John Forbes Kerry, the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, while sitting in first-class, took off his mask today as he settled into his book moments before his American Airlines flight from Boston to Washington took off.
The so-called Climate Envoy was not eating, nor drinking, even though first-class passengers are often served before take-off.
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Metro Nashville City Council approved legislation implementing annual boards and commissions demographic reports during Tuesday’s meeting. Council member Tom Cash introduced the legislation; his proposed report would focus on the makeup of racial and ethnic minorities, and LGBTQ-identifying individuals. Following submission to the Metro Clerk by October 1 of each year, the report would be posted publicly.
The council voted unanimously to add an amendment to the legislation to include sex and gender on the demographic. The legislation passed on second reading, 33-2. Only council members Steve Glover and Robert Swope voted no.
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A bill that was killed last week in the House Banking and Consumer Affairs Subcommittee would have reverted to the threshold required for E-Verify in legislation signed into law by Governor Bill Haslam in 2011 and remained in effect until 2016.
Currently, employers are required under state law to use the E-Verify program to confirm work authorization status of their employees, but only if they have 50 or more employees.
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Democrats by no measure have a clear mandate in Washington. But they sure do act like it.
Senate Democrats know that they don’t have support for many items on their radical agenda, more of which Majority Leader Chuck Schumer plans to force votes on in the coming weeks. That’s why talks are recirculating in the Senate to end the filibuster once and for all.
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Rep. Ilhan Omar urged President Joe Biden’s administration in a letter Monday to end Immigrations and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) contracts with prisons and jails.
The letter calls for Biden to issue an executive order to end ICE’s contracts with state, county and local jails due to the treatment of the detained immigrants and the facilities’ conditions. The Minnesota Democrat called the conditions of the facilities “systemic abuse.”
“Conditions in the municipal, county, and state jails and prisons contracting with ICE to detain immigrants mirror the systemic abuses in privately operated immigration detention facilities, including mental neglect, long term use of solitary confinement, sexual assault, and lack of access to legal counsel,” Omar wrote in the letter.
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The Catholic Church cannot bless gay unions since Catholic teaching holds that gay sex is “intrinsically disordered” and marriage is intended for the sake of creating new life, the Vatican re-emphasized Monday.
In a formal response issued Monday, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith responded to a question on whether Catholic clergy can bless gay unions with the answer: “Negative.”
The Vatican’s response noted that God “does not and cannot bless sin.”
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CNN and the Washington Post issued corrections on Monday, revealing that they “misquoted” some of former President Trump’s comments in a December phone call with Frances Watson, Georgia’s top election investigator.
In their original reports, CNN and the Post claimed Trump ordered Watson to “find the fraud,” and if she succeeded, she would be a “national hero.”
The media outlets were forced to issue mea culpas after the Georgia secretary of state released an audio recording of the December 23 phone call, laying bare what was actually said versus what their anonymous sources claimed was said.
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Thousands of immigrant teenagers will be held at a convention center in Dallas, Texas, as an increasing number of unaccompanied migrant children occupy available facilities, the Associated Press reported Monday.
Up to 3,000 boys aged 15 to 17 will be held at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas possibly beginning this week, the AP reported. The convention center will be used by federal agencies for up to 90 days as a “decompression center,” according to a memo obtained by the AP.
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Three illegal aliens have been sentenced for operating a methamphetamine lab out of their home in Norcross, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
“Zury Brito-Arroyo, Bonifacio Brito-Maldonado, and Roberto Arroyo-Garcia have been sentenced to federal prison for manufacturing and distributing methamphetamine in a home where a minor child resided and within 1,000 feet of a school,” a Monday press release said. “The three men, all of whom had illegally entered the United States from Mexico, utilized a family home in Norcross less than 200 feet from an elementary school to operate a methamphetamine laboratory.”
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Traditionally, March 17 was a day to remember St Patrick, who ministered Christianity in Ireland during the 5th century. But over time, the day has evolved to represent a celebration of Irish culture more generally. Today, as with Halloween and Christmas, the true meaning of the celebration has been watered down even further. Now, it is just as likely to be marked by non-Irish people who use it as an excuse to consume large quantities of alcohol and dress as leprechauns.
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles to talk about the history and tradition of Mules Day in Columbia, Tennessee.
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed screenwriter, playwright, and novelist Roger Simon to the studio to discuss growing up as a typical leftist in Yale School of Drama and guys like Trump.
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Mayor Andy Ogles to the studio to talk about being a mayor and the testimony he will provide in the Tennessee General Assembly on emergency powers.
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Emails obtained through an open records request show that several top scientists declined in an early statement about the origins of SARS-Cov-2 to acknowledge the possibility that the virus had escaped from a lab, a scenario that many disease experts still consider highly plausible.
In February of 2020, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy directed the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to “rapidly examine the information and data needed to help determine the origins of the novel coronavirus that is causing a global outbreak of respiratory illness.”
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Senior Political Analyst for The Epoch Times, Roger Simon in the studio to discuss his recent piece.
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A U.S. nonprofit with close ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology violated federal law by failing to disclose that taxpayer funds supported its work, according to a complaint a taxpayer watchdog group filed Monday.
EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) diverted $600,000 in taxpayer funds to the WIV in the form of National Institutes of Health subgrants between 2014 and 2019 as part of a research project studying coronaviruses from Chinese bats. But press releases from EHA describing the project failed to disclose that the project was backed by federal dollars, an omission that, according to the White Coat Waste Project, is a violation of a federal law known as the Stevens Amendment.
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Metro Nashville City Council is considering a complete overhaul of street parking through a proposed “Smart Parking Program.” The legislation would overhaul the current street parking system (located as item number 44 under Bills on Second Reading). It would allow contractors to enforce parking violations; shift court date notifications, payment systems, and notice methods to a web and text message-based system; and implement license plate scanner technology. It would abolish free parking on Sundays and holidays, the use of coin-operated meters, and free parking perks for carbon neutral vehicles.
The bill also insisted on updating the term “meter maids” to “parking enforcement patrol.” The sponsors of the bill are Council members Freddie O’Connell, Robert Nash, Tonya Hancock, and Ginny Welsch.
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Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Tuesday that the number of migrants apprehended at the United States’ southern border is on track to hit a two-decade high.
“We are on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years,” Mayorkas said in a statement. “We are expelling most single adults and families. We are not expelling unaccompanied children.”
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Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery this week announced a lawsuit against the Murfreesboro-based Care Services Management and Marquis Mobile Dental Services for wasting taxpayer money and allegedly violating the Tennessee Medicaid False Claims Act. This, according to an emailed press release that Slatery and his staff emailed this month.
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In the early hours of March 12, FBI agents in southwestern Florida barricaded a neighborhood to prepare to raid the home of one resident. Christopher Worrell of Cape Coral was arrested and charged with several counts related to the January 6 Capitol melee. Even though Worrell had been cooperating with the FBI for two months, the agency nonetheless unleashed a massive, and no doubt costly, display of force to take him into custody.
Law enforcement agents, according to one neighbor who spoke with a reporter, wore “whole outfits . . . like military and it was crazy. There was like six or seven . . . big black vehicles. They busted down the front door.” The raid included “armed men with helmets and a tanker truck” and was partially executed by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Worrell never entered the Capitol building on January 6; he isn’t accused of committing a violent crime. But a D.C. judge overturned a Florida judge’s ruling to release Worrell pending further review of his case. He remains in jail.
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Users trying to access the secure messaging app Signal from mainland China reportedly had to use a virtual private network to get around what seems to be a government block, according to the Associated Press Tuesday.
The Chinese government maintains censorship of websites, services and apps through a “Great Firewall” which can be bypassed using a virtual private network (VPN), according to the AP. Signal is one of the few messaging apps that allows for encrypted communications between users in China.
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The Georgia Secretary of State investigator who was the anonymous source for a Washington Post story about former U.S. President Donald Trump — that people now discredit — said Tuesday the paper got the story correct. This, aside from a few minor mistakes, said Georgia Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs, the anonymous source.
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Former U.S. Rep. Deb Haaland of New Mexico, who opposes fracking and oil drilling on federal lands, was confirmed as President Joe Biden’s new Interior secretary Monday in a narrow, 52-40, vote.
Haaland, who will become the first cabinet secretary of Native American descent, was criticized by many Republicans and supporters of the U.S. oil and gas industry as being extreme on climate change.
“America’s energy workers will be disappointed, but this close vote is hardly a ringing endorsement for Deb Haaland and the Biden anti-energy agenda,” Power The Future’s Western States Director Larry Behrens said in a statement. “With 40 Senators voting against her confirmation, it’s clear many across the country don’t trust Deb Haaland to run a critical federal agency.”
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Michigan Technological University has seven federally funded programs and scholarships that do not enforce Title IX’s prohibition of sex discrimination against men, alleges a complaint filed with the Office for Civil Rights.
It was filed March 2 by University of Michigan-Flint economics Professor Mark Perry.
The complaint was influenced, Perry said, by Michigan Tech associate professor of electrical and computer engineering Jeffrey Burl’s recent letter. In it, Burl alleges he has been “systematically discriminated against” as a white male at MTU during his 28-year career there.
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Vaccinations will soon become available to those older than 16 in Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced on Tuesday.
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Georgia will use $277 million in federal coronavirus relief for local transportation projects, Gov. Brian Kemp’s office said Monday.
Kemp’s office said the money was set aside for the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) to offset projected COVID-19-related revenue gaps.
“I am thankful for these one-time federal resources that will help keep Georgians working while also keeping our economy on the road to recovery,” Kemp said.
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Gourmeltz 90’s Music Bar & Drafthouse, based in Spotsylvania, has had its health certification suspended after owner Matt Strickland refused to enforce bar closures and mask restrictions. Strickland refused to close after the certification was suspended, and the attorney general is now seeking an injunction against Strickland that will force Gourmeltz to close, according to Fox5. Strickland had a court hearing on Friday, and is now waiting for a decision from the judge.
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Four of the five Democratic candidates for Governor discussed legal reform, racial justice, environmental justice, and good government in a debate hosted by The Virginia People’s Debates. Delegate Lee Carter (D-Manassas), Jennifer Carrol Foy, Senator Jennifer McClellan (D-Richmond), and Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax participated; front-runner Terry McAuliffe was absent.
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J.D. Vance is expected to announce his candidacy for the 2022 U.S. Senate in Ohio.
“All signs point to J.D. launching a run in the coming months,” a source told the Washington Times.
In a video sent to The Star, Vance appears to be the first high-profile candidate who will not position himself as a Trump Republican – if his views from 2016 and 2017 remain.
The Roanoke City Council passed a firearms and ammunition ban for its buildings and parks in a six-to-one vote on Monday night. Council Member Stephanie Moon Reynolds voted against the ordinance, objecting to the portion that bans firearms in parks.
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According to a Tennessee Star poll of 1001 likely Tennessee Republican primary voters, former President Donald J. Trump has all-time high approval rating among the GOP in the state, more than two months after leaving office.
The poll found that 89.7 percent of those voters have a favorable impression of the 45th president, compared to 7.4 percent who view him unfavorably.
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