Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has once again extended the state of emergency until the end of September.
Lee, a Republican, initially imposed the state of emergency on March 12 in order to free up funding and relax rules regarding the treatment and containment of COVID-19. He extended the order on Friday, the day before it was set to expire.
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Her name is Vicky Osterweil. It’s a pity that she is only emerging on the scene now. Had her ideas enjoyed broad circulation even a month ago, she could have made a major and clarifying contribution to the Democratic Party’s platform.
Many commentators, from the Left as well as the Right, grumbled that the Democrats’ convention lacked a clear policy agenda. Sure, we all knew in general outline what they were about – they were “against racism,” “against white supremacism,” above all, they were “against Trump.”
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One person was shot and killed late Saturday in Portland, Oregon, as a large caravan of President Donald Trump supporters and Black Lives Matter protesters clashed in the streets, police said.
It wasn’t clear if the shooting was linked to fights that broke out as a caravan of about 600 vehicles was confronted by protesters in the city’s downtown.
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As waves of schools and businesses around the country are cleared to reopen, college towns are moving toward renewed shutdowns because of too many parties and too many COVID-19 infections among students.
With more than 300 students at the University of Missouri testing positive for the coronavirus and an alarming 44% positivity rate for the surrounding county, the local health director Friday ordered bars to stop serving alcohol at 9 p.m. and close by 10 p.m.
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Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post, solidified his status as the world’s wealthiest man after his net worth reached the $200 billion mark, according to the Daily Caller.
Bezos reached the astounding milestone on Wednesday, with the Caller noting that he is not alone in expanding his wealth during the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown, which has significantly increased business for Amazon due to the rise in online shopping. Two other prominent CEOs who saw their net worths reach significant landmarks are Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who both reached $100 billion.
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The coronavirus has upended everyday life in ways big and small. What happens when those disruptions overlap with voting? Thousands of state and local election officials across the U.S are sharing ideas and making accommodations to try to ensure that voters and polling places are safe amid an unprecedented pandemic.
Some are finding ways to expand access to voter registration and ballot request forms. Others are testing new products, installing special equipment or scouting outdoor voting locations.
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When it comes to Fentanyl, it is hard for us to think beyond the sheer human tragedy.
It is hard for us to think beyond the 32,000 lost to overdoses from this drug in 2018 – up from 28,000 the year before.
It is hard for us to think beyond the suffering James Rauh of Cleveland has endured. His son, Thomas, injured himself in a roller-blading accident and was prescribed opioids to deal with the pain. The son became addicted, turned to heroin and died when unbeknownst to him, he injected a dose of pure fentanyl that was provided by the drug dealer.
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According to a white paper written by a group called the National Election Integrity Task Force (NEITF), jury roll data in one county suggests around 10 percent of registered Virginia voters may be ineligible to vote.
After seeing the Washington Free Beacon report, Heritage Foundation Senior Legal Fellow Hans Von Spakovsky said, “I’m not surprised by it at all.”
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The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) approved for Minnesotans to receive $300 in weekly unemployment benefits this fall. FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor issued the grant through the Lost Wages Supplemental Payment Assistance program.
The approval comes one day after Governor Tim Walz announced his decision to apply for additional unemployment payments. Walz explained this was a necessary decision based on the continued COVID-19 mandates.
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A Minneapolis police officer dropped to the ground after a metal trash can lid struck him in the head during a resurgence of rioting and looting in the city Wednesday.
The attack, which was reportedly broadcast on Facebook Live, showed a cop trying to open his driver’s-side door before the metal disk whizzed through the air and connected with the back of the unsuspecting officer’s head, according to the New York Post. The uniformed officer dropped to the ground and appeared to be rolling in pain, as fellow law enforcement in riot gear made their way to him, the Post’s video showed.
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Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey gave National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) “staff and volunteers” permission to disobey curfew orders amid riots in his city.
Emails acquired by Alpha News as part of a larger public document dump related to the Minneapolis riots show that Frey “granted an exemption to NAACP from the 8:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. curfew in Minneapolis for the dates of Friday, May 29 and Saturday May 30, 2020.” The document dump which unearthed these emails was prompted by a data practices request filed by Crime Watch Minneapolis.
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The Columbus Dispatch published an article casting a local “Save the Children” event as a Trojan Horse for “QAnon” beliefs. Before the event even takes place, the article depicts it as mobilization for potential violence by conspiracy theory supporters.
It is the latest in a growing trend with media to downplay or dismiss child sex-trafficking awareness events as covers for other, darker political intentions. QAnon is a conspiracy theory that President Trump is secretly battling powerful and wealthy Satan-worshipping pedophiles.
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Governor Ralph Northam announced Thursday a new elective course for Virginia high school students on African American history.
The course will be offered in 16 Virginia school divisions during the 2020-2021 academic year, including Henrico County, Chesterfield County, Prince William County, Charlottesville, among others.
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MOUNT JULIET, Tennessee — Under a large pitched tent and in sweltering heat, Roger Stone, a 40-year confidante of U.S. President Donald Trump, shared his personal testimony Sunday and said he’s “living proof prayer works” despite seemingly insurmountable odds. But Stone’s testimony also came with a warning. “We are in the most dangerous time ever in America,” Stone told members of Global Vision Bible Church in Mt. Juliet. “This is an epic struggle between dark and light, between good and evil, between the godly and the godless, and this is also a fight for the struggle of Western Civilization as we know it.” As reported, Trump last month commuted Stone’s prison sentence. Officials sentenced Stone to three years and four months on counts of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing the House investigation into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 election. But Stone adamantly maintained his innocence and told churchgoers Sunday that law enforcement had no evidence to prove his alleged crimes. Stone spoke of a private meeting he had with the Rev. Franklin Graham. “I told him [Graham] that I was up against an implacable enemy with deep pockets and no morals and no rules,”…
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Members of Americans for Prosperity – Tennessee this week said they were disappointed that Mayor John Cooper referred to the Nashville Taxpayer Protection Act as a “poison pill.”
AFP members said this in a press release.
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The Democrats have always been the party that coddled criminals. It is now the party that canonizes them. While Democrat-run cities burn across the country, Biden concerns himself with masks and Hatch Act violations. He strains at the gnat and swallows the camel.
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At Saturday’s meeting of the Tennessee Republican Party (TRP) State Executive Committee, the majority voted to charge candidates for certain offices a fee to run as a Republican and won’t take up the issue of the House District 18 primary challenge until Wednesday.
TRP Chairman Scott Golden told The Tennessee Star he wasn’t sure why some people thought that the challenge to the House District 18 primary results would be taken up at Saturday’s meeting and said it wasn’t “because it’s against the law.”
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More than 20 percent of small business owners said they will have to close permanently if current economic conditions do not improve within the next six months, according to a survey conducted by the National Federation of Independent Business.
The largest small business association in the U.S., headquartered in Nashville, conducted the survey to assess the financial health of small businesses.
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The reelection campaign of Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell announced on Friday that it had hired as a grassroots director Nicholas Sandmann, the Kentucky teen who was catapulted into national prominence last year due to an incident at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Sandmann was among the teen students from Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, KY, who in January of 2019 were videotaped in what initially appeared to be an aggressive confrontation of an elderly Native American man, Nathan Phillips, at the Lincoln Memorial.
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The ruler of the United Arab Emirates issued a decree Saturday formally ending the country’s boycott of Israel amid a U.S.-brokered deal to normalize relations between the two countries.
The announcement now allows trade and commerce between the UAE, home to oil-rich Abu Dhabi and skyscraper-studded Dubai, and Israel, home to a thriving diamond trade, pharmaceutical companies and tech start-ups.
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I’m pleased to announce the third in AIER’s book series on the virus: Coronavirus and Disease Modeling. This follows Coronavirus and Economic Crisis and Coronavirus and Economic Recovery. The third book focuses on the fallacies of epidemiological modeling and the social and economic planning that instituted its inspiration.
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Minneapolis college student Tnuza Jamal Hassan pleaded guilty to attempting to provide support to the foreign terrorist organization, Al-Qaeda.
According to the defendant’s guilty plea and court documents, Hassan, while a student at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota, drafted and anonymously delivered a letter encouraging two other students to join al-Qaeda.
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President Donald Trump is leading former Vice President Joe Biden ahead of the November election in the battleground state of Michigan, according to a Republican-leaning poll published Friday.
The president carries a narrow 46-45 lead Biden in the state, a poll published by the Trafalgar Group shows. The poll, conducted between Aug. 14 and Aug. 23, comes a day after Trump wrapped up the Republican National Convention, and less than a week after the Democratic National Convention.
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Over 100 former staffers for former President George W. Bush, the late Sen. John McCain and Sen. Mitt Romney endorsed Democratic nominee Joe Biden for president Thursday, Politico reported.
“What unites us now is a deep conviction that four more years of a Trump presidency will morally bankrupt this country, irreparably damage our democracy, and permanently transform the Republican party into a toxic personality cult,” Romney Alumni for Biden said in an open letter.
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Three-quarters of Democratic voters believe that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to steal the 2016 election, according to a new Just the News Daily Poll with Scott Rasmussen.
Asked whether it was more likely that Trump colluded with Russia in 2016 or that the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign that year, 73% of Democrats said the Russia collusion theory was more likely to have occurred.
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Big Ten coaches, athletic directors and medical personnel are working on multiple plans for staging a football season — including one that would have the league kicking off as soon as Thanksgiving weekend.
The conference is in the early stages of a complicated process that also involves broadcast partners and possible neutral site venues, a person with direct knowledge of the conference’s discussions told The Associated Press.
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Virginia Democrats have been playing a bit of a cat-and-mouse game over defunding Virginia law enforcement professionals as punishment for standing up to the BLM/Antifa mobs that have destroyed places such as Downtown Richmond.
Looks like this Friday, the payback was delivered.
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Democrats want lawmakers to take action on House Bill 6, a ratepayer-funded bailout of nuclear power plants in Ohio, when the state House convenes next week, but one Republican says any replacement must prioritize nuclear energy.
The bill faces new scrutiny after a federal grand jury indicted former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Glenford, and four others as part of a $60 million “public corruption racketeering conspiracy” to pass the legislation.
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Virginia Lieutenant Governor candidate Paul Goldman filed a lawsuit Thursday against the State Board of Elections in the ongoing controversy over Amendment 1 redistricting. The suit says that the ballot question on the amendment uses misleading language to unfairly skew voter perception.
Goldman says people will assume they have a fair summary before them. However, he argues this is not the case.
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As Virginia legislators push forward with criminal reform bills, police warn that reform will leave officers without enough tools and protections to do their jobs.
Last week, the Senate passed a bill that, if it becomes law, will end mandatory minimum felony sentences for those who assault police. Other measures being considered include bans on choke holds, elimination of no-knock warrants, and an end to qualified immunity.
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Outrage is growing as Ohio State University remains silent about the Big 10’s decision to postpone football.
In an open letter on the decision, Big 10 Commissioner Kevin Warren said:
“We thoroughly understand and deeply value what sports mean to our student-athletes, their families, our coaches, and our fans. The vote by the Big Ten Council of Presidents and Chancellors (COP/C) was overwhelmingly in support of postponing fall sports and will not be revisited.”
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Former Nashville mayoral candidate Carol Swain said Tennessee Titans starting quarterback Ryan Tannehill doesn’t need anyone to debate him about America’s supposed racism — instead, as far as this topic goes, he needs to get educated.
Swain told The Tennessee Star Saturday that Tannehill “is ill-informed” about history and topics of race.
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Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn interned for U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) almost 20 years ago, according to a resume that Schwinn posted online.
Schwinn posted that resume to a document more than 10 years ago.
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The Republicans have now forced the Democrats to change course and tactics, shed their narcissistic complacency, and recognize that they are in the fight of their lives.
When the history of this astonishing political year is written, there will be amazement that the Democrats ever imagined that they could preserve the entire election as a referendum on Trump based on the question of whether the population is content, and leave the president floundering in blustery self-justification while their nominee fielded soft pre-agreed questions from his home.
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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Nashville attorney Jim Roberts to give an update on the Nashville Taxpayer Protection Act petition signature count.
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At the conclusion of the Republican National Convention watch party and protest Thursday evening, Metro Councilman-At-Large Steve Glover said of Republicans, “We want to build up America, not tear down America.”
Glover was referring to the hundreds of attendees at the event that was his brainchild on the grounds of Barbara Mandrell’s former estate, Fontanel, in Nashville.
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The father of a young man killed in Seattle’s Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) zone has filed $3 billion in claims against King County, the city of Seattle, and Washington state.
Horace Anderson filed the lawsuit Thursday over the death of his 19-year-old son, Horace Lorenzo Anderson, alleging that the local government’s “inactions” and actions created a “hazardous, and lawless situation” that resulted in his son’s death, KING 5 news reported from a statement by the law firm representing Anderson.
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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Attorney Jim Roberts to the studio to discuss the irresponsible spending by Mayor John Cooper in Nashville.
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An all new LIVE STREAM of War Room: Pandemic starts at 9 a.m. Central Time on Saturday.
Former White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon began the daily War Room: Pandemic radio show and podcast on January 25, when news of the virus was just beginning to leak out of China around the Lunar New Year. Bannon and co-hosts bring listeners exclusive analysis and breaking updates from top medical, public health, economic, national security, supply chain and geopolitical experts weekdays from 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon ET.
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In 2018, Rod Dreher published The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians Living in a Post-Christian World. In it, he argued that Christians needed to recognize that this is a post-Christian society, and that they should withdraw as much as possible from it and build up private Christian communities. His inspiration for this concept is Saint Benedict of Nursia, who founded 12 different communities for monks, which became repositories of learning and civilization during the barbarism that ensued after the collapse of the Roman Empire.
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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Jim Roberts to weigh in on Mayor John Cooper’s comments about the Taxpayer Protection Act.
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Friday morning on the John Fredericks Show, host Fredericks welcomed Freedom Works President and CEO Adam Brandon to discuss the terrifying scene of violent protesters outside of the White House after the president gave his RNC acceptance speech Thursday evening.
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Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe announced his decision to step down from the post Friday, citing the return of a health problem, the Associated Press reported.
“It is gut-wrenching to have to leave my job before accomplishing my goals,” Abe said during a news conference announcing his decision, mentioning ongoing tensions with North Korea and a border dispute with Russia.
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A judge blocked an Education Secretary Betsy DeVos policy on Wednesday that transfers COVID-19 relief funds from public school districts to private schools, Politico reported.
U.S. District Judge James Donato of the U.S. District Court Northern District of California granted a preliminary injunction for the plaintiffs, order Thursday, blocking release of additional relief funding to private schools.
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The attorney who is representing Covington Catholic teen Nick Sandmann has offered to represent the Kenosha gunman Kyle Rittenhouse pro bono.
Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old Illinois resident, was arrested by police on Wednesday for first-degree murder after he allegedly fatally shot two rioters, and wounded another in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Tuesday evening.
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden shouldn’t debate President Trump.
Biden said later that he will debate Trump.
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Richard J. Daley, the old-school mayor of Chicago, told the city’s superintendent during the riots that followed Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination to “shoot to kill any arsonists” and “shoot to maim or cripple anyone looting.”
Another of President Lyndon Johnson’s staunchest allies offered a similarly sanguine prescription to the unrest taking place on campus that same month. “It would have been a wonderful thing,” longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer later testified before a Senate committee about the Columbia University student takeover, “if [Columbia President] Grayson Kirk got mad and got a gun and killed a few.”
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The Louisiana coastline devastated by Hurricane Laura began a long and gloomy recovery Friday as hundreds of thousands of people still without water and power confronted the possibility that basic services may not return for weeks or even longer. The number of dead climbed to at least 14.
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President Donald Trump’s administration asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to reinstate a requirement that a woman must visit her health care provider to obtain abortion drugs.
“Given that surgical methods of abortion remain widely available, the enforcement of longstanding safety requirements for a medication abortion during the first ten weeks of pregnancy does not constitute a substantial obstacle to abortion access, even if the COVID-19 pandemic has made obtaining any method of abortion in person somewhat riskier,” acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall said, according to CNN.
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On Monday morning, Representative Nino Vitale (R-Urbana) began the week with a bang – he announced on Facebook the release and his co-sponsorship of articles of impeachment levied against Republican Governor Mike DeWine.
Vitale and three other representatives co-sponsored the articles that outlined 10 offenses the foursome listed as reasons for DeWine to be removed from the state’s top post.
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