The coronavirus may be changing the world, but there aren’t many signs of the pandemic at the massive annual motorcycle rally being held this week at a small city along Interstate 90 in western South Dakota.
The scene Saturday at the 80th Sturgis Motorcycle Rally was familiar to veterans of the event, with throngs of maskless bikers packing the streets.
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A large swath of U.S. churches have not reopened for in-person services even though they have legal license to do so. It’s a decision that may very well spell destruction — with dwindling congregations and empty coffers — but it’s a decision many pastors are making nonetheless.
Almost one-third of church-going adults, 31 percent, attend a church which was still closed for public worship as of mid-July, according to a survey from the Pew Research Center published Thursday. In addition, half of church-going adults (those who attend services at least once a month) said they have not attended any in-person religious services for the past month. At the time of the survey, July 13-19, public worship was permitted everywhere in the United States except in some counties in California.
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Memphis Police officers will be required to live in the city, whether they like it or not.
Memphis City Council members approved an ordinance this month that removed the question of residency from the November 2020 ballot.
Specifically, the approved ordinance rescinds Referendum Ordinance No. 5744, which might have allowed specified personnel employed within the Divisions of Police and Fire Services to reside 50 miles outside of the City of Memphis.
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Some school districts are having a difficult time accounting for thousands of devices that were sent home with students this spring to participate in distance learning programs during COVID-19 shutdowns.
Federal CARES Act funding allocated money to states to purchase millions of students laptops, tablets and Chromebooks. Now some districts are having difficulty finding them.
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A recent study of collectively bargained deals negotiated by police unions nationwide found these deals often scale back accountability and shield police from disciplinary action.
Before this year, public-sector collective bargaining was banned in Virginia. But after Democrats won control of the House and Senate, party leaders were able to pass legislation to end that prohibition, and Gov. Ralph Northam signed it into law. The law will go into effect in May 2021.
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At least 17 people were killed and 123 injured when a special return flight for Indians stranded abroad because of the coronavirus skidded off a hilltop runway and cracked in two while landing Friday in heavy rain in the southern state of Kerala, police said.
Among the injured, at least 15 were in critical condition, said Abdul Karim, a senior Kerala state police officer. Rescue operations were over, he said.
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Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden (or his staff) Thursday evening felt the need to “clarify” comments the candidate made suggesting lack of diversity among “the African American community” – even after the corporate media worked valiantly to excuse the comments.
“In no way did I mean to suggest the African-American community is a monolith — not by identity, not on issues, not at all,” Biden said in an series of tweets.
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Ramsey County District Judge Sara Grewing has single-handedly overturned Minnesota election law by ruling on Aug. 3 that Minnesota’s absentee ballots no longer require the signature of a witness who is a registered voter or a notary public.
The judge also ruled that absentee ballots can be accepted after the election, as long as they are postmarked as of Election Day. Under the Minnesota law that the judge scrapped, absentee ballots had to be in by 8 p.m. on the night of the election.
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Police officers and criminal justice reform advocates share some common ground going into Virginia’s special session to address policing reform, but the two groups break apart on some of the more controversial reforms.
“We are as repulsed by bad police officers … as anyone [else],” Wayne Huggins, executive director of the Virginia State Police Association, told Virginia House members Thursday during the last criminal justice reform hearing ahead of the special session, which convenes Aug. 18.
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An Auditor General’s recently released report answered questions about a canceled no-bid contact-tracing contract tied to a Democratic political consultant, but the person “primarily in charge of contact tracing” refused to cooperate.
Contact tracing is a method of gathering information to discover who might have been infected with COVID-19 by following an infected person’s interactions.
For example, one event at an Ingham County bar resulted in 187 COVID-19 infections across the state.
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A pair of Republican lawmakers want to expand the list of offenses that would render an elected official in Ohio ineligible for retirement or disability benefits.
House Bill 741 adds to the list felony offenses of extortion and perjury and a slew of federal violations, including racketeering. It also adds theft and bribery involving programs receiving federal funds; mail, wire and honest services fraud; and interference with commerce by threats or violence in violation of the “Hobbs Act.”
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Federal officials late last week announced an initiative, Operation Legend, to fight violent crime in Memphis and St. Louis.
“The most basic responsibility of government is to protect the safety of our citizens. Today, we have extended Operation Legend to Memphis and St. Louis, two cities experiencing increases in violent crime that no resident of those cities should have to accept as part of everyday life,” Attorney General William P. Barr said in a statement.
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Nashville Mayor John Cooper this week announced Order 10 from the Metro Public Health Department pertaining to alcohol.
Cooper’s order took effect Saturday.
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by Daniel J. Mitchell The coronavirus has been horrible news, most obviously because of death and suffering. But the disease has also wreaked havoc with the economy and given politicians an excuse to push counterproductive policies. But if you want to find a silver lining to that dark cloud, the virus may be putting pressure on America’s government school monopoly. For instance, John Stossel explains that it may lead to more homeschooling. Given the large amount of evidence showing superior outcomes for home-schooled students, this is definitely a much-needed bit of good news. Matthew Hennessey, in a column for the Wall Street Journal, also opined about how the coronavirus may produce a permanent expansion of homeschooling: Most students will return to traditional classrooms when the crisis passes. But some families—perhaps many—will…decide that homeschooling is not only a plausible option, but a superior one. …An economy of high-quality online educational materials has sprouted in the past decade. All you need is a laptop, headphones and a quiet corner of the house, and your kid can study everything from calculus to ancient Greek. …Education has managed to stave off innovation for a variety of reasons. Inertia is one—most people have a hard time reimagining something as basic as school. …Teachers unions…
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Amid the coronavirus pandemic, about 20 percent of Harvard and Yale University students will not re-enroll at the Ivy League schools this fall.
An email sent to Harvard students from Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Claudine Gay iterated the same fate for Harvard, the Harvard Crimson reported. A similar, if not identical announcement, was posted on Harvard’s website, confirming that 5,231 students intend to enroll for the fall semester. As the Harvard Crimson noted, data from the previous year show that 6,755 enrolled at Harvard in 2019.
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The National Basketball League Board of Governors announced plans Thursday to give $300 million over the next decade towards a new foundation supporting economic opportunities for black communities.
The NBA will donate $30 million each year for the next ten years towards the NBA Foundation, according to an NBA press release. The 30 NBA teams will each donate $1 million every year to the fund, NBC News reported.
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Dr. Simone Gold, a board-certified emergency physician and the founder of America’s Frontline Doctors, has responded to Twitter’s removal of her tweet about treatments for COVID-19 and locking her out of her account.
In her response, Dr. Gold – who also graduated from Stanford Law School after completing her medical degree – called out her temporary Twitter ban, calling the action “another classic case of tech censorship against anyone who speaks out against the media narrative.”
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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer traveled to Delaware last weekend to meet with Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s first known in-person session with a potential running mate as he nears a decision.
Whitmer visited Biden Sunday, according to two high-ranking Michigan Democrats who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The first-term governor of the battleground state has long been on his short list of possible running mates.
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Herman Cain, the former Republican presidential candidate, businessman and close ally of President Donald Trump, was guided by his Christian faith in politics, business and his personal life, his pastor said at his funeral Friday.
Cain “made his mark on this world” and his life will be celebrated for years to come, the Rev. Kenneth Lamont Alexander of Antioch Baptist Church North in Atlanta said.
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CNN and reporters called 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden a “devout Catholic” Thursday after President Donald Trump said the former vice president would “hurt the Bible, hurt God.”
Biden has frequently referenced his Catholic faith throughout his political career, describing his faith as “the bedrock foundation” of his life. The former vice president also supports policies that are explicitly opposed to Catholic teaching, such as abortion and same-sex marriage.
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President Donald Trump on Saturday signed executive orders to supplement unemployment benefits for workers who lose their jobs during the coronavirus pandemic by $400 a week and suspend payroll taxes for those earning less than $100,000 a year.
He also signed orders freezing evictions in federal housing and deferring student loan payments through the end of 2020.
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Joe Biden is continuing to suffer from a terrible case of foot-in-mouth disease when it comes to discussing black Americans and their politics.
The tone-deaf former vice president recently claimed “that the Latino community is ‘incredibly diverse,’ ‘unlike’ the black community.”
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Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee declared Saturday, August 8 as Emancipation Day.
Lee announced this on his Facebook page.
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Approximately 111 New York City Police Department (NYPD) officers have been injured in demonstrations across NYC’s five boroughs since June 10, a law enforcement spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
A total of 461 NYPD officers have been injured since the start of violent demonstrations on May 26 that followed the death of George Floyd, who died after a police officer knelt on his neck for over eight minutes, NYPD spokesperson Sgt. Mary Frances O’Donnell told the DCNF in an email.
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Federal officers from five different agencies are set to arrive in Memphis and St. Louis to aid in crime reduction and investigations, the Department of Justice announced Thursday.
Memphis will receive an influx of 40 federal agents from the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and Homeland Security — 24 of which are permanent assignments, according to a DOJ press release. St. Louis is set to receive an unspecified number of agents from the ATF, DEA, FBI and U.S. Marshals Service with an additional 50 Homeland Security agents, the release said.
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A Wright State University (WSU) economics professor has been barred from teaching a class critical of Marxism to the general student body.
Professor Evan Osborne had his repeated requests to teach a class critical of communist economist Karl Marx to non-honors students denied, reports The College Fix.
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President Donald J. Trump nominated Ilan L. Berman, a critic of his Ukrainian policy and one of the three authors of the proposed Ukraine plank to the 2016 Republican Platform that was cited as proof of the Russian Collusion Hoax, to be a member of the International Broadcasting Advisory Board for a term of three years, according to an Aug. 3 statement from the White House. Berman is the senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, as well as a member of the associated faculty at Missouri State University’s Department of Defense & Strategic Studies. Berman also fed the hysteria over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s influence over Trump in the early days of his administration. Ok, tweeps, a bit of personal news… https://t.co/kgvD8dpWNc — Ilan Berman (@ilanberman) August 3, 2020 Berman stoked rumors Trump gave Putin green light in Ukraine Berman, who is considered a regional expert regarding the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Russian Federation, wrote in a Feb. 6, 2017 column “Trump’s Ukraine Dilemma” for U.S. News & World Report there was reason to believe that Trump in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, gave the Russians the green light to ramp up…
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Governor Walz announced in a press release Friday that he will extend Minnesota’s COVID-19 Peacetime Emergency again by 30 days. The state’s peacetime emergency first went into effect March 13 – this is the fifth extension to date.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented and rapidly evolving, and we can’t let our guard down,” stated Walz.
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Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN-05) and Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) introduced a bill Friday to tax billionaires sixty percent of their pandemic-earned assets. The proposed bill, “Make Billionaires Pay Act,” would use the tax money to cover individual healthcare expenses for one year.
In a tweeted video, Sanders argued billionaires have profited off the coronavirus pandemic while the rest of the country has suffered.
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Conservative media personality Dana Loesch will be the keynote speaker at the Citizens for Community Values (CCV)’s upcoming Celebration Gala to be held in Cincinnati.
Loesch will speak at the gala on Thursday, October 1 at Xavier University.
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Metro Nashville At-Large Council Member Sharon Hurt said Wednesday during a virtual meeting of the Joint Public Safety and Health Committee that there should be stronger legislation for those not wearing masks and suggested they be charged with murder or attempted murder.
Hurt said that she works for an organization that, “If they pass the virus, then they are tried for murder or attempted murder.”
Hurt thinks the same standard should apply to the general public.
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Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden told Fox News that he had chosen a vice presidential candidate; however, Biden’s campaign denied he had selected a running mate.
While riding his bike Saturday morning, Fox News asked Biden if he decided on a vice presidential nominee. The former vice president jokingly said he had chosen a person and told Fox News reporter Peter Doocy that it was “you” he had decided upon.
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Tennessee U.S. Senate Democratic nominee Marquita Bradshaw is an environmental activist and former AFL-CIO organizer, according to information she posted on her campaign website.
Bradshaw got 35 percent of the vote against four lesser performing candidates in Thursday’s Democratic primary, according to the Tennessee Secretary of State’s website.
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The Democrats became so addicted to their need for President Trump to be permanently under a cloud of criminal suspicion for their media lackeys to endlessly celebrate, that their present discomfort is considerable as the weight of prosecutorial scrutiny shifts to another—that is, to their—foot.
Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates’ performance at the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday was the most dignified and plausible attempt yet by any serious Obama Administration official to try to maintain the fiction that its justice department and intelligence agencies didn’t go rogue and assault the Constitution.
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New York schools can bring children back to classrooms for the start of the school year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Friday, citing success in battling the coronavirus in the state that once was the U.S. heart of the pandemic.
The Democratic governor’s decision clears the way for schools to offer at least some days of in-person classes, alongside remote learning. Students will be required to wear masks throughout school day.
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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to discuss Joe Biden and the Democrat Party’s racism.
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The U.S. economy added 1.8 million jobs in July, while unemployment fell to 10.2%, according to Department of Labor data released Friday.
Total non-farm payroll employment rose by 1.8 million in July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics report, and the number of unemployed persons fell by 1.4 million to 16.3 million.
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We The Kingdom is a multigenerational family of musicians, including esteemed producers and songwriters Ed Cash (Chris Tomlin, NeedToBreathe, Bethel Music, Crowder), and Scott Cash, who are brothers. Ed’s daughter Franni, his son Martin and close friend Andrew Bergthold are also part of the group. Ed and Scott’s dad played guitar while their mom played piano resulting in a home filled with music. Despite there being an eleven year age gap between them, as both Ed and Scott entered their teens and early 20s, they embarked on similar individual journeys as touring artists.
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Democratic Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib violated the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 by paying herself a salary from her campaign after securing victory in the 2018 general election, the House Ethics Committee unanimously ruled on Friday.
The Ethics committee found that Tlaib violated FECA’s personal use restrictions by paying herself $10,800 from her campaign when she was no longer a congressional candidate in late 2018 and ordered her to repay that amount back to her campaign within one year, the committee said in a report.
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A Virginia inmate who was released from jail because of the Coronavirus pandemic is back in police custody for allegedly murdering his accuser.
Ibrahm Elkahlil Bouaichi, a 33-year-old man who was arrested for allegedly raping his ex-girlfriend Karla Elizabeth Dominguez Gonzalez in October 2019 and held without bond, was arrested Wednesday morning for shooting and killing Gonzalez on July 29.
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Twitter partially suspended the Democratic National Committee’s account Thursday for sharing a tweet from President Donald Trump that contains a video of the president suggesting children are “almost immune” to coronavirus.
The company made the move after the DNC tweeted a clip of Trump’s Wednesday appearance on Fox News in which the president made the claim relating to children and the pandemic, CNN reported. The account intended to retweet the post with the intention of criticizing the president for spreading misinformation, but Twitter’s moderators flagged the post instead.
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Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine tested negative for the coronavirus Thursday after testing positive earlier that day, according to The Wall Street Journal.
DeWine first tested positive for the virus Thursday before his scheduled meeting with President Donald Trump in Cleveland, the WSJ reported. DeWine’s office said the 73-year-old governor doesn’t have any symptoms, according to the WSJ.
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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Nashville attorney Jim Roberts to discuss the latest update on the number of signatures needed for the Nashville Taxpayer Protection Act.
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Hundreds of thousands of applications for mail-in ballots that a voter-advocacy group sent to voters in Virginia had the wrong return addresses, adding another complication for state election officials who are already hard-pressed to pull off a smooth election in a pandemic.
The Virginia Department of Elections said the return envelopes were addressed to the wrong election office, which would force election officials to forward the applications to the correct office for processing. Meanwhile, the department said anyone wanting to vote absentee should apply for a ballot through the state’s website.
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Cori Bush, the Justice Democrats-supported progressive activist that defeated 10-term Rep. William Lacy Clay Jr. in Tuesday’s Democratic primary in Missouri, is at least a year late in disclosing her finances to the public as required by federal law, public records show.
Bush has yet to submit her personal financial disclosure to the House of Representatives for her 2020 campaign, according to the House Office of the Clerk, which maintains a database of financial disclosures of congressional candidates and members of Congress.
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TikTok threatened to sue President Donald Trump Friday for signing an executive order prohibiting individuals from communicating with the Chinese social media app’s parent company over the next 45 days.
The executive order, which also impacts Chinese app WeChat, was issued Thursday night “without any due process,” TikTok said in a press statement.
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The U.S. economy produced between 1.35 million and 1.8 million jobs the month of July, bringing the total number of jobs created since April when labor markets bottomed with the federal and state governments in lockdown to combat the Chinese coronavirus to between 9.3 million and 10 million.
Further speeding the recovery along are the number of COVID-19 cases are beginning to decline nationally after brief spikes in Texas, California, Florida and Arizona as states were reopening. Now the cases have stabilized in those states, and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation is projecting they will remain stable until mid-to-late September when the cold and flu season gets going again.
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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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The editorial board of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN-05) hometown newspaper, The Star Tribune, endorsed her primary rival Antone Melton-Meaux Wednesday.
The board explained that they came to support Melton-Meaux after reviewing and interviewing both candidates extensively, stating that the candidate has “strong progressive values that align well with the district.”
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A Warren County Court judge ruled on Thursday against the director of the Ohio Department of Health Lance D. Himes injunction on contact sports.
The order allowed non-contact sports to re-open for their normal seasons, as long as certain precautions are followed. Contact sports, however, including football, basketball, wrestling, boxing, martial arts, and soccer would have been required to test players for COVID-19 several times per sporting event. Students would be required to test negative within 72 hours of a game, again during any tournament lasting more than three days, and every two days after that should the tournament last longer.
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