Indoor gyms in Michigan will be able to reopen this month after a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s executive orders that continue to keep indoor gyms closed.
U.S. District Court Judge Paul Maloney said in an opinion published Friday that the state had given a “blanket ‘trust us’ statement that is insufficient to uphold a no-longer-blanket rule.”
Read the full story
Authorities are conducting a criminal investigation after the outside of the Ohio Statehouse was defaced with red hand prints and the phrase “hands up, don’t shoot” in protest of police brutality.
State troopers began to wash off some of the red paint on the western side of the statehouse on Thursday afternoon as a group of people protesting police brutality watched. It’s the latest example of damage to the downtown Columbus icon since protests over the police killing of George Floyd began three weeks ago.
Read the full story
Mayor Emily Larson said she wants the Duluth City Council to approve an ordinance that would remove the word “chief” from a city government job title.
“We are dropping the name chief with intention and with purpose so that we have more inclusive leadership and less language that is rooted in hurt,” said Larson, who called the title “offensive” and intentionally marginalizing.
Read the full story
The Ohio Department of Family Jobs and Services released numbers Friday that showed Ohio’s unemployment rate in May at 13.7 percent.
Ohio’s unemployment rate is trending in a downward direction as the state’s unemployment rate went down almost four percentage points from April to May. As the unemployment rate continued to go down, the Buckeye State had 211,000 unemployed workers go back to work in May.
Read the full story
Under a resolution passed this week, Minneapolis leaders said they will allow the city’s homeless population to seek “refuge” in public parks.
The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board (MPRB) approved the resolution during a Wednesday meeting. According to a press release, the resolution “allows those currently experiencing homelessness to seek refuge on Minneapolis parkland,” and requests assistance from federal and state agencies in finding a permanent housing solution.
Read the full story
Major pro-life legislation was approved by the Tennessee Legislature in Friday’s early morning hours just before legislators wrapped up their year.
Passage — and the end of the session — came as a surprise because Senate leaders had said they would not take the abortion measure up in this condensed year, according to a story by The Tennessee Journal: On the Hill. The publication also reported the Senate did this to persuade the House to back off of making changes to the budget proposal the Senate had approved.
Read the full story
The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Friday rejected a request to require everyone attending President Donald Trump’s rally in Tulsa this weekend to wear a face mask and maintain social distancing inside the arena to guard against the spread of the coronavirus.
The court ruled that the two local residents who asked that the thousands expected at Saturday night’s rally be required to take the precautions couldn’t establish that they had a clear legal right to the relief they sought. Oklahoma has had a recent spike in coronavirus cases, but in a concurring opinion, two justices noted that the state’s plan to reopen its economy is “permissive, suggestive and discretionary.”
Read the full story
The rally scheduled for Saturday in Tulsa has not only shown continued enthusiasm for President Trump and the country but has also given opportunities to demonstrate America’s ingenuity and charitable nature.
One such example is that of TrueHero Extreme Coverage Face Shields.
Read the full story
The on-the-ground evidence in Tulsa is that the enthusiasm for the country and President Trump is still strong, despite or perhaps because of the events in recent months related to the COVID-19 shutdowns since March followed by the unrest going on across the country over the past few weeks.
Once President Trump announced on June 10 his first rally since the “invisible enemy” changed life around the world, people started camping out two days later to hold their place in line at Tulsa’s BOK Center for the event.
Read the full story
Nashville Mayor John Cooper announced Thursday that the city will enter the third of its four announced phases of reopening after the COVID-19 pandemic struck the United States.
Cooper announced this at a press conference.
Read the full story
U.S. Senate candidate Bill Hagerty on Thursday announced he will host a telephone town hall with conservative political strategist Kellyanne Conway to talk about maintaining the Senate majority and ensuring President Donald Trump has allies in the Senate.
This, according to a press release Hagerty published on his campaign’s website.
Read the full story
Live from Music Row Friday 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 Senior Reporter Laura Baigert to the newsmakers line.
During the second hour, Baigert described the scene in Tulsa, Oklahoma where President Trump plans to hold his first post-coronavirus rally at the BOK. She noted that there was an air of camaraderie among the people waiting in line hanging their Trump and American flags.
Read the full story
Gov. Bill Lee spoke by phone Wednesday with First Lady Melania Trump on a new task force to address children’s mental and physical health during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The White House said Penny Schwinn, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Education, also participated.
Read the full story
As we watch radicals tear down statues, deface monuments, intimidate people who want to stand for the National Anthem, demand the firing of people who write or say something deemed inappropriate to the Leftist Anti-American Theology, it is utterly clear that many Americans today hate America.
People ask me how we’ve gotten to this point. All of this is the result of three generations of brainwashing going back at least to Herbert Marcuse, the German-born University of California, San Diego professor who taught young Americans the philosophical foundation of Marxism in the 1960s. As early as 1972, Theodore White was warning that the liberal ideology was becoming a liberal theology and dissent was less and less acceptable to the left.
Read the full story
Members of the Metro Nashville Beer Permit Board penalized four bars downtown this week after they said staff at those establishments, including Kid Rock’s Big Ass Honky Tonk & Rock N Roll Steakhouse, ignored city guidelines as businesses re-open after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Moxy Nashville Downtown, Broadway Brewhouse, and Nudie’s Honky Tonk were the other three bars.
Read the full story
U.S. Senate Health Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN) this week weighed in on the topic of telehealth.
Alexander said the government should permanently extend at least two of the most important temporary changes in federal policy made to help patients see doctors by phone or video during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read the full story
A resolution that would enshrine right-to-work protections in the Tennessee Constitution has passed the state House after already clearing the Senate.
“Since 1947, Tennessee has valued the right to work because we understand that it is truly a right,” Rep. Robin Smith, R-Hixson, said on the House floor Wednesday evening before the resolution passed, 67-23.
Read the full story
Live from Music Row Thursday 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 Metro Nashville’s City Council Member-at-Large Steve Glover to the newsmakers line.
During the third hour, Glover described the situation where the Metro Nashville City Council voted 32 to 8 in favor of a 34 percent tax increase which was designed by Council Chairman Bob Mendes. He was clearly sickened by the vote and stressed to all registered voters that they need to head to the polls in December as well as sign the 4goodgovernment.com petition.
Read the full story
A judge on Thursday indefinitely extended an injunction preventing the Virginia governor from removing a historic statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee from a famed avenue in the former capital of the Confederacy.
Richmond Circuit Court Judge Bradley Cavedo made the decision after hearing from attorneys for the state and for the plaintiff in a lawsuit against Gov. Ralph Northam. Earlier this month, Cavedo had issued a 10-day injunction barring Northam from removing the bronze equestrian statue of the Confederate hero from Monument Avenue.
Read the full story
The Chinese Communist Party is waging information warfare to shape American public opinion and influence our economic and government policy to their benefit.
The CCP doesn’t shape public opinion by buying billboards and TV ads. That kind of persuasion is far too American for them.
Read the full story
Live from Music Row Thursday 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 all-star panelist Dr. Carol Swain to the studio.
During the second, Swain discusses her busy schedule and her appearance at President Donald Trump’s first rally this Saturday in Tulsa post-coronavirus. She later in the segment suggested listeners help her organize a BBQ with music and speakers to celebrate the police calling it “Back the Blue.”
Read the full story
Both Target and Best Buy have announced plans to make Juneteenth a company-wide holiday, an idea that Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) wants to institute on the federal level.
“One of the most defining days in our nation’s history was when President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, finally freeing all slaves in Confederate territory. But slaves in Texas wouldn’t learn this life-altering news for two and a half years,” Cornyn said during a Senate floor speech Thursday.
Read the full story
Live from Music Row Thursday 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 the Principal of Thales Academy-Franklin Rachael Bradley to the newsmakers line.
During the second hour, Bradley described direct instruction methodology and urged parents to fill out an application online as slots are filling up quickly at the new school. She also said there is an upcoming parental informational meeting on June 30.
Read the full story
Live from Music Row Thursday 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 all-star panelist Carol Swain to the studio.
During the third hour, Swain discussed her experiences by which she left the Democratic Party and the racism while growing up and throughout her college career noting that it was white people and Conservatives that encouraged her to excel. Disappointedly, she admitted it was the affluent black people that were typically unsupportive because of her socioeconomic status.
Read the full story
Marriage and families are the cornerstone of not only civilization but of nature itself, without which humans would have never survived as wandering nomads and early farmers, let alone building cities, an economy and governments to represent the people in state-to-state relations.
Without families as a basic building block, children are not nurtured, educated and empowered to raise and sustain families themselves, and the human race could not continue, always being but one generation away from extinction.
Read the full story
U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) has joined a legislative effort to provide police reform, accountability and transparency.
Blackburn said she became a cosponsor of U.S. Sen. Tim Scott’s (R-SC) Just and Unifying Solutions to Invigorate Communities Everywhere (JUSTICE) Act.
Read the full story
U.S. Senate candidate Bill Hagerty on Thursday weighed in after the United States Supreme Court ruled to uphold former president Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Hagerty said this in a press release, which he posted on his website.
Read the full story
Twenty-eight congressional Democrats signed a letter Wednesday condemning the Department of Education for ruling that public schools that allow biological males who identify as transgender to play girls’ sports are violating Title IX civil rights legislation.
Democratic Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal joined 27 House Democrats in signing the letter, which charged that the department’s order “discriminates against transgender youth” by restricting girls’ sports to biological females.
Read the full story
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday she is ordering the removal from the Capitol of portraits honoring four previous House speakers who served in the Confederacy.
In a letter to the House clerk, Pelosi directed the immediate removal of portraits depicting the former speakers: Robert Hunter of Virginia, James Orr of South Carolina and Howell Cobb and Charles Crisp, both of Georgia. The portraits were to be removed later Thursday.
Read the full story
Facebook has removed ads for President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign because they featured an upside-down red triangle.
The tech giant said the ads were removed because the symbol was once used by Nazis to designate political prisoners, but Trump’s campaign has noted that the symbol is widely used by Antifa, which is why it was included in the ad.
Read the full story
Tennessee’s jobless rate in May fell in comparison with a record increase the month before, as more than 300,000 people continued to receive unemployment payouts during the new coronavirus outbreak, state officials said Thursday.
The Tennessee Department of Labor & Workforce Development reported Thursday that the preliminary seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for May was 11.3%. That’s a drop of 4.2 percentage points from April, when Tennessee reached its highest monthly unemployment rate ever, at 15.5%.
Read the full story
More than 1.5 million American workers filed new unemployment claims last week, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, even as state restrictions to slow the spread of COVID-19 are easing.
More than 45 million claims have been filed in the three months since state and local governments started restrictions that closed businesses deemed nonessential, but millions of those workers have since gone back to work as states began reopening their economies.
Read the full story
At least three more Minnesotans were charged this week for their involvement in the destruction of Minneapolis.
On Monday, U.S. Attorney Erica MacDonald announced that 25-year-old Montez Terrill Lee of Rochester was charged with arson for starting a pawn shop on fire. According to a criminal complaint, surveillance video showed a masked man, later identified as Lee, pouring liquid from a metal container throughout the pawn shop on the night of May 28.
Read the full story
Minnesota residents filed 25,549 new unemployment claims during the week ending June 13, down 2,762 new claims from the prior week.
The total number of unemployed Minnesota residents is 416,729.
Read the full story
Minnesota will waive its witness requirements for absentee ballots for the statewide primary election in August under the settlement of two lawsuits sparked by the health threat from the coronavirus pandemic.
The lawsuits were filed by political arms of the League of Women Voters of Minnesota and the Minnesota Alliance for Retired Americans. A Ramsey County judge signed off on the consent decree with the retirees Wednesday while a federal judge scheduled a hearing for Thursday on the league’s case.
Read the full story
Ohio residents filed 33,112 new unemployment claims during the week ending June 13, down 3,042 new claims from the prior week.
The total number of Ohio residents seeking unemployment is 504,124.
Read the full story
Michigan residents filed 19,552 new unemployment claims during the week ending June 13, down 8,284 new claims from the prior week. The total number of unemployed Michigan residents is 726,513.
The downward trend of new claims in the state continues unabated. Michigan ranked fourth in the nation in largest decreases of new unemployment claims in the week ending June 6.
Read the full story
The Michigan House of Representatives approved a concurrent resolution on Thursday demanding transparency from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer about information related to the coronavirus in Michigan and officially opposing her coronavirus nursing home policies.
Michigan only recently began publishing data about coronavirus cases and deaths in the state’s long-term care facilities like nursing homes.
Read the full story
Ohioans for Secure and Fair Election (OSFE) announced Thursday that it was suspending its ballot initiative campaign trying to make major changes to Ohio’s election laws.
“While this is certainly not the outcome we hoped, planned, organized, fundraised, or campaigned for, we come to this decision with pride in our work, appreciation for our coalition partners, and a clear vision for the future,” said Toni Webb, the campaign manager for OFSE.
Read the full story
Mayor John Cooper said this week that he has asked the Metro Nashville Police Department to strengthen its policies to “explicitly prohibit the use of chokeholds and to further clarify officers’ duty to intervene.”
However, as the statement from Cooper’s office notes, chokeholds are already prohibited under Tennessee law in most circumstances. Additionally, since the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) doesn’t train officers on the technique, chokeholds are “not allowed per Nashville police policy and have not been allowed for decades,” said the statement.
Read the full story
The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected President Donald Trump’s effort to end legal protections for 650,000 young immigrants, a stunning rebuke to the president in the midst of his reelection campaign.
For now, those immigrants retain their protection from deportation and their authorization to work in the United States.
Read the full story
Nashville Police Chief Steve Anderson will retire in likely six months’ time.
Nashville Mayor John Cooper announced this at a press conference Thursday — a conference that Anderson did not attend.
This, as The Tennessee Star reported, after left-wing activists and Metro Council members pushed for either Anderson to resign or for Cooper to fire him.
Read the full story
Metro Nashville Police Chief Steve Anderson said this week that he accepts the #8CANTWAIT principles that regulate police officers’ behavior on-the-job.
Anderson said this in a press release this week.
Read the full story
In a ruling that shocked conservatives and religious liberty advocates, the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 vote, ruled Monday that a key provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects gays, lesbian and transgender people from discrimination in employment.
The court held that a key provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 known as Title VII that bars job discrimination because of sex, among other reasons, encompasses bias against LGBT workers.
Read the full story
China and India accused each other Wednesday of instigating deadly border clashes between their forces along the disputed Himalayan frontier, pledging to safeguard their territory but also to try to end a standoff that has dramatically raised the stakes between the nuclear-armed Asian giants.
Twenty Indian troops were reportedly killed in the clashes Monday night in the Ladakh region’s Galwan Valley, while it was not clear whether China suffered any casualties.
Read the full story
Officials with a Nashville-based right-of-center think tank on Wednesday harshly criticized members of the Metro Nashville Council for jacking up property taxes by 34 percent.
Members of that think tank, the Beacon Center of Tennessee, said this in a press release.
Read the full story
Live from Music Row 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 discussed the Democrat’s immediate agenda and strategy for law enforcement and police reform. He pointed out that their intent is not to defund the police but to federalize it via a blueprint inspired by the Obama administration.
Read the full story
Senate Republicans unveiled proposed changes to police procedures and accountability Wednesday, countering Democratic policing legislation with a bill that is less sweeping but underscores how swiftly the national debate has been transformed five months before elections.
Republicans are embracing a new priority with the “Justice Act,” the most ambitious GOP policing proposal in years, in a direct response to the massive public protests over the death of George Floyd and other black Americans. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he believes America is not a racist country but “the stain is not totally gone” from slavery and the Civil War.
Read the full story
Live from Music Row Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report Early Edition 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 American economist and the Director at the Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs at the Competitive Enterprise Institute John Berlau to the newsmakers line.
During the first hour, Berlau joined the show to discuss his new book entitled George Washington, Entrepreneur, and how his innovative spirit contributed to America. He also touched upon Washington’s relationship to slavery and how near the end of his life had led the way by freeing all of his slaves.
Read the full story
Christian media outlets report a revival filled with miracles has been happening in the spot where George Floyd died in the custody of the Minneapolis Police Department.
CBN News reports salvations, baptisms, worship and healings are taking place. The movement began with Dr. Charles Karuku and Pastor Lindsey Karuku of International Outreach Church, CBN News said. They told CBN’s The Prayer Link that they felt a call from God.
Read the full story