Morning Reads for Tuesday, April 26

Good morning! I hope yours is wonderful.

• The Georgia legislature is set to have massive turnover: 50 of races for the General Assembly’s 236 seats don’t have an incumbent on the ballot (and it’s not impossible that an incumbent or three will lose their primaries). This means that the House and Senate are in store for a ”brain drain” — particularly with the loss of legislative titans like Dean of the House Calvin Smyre (soon to be confirmed as the United States Ambassador to the Dominican Republic), House Appropriations Chairman Terry England (retiring), and Senate Rules Chair Jeff Mullis (also retiring).
  • It’s fair to assume that the first stretch of the 2023 legislative session will be not unlike the first few weeks of high school, with a large cohort of freshmen who have no idea what they are doing (or where the bathrooms and the cafeteria are), and an entirely new political pecking order for the folks basking in their newly-elevated senior lawmaker status.
• When my kids were little, they did a inter-school activity called ”The Battle of the Books.” (Truly, it is where I hit my mom stride in a way that is probably not unlike what it is to be a travel sports mom, just with books.) These days, the phrase ”battle of the books” has a whole new meaning, most recently in Cherokee County.
  • Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi, is a stunning novel that I would have zero issue with my high school reading. In fact, my oldest read her newest novel in class this year. He didn’t love it — and that’s okay! You’re not going to love everything you read in school, I told him! That’s how you grow as a critically-thinking reader!
• I’m enthralled by these proposals for Gwinnett Place Mall. The usefulness of malls as shopping destinations is long past — but the fact that they are centrally-located and easy-to-access makes them ideal for transportation and mixed-use redevelopments.
• Fulton County Elections worker Wandrea ”Shaye” Moss is in excellent company as the most recent recipient of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. (H/t to Axios.)
• Spelman College has a new President!
• Former Senator Kelly Loeffler insisted that she was saving taxpayer money by using her husband’s company’s private jet. Financial disclosures reveal that she was indeed saving taxpayers money, since both she and her husband are taxpayers.