Nearly 3,000 Tennesseans have signed up to be poll workers for the state’s August 6 primary election, Secretary of State Tre Hargett said.
“I am encouraged by how many students and young adults have applied to serve as poll officials,” Hargett said in a press release. “A successful election would not be possible without these Tennesseans choosing to serve in their community.”
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A Minnesota lawmaker has asked the federal government to withhold federal transportation funds from the state if leaders continue to allow protesters to block highways.
“In the last few months, we have seen two of our primary interstates blocked by protesters, 35 and 94, with the acquiescence of state and local officials. While some arrests have been made, the penalty for this offense is low; it encourages others to protest in the same way,” Rep. Cal Bahr (R-East Bethel) said in a letter sent Tuesday to U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr.
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Former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign hired three full-time staffers this week to oversee its campaign operations in Minnesota.
According to ABC News, Ryan Doyle, who managed Keith Ellison’s campaign for attorney general, will serve as Biden’s Minnesota state director.
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A Minnesota House committee approved a resolution Tuesday declaring racism a statewide “public health crisis.”
The resolution passed out of the House Rules Committee and now heads to the House floor for debate, with a final vote expected for July 20.
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The Minneapolis Park Board plans to vote on repealing its nudity ordinance this week because the law contains “discriminatory language that targets female breasts.”
Park Board Commissioner Chris Meyer said repealing the ordinance will be voted on during a Wednesday meeting. According to Meyer, it’s already legal for “people of all genders” to be topless in Minneapolis, but women and transgender people can still be cited for going topless in parks and on parkways because of the Park Board ordinance.
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Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said Tuesday the state will do “whatever it takes” to defend the pro-life Heartbeat Bill in court.
U.S. District Judge William “Chip” Campbell in Nashville blocked the pro-life measure just hours after Gov. Lee signed it into law Monday.
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A Port Clinton, Ohio man recently turned his entire front lawn into a massive Trump 2020 sign.
J.R. Majewski, an Air Force veteran, said his 19,000-square-foot lawn is now home to one of the world’s largest Trump flags.
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One of former President Barack Obama’s top health care officials said he asked Gov. Tim Walz to reclose all bars in Minnesota during a Sunday phone call.
Andy Slavitt, the former acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said he urged Walz and Department of Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm to close “all of the bars to indoor service across the state of Minnesota” to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
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Pro-abortion advocates praised a Trump-appointed judge for blocking Tennessee’s Heartbeat Bill from becoming law.
U.S. District Judge William “Chip” Campbell in Nashville blocked the pro-life measure just hours after Gov. Bill Lee signed it into law Monday. Campbell’s mother, Beth Campbell, serves as a Republican National Committee member for Tennessee, the Tennessee Republican Party confirmed.
“An activist judge barely waited until the ink was dry to promote his own pro-choice view. We cannot allow the lives of unborn children to be jeopardized by radical judges. As your Senator, I will only vote to confirm justices who stick to the Constitution,” said Manny Sethi, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate.
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A north Minneapolis Democrat said his constituents are “facing a real emergency” as the city continues to experience alarming levels of gun violence.
“Every Minnesotan deserves to be safe in their own neighborhood, but right now many people are experiencing gun violence at unsustainable levels,” Rep. Fue Lee (DFL-Minneapolis) said in a statement released Saturday. “The neighborhoods I represent in north Minneapolis are facing a real emergency.”
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Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH-04), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said his constituents want to see someone go to jail for targeting President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.
The Ohio Republican said he hopes U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Russia probe will produce indictments.
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Bill Hagerty’s Senate campaign confirmed with The Tennessee Star that the Republican has resigned from the board of an investment firm that issued statements in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Hagerty previously served as President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Japan and was endorsed by the president in the race to replace Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who is retiring at the end of his current term.
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President Donald Trump has rejected Gov. Tim Walz’s request for federal financial assistance to help rebuild portions of the Twin Cities that were destroyed by rioting.
Nearly 1,500 Twin Cities businesses were vandalized, burned, or looted during the late May riots, with current estimates of the damage exceeding $500 million.
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Gov. Tim Walz said he plans to extend his COVID-19 peacetime emergency declaration for another 30 days when lawmakers return to St. Paul Monday for a special session.
The governor announced Friday night that he has convened a special legislative session for July 13, the same day his peacetime emergency declaration is set to expire. According to Minnesota law, the governor must convene both houses of the Legislature if he wishes to extend a peacetime emergency when the Legislature is not in session.
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Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN-09) called President Donald Trump a “textbook narcissist and sociopath” after he commuted the prison sentence of Roger Stone Friday night.
Stone had been sentenced in February to three years and four months in prison for lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing the House investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. He was set to report to prison by Tuesday.
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The federal government granted Gov. Bill Lee’s request this week for a major disaster declaration for 20 Tennessee counties impacted by severe weather in early May.
President Donald Trump announced in a Thursday press release that he approved the declaration, which will make federal funding available for state and local recovery efforts in the affected areas.
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The Minnesota DFL Party launched a new ad campaign this week targeting key Republican state senators who are accused of “standing in the way of passing real police reform.”
Jason Lewis, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, said in a recent interview that Democrats don’t “want reform” so much as they “want a political issue.”
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A survey conducted by the Minnesota Department of Education found that the majority of parents would feel comfortable sending their children back to school this fall.
Between June 15 and July 6, the agency collected more than 130,000 responses to the informal survey, which was offered in English, Hmong, Spanish, and Somali. A total of 64 percent of respondents said they would feel comfortable sending their children back to school in September. Of that 64 percent, 94 percent said they would send their children back to school full time.
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Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) said he disagrees with President Donald Trump’s decision to terminate the United States’ membership in the World Health Organization (WHO).
The Trump administration formally notified the United Nations this week of its decision to leave WHO, The New York Times reported.
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The Department of Justice announced the formation of a new Twin Cities Violent Crimes Task Force Wednesday in response to an “extraordinary spike in gun violence and violent crimes.”
Erica MacDonald, U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota, said the task force will bring together federal and state resources to assist local law enforcement in investigating, arresting, and prosecuting individuals responsible for gun violence.
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Republican Senate candidate Jason Lewis said parents should be refunded for property tax payments and tuition if schools aren’t allowed to reopen in the fall.
“The more we learn about COVID, the more it becomes apparent that we have done a huge disservice to our children in the way we have handled this virus. Research has proven that COVID presents minimal risks to young people. But what isn’t minimal is the toll this prolonged lockdown and social isolation has on our kids’ social, mental, and physical well-being,” Lewis said in a statement released Wednesday.
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Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) has added her name to a bill that would prevent federal funding from going to cities with “violent anarchist jurisdictions.”
The bill, carried by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), defines an anarchist jurisdiction as a city or state that abdicates its constitutional duty to its citizens to uphold the rule of law, or fails to provide police, fire, or emergency medical services to its residents, according to Blackburn’s office.
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Police are investigating a string of sexual assaults at a homeless encampment in a Minneapolis park, according to various news reports.
Since June 26, Minneapolis Park Police have received three reports of sexual assault in Powderhorn Park, where more than 850 people have set up a 560-tent encampment, according to KARE 11. Two of the assaults involved juvenile victims.
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A Republican lawmaker has drafted a bill that would require Minnesota to sell a facility it purchased for the storage of deceased COVID-19 patients.
Due to a projected surge in COVID-19 fatalities, the state of Minnesota spent $6.9 million in May to acquire a warehouse for the “temporary storage of human remains.” As of early June, however, the facility had yet to be used.
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Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN-09) urged Gov. Bill Lee to remove a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest from the State Capitol and rename a state park that bears his name.
In a letter sent to Lee Monday, Cohen asked the Republican governor to “demonstrate leadership on an issue that causes so much pain in the Black community in Tennessee.”
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Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan shared a post on social media over the Independence Day weekend calling Mount Rushmore a “symbol of white supremacy.”
“Mount Rushmore is a symbol of white supremacy, of structural racism that’s still alive and well in society today. It’s an injustice to actively steal Indigenous people’s land, then carve the white faces of the colonizers who committed genocide,” said the post, which Flanagan shared on her Instagram.
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Gov. Tim Walz is expected to call another special session by the end of the week in order to extend his peacetime emergency powers.
House Speaker Melissa Hortman (DFL-Brooklyn Park) alerted members and staff in a Monday email about the likely special session.
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Gov. Bill Lee announced a new partnership last week with law enforcement agencies across the state in an effort to reform policing in Tennessee.
“The intent of this partnership is the desire to ensure law enforcement are consistently reflecting the values of the communities they serve,” Lee explained in a press release.
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State Sen. Scott Jensen (R-Chaska), a practicing physician, revealed Sunday that anonymous complaints were filed against him with the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice for his public comments on the coronavirus pandemic.
“This is one of the most important videos I’ve made and one of the hardest,” Jensen said in a video posted to Facebook. “Less than a week ago, I was notified by the Board of Medical Practice in Minnesota that I was being investigated because of public statements I had made.”
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Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said he supports Dayton’s decision to require residents to wear face masks in public places.
The Dayton City Commission approved an ordinance Wednesday requiring “face coverings in public spaces.”
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Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) called President Donald Trump’s Independence Day speech at the annual Salute to America celebration “one of the best” of his presidency.
The president delivered back-to-back speeches over the holiday weekend, the first of which took place Friday night in front of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. In both addresses, Trump delivered an unapologetic defense of American culture and history, mercilessly deriding the “cancel culture.”
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Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said he wants the public to weigh in on the question of whether internet search engines should be “allowed to favor their own products and services in search results.”
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Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who welcomed the destruction of a Christopher Columbus statue, chairs the board responsible for Capitol artwork and monuments.
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Gov. Bill Lee signed an executive order Friday granting the mayors of 89 counties the authority to issue local face mask mandates.
Six Tennessee counties – Sullivan, Knox, Hamilton, Davidson, Madison, and Shelby – have local health departments, and therefore already have the authority to issue mask requirements as needed, Lee’s office explained.
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Gov. Tim Walz recently filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought against him regarding his use of emergency powers during the coronavirus pandemic.
The lawsuit was filed on May 28 by four members of the New House Republican Caucus, the Free Minnesota Coalition, and at least eight businesses across the state. The complaint argues that the governor does not have the authority to “suspend the constitutional rights of Minnesotans.”
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Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN-05) introduced a bill last week that would create a “job guarantee program” at the U.S. Department of Labor.
The Workforce Promotion and Access Act, sponsored by Omar and Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ-12), seeks to get more Americans “back to work in living-wage jobs created directly by the federal government.”
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The University of Memphis recently announced that its football players will wear helmets with a Black Lives Matter sticker for every game during the upcoming season.
“This season, for every game, our student-athletes’ helmets will have a BLM sticker,” Ryan Silverfield, head coach of the school’s football team, wrote on Twitter.
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Gov. Tim Walz has requested federal financial assistance to help the Twin Cities recover from more than $500 million worth of damage caused by rioting.
In a press release, Walz’s office said nearly 1,500 Twin Cities businesses were vandalized, burned, or looted during the late May riots, with current estimates of the damage exceeding $500 million.
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Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN-04) praised FedEx and Nike for their efforts to pressure the Washington Redskins into changing the team’s “harmful” name and mascot.
“I have been working on this for almost a decade because I believe all people, including Native Americans, should be treated with dignity and respect – and not dehumanized as mascots,” McCollum said in a statement.
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The Metro Nashville Police Department announced a “significant arrest” Wednesday night in connection to the May 30 riots outside the Metro Courthouse.
According to a press release, authorities have arrested 33-year-old Ryan Keith Ray on eight criminal charges. Ray has been charged with inciting a riot, arson, two counts of burglary, and four counts of felony vandalism.
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Republican Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) has cosponsored an amendment to replace Columbus Day with Juneteenth as a new federal holiday.
The measure was introduced Wednesday as an amendment to Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-TX) bill to declare Juneteenth a federal holiday. Johnson is co-sponsoring the amendment with Sen. James Lankford (R-OK).
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Two Republican state senators asked the Minnesota Historical Society to repair and restore a Christopher Columbus statue that was torn down outside the Minnesota Capitol three weeks ago.
Although the incident took place in broad daylight and was recorded by countless news stations and reporters, the Minnesota Department of Public Safety said last week the investigation remains ongoing.
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The Hennepin County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution Tuesday declaring racism a “public health crisis.”
Commissioners Angela Conley and Irene Fernando introduced the resolution, which passed in a vote of 6-1.
“Ultimately this resolution is about the health and well-being of Hennepin County residents who have borne the brunt of racial discrimination and racial inequity through various different systems,” Conley said in a press release after the resolution passed.
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Three more Minnesotans are facing federal arson charges in connection to the late May riots in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Both Matthew Scott White, 31, and Mohamed Hussein Abdi, 19, were arrested on June 29 and charged with one count of arson.
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Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN-09) wants to open up another impeachment inquiry, this time of U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr.
After calling for Barr’s impeachment last week, Cohen formally introduced a resolution Tuesday that would authorize an impeachment inquiry into Barr’s conduct.
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The U.S. Supreme Court said Tuesday that states can’t cut religious schools out of programs that send public money to private education in a 5-4 ruling.
Hailed as a victory for religious freedom, the justices upheld a Montana scholarship program that allows state tax credits for private schooling in which almost all the recipients attend religious schools.
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Multiple videos recorded after a Saturday prayer vigil in St. Louis appear to show Black Lives Matter agitators assaulting Catholics who participated in the event.
“Yesterday, while praying for peace and unity in our city and the protection of the St. Louis statue, Black Lives Matter protesters started to harass, berate, and assault the Catholics that were peacefully praying. We did nothing in retaliation,” Conor Martin, a candidate for Bedford Township Republican committeeman, claimed on Twitter.
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Gov. Tim Walz said a statewide mask mandate to help curb the spread of COVID-19 is “on the table” during a Monday press conference.
According to Walz, Republican governors who participated in a Monday phone call with Vice President Mike Pence were also “exploring the idea.”
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Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) led a bipartisan group of lawmakers in urging member states of the European Union to designate Hezbollah a terrorist organization.
Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) along with Reps. Lee Zeldin (R-NY-01) and Ted Deutch (D-FL-22) joined Blackburn in drafting the letter to EU member states. A total of 30 lawmakers signed their names to the letter.
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A husband and wife from St. Louis are defending their decision to pull firearms on a large group of Black Lives Matter agitators Sunday night.
In a viral video of the encounter, Mark and Patricia McCloskey, both personal injury lawyers, are seen pulling a rifle and a handgun on a leftist mob.
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