U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams (D-GA-05) this month submitted a resolution that would, if enacted, prohibit former U.S. President Donald Trump from entering the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. The resolution directs that the U.S. Capitol Police and other entities prohibit Trump from entering the U.S. Capitol at any time after he left office.
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Members of the Williamson County-based Tennessee Stands said this week that a new education bill in the Tennessee General Assembly will waste a lot of money and the state does not need it. State Sen. Jack Johnson (R-Franklin) is sponsoring the bill, the Tennessee Learning Loss Remediation and Student Acceleration Act. The COVID-19 pandemic, and its effects on public schools, prompted the legislation.
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The Senate of Virginia on Friday will vote to pass legislation out of the body that would allow for private health insurance companies offering plans through the state exchange to have the option for abortion coverage.
Senate Bill 1276 was introduced by Sen. Jennifer McClellan (D-Richmond City), who is also a gubernatorial candidate seeking the Democratic nomination, and co-sponsored by three other Democratic legislators.
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The Republican Party of Virginia (RPV) State Central Committee (SCC) plans to meet once again on Saturday in an effort to pick a nomination method. SCC members have already voted twice to hold a convention, but a necessary amendment allowing for an unassembled convention was blocked, since the amendment needed three-fourths approval to pass.
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A day before President Joe Biden was sworn into office with the stated goal of unifying the United States, the head of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) made sure to take one last jab at Republicans.
“I think the Republican Party has a choice to make because there’s two sides,” DFL Chairman Ken Martin said in an online press conference. “You’re either on the side of Nazis and White supremacists and far-right groups, or you’re on the side of Democracy and liberty and freedom and our Constitution.”
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The Virginia Safety and Health Codes board voted on January 13 to make the COVID-19 Emergency Standard permanent, according to a notice at the Virginia Regulatory Town Hall. The proposed permanent standard still needs approval from Governor Ralph Northam.
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One of President Joe Biden’s first executive orders drew concerns from U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who said it will cost jobs and hurt the economy.
On Wednesday, Biden signed an order rescinding the presidential permit that allowed for construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. Before the order, Canadian company TC Energy Corp. announced it had suspended work on the 1,700-mile pipeline.
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A Democratic lawmaker has introduced legislation to speed up Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s climate initiatives.
The Green New Deal Act, which was introduced by Del. Sam Rasoul, D- Roanoke, takes inspiration from New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s federal Green New Deal legislation. The bill drastically would speed up Northam’s initiative to make Virginia’s electric utilities carbon free.
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Governor Mike DeWine announced Thursday that the temporary curfew he imposed in Ohio the day before would be extended past Saturday, and he gave little indication when or if the curfew would be lifted at all.
Word of the extension came at the end of DeWine’s press briefing as a response to the first question asked by media.
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(The Center Square) – For the past 83 years, Peter Tomassoni’s family has run Recreation Lanes and the Antoin Room Banquet and Convention Center in Iron Mountain.
Less than one year under Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s restrictions to curb the spread of COVID-19, however, it could die, through no fault of the family.
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A bill to help Virginia speed up its mass vaccination effort by expanding who is allowed to inoculate citizens and where those injections can occur is being pushed by a bipartisan group of state Senators.
Flanked by various medical professionals, Senators Chap Petersen (D-Fairfax City), Todd Pillion (R-Washington), Jennifer Kiggans (R-Virginia Beach), George Barker (D-Fairfax) and Siobhan Dunnavant (R-Henrico) held a news conference to discuss Senate Bill 1445 in Richmond on Thursday.
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COLUMBUS, Ohio – Ohio Governor Michael DeWine wrote a letter to the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) Nominating Commission Wednesday telling them to offer new candidates for the vacancy left by the resignation of former PUCO Chairman Samuel Randazzo. DeWine rejected the slate of four finalists screened by the 12-member Nominating Council. “The list contained candidates who could be an appropriate addition to the PUCO,” wrote DeWine. “I reject the first list and request you reconvene the PUCO Nominating Council to provide me with a second list. The second list may include candidates that have previously applied, along with new applicants.” The four applicants submitted to the governor on December 21 were: Angela Amos – policy advisor at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; Anne Vogel – governor DeWine’s energy policy Director and former Director of Federal Government Affairs at American Electric Power (AEP); Greg Poulos – Director of Consumer Advocates of the PJM States, Inc.; Judith French – jurist and former Ohio Supreme Court Justice. French was just appointed by DeWine to head the Ohio Department of Insurance. Vogel recently fell under scrutiny and criticism from the Energy and Policy institute for alleged ties to AEP dark money.…
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The Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce PAC released a statement Thursday condemning the mostly peaceful protests at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. on January 6, promising to re-evaluate the involvement of its current endorsees, along with potential future endorsees.
“Members of the business community in Michigan and nationally are carefully evaluating their political engagement in light of the Jan. 6 events at the U.S. Capitol,” the Chamber said. “Entities ranging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to Fortune 500 firms based in Michigan have expressed dismay not just at what happened inside the Capitol, but also the actions of many that enabled this unprecedented act of sedition.”
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A U.S. House member from Tennessee Thursday celebrated the United States’ re-entry in to the World Health Organization (WHO), which is notoriously tied to the Communist Chinese.
“Thank you [President Biden] for halting the United States’ withdrawal from the World Health Organization. A global pandemic needs a global response & I’m thankful we had representation at the [World Health Organization]meeting today,” Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN-05) said. “We will continue working together to combat #COVID19.”
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Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) Board Chair Christiane Buggs caught parents’ ire for continuing to keep schools closed in light of her activities in recent months. Shortly before the ongoing school closure began in November, Buggs hosted an election watch party and then vacationed internationally.
Buggs defended the board’s initial decision in the fall to adjust all schools to virtual learning. She described it as a necessity, explaining how her own father was concurrently battling COVID-19. Buggs explained that he was infected while working at one of their middle schools. She stated that preventing the spread was paramount to in-person learning, which she described as a “convenience.”
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It is so appropriate that Mike Lindell, founder and CEO of MyPillow — ♪ for the best night’s sleep in the whole wide world, it’s my pillow dot com ♪ — is the latest prominent person to come out yet again, even post January 6, for Donald Trump. Although I disagree vehemently with the “martial law” stuff and although Donald Trump decidedly is not my hero — my late wife Ellen of blessed memory is my hero — I still publicly count myself as a strong supporter of the entire four-year Trump presidency. His presidency was enormously powerful and successful. It was en route to Mount Rushmore until a once-in-a-century pandemic set off inevitable setbacks. None were his fault, and his “Operation Warp Speed” will have saved more lives than the Mainstream Media ever will admit. Indeed, had the COVID impact come during an Obama-quality bleak economy, the plague’s disaster’s catastrophe would have been amplified.
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President-elect Joe Biden will order the Department of Education to extend the student loan payment moratorium through September in one of his first presidential moves.
Joe Biden is set to sign the executive order on Wednesday following his inauguration, extending the current pause on student loan payments, which has been in effect since March, according to CBS News. The order is a fulfillment of Biden’s campaign promise to prioritize the U.S. student loan debt crisis.
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Governor Bill Lee was appointed the co-chair of the National Governors Association’s (NGA) Pandemic and Disaster Response Task Force on Wednesday. The other chair selected was Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont.
Lee and Lamont will oversee the Federal Emergency Management administration (FEMA), the National Guard, cybersecurity, healthcare, and all issues related to addressing and recovering from COVID-19, such as testing and personal protective equipment (PPE). Other members in the task force have yet to be announced; as of Wednesday, the two staffers on the task force were legislative directors Mary Catherine Ott and Maribel Ramos.
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Lucas Hoge is a multi-talented entertainer who was recently featured in my Music Spotlight column in July of 2020.
Although he was able to shoot his TV series, Hoge Wild, since the pandemic, the singer/songwriter/actor/sportsman has been unable to tour and sing to live audiences.
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to examine K-12 education and the decay of American values.
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Crom Carmichael in studio to discuss the mind-boggling stupid mentality of Democrats and their failure as a one-party rule.
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President-elect Joe Biden announced on Wednesday that he would cancel a permit critical to the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
The move marks the second time that a Democratic administration has effectively killed the $8 billion project. While environmental and conservation groups praised the move, TC Energy, the company behind the pipeline’s construction, argued in an earlier Supreme Court brief that scrapping the project would strip 1,500 construction workers and 300 inspection and management workers of their jobs.
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Hospitals have come under sharp criticism for their part in the chaotic COVID-19 vaccine rollout. That’s because in the rush to get the vaccine out quickly, many hospitals were shipped more vaccine than anticipated and fewer staff took it than anticipated. As a result, hospitals accrued a vaccine surplus and offered it to their low-risk grad students and young administrative staff working from home and are now scrambling to figure out what to do with the rest. The answer should be simple: give it to older members of your community, but a recent letter from the American Hospital Association cited a number of important barriers to effective vaccine distribution including a lack of coordination and guidance from federal, state, and local governments.
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Craig Klein of Sales Nexus to the newsmakers line to explain why his company is a great alternative to Google AdSense.
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The default settings to sponsor inauguration flags sends money to the Presidential Inaugural Committee’s partners — including the Planned Parenthood of America, the nation’s largest abortion provider.
The Presidential Inaugural Committee installed an “extensive public art display” that includes 191,500 flags on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Americans may symbolically sponsor flags by donating through ActBlue Charities.
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Over half of all Republican members of the House of Representatives are prepared to support an effort to remove Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) as Chair of the House GOP Conference, according to Breitbart.
It has been reported that approximately 115 House Republicans are committed to voting in favor of a “no confidence” motion on Cheney’s leadership, which could allow for Cheney to be removed and replaced. The position is the third highest-ranking role in House GOP leadership, only behind the House Minority Whip and House Minority Leader.
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed National Correspondent of the Tennessee Star Neil McCabe to the newsmakers line to weigh in on the agenda of a new Biden administration.
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed State Representative (R) Ryan Williams to the newsmakers line to discuss the General Assembly’s special session as it focuses on literacy and reinstalling phonics into public school curriculum.
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Activists and legislators are calling for Gwinnett County Board of Registrations and Elections Chair Alice O’Lenick to resign for supporting election law changes. O’Lenick wanted to limit no-excuse absentee voting to the elderly and infirm, ban absentee ballot drop boxes, and expand early voting to last 21 days and be open on the weekends.
O’Lenick’s proposals incited negative responses from a variety of civil rights and activist groups, as well as a coalition of Democratic state legislators. Amongst the groups were The Lincoln Project, Fair Fight Action, Asian Americans Advancing Justice Atlanta, Georgia American Federation of Labor and Congress of Individual Organizations (AFL-CIO), Georgia Equality, and Voto Latino.
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The Virginia Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections passed a resolution to censure Republican gubernatorial candidate Sen. Amanda Chase (R-Chesterfield) on Tuesday regarding her conduct and comments on the January 6 Capitol riots in Washington D.C.
Introduced by Sen. John Bell (D-Loudon) and sponsored by nine other Democratic legislators, Senate Resolution 91 was reported out of the committee by a 9-6 vote straight down party lines and will now be considered on the floor in the coming days.
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Georgia’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic should be strong and swift, the state’s fiscal economist said Tuesday.
Georgia’s economy has been supported by federal aid, a recovering job market and business owners’ improvisation, state economist Jeffrey Dorfman told the House and Senate appropriations committees during a joint meeting Tuesday.
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Representatives from approximately 90 bars, restaurants, and other Michigan establishments signed a letter asking Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to safely reopen dine-in service “as soon as possible” to prevent additional permanent closures.
The Facebook post announcing the letter has been shared more than 1,000 times.
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Vice President Kamala Harris, sworn into office herself just hours prior, swore in two new Senators from Georgia Wednesday afternoon.
Democat Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, who edged out former Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, respectively, in a runoff election on January 5, became the newest members of the U.S. Senate, flipping control of the higher chamber of Congress the Democratic Party.
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Members of the Georgia General Assembly will soon consider two separate bills that pertain to civil asset forfeiture, one which would make it harder for government officials to seize private property. This bill, the Due Process in Civil Forfeiture Act, would increase the burden of proof for the government in civil forfeiture proceedings. The bill would alsoprovide people with public defenders during civil forfeiture proceedings in certain criminal cases.
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Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced Wednesday that 97,795 voters were removed from the rolls after Ohio’s 88 county boards of elections identified the abandoned registrations as part of the maintenance process required by Ohio and federal law. “Getting rid of bad voter data from the voter rolls helps prevent fraud, makes it easier for county boards of elections to do their jobs, and strengthens the confidence Ohioans place in our elections,” LaRose said. The purge process began in 2016 when registrants who had been inactive for two years at that point received notification to determine if they were at the registered address and wished to remain a registered voter. “If that record remains inactive for another four years or six years of total inactivity, it must be removed from the voter rolls,” the secretary of state’s release stated. On August 17, LaRose released to all county boards of election Directive 2020-14 announcing a December 7 deadline by which boards had to identify for removal inactive registrants. Between the August directive and the December deadline, 18,000 Ohioans took action to keep their active voter status – 10,000 did so by voting in the 2020 presidential election. “It’s important…
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President Joe Biden was supposed to have been working on a Jeffersonian-like speech to unite the nation and collectively heal the wounds and soothe the consciences of Americans.
Instead? We got a flat Sprite and saltines.
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Minnesotans under the age of 40 are two times more likely to be murdered than die from COVID-19, Center of the American Experiment economist John Phelan said in a recent article.
According to the Minnesota Department of Health, 42 Minnesotans under the age of 40 have died from COVID-19. According to the Center of the American Experiment, at least 88 Minnesotans under the age of 40 have died in a homicide since March 21 — the date of Minnesota’s first reported COVID-19 case.
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The House of Delegates passed Delegate Mark Levine’s (D-Arlington) “Good Apples Bill,” which requires law enforcement officers to report acts of wrongdoing committed by other on-duty officers. It also requires officers to render aid if they witness someone suffering a serious bodily injury, and it expands a ban on biased-based profiling to include profiling by sexual orientation. In a vote Wednesday, HB 1948 passed 57-42, with three Republicans joining Democrats to vote for the bill.
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Democratic candidate for governor and Virginia State Senator Jennifer McClellan (D-Richmond City) released a plan central to her campaign last Friday that seeks to provide affordable and quality child care for every family with a kid under the age of five by 2025.
Under McClellan’s Universal Child Care & Early Learning Plan, Virginia families that make below or up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level would receive free child care, no matter the family size. While families making above that poverty threshold would have to pay for child care costs, but no more than 7 percent of their annual income.
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Workers in Fairfax County are asking the National Labor Relations Board to change its policies so they can vote to remove union bosses at any time during a contract.
Under NLRB rules, workers cannot vote to oust union representatives until after a contract has expired or after three years have passed, whichever is earlier. Employees at Transdev, a public transport company, who are working at the public bus service Fairfax Connector are seeking a change to the rule with legal help from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.
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House of Delegate Republicans have repeatedly begun the regular sessions this week by blasting Virginia’s government for the slow COVID-19 vaccine rollout.
On Monday, GOP Caucus Chairman Delegate Kathy Byron (R-Bedford) said, “Madam Speaker, as we meet today, Virginia’s government is struggling in a critical life-saving mission. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Virginia has received over 850,000 doses of the COVID vaccine, but we have administered fewer than 250,000 doses. That performance ranks us among the lowest of the fifty states.”
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Metro Nashville officials are evaluating whether to spend $13.8 million in new infrastructure costs to allow a private company, Oracle, to set up shop in Davidson County. Metro Nashville At-Large Council Member Steve Glover told The Tennessee Star that council members on Tuesday approved an agreement — on the second reading — to invest the money. They then referred it for a final reading.
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Accompanied by family and supporters, President Trump spoke briefly to supporters Wednesday morning before he and first lady Melania Trump boarded Air Force One for their home in Florida, telling them: “You are amazing people. This is a great, great country.”
The first family arrived for their flight from Joint Base Andrews after arriving on Marine One from the White House.
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President Trump pardoned former White House adviser Steve Bannon, several ex-congressman and two high profile rappers in a final wave of clemency and commutations as he left office.
The White House released the list of 73 pardons and 70 commutations early Wednesday morning, and it did not include Trump himself, any family members or his attorney Rudy Giuliani as some had speculated.
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A Minnesota Senator used her inaugural speech to demonize mostly peaceful protestors who occupied the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. on January 6, while simultaneously calling for unity.
“Two weeks ago, when an angry, violent mob staged an insurrection and desecrated this temple of our democracy, it awakened us to our responsibility as Americans,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) said, speaking to a sparse crowd. “This is the day when our democracy picks itself up, brushes off the dust, and does what America always does: goes forward as a nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
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In his inaugural address Wednesday, President Joe Biden called for an end to this “uncivil war” and asked his political opponents not to let disagreement “lead to disunion.”
“We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural verses urban, conservative verses liberal, we can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts,” Biden said on the steps of the U.S. Capitol Building.
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The Mayor of Knoxville is the latest politician to have her home vandalized, in a trend that has become commonplace since last summer’s Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots.
“The Knoxville Police Department is investigating after a vandalism report at Mayor Indya Kincannon’s home Sunday night,” according to a Monday report by WBIR. “When officers arrived on the scene, they observed the word ‘Death’ spray-painted in black on the backside of a detached garage at Mayor Kincannon’s house.”
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Does President-elect Joe Biden really want the first order of business when he is sworn into office to be the trial of outgoing President Donald Trump?
On Nov. 6, 2020, while votes were still being counted, Biden told the nation: “We may be opponents but we’re not enemies, we’re Americans. No matter who you voted for I’m certain of one thing, the vast majority of them, almost 150 million Americans who voted they want to get the vitriol out of our politics. We’re certainly not going to agree on a lot of issues but at least we can agree to be civil with one another. We have to put the anger and the demonization behind us. It’s time for us to come together as a nation to heal. It’s not going to be easy, we have to try. My responsibility as president will be to represent the whole nation.”
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Tucker Carlson blasted a member of the U.S. House from Tennessee Monday night for suggesting that most of the National Guardsmen deployed in Washington, D.C. for President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration could be a threat because they are White and male.
“Democrats in Congress demanded that the troops sent to Washington this week submit to a political purity test — ‘ideological vetting,’ as they put it — to make certain that every soldier professed loyalty to the new regime,” Carlson said. “Not loyalty to our country, not loyalty to our Constitution, but loyalty to the aims of a specific political party. Nothing like that has ever happened in America and just a few months ago, it would have been unimaginable. Suddenly it’s compulsory.”
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Proclaiming Justice to the Nations (PJTN) announced that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is removing it from its list of designated hate groups.
PJTN said in a statement that it learned in 2020 that the SPLC had designated their organization as a ”hate group.”
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