Georgia GOP Chair David Shafer on Wednesday tweeted photos of masked and armed individuals standing outside the Georgia Capitol. Their identities remained a mystery Thursday, even to officials at the Georgia Department of Public Safety (GDPS).
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The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation submitted a writ of certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court Monday for Rizzo-Rupon v. International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
The Midland-based foundation seeks to extend First Amendment protections to employees who have been unionized under the Railway Labor Act, which covers railway and airline employees.
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Retired Sgt. David Pleoger testified on the Minneapolis Police Department’s use of force policies and said the “dangers of positional asphyxia” are generally known throughout the MPD.
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The investigation into the Virginia Parole Board will be investigated, if legislators approve a proposal from Governor Ralph Northam. On Wednesday, Northam finalized his amendments to a budget passed by the Virginia General Assembly, including money for an investigation.
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Delta Airlines, according to its website, requires its passengers prove they are who they say they are and present a government-issued ID. Coca-Cola officials, according to their corporate website, mandated that anyone who attended their 2020 annual shareholders’ meeting also present proper identification.
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Ohio continues to add resources to a public-private partnership to combat unemployment fraud, which the state says has cost taxpayers more than $200 million, and the newest additions are a pair of big names.
Gov. Mike DeWine announced recently a new agreement between the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services and Google to conduct data analytics on all outstanding claims. The state will pay the tech company $1.4 million to use Google Analytics to help discover fraud.
“This is one of the first things the private sector group told me when they came in is drilling down on this data and doing it in a very sophisticated way,” DeWine said.
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April Fool’s Day marks one year since Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon issued the “safer-at-home” order, after three counties dropped their mask mandates. The counties of Hamblen, Roane, and Claiborn allowed their mandates to expire on Wednesday. Similar “15 days to slow the spread” practices turned into weeks, then months, and now, for many across Tennessee and the country.
Kincannon’s Safer at Home order lasted for nearly a month. It prohibited gatherings over 10 and forced closure of all “nonessential” businesses. The order empowered city officials with regulatory authority to take action against anyone who violated the order. The city even made available a non-compliance reporting process to enforce the order – which is still active.
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Nashville Metro Council member Steve Glover is pushing for more budget transparency from Mayor John Cooper. Glover made this announcement during a press conference on Wednesday. In short, the resolution would ask the mayor to share with the council an estimate on revenues. Glover shared that his initial predictions of a $70-100 million surplus proved less than the actual current surplus of $102-150 million.
As a result, Glover estimated that the mayor could reduce the tax increase anywhere from 31 to 50 percent. He explained that he’d relied on numbers from the state to draw these conclusions – the same information that the mayor knew while deciding on the hefty property tax increase.
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My daughter had a friend over this week whose parents just took her out of public school for homeschooling, and my neighbor recently unenrolled her child from public school to homeschool for the rest of the academic year. These families are much more than local anecdotes—they are representative of a national trend.
New Census Bureau data show that 11.1 percent of K-12 students are now being independently homeschooled. This is a large uptick from 5.4 percent at the start of the school shutdowns last spring, and 3.3 percent in the years preceding the pandemic.
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A top Chinese government official on Wednesday seized on the findings of a World Health Organization report about the origins of the coronavirus, and revived a baseless theory that a U.S. military lab in Maryland was somehow involved in spreading the virus.
Hua Chunying, the spokeswoman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, endorsed the theory at press conferences on Tuesday and Wednesday, both before and after the release of a World Health Organization (WHO) report regarding the origins of the virus.
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Covid cases are falling in Texas, over two weeks after Gov. Greg Abbott (R) lifted restrictions, including the statewide mask mandate, Breitbart reported.
In March, Abbott announced the end of the statewide mask mandate, which had been in effect since July, and lifted restrictions allowing businesses to operate at 100 percent capacity.
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Former President Trump is considering holding a rally in the near future.
“We’re thinking about doing one relatively soon just to let everybody know that there’s hope in the future,” Trump told daughter-in-law Lara Trump on Tuesday during her podcast “The Right View with Lara Trump.” “I love doing them. But more importantly, I think we get the word out.”
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Tennessee State Senator Mark Pody in the studio to discuss state’s rights in the face of a continuation of the federal government’s usurpation of power.
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Over 100 American college professors signed a joint letter on Tuesday demanding greater transparency of their colleges and universities with regards to business dealings with the Chinese government, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
The letter states, in part, that “universities and research institutions in liberal democracies also have a responsibility to respond to transnational academic repression and to protect a diversity of views. At a minimum, this requires real transparency over agreements signed with counterparts in autocratic states.”
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) vowed that he would issue an executive order forbidding local governments and businesses from requiring “vaccine passports” to show digital or physical proof of vaccination against COVID-19, The Hill reports.
At a news conference, the Florida governor announced he would introduce “an executive function, emergency function” against vaccine passports and requested the Republican state legislature draft a bill forbidding such passports.
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There is a deep irony in President Joe Biden’s decision to start looking for support for his American Job Killing Tax Plan in Pittsburgh, Penn.
And make no mistake: Biden’s so-called American Jobs Plan is a tax increase bill masquerading as an infrastructure bill – which is in turn masquerading as a jobs bill. It will not create jobs or ultimately improve our infrastructure. It will kill jobs and make infrastructure projects more expensive in time and money.
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Washington Correspondent for the Tennessee Star Neil W. McCabe to the newsmakers line to weigh in on the unmasking of the woman at the border who blocked Senator Ted Cruz’s video and Kamala Harris’s wait for the presidency.
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As the Small Business Administration official who oversaw the Paycheck Protection Program, I’m often asked, “Did PPP actually work?”
PPP was a response to state and local governments mandating shutdowns as a way to slow the spread of COVID-19. The premise was this: Encourage lenders to provide small businesses and nonprofits with forgivable, SBA-guaranteed loans over an eight-week period as a payroll-support measure. This small business financial support was designed to help prevent mass unemployment as Americans were confined to their homes.
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Davidson County Elections Administrator Jeff Roberts updated new developments with the proposed referendum for the Nashville Taxpayer Protection Act and when and if election commissioners will permit voters a chance to have their say. “We are in the process of verifying the 14,000 signatures turned in last week. The Charter states the number of signatures needed is based on the preceding general election,” Roberts told The Tennessee Star in an email Wednesday.
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NASHVILLE, Tennessee- Nashville is famous for its writers’ rounds. The Song Suffragettes is the only all-female writers’ round and they have been consistently performing at the Listening Room on Monday nights for seven years.
Todd Cassetty founded Song Suffragettes for the simple reason of giving female singer-songwriters a place to play their music and be heard. Those who follow country music know that it is not an even playing field when it comes to women getting record deals and having their music played on country radio.
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael and State Senator (R) Mark Pody in studio to talk about the new vaccination bill on the table that would exempt people at a governmental level from taking the vaccine.
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A memo from Indiana Republican Rep. Jim Banks, who leads the powerful Republican Study Committee, argued that the party must “embrace our new coalition” and double down on Trumpism in order to be successful in the future.
The memo, titled “Cementing GOP as the Working-Class Party,” argues that “President Trump’s gift didn’t come with a receipt,” and that Republicans should not fight their “coalitional transformation” or corporate donors retreating from the party.
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Conservative powerhouses Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens addressed college students, community members, and a few cross-country travelers in downtown Nashville on Wednesday. Turning Point Nashville arranged the event as a part of the Turning Point USA (TPUSA) GenFree Tour. Attendees filled every seat, stood along the walls, and in the empty spaces around seating – and more waited outside the building for any opportunity to enter.
Kirk and Owens sat in armchairs while onstage. The interaction came off as part talk show host interview, part easygoing conversation between friends. Their conversation largely focused on modern cultural issues, faith and morals, campus culture, and education.
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It is Holy Week in the Catholic Church, the most sacred time of the year for that religion, and one Jesuit priest at Xavier University is using it to weaponize Jesus on behalf of progressive politics.
“Jesus Christ and Derek Chauvin are on trial this week. If the justice system lets Derek Chauvin walk free, then we will have chosen Barabbas over Christ once again,” Jesuit Regent David Inczauskis said on Twitter.
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Marijuana legalization is back on track for July, after Governor Ralph Northam announced amendments to legalization legislation. In February, legislators surprised marijuana policy watchers by delaying the effective date of legalization until 2024, leading the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia to blast the bills as worse than nothing. Since then, legalization advocates have lobbied Northam to amend the legislation to go into effect in July, when most other recently-passed bills take effect.
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The Family Foundation is suing the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) over its Model Policies for the Treatment of Transgender Students in Virginia’s Public Schools. The model policies took effect March 6, 2021, and school boards must adopt policies consistent with the model by the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year. However, the Family Foundation says there are legal problems with the policies and that the VDOE did not properly address comments made during a legally required public comment phase.
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Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp this week defended the state’s new voter integrity law, Senate Bill 202, this time before a national audience. This, as certain right-leaning news outlets called out Democrats for grossly mischaracterizing the law and what it does.
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U.S. Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Tom McClintock (R-CA) have sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas asking him to release communications about the transition between the Trump and Biden administrations in regard to immigration policy.
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A Republican representative introduced a bill last week to provide legal protections to churches during states of emergency.
Under HF 2422, authored by Rep. Eric Lucero, R-Dayton, health boards, whether at the state or local level, would not be allowed to impose restrictions upon religious organizations during a declared emergency.
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In Savannah this week, a Russian national and his engineering company have admitted to charges that they violated U.S. national security laws. This, according to a press release that staff at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia published on their website this week.
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The general manager and head coach of the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx came out in favor of male athletes participating in female sports Wednesday, publishing an opinion piece in Sports Illustrated explaining her position.
“Proud to lend my voice and support for transgender inclusion,” Cheryl Reeve said on Twitter, attaching her opinion piece.
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A Republican former U.S. Senate candidate from Michigan is launching a Political Action Committee (PAC) with the goal of helping other GOP candidates get elected in 2022.
John James is a West Point graduate, Iraq War veteran and businessman who ran twice for U.S. Senate in Michigan. In 2020, he was barely edged out by incumbent Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) by a 49.6 percent to 48.5 percent margin.
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The Tennessee Senate Health and Welfare Committee recommended for passage an amendment to a bill allowing for religious or conscientious vaccine exemptions. As The Tennessee Star reported, this amendment was originally a bill killed in the House Health Subcommittee early last month.
Prior the committee hearing, Tennessee Stands gathered in a “We the People” rally to show community support for the amendment. Tennessee Stands Executive Director and founder Gary Humble led the event, with speeches from State Senator Mark Pody (R-Lebanon), State Representative Bruce Griffey (R-Paris), and a prerecorded statement from the bill sponsor, State Senator Janice Bowling (R-Tullahoma).
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