect lands.

Our state is growing because we've had strong leadership and our economy is attracting a lot of industry and a lot of manufacturing, which we're proud of, but we want to make sure we do protect opportunities for to protect lands and, you know, and let people enjoy the great outdoors.

I was real proud to have carried, sponsored and carried the Georgia Outdoor Stewardship Act several years ago under Governor Diehl.

And I hope we can maybe expand that.

And that's where a portion of the sales tax revenue on outdoor recreation equipment goes to acquiring land to protect for the public use.

Okay.

Anything else you want to mention in terms of Democratic priorities in your caucus?

Absolutely.

Another issue is going to be housing, which was also mentioned.

But the way you actually approach it is going to be key.

So some of those issues you can deal with from kind of like a regulatory level such as zoning, but also you want to look at the fact that private equity, Georgia is one of the worst offenders as far as private equity, buying so many homes.

Here's the problem with that.

What happens is they're not buying those homes for people to live in as a home.

They're buying those homes and actually jack up the rent, so to speak.

And that becomes problematic.

And so we actually are going to have a bill to talk about trying to limit private equity, buying up all these homes in Georgia.

And as I said, in Atlanta, actually is a victim of this, quite frankly.

And other parts of Georgia are too.

So number 1, we'll look at regulatory features.

And then number 2, we'll look at private equity to try to get people into their homes.

Okay.

Let's get to your next generation because part of it deals with something we're going to talk about later.

And that's protecting children when it comes to A.I.

But you're really focusing on things when it comes to schools and those kinds of things.

Yes.

So A.I.

Certainly has a lot of benefits to it.

We just want to make sure there are guardrails around it so that, for example, you don't want A.I.

To be imitating a child and, and be on social media.

That would damage that child.

There just needs to be guardrails around it.

And I'm sure your next guest will know a lot more about it than I do.

But it's an interesting topic.

And, you know, but it is a little, as you said in the intro, a little scary to me in my generation anyway.

Yeah.

So also absenteeism you guys looked at and low literacy rates.

So those are two things you're going to look at.

Yeah we have a chronic absenteeism problem.

And we are going to address that this year.

I will say that I do agree with the leader, minority leader on the private equity, buying up and driving up the cost of housing.

That's something I think we can work together on, and I look forward to that.

Absolutely.

So one of the things I wanted to ask before you go is what we're hearing is that you, from both sides, as you guys are agreeing on a lot.

Do you agree that that's true?

We're agreeing on a lot.

We just have to see the details.

That's always going to be the key.

But I think one of the good things is that Senator Pro Tem Walker myself actually have a great relationship.

So I think that will add to possibility of getting things done.

So you agree that we may not see things as contentious as we've.

Seen in the past?

I hope we're going to just focus on putting Georgians first and focus on kitchen table issues that really matter, not get caught up in all the political grandstanding.

This is an election year and all the political posturing.

I hope we can keep the main thing, the main thing.

Okay, well, I want to thank you both for coming on the show, and maybe we'll have you on a little bit later.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you so much.

Well, coming up, the good, the bad and the unknown when it comes to technology and artificial intelligence, to Lawmakers update us on what to expect during the session on everything from air taxis to A.I., chat bots and more.

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Welcome back to Lawmakers.

I'm Donna Lowry.

Technological innovations speed up faster than many of us can keep up.

Our state is helping to keep things moving.

According to the Georgia Department of Economic Development, Georgia is proudly at the forefront of digital health, cybersecurity, fintech and creative technology.

Now, that's great for Georgians in the workforce.

But as technology grows, there's a need to create laws that protect Georgians.

And joining me are representative Republican Representative Todd Jones of South Forsyth.

He chairs the House Committee on Technology and Infrastructure Innovation and Democratic Senator Sally Harrell of Atlanta.

Her committees include Government Oversight.

And she also co-chaired a Senate study committee on social Media, A.I.

And children.

Over the past few months.

And welcome to Lawmakers to both of you.

Always glad to have you here.

I'm going to start with you, Chairman Jones.

Give us a general picture of the types of innovation your committee will look at technology.

This coming session.

Look, Donna, for over a decade, we've been the number 1 place to do business.

We're now shifting to becoming the most innovative place to do business in the entire country.

We're going to take leadership in places like mobility in terms of air taxis, in terms of autonomous vehicles.

We're going to take those folks that have been, in a sense, stuck in their home because of disability, because of old age, and we're going to help them get out vis a vis AV.

We're going to bring traffic off into the air.

We're going to go ahead and use a creative manufacturing.

A lot of people call that 3-D printing to absolutely expand everything that we can print, or in a sense, manufacture here in Georgia and for outside of our state.

In other words, we're going to take literally what A.I.

Can do, what humanoids can do, and robotics can do and transform education, health care, transportation, just about everything that a Georgian touches is going to be transformed in the next 5-10 years.

And you'll need to put guardrails on that.

We are going to have to put guardrails on it.

But I'll tell you this on the innovation side, we want to make sure that this is very similar to the third industrial revolution.

We're in the fifth industrial Revolution when Carnegie and Rockefeller and Edison, when they were making those changes and they were getting those great innovations in steam and electricity, there wasn't a lot of guardrails on them.

On the innovation side, we want to do the same thing.

We want to give our innovators a chance to innovate and really change the game economically.

Healthcare and education.

Well, I know you have done a lot with urban transportation.

We'll get to that in a moment.

But Senator Harrell, I want to actually start with you.

With that committee we talked about and play a clip of a DeKalb County mother who talked at one of your at one of the final ones, she testified before your committee on October tenth.

Her name is Kay Fullerton.

And she described how her fourth grader and his friends found an A.I.

Chatbot, but with a Hunger Games theme.

, and they started to have a conversation with it because they're kids and curious.

And that quickly descended into sexualized content.

On the school network in fourth grade.

And this wasn't blocked because of the nature of the website.

Services like ChatGPT have these developer tools that allow developers to access these large language models for fractions of a penny, with no oversight on where that content goes after it's produced by the model.

Yeah.

And Senator Harrell, one of her concerns is parents can't preview what these bots are doing.

So there's no way of monitoring any of that.

So talk a little bit about that.

That's right.

This parent came to me during session last year and told me this story, and I immediately tried to find a bill to amend because it was late in the session so that we could fix this issue.

Unfortunately, the bill didn't pass.

And so that's when I really pushed to have this study committee.

This issue is personal for me.

My kids, my kids were like in middle school when everybody started getting smartphones.

And I could see that these programs on these phones were fundamentally changing.

My children and I tried to sound the alarm and no one would hear me.

And so I've waited eight, ten years to be able to do something about it.

Now we have enough millennials who have had kids who are scared about the phone and what it can do to their children, that we have enough collective voices that we can do something about it.

Yeah, I want to clarify something they watched at school, but they and there are there's a way they block things, but they were able to get through.

Right.

Because this is new, these A.I.

Companion chatbots are are new.

And so the companies that help the schools monitor what kids can access, they weren't on top of it.

And so this just slipped through.

Now Miss Fullerton did say that the school responded really, really well and took care of the problem.

But this technology, it changes so quickly that schools can't keep up, parents can't keep up.

So in the end, we made our committee, made several recommendations that we are turning into legislation now.

Okay.

We're going to talk about those in a minute.

I want to get back to you going back and forth.

You you certainly agree with all of that.

And I've heard that there are members of your party who certainly agree that there needs to be some kind, something happening when it comes to these chat bots and things like that 100%.

Look, we're seeing basically data telling us that upwards of 75% of 15 year olds in our state consider their A.I.

Chatbot, their best friend, their best friend.

We have to find a way to get that socialization to be fundamentally different.

We got to put the guardrails on, but frankly, we need the help of 11 million Georgians because, look, legislation can create that guardrail, but we need the parents.

We need the grandparents, the uncles, the aunts and everyone else to understand this is changing and it's changing monthly.

It's changing daily.

So all of us need to be super diligent in terms of what we're doing and what we're doing with our children.

And we I know that's hard.

I got four children and I know how hard that is to do, but between the guardrails that we can put on with my colleague in the Senate and what we can also do to work with 11 million Georgians, I think we can make a difference.

Yeah.

Talk, talk a little bit about what you're expecting to do with some legislation.

Right.

So what we've realized is that these big tech companies have discovered through the years that the more engaged they keep the users, the longer they keep them on the phone or the or the iPad.

The more money they make selling information to advertisers.

So they're making money off of our kids attention, and they're doing that now by designing the platforms and the products to be addictive, designing things in where if you do something, they they give you something back, they give you a reward that gives a little dose of dopamine, that makes you feel good.

So the first thing we want to do is is, is regulate the addictive design.

We don't want addictive products designed for our, our children.

The second thing we want to do is address the chatbot.

The companion chatbot issue.

This is critical.

This is going to make the situation so much worse.

Children are using these chatbots.

They're becoming friends with these chat bots.

And the parents, they don't know yet that their children are interacting with these chatbots.

We had parents who told horrible stories about the chatbot actually telling the child to kill.

Himself to commit suicide.

I listened to that.

It was just terrifying.

It's awful.

You know, child, no parent knows what this chatbot is going to say to their child.

So to those parents out there, I would tell you, find out if your children are using companion chatbots.

If they are, please teach them about the dangers we want to hold these companies accountable.

If a parent bought a doll and the doll said, kill yourself, that company would be liable because they had a product.

Just like cars, cars have to study safety measures before they bring out a new model.

We want these companies to be responsible for the products they put out in the harms that they cause.

In terms of A.I., chatbots, and then finally, we want to give parents more power.

So the parent parental controls, they're very difficult to use.

And parents are frustrated and the kids find their ways around them.

So we're supporting something called the App Store Accountability Act, which when a parent buys a phone for a child, the phone is linked to the parents phone.

If a child tries to download an app, a notification is sent to the parent and the parent can decide whether to approve the app or not.

That's easier than parental controls.

And then the very last thing we're doing.

Last year we passed a law banning cell phones in schools K through eight.

I believe we are going to come back and add high schools.

And I know that that they're talking about that both in the Senate and certainly in the House.

That's going to happen.

So that's good.

I want to get back to you about something before while we still have time.

I know that when it comes to the air taxis, something special is going to happen in 2026.

And you've been working on this for a long time.

For a long time.

Knock wood.

We're going to get special permission to be able to land an air taxi right in the middle of the Georgia World Congress Center at the kickoff, and I don't mean that as a pun.

At the kickoff of the World Cup.

And this is literally the world looking at us, billions of people looking at Atlanta and being able to land an air taxi and simultaneously bringing up an autonomous vehicle and hopefully having the FIFA head, our governor, our speaker and our lieutenant governor going into a three D printed mini house, because we want to show that affordable housing can be done, it can be done in our state, and we can do it through creative manufacturing.

So we're going to go ahead and put all together basically an entire portfolio of innovation for the world to see that Georgia is leading the way.

So they're going to start at this very, very port.

Vertiport Vertiport up in the north Fulton.

Right.

The governor and all of these officials are going to go to the Georgia World Congress Center.

And then there's going to be this House there.

That is our hope.

And we're hoping to get the final approvals on that.

And any of you who know anyone at the FAA, we'd like to be able to get that from them.

Yeah.

And for people who don't understand these these taxis are going to go along the interstate and they'll be able to go to Hartsfield and different things like that.

Yeah.

Look, imagine an idea where you're going to be able to go out to your rideshare app and you're going to have a choice of, do you want to go autonomous?

Do you want to go driver, or do you want to go in the air and you're going to be able to go in the air and literally go from, say, the The Northern Arc to Fox Theater, the northern Arc into the airport, you name it, you're going to now have a defined commute time as opposed to guessing what your commute time is going to be based on traffic.

And autonomous.

That means anybody will be.

Yeah, well, okay, so much to talk to you too, about.

Thank you so much for coming on.

We'll keep up with these issues.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for also joining Lawmakers today.

Tomorrow on day three of the session, house leaders from the majority and minority parties will outline what they would like to accomplish this year.

And we'll also hear from members of the Senate Committee on Eliminating the State Income tax.

Have a nice evening.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Oh.