Obama congratulates MLB for ‘taking a stand’ against Georgia election law as Trump calls for boycott

Obama on Saturday congratulated the league “for taking a stand on behalf of voting rights for all residents,” following MLB’s Friday announcement. The Democrat’s tweeted support of the transfer struck a starkly totally different tone from his Republican successor’s assertion late Friday that known as for a boycott of baseball and the entire “woke corporations which might be interfering with Free and Truthful Elections.”

Opponents of the brand new election legislation say the laws, and comparable measures being thought of in different states, quantity to voter suppression efforts that may scale back minority voting. Republicans solid the measure, dubbed The Election Integrity Act of 2021, as essential to spice up confidence in elections after the 2020 election noticed Trump make repeated, unsubstantiated claims of fraud.

The laws, signed into legislation final month by Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, imposes voter identification necessities for absentee ballots, permits state officers to take over native elections boards, limits using poll drop packing containers and makes it against the law to provide or provide voters food and drinks as they wait in line to vote.

Georgia was key to President Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in November, and Biden has known as the invoice “Jim Crow within the twenty first Century” and “an atrocity.” On Wednesday, he informed ESPN — earlier than the MLB made its choice — that he would “strongly help” shifting the sport out of Atlanta.

In his Saturday tweet praising the league’s transfer, Obama added that “there is not any higher manner for America’s pastime to honor the nice Hank Aaron, who all the time led by instance.”

MLB’s choice to maneuver the sport comes because the tourism trade, one of many hardest hit through the Covid-19 pandemic, continues to be struggling to rebound.

The “estimated misplaced financial affect” from the MLB “All-Star Recreation relocation is greater than $100 million,” in response to an announcement from Holly Quinlan, a Cobb County tourism official.

Kemp blasted the MLB’s choice throughout a Saturday information convention as caving to “concern and lies from liberal activists” and placing “the needs” of Biden and Stacey Abrams, a Georgia Democrat and voting rights advocate, “forward of the financial well-being of hard-working Georgians who had been relying on the All-Star Recreation for a paycheck.”

Atlanta’s Democratic Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms informed CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield on Saturday that the MLB’s choice would seemingly be the “first of many boycotts of our state to return” and urged Republican state lawmakers, who handed the measure, to repeal it or make adjustments.

Bottoms informed CNN that whereas she would not like MLB’s choice to drag the sport from her metropolis, “I definitely perceive it,” including that “it’s hurting our economic system and it is my hope that, lastly, leaders throughout the state will hear.”

“Simply because the legislators and the governor made the choice to go ahead with this invoice, individuals are making choices to not come to our state. And it should affect hundreds of thousands of Georgians, employment, small companies, our companies, and it’s totally unlucky,” she stated.

The brand new host metropolis for the July 13 recreation has but to be introduced, in response to the league.

This story has been up to date with extra particulars Saturday.