In a nationally televised interview in January, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger rattled off an impressive list of measures his state used to ensure the November election count was accurate. “We had safe, secure, honest elections,” he declared to “60 Minutes.”
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The United States Supreme Court has unanimously sided with a Catholic adoption agency in a religious freedom case regarding same sex unions.
The court ruled 9-0 that the city of Philadelphia’s refusal to contract with Catholic Social Services (CSS) unless CSS agreed to ‘certify same-sex couples as foster parents” violates CSS’s free exercise of the First Amendment.
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The number of Americans filing new unemployment claims increased to 412,000 last week as the economy continues to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Department of Labor.
The Bureau of Labor and Statistics figure released Thursday represented an increase in the number of new jobless claims compared to the week ending June 5, when 375,000 new jobless claims were reported. That number was revised down from the 376,000 jobless claims initially reported last week.
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Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed American’s for Prosperity’s Grassroots engagement director Grant Henry in studio to reflect upon his life path that led him to his current position.
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Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the Executive Director of Seeking Educational Excellence Charles Love to the newsmakers line to discuss his recent essay and growing up Black in America.
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Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed AMF’s Grant Henry in studio to expand on the Nashville Taxpayer Protection Act and the start of grassroots door knocking.
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The highly-connected and well-funded network of donors, think tanks, and other institutions run by the Koch Brothers is pushing for Congress to “immediately prioritize” amnesty for illegal aliens, as Breitbart reports.
The Koch network’s declaration comes on the anniversary of the unpopular, controversial, and highly unconstitutional “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” (DACA) program, an executive order signed by then-President Barack Obama to give blanket amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegals. Obama had signed the order after failing to get the program passed by Congress in the form of the Dream Act.
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On Wednesday, Joe Biden’s Department of Education declared that it would be reversing a popular policy from the presidency of Donald Trump that protected student athletes from interference by so-called “transgender” students, and instead said that the transgenders themselves will receive special protection, according to USA Today.
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Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the Heartland Institute’s State Government Relations Manager Samantha Fillmore to the newsmakers line to discuss the calculated stifling of America’s workforce through excessive unemployment legislation.
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Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and members of his staff would not say Thursday whether they will dispatch resources to Texas and Arizona to help guard the U.S.-Mexican border. The Tennessee Star made repeated attempts Thursday to contact Lee’s Communications Director Laine Arnold — by email, phone, and text. Arnold did not return our messages before Thursday’s stated deadline.
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The Supreme Court slammed Texas and other Republican-led states’ attempts on Thursday to take down Obamacare.
The 18 Republican states challenged whether the individual mandate, a requirement by law for people to purchase healthcare, can be cut from the rest of the law or if they can repeal the legislation in its entirety.
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In a wide-ranging interview from the corner office atop his eponymous New York City tower last week, an unfiltered Donald Trump showed he has lost none of his edge as he attacked President Biden’s ethics, demanded reparations from China for COVID-19, and advanced his claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
Here are some of the highlights, as the former president held forth on a range of issues in his inimitable style.
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Tennessee’s Department of Health Commissioner Lisa Piercey, M.D. came under intense fire from state legislators and members of the public alike, during a meeting of the Tennessee General Assembly’s Joint Government Operations Committee meeting held Wednesday, for activities interpreted as marketing COVID-19 shots directly to children under the cover of the “mature minor” doctrine.
Prior to the standard business of the committee reviewing emergency rules filed in April 2021, the meeting agenda called for a presentation by the Department of Health regarding a May 12, 2021, letter from Medical Director of the Tennessee Vaccine-Preventable Diseases and Immunization Program at the Tennessee Department Health Dr. Michelle Fiscus that addressed the Tennessee “mature minor” doctrine and co-administration of COVID-19 and routine vaccinations.
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A group of parents is collecting signatures to recall three members of the Fairfax County Public School Board (FCPS). FCPS has announced plans to have five-days-a-week, in-person school in the upcoming school year. But the Open FCPS Coalition is still seeking to recall Springfield District Member Laura Jane Cohen, Dranesville District Member Elaine Tholen, and At-Large Member Abrar Omeish.
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Instead of calling 911 to report crime, Minneapolis residents are now being told to call 311 if the crime is not currently in progress or if it is non-violent. The 311 line is staffed by civilian city workers who will take complaints and file reports instead of having Minneapolis police officers dispatched. Some residents have reported up to a 30 minute wait time on the 311 line.
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After no candidate succeeded in obtaining more than 50 percent of the vote Tuesday’s state House primaries, the two special elections are headed for a runoff. One of those special elections has national implications.
Republican Devan Seabaugh will square off against Democrat Priscilla Smith for a seat in House District 34, in Cobb County. That seat could be an early indicator of voters’ satisfaction with President Joe Biden.
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Michigan business owners say federal $300/week boosted unemployment benefits are exacerbating a worker shortage partly caused by COVID-19 fears.
Roy Baldwin, owner of Baldwin’s Smokehouse Barbecue in Buena Vista Township, says COVID-19, rising food prices, and a worker shortage have hit his store hard. Since opening his store in 2019, he says food product prices have doubled.
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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is sending members of various law enforcement agencies throughout the state to Texas and Arizona to help combat the crisis at the Southern border.
“Governors Abbott and Ducey recently sent out a call for help to every state in the nation, needing additional law enforcement manpower and other resources to aid with border security. I’m proud to announce today that the state of Florida is answering the call. Florida has your back,” DeSantis said of his decision.
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Congressman Rob Wittman (R-Virginia-01) is calling for sanctions against top Chinese health officials until they allow an independent investigation into the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origins of COVID-19. Wittman and Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R-New York-21) introduced The World Deserves to Know Act on Tuesday.
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The Michigan Conservative Coalition Thursday demanded that the Republican-controlled state Senate conduct an audit of the 2020 election, like the one being conducted in Arizona.
The group said that “as co-sponsor of the ‘Let Freedom Ring’ rally on June 17, will deliver over 7,000 notarized affidavits demanding a statewide audit of Michigan’s 2020 election, as allowed by the Michigan Constitution,” according to a Thursday press release.
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Many businesses have been impacted by the increasing rates of violence in Minneapolis. One, a salon that has been located in Uptown Minneapolis, announced their decision Monday to permanently close their location that has been open for over 35 years. The owner and founder of the salon, Juut, said in a Facebook post that they “decided to close due to the continued escalation of crime and violence in our neighborhood.”
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COLUMBUS, Ohio – House Bill 240 (HB240), the Parents Right to Know Act, received its first hearing in the Ohio House Primary and Secondary Education Committee on Wednesday soon after ramped up pressure came from Rep Reggie Stoltzfus (R-Paris Twp), Ohio Value Voters (OVV) and a report from The Ohio Star drew attention to the law and committee Chairwoman Gayle Manning (R- North Ridgeville) who was suppressing the bill according to Stoltzfus and OVV.
However, Stoltzfus told The Star in an interview that Manning intentionally and passive-aggressively caused a three-and-a-half-hour delay in the hearing start time. “She is angry at me, and other folks, for putting pressure on her to hear conservative bills and that is the way she is taking it out on me,” said Stoltzfus.
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Herschel Walker, the former star NFL running back and potential candidate for U.S. Senate, released a video on Thursday, adding speculation that Walker will enter the race to compete against Senator Raphael Warnock.
Walker has been widely encouraged to run in the state that he represented while playing football at the University of Georgia. Former President Donald Trump asked Walker to run for the highly competitive seat earlier this year.
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A far-left legal nonprofit has filed the latest lawsuit against the state of Florida over its new election integrity measures.
“The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the groups HeadCount and the Harriet Tubman Freedom Fighters Corp., is the fourth challenge to the law, which was passed in April by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed in May by Gov. Ron DeSantis,” Orlando Weekly reported.
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Tensions were high Thursday as school system employees assembled at this month’s Gwinnett County School Board meeting and handed out flyers instructing parents to act with civility as they discussed and debated Critical Race Theory (CRT). The contentious issue of CRT divided the parents who showed up in droves.
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Judge Terry Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana on Wednesday issued a nationwide preliminary injunction against U.S. President Joe Biden’s ban on oil and gas leases on federal lands. Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr joined 12 other state attorneys general in filing suit to block the Biden Administration’s violation of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) and the Mineral Leasing Act (MLA). Coalition members are citing Wednesday’s action as a major victory.
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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis proposed two executive orders to the Florida Executive Board of Clemency Wednesday that continues his pursuit to stop local governments from establishing overreaching COVID-19 restrictions.
The two orders, EO 21-132 and EO 21-133, would grant full pardon for individuals or businesses who are charged with non-violent civil and criminal offenses related to breaking local COVID-19 restrictions; and waive fees or fines associated with breaking COVID-19 restrictions, respectively.
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Nashville Mayor John Cooper says voter control over property tax rollbacks and increases is unconstitutional – and that voters are uninformed for supporting it. The mayor made this assertion during a Wednesday press conference explaining Metro’s new budget.
The mayor responded to reporter questions about what potential consequences would occur if the taxpayer referendum – the Nashville Taxpayer Protection Act led by 4 Good Government – were to pass, and what the city would do about the potential financial blow. Cooper said that government officials have the ultimate control and final say on that matter. He noted that the 34 to 37 percent property tax increase last year “never really was that high.” Cooper said that community upset over the increase was no longer relevant because “that is so last year – that is so 2020.”
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Last weekend, around 50 Tennessee educators marched through Memphis to oppose the state’s new ban on critical race theory in the “Downtown Memphis Solidarity Walk.” The educators gathered at the site where a historical slave market run by Confederate General and Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest once stood, then walked by the Schools for Freedman historical marker and the Memphis Massacre marker before concluding at the National Civil Rights Museum.
The march was part of a national pledge called “Day of Action.” The effort was organized by Black Lives Matter (BLM) At School, a national coalition with loose ties to the original BLM, and the Zinn Education Project, which provides supplemental curriculum for “a more accurate, complex, and engaging” version of U.S. history. Some of their materials include information on the 1619 Project, reparations, environmental racism, and antiracism.
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Former President Donald Trump released a statement on Thursday praising Georgia Star News journalist Laura Baigert for her investigative reporting efforts.
“Thank you and congratulations to Laura Baigert of the Georgia Star News on the incredible reporting you have done. Keep going! The scam is all unraveling fast!” President Trump said of her reporting.
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When I was a child, I made the mistake, as many children do, of thinking that the actors I saw in movies were in some way responsible for their lines. As the playwright Moss Hart heard from a lady sitting behind him: “Actors say the cleverest things!”
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California teacher Brenda Lebsack says she began seeing “red flags” in her school district when she decided to become more involved with her union, the California Teachers Association.
After she began attending the union’s conferences in 2015, Lebsack says, she was alarmed to see that many of the topics weren’t academic but instead focused on social justice, human rights, and LGBTQ issues.
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed All-Star panelist Crom Carmichael in studio to define white supremacy and its convenient connection to journalism today.
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In an unsettling development, the administration of Joe Biden is asking American citizens to betray friends and family who have different political views, and report them to the government for allegedly being “radicalized,” as reported by Breitbart.
During a teleconference with the press, a senior administration official said that they were seeking “to improve public awareness of federal resources to address concerning or threatening behavior before violence occurs.” “This involves creating contexts,” the official continued, “in which those who are family members or friends or co-workers know that there are pathways and avenues to raise concerns and seek help for those who they have perceived to be radicalizing and potentially radicalizing towards violence.”
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Congresswoman Diana Harshbarger (R-TN-01) introduced a bill in the House of Representatives on Tuesday that would prohibit the federal use of a COVID-19 vaccine passport or any other similar required proof of vaccination.
“Vaccine passports are a restriction on individual liberties, period,” Harshbarger said of the attempts by some governments to require proof of vaccination in certain circumstances.
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A federal judge ordered the federal government to halt its ban on new oil and gas leases in a major setback for President Joe Biden’s administration.
Judge Terry Doughty, of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, granted a preliminary injunction that had been requested by a large coalition of Republican state attorneys general in an order released Tuesday evening. The Department of Interior is prohibited from enforcing the oil and gas leasing ban until the case is concluded, according to the order.
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the Managing Editor of Project Veritas Nick Givas to the newsmakers line to discuss their recent bombshell story of whistleblower Ivory Hecker of Fox 26 in Houston.
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Carol Swain to the newsmakers line to discuss being silenced at the Southern Baptist Convention on critical race theory.
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Williamson County parents are upset about the recently adopted Wit & Wisdom curriculum being used with their children. On Tuesday, June 15, 2021, about 350 parents, grandparents, and concerned citizens settled into their seats at the Moonshine Harley-Davidson in Franklin, Tennessee to listen to Robin Steenman and her Moms For Liberty-Willamson County discuss how the concerning curriculum snuck its way into our school district. In a mostly Republican, conservative, community on the outskirts of Nashville, residents were shocked.
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United States District Judge William C. Griesbach sustained a motion last week for a temporary restraining order to block a program under the Department of Agriculture to forgive certain government loans for farmers belonging to at least one “socially disadvantaged group.” The Department of Agriculture identified groups eligible for this classification as “a group whose members have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice because of their identity as members of a group without regard to their individual qualities . . . one or more of the following: Black/African American, American Indian, Alaskan native, Hispanic/Latino, Asian, or Pacific Islander.”
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General Motors announced in a press release Monday that it would invest $35 billion in electric vehicles through 2025, including the construction of two U.S. battery factories.
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Fox 26 reporter Ivory Hecker told Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe that the Fox affiliate moved to muzzle her reporting on Hydroxychloroquine because it went against “the corporate narrative,” which has allegedly been influenced by Fox’s advertisers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and vaccine companies.
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The Senate unanimously passed legislation Tuesday making Juneteenth a federal holiday.
Juneteenth, already celebrated in the majority of states on June 19, commemorates the official end of slavery in Confederate states on that day in 1865. Though President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, hundreds of thousands of slaves did not learn of their freedom until after the end of the Civil War.
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Rhodes College officials in Memphis have notified students that they must vaccinate themselves against COVID-19 — or else pay a per semester mandatory testing fee of $1,500. This, according to a letter that Vice President for Student Life Meghan Harte Weyant recently distributed to students about the upcoming school year.
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Senators Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty are on a mission to stop Congress and the White House’s rampant, out-of-control spending agenda that is raising the cost of living for far too many Tennessee families.
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The greatest threat America faces isn’t “white supremacy” or any foreign power, but America’s own ruling class. China understands very well that Americans have less to fear from Chinese armies than they do from their own Stasi-like informants with “In This House, We Believe . . . ” signs on their front lawns.
The Chinese have a word for this demographic: baizuo, which literally means “white left.” It’s a political pejorative referring to narcissistic white American liberals.
In a time of vaccine passports, “disinformation,” and make-believe insurrections, the anti-social, authoritarian tendencies of this lot have never been a clearer menace to America and its tradition of civil liberty.
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Parents are organizing to recall six members of the Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) School Board who kept schools closed and reportedly allowed and encouraged critical race theory curriculum. LCPS parent Ian Prior – one of the leaders behind Fight For Schools, the recall effort – informed The Virginia Star that they have secured more than the 10 percent of votes each member obtained during the last election – and they’ve been busy gathering more.
“At last count last Sunday, we were at 60 percent for Beth Barts, 54 percent for Ian Serotkin, 42 percent for Denise Corbo, 27 percent for Leslee King, 24 percent for Brenda Sheridan, and 20 percent for Atoosa Reaser. That was 10 days ago. People are out there collecting signatures: going door-to-door and attending events,” explained Prior. “We want to make sure that we have more signatures than required, which will obviously protect us from any challenges or whatnot. We’re still determining the best way forward.”
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An African American man who allegedly shot and wounded five white men in Phenix City, Alabama last weekend and then crossed the Chattahoochee River into nearby Columbus, Georgia could face federal hate crimes charges. This, according to Phenix City Assistant Police Chief George Staudinger.
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Two competing Republican bills have been brought forward seeking to end Governor Tim Walz’s emergency powers and ensure that it will never happen again. One of the bills, HF28 was introduced to the Special Session on Monday and was authored by Representative Cal Bahr (R-MN-31B), along with Representative Jeremy Munson (R-MN-23B), Representative Eric Lucero (R-MN-30B), Representative Shane Mekeland (R-MN-15B), Representative Steve Drazkowski (R-MN-21B), Representative Mary Franson (R-MN-08B), Representative Sondra Erickson (R-MN-15A), and Representative Tim Miller (R-MN-17A).The other bill, HF2204, or the Unilateral Emergency Powers Repeal Act, was authored by Representative Erik Mortensen (R-MN-55B), and Representative Jeremy Munson (R-MN-23B), Representative Steve Drazkowski (R-MN-21B), Representative Tim Miller (R-MN-17A), and Representative John Poston (R-MN-09A). This bill was first brought forward in March, but according to Action 4 Liberty President Jake Duesenberg, it was later not supported in the legislature by some of the same lawmakers who signed it.
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The Michigan State Senate passed a School Aid Funding supplemental appropriations bill.
The entire $4.38 billion sum approved by the Senate on Tuesday afternoon is derived from federal funding, which includes $700 million of COVID-19 relief money approved last year during the administration of Donald Trump and another $3.66 billion from the American Rescue Plan signed by President Joe Biden in March.
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