Tennessee’s Republican state legislators want to loosen foreign influence- a new bill being considered would limit foreign ownership of agricultural land. The bill wouldn’t limit foreign ownership of land for any other purposes. It also wouldn’t apply retroactively.
State Senator Frank Niceley (R-Strawberry Plains) first introduced the bill, followed by State Representative Jerry Sexton (R-Bean Station).
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Next May, a student will head to trial against Overton County Board of Education for banning her Biblical shirt while allowing LGBTQ-themed attire and paraphernalia. Court documents show that the board attempted to mediate with the family on Monday. The record indicates that mediation wouldn’t resolve the issue.
“Written discovery has been exchanged that is sufficient to evaluate and discuss settlement substantively,” stated the joint report. “At this stage it does not appear that mediation will successfully resolve this case. However, depositions are scheduled which could help lead to settlement.”
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The “circle back” meme in the Biden White House isn’t limited to Jen Psaki’s avoidance of tough questions at press briefings. The Biden administration demonstrated that it also intends to circle back to the way things were under the Obama years when it comes to managing Medicaid. Rather than taking a cooperative approach to the state and federal partnership, Obama 2.0 is committed to running the program by decree and eliminating flexibilities that improve the program. Unfortunately, states hoping for true flexibility will be disappointed, as Medicaid flexibility has departed for Mar-a-Lago.
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Thirty-seven of 44 shelters, or 87 percent, currently housing unaccompanied migrant minors in Texas reported positive COVID-19 test results between March 5 and 23, according to data collected by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. Cases are identified by shelter facilities and foster care providers, which are then reported to officials at the agency.
“The Biden Administration has been an abject failure when it comes to ensuring the safety of unaccompanied minors who cross our border,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said. “The conditions unaccompanied minors face in these federally run facilities is unacceptable and inhumane. From a lack of safe drinking water in one location to a COVID-19 outbreak in another, the Biden Administration has no excuse for subjecting these children to these kinds of conditions.
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Dr. Rachel Levine became the highest-ranking transgender official to serve in federal office with her confirmation Wednesday in the U.S. Senate.
Levine joins the Department of Health and Human Services as assistant secretary of health after President Joe Biden nominated her for the post in January.
At the time, Biden described Pennsylvania’s former Secretary of Health as an “historic and deeply qualified choice to help lead our administration’s health efforts.”
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In yet another potential scandal for the already-embattled Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.), a new report claims that his family members and others with close ties to his administration were given special priority with regards to early testing procedures for the coronavirus, according to The Hill.
The report, which first came from the Albany Times Union, says that Cuomo’s Health Commissioner Howard Zucker ordered the New York State Department of Health to give priority to those who Cuomo himself specifically designated, which included his brother, his mother, and one of his sisters. Such testing was conducted in their own private residences, with the officials from the Health Department going out of their way to travel to their homes just to give them the tests.
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The judge overseeing the case involving the Tennessee-based Action 24/7 has ruled that the Tennessee Education Lottery (TEL) must reinstate the company’s sports gaming operator license. Chancellor Patricia Moskal ruled that members of the TEL did not give Action 24/7 the proper due process and that continued suspension of the license threatens the businesses’ continued financial livelihood.
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Parler, the free speech social media platform maligned by political partisans and their media associates has responded with a letter to the House Oversight Committee which is currently investigating the company for failing to “police” its content before the January 6th riot.
The social media company reports it alerted the FBI more than 50 times of posts indicating the violent action at the Capitol posted on its site. The Wall Street Journal reports:
The social-media site referred a number of posts to law enforcement, including one on Dec. 24 from a user who called for an “armed force” of 150,000 people to “react to the congressional events of January 6,” according to the letter, which included the post and communications with FBI officials among its exhibits and has been reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
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Congressional Democrats and President Joe Biden have vowed to act on gun control in the aftermath of two mass shootings that left 18 people dead, but despite their majorities in Congress, Democrats’ proposed bills would be extraordinarily unlikely to overcome a Republican Senate filibuster.
Partisan gridlock on guns is nothing new. No major gun control legislation has passed in over 25 years, when Congress passed a 10-year assault weapons ban under former President Bill Clinton. But despite the constant stalemates, some Republicans have offered alternative plans, meaning that the possibility of some form of bipartisan gun legislation may still exist.
Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey said Tuesday that while he did not think the two bills passed by the House would overcome a filibuster, there was still opportunity for compromise.
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The current migrant crisis in the U.S. will continue to worsen despite Mexico implementing travel limits on March 18 at its southern border, immigration experts say.
Mexico announced non-essential travel restrictions at its southern border due to COVID-19 as thousands of Central American migrants continue to enter the country en route to the U.S.
“The crisis will continue, and worsen, until such time as the [Biden] administration decides to take steps to end it,” Ira Mehlman, the media director of the Federation For American Immigration Reform (FAIR), told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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Customs and Border Protection is detaining as many as 9,000 migrants daily and over half of them are unaccompanied minors and families, a senior U.S. Border Patrol official said Friday.
Around 6,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended Thursday including 1,900 unaccompanied migrant minors and families who were processed under Title 8, according to the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) senior official. Title 42 is still used to expel most single migrant adults and U.S. officials are working with other countries to identify the migrants coming into the U.S., the official said.
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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 surge of migrants at the U.S. southern border has dramatically increased in recent months. According to U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas, “We are on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years.”
In February, changes in U.S. border policy and the search for a better life incentivized more than 100,000 migrants to travel to the United States and cross the southern border.
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Throughout the Trump years and in particular during the 2020 COVID pandemic crisis, the nation was lectured by the Left “to follow the data,” as the Democrats proclaimed themselves the “party of science.” As sober and judicious children of the enlightenment, they alone offered the necessary disinterested correctives to Trump’s supposed bluster and exaggeration—and to his anti-scientific deplorable following (often dismissed by Biden as dregs, chumps, and Neanderthals).
In truth, leftists and Democrats have become the purveyors of superstition. Their creation of a fantasy world is not because they do not believe in science per se, but because they believe more in the primacy of ideology that should shape and warp science in the proper fashion for the greater good. What prompted Paul Ehrlich, Al Gore, or Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) hysterically and wrongly to forecast widespread demographic or climatological catastrophe in just a few years was not ignorance of science per se, but a desire to massage science for our own good.
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The people behind the Nashville Taxpayer Protection Act said Friday that they have obtained 14,000 signatures for a referendum on the matter and have filed those signatures with the Metro Nashville Clerk’s Office. As The Tennessee Star reported last month, organizers are pushing again for Davidson County voters to have the chance to vote for the proposed Nashville Taxpayer Protection Act. If voters approve it, the Nashville Taxpayer Protection Act would roll back Nashville Mayor John Cooper’s 34 to 37 percent tax increase.
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Friday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the Director of the Center for Economic Opportunity Patrice Onwuka to the newsmakers line to weigh in on Joe Biden’s press conference and the current Election Integrity Act of 2021 passed in the state of Georgia.
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In one microscale step for machine, but a potentially significant leap for the treatment of brain cancer, researchers at the Harbin Institute of Technology in China have created controllable microrobots that can breach the blood-brain barrier and deliver cancer drugs to tumors in the brains of mice.
They detailed their efforts in the journal Science Robotics.
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Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Friday published a lengthy defense of the state’s new Republican-sponsored election reform bill, which legislators passed Thursday. According to Kemp’s Facebook page, the new law requires the following:
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A Georgia House Democrat was arrested Thursday night after repeatedly banging on Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s office door.
Rep. Park Cannon (D-GA-58) was banging on the door in protest of an election integrity bill signed into law Thursday. Democrats contend that the bill constitutes “voter suppression.”
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After a year of strict lockdowns imposed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the state Senate wants to codify rules for business closings in the event of another epidemic.
“If this state has a test positivity rate of less than 3% for not less than 7 consecutive days or if less than 3% of hospital beds in this state are being used to treat individuals with coronavirus for not less than 7 consecutive days, the emergency order must not place a limitation on indoor dining occupancy or on a meeting or event held at the qualified establishment,” SB 250 says.
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The Minnesota Supreme Court earlier this week made a controversial ruling on a case involving a convicted rapist, ordering a new trial on the grounds that the woman involved in the incident voluntarily intoxicated herself prior to the sexual encounter.
Francois Khalil was convicted of third-degree criminal sexual conduct involving a victim who was impaired in 2019, stemming from an incident in 2017. The woman involved in the case said the two had been partying when she blacked out, and woke up to Khalil raping her. He was sentenced to five years in prison by a jury in Hennepin County.
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Charlottesville Mayor Nikuyah Walker drew attention this week with a graphic poem on social media comparing her city to a rapist.
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The Ohio Senate approved more than $8 billion it hopes will spur both economic development and job growth while tackling the state’s transportation needs over the next two years.
The state’s proposed transportation budget passed the Senate unanimously Thursday with some adjustments made by the Senate, including additional money for public transportation, local road projects and emergency road repair. It also requires the Ohio Department of Transportation to reopen currently decommissioned weigh stations to serve as overnight parking areas for commercial truckers.
“This transportation budget makes critical investments in Ohio’s communities and local infrastructure,” said Senate President Matt Huffman, R-Lima. “I am confident House Bill 74 will improve roads and infrastructure that Ohioans use every day and will enhance Ohio’s economy and promote job growth.”
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GoFundMe has taken down Parents Against Critical Theory (PACT) Founder Scott Mineo’s page, meant to help fund his efforts to fight critical race theory implementation in Loudoun County Public Schools. He said that GoFundMe didn’t say why it were removed his posts, but he has a guess.
“Because I’m anti-[critical race theory], that’s it,” he said.
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Friday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the Nashville Taxpayer Protection Act attorney Jim Roberts to the newsmakers line to celebrate the successful delivery of more than enough signed petitions to the Metro Clerk and Metro Legal’s intent to move the goalpost.
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Lieutenant Governor Randy McNally (R-Oak Ridge) appears to have a change of heart on the possibility of expanding Medicaid in Tennessee. According to reports, the White House’s latest plan to expand subsidized coverage caught McNally’s fancy.
Via the American Rescue Plan, President Joe Biden promised that if states expanded their Medicaid programs they’d receive more federal dollars to cover the program. McNally’s spokespersons have indicated that he is open to this option.
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Several members of the Tennessee Education Lottery (TEL) Corporation’s Board of Directors, while driving in their vehicles, decided to temporarily take away Action 24/7’s operating license.
Some board members were on spring break.
And TEL board members took this action while taking the word of an investigator who said the company didn’t follow through on the necessary security protocols.
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Over just a few hours Thursday, Georgia’s Legislature and Gov. Brian Kemp drew the first battle line in the high-stakes struggle to decide how American voters will cast ballots in the future after the pandemic-ridden election of 2020.
The Republican-controlled state put itself firmly in the camp of voter ID requirements, limited drop boxes and expanded weekend voting. And depending on the eye of the beholder, it was either a win for election integrity or a return to the era of Jim Crow voter suppression.
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In Tennessee, houses of worship may never have to worry about blanket policies shutting them down during a state of emergency. Specifically, a proposed bill would limit state, political subdivisions, or public officials from imposing restrictions or outright prohibiting churches or religious organizations from operating.
The bill would also limit the authority of county health officers to mandate quarantines. It wouldn’t extend its protections to those places of worship where an outbreak has occurred.
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Last week in Anchorage, Alaska, Chinese diplomats dressed down Biden Administration Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. Both seem stunned by the Chinese broadsides.
Apparently, as elite Americans readily confess to inherent white supremacy and racism—highlighting the complaints of BLM and Antifa—the Chinese are happy to agree that such admittedly toxic Americans should not dare to criticize China’s racist policies.
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For two fleeting years after Trump was elected president, the GOP controlled the White House and both houses of the U.S. Congress. This level of one-party control for the GOP was almost without precedent. Apart from 2003-2007—the end of George W. Bush’s first term in office and the beginning of his second—you have to go back all the way to 1953, the first half of Dwight Eisenhower’s first term, to find a GOP president and a GOP-controlled Congress.
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Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Proclaiming Justice to the Nation’s President and Founder Laurie Cardoza-Moore to the newsmakers line to discuss her recent appointment on the Tennessee Textbook and Instructional Quality Commission and California’s anti-Semitic curriculum.
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Under Joe Biden, the Department of Homeland Security has overseen the release of over 23,400 illegal aliens into the United States since February, according to Breitbart.
These illegals were released after they had already been detained at the border for attempting to cross. Of that 23,400, around 15,600 were released in the month of March alone. This is in addition to the thousands of more illegals who have similarly been released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) over the same period, with the exact numbers currently being unavailable.
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Nearly all members of Congress who oversee privacy and antitrust issues have received donations or lobbying money from Big Tech, according to a Public Citizen report.
Ninety-four percent of lawmakers on Capitol Hill with jurisdiction over key Big Tech issues have received money from the industry, according to the Public Citizen report released Wednesday. Altogether, Big Tech political action committees (PAC) and lobbyists contributed roughly $3.2 million to lawmakers who are specifically tasked with regulating the industry.
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Thousands of migrants have reportedly used social media apps Facebook and WhatsApp to organize caravans and groups headed to illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border.
The migrants, who largely originate from Central America, started joining Facebook and WhatsApp groups in the months after President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in the November presidential election, according to Reuters. Members of the groups reportedly warned others that they should time their border treks to ensure they arrived after Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration.
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Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Tennessee Firearm Association’s John Harris to the studio to define and discuss the three bills pertaining to constitutional carry gun rights legislation.
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The number of Americans filing new unemployment claims dropped to 684,000 last week as the economy continued to slowly recover from the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Department of Labor.
The Bureau of Labor and Statistics figure released Thursday represented a large decrease in the number of new jobless claims compared to the week ending March 13, when 781,000 new jobless claims were reported. That number was revised up from the 770,000 jobless claims initially reported last week.
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The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has opened an investigation into President Joe Biden’s decision to freeze congressional funds allocated for construction of the southern border wall, Politico reported.
Senate Republicans requested the GAO investigate the Biden administration for potentially violating the Impoundment Control Act (ICA), which prohibits the president from altering funding appropriated by Congress without approval, Politico reported. Republicans are referring to the $1.4 billion allocated for border wall construction in the $900 billion COVID bill passed by Congress in December.
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The judge overseeing the case involving the Tennessee-based Action 24/7 reportedly will work as quickly as she can to determine whether the Tennessee Education Lottery (TEL) should reinstate Action 24/7’s sports gaming operator license. This, because of the loss of revenue the company is experiencing during the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s “March Madness” basketball tournament, according to LegalSportsReport.com
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President Joe Biden on Thursday set a new target of 200 million Americans being vaccinated by the end of April while also facing questions about the southern U.S. border crisis, the potential to end filibusters in the U.S. Senate and other issues.
At the first news conference of his presidency, held later into his first term than recent presidents, Biden said the U.S. was on target to vaccinate more than 200 million Americans by his 100th day in office.
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The Educational Media Foundation (EMF) announced it would be moving its global headquarters from Rocklin, California to Nashville, Tennessee. EMF is the parent company to popular contemporary Christian radio networks K-LOVE and Air1, as well as Christian content producers AccessMore podcasts and WTA Media.
EMF stated that the transition would take about three years’ time. In its announcement, EMF clarified that it had also made small preparations for this move in advance, such as the expansion of broadcast studios and offices for the companies already based in the state.
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Democratic senators plan to introduce legislation that would repeal the Hyde Amendment, arguing that the decades-old legislation is both “anti-choice” and “blatantly racist.”
The Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance Act will be introduced in Congress Thursday, the HuffPost reported, by Democratic Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth and Democratic California Sen. Barbara Lee. The legislation demands the reversal of the 1976 Hyde Amendment, which bans the use of federal funds for abortions.
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Wednesday the Ohio General Assembly (GA) did something that doesn’t often happen – the Republican supermajority delivered veto override votes in both chambers to undo what a Governor from their own party did just one day earlier.
Senate Bill 22 (SB22) is a law that establishes legislative oversight of emergency, standing and special orders issued by state leaders and agencies – giving the General Assembly the power to rescind orders with a concurrent resolution (a simple majority vote of both the House and the Senate) instead of passing a law that requires the Governor’s approval.
Below is a simple list of what the new law does and doesn’t do.
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A wide spectrum of Ohioans could catch a break when it comes to state taxes after the Ohio House passed a bill Wednesday that brings state tax rules in line with federal rules.
The bill, which already passed the Senate and now awaits Gov. Mike DeWine’s signature, increases the child and dependent care credit, provides tax breaks for student loan payments and eliminates taxes on the first $10,200 in unemployment compensation.
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Embattled Michigan Gov. Gretchen Wilson (D), facing scrutiny for secret deals made with departing state employees and her COVID-19 nursing home policies, vetoed a bill that would have limited the executive power of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS).
Senate Bill 1 would have capped emergency pandemic orders by MDHHS at 28 days, causing them to automically expire unless they were ectended by the legislature. But Whitmer, who was long ago stripped of her emergency pandemic powers by the Michigan Supreme Court, veteod the bill, ensuring that her executive branch has unfettered power to give mandate emergency orders.
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Gov. Tim Walz expressed his support for a bill that would give progressive organizations influence over the state’s collection of data on “crimes motivated by bias” and police training standards for responding to those crimes.
“Words matter. It, to me, is stunning that we would not hold hearings in the Minnesota Senate to debate this bill that simply does the obvious, that makes it a crime to discriminate against a neighbor for any reason of who they are or their origin or their religious preferences or you name it,” Walz said at a Tuesday press conference on the bill.
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Virginia became the first state in the south to abolish the death penalty when Governor Ralph Northam announced Thursday that he signed twin death-penalty repeal bills introduced by Delegate Mike Mullin (D-Newport News) and Senator Scott Surovell (D-Fairfax). Virginia joins 22 other states that have also repealed the death penalty.
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COLUMBUS, Ohio – Four lawmakers – State Senators Matt Dolan (R-Cuyahoga) and Stephanie Kunze (R-Dublin), and State Representatives Nino Vitale (R-Urbana) and Andrea White (R-Kettering) – were the sole Republicans that did not cast a vote to override Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of a measure that limits his authority to issue orders during an emergency.
Senate Bill 22 (SB22) is aimed at rebalancing power by giving the Ohio Legislature oversight of government rules and orders. Chairman of the House State and Local Government Committee Scott Wiggam (R-Wooster) was the point man in the lower chamber on the legislation, which passed overwhelmingly earlier this month.
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The Ohio Department of Taxation announced on Thursday that it would be extending the deadline to file and pay taxes in the state from April 15 to May 17.
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KENNESAW, Georgia — Corey Lewandowski, who advises former U.S. President Donald Trump, updated Georgians about Trump’s frame of mind since he left office and the hostile feelings that establishment media figures hold toward the former president’s supporters.
Lewandowski was one of several people who spoke at a launch party at Kennesaw’s Marietta Country Club for the new Freedom WMLB 1690. The station broadcasts to Atlanta audiences through the John Fredericks Radio Network (JFRN).
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