Friday Facts: July 10, 2026

Few line items in a household budget feel as immovable—or as frustrating—as the monthly insurance premium. For years, Georgians watched those bills climb, driven in no small part by a legal environment that consistently ranked among the nation’s most costly and litigious. 

In 2025, state leaders finally moved to change that, passing a sweeping package of tort reforms aimed at reining in lawsuit abuse and the hidden costs it imposed on nearly everything people buy. 

Now, a little over a year later, enough time has passed to begin asking the obvious question: is it working? 

The early data—both here in Georgia and in neighboring Florida, which took a similar path a few years earlier—offers some genuinely encouraging signs, even if the full picture will take years to develop.

We take a look at the data in this week’s commentary.

– Kyle Wingfield

Friday’s Freshest 🗞️

The Declaration of Independence was the most revolutionary act of our revolutionary generation. Not because the document’s signers risked everything by doing so, though they did. Not because it opened a new epoch, though it did. But rather, because it sparked a change in human thought, behavior and expectations that continues to unfold 250 years later.

In the ongoing debate over why homeownership remains out of reach for so many Georgia families, we have the usual explanations: higher interest rates, institutional investors buying up homes, global supply chain disruptions and the rising cost of labor. But an updated study from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) puts a new dollar figure on the cost of government regulations nationwide.

Frédéric Bastiat famously distinguished between “what is seen and what is not seen,” arguing that the mark of a good economist is attention to the unseen.Yet, the U.S. Social Security system takes one of the largest financial commitments of an American’s life and renders its true cost hidden by design.

If school choice advocates want these programs to last, they should demand better outcome reporting. The current state of scattered outcome reporting across the country is not sufficient to judge the success of universal eligibility, but there are a number of valuable pieces already available.

Peach Picks 🍑

Sixty-six Georgia cities and counties hoping for a 1-cent sales tax to offset property taxes will not get a chance to put it before voters. Democrats in the House of Representatives voted against the bills, which needed a two-thirds majority to pass, on Saturday, and didn’t change their mind when given a chance to reconsider on Monday.

The state legislature concluded its special session Tuesday by passing a solution to a looming election deadline. Senate Bill 3EX would move a July 1 deadline to stop using QR codes on ballots to count votes to 2028. It would also appoint a commission to study a new election system for 2028, including hand-marked paper ballots.

Gov. Kemp announced that Georgia-based engineering and manufacturing company Yancey Engineered Solutions will invest $5.7 million in a new manufacturing facility in Cordele, creating 300 new jobs over the next several years in Crisp County.

The State of Georgia is participating in the Great American State Fair in Washington, D.C., as part of the nationwide celebration of America’s 250th Birthday. Georgia’s exhibits highlight key industries in the state, as well as special items from well-known Georgia-based companies like Waffle House and Chick-fil-A.

Officials on Wednesday unveiled renderings of a 10,000-plus-capacity, red-brick arena to be built along I-16 that will, at an estimated $350 million, be the priciest and largest public undertaking of its kind in Middle Georgia’s history.The for-now-dubbed Macon Arena, with its oval, overhanging rooftop that is symbolic of a vinyl record, an homage to the city’s rich musical heritage, will replace the nearly 60-year-old Macon Coliseum that, until it is razed in a couple of years, sits next door on a high-visibility hillside across the Ocmulgee River from downtown.

Featured Video 🎥

In this video, we explain why Georgia’s physician shortage persists, how the current licensing system created an unnecessary bottleneck, and what the new Senate Bill 427 changes.

Quote of the Week 🌟

Freedom and law are often treated as opposites, but Cicero understood that they depend on each other. The quote above captures a central truth of ordered liberty: Freedom is not the absence of rules.

When society respects the rule of law, citizens can cooperate, plan, build, work, worship, raise families and invest with confidence. They know that their rights do not depend on the mood of an official or the politics of the moment. But when laws become arbitrary, unpredictable or selectively enforced, liberty gives way to power.

That is why limited government matters. The law should protect people from force, fraud and abuse; it should not become a tool for micromanaging every decision or favoring one group over another. A free society requires both restraint from citizens and restraint from government.

Cicero’s insight remains relevant because the rule of law is the foundation of opportunity, accountability and self-government. We submit to just laws not because we are less free, but because without them no one’s freedom is secure.

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