Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery announced on Monday that he will lead a coalition of 20 states in a lawsuit against the Biden administration.
In the suit filed Eastern District of Tennessee, Slatery and the other attorneys general seek to prevent the Biden administration from enforcing specific federal guidance that “threatens women’s sports and student and employee privacy.”
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Demagogues appeal to envy because they believe that promising to destroy the advantages enjoyed by others will win votes and inspire loyalty. Sometimes it does. As the envy-driven horrors of Rwanda and Nazi Germany demonstrate, pledging to disrupt the envied lives of a despised “other” can be a ticket to victory for a political candidate savvy enough to convince voters that he has their best interests at heart.
More than 25 years ago, Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, pronounced in his book The Politics of Envy: Statism as Theology that we “live in an age of envy.” Pointing out that “people don’t so much want more money for themselves as they want to take it away from those with more,” Bandow suggested that although “greed is bad enough, eating away at a person’s soul, envy is far worse because it destroys not only individuals, but also communities, poisoning relations.” A Christian libertarian, Bandow wrote that
those who are greedy may ruin their own lives, but those who are envious contaminate the larger community by letting their covetousness interfere with their relations with others.
One can satisfy greed in innocuous, even positive ways—by being brighter, working harder, seeing new opportunities, or meeting the demands of others, for instance.
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Congressman Mark Green (R-TN-07) on Monday delivered the weekly Republican Address, specifically focusing on the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.
In the nearly three-minute video, Green, a former flight surgeon for the Army who was deployed to Afghanistan, blasted the Biden administration’s decision making.
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A group of parents said Monday they are seething after Rutherford County Director of Schools Bill C. Spurlock decided his month to unilaterally remove and then quarantine non-symptomatic and non-COVID-19 positive students from schools. The parents said Spurlock did this without consulting with members of the Rutherford County School (RCS) Board. RCS Board members had previously approved a procedure that would have prevented COVID-19-free or symptom-free students and staff from quarantine, parents said.
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Uzbekistan, a Middle Eastern nation that borders Afghanistan, warned the U.S. that refugees fleeing the Taliban wouldn’t be granted asylum, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The Uzbekistan government recently urged the U.S. to take action and transport the refugees to a third nation, according to the WSJ. The small Middle Eastern country reportedly doesn’t want t0 create tension with the incoming Taliban-controlled Afghan government by housing refugees including soldiers who fought alongside and were trained by American troops.
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The Department of Education announced it would stop enforcing a Trump administration rule designed to protect those accused of sexual assault on college campuses.
A district court in Massachusetts upheld most of the Title IX 2020 amendments in a July ruling, maintaining new regulations related to public institutions managing allegations of harassment, assault, violence, and more. Although, the court struck down one procedural regulation related to what evidence a “Decision-Maker,” or the employee who is designated to adjudicate the case, may consider in making rulings.
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Over 1 million Louisiana residents are without electricity Monday morning, after Hurricane Ida came ashore Sunday afternoon with 150 mph winds and relentless rain.
At least one person is reported dead, with winds having sheered off roofs and flooded roads having kept rescue teams from responding.
“Nobody should be expecting that, tonight, a first-responder is going to be able to answer a call for help,” said Gov. Jon Bel Edwards at a news conference Sunday afternoon.
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On August 17, Hakeem Jefferson, a professor of political science at Stanford University, launched a series of tweets that claimed protestors of school mask mandates are doing so because of their “Whiteness”.
Hakeem’s tweets claim that the protests and opposition to mask-wearing are caused by “Whiteness” and that comprehensive discussions about these protests cannot be had without acknowledging that.
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The Biden Administration’s hasty extraction of Afghan refugees to the United States has been so rushed and so sloppy that many are arriving into the country with no documentation to confirm who they even are, Breitbart reports.
Even CNN’s coverage of the debacle confirms the lack of preparation and failure to properly vet refugees. Sources from within the evacuation process told CNN that the goal of the Biden Administration has been to “get as many people on the plane as you can, and we’ll sort out the [paperwork] stuff later.” The same sources added that “some people have landed with no documents whatsoever, creating a very challenging work environment for the officers.”
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A former minister in Afghanistan’s government is working as a pizza delivery guy in Germany, local media reported.
Images show Syed Ahmad Shah Sadat, former minister of communications and information technology in Afghanistan, delivering pizzas and other food by bicycle in Leipzig, Germany, Newsweek reported.
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With national attention riveted over the weekend on two major stories — the frantic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan amid its fall to the Taliban and category 4 Hurricane Ida slamming into the Louisiana coast — Big Tech and woke finance dramatically extended the reach of cancel culture with brazen moves to silence and harass three high-profile voices of political and scientific dissent: independent journalist Alex Berenson, popular conservative news and opinion website The Gateway Pundit, and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
On Saturday, Twitter permanently banned Alex Berenson, who has built a large social media following challenging public health establishment orthodoxy on COVID issues ranging from lockdown to vaccine mandates.
“The account you referenced has been permanently suspended for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation rules,” a Twitter spokesperson responded to an inquiry from Fox News.
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Nine members of a family of Afghan allies, including six children, were killed in a US drone strike targeting ISIS terrorists in a residential neighborhood of Kabul, Sunday, according to multiple reports.
The drone strike was reportedly targeting suicide bombers who were planning an attack on Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA).
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Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Michael Harrison of Talkers Magazine to the newsmakers line to discuss the evolution of the Heavy 100 list and the future of talk radio.
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Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Color Us United Spokesperson Christian Watson to the newsmakers line to discuss his recent op-ed in The Washington Times.
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Despite calls for increased regulation of the tech industry, Congress has yet to pass any major legislation, leaving it up to the states to take action curbing tech companies’ power and influence.
Meanwhile, state legislatures have introduced and enacted legislation on data privacy, antitrust, and content moderation, while state attorneys general have issued a number of legal challenges alleging anticompetitive business practices.
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Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to weigh in on breaking news out of Georgia where chain of custody laws were broken.
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German publishing company Axel Springer announced Thursday it intends to acquire the digital news outlet Politico which could reportedly cost up to $1 billion.
The acquisition of Politico will add to Axel Springer’s portfolio of news outlets which include Morning Brew and Insider, according to a press release from Axel Springer.
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The Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development revealed it awarded $1.25 million to Kaiser Aluminum Investments to move its company headquarters from California to Franklin.
TNECD also granted pet-supply online retailer Chewy $2.1 million for its fulfillment center in Wilson County.
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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 the course events of Shelby County’s mask mandate lawsuit against Governor Lee.
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Florida Crystals’ Okeelanta Corp., U.S. Sugar, and the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative filed separate lawsuits and are suing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over proposed reservoir water levels. The sugar companies say the proposed levels will be too low to supply enough water to their fields.
The Corps are attempting to keep the water low as part of an Everglades restoration project, but the growers would want to see the levels returned to a standard adopted in 2000.
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Statewide assessment results for 2021 show declines in the number of students meeting or exceeding grade-level standards compared to 2019 after a year of virtual learning and disruptions from COVID-19.
In math, 44% of students in grades three to eight and 11 who took the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCA) or Minnesota Test of Academic Skills (MTAS) met or exceeded grade-level standards, down from 55% in 2019. Student reading proficiency dropped seven percentage points to 53% from 2019, while science proficiency dropped eight percentage points to 43%.
ACCESS for ELLs (English language learners) measures students’ English language proficiency. Of the students who took the ACCESS for ELLs in 2021, 9% were proficient in English, a three percentage point decrease from 2019.
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An informal meeting of the Genesee County, Michigan Board of Commissioners on Monday saw residents turn out heavily against a school-mask mandate for students in grades K-6.
County Medical Health Officer Pamela Hackert told attendees she imposed the requirement only on those lower grades because she wanted to provide protection to students who do not yet have the option of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.
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A school board in Virginia has been ordered to pay the legal fees, totaling more than a million dollars, to a transgender former student after a years-long battle.
The Gloucester County School Board has agreed to pay the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which defended Gavin Grimm beginning in 2015, $1.3 million.
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Just days after two professors at the University of North Georgia resigned instead of teaching classes in person, another professor at a public university in Georgia has decided to call it quits over COVID-19 concerns.
Irwin Bernstein, am 88-year-old retiree-rehire at the University of Georgia, abruptly quit his position in the middle of a class after a student refused to pull her mask over her nose, according to WSBTV.
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The Ohio Ballot Board has approved an initiative petition drive seeking to legalize marijuana for adults 21 years old and older, clearing the way for supporters to collect signatures for presentation to the Ohio General Assembly later this year.
The five-member panel certified the proposed “Act to Control and Regulate Adult-Use Cannabis” in a 5-0 votes as meeting the one-law standard for proposed ballot measures.
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GOP gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin unveiled a long list of policy priorities prominently featuring tax breaks alongside spending on law enforcement and schools in his “Day One Game Plan.” His Monday announcement in Falls Church also included a declaration that he would ban Critical Race Theory (CRT) from being taught in schools or used in teacher training, and he said he wouldn’t implement COVID-19 shutdowns.
“I will not allow COVID lock downs to ever occur in Virginia again,” Youngkin said to loud cheers and applause from the crowd.
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Two prominent Democrats have come out against the ballot effort to defund the Minneapolis Police Department, saying police reform, not defunding, is needed.
Gov. Tim Walz revealed in an interview at the Minnesota State Fair last week that he thinks the ballot question does not provide enough detail and will leave residents “confused” on what they’re voting for or against, Fox 9 reported.
“It’s been distilled down to this: defund police or fund police? I know it’s more complex than that, but I think that poses problems,” Walz said.
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Members of the Georgia State House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee are scheduled to meet Tuesday to address Atlanta’s rising crime rates, and a representative from a gun control group plans to speak. Committee members are scheduled to meet at 1 p.m., Tuesday, August 31, in room 406 of the Coverdale Legislative Office Building at 18 Capitol Square Southwest in Atlanta.
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Floridians hospitalized for COVID has decreased for a fourth day in a row, according to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services data.
The data shows Florida’s hospitals are taking care of 15,778 COVID patients which accounts for only 27.5 percent of all Floridians hospitalized. Similarly, Florida’s ICU’s are helping 3,477 COVID patients, which was over 200 less COVID patients than Thursday, last week.
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Two Ohio lawmakers want to close a loophole in state law that allows teachers who are under investigation for misconduct to retire and school districts to not file a report with the Ohio Department of Education.
The legislation, filed this week by Reps. Adam Miller, D-Columbus, and Sarah Fowler-Arthur, R-Geneva-on-the-Lake, was proposed after five Rocky River School District teachers resigned and one retired in the spring as the district investigated alleged inappropriate contact.
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Wisconsin’s state superintendent is taking a swipe at parents who don’t want their kids to be forced to mask-up this school year.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly on Wednesday wrote an op-ed that dismisses parents who are protesting mask mandates at their local schools.
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A man upset over Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s COVID-19 policies plead guilty to one count of a kidnapping conspiracy and accepted a plea deal to serve six years and three months in prison.
Ty Garbin, 25, is the only known member of the Michigan militia group “Wolverine Watchmen” to plead guilty to the alleged plot.
Federal prosecutors suggested he serve a nine-year sentence, citing his cooperation with authorities and plans to testify against other alleged kidnappers.
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Stephen K. Bannon welcomed Michael Patrick Leahy on Monday’s War Room: Pandemic to discuss the 43,000 absentee ballots that violated the chain of custody rule in Georgia and questioned the Secretary of States’ position on the certification of the election.
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Some Arizona school officials are in a feud with Governor Doug Ducey and the Arizona Legislature over implementing mandatory mask policies, but some of those officials have been caught not wearing masks themselves. Arizona Superintendent of Schools Kathy Hoffman, a Democrat, was spotted not wearing one along with others at a baby shower. Not a single person present had a mask on or was social distancing. Amphitheater Public Schools, which mandated masks on August 16, posted a photo of their Communications Director Michelle Valenzuela, posing without a mask on, clearly standing within a couple of feet of the photographer. They deleted the tweet.
Ducey is confident the school mask mandates will not hold up in court. He said earlier in August, “COVID has been with us for well over a year and a half now, and Arizonans are educated about it. If they want to wear masks, they should absolutely do so. It’s an individual choice. No one and no law anywhere in Arizona is stopping anyone from wearing masks. Ultimately, these mandates are toothless, unenforceable and will not hold up in court.”
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U.S. Department of Education (USDE) officials announced Monday they will investigate Tennessee and five other states that allow parents the right to opt out of a public school’s COVID-19 mask mandates. In a press release, USDE officials said such policies could discriminate against students who are disabled and at heightened risk for severe illness.
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43,907 of the 61,731 absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes in the November 2020 presidential election in DeKalb County, Georgia–72 percent–were counted in official tallies certified by the county and the state, despite violating chain of custody requirements set forward in Georgia Emergency Rule 183-1-14-1.8-.14 promulgated by the Georgia State Election Board at its July 1, 2020, meeting.
That rule states absentee ballots placed in drop boxes, “shall be immediately transported to the county registrar” by the two person collection team, which is required to sign a ballot transfer form indicating the number of ballots picked up, the time the ballots were picked up, and the location of the drop box, and that, “The county registrar or a designee thereof shall sign the ballot transfer form upon receipt of the ballots from the collection team.”
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An analysis by The Georgia Star News of DeKalb County’s absentee ballot drop box transfer forms from the November 2020 election identified a number of problems that puts the documents out of compliance with the Georgia Board of Election Emergency Rule 183-1-14-1.8-.14.
The Star News reviewed 725 absentee ballot drop box transfer forms, obtained from the DeKalb County law department in response to an open records request, that were used by DeKalb County during the November 2020 election to document the chain of custody of the 61,731 absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes .
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Tennessee statutes allow recalls in any “governmental entity having a charter provision for a petition for recall.” This delegates the decision about recalls of local officials to each municipality. If a local government’s charter allows for such recalls, then state law establishes the signature requirements and filing deadlines for conducting them. This also applies to school board members. Tennessee law says, “Any member of the board of education of the city elected or appointed…may be removed from office by the registered voters of the city.”
Tennessee also allows any county with a metropolitan form of government and more than 100,000 residents to establish its own recall procedures in its charter. One example of this is in Nashville, which has a population of 715,884, according to 2020 census data. In 1963, the governments of the city of Nashville and Davidson County merged to form the Nashville-Davidson Metro Government.
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The ACLU on Tuesday announced it is bringing a lawsuit against South Carolina over its mask policy.
The Palmetto State is one of seven states—along with Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Arizona, Utah, and Florida— that have policies in place banning schools from having mask policies. Thirteen states, meanwhile, have laws that mandate masks in schools. The majority of states (30) allow school districts to determine their own mask policies.
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In the wake of the deadly terrorist attack in Kabul that killed 13 American service members and at least 170 Afghans, Rep Mike Waltz (R- Fla.) and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have called on Joe Biden to formally recognize former officials in Afghanistan as legitimate government representatives, and to designate the Taliban as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
The pair released the following statement on Friday after speaking with a number of Afghan government officials, including the former vice-president, who say they have established a safe zone for Americans and our afghan allies left behind in the now Taliban-controlled country.
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Ed Asner, the veteran actor who starred in the Mary Tyler Moore Show and the spinoff Lou Grant show, has died at the age of 91.
“We are sorry to say that our beloved patriarch passed away this morning peacefully,” read the tweet from Asner’s official Twitter account. “Words cannot express the sadness we feel. With a kiss on your head- Goodnight dad. We love you.”
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As I’ve watched the events of the past few weeks – and thought about the nature of Joe Biden’s young presidency – I began to ask myself: How much more of this can we take?
In just seven months, President Biden has overseen a remarkable number of complete blunders. To make sense of them all and consider how to overcome them, I decided to make a list of them. Of course, it would take months of time and writing to list all the errors Biden has made in his 48 years in politics, so I decided to start at his inauguration in January. These are roughly in chronological order. It seemed impossible to rank them as so many of them could have lasting, unforeseeable consequences.
1 – Bipartisan Baloney
As I write in my upcoming book, Beyond Biden, which will be released on Nov. 2, the first major mistake Biden made was immediately failing to live up to the pledges he made in his inaugural address. In his inaugural address, Biden said: “Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together. Uniting our people. And uniting our nation.”
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An “element” of the U.S. intelligence community believes COVID-19 entered the human population due to a lab accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, according to a declassified summary of its 90-day review of the pandemic’s origins released Friday.
Overall, however, the 17 agencies that make up the intelligence community were unable to come to a conclusive assessment on the origins of COVID-19 as a result of the review, which was ordered by President Joe Biden in May. Some in the intelligence community believe COVID-19 came from nature, while others pin blame on the Wuhan lab, which prior to the pandemic was conducting risky experiments on bat-based coronaviruses to make them even more contagious.
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The New School’s mascot, a Narwhal named Gnarls, got a gender-neutral redesign for the Fall 2021 semester, the university reports.
Gnarls backstory includes an “unconventional” upbringing due to “distressing levels of ice loss” that forced the Narwhal’s family out of its Antarctica home.
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Authorities on Thursday announced they plan to shut down a federal jail in New York City where alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein died in 2019.
Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in lower Manhattan, apparently due to suicide, The New York Times reported. The prison guards were later accused of sleeping and surfing the internet while on duty.
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Seven Capitol Police officers filed a lawsuit on Thursday against President Donald Trump, claiming with no evidence that the president conspired with right-wing activists to organize the peaceful protests that took place at the Capitol on January 6th, according to Politico.
The lawsuit was filed with the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C., by the group Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; the suit claims that President Trump’s rhetoric leading up to January 6th, in which he called out widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election that may have ultimately swung the election results away from him and in favor of Joe Biden, violated the Ku Klux Klan Act.
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Roughly one-third of the U.S. population had been infected by the coronavirus by the end of 2020, according to a new study that appears to show how widespread but underreported the virus was.
The study was conducted by Columbia University researchers and published Thursday in the science journal Nature.
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The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) has informed active duty and retired service members that they cannot “disrespect” President Joe Biden or other senior government leadership, even during the chaotic and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The warning came in an email, according to The Daily Wire, from the ONI’s chief of staff, reminding service members, current and retired, that they are “prohibited from disrespecting senior government leadership (e.g. the President, Vice President, Congress, Secretary of Defense, Service Secretaries, etc.).”
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Texas’ controversial elections bill cleared the state House Friday afternoon, clearing its way to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk after a months-long battle that drove Democrats to flee the state in an attempt to block its passage.
Senate Bill 1 was lauded by Republicans as a means to better secure future elections, but was chastised by Democrats as an effort to restrict voting access following former President Donald Trump’s discredited claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent. It passed on an 80-41 vote that fell largely along party lines.
The Texas House considered dozens of amendments during a marathon session Thursday, and the bill now heads to the Senate for the provisions adopted to be approved before heading to the governor’s desk. Abbott, a Republican who has championed the issue, has vowed to sign it.
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Twitter has permanently banned Alex Berenson, a former New York Times journalist who has become a major critic of Big Tech censorship and coronavirus lockdowns and mandates.
Responding to an inquiry from Fox News, where Berenson has been a frequent guest during the pandemic, a spokesperson for Twitter replied that “The account you referenced has been permanently suspended for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation rules.”
Berenson responded on his Substack page, where he posted a message titled “Goodbye Twitter.”
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