A county government in Georgia approved $250,000 to fund a reparations task force.

The funding was approved during a Jan. 18 Fulton County Board of Commissioners meeting in a  4 to 3 vote, according to a Fulton County press release. Fulton County is home to Atlanta. 

The reparations task force will provide recommendations ‘to the Board of Commissioners regarding priorities, objectives, and policies which will support the revitalization, preservation, and stabilization of the Black/African American population in Fulton County in the form of reparations,’ according to the press release.

According to FOX 5, the task force was first created in 2021 to study the feasibility of giving reparations to Black residents in the county.

The funding was requested in order to study if the county owes Black residents reparations for slavery, Jim Crow, as well as the effects of ‘urban renewal.’ If it is decided that reparations are necessary, the study will also determine how much Black residents should receive.

Task Force Advisory Board Chair Dr. Karcheik Sims-Alvarado said the funding is a victory.

‘It was a great victory to secure a majority vote from the Board of Commissioners granting $250,000 to perform an empirical-based study and a feasibility study,’ Sims-Alvarado said. ‘Qualitative and quantitative data will allow the Task Force to critically examine the ways slavery, Jim Crow, and Urban Renewal denied African Americans opportunities to acquire personal, political, and economic autonomy. Recommendations will be offered based on the empirical evidence. The feasibility study will demonstrate how Fulton County can support the recommendations made by the Task Force.’

The task force will present their findings to the board of commissioners in October 2024.

U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Penn., remains hospitalized in Washington, D.C. Thursday night after feeling lightheaded while attending a Democratic retreat in the nation’s capital on Wednesday. 

Fetterman, who suffered a stroke during his campaign in May 2022, stayed another night at George Washington University Hospital to undergo testing. His office said Thursday night that an MRI and tests conducted so far have come back negative for another stroke or a seizure.

Though there haven’t been any signs of a seizure thus far, Communications Director Joe Calvello said Fetterman was still being monitored with an electroencephalogram (EEG) – an instrument that measures brainwaves.

Calvello did not share details on when Fetterman might be released, but had said late Wednesday that he was ‘in good spirits and talking with his staff and family.’

In November, the 53-year-old was elected to replace now-retired Republican Pat Toomey in the U.S. Senate. He defeated celebrity heart surgeon and GOP nominee Dr. Mehmet Oz by five percentage points, flipping a seat that was crucial in the Democrats’ efforts to hold the Senate majority.

The Associated Press reported more than $300 million was spent during the campaign, making it the most expensive Senate race in 2022.

Two days before the state’s Democratic primary on May 15, Fetterman experienced what he later described as a near-fatal stroke. His campaign took a backseat for a few months as he recovered from having a pacemaker with a defibrillator implanted to manage two heart conditions, atrial fibrillation and cardiomyopathy.

When he fully returned to the campaign trail, Fetterman refused to release his medical records and reportedly wouldn’t allow his doctors to answer questions from reporters, though he insisted his doctors said he could fully recover.

During the months leading up to the November election, Republicans, including Oz, publicly questioned if Fetterman was honest about the effects of his stroke and wondered if he was in a place to serve as senator.

As a result of the stroke, Fetterman has struggled with auditory processing disorder, a common aftereffect that can leave a person unable to speak fluidly. It can also alter a person’s ability to quickly process spoken conversation into meaning.

Those effects were noticeable during the campaign’s only debate in the fall when Fetterman struggled to complete sentences while jumbling words, which raised more concerns about his ability to serve if elected.

During his election night victory speech 15 days later, Fetterman told cheering supporters he ran for ‘anyone that ever got knocked down that got back up.’

Before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022, Fetterman served as the state’s lieutenant governor from 2019 to 2023 and mayor of Braddock, Penn., from 2006 to 2019.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

FIRST ON FOX: Montana’s Republican attorney general threatened to sue a nonprofit organization of state attorneys if it didn’t return taxpayer money amid accusations of growing liberal bias in the group.

AG Austin Knudsen sent a pointed letter with a 90-day deadline to the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) following an exodus of members as questions swirl about the group’s finances and a supposedly liberal agenda despite labeling itself as nonpartisan.

‘There is no doubt in my mind now that NAAG is an unreliable and improper financial steward, and that Montana’s share of the money at NAAG needs to come home,’ Austin Knudsen wrote in the letter, which was dated Wednesday and obtained by Fox News Digital.

‘Return the money in your accounts that belongs to Montana within 90 days or I will go to court and sue to ensure that the money is safely and legally brought back within the four corners of Montana law.’

Knudsen was one of several attorneys who fled NAAG in the last year as accusations were made that the group was banking money from consumer protection settlements often bigger than the cuts the states themselves received. The group also allegedly mismanaged funds and promoted liberal causes while stifling conservative members’ voices, Fox News Digital reported last month.

‘Over the last six-plus months, the disheartening revelations about NAAG have confirmed the wisdom of extricating Montana from NAAG activities,’ Knudsen wrote in his letter, citing Fox News Digital’s reporting that the group is down $53 million in revenue since last year.

The letter also cited reports that the group has heavily invested in companies that promote economic policies known as ESG (environmental, social and governance) that conservatives claim are used by the left as a social credit score to force businesses and financial institutions to adopt progressive ideologies across the globe.

Kansas Republican AG Kris Kobach, a member of NAAG’s executive committee, sent a letter to the taxpayer-funded organization last month to demand answers on investments with companies like BlackRock that promote ESG and, according to Kobach, ‘destroy shareholder value in pursuit of faddish ideological aims, often without proper disclosure to investors.’

‘NAAG may not have a policy affirmatively endorsing ESG, but actions speak louder than words, and they have invested millions of dollars in funds linked to ESG initiatives,’ Knudsen told Fox News Digital.

NAAG recently agreed to suspend dues paid by the states with taxpayer money after Republican attorneys general began pulling out or threatening to pull out of the organization. Critics said leadership has been pushing ‘woke’ programming and mismanaging its share of legal settlements.

The controversial settlements include a $15 million cut NAAG took from a $573 million nationwide settlement with McKinsey & Co. that resolved allegations it improperly advised pharmaceutical companies on how to boost opioid sales.

That cut represents 40% more than the state of Kentucky received and twice the amount NAAG gave state attorneys general to investigate the case in the first place.

‘These states have lost thousands of their citizens to the opioid epidemic and represent thousands more who still struggle,’ Kentucky Republican AG Daniel Cameron said in a letter to NAAG obtained by Legal Newsline last year. ‘Yet NAAG, an entity with no such constituency, collected $15 million.’

Former Arizona Republican AG Mark Brnovich, one of the attorneys to leave NAAG, told Fox News Digital that the group had recently changed.

‘At one point NAAG was a place where Republicans and Democrats could work together but became a piggy bank for the group to finance plaintiff lawsuits that states were disagreeing with,’ Brnovich said.

Taxpayer funds collected by NAAG are better off being spent in the states by people who more represent the values of voters, Knudsen told the organization in his letter.

‘It’s time for the money that is lawfully Montanans’ come back to where it can be put to use benefiting them,’ Knudsen told Fox News Digital. ‘These funds belong to Montana taxpayers and should not pay for European junkets and investments that run counter to the interests of our state.’

In addition to concerns about consumer protection settlements, investments and ESG, Knudsen said in the letter that he obtained documents that ‘call NAAG’s entire financial structure into question’ – including a document that he told Fox News Digital shows the Internal Revenue Service considers NAAG ‘an instrumentality of the state.’

That designation carries ‘significant implications for the status of Montana’s money,’ Knudsen told Fox News Digital – and it raises concerns whether NAAG is breaching its fiduciary obligations in the way it handles taxpayer funds.

‘From what I have seen, it appears the entire NAAG arrangement is premised on a series of arrangements that do not square with the [way] law works in Montana, or maybe in any other state,’ Knudsen wrote in the letter.

O.H. Skinner, executive director of Alliance for Consumers, told Fox News Digital that he believes Knudsen is ‘exactly right’ to take action against NAAG. He bashed the group, saying it cannot be trusted with hundreds of millions it collects from consumer protection settlements.

‘Between NAAG’s foreign stock investments, the financing of lavish foreign trips and the secret investments in ESG with liberal activist asset managers like BlackRock, they have proven themselves to be wholly unreliable and have teed up legal action against themselves,’ Skinner said.

Skinner added that it is time for NAAG to ‘throw in the towel’ and ‘send their cash stash back to the states and consumers.’

A spokesperson for NAAG told Fox News Digital the organization has received the letter and is ‘working with our executive committee of attorneys general on the matter and will present it to our membership.’

Knudsen’s letter instructs NAAG to preserve documents and any related communications involving the state of Montana, investments, fees collected and other financial details and that ‘spoliation’ of any relevant evidence will have ‘serious consequences.’

‘I hold out hope that you will return Montana’s money without the need for litigation,’ Knudsen’s letter concludes. ‘But if not, I expect to be seeing you in court. The choice is yours.’

FIRST ON FOX: Internal documents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) show the ‘zero tolerance’ guidelines the agency is using to shut down gun stores.

Fox News Digital exclusively obtained the ATF’s federal firearms licensee (FFL) inspection guidance from January 2022 that makes it easier to revoke gun stores’ federal licenses.

The guidance says the agency ‘has zero tolerance for willful violations that greatly affect public safety and ATF’s ability to trace firearms recovered in violent crimes’ and that ‘revocation’ of the FFL’s license ‘is the assumed action’ with violations.

‘Therefore, revocation is the assumed action, unless extraordinary circumstances exist, when violations are cited that include’ transferring a firearm ‘to a prohibited person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe the transferee is a prohibited person,’ failing to perform a background check, and ‘making a false or fictitious written statement in the FFL’s required records or in applying for a firearms license,’ the guidance reads.

The guidance defines administrative action ‘as a warning letter, warning conference, revocation, imposition of civil fine, and/or suspension of a federal firearms license, including a recommendation of denial of an original or renewal application, and alternate action to revocation.’

According to the documents, the ‘ATF must establish willfulness to proceed with revocation’ under federal law, but the agency ‘does not have to establish a history of prior violations to determine willfulness.’

‘Accordingly, ATF will revoke a federal firearms license, absent extraordinary circumstances on initial violations, if those violations inherently demonstrate willfulness, such as transferring a firearm to a prohibited person; failing to run a background check prior to transferring a firearm to a non-licensee; falsifying records, or making false statements; failing to respond to an ATF tracing request; refusing to permit ATF to conduct an inspection; or allowing a straw sale of a firearm to occur.’

‘ATF may also revoke for any other willful first-time violation as it deems appropriate,’ the guidance reads.

The guidance says that the agency ‘can establish the knowledge element of willfulness in several ways’ including establishing ‘the FFL has a history of similar, repeat violations, and documentation that an [Industry Operations Investigator (IOI)] discussed them with the FFL.’

‘The FFL’s compliance history can include other efforts by ATF (including qualification inspections) to inform the FFL about its legal responsibilities,’ the ATF guidance reads, also saying the agency can ‘use inspection reports to establish willfulness even if the inspection found no violations.’

‘Revocation is also an appropriate licensing action in response to the discovery of the below willful violations,’ the guidance also says, which includes any ‘other [Gun Control Act] violation not specifically addressed in this order where revocation may be appropriate.’

Additionally, when an FFL loses its license, it will likely close shop and be required to send its gun purchase records — which are now required to be kept indefinitely — straight to the ATF.

The ATF announced in July 2021 that they would be updating the guidelines established under the Trump administration.

Gun rights group Gun Owners of America (GOA) first obtained and shared the documents with Fox News Digital on Thursday.

Aiden Johnston, GOA’s director of federal affairs, told Fox News Digital that ‘Joe Biden has weaponized the ATF against gun owners and the firearms industry in an attempt to violate the Second Amendment and expand his illegal gun registry.’

‘Rather than targeting those who display clear negligence and disregard for the law, ATF now revokes licenses without warning at the discovery of a first mistake by honest gun dealers,’ Johnston said.

‘When Federal Firearms Licensees are forced out of business, ATF adds their records to its digital gun registry that has nearly a billion gun and gun owner records,’ he continued. ‘GOA is already working with Second Amendment champions like Rep. Michael Cloud on Capitol Hill to address this alarming issue and eliminate this unconstitutional gun registry.’

ATF spokesperson Erik Longnecker told Fox News Digital the ‘ATF can revoke a federal firearms license for willful violations of the Gun Control Act, especially those willful violations that are a threat to public safety.’

‘Such willful violations can include transferring a firearm to a prohibited person, not conducting background checks, falsifying records, not responding to trace requests, and refusing to permit inspections,’ Longnecker said in response to Fox News Digital’s question as to why the agency is moving immediately to revocation of FFL licenses for potentially minor violations instead of issuing a warning letter or conference.

‘These willful violations are anything but ‘minor,’’ Longnecker said.

GOA previously blasted the ATF for their ‘illegal gun registry’ in their new report on the finalized rule requiring FFLs to maintain purchase records indefinitely.

The group’s report on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requested documents revealed the ATF ‘is maintaining a digital, searchable, centralized registry of guns and gun owners in violation of various federal prohibitions.’

GOA wrote in their report that the ‘ATF has reached a point where it has converted nearly one billion records (required to be kept by FFLs) into a single, centralized, and searchable national gun registry, that is routinely searched by multiple data fields (except, reportedly, by gun owner name).’

Federal law before the rule required federally-licensed gun stores to hold onto purchase records for a minimum of 20 years. The new rule prevents FFLs from destroying the purchase records should they so choose.

Second Amendment sentinels in Congress have taken aim at the newly finalized rule, with Cruz introducing the Senate companion bill to Rep. Michael Cloud’s, R-Texas, legislation, the No Retaining Every Gun In a System That Restricts Your (REGISTRY) Rights Act, last Congress.

EXCLUSIVE: Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm met privately with the leader of the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), the group that funded a recent study used to justify calls for a gas stove ban.

Granholm met with Jules Kortenhorst — the CEO of RMI at the time — in June 2021, according to her internal agency calendar obtained by government watchdog group Americans for Public Trust (APT). Kortenhorst is widely known global climate activist who also founded the Energy Transitions Commission and chairs the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Net Zero Transition.

The calendar didn’t include the agenda for the meeting which was conducted via Zoom and lasted for approximately an hour. The Department of Energy (DOE) and RMI didn’t respond to requests for comment.

‘Despite calling stories about the Biden administration banning gas stoves ‘ridiculous’ and ‘not true,’ Secretary Granholm’s calendar tells a different story,’ APT executive director Caitlin Sutherland told Fox News Digital. ‘We’ve now learned that she consulted with the dark money group pushing to ban gas stoves.’ 

‘Suffice it to say, ‘ridiculous’ and ‘not true’ proposals don’t ordinarily involve a meeting with the Secretary of Energy — and where there’s smoke, there’s fire,’ Sutherland added. ‘Americans everywhere must demand Granholm and green energy extremists stay out of their kitchens.’

RMI — which is a Colorado-based nonprofit that works to accelerate the global green energy transition, particularly through economy-wide electrification — recently made headlines after it funded a study that highlighted public health dangers posed by gas stove usage. The study was cited in a Bloomberg article in early January that included comments from a Consumer Product Safety Commission member who told the outlet a gas stove ban was ‘on the table.’

Granholm also boosted the study, authored by RMI researchers Talor Gruenwald and Brady Seals, in a tweet in which she implored Americans to switch to electric stovetops.

‘We can and must FIX this,’ Granholm tweeted on Jan. 4 in response to a post from Seal with the study’s findings. ‘Through [President Biden’s] Inflation Reduction Act, Americans will have greater access to Electric and Induction Cooktops: keeps pollution out of the home. Cooks food faster. Helps families save money.’

After widespread criticism, the White House ultimately came out against a gas stove ban, saying it wouldn’t support such a measure. Granholm called the idea a ban ‘ridiculous.’

However, earlier this month, the DOE reignited the debate, proposing tight efficiency regulations that would restrict consumers’ gas stove purchases in the future. Overall, the Biden administration took more than 110 actions on similar energy efficiency standards throughout 2022. 

‘One huge piece of this, of course, is making sure that we electrify and create efficiencies within the home environment,’ Granholm said during the White House Electrification Summit in December. ‘This is our moment to work together to deploy, deploy, deploy, and to get to that clean energy future that we all care about.’

In addition, RMI has collaborated with the Chinese government to study transitioning away from traditional fossil fuels and the group’s only office outside the U.S. is located in Beijing, China’s capital city. RMI is a member of the China Clean Transportation Partnership, a green group with significant ties to the Chinese government.

In 2013, RMI worked with the National Development and Reform Commission, a Chinese government entity, to create a roadmap for ‘China’s revolution in energy consumption and production to 2050.’ The report largely showed how China’s economy could adopt new clean energy technologies to replace oil and gas infrastructure.

RMI board member Wei Ding previously was the chairman of the China International Capital Corporation, a bank partially owned by the Chinese government.

The Washington Free Beacon first reported RMI’s ties to the Chinese government.

And RMI has been the recipient of millions of dollars in DOE funding and its staff members have participated in agency events on green transportation and sustainability.

The DOE awarded RMI with a $4.4 million grant in March 2022 to demonstrate ‘an integrated retrofit package of envelope panels, a heat pump pod, and innovative financing’ in a building in Cambridge, Massachusetts.