Wisconsin Representative Bryan Steil (R-WI-01) introduced several amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act. According to a press release from Rep. Steil’s office, “Bryan Steil introduced several amendments to the nation’s annual defense funding bill, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to strengthen the legislation and hold our adversaries accountable.”
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Although her political committee, Friends of Ashley Moody, has already began fundraising, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody recently announced an event that will officially kickoff her reelection campaign for 2022.
The 90 minute event – which can be found on Eventbrite.com – will be Tuesday, September 28th, and held in the Grand Ballroom of TPepin Hospitality Centre in Tampa.
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Wisconsin Representative Tiffany shared concerns in a Fox News interview about Afghan refugees coming and going from Fort McCoy unsupervised. Tiffany visited Fort McCoy, a base hosting Afghan refugees, in late August.
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U.S. Representative Drew Ferguson (R-GA-03) this week said Democrats on the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee blocked every amendment he added to what he called that party’s $3.5 trillion tax-and-spend budget proposal. Ferguson serves on the committee.
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The CEO of Tampa General Hospital has gone on the offensive, criticizing the President Joe Biden administration’s decision to ration monoclonal antibody treatments to states like Florida. The Department of Health and Humans Services (HHS) announced they will be handling the nationwide distribution of the treatments, earning much criticism from Florida officials who have been implementing the treatment for months.
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The Virginia Employment Commission is still lagging in processing claims, according to an interim report from the Joint Legislative Audit Review Commission (JLARC) presented to legislators Monday.
“A theme that you will hear in the presentation is that while the agency could not have been expected to be fully prepared to respond to the pandemic, it could have been better prepared,” JLARC Director Hal Greer said. “As you’ll hear, 18 months into the pandemic, the agency is still overwhelmed by backlogs of claims. Its call center continues to under-perform, and the agency is struggling with how to recoup a significant amount of benefit payments that were incorrectly issued.”
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On Monday, Middle Tennessee was rocked with another round of heavy rainfall that led to dangerous flooding. Multiple water rescues were underway in Rutherford, Maury, and Williamson County to help those trapped by the water.
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As a result of the 2020 census, Florida will gain one additional congressional seat, and Florida lawmakers will begin the process to redraw district lines in the upcoming fall committee weeks with the 2022 legislative session beginning in January.
“Prior to the start of the 2022 Regular Session the Legislature will hold interim committee meetings, at which time the committees that conduct the redistricting and reapportionment processes may meet,” according to the Florida Senate’s redistricting site.
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Georgia State Sen. Jason Anavitarte (R – Dallas) has called upon his colleagues in the Georgia General Assembly to place a statue of U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas on the state capitol grounds. This, according to a press release that Anavitarte emailed Tuesday.
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Partisan map drawers presented the first set of maps of the whole commonwealth to the Virginia Redistricting Commission Monday. The commission is nearing the end of its allotted time to create maps for the Virginia General Assembly; the maps are expected to be submitted between October 10th and October 24th. But the maps presented to the commission are drafts, and the commission still needs to analyze public comment and political data and how that should affect the maps. Additionally, the commission has to find a way to turn the two sets of proposals from the Republican and Democratic map drawers into one final draft.
“We’re three weeks away from when we’re supposed to vote on final maps to be presented to the General Assembly. So the clock is really moving quickly now. So think about your ideas on how to reconcile the two versions of each map that we have,” Co-Chair Greta Harris (D) told the commission.
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Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) is refusing to challenge President Joe Biden (D) about the surge of illegal aliens at the southern border, the Republican Governors Association (RGA) claimed Monday.
The group, which views the Michigan governor’s race as one of its top priorities in 2022, noted 26 Republican governors have requested a meeting with Biden “to demand the end to the crisis at the border” and added Whitmer “refuses to acknowledge the crisis.”
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Republican state legislators are encouraging Michigan voters to register their opinions on three election procedural rules changes promulgated by Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.
The Department of State will conduct a public hearing on the proposed rules on Friday, Oct. 1.
The three rule changes include:
Significantly altering the process to allow the disqualification of candidates by city and township clerks for election finance violations;
Creating a state database of voter signatures whereby voters could upload signatures rather than submitting an original ink signature with local election officials;
Relaxing standards of signature verification for absentee ballots, relying on an automatic presumption a voter’s signature is valid.
Conservatives supporting enanctment of anti-Critical Race Theory education legislation rallied on the south plaza of the Ohio Capitol even as Ohio’s State Board of Education remains quiet about a shot across the bow Attorney General Dave Yost fired on the panel last week.
About 100 supporters of House Bill 327 gathered to hear speakers against allowing teachers to promote CRT, a political agenda that presents American history, social justice, business and other aspects of society through the lens of radical racial and gender politics.
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Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) is running neck-and-neck with relatively unknown Republican opponents, according to a poll released Monday.
Strategic National — a firm working for Republican James Craig — found its client trailing the incumbent by less than one point among likely voters, 46.6 percent to 46 percent, Breitbart News reported.
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On Monday, during a routine school board meeting, the Williamson County Board of Education voted to extend the temporary mask requirement for students, staff and visitors at all grade levels, inside all buildings and on buses, through January 19, 2022.
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A measure to guarantee that all political campaigns report their fundraising and expenditures online passed the Pennsylvania Senate State Government Committee on Tuesday, along with several other election reforms.
All Pennsylvania candidates who raise or spend more than nominal amounts of money for their campaigns must establish fundraising committees, and those that have done so must file campaign-finance reports periodically. At least 32 states presently demand that all candidates who fundraise must report their finances online. In Pennsylvania, candidates for state office must submit online filings but most local campaigners can legally avoid it.
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More than 100% of private sector jobs in Arizona have been recovered since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the August employment report.
The Arizona Office of Economic Opportunity report showed that Arizona has recovered 325,500 private-sector jobs since April 2020, representing 101% of private-sector jobs lost.
Between July and August, Arizona’s unemployment fell by about 13,000 people. The unemployment rate dropped from 6.6% to 6.2%, marking the largest rate decline of the year.
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A Minnesota gubernatorial candidate, Dr. Scott Jensen, wrote a Health Freedom Sanctuary State Bill. Jensen said, “We need this bill to get a hearing. We need to have a conversation about the political response to the COVID-19 pandemic and our fundamental rights.”
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed former attorney and author of Journey with a Tin Can Pilgrim, Lynda Rozell to the newsmakers line to discuss what prompted her to leave everything behind to travel in an Airstream RV.
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Tennessee Department of Health officials said this week that only the unvaccinated should take monoclonal antibody treatments. Monoclonal antibodies, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s website, are laboratory-made proteins that mimic the immune system’s ability to fight off harmful pathogens such as viruses. Houston Methodist said monoclonal antibody infusion treats COVID-19 and can help prevent hospitalizations, “reduce viral loads and lessen symptom severity.”
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President Joe Biden is planning to increase the number of refugees allowed to enter the U.S. to 125,000 during the new fiscal year, which will begin October 1.
The move, which was announced by the State Department Monday, fulfills a Biden campaign promise. Though, the action will likely not impact two groups of people in the news of late – the thousands of Afghans who fled Kabul last month as U.S. forces were hastily withdrawn, and the more than 15,000 Haitians who are camped under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, along the southern border having fled political and economic turmoil in their home country. The two groups are not classed by the department as refugees.
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In a stunningly blunt warning to senators, President Joe Biden’s just-departed Border Patrol chief is accusing the administration of intentionally eroding security to bring illegal aliens into the country and misleading Congress about the severity of the crisis.
Rodney S. Scott, a 29-year career law enforcement officer who retired last month as the U.S. Border Patrol chief, wrote the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate and its Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that career experts have offered numerous recommendations to slow the crisis but have been repeatedly rebuffed.
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The Star News Network can confirm as of Monday that Gen. Mark A. Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was arrested in Cumberland County, North Carolina in 1982 for driving under the influence, or DUI, after a traffic stop.
A clerk at the Cumberland County, North Carolina records section confirmed to The Star last week that a man named Mark A. Milley was charged with driving under the influence on November 19, 1892.
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This week the Wall Street Journal unveiled “The Facebook Files” – an investigative series based on leaked internal Facebook materials that offer an unvarnished look at how the social media giant sees its platform and its impact on society. A central theme of the reporting is the degree to which Facebook’s own research is at odds with its public statements, and that internally it has recognized the harms the platform causes for society even while publicly touting its benefits.
The Journal’s reporting raises myriad concerns over the state of social platforms generally today, from Instagram’s toxic influence on teenage girls to the impact of algorithmic changes on political discourse to how Facebook secretly shields influential users from its content moderation rules.
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A business law professor who has been put on paid leave for refusing to wear a mask in class is defending his actions with an unexpected authority: the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
“[B]y requiring employees to wear a mask, you are promoting the idea that the mask can prevent or treat a disease, which is an illegal deceptive practice,” David Clements, who teaches consumer law at New Mexico State University (NMSU), told provost Carol Parker in a Sept. 13 letter.
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Only a small minority of Americans say they trust the government to keep their online personal information safe, according to a new poll.
Just 23% of Americans say they are very or somewhat satisfied with the federal government’s efforts to keep their online data secure, according to the results of a poll released Thursday by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and MeriTalk. Almost 4 in 10 Americans say they are dissatisfied with the government’s efforts.
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On Monday, administrators at Brown University informed students that the school had confirmed eighty-two “positive COVID-19 asymptomatic tests in the past seven days” arising largely from asymptomatic undergraduate students.
Brown then introduced several temporary restrictions. But rather than providing a specific end date, the university told students that restrictions will be removed “after achieving a decrease in positive tests.”
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Louisiana State University has begun unenrolling students who failed to comply with COVID-19 regulations.
As Fox 23 reports, seventy-eight students were told that they had been “resigned” from the school and would be refunded 50 percent of their fees. Louisiana State media relations director Ernie Ballard confirmed on Twitter that the students are “being contacted that they are being unenrolled from the university.”
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On Monday, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R-TN) joined 25 other Republican Governors in signing a letter requesting to meet with President Joe Biden regarding the southern border crisis within the next 15 days.
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Claudia Henneberry, the Executive Director of The National Constitution Bee of the Star News Education Foundation discussed how our education institutions have fallen to anti-American forces, and why the current landscape needs to change. Henneberry, a former history, political science and English teacher, spoke with The Tennessee Star about her role and what inspired her to take on this project.
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After the Biden Administration announced its intentions to resettle at least 95,000 Afghan refugees in the United States, over a dozen Republican governors have voiced their support for his plan, as reported by Breitbart.
Last week, the White House declared that at least 36,000 Afghans will be resettled in the United States across 46 different states. The only four states that will not be receiving any refugees are Hawaii, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming, as well as Washington, D.C.
In August, only about 10 Republican governors supported the proposed resettlement, including well-known “moderate” Republicans such as Larry Hogan in Maryland, Charlie Baker in Massachusetts, Brian Kemp in Georgia, Doug Ducey in Arizona, and Phil Scott in Vermont. But since then, eight more Republicans have joined in their support for the plan. In total, the 18 states with Republican governors that now support refugee resettlement are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and Vermont.
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Twitter proposed an $800 million dollar settlement agreement to resolve all claims the company misled investors regarding its user and engagement data, the company announced Monday.
Twitter submitted the agreement to the Northern California District Court to settle a class action lawsuit filed by shareholders in 2016, the social media platform announced in an 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday. If the settlement is approved by the court, Twitter will pay shareholders $809.5 million.
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On Friday, The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation announced the addition of 144 acres to T.O. Fuller State Park, a donation to the park by philanthropists Hugh and Margaret Jones Fraser and the Carrington Jones family of Memphis.
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Tennessee’s revenue collection continues to exceed the state’s budgeted expectations.
Tax revenue in August was $267.9 million more than budgeted estimates, reaching $1.4 billion. The growth rate for revenue was 22.11% higher than a year ago.
The August accrued numbers are for taxes collected from July. The August accruals start a new fiscal year for the state.
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Three similar lawsuits challenging Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s executive order allowing parents to opt students out of mask mandates are proceeding across the state and are at different points.
A preliminary injunction granted last week in Shelby County against Lee’s order applies to only Shelby County.
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Doctors can now prescribe puberty blocking medication to children under the age of 16 without a judge’s approval, Britain’s Court of Appeals ruled on Friday.
The decision reverses last year’s ruling that children seeking gender reassignment aren’t mature enough to give informed consent to take puberty blocking medicine, the Associated Press reported. The decision said that doctors should seek court approval before prescribing the medication because the drugs were still experimental.
The Tavistock and Portman National Health Service (NHS) trust, Britain’s only gender identity development service (GIDS) for children, appealed last year’s ruling, the AP reported. The Court of Appeal sided with the trust Friday, ruling it was “inappropriate” for the high courts to issue their guidance, and it was up to the doctors to “exercise their judgment” regarding patients’ consent.
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Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs to the newsmakers line to discuss his recently penned letter to President Biden.
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Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Executive Director Dr. Matthew Spalding of Hillsdale College’s 1776 Curriculum to the newsmakers line to talk about Hillsdale’s new online resource for K12 students, teachers, and parents.
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More than half of the country’s governors would like a moment of the president’s time – and soon: Twenty-six Republican governors are urging Joe Biden to do more to address the deteriorating situation along the southern U.S. border.
“As chief executives of our states,” they write in a letter postmarked for Monday and first obtained by RealClearPolitics, “we request a meeting with you at The White House to bring an end to the national security crisis created by eight months of unenforced borders.”
The GOP chief executives are requesting an audience “within 15 days” given that the “the crisis that began at our southern border now extends beyond to every state and requires immediate action before the situation worsens.”
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Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin reportedly said in private that the “strategic pause” he has pushed for regarding his party’s budget should last through the end of the year.
Manchin’s remarks, first reported by Axios, would mean a sharp departure from Democrats’ long-stated goals, which include passing both the budget and the bipartisan infrastructure bills before the end of September.
His remarks align both with a Wall Street Journal op-ed he wrote earlier this month and recent comments he made calling for a “pause” on the budget as Congress addressed other priorities ranging from a messy Afghanistan withdrawal to multiple natural disasters.
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Twenty years after the U.S. government declared war on terrorism, it consummated its own defeat in Kabul and Washington, in a manner foreseeable, foreseen, and foreshadowed in 9/11’s immediate aftermath. Fixation on itself and unseriousness about war are the twin habits of heart and mind that disposed the ruling class to defeat. The practical explanation for why and how it accepted defeat is found in the overriding interest each part of the ruling class has in doing what it wants to do.
On the night of September 11, 2001, Muslim governments strictly forbade public celebrations of the carnage. The Palestinian Authority, anticipating that outraged Americans would destroy them to avenge the day’s events, even called the attacks al nachba—“the disaster.” But as the U.S. ruling class made clear that it was accepting defeat, the Muslim world’s media and streets celebrated.
Two decades later, after that defeat’s logic had worked its way through and transformed American life, and as the government’s self-humiliating exit from Afghanistan consummated it, much of mankind followed Muslim crowds in celebrating—including prominent Americans.
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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 Senate parliamentarian’s reconciliation ruling and the case of blue state billionaires.
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Last week, the special counsel appointed to oversee the probe into the FBI’s investigation of former president Donald Trump indicted Michael Sussmann, a lawyer for the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. Republicans and Trump allies are optimistic about the latest development in John Durham’s investigation but are still concerned that Attorney General Merrick Garland might halt the investigation to protect allies and even the president himself.
FBI notes appear to suggest that as vice president, Joe Biden played a role in the Democratic Party project to smear Trump as a Russian asset by raising the obscure, disused, 18th century statute the Logan Act as a possible vehicle for prosecuting Michael Flynn for speaking with the Russian ambassador to Washington — even after FBI case agents had cleared Trump’s incoming national security adviser of wrongdoing.
And now Republicans are raising concerns that the judge appointed to the Sussmann case has too many conflicts of interest to preside over it fairly.
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House Republicans are arguing against a Democratic proposal to increase the $7,500 taxpayer-funded credit for electric car purchases to as much as $12,500, arguing that it would disproportionately help wealthy Americans who can afford to buy pricey electric vehicles.
Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee have proposed increasing the credit as part of their party’s filibuster-proof $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill, which includes new social programs and billions for electric vehicle infrastructure.
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Major stock market indices plummeted Monday in a continuing sell-off tied to China’s declining property value, increasing COVID-19 cases and lack of progress in Congress on increasing the debt limit.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), an index measuring 30 major U.S. corporations, dropped 1.78% on Monday. The S&P index, which measures 500 of the largest publicly traded companies, fell 1.7%, while the NASDAQ, an index composed largely of technology firms, declined 2.19%.
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TikTok maker ByteDance announced Saturday it was limiting screen time for Chinese users under 14 years old.
The Chinese version of video sharing platform TikTok, called “Douyin,” unveiled a new “youth mode” feature that limits the use of its app for children under 14 to 40 minutes a day, its parent company ByteDance announced Saturday. The app will also be unavailable for children between the hours of 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m., ByteDance said, according to The Wall Street Journal.
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In response to pro-life policy victories like the Texas Heartbeat Act and an upcoming Supreme Court case asking the justices to provide a constitutional course correction to America’s arbitrary and unworkable abortion jurisprudence, pro-abortion legislators in Congress are advancing a deceptively named piece of legislation called the Women’s Health Protection Act. The radical, far-reaching proposal would entrench unfettered access to abortion in federal law.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her congressional allies—as well as the media —have characterized the Women’s Health Protection Act as simply “codifying Roe v. Wade.”
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Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd to the newsmakers line to discuss the current surge, agent morale, and the need for the public to express their outrage to make a change.
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The designer of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Tax the Rich” gown for the recent Met Gala reportedly has her own tax issues, including owing thousands on a $1.6 million home she recently purchased in Los Angeles’ Hollywood Hills.
Designer Aurora James bought the home in September 2020, but the property is already listed as “delinquent” by the Los Angeles County assessor’s office. The office told The New York Post, which this past weekend reported on James’ tax issues, the designer owed $2,504 in property taxes.
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The Emory University student newspaper edited an article written by the now-U.S. Solicitor General nominee to remove a quote they described as “harmful for some readers.”
Editors at The Emory Wheel, the student newspaper of Emory University, removed a quote given to then-student editor Elizabeth Barchas, whom President Joe Biden nominated to be the U.S. Solicitor General in August.
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