The city of Buffalo is trying to force one business owner to stop flying his “Trump 2020” flag, saying that the flag violates a city ordinance.
But Jay Johnson, who is flying the 50 feet by 30 feet flag from a crane at his construction business, says he’s not budging.
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Republican candidate for Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears announced that she is asking for Virginia to remove the “mask mandate” that has been instituted by Virginia Governor Ralph Northam. In a video posted to Facebook, former Delegate Sears announced that she will be publicly calling for Governor Northam to remove the mandate to wear a face mask to enter Virginia businesses, open schools, and open Virginia businesses at full capacity.
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Ashland, Ohio – An Ohio judge ruled that the Director of the Ohio Department of Health (ODH) does not have the authority to issue mask mandates, social distancing or other types of mandates since Ohio law does not give the agency such stated or implied authority.
Ashland County Common Pleas Judge Ron Forsthoefel wrote that the ODH only has ultimate authority in matters of isolation and quarantine – matters the legislature defined in Senate Bill22, the law enacted when the General Assembly overrode Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s veto of the bill last month.
The case Forsthoefel judged involved Cattlemans Restaurant and the Ashland County Health Department – the latter which issued a cease and desist order against the restaurant for an alleged violation of the COVID-related Dine Safe Order.
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The U.S. Department of Education (USED) denied Michigan’s request to waive the federal requirement to administer state summative assessments.
In late January, the Michigan Department of Education cited the COVID-19 pandemic as a reason not to test Michigan’s 1.5 million students. MDE requested waivers to federal requirements for state summative tests,and waivers of associated high-stakes accountability requirements. The accountability waivers were approved on March 26.
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On Wednesday, the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee approved a bill to make county health boards as advisory bodies only, and to prohibit mandatory vaccine passports. The bill was introduced by State Representative John Ragan (R-Oak Ridge), and also sponsored by State Senator Janice Bowling (R-Tullahoma).
Currently, the components limiting county health boards’ powers and prohibiting vaccine passport mandates aren’t listed as part of the bill. They were introduced as an amendment in the House on Tuesday. Additionally, the bill would relegate local health authority to the state and limit county health officers’ quarantine-mandating powers – individuals and places that aren’t known to have contributed to the spread of a disease may not be quarantined.
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The Tennessee General Assembly has been considering whether it should be in charge of selecting U.S. Senate candidates for primaries. On Tuesday, the sponsor of the bill encompassing that proposed change, State Senator Frank Niceley (R-Strawberry Plains), requested that the legislature have until next March to contemplate the bill.
During the Senate State and Local Government Committee hearing on Tuesday, Niceley asserted that the U.S. Senators have gotten out of touch with the state legislature. He explained that this bill would improve the working relationship between their lawmakers in D.C. and the Tennessee Capitol.
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It is not often that a concurring opinion of the Supreme Court calls for in-depth comment, but Justice Thomas’ opinion, in Joseph R. Biden Hr., President of the United States, et al v. Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, et al., is an exception.
The case arises out of the suit by Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University against former president Donald Trump. Knight sued Donald Trump on First Amendment grounds for blocking Knight from accessing the comment thread of Trump’s Twitter feed.
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Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told employees he’s considering building more sections of the border wall to fill in “gaps,” The Washington Times reported Monday.
President Joe Biden stopped federal funding to the southern border wall, though Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials reportedly asked Mayorkas last week what his plans for the wall are, according to the Times. Biden issued a Jan. 20 executive order ceasing all construction on the southern border wall.
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Tennessee State Rep. Scott Cepicky to the newsmakers line to discuss MLB gone woke, cancel culture, election laws, and the upcoming agenda in the Tennessee General Assembly.
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed direct marketing expert Craig Huey in studio to explain the concept of election modernization and how candidate Odessa Kelly will use it against incumbent Jim Cooper.
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Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order Monday banning government-issued “vaccine passports” statewide.
Abbott said that vaccinations against COVID-19 cannot be government-mandated, and that residents’ choice to not receive one should not prevent them from going about their lives.
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Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough said Monday evening that Democrats can use budget reconciliation for a second time in fiscal year 2021, according to a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Democrats’ ability to use the legislative tool means that they could hypothetically pass President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill with a simple majority vote instead of the 60 votes required to override a filibuster. If reconciliation proceeds, then Democrats would have enough votes to pass Biden’s infrastructure and tax packages with Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote if every Senator in the party votes in favor.
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Two Republicans have replaced two other members of that political party on the Davidson County Election Commission. Davidson County Administrator of Elections Jeff Roberts on Tuesday identified those two new Republicans as Dan Davis and Ross Evans. Through their votes, Davis and Evans may ultimately help determine whether the Nashville Taxpayer Protection Act goes to a referendum.
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After deferring action last week on a bill banning abortion completely, the Tennessee House Health Subcommittee decided to push their decision off until 2022. The “Rule of Law Life Act” was sponsored by State Senator Janice Bowling (R-Tullahoma) initially, and taken up in the House by State Representative Terri Lynn Weaver (R-Lancaster).
As The Tennessee Star reported in early February, the bill saw movement quickly following its introduction. It declared that the Fourteenth Amendment extends the right to life to the unborn, and that life begins at conception.
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There’s a new outrage every day, it seems, popping up in the state they call Golden. Just the other day news broke that new arrivals from the ongoing illegal-immigrant surge will receive in-person instruction in San Diego while children who attend San Diego public schools “are stuck learning in Zoom school,” as one parent put it.
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Arkansas GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson vetoed a bill Monday that would have made the state the first in the nation to restrict gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors.
Hutchison suggested the bill was well intended but called it a “vast government overreach.”
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed direct marketing expert Craig Huey in studio to speculate on the 2022 Davidson County congressional race and the campaign strategies Odessa Kelly may employ.
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A new report reveals that Nike is one of over two dozen corporations that have not paid any federal income taxes since 2018, as reported by Breitbart.
The report comes from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, which shows that at least 55 of the biggest companies in America did not pay any federal income taxes in the year 2020. Of those 55, 26 have not paid this tax since 2018. This means that a collective total of approximately $8.5 billion was not paid last year, with the 55 companies instead receiving approximately $40.5 billion in pre-tax income.
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed author and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute Kerry McDonald to the newsmakers line to talk about her book Unschooled, homeschooling and the ever-changing way people are looking at educating their children in the home.
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NASHVILLE, Tennessee- Since my “other” job is working with educators, I am keenly aware of bullying and the effects it has on a person.
Tera Townsend is a singer, songwriter, and musician from small-town in Tennessee. She grew up with a speaking disability and ADHD and was mocked and bullied as a child/teen because of her disability.
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Florida Democratic Rep. Alcee Hastings died Tuesday morning after complications from pancreatic cancer. He was 84.
Hastings was diagnosed with the cancer in 2018 but continued to serve and make public appearances in between receiving medical treatment. In recent days he was placed in hospice care, according to the Sun-Sentinel.
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Craig Huey of the Huey Report and California Refugee in studio to talk about this recent trip to California and the fear and lack of freedom and liberty he witnessed compared to Tennessee.
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Monopoly is going directly to Woke, not passing Go, and not collecting $200. This is the lamentable news from Hasbro, America’s latest victim of vacuous corporate woke consciousness. Monopoly’s makeover is yet another step in the Left’s forced march to turn our pastimes into nap times by seeking to expunge fun in the name of social justice.
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Former U.S. President Donald Trump criticized Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan this week and suggested Democrats in the state got the better of them. “Too bad the desperately needed election reforms in Georgia didn’t go further, as their originally approved bill did, but the governor and lieutenant governor would not go for it. The watered-down version, that was just passed and signed by Governor Kemp, while better than before, doesn’t have signature matching and many other safety measures, which were sadly left out. This bill should have been passed before the 2020 Presidential Election, not after,” Trump said in a written statement.
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The five Democratic candidates for governor met for the first televised debate on Tuesday evening where they discussed issues including the economic crisis, gun violence, marijuana legalization, the Virginia Parole Board, and vaccine hesitancy. For the most part, the candidates stuck to discussing their own policies, but occasionally turned to attack perceived front-runner McAuliffe.
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Using her social media, a Black Lives Matter activist promised riots if former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin is not convicted of murder in the death of George Floyd.
“If George Floyd’s murderer is not sentenced, just know that all hell is gonna break loose,” Maya Echols said on her TikTok account. “Don’t be surprised when buildings are on fire. Just sayin’.”
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After ditching Atlanta in protest over a new voter integrity law which requires voters to present identification if they wish to vote absentee, Major League Baseball decided to move its All-Star game to Colorado, a state that also requires voter ID.
In order to register to vote in Colorado, voters are required by law to present some form of government issued identification. The only exception to that rule is a current “utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government document that shows the name and address of the elector,” with “current” defined as issued within the previous 60 days before registering to vote.
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Former Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton released a statement Tuesday revealing that she will not seek the 2022 Ohio Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate.
“It has been a tremendous honor to be asked to consider a run for the U.S. Senate. Like many of you, I have a profound reverence for the office, and for those who have answered the calling to public service,” wrote Acton
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The Roanoke City Council is considering a five-cent tax on disposable plastic bags, like grocery store or convenience store bags. On Monday, the Council agreed to schedule a public hearing on April 19.
The tax was legalized by the 2020 General Assembly. HB 534, introduced by Delegate Betsy Carr (D-Richmond), and SB 11, introduced by Senator Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria), authorize localities to enact five-cent taxes on disposable plastic bags and require the localities to use revenue from the tax for environmental cleanup and to provide re-usable bags.
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While Congress continues to push toward voting law changes and efforts to federalize elections, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose continues to speak out in trying to protect states’ authority.
LaRose and the Ohio General Assembly were among the first a month ago to call attention to House Resolution 1, which LaRose said is a federal takeover of state-run elections.
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Despite continued COVID-19 restrictions, including social distancing, limited capacity inside businesses, and mask mandates, Michigan has more COVID-19 hospitalizations than Texas, which dropped all of its COVID-19 restrictions about one month ago.
Associated Press reporter David Eggert attended a ceremony at Ford Field on Tuesday where Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was vaccinated. He reported that the state has 3100 hospitalizations for COVID-19, an increase from 2600 last Friday.
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State Representative Iris Rudder (R-Winchester) pulled a bill making it a punishable offense for discriminating against another based on COVID-19 vaccine status. The legislation was scheduled to appear before the House Civil Justice Subcommittee on Tuesday, but Rudder requested that the bill be pulled. She didn’t provide any explanation as to why.
The bill aimed to limit any “direct or indirect act or practice of exclusion, distinction, restriction, segregation, limitation, refusal, denial, or other practice of differentiation or preference in the treatment of a person or persons[.]” This would have extended to any entity open to the public, which includes businesses, airlines, public transit systems, and schools. They would’ve been prohibited from following through on actions or policies regarding COVID-19 vaccines – even if they were adhering to local, state, or federal statutes or orders.
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A bill prohibiting government-mandated emergency closures for worship services has been delayed once again, as the Tennessee General Assembly floor session on Monday. State Representative Chris Todd (R-Madison County) delivered the news on behalf of the sponsor, State Representative Rusty Grills (R-Newbern), requesting that the bill be placed on the next available calendar. No explanation was given for this delay.
As The Tennessee Star reported last week, Grills delayed the bill initially due to concerns from legislators opposed to prohibiting church closures. Two Democratic legislators, State Representatives London Lamar (D-Memphis) and Harold Love, Jr. (D-Nashville) expressed concerns that the bill constrained government authorities from stopping church gatherings during a pandemic or other emergencies.
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A Justice Democrats-backed candidate has come forward to challenge U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN-05). Members of the Knoxville-based Justice Democrats announced in an email Monday that Nashville resident Odessa Kelly will oppose Cooper. Her platform calls for the Green New Deal and Medicare for All.
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A recent column by Victor Davis Hanson titled “Radical New Rules for Post-America” lists “10 new ideas that are changing America, maybe permanently.” Hanson offers a thorough description of what’s wrong: Fiscal and monetary negligence, selective enforcement or nonenforcement of laws, anti-white racism, rights and privileges for immigrants over citizens, an infantilized culture, hypocrisy, urban chaos, censorship and cancel culture, politicized “science,” and “woke” as the new religion, with Big Tech as the clergy.
While there may not be a more succinct description of the new and radical rules Americans face these days, Hanson is covering familiar territory. But what is the cause of these changes?
It doesn’t require a conspiracy theorist to suggest these wholesale shifts in American culture are not happening by accident. Nor are they solely the result of nefarious intent, at least not among everyone occupying the highest rungs of power and influence in America. What motivates members of the American elite, billionaires and corporate boards alike, to approve of these radical changes?
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Of the more than 700 unaccompanied migrant minors who were transported to the San Diego Convention Center from Texas, roughly 10% have tested positive for COVID-19, according to multiple news reports citing health officials.
The Department of Health and Human Services reported on March 30 that 70 of these minors tested positive; none required hospitalization.
The San Diego Convention Center is currently holding 723 girls between the ages of 13 and 17 – all of whom were transferred from federal shelters in Texas.
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A recently unveiled statue of teen climate activist Greta Thunberg has miffed Winchester University (U.K.) students and local residents alike.
Titled “Make a Difference” and commissioned in 2019 (the same year Winchester declared a “climate and ecological emergency”), the statue cost the school almost 24,000 pounds (just over $33,000) and is thought to be the first commemorating Thunberg, the Daily Mail reports.
The university says the statue symbolizes Winchester’s commitment to “sustainability and social justice.”
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Losses in the mobile phone business have driven the South Korean electronics company LG to quit the production of phones and instead focus more on profitable items including electric vehicle components, robotics and artificial intelligence.
Following approval from the company’s board, LG on Monday announced the changes and expects to fully exit the phone industry by July.
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The Tennessee House passed a bill cancelling the excise tax on certain COVID-19 payments given to businesses. The legislation would cover all payments from March 1 to December 31 of last year.
If passed, the bill would apply to payments from the Tennessee Business Relief Program, the Tennessee Supplemental Employer Recovery Grant Program, the Coronavirus Agricultural and Forestry Business Fund, the Hospital Staffing Assistance Program, the Emergency Medical Services Ambulance Assistance Program, the Tennessee Small and Rural Hospital Readiness Grants Program, or the federal Child Care and Development Block Grant.
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House Republicans say they still want to know why $35 million in taxpayer dollars went to a Democrat-aligned consulting firm to boost voting last year in California—and whether it was even legal.
The federal agency that oversees related issues seems uninterested in investigating why federal money sent to California was used in part to pay for election safety measures in a $35 million contract with a political consulting firm that touted itself as part of “Team Biden.”
At least $12 million of the total came from federal taxpayers, while the remainder was from California taxpayers.
Using federal funds for a get-out-the-vote operation or to help one political party over another would violate federal law, Republican lawmakers say.
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Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael in studio to discuss Joe Biden’s thinking by comparing and contrasting that with FDR and the Great Depression.
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A student at Virginia Tech University was told by a teaching assistant that “White people cannot experience racism” when asked why she received a low grade on her final paper.
Students in the Nations and Nationalities class at Virginia Tech were asked to complete a paper describing a hate group from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list, and analyze how that group justifies its worldview, according to Alyssa Jones, a student in the class.
Jones is also the president of the Virginia Tech University Turning Point USA chapter and a campus ambassador for The Leadership Institute, the parent organization of Campus Reform.
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Florida Sen. Marco Rubio accused Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred of hypocrisy on Monday over the league’s relationship with a Chinese media conglomerate that has backed Beijing’s opposition to pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
“Since Major League Baseball now appears eager to use its ‘platform’ to demonstrate ‘unwavering support’ for fundamental human rights, will you cease your relationship with the Chinese Government?” Rubio wrote in a letter on Monday to Manfred.
The Republican accused Manfred of “woke corporate virtue signaling” for pulling this year’s All-Star game out of Atlanta in protest over a Georgia voting bill passed last month.
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A report released Monday details how human traffickers are using Facebook – and the Biden administration’s new open border’s policies – to generate business and smuggle illegal aliens into the United States.
Public Facebook pages called “Migrants from Various Countries in Mexico” and “Migrants in the Mexico-U.S.A. Border Awaiting Hearing,” among others, were openly being used by smugglers on the Big Tech platform to scheme with would-be illegal aliens about how to break America’s immigration laws.
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After almost a year of nonstop violent riots by Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and other far-left domestic terrorist organizations in the city of Portland, over 100 of the city’s police officers have quit the force out of protest of the city’s failure to adequately handle the violence, according to Fox News.
The report first came from the newspaper The Oregonian, which said that since July of 2020, approximately 115 officers have left the department to take lower-paying jobs just to get out of the dangerous environment. The paper described it as “one of the biggest waves of departures in recent memory.”
Out of 31 exit interviews from officers who left during this time period, the general consensus was that the officers quit because they felt that they were receiving “zero support” from the community and local leadership. One officer said that “the city council are raging idiots, in addition to being stupid,” and that “the mayor and council ignore actual facts on crime and policing in favor of radical leftist and anarchist fantasy.”
As a result of the spike in riots, which began last summer after the accidental overdose death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis, Portland also saw its homicide rate surge to its highest point in 26 years, with 55 deaths over the course of 2020. Numerous efforts by Mayor Ted Wheeler (D-Ore.) to try to curb gun violence in the city, through special police forces and various multi-million dollar studies, have all failed thus far. Wheeler and other local leaders were widely criticized for refusing to crack down on the riots, with their inaction attributed to the fact that they shared many of the same political stances as the far-left rioters.
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Just a few short weeks apart, the U.S. Justice Department settled two major fund-raising cases involving foreign money injected into American elections.
In February, a longtime Democratic bundler named Imaad Zuberi, who also donated to Donald Trump’s inauguration, was sentenced to 12 years in prison and millions in fines in a criminal information that alleged he routed foreign money into U.S elections, sometimes through straw donors.
Last week, Nigerian-Lebanese billionaire Gilbert Chagoury, 75, a large donor to the Clinton Foundation, got a fine, no prison and deferred prosecution for allegedly routing his foreign money to straw donors to help Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and some GOP congressional candidates. An associate also made a secret loan to Obama-era Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who failed to disclose the assistance.
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“The city comes in to being for the sake of life, but it continues for the sake of the good life. ” — Aristotle, Politics
“[The Declaration of Independence] was the word, “fitly spoken” which has proved an “apple of gold” to us. The Union, and the Constitution, are the picture of silver, subsequently framed around it. The picture was made, not to conceal, or destroy the apple; but to adorn, and preserve it. The picture was made for the apple — not the apple for the picture.”—Abraham Lincoln, “Fragment on the Constitution and Union”
The crisis of our time requires clear thinking about political means and ends, and the ways they are connected. The two epigraphs above address this central question of practical wisdom—the first from the general perspective of theory, the second as relates to the particular nation of the United States. Both quotations may be familiar to educated conservatives, and particularly to those students of political philosophy broadly associated with the Claremont school of thought. Yet there is a danger that such familiarity may breed, if not contempt, then the forgetfulness that settles on “sonorous phrases” which lapse into clichés. I would like to reconsider these arguments made by Aristotle and Lincoln—along with some related observations by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson—not as hackneyed commonplaces but as genuine insights that remain relevant and even urgent. Circumstances in the coming years may require new or unusual means to secure the ends of liberty and justice. Our thinking must be appropriately radical.
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On Monday, Students at the Ivy League school Brown University voted in favor of two resolutions approving reparations for black students, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
Both resolutions seek to identify any black students who are direct descendants of slaves, or “who were entangled with and/or afflicted by the University and Brown family and their associates,” in reference to the university’s founder Nicholas Brown Jr.
One resolution would give priority admission to any such black students, while the other would give direct monetary payments to said students. In the vote amongst all students on campus, the admissions resolution received 89 percent of the vote, while the financial payment resolution received 85 percent. The vote was held after the student government at Brown passed a resolution, introduced by the student government president Jason Carroll, “calling upon Brown to attempt to identify and reparate the descendants of slaves entangled with the university.”
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Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Misrule of Law blog creator Mark Pulliam to the newsmakers line to discuss his recent essay addressing nullification and the overreach of the federal government.
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Vanderbilt University’s Equal Opportunity and Access office is investigating formal complaints related to its recent student government election, in which a white, Jewish candidate says he faced cyberbullying and defamation.
Student Jordan Gould published a column in Medium last week headlined “When the Social Justice Mob Came for Me” that described how he was called a “white supremacist and a racist confederate” by peers as he ran for student government president.
“We have received several formal complaints related to the student government election and our Equal Opportunity and Access office is investigating these,” Vanderbilt’s spokesperson Damon Maida told The College Fix via email on Friday.
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