Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed (R-TN) Congressman Mark Green to the newsmakers line to explain his recent statement against the Secretary of Defense’s executive power grab to mandate the vaccination of all military personnel.
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Americans for Prosperity’s Grant Henry in studio to weigh in on the laws and liberties of American citizens, dangerous precedence, and Governor Lee’s disturbing executive order.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci said Tuesday he supports efforts by local governments to mandate vaccinations for teachers against the novel coronavirus.
“I’m going to upset people on this but I think we should [mandate vaccinations for teachers]. I mean, we are in a critical situation now,” Fauci told MSNBC “We have had 615,000 deaths and we are in a major surge now as we’re going into the fall, into the school season. This is very serious business.”
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A trio of local grassroots groups have announced that they are co-hosting a free “Safeguard Our Schools” event this Saturday afternoon in Hendersonville and invite the public to come together to take a look at “our most important asset,” our schools.
As Tennessee students are returning to school this week with the backdrop of spiking COVID-19 cases prompting mask mandates in some districts, there are a number of issues to be addressed at the grassroots gathering.
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As America begins to put the COVID-19 pandemic in the rearview, the lesson from this once-in-a-generation crisis couldn’t be clearer: We need less, not more, central planning in our lives.
For example, a study earlier this year by health economist Casey Mulligan revealed that economic lockdowns mandated by government were counterproductive, given the significant steps workplaces took to prevent the virus from spreading.
The same is true with health care. By now, most folks know the story of how Operation Warp Speed — the previous administration’s unprecedented plan to trim bureaucracy from the vaccine development process — resulted in the creation of multiple safe and effective vaccines in record time. But an equally important storyline is how states took a sledgehammer to their own bureaucracies to expand access to care for those in need.
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COVID-19 isn’t over in Michigan but early 2021 data from 24 states suggests a fully vaccinated person is much less likely to be hospitalized or die from the virus, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF).
As summer winds down, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ranked Michigan as having “substantial” community COVID-19 transmission with a seven-day average case positivity rate between 5% to 7.9%.
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Georgia State Sen. Burt Jones (R-Jackson) announced Tuesday he’s running for lieutenant governor, and, while he didn’t elaborate, said he feels “real good” about getting an endorsement from former U.S. President Donald Trump. The Georgia Star News asked Jones Tuesday if he knows something about a possible Trump backing that he has not yet publicly disclosed.
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The Minneapolis DFL Chair Devin Hogan said in an op-ed that the burning down of the Third Precinct last summer was an “act of pure righteousness.” Hogan wrote a column in the Southside Pride, saying that lighting the precinct on fire was a “genuine revolutionary moment.”
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A new report from the payroll company PayChex ranked the states in order of small business job growth and Arizona came out No. 1, with nearly 6% growth over the past year. Phoenix ranked third among the country’s 20 most populated cities. The Arizona Legislature released a report shortly before that showing Arizona is in great condition, breaking records. The state passed historic tax cuts this year, preventing a 77% increase on small business taxes, reducing small business property taxes by 10%, and capping the maximum tax rate on businesses at 4.5%.
Frank Fiorelle, vice president of risk, compliance and data analytics at Paychex, explained that a lot of the job growth is due to the pandemic ending. “A lot of those restaurants are coming back online, opening the doors and turning on the lights, he said. He added that states which reopened their economies earlier have higher job creation rates.
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A small Republican grassroots panel called the Committee for a Better Ohio has challenged the legality of the Ohio Republican Party (ORP)’s decision to support the re-election campaign of Gov. Mike DeWine without the affirmation of the state central committee.
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The state of Florida plans to appeal U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams’ decision to grant the injunction proposed by Norwegian Cruise Line against the law that bans Florida businesses from requiring vaccine documentation for service.
While state attorney Peter Patterson previously stated that they may take the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court, it will first appeal the ruling in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal, which has previously sided with the state regarding the ban on vaccine passports.
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U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) went maskless during a weekend wedding, violating recommendations Democrats have placed on Americans.
Video posted by Michigan Rising Action showed Tlaib smiling broadly and dancing while violating CDC six-foot distancing guidelines:
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration is reminding officials who are defying his executive order banning mask mandates in Florida’s schools, they could have funding withheld or the superintendents and school board members who impose the mandate could have their salaries suspended. DeSantis’ Press Secretary Christina Pushaw reminded the noncompliant school districts of the possible ramifications:
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RICHMOND, Virginia – The General Assembly approved eight new judges for the Court of Appeals of Virginia Tuesday. Although tradition kept Republicans from voting against the candidates, votes on individual candidates varied as Republican legislators abstained. That completed the General Assembly’s goals for the special session: allocating American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds and filling court vacancies.
“I thought it was an historic session,” Senator Scott Surovell (D-Fairfax) told The Virginia Star. “What just happened with the Court of Appeals was the largest number of judges to go on the Court of Appeals since 1985, and we gave Virginians the same right to appeal their legal matter that every other American has.”
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Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, speaking remotely to the American Bar Association on Monday, called for “educating voters” about supposed GOP efforts underway to “undermine democracy,” but questions remain regarding her role with the “voter education” efforts of a Mark Zuckerberg-funded nonprofit she founded.
Benson is a former president of the Michigan Center for Election Law and Administration (MCELA), an organization that received $12 million in grants from the D.C.-based Center for Election Innovation and Research.
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Virginians for Safe Communities (VSC) is the second organization to try to recall Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano. Now, the organization wants an ethics investigation into the prosecutor, alleging misconduct in a August 9 letter to the Virginia State Bar (VSB).
“Mr. Descano, as the leader of the office of the Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney, has engaged in serious matters of professional misconduct that constitute a violation of the VSB’s Professional Guidelines,” the letter states
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The University of Minnesota announced that they will require the COVID vaccine for students if the vaccine is Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved. As long as the plan to mandate the vaccine is approved by the Board, the University has said that they will offer some exemptions, the email from University of Minnesota President Joan Gabel said. The vaccine will not be required for faculty or staff.
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U.S. Representative Jim Banks (R-IN-03) on Tuesday endorsed best-selling author J.D. Vance in his quest to win the Republican nomination to represent Ohio in the U.S. Senate.
When describing the basis for the endorsement, Banks told Axios that Vance “isn’t afraid to stand up to the woke elites and will always put middle- and working-class Ohioans first.”
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Andy Slavitt, who has been helping the Minnesota Department of Health to vaccinate school children, said in a Twitter thread that going to public events is not a constitutional right. Slavitt was a former Biden COVID Response Senior Advisor and worked in the Obama administration as the head of Medicare and Medicaid.
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In four separate groups over a period of less than 24 hours over the weekend, 280 unaccompanied minors illegally crossed into the United States, with Arizona as their destination.
“Within 24 hours, 4 separate groups, totaling over 400 migrants, surrendered to #Tucson Sector #BorderPatrol agents after illegally crossing the border. More than 280 were unaccompanied migrant children,” said Tucson Sector U.S. Border and Customs Protection (CBP) Interim Chief John R. Modlin on Twitter.
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The proposed changes to Minnesota’s social studies curriculum would embrace Critical Race Theory. According to the Center for the American Experiment, “The Critical Race Theory framework can be found throughout the second draft of the social studies standards.”
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Michigan’s local health departments are plotting new restrictions as bureaucrats are alarmed by a rise in COVID-19 cases that apparently are not being blunted with vaccinations.
WZZM speculated another lockdown may be “in sight.”
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Supporters of former President Donald Trump held a “Trump Won” rally in Livonia, Michigan on Tuesday.
Organizers of the event, affiliated with the Michigan Conservative Coalition (MCC), want the state legislature to commission a forensic audit to verify the reliability of the 2020 presidential-election results in the Great Lake State.
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A lawsuit arguing the constitutionality of a 2015 law (HB 633) that requires women to wait 24 hours before having an abortion is set to be heard in trial next year, as directed in an order issued by Leon County Circuit Judge Angela Dempsey on Wednesday.
The lawsuit was filed by two women’s health clinics in Florida and a group of medical students shortly after the law was signed by then Governor Rick Scott.
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Brentwood High School staff members gave students a questionnaire on the first day of school this year and allegedly asked them to identify themselves by the gender pronouns “She/her/hers,” “He/him/his,” “They/them/theirs,” or “other.” Middle Tennessee residents posted a screenshot of the questionnaire on their Facebook pages late last week. The posters said someone at Brentwood High — whom they did not identify — took the photograph.
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Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday he will resign from office in 14 days, bowing to pressure following a bombshell attorney general report accusing him of violating federal and state laws involving sexual harassment of subordinates.
Earlier Tuesday, an attorney for the governor held a press conference in an attempt to discredit elements of the New York Attorney General’s report, which was released last week. Rita Glavin, who is representing the governor, said “This is about the veracity and credibility of a report that is being used to impeach and take down an elected official.”
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A liberal nonprofit that accused President Donald Trump of unleashing a “surge in white supremacy and hate” donated $85,000 last fall to election administrators in Georgia’s largest county as part of a campaign to turn out black votes in the 2020 election. Auditors now want some of that money returned.
The Fulton County Auditor declared this month that county election officials failed to spend all of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s grant for buying absentee ballot drop boxes and did not comply with one of the grant’s primary requirements to publicly disclose how many ballots were collected in the boxes.
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Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed an executive order late last week regarding the state’s continued response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but some people worry it infringes upon basic liberties. Among other things, Lee’s executive order permits more flexibility in behavioral health care to relieve capacity strain and allows medical laboratory directors to monitor facilities remotely. But the order also gives the state government discretion to use the National Guard in connection with certain health care and emergency services operations.
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Over the course of the pandemic, federal overspending has exploded even by Congress’s lofty standards. While trillion-dollar deficits were a cause for concern before 2020, spending over just the last two years is set to increase the national debt by over $6 trillion. It’s bizarre, then, that the only thing that members of opposing parties in Congress can seem to work together on is fooling the budgetary scorekeepers with phantom offsets for even more spending.
In total, the bipartisan infrastructure deal includes around $550 billion in new federal spending on infrastructure to take place over five years. Advocates of the legislation claim that it is paid for, but they are relying on gimmicks and quirks of the budget scoring process to make that claim.
Take the single biggest offset claimed — repurposing unused COVID relief funds, which the bill’s authors say would “raise” $210 billion (particularly considering that at least $160 billion have already been accounted for in the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) baseline). Only in the minds of Washington legislators does this represent funds ready to be used when the national debt stands at over $28 trillion.
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On Wednesday, a U.S. Senate panel was told by a former national security official that the Chinese government has amassed enough stolen data to be able to create a “dossier” on every American citizen, Fox News reports.
The startling report was made by Matther Pottinger, a deputy national security adviser from the Trump Administration, during testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. “Assembling dossiers on people has always been a feature of Leninist regimes,” Pottinger explained. “But Beijing’s penetration of digital networks worldwide, including using 5G networks…has really taken this to a new level.”
“Beijing’s stolen sensitive data,” Pottinger continued, “is sufficient to build a dossier on every single American adult, and on many of our children too, who are fair game under Beijing’s rules of political warfare.” This information could subsequently be used by China to “influence, target, intimidate, reward, blackmail, flatter, humiliate, and ultimately divide and conquer” its enemies, including the United States itself.
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A memo obtained by Campus Reform reveals that the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media considered “diversity of thought” to be in conflict with its efforts to achieve social justice objectives.
Hussman Dean Susan King wrote the August 1, 2020 memo to university Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz. She stated, “There is a fundamental conflict between efforts to promote racial equity and understandings of structural racism, and efforts to promote diversity of thought. These two things cannot sit side by side without coming into conflict.”
King wrote the memo in anticipation of Nikole Hannah-Jones joining the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty and teaching a class based on the “1619 Project.”
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On April 12, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the appointment of Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, a career Foreign Service Officer and former ambassador to Malta, as the State Department’s first chief diversity and inclusion officer (CDIO). On July 21, Blinken sent an unclassified cable to U.S. diplomatic and consular posts around the world to introduce Abercrombie-Winstanley — who, in her new position, reports directly to the secretary of state — and to tout the new Office for Diversity and Inclusion.
A State Department that welcomes, and offers opportunities for advancement, to all Americans is a priority. Yet the lofty rhetoric of diversity and inclusion has often provided a cover for imposing ideological conformity and distributing benefits and burdens based on race. Therefore, Blinken’s new undertaking gives cause for concern. His near silence in the two official pronouncements about the personal qualities, educational attainments, professional achievements, and areas of expertise that the State Department values in building a workforce that responsibly conducts American foreign policy heightens apprehensions.
To advance U.S. interests abroad, the State Department must live up to America’s highest principles by ensuring that service in the nation’s diplomatic corps is open to all citizens based on skills, talents, and character. Individuals with diverse experiences, opinions, and training enrich understanding within the department of the vast array of jobs, opportunities, and threats that the United States faces abroad. These range from efficient processing of visa requests and effective operation within international organizations to protect health and the environment to cooperating with friends and partners to counter the Chinese Communist Party’s aim in every region of the globe to reorient world order around Beijing’s authoritarian imperatives.
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Senate Democrats have publicly released their $3.5 trillion, filibuster-proof budget reconciliation resolution.
The draft of the legislation released on Monday includes new spending programs that the White House has labeled “human infrastructure,” such as universal pre-K, childcare support and tuition free community college.
The spending total is estimated over a 10-year period. Using budget reconciliation allows the Democrats to pass the measure without votes from Republicans in the 50-50 Senate. Democrats used the same process in March to pass President Biden’s $1.9 trillion pandemic stimulus package called the American Rescue Plan Act.
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Stanford University officials recently released a report that delved into the problems and benefits of its police force.
But an anti-police group called Abolish Stanford still is not pleased with the report’s recommendations on reforms — its members wanted a complete abolition of the police force and nothing less. The report called for a reduction in the use of armed Stanford University Department of Public Safety officers.
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Princeton University students can learn about the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement — while reading from an avowed Marxist.
A Fall 2021 course, called “#BlackLivesMatter,” plans to discuss the important role the social movement has played in fighting against historical oppression of Black Americans.
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If there is a public policy silver lining to this past year, it is the increased support for school choice. Most public schools went online during lockdowns and parents, dissatisfied with the results, sought out other solutions, including private schools, pods, charter schools, online learning, and homeschooling. The last more than doubled with 11.1 percent of households homeschooling, up from 5.4 percent the year before.
Many state legislatures improved school choice options in their states. This is to be celebrated and continued.
School choice by itself, however, will not save students from a failing education if charter and private schools adopt the same curriculum and practices as the most woke schools. Without a focus on the right subjects and lessons, students will be unprepared for personal or professional success.
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A federal court has blocked President Joe Biden’s mandate that would require doctors to perform transgender surgeries against their consciences.
Judge Reed O’Connor of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Wichita Falls Division, granted “a permanent injunction” to the Christian plaintiffs “to be exempt from the government’s requirement to perform abortions and gender-transition procedures.”
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President Joe Biden has proposed amending the inheritance tax, also known as the “death tax,” but farmers around the country are raising concerns about the plan.
In the American Families Plan introduced earlier this year, Biden proposed repealing the “step-up in basis” in tax law. The stepped-up basis is a tax provision that allows an heir to report the value of an asset at the time of inheriting it, essentially not paying gains taxes on how much the assets increased in value during the lifetime of the deceased. This allows heirs to avoid gains taxes altogether if they sell the inheritance immediately.
Under Biden’s change, heirs would be forced to pay taxes on the appreciation of the assets, potentially over the entire lifetime of the recently deceased relative.
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State legislatures in six states limited their governors’ emergency powers wielded during the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing executives have overextended their authority.
As of June 2021, lawmakers in 46 states have introduced legislation stripping governors of certain emergency powers, according to USA Today. Legislatures justified their actions as necessary to restore a balance between the branches of state government, pointing to examples of executive overreach and the centralization of power in the hands of governors.
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When a Dickson County, Tennessee jury reconvened Monday on sentencing Steven Wiggins for killing Sergeant Daniel Baker, counsel for the the defendant argued Wiggins suffered mitigating mental-health issues.
Defense attorney David Hopkins emphasized to jurors that their determination of Wiggins’s guilt last week was not being challenged and that the task at hand is deciding whether life without the possibility of parole or the death penalty is deserved.
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Despite the fact that many healthcare workers Butnationwide have taken to the streets to protest vaccine mandates, the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Health System has mandated that all of its employees must take the vaccine.
“All VCU and VCU Health System employees will be required to report COVID-19 vaccinations,” the university announced. “If you have already reported your vaccination, there is no action required on your part. If applicable, you may submit a request for a medical or religious exemption. Additional information is forthcoming from the university and health system about the medical and religious exemption process.”
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Cases of a common seasonal virus that can be deadly to young children and the elderly are exploding, according to an East Tennessee Hospital.
East Tennessee Children’s Hospital says that it treated more cases of Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in July than it had for the rest of 2021 in total, according to a WATE report.
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Rarely is the sequence of cause and effect so clear. The current surge of migrants at our southern border is the direct result of the Biden administration eliminating the Trump rules that had once tamed the flow. Gone are the “safe third country” agreements that helped migrants apply for asylum in countries through which they had already traveled. Gone is the “remain in Mexico” policy that ensured a mere application for asylum would not be a free ticket into the United States. At the same time, Obama-era “catch and release” for minors and family units has made a comeback. As word has spread of this lax enforcement, more and more migrants throughout the world are attempting the journey.
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A Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) bus driver has informed her employer she “cannot in good conscience comply” with the school system’s new COVID-19 mask mandate. That school bus driver, Brenda Mason, filed a letter Monday stating she disagrees with the mask policy and must object.
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As U.S. Senate leaders expect to pass a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill Tuesday morning, both of Tennessee’s senators, Marsha Blackburn (R) and Bill Hagerty (R) are vehemently opposing the legislation, alarmed by its potential to worsen the national debt.
Senate Democrats have expressed their intention to use a process called reconciliation to avoid any possible filibuster, thus allowing themselves expand the measure to encompass $3.5 trillion in federal spending.
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In the latest development related to the absentee ballot chain of custody documents from the November 2020 election, Fulton County elections officials have contradicted Georgia Public Broadcasting News’s claims about their source for the drop box transfer forms and that documents for 18,901 absentee ballots remain missing.
On August 3, The Georgia Star News reported that Fulton County denied the same chain of custody documents for absentee ballots deposited into drop boxes during the November 2020 general election that they purportedly gave to Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) News on or before June 17.
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Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed retired attorney Mark Pulliam to the newsmakers line to discuss his efforts to stop woke curriculum from permeating the Maryville, Tennessee school system.
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Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Senator Bill Hagerty to the newsmakers line to discuss his reasons for holding firm against passing the Greed New Deal disguised as an infrastructure bill.
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Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed The Star News Network’s Senior Reporter, Laura Baigert to the newsmakers line to detail her exclusive interview with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Saturday.
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Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed constitutional lawyer and author of The Authoritarians, Jonathan W. Emord to the newsmakers line to discuss his new book, rising socialism, Marxism, and the administrative state in America.
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