University football coach fired for 'hateful' tweet about Stacey Abrams, election fraud



An assistant football coach for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga has been fired after posting a tweet disparaging former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and making unsubstantiated claims about election fraud during Tuesday's Senate runoffs.

Chris Malone, who had just finished his second season with the Mocs, mocked Abrams' appearance as well as her failed 2018 run for governor in the post, which has since been deleted.

"Congratulations to the state of GA and Fat Albert @staceyabrams because you have truly shown America the true works of cheating in an election again!!! Enjoy the buffet Big Girl! You earned it!!! Hope the money was good, still not governor!" Malone wrote, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Abrams, who formerly served in the Georgia House of Representatives, played an active role in garnering support for Democratic Sens.-elect Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossof ahead of the state's runoff elections.

It's worth noting that a third-party voter registration group founded by Abrams, the New Georgia Project, was under investigation by the Georgia secretary of state's office for "repeatedly and aggressively" seeking to register "ineligible, out-of-state, or deceased voters" ahead of the runoffs.

In response to the tweet, Malone was promptly fired and his bio page on the university athletics department website was removed. The university's chancellor called the tweet "hateful, hurtful and untrue" in a video announcement of his removal.

"Last night, a totally inappropriate social media post by a member of our football staff was brought to my attention," UT-Chattanooga athletic director Mark Wharton wrote in a statement Thursday morning. "The entire post was appalling. The sentiments in that post do not represent the values of our football program, our athletics department or our university. With that said, effectively immediately, that individual is no longer a part of the program."

Head coach Rusty Wright added: "Our football program has a clear set of standards. Those standards include respecting others. It is a message our players hear daily. It is a standard I will not waiver on. What was posted on social media by a member of my staff is unacceptable and not any part of what I stand for or what Chattanooga Football stands for. Life is bigger than football and as leaders of young men, we have to set that example, first and foremost. With that said, effectively immediately, that individual is no longer a part of my staff."

Statements below from head coach Rusty Wright and Director of Athletics Mark Wharton. https://t.co/qRbQgbrvi3
— Chattanooga Football (@Chattanooga Football)1610028579.0

Malone was hired by the Mocs in 2019 to serve as an offensive line coach and formerly worked as a coach at Old Dominion, James Madison, Virginia State, and UMass.

Federal judge — who is Stacey Abrams’ sister — orders two Georgia counties to stop removing voters from rolls ahead of Jan. 5 runoffs



A federal judge has ordered two counties in Georgia to reverse course on removing thousands of individuals from voter rolls ahead of the state's Jan. 5 Senate runoffs.

The judge, Leslie Abrams Gardner — who is the sister of former Democratic candidate for governor Stacey Abrams, a prominent ally of Democratic President-elect Joe Biden — issued the ruling Monday, concluding the counties relied on unverified change-of-address data to proceed with the action.

"Defendants are enjoined from removing any challenged voters in Ben Hill and Muscogee Counties from the registration lists on the basis of National Change of Address data," Gardner wrote in the order.

Politico reported that the majority of the registrations officials were seeking to rescind, about 4,000, came from Muscogee County, where Biden claimed an easy victory, while an additional 150 registrations were from Ben Hill County, where President Trump won by a sizable margin.

The number of registrations could prove significant in the hotly contested state where, in November, Biden defeated Trump by just under 12,000 votes and Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler were unable to accrue the majority needed for victory and avoid runoff elections.

The elections boards in each of the counties had approved motions filed by local voters claiming the registrations should be removed based on data from the United States Postal Service's National Change of Address database that allegedly showed the individuals had moved out of the county.

In her Monday order, Gardner ruled that the evidence in each case was not conclusive enough to support their removal and noted that the removals may have violated federal law because the voters were not given proper notice as is required within 90 days of a federal election.

Earlier on Monday, the Muscogee County elections board filed a motion requesting Gardner's recusal from the case given her connection to Abrams, but the request was denied.

Abrams, after losing her run for governor in 2018, has become a vocal proponent of increasing voter registration in the state. Earlier this month, the Georgia secretary of state's office announced it had launched an investigation into the New Georgia Project, a third-party registration group founded by Abrams, for "repeatedly and aggressively" seeking to register "ineligible, out-of-state, or deceased voters" ahead of the runoff elections.

In the motion, lawyers for the board described Abrams as "a Georgia politician and voting rights activist who was the Democratic candidate in the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election and has since engaged in various highly publicized efforts to increase voter registration and turnout for the 2020 general election in Georgia."

This week, during an interview on CNN, Abrams charged that "Republicans do not know how to win without voter suppression as one of their tools."

Report: Over 100K Georgians who didn’t vote on Election Day have requested ballots for Senate runoffs — and they skew Democratic



More than 100,000 voters who did not vote in Georgia on Election Day have requested mail-in ballots for the state's upcoming Senate runoffs, and the sampling of demographics show they probably lean Democratic, a new report from the Peach State revealed.

What are the details?

As of Thursday afternoon, 108,625 Georgians who did not vote in the November election have applied for ballots to vote in the Jan. 5 runoffs, according to data from georgiavotes.com. The tracking site uses publicly available information from the Georgia secretary of state's website.

The figure, which amounts to 6.3% of all mail-in ballot requests, could be enough to sway results in an election that is expected to be close. Democratic challenger Joe Biden defeated President Trump in the state by a narrow margin of just under 12,000 votes. Both Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler failed to win a 50% majority of the vote, which sent each race to a runoff.

The demographic breakdown of the new runoff applicants skew toward traditionally Democratic voting groups, with non-white voters making up the majority of the sampling. More than 42,000 are white voters while nearly 38,000 are black voters, and the remaining 28,000 classified themselves as Hispanic, Asian, and other.

The demographic breakdown, though perhaps concerning, is certainly not an assurance that Democrats will take the seats due to the fact that Republicans made historic inroads with minority groups during the 2020 election.

What else?

The highly anticipated runoff elections are also reportedly drawing completely new Georgia voters into the state's voter pool. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, nearly 75,000 new voters have registered in the state since the presidential election in November. The news outlet pulled the data from an updated voter registration list purchased from the secretary of state's office.

The Journal-Constitution noted that the new voters are "overwhelmingly young, with 57% of them under 35 years old. Some are new Georgia residents; others just turned 18."

It's worth noting that Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has warned against out-of-state voters temporarily relocating to Georgia to vote in the runoffs. To do so is a felony.

Anything else?

The fact that an increasing number of non-voters are registering ahead of the runoffs doesn't guarantee that they will actually vote or that turnout will be up overall.

Republican strategist Karl Rove argued recently that the mail-in ballot requests overall are down from what they were for the presidential election.

"In November, 1,740,795 people requested a mail-in ballot — 1,362,369 actually exercised it, voted by mail. So today, the requests are half a million less, a third less than they were for the November election," he said.

Current figures on georgiavotes.com show that the vote turnout for the runoff elections is down 9% in comparison to where the vote turnout was for the presidential election at this point. Mail-in allot applications are also down 2%.

"And what you also need to remember is 600,000 of the people on the list for mail-in ballots, 600,000 of that 1.7 million are automatically on the list. They are on the list for a long time. They sign up for permanent mail-in ballots, so they're counted as a request, but we don't know whether or not they are actually going to vote," Rove added.

Black pastors call out Rev. Raphael Warnock for supporting 'systemic racism of abortion'



A coalition of more than 25 black pastors — mainly from Georgia — recently called out Democratic Senate candidate Rev. Raphael Warnock over his support for abortion ahead of the Peach State's Jan. 5 runoff elections.

In a letter obtained by Fox News and sent last Friday, the pastors said they felt "compelled to confront" the reverend after he recently made public comments supporting abortion, which they said represented "grave errors of judgment and a lapse in pastoral responsibility."

In November, Warnock tweeted, "I will always fight for reproductive justice." Then in another tweet, he said, "I'm a pro-choice pastor, and I believe that a hospital room is way too small for a woman, her doctor, and the United States government."

The tweets followed an earlier public statement the reverend made during a podcast interview in which he argued that abortion is an exercise of "human agency and freedom" and is "consistent with" his beliefs as a minister.

Warnock, who serves as senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, an Atlanta church where both Martin Luther King Jr. and his father once pastored, is challenging Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler (Ga.) for one of the two Senate seats up for grabs in Georgia.

In the letter, the pastors charged Warnock to reconsider his position based on biblical grounds and instead turn to denounce the evil practice:

As a Christian pastor and as a Black leader, you have a duty to denounce the evil of abortion, which kills a disproportionate number of Black children. Your open advocacy of abortion is a scandal to the faith and to the Black community.

Abortion is fundamentally in conflict with the plain reading of the Bible. The Bible clearly teaches that human life is created by God beginning at conception. As Psalm 139 proclaims:"You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am wonderfully and fearfully made." What human being could possibly have the right to blot out an innocent life that God has wonderfully and fearfully made?

Abortion prematurely thwarts God's providential and loving plan for a promising human life.And by terminating an innocent unborn life in the womb, abortion directly violates the seventh commandment: "Thou shalt not kill." God demands that every faithful Christian protect and uphold the sanctity of innocent human life, at every stage of life. Supporting abortion represents a serious abdication of and a transgression against that responsibility, just like the disrespect of the poor, the disabled, or the elderly.

Later in the letter, the pastors also entreated Warnock to change course over the devastation that abortion has wreaked on the black community. They pointed out that the abortion movement was begun with the premise of racism and white supremacy and today continues to disproportionately harm black Americans.

"Can you in good conscience defend abortion, knowing that abortion kills 474 Black babies for every 1000 live births?" the pastors asked.

"For all of the above reasons, we entreat you to reconsider your public advocacy for abortion," they concluded. "We implore you to uphold the Biblical defense of life and to fight against the systemic racism of abortion."

It's not the first time that Warnock has been confronted over his support for abortion. Last week, former NFL coach Tony Dungy questioned Warnock's faith over the issue.