By Kathryn Squyres, CNN

(CNN) — At least 22 candidates have filed to run for former GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s district in northwest Georgia.

The group includes veterans, farmers and business owners. Seventeen are Republicans. Some have challenged Greene in the past or have held local office, while others are newcomers to politics.

Few are talking much about Greene or her legacy in the district, while several claim to be President Donald Trump’s best local ally.

While the deep-red district is all but certain to stay in Republican hands, the race could give a sense for how voters come down on the split in the party between Greene and President Donald Trump.

All these candidates will run on the same ballot in the special election on March 10. If no candidate wins a majority, the top two candidates will advance to a runoff on April 7.

The information below comes largely from campaign websites and social media pages.

Republicans

Colton Moore, a former state senator, calls himself “Trump’s No. 1 defender” in the district. Before he resigned to run in the special election, he was expelled from the Senate Republican caucus in 2023 for ripping his colleagues over not agreeing to a special session to impeach Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who obtained a since-dismissed indictment of Trump. At the time, Trump praised Moore, thanking him for his “courage and conviction.” Moore was banned from the state House floor in 2024 for criticizing the late House speaker and was then arrested last January as he tried to push his way into the chamber during the State of the State address.

Jim Tully is a former Greene staffer and the immediate past chair of the district’s Republican committee, although he hasn’t been highlighting his affiliation with the former congresswoman during the campaign so far.

Clay Fuller is the elected district attorney for the judicial district at the northwestern tip of the state. A self-proclaimed “America First district attorney,” Fuller says he’s running to bring manufacturing back to the district.

Brian Stover served on the Paulding County Board of Commissioners for five years before unsuccessfully running for commission chairman. In an ad his campaign said ran during the Sugar Bowl, Stover says he has the same mission as Trump: “to take out the trash.”

Nicky Lama, who calls himself “100% MAGA,” resigned from his post on the Dalton City Council to enter the special election. Lama owns contracting and real estate companies, runs a farm and owns a restaurant in Dalton. He says he was inspired by marching with his grandfather during the tea party movement and voting for Trump in 2020 – the first presidential election in which he was old enough to vote.

Reagan Box is a horse trainer and political newcomer. Box, who had been running for US Senate before switching to the House race, casts herself as a Trump ally with an “

By Harmeet Kaur, CNN

(CNN) — As Americans across the country demonstrate their opposition to Donald Trump’s immigration offensive, the president and his administration aren’t classifying them as protesters. Instead, they’re calling them “agitators.”

In the words of the Trump administration, Renee Good, the woman killed by an ICE agent while protesting enforcement actions in Minnesota, and her wife, Becca Good, were part of a “mob of agitators.” A bystander who could be heard in a video of the interaction crying “shame, shame” was an “agitator, probably a paid agitator.” Minnesota residents who are protesting, angry that one of their neighbors was killed at the hands of federal authorities, are “professional agitators.”

“Agitator” is a Latin word meaning driver or charioteer, from the verb agitāre, meaning to put into motion, to rouse up or to disturb. Today, the Oxford English Dictionary defines an agitator as “a person who instigates public dissent or unrest,” while American English authority Merriam-Webster defines it as “one who stirs up public feeling on controversial issues.” (Separately, an agitator is also the post in the middle of a washing machine that helps slosh the clothes around.)

Exactly who is instigating public unrest or stirring up public feeling is a matter of interpretation. Throughout US history, the label “agitator” has largely been deployed in one direction — “by the powerful to delegitimate real grievances of the marginalized and oppressed seeking change,” Aldon Morris, a professor emeritus of sociology at Northwestern University, wrote in an email to CNN.

Per Morris, the “agitator trope” was used by enslavers to describe abolitionists, by business magnates to characterize labor union organizers and by segregationists to smear Black civil rights activists. (In some instances, so-called agitators appear to have claimed the label as a point of pride.) And from 1967 to 1971, the FBI kept what it first called its Rabble Rouser Index, then renamed the Agitator Index, containing information about dissidents that it deemed a threat to order.

Martin Luther King Jr., one of the most well-known figures ever to be deemed an “agitator,” warned against dismissing those who engage in nonviolent civil disobedience.

“And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as ‘rabble rousers’ and ‘outside agitators’ those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, million

CNN

By Isobel Yeung, Aida Karimi, Catherine Nicholls, Augusta Anthony, CNN

(CNN) — Fears are growing for the fate of a detained Iranian protester who may soon be executed, according to a family member and the US State Department, amid a brutal and ongoing crackdown on nationwide anti-government protests by Iranian authorities.

In a Tuesday post on X, the US State Department said that Iranian authorities are planning to execute Erfan Soltani, who was arrested at his home last Thursday in connection with protests in Fardis, a city about 25 miles west of Tehran.

“More than 10,600 Iranians have been arrested by the Islamic Republic regime simply for demanding their basic rights. Erfan Soltani, 26, whose death sentence was issued for January 14, is among them,” the State Department said.

Speaking to CNN on Tuesday, Somayeh, a relative of Soltani who declined to be identified by her full name due to security concerns, said he is an “incredibly kind and warm-hearted young man” who has “always fought for the freedom of Iran.”

Soltani was not allowed a lawyer or an appeal after being sentenced to death, according to Somayeh, who said that his trial was rushed.

Rushed death sentences and sham trials are a common occurrence in Iran, according to regional experts.

“This time, the Islamic Republic regime didn’t even bother with its usual 10-minute sham trial,” the US State Department said in a post on X.

CNN is reaching out to Iranian authorities for comment.

Iranian Attorney General Mohammad Movahedi Azad said over the weekend that legal proceedings against protesters, whom he called “terrorists,” will be carried out “without leniency, mercy or appeasement,” according to the semi-official news agency Tasnim.

On Wednesday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said its intelligence network has received nearly 400,000 public reports, leading in some cases to arrests.

Denied access to case

Hengaw, a Norway-based human rights organization, reported that Soltani was arrested at his home last Thursday. Four days after his arrest, his family was told that his execution had been scheduled, it said.

Soltani’s family has been denied access to any information regarding his case, including the charges against him, Hengaw reported Monday. His sister, a licensed lawyer, has tried to pursue the case, “but authorities have so far prevented her from accessing the case file,” the organization said.

His family has been granted only “a brief opportunity for a final visit” before his execution, according to Hengaw.

The feared execution looms as tensions between the US and Iran further intensify, with US President Donald Trump considering taking military action against Iran.

On Tuesday, Trump warned the regime against executing protesters and said the US would take

By Jack Guy, CNN

(CNN) — Horses can detect fear in humans by smell, becoming more likely to startle and more wary of people who are scared, a new study has found.

Researchers collected samples of odor compounds from the armpits of human study participants and then observed how the horses behaved when they were exposed to the different odors during standardized tests, according to research published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.

While previous research has found that horses can pick up on human emotions through speech and facial expressions, the idea that they can smell our fear has remained just a theory due to the difficulties of studying smell, said lead study author Plotine Jardat, a researcher at the French Institute for Horse and Riding (IFCE).

“As humans, we are not really aware of all the smells that are around us compared to what other animals apparently perceive, so that’s not so easy to study,” Jardat told CNN.

To overcome this problem, researchers developed a novel method that involved placing cotton pads in the armpits of the human study participants, where odor compounds are released by the sweat glands.

Samples were taken from people while they watched a scary video and a joyful video, as well as a neutral sample, and these pads were later placed on the nostrils of 43 different female horses, held in place by small nets.

The researchers were careful to prevent contamination by other odor compounds by making sure the pads were only handled by the human providing the sample, and the compounds were preserved by freezing the pads, said Jardat.

The horses were then exposed to a series of tests conducted by experimenters familiar to the animals — for example, whether or not they would freely approach a human in their paddock, or startle at the sudden opening of an umbrella.

Researchers observed the horses’ behavior, as well as collecting data on their heart rate and the level of cortisol in their saliva, a key biomarker for stress.

Analysis showed that both the horses’ behavior and physiology were influenced by the human odor compounds.

Researchers observed that the horses exposed to odor compounds produced by volunteers who had watched scary footage were more likely to startle more easily, and less likely to approach people or investigate unfamiliar objects.

“The fearful odors from humans amplify the reactions of horses,” said Jardat.

“The significance is that horses can smell how we feel, even if they can’t hear or see us,” she said.

Study co-author Léa Lansade, research director at the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE), said the study provides evidence of cross-species “emotional contagion.”

And there are practical implications for those who ride or handle horses, including “acknowledging the importance of handlers’ emotional state and its potential transmission through chemosignals during human-horse interactions,” according to the paper.

Although as humans we cannot control the emotional odors that we emit, Lansade said in a statement to CNN that horseback riders should “focus on relaxing, so you can ride

By Andrew Freedman, CNN

(CNN) — Congress is poised to reject President Donald Trump’s “astounding” proposed cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as well as NASA’s Earth science programs.

Trump sought to slash spending in scientific research at NOAA and NASA, among other agencies. The administration’s budget request would have eliminated all of NOAA’s research laboratories, including those like the National Severe Storms Laboratory that work to make weather forecasts more accurate. The budget request also sought to cancel weather and climate satellite programs and instruments at NOAA and NASA, including multiple missions that had already been launched.

Instead, the House has passed a funding bill for the Commerce, Justice and State Departments that funds science at NOAA and NASA. The Senate is expected to do the same this week.

Neither NOAA nor NASA would see an overall increase in funding under the congressional budget, but they would be spared from dramatic cuts that scientists and activists have warned would have a devastating effect on climate science, meteorology and other fields of study in the US and around the world.

At NOAA, the bipartisan spending bill would fund the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, which the administration proposed eliminating entirely due to its climate change portfolio. This branch of NOAA conducts climate change research, including monitoring greenhouse gas levels around the world. It also operates a network of laboratories across the US that pursue cutting edge weather and climate research programs.

The Trump administration’s budget request called for a nearly 50% cut in spending for NASA’s science mission, including canceling several planned as well as existing Earth-observing satellites, like the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 to track carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The bill, and an accompanying committee report, explicitly calls for maintaining the agency’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which is NASA’s top climate monitoring and computer modeling lab, which the administration sought to eliminate and disperse its functions elsewhere within the agency. Congress also would instruct the agency to seek a new home for the top lab after the administration canceled its lease in New York City last year and forced staff to work virtually, while maneuvering to shut it down entirely.

The bill’s bottom line would cut about 1% of NASA’s science program budget compared to what was enacted in 2025 and provide roughly the same amount of funding to NOAA as it did in 2025, at $6.17 billion.

It is not unusual for Congress to push back against items in the president’s annual budget request, but the bipartisan support for NOAA and NASA’s weather and climate research is noteworthy since these cuts were such a major part of the request itself. For example, Congress is on track to approve $634 million for NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research — compared to the budget proposal, which had zeroed out that office.

The bill would provide a slight increa