Day: June 29, 2019

Phil Bredesen Endorses David Briley for Nashville Mayor

Chris Butler

  Former Tennessee Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen came forward this week to endorse incumbent Nashville Mayor David Briley for reelection. Briley announced the endorsement on his Twitter page Thursday. “It was my honor to have former Mayor and former Governor @PhilBredesen come out and support my campaign last night. Thank you Gov. Bredesen. You laid the foundation for the great city that Nashville is today, and I want to continue that work! #TeamBriley,” Briley wrote. According to Briley’s social media posts, Criminal Court Clerk Howard Gentry, LGBTQ Activist Eric A. Patton, businessman Charles Robert Bone, and former YWCA President Pat Shea have already endorsed his reelection. Bredesen was the Democratic Party candidate to replace former Republican U.S. Sen. Bob Corker last year. Bredesen lost to Republican Marsha Blackburn, by a margin of almost 55 percent to 44 percent. As The Tennessee Star reported last year, Bredesen went all-in with the President Trump-hating far left socialist wing of the Democrat Party during his run for the U.S. Senate. Bredesen, for instance, announced entertainers Jason Isbell and Ben Folds — who supported Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign — would host a fundraiser for him in Nashville. Bredesen also refused to disavow the comments of…

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Commentary: Why Doesn’t the Supreme Court Want to Know How Many Illegal Aliens America Has?

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by Robert Romano   The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a citizenship question can be included in a Census under the U.S. Constitution, however a narrower 5 to 4 majority threw out the specific rationale used by the Trump administration for the 2020 Census, remanding the case to lower courts for adjudication. Chief Justice John Roberts, joining the higher court’s liberal justices, stated “We do not hold that the agency decision here was substantively invalid. But agencies must pursue their goals reasonably. Reasoned decisionmaking under the Administrative Procedures Act calls for an explanation for agency action. What was provided here was more of a distraction.” This is the so-called reasoned analysis that is supposed to accompany a regulation under Supreme Court precedent. The Department said it relied on the Department of Justice saying the information was needed to enforce the Voting Rights Act. In this case, however, the court ruled that the Department of Commerce “adopted the Voting Rights Act rationale late in the process” and the “evidence established that the Secretary had made up his mind to reinstate a citizenship question ‘well before’ receiving DOJ’s request, and did so for reasons unknown but unrelated to the VRA.” The court…

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What (Other) Economists Think About Democrats’ Education Plans

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by Kerry McDonald   A recent NPR article, titled “What Economists Think About Democrats’ New Education Proposals,” caught my eye. FEE, after all, is an economic education organization that looks at how free markets and individual liberty lead to more progress, greater prosperity, and better outcomes for all than any other social or economic system ever created. I was curious what these NPR-interviewed economists might say about the Democratic presidential candidates’ education plans, which involve funneling more money into a government system of mass compulsory schooling. What’s the Plan? According to the article, Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris wants to spend $315 billion of taxpayer money to lift teacher salaries. Joe Biden wants to increase federal spending to low-income schools with teacher pay hikes. Bernie Sanders wants to impose price controls for teacher salaries, imposing a pay floor of $60,000 for incoming teachers. To its credit, the NPR article explains that by both domestic and international standards, American teachers are already well compensated and enjoy above-average employee benefits. But that’s not enough, according to one of the economists interviewed. Eric Hanushek of Stanford says: “I think teachers are way underpaid.” Hanushek and others argue that teachers who are able to…

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DHS Expects Border Apprehensions to Decrease By 25%, Credits Trump’s Deal With Mexico

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by Jason Hopkins   The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) expects apprehensions of illegal aliens to decline by 25% along the U.S. southern border in June and directly credited President Donald Trump’s immigration deal with Mexico for the change. “It’s become clear that over the past three weeks, since the administration reached a new agreement with Mexico, that we’ve seen a substantial increase in the number of interdictions on the Mexican southern border, and a sincere effort to the transportation networks coming through Mexico,” DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan said to reporters Friday. “In terms of when we’re going to know if these efforts in Mexico are making an impact, I think these three weeks have demonstrated that they are ready. That 25% decrease in June is more than we’ve seen in past years. We are not really tracking a seasonal pattern anymore,” he stated, explaining the decline is not completely attributable to the change in season. The DHS chief’s announcement follows a deal between the Trump administration and Mexico City reached on June 7. In return for the U.S. not slapping a 5% tariff on all its goods, Mexico agreed to dramatically ramp up its own border enforcement. Its government…

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Michigan Workers Prepare for Another Factory Close Next Month As Dems Set Sights on Key Voters

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by Audrey Conklin   Another auto plant in Warren, Michigan, that has been operating since 1958 is preparing to close in a little over a month, ending 261 jobs. The 261 hourly workers who will lose their jobs at the 2.1-million-square-foot General Motors factory build car transmissions. GM announced the closure in November but is set to end all production in July and keep a different transmissions factory open in Mexico, NBC News reported Friday. “It’s not the dream job it used to be,” one worker told NBC. “It’s actually quite a nightmare to try and survive and reach your pension. It feels impossible.” GM officials announced in the fall of 2018 that it was going to cut 14,000 jobs to save $6 billion by 2020, nearly 10 years to the day after the U.S. Treasury gave the company a $51 billion bailout. President Donald Trump promised to bring jobs back to middle-class populations in once-thriving, industrial midwestern towns and won more key swing states than former candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016, including Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Ohio. “Don’t sell your house,” Trump told his audience at a 2017 rally in Youngstown, Ohio. “We’re going to get those…

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DHS Chief Adamantly Denies He Leaked ICE Raid Details to the Media

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by Jason Hopkins   Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan vehemently denied that he was the source of a leak that led to the White House canceling its plan for mass deportation raids. “Absolutely not,” McAleenan said Thursday night when Fox News’s Laura Ingraham asked if he was the leaker. “I would not, and have not, ever leaked details of a sensitive law enforcement operation. My primary responsibility is the safety of the men and women who go out there every day to protect American people. It’s just not true.” McAleenan’s denial comes after President Donald Trump announced — and then abruptly canceled — a plan earlier this month to conduct mass Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests of illegal aliens across the country. At first, Trump said the cancellation was to give time for his administration to reach a deal with Democrats on the immigration crisis. However, several sources within the administration began claiming that the president had to cancel the operation because key details of the plan were leaked to the media, revealing the day, number of people being targeted, and the cities involved. Executing the raid when such information was out in the open put ICE agents…

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The Supreme Court Will Determine the DACA Program’s Future Next Term

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by Kevin Daley   The Supreme Court will decide whether President Donald Trump can rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program during its next term, the justices announced Friday. DACA is an Obama-era amnesty initiative that extends temporary legal status to 700,000 foreign nationals who came to the U.S. as children. The Department of Homeland Security first took steps to terminate DACA in September 2017. Federal trial judges subsequently entered injunctions requiring that Trump maintain the program while litigation continued. The first of those orders came from U.S. District Judge William Alsup in California, who said the government’s action was based on a flawed legal premise and therefore “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, [and] otherwise not in accordance with law.” That premise — that only Congress, not the executive, could authorize a program like DACA — conflicts with precedent and the Department of Justice’s past-stated views, Alsup said. Shortly after those injunctions issued, the Trump administration took the unusual step of bypassing the federal appeals courts and asking the Supreme Court to intervene immediately. The high court rejected that request, prompting a new round of litigation in the appellate courts. The government returned to the Supreme Court…

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State Reps. Ryan Williams, Cameron Sexton Join Race to Succeed Glen Casada as House Speaker

Jason M. Reynolds

  The pieces are falling into place for the Tennessee GOP House Caucus to select the new speaker, with a couple of new faces entering the race this week. The caucus will meet July 24 to pick a nominee to replace disgraced outgoing Speaker and Rep. Glen Casada (R-TN-63) of Franklin, The Tennessee Star said. The meeting was called by House Majority Leader William Lamberth (R-TN-44) of Portland. In a statement issued by Lamberth Wednesday, he said his call for the caucus meeting came, “following conversations with our members of the last several days.” In an exclusive interview with the USA TODAY Network – Tennessee, State Rep. Ryan Williams (R-TN-42) said he wants to unite the party and rebuild the state GOP brand. “I think there are some chasms between some members and others in our caucus, but the goal here is to unite the differences,” he said. “Like Ronald Reagan said, focus on the 80% we agree on.” Williams, a former GOP caucus chairman from Cookeville, is not the only candidate. The Chattanooga Times Free Press said the other declared candidates for speaker are Reps. Mike Carter (R-TN-29) of Ooltewah and Curtis Johnson (R-TN-68) of Clarksville, GOP Caucus Chairman…

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2020 Election Meddling by China, Iran, N. Korea Likely, Administration Officials Warn

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by Fred Lucas   Russia isn’t the only threat to election security going into 2020, as Trump administration officials say they are preparing for meddling from Iran, China, and North Korea. The federal government anticipates that Russia will again meddle in the U.S. election in 2020 through “Russian-controlled or influenced English-language media, false-flag operations, or sympathetic spokespersons,” a senior intelligence official said. China’s government finances English-language media outlets in the United States to influence U.S. perceptions on various issues, such as trade, the senior intelligence official told reporters during a briefing on election security. “No surprise to you: Iran is increasing their use of social media to promote strategic goals and perspectives to the American public,” the official continued. “Its influence campaigns have included denigrating U.S. decisions to leave [the Iran nuclear deal], downplaying the effectiveness of sanctions, and promoting pro-Iranian interests.” Administration officials asked reporters that the conference participants’ names not be used. North Korea is also in the mix, said a senior law enforcement official, who spoke of the FBI Foreign Influence Task Force set up in 2017 to combat the international meddling. “We’ve since expanded our scope to look at any nation-state actors involved in foreign influence,…

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Marsha Blackburn Warns About Technology Companies’ Abusive Behavior Using Your Personal Information

Chris Butler

  U.S. Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee reportedly warned in a speech this week about privacy concerns as technology companies gather consumer data and profit from it. This, according to Broadbandbreakfast.com, which reported Blackburn’s remarks during a speech to the free market group Free State Foundation in Washington, D.C. “The framework for federal privacy regulation is emerging as another flashpoint in some conservatives’ political battles with Silicon Valley powerhouses,” according to the website. “The more data companies extract, the more profitable they are,” the website quoted Blackburn as saying. “Big tech needs to trust the American consumer to make the wise decision, which means big tech needs to be transparent,” said Blackburn. Broadbandbreakfast.com also reported that many people in the audience agreed with the idea of more privacy regulations. “Privacy violations can result in consumer harm in the marketplace, harms which should be ‘identified, analyzed and potentially regulated,’” the website quote Noah Phillips as saying. Phillips is a Commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission. The website also quoted Phillips as saying new privacy laws must allow for “investment and risk-taking.” Michelle Richardson, director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said Congress needs to rebalance power between companies and consumers.…

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Trump Deregulation Will Boost Household Income by $3,100, Report Finds

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by Fred Lucas   The Trump administration deregulation efforts will raise incomes by about $3,100 per household over the next five to 10 years, and sharply reduce prices for consumers, according to a report released Friday by the White House Council of Economic Advisers. “The deregulatory efforts of the Trump administration have also removed mandates from employers, especially smaller businesses, and have removed burdens that would have eliminated many small bank lenders from the marketplace,” Casey Mulligan, the chief economist for the Council of Economic Advisers, told reporters Friday. “These deregulatory actions are raising real incomes by increasing competition, productivity, and wages.” The Council of Economic Advisers report is titled “The Economic Effects of Federal Deregulation Since January 2017: An Interim Report.” The report takes a sampling of 20 major deregulatory efforts, which it projects alone will save consumers and businesses about $220 billion annually, and increase after-inflation incomes by 1.3%. “Many of the most notable deregulatory efforts in American history, such as the deregulation of airlines and trucking that began during the Carter administration, did not have such large aggregate effects,” the Council of Economic Advisers report says. The aggressive deregulation also cuts consumer prices for prescription drugs, health…

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Commentary: How Romney and the Anti-Trump GOP Fueled the Border Crisis

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by Julie Kelly   The crisis at the southern U.S. border proves at least one thing to be true: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is more honest than Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and his fellow anti-Trump Republicans. Ocasio-Cortez, to her credit, has never tried to fool the American people or her constituency by suggesting she wants anything less than open borders. Lawmakers on the Left, including the roster of Democratic presidential candidates, have made it clear we must accept an unlimited influx of refugees from Central America. The treatment of migrant children, they tell us, is a national disgrace and an international scourge. Border patrol agents are criminals but the tens of thousands of Central American citizens illegally entering our country each month are not, they insist. Overflowing intake facilities are compared to Nazi concentration camps, and Donald Trump is Adolf Hitler. I don’t know about you, but I’ll take that sort of unabashed honesty—no matter how insane, dangerous, and historically illiterate it is—over the deceptive and duplicitous machinations of alleged “conservatives” like Romney. To her credit, AOC doesn’t pretend to be someone she’s not—staged and dated photo-op notwithstanding. Give me a truthful authoritarian over a phony conservative any day. At…

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Cincinnati Church Celebrates Pride Month with Drag Queen Story Hour During Sunday Worship

Beth Lear

  A Cincinnati church celebrated LGBT Pride month by hosting one of their own, caretaker Dan Davidson, dressed in drag. Davidson, called Sparkle Leigh in costume, greeted church attendees and read to the children during the service. His story of choice? Pride: the Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag. Milk was the first openly homosexual politician elected in California and has often been referred to as a pedophile. The pastor of Mount Auburn Presbyterian Church, Reverend Stacey Midge, couldn’t offer comment to The Ohio Star without permission of her church board, but she was willing to share that the church has received both positive and negative feedback. Midge was able to speak more freely on the church Facebook page about their choice to host the performer. “We are particularly outspoken about our welcome to people of all sexual orientations and gender identities/expressions because 1) we do not believe variations in sexual orientation or gender identity/expression to be sinful, and 2) people of non-heterosexual orientation or whose gender identity or expression does not fit into a rigid binary are historically and currently marginalized, especially by the Church.” “The idea of reading a child’s book about Harvey Milk is the…

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Ellison Passes Over Klobuchar, Endorses Sanders for President

Anthony Gockowski

  Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has endorsed (again) Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont for president, straying from a pack of Minnesota politicians who are supporting hometown candidate Sen. Amy Klobuchar in the race. “Kamala, Julien [sic] and Pete all did very well. Elizabeth showed why she is a true leader; champion of working families everywhere. But Bernie Sanders dominated both nights with the force of ideas, which have been consistent throughout his service. I support him—like I did last time,” Ellison wrote on Twitter early Friday morning after the second night of Democratic debates. Kamala, Julien & Pete all did very well. Elizabeth showed why she is a true leader; champion of working families everywhere. But @BernieSanders dominated both nights with the force of ideas, which have been consistent throughout his service. I support him – like I did last time. — Keith Ellison (@keithellison) June 28, 2019 Ellison was one of the first members of Congress to support Sanders’ 2016 bid for the presidency. Sanders, in turn, supported Ellison in his run for DNC chair in 2017, and his 2018 campaign for his current role as Minnesota’s attorney general. Ellison told The Star Tribune that his endorsement of…

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Governor Bill Lee Calls a Special Session for August 23 to Elect a New Speaker of the House

Laura Baigert
Bill Lee

  The day following the House Republican Caucus set a meeting to select a new Speaker, Governor Bill Lee issued a Proclamation calling for a special session of the General Assembly on Friday, August 23 at 10 a.m. On Thursday, Governor Lee issued a statement regarding the signing of the proclamation calling for the extraordinary session, “It is in the best interest of our State to select a new Speaker of the House, and so I am calling a special session of the General Assembly for August 23 to accomplish that purpose. I have also asked the General Assembly to take up approval of the recent amendments to the Supreme Court rules, in addition to settling these leadership matters. Any other procedural business would be at the discretion of the General Assembly.” The Proclamation itself states that the Governor was requested to convene an extraordinary session by numerous members of the House of Representatives, including, but not limited to the Majority Leader, who is William Lamberth (R-Portland), and the Majority Caucus Chair, who is Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville). As reported, Leader Lamberth announced Wednesday that the House Republican Caucus would meet on Wednesday, July 24 to select a new Republican nominee…

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