Nearly 1.1 million coronavirus relief payments totaling some $1.4 billion went to dead people, a government watchdog reported Thursday.
More than 130 million so-called economic impact payments were sent to taxpayers as part of the $2.4 trillion coronavirus relief package enacted in March. The Government Accountability Office, Congress’ auditing arm, cited the number of erroneous payments to deceased taxpayers in its report on the government programs.
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The U.S. Department of the Interior released new footage this week of violent riots outside the White House in Lafayette Square.
President Donald Trump has faced criticism for his decision to clear protesters out of the square on June 1 before he took photos with members of his administration in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church.
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Three Republican state senators called on U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr and the Department of Justice to investigate the Minneapolis Police Department and its response to recent unrest in the city.
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka (R-East Gull Lake) announced plans to hold a series of legislative oversight hearings beginning July 1 on state and local responses to the riots.
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An Ingham County judge ordered Enbridge on Thursday to shut down its Line 5 pipeline after the company reported last week that the line had sustained damage.
The order follows a temporary restraining order requested by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel.
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Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), whom The Wall Street Journal recently described as the “heir to Trumpism,” has launched a new ad attacking Joe Biden for his failure to stand up to the “liberal mob.”
Cotton is running unopposed in his reelection bid and is considered a likely future presidential candidate for the Republicans.
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As the nation emerges from lockdowns imposed in response to the coronavirus pandemic, new unemployment claims continue to decline.
The number of Minnesota residents receiving unemployment checks decreased by 823 claims between the weeks ending June 13 and June 20. Advance claims for the week ending June 20 were 371,107 claims, compared to 371,930 claims the week ending June 13.
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President Trump is standing up for Michigan workers and business owners at a time when our own lawmakers and elected officials have refused to do the same.
The riots that swept through America had a devastating impact on local communities throughout the country, including Michigan. In Grand Rapids alone, the radical Antifa thugs caused nearly $1 million in private property damage, as well as costing taxpayers over $1.3 million in police overtime and damaged municipal property.
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Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost released a statement Tuesday encouraging all Ohioans who received a notification about an overpayment of unemployment compensation to appeal their cases if they think their notices were sent by mistake.
“It’s no secret that despite the state’s Herculean efforts, it was crushed with the unprecedented volume of new claims flooding in simultaneously,” Yost said. “We will aggressively pursue any cases of fraud, but we want to make sure any non-fraudulent cases referred to us for collection have been thoroughly reviewed and appealed as is your right.”
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As the nation emerges from lockdowns imposed in response to the coronavirus pandemic, new unemployment claims continue to decline.
The number of Ohio residents receiving unemployment checks decreased by 48,753 claims between the weeks ending June 13 and June 7. Advance claims for the week ending June 20 were 444,205 claims, compared to 492,958 claims the week ending June 13.
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A Chancery Court judge ruled that Metro Nashville’s contract to build the Major League Soccer stadium on The Fairgrounds Nashville is invalid because the meeting approving it violated the Tennessee Open Meetings Act, WSMV reported.
The Sports Authority gave only 48 hours’ notice before holding a special meeting to sign off on the $192 million contract with M.A. Mortenson Co./Messer Construction Co. on November 1, 2018.
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The number of laid-off workers seeking U.S. unemployment benefits dipped only slightly last week, and the economy shrank in the first three months of the year — evidence of the ongoing economic damage being inflicted by the viral pandemic.
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U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) this week took to the floor of the Senate to plead with people to “not try to erase our history,” especially as it pertains to former U.S. President Andrew Jackson’s statue in Lafayette Square.
During his lifetime, Jackson resided in Tennessee.
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As I watch the continuing efforts to defund or abolish police across the country, I have been struck by the radical Left’s willingness to stick with its dangerous ideology even when Americans are killed because of it.
According to Fox 32 Chicago, over Father’s Day weekend, there were 104 people shot and 14 killed in the Windy City. Tragically, these statistics include a 3-year-old who was shot while in the backseat of his father’s car. This follows the last week of May, in which 85 people were shot in Chicago, with 24 of them perishing.
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In an interview on CNN’s Cuomo Prime Time Tuesday, filmmaker Ken Burns voiced his support of the mob attacks on historical works of art depicting figures and events surrounding the Confederacy and the Civil War.
“I think we’re in the middle of an enormous reckoning right now in which the anxieties and the pains and the torments of centuries of injustice are bubbling up to the surface, It’s very important for people like me, of my complexion, to be as quiet as possible and to listen,” Burns began.
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Live from the iHeart Media studios in Washington, D.C. Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Crom Carmichael to the studio.
During the second hour, Carmichael likened the Black Lives Matter protesters to the militant arm of the Democratic Party. He alluded to the fact the Left does not have a plan after statues are torn down.
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Live from the iHeart Media studios in Washington, D.C. Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Tennessee Star National Correspondent Neil McCabe to the newsmakers line.
During the third hour, McCabe weighed in on current events taking place in cities where protesters are bringing down historic statues. He was concerned that both the left and the right had become binary as the Democrats move further left and Republicans edge out conservatives.
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Former Congressman Zach Wamp on Wednesday endorsed Manny Sethi for the United States Senate.
“There are three reasons why I am endorsing Dr. Manny Sethi for Senate,” Wamp said in an emailed press release.
“He is the true conservative in this race, and he will stand for fiscal responsibility when so many others have buckled. He is authentic and he will represent the people of Tennessee, not the establishment, in every decision he makes. Finally, he belongs to a new generation of conservatives who have the chance to lead our country to greater freedom and prosperity. We need more political outsiders and citizen legislators like Dr. Manny Sethi in the U.S. Senate, and that is why I am proud to endorse him.”
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The New York City legal system has more than 39,000 pending criminal cases after trials were postponed in February, the city confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Trials by jury were postponed, prosecutions decreased as officials aimed to decrease the incarcerated population and various hearings were held virtually, The New York Times reported.
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U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN-03) endorsed Bill Hagerty Wednesday for the United States Senate, citing the former ambassador’s business acumen among the reasons for his support.
“Bill Hagerty is a trustworthy conservative businessman, just like President Trump, who has my complete support,” Fleischmann said in the press release.
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U.S. Senate candidate Bill Hagerty released a new television ad this week highlighting what he said is his experience working with President Donald Trump to get the nation’s economy going again.
The ad also highlights what Hagerty said is his readiness to stand up to China. This, in the wake of China unleashing the Wuhan virus upon the world, causing massive loss of life and harming America’s economy, Hagerty said.
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On Monday President Trump issued an Executive Order suspending most work-related immigration to the United States, this proclamation is an extension and expansion of his Proclamation 10014 of April 22, 2020 “Suspension of Entry of Immigrants Who Present a Risk to the United States Labor Market During the Economic Recovery Following the 2019 Novel Coronavirus Outbreak.” The new Order extends limits on immigration “of certain aliens as immigrants and nonimmigrants would be detrimental to the interests of the United States” through December 31, 2020.
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Live from the iHeart Media studios in Washington, D.C. Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Crom Carmichael to the studio.
At the end of the second hour, Carmichael weighed in on Apple CEO Tim Cook’s position for foreign visas which shows his disdain for American workers and favor of cheaper foreign labor. Towards the end of the segment, he identified how the original purpose of Black Lives Matter has been hijacked by militants used as an extension of the Democratic Part
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A former federal prosecutor said Tuesday that he believes that the reason congressional Democrats are working so hard to smear Attorney General William Barr is to “preempt” what will soon be coming down in two Department of Justice investigations.
Jim Trusty, formerly the Chief of the Organized Crime Section at the DOJ, now a partner at Ifrah Law, said Dems are doing “damage control” because U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe, and a DOJ investigation into antifa’s financing are about to result in some “bombshell” indictments.
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The Trump administration won a court ruling Tuesday upholding its plan to require hospitals and insurers to disclose the actual prices for common tests and procedures in a bid to promote competition and push down costs.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar called the decision in federal court in Washington, D.C., “a resounding victory” for President Donald Trump’s efforts to open up the convoluted world of health care pricing so patients and families can make better-informed decisions about their care.
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When examining the challenges facing the black community in America, the conservative response—if they have the courage to respond at all—is to attack the policies Democrats have implemented supposedly to help blacks.
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Americans are unlikely to be allowed into more than 30 European countries for business or tourism when the continent begins next week to open its borders to the world, due to the spread of the coronavirus and President Donald Trump’s ban on European visitors.
More than 15 million Americans are estimated to travel to Europe each year, and such a decision would underscore flaws in the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic, which has seen the United States record the highest number of infections and virus-related deaths in the world by far.
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The Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) announced Tuesday night that it removed protesters’ extra equipment from the Legislative Plaza after these individuals failed to comply with an agreement made between the two sides.
These protesters have been camping out at the plaza for the last 12 nights. In a makeshift CHOP, these demonstrators renamed the plaza the Ida B. Wells Plaza, who was an early civil rights leader.
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Bayer will pay up to $10.9 billion to settle litigation over the subsidiary Monsanto’s weedkiller Roundup, which has faced thousands of lawsuits over claims it causes cancer, the German-based company said Wednesday.
Bayer said it was also paying up $1.22 billion to settle two additional areas of intense litigation, one involving PCB in water, and one involving dicamba, another weedkiller.
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A top executive at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America has been fired over allegations of racism.
The organization’s board of directors announced Tuesday that they had “parted ways” Monday with Laura McQuade, who had served as chief executive of Planned Parenthood of Greater New York since 2017, the New York Times reported. The news came after allegations of both abusive and discriminatory behavior towards black Planned Parenthood employees.
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It’s been two weeks since a Christopher Columbus statue was toppled outside the Minnesota Capitol, but the Minnesota Department of Public Safety said the investigation remains ongoing.
A spokesperson for the agency told KSTP chief political reporter Tom Hauser that the “investigation continues as the [Bureau of Criminal Apprehension] works to identify other participants in the incident, beyond the leader.”
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Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said Tuesday that while he’s not in favor of the removal of statues of Christopher Columbus, he’s open to discussions that arise about people’s place in history.
DeWine addressed last week’s removal by Columbus State Community College of its statue of the namesake explorer, and the announcement by Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther that he wants the large statue outside City Hall to also go.
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The owner of a Sauk Rapids bar and restaurant has sued a local activist group for defamation after it boasted about getting the business removed from a tourism website.
Rollie Hogrefe, owner of Rollie’s Rednecks and Longnecks, filed a defamation and tortious interference lawsuit Wednesday against the “radical agitators” of UniteCloud and its executive director Natalie Ringsmuth.
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Ohio House Democrats introduced a bill Wednesday that seeks to implement more training for state law enforcement officers.
In House Bill 706, whose primary sponsors are state Reps. Erica C. Crawley (D-Columbus) and Thomas West (D-Canton), would require police to undergo training in de-escalation techniques, mental health issues, implicit bias.
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Ypsilanti Mayor Beth Bashert resigned on Tuesday after receiving criticism for controversial remarks about a Black city official during a virtual council meeting.
During a Zoom meeting on June 16, Bashert said that she would be “crucified” for not voting to reappoint city human relations commissioner Ka’Ron Gaines.
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An 18-year-old from Heiskell, Tennessee was charged Monday with inciting a riot and civil disorder for his involvement in a May 30 riot in downtown Knoxville.
According to WVLT, a group of 50 to 100 people gathered in Market Square around 11:30 p.m. on May 30 to commit acts of vandalism as unrest spread across the nation in response to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
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A federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered the dismissal of the criminal case against President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said in a 2-1 ruling that the Justice Department’s decision to abandon the case against Flynn settles the matter, even though Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to prosecutors in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
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As Tennessee’s 111th Tennessee General Assembly wound down to adjourn, the House passed a resolution recognizing the need to address legislation passed by one chamber but left unfinished by the other.
When Tennessee’s 111th Tennessee General Assembly came back to their second session after the three-month COVID-19 recess, the Senate only wanted to take up bills that were budget-related, time-sensitive, or COVID-19 related, while the House planned to complete all of their work.
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The cultural revolutionaries who have begun marching in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin have opened a widespread assault on history itself, toppling statues across the country including those of Confederate generals like Albert Pike in Washington, D.C. but also Union generals, too, like Ulysses S. Grant in San Francisco, who won the Civil War to abolish slavery and later went on to become President.
The vandals have even begun targeting religious symbols, with some calls to go after statues of Jesus, who was Jewish, as somehow being a symbol of white supremacy.
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Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed #WalkAway Founder and President Brandon Straka to the newsmakers line.
During the third hour, Straka reflected on his four days undercover in the Seattle CHAZ/CHOP seven-block radius described as an autonomous zone free of government and police. He noted that capitalism was very alive in the zone with people selling items and suggested that these people are more conservative than they think in their quest for limited government.
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A shocking new undercover video from Project Veritas exposes the rampant anti-conservative bias of Facebook’s content moderators, the employees who are responsible for deciding what posts are censored.
Zach McElroy, a former Facebook employee who worked as a content moderator in Tampa, Florida, told Project Veritas that he’s willing to testify before Congress about Facebook’s bias against Trump supporters and conservative causes.
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The column, written in the heated aftermath of George Floyd’s killing, sounded like a typical anti-American screed published in the New York Times or posted on MSNBC.
“Racism in America is a fatal wound,” the author lamented. “Every time another incident occurs we put a Band-Aid on it, but the Band-Aid keeps falling off. Band-Aids are not enough to ever stitch this country back together.”
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The noose found hanging in Bubba Wallace’s garage stall at Talladega Superspeedway had been there since at least last October, federal authorities said Tuesday in announcing there will be no charges filed in an incident that rocked NASCAR and its only fulltime Black driver.
U.S. Attorney Jay Town and FBI Special Agent in Charge Johnnie Sharp Jr. said an investigation determined “although the noose is now known to have been in garage number 4 in 2019, nobody could have known Mr. Wallace would be assigned to garage number 4 last week.”
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Congress is preparing another coronavirus relief package, President Donald Trump said, which includes another direct cash payment to Americans.
“Yeah, we are … We will be doing another stimulus package. It’ll be very good, it’ll be very generous,” Trump told a Scripps reporter Monday. “I think over the next, I think it’s going to be bi-partisan, I think it’s going to be over the couple of weeks, probably.”
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A Seattle-based investment firm announced Monday that it will leave the city because of civil unrest and move south, taking billions with it.
Smead Capital Management President and CEO Cole Smead, told KSTAR NEWS, that “the unrest that has taken place in the city of Seattle… there really is not a downtown community today.”
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Ramsey Solutions CEO Dave Ramsey announced this week that the Williamson County-based Ramsey Solutions will invest $52 million to expand its corporate headquarters in Franklin and create 600 jobs.
Ramsey announced this in a press release on the Tennessee Department of Community and Economic Development’s website. Ramsey announced this with Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and ECD Commissioner Bob Rolfe.
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One hallmark for the pandemic scare in Tennessee has been the heavy governmental use of electronic meetings, facilitated by Gov. Bill Lee signing executive orders allowing them.
The meetings often were on Zoom or a similar format, and as the state began reopening, sometimes meetings would have participants both in person and participating electronically.
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U.S. Senate candidate Bill Hagerty slammed Facebook officials on Tuesday after an undercover video revealed that officials at the social media company flagged and deleted posts that supported President Donald Trump.
In a statement on his campaign’s website, Hagerty said Facebook officials did this to undermine Trump’s 2020 presidential re-election campaign.
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Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Thales Academy-Franklin Principal Rachael Bradley to the newsmakers line.
During their conversation, Leahy and Bradley discussed the upcoming school year and Thales Academy-Franklin’s parent information meeting next week.
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Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Tennessee state Senator Kerry Roberts (R-Springfield).
During the third hour, Roberts weighed in on the recent Fetal Heartbeat Bill surprisingly passed at midnight in the Tennessee General Assembly this week. Roberts discussed the issues with the constitutionality of the COVID-19 Liability bill which would hold businesses harmless should anyone contract the virus after a visit to their establishment.
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President Donald Trump said Tuesday he’ll issue an executive order to protect monuments that are coming under new scrutiny as America wrestles with racism during the unrest sparked by the police killing of George Floyd.
Trump has been clear that he opposes the removal of monuments of leaders of the Confederacy or other distasteful aspects of American history.
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