Author

Jay Bookman
Jay Bookman is a columnist at the Georgia Recorder, a media outlet of the States Newsroom. He covered Georgia and national politics for nearly 30 years for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, earning numerous national, regional and state journalism awards. He was awarded the National Headliner Award and the Walker Stone Award for outstanding editorial writing. He is also the author of "Caught in the Current," published by St. Martin's Press. The Florida Phoenix is part of the nonprofit States Newsroom.
Unholy night – A Trump White House Christmas coup caper
By: Jay Bookman - November 17, 2023
It was a Christmas party at the Trump White House, and despite the festive decorations, the trees and the wreaths and the red-and-green bunting, the mood must have been grim. A few days earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had firmly rejected a lawsuit filed by the state of Texas seeking the overthrow of election results […]
Right-wing culture warrior attacks hurt military recruiting
By: Jay Bookman - October 6, 2023
By 2017, the U.S. military knew it had a serious problem in the ranks. In a survey of more than 80,000 personnel, one out of four minority service members had reported that they had experienced racial or ethnic harassment by fellow soldiers in the previous year; as a result, roughly a third of those were […]
Bookman: More evidence for Tooth Fairy than Georgia 2020 election fraud
By: Jay Bookman - September 10, 2023
According to a poll conducted last month by the University of Georgia, 63% of Georgia Republican voters still claim to believe “there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.” At this point, almost three years after the election, that’s like an adult believing in the Tooth Fairy, only worse. There’s at least some […]
Bookman: The season for accountability has arrived
By: Jay Bookman - August 2, 2023
A democracy has the right – no, the obligation — to defend itself against those who attack it and seek to destroy it. That’s what Capitol Police were forced to do on Jan. 6, as they physically fought off thousands of attackers. It’s what special counsel Jack Smith, operating in a different role, has now […]
From Clayton County to Buffalo, Biden is right about white supremacist terrorism
By: Jay Bookman - May 20, 2023
In March, a U.S. judge here in Georgia sentenced 48-year-old Larry Foxworth to 20 years in federal prison for firing multiple gunshots into two late-night convenience stores in Clayton County. Foxworth’s shooting binge wasn’t an act of random violence. It also wasn’t personal. It had a purpose, a motivation, an ideology behind it. “Foxworth told […]
In MTG’s grimy paws, a beautiful video becomes something sickening
By: Jay Bookman - April 9, 2023
“I’ll say it again,” Marjorie Taylor Greene says in a new video labeled “The Predator President.” “Democrats are the party of pedophiles.” What follows in the video is a compilation of interactions between Joe Biden and various young people, attempting to make the case that the 80-year-old president sexually abuses young children. This is what […]
Bookman: Potential indictments of former president not created equal
By: Jay Bookman - March 23, 2023
Let me ask a question, purely theoretical: Should the justice system treat a former president of the United States just as it would treat any other American citizen? As long as it’s just theoretical, the obvious answer is yes, of course. As Americans, we have no kings, no untouchable royalty. We are all equal before […]
Bookman: Marjorie Taylor Greene ascends in GOP because of stupidity, not in spite of it
By: Jay Bookman - March 4, 2023
Marjorie Taylor Greene is an idiot, and idiots, as a rule, aren’t interesting people. They aren’t interesting because their idiocy overshadows all other aspects of their personality. Greene is more an exemplar of that rule than an exception to it. Nonetheless, in their wisdom, the voters in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District have elected Greene as their […]
Fulton indictments coming in 2020 election probe, just not reeling big fish
By: Jay Bookman - February 16, 2023
There will be indictments. They are coming at the federal level – you don’t subpoena a former vice president in a high-profile criminal case unless and until prosecutions are likely — and they are coming at the state level here in Georgia. At least, I think so. That prediction is not based on leaks. To […]
Bookman: Newt Gingrich is father of today’s compromise-is-surrender GOP politics
By: Jay Bookman - February 3, 2023
In an NBC News poll last month, just 23% of Americans said they believe the country is headed in the right direction. Among Republicans, just 7% liked the way things are going. (Among Democrats it was 41%.) In any country with such deep discontent within a major faction, this one included, it shouldn’t be a […]
If Georgia GOP thinks life starts at conception, why allow ‘murder’ for six weeks?
By: Jay Bookman - January 22, 2023
If you honestly, sincerely believe that human life begins at the moment that sperm is introduced to egg, certain conclusions flow logically from that starting point, including that abortion is murder and that banning abortion is a moral obligation on a par with banning slavery. I strongly disagree with that approach, but I understand it, […]
Georgia’s gift to Trump is a lump of coal in stocking
By: Jay Bookman - December 18, 2022
When the history books about Donald Trump are written – and believe me, there will be many – Georgia will have earned a place of pride. It’s only a mild exaggeration to say that Georgia has been to Trump what Waterloo was to Napoleon, what Saratoga was to King George and his redcoats, what Gettysburg […]