Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael in studio for another edition of Crom’s Commentary.
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The Biden administration said it’s no longer releasing migrants into the U.S. without court dates, CNN Politics reported Tuesday.
Migrants will be issued formal notices to appear in an immigration court when released from federal custody instead of notices to report, which direct them to check in with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office within 60 days, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said, according to CNN.
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NASHVILLE, Tennessee – Dennis Quaid concluded his fall musical tour on November 15th when he played the Nashville City Winery to a sold-out crowd.
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Last week, New York Governor Kathy Hochul launched a new program: an incentive to get children ages 5 through 11 to take COVID shots, now that they are available. The program in question has that usual bureaucratic and humorless advertising campaign: “Vaccinate, Educate, Graduate.”
According to the New York State website, “Parents and guardians of children ages 5 through 11 who receive their first vaccine dose by December 19th can enter the State’s incentive program for a chance for their child to win a full scholarship to any two- or four-year SUNY or CUNY college or university; the scholarship includes tuition, room, and board. Ten winners will be announced each week beginning November 24th, with a total of 50 winners being selected over the five-week period.”
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The Navajo Nation criticized the Biden administration for banning oil and gas leasing on a large swath of New Mexico land that supported much of its community.
The tribe argued that President Joe Biden failed to properly consult it before issuing the sweeping order earlier this week. Biden and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced Monday that the federal government would review a new rule prohibiting oil and gas leasing within the 10-mile radius around the Chaco Culture National Historical Park in northwest New Mexico for 20 years.
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The leader of a conservative watchdog group said Arabella Advisors, a Democratic dark money juggernaut, had security remove her from their office on Monday morning after she made an in-person request for nonprofit tax documents Arabella is legally required to provide.
Arabella has been called the “mothership” behind a network of Democratic dark money nonprofit groups that have raised a combined $3 billion from mostly anonymous donors as of 2019. Arabella’s dark money network includes the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which funneled millions into a left-wing effort to stop Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation in 2018, and the New Venture Fund, which helped bankroll a group that launched a local news network in 2019 that, according to Bloomberg, functions as “political instruments designed to get them [readers] to vote for Democrats.”
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The Pentagon responded appropriately and in a timely fashion to urgent requests for National Guard assistance on the day of the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, according to a Defense Department inspector general report released Wednesday.
“We also determined that DoD officials did not delay or obstruct the DoD’s response,” reads the report.
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The National School Boards Association scrubbed its letter, which compared the actions of concerned parents at school board meetings to those of domestic terrorists, from its website.
The deleted National School Boards Association (NSBA) letter, addressed to President Joe Biden’s administration, sparked outrage and backlash from parents across the country for requesting federal government intervention. The letter suggested the use of statutes, such as the USA PATRIOT Act, to stop threats or violence directed toward school board members over actions that it said could be “the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes,” according to the Sept. 29. letter.
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed State Representative Jerry Sexton to the newsmakers line to weigh in on a recent stay ruling against the Tennessee General Assembly law banning school mask mandates.
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The Spotsylvania County School Board has rescinded a vote to begin removing explicit books from its libraries just a week after unanimously passing the motion. The 5-2 vote came after public outcry and an hours-long public comment period.
“I admit that we may have made a hasty vote to remove sexually explicit materials without the appropriate discussions about what was already in our policy,” member Lisa Phelps said in WFVA video of the meeting.
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An influential Georgia state senator, who is running for lieutenant governor in 2022, says he believes states like his own that used drop boxes to collect absentee ballots last year should audit the surveillance video tapes that were installed at the voting locations to ensure no shenanigans occurred.
“All those drop boxes that were sent throughout Metro Atlanta, you can’t police them if you wanted to, so it just made it ripe for bad actors to game the system,” Republican state Sen. Burt Jones told Just the News in an interview this week.
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Wisconsin Representative Thomas Tiffany (R-WI-07) joined the effort to nullify the Biden Administration COVID vaccine mandate. Tiffany said, “Overreaching federal vaccine mandates will affect 80 million Americans.”
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After defending its employee over the weekend, Old Dominion University (ODU) said Tuesday night that has placed Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology Allyn Walker on leave.
“Old Dominion University has placed Dr. Allyn Walker on administrative leave, effective immediately, from their position as assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice,” the school said in a statement. “Reactions to Dr. Walker’s research and book have led to concerns for their safety and that of the campus. Furthermore, the controversy over Dr. Walker’s research has disrupted the campus and community environment.”
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A Wisconsin school district allegedly concealed information regarding children’s gender identity from parents, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday.
A 12-year-old girl was pulled from public school after the district began a ”social transition,” which the complaint says involves “presenting to others as the opposite sex, primarily by adopting a new name and pronouns,” against the parents’ express wishes, according to the lawsuit against the Kettle Moraine School District filed Nov. 17 by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) and the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) on behalf of two sets of parents.
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The incoming governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia hailed public safety, funding the police and preserving qualified immunity for law enforcement officers as pillars of his election victory and his new administration a November 17 talk at the Republican Governor Association annual meetings in Phoenix.
“Let’s fund law enforcement, and oh, by the way, let’s protect qualified immunity, which protects law enforcement from frivolous lawsuits,” said Governor-elect Glenn A. Youngkin, who takes office January 15.
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Madison Metropolitan School District will continue their coronavirus protocols into the spring semester, according to a release from the district’s superintendent.
The measures, which require students and faculty to continue to wear a mask at all times, have remained in place since the beginning of the school year.
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Despite the fact that jurors have been deliberating for two days in the trial of accused killer Kyle Rittenhouse, Wednesday was still a contentious day inside the Kenosha County Courthouse.
Twelve jurors, chosen at random by Rittenhouse himself, will continue to deliberate Thursday, their third day of working to decide the 18-year-old’s fate.
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Senator Amanda Chase (R-Chesterfield) has announced her candidacy for Virginia’s Seventh Congressional District. On Wednesday, she made multiple radio talk show appearances and held a press conference in the Virginia capitol.
“We need a specific type of demographic to beat Abigail Spanberger. I am a suburban mom from Chesterfield, and that determines who wins in the seventh district,” Chase said on the John Fredericks Show. “I know the people of the seventh. I’ve worked for all the winning congressmen. It was my job to get them reelected. And so I know how to do it.”
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Recent data released by Visit Florida regarding the third quarter of 2021 saw the number of U.S. travelers to Florida exceed the numbers from the same three-month period in 2020, and in 2019, while international travelers slowly make their way back to the state.
The number of domestic travelers in quarter three of 2021 was 31.204 million, 55.3% more than quarter three of 2020. With other countries loosening their COVID-19 border policies, the number of overseas and Canadian travelers was 1.226 million and 85,000, respectively, which toppled 2020 quarter three data by 604.1% and 512.3%, respectively.
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Monthly polling of Arizonans shows Independents have shifted to align more with Republicans in terms of handling the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since the pandemic-related mitigations began in early 2020, registered Independent voters in Arizona have treaded evenly between Republican opinions on how to mitigate the spread of the virus and those of Democrats.
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Western Michigan University has granted religious exemption requests to student athletes who sued the taxpayer-funded school after it vowed to kicked them off their teams for refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
A trial judge previously issued an injunction, later upheld by a federal appeals court, prohibiting the student athletes’ removal from the football, baseball, women’s basketball, women’s soccer, dance team, and cross-country programs.
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The Minnesota Department of Agriculture has a program apparently designed to provide resources and financial aid to every group of people except white men.
The new members of the “Emerging Farmers’ Working Group” were announced last week. The group is comprised of 19 members selected by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture who will find ways to provide resources to “farmers or aspiring farmers who are women, veterans, persons with disabilities, American Indian or Alaskan Natives, members of a community of color, young, and urban, and any other emerging farmers as determined by the commissioner.”
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The Ohio Public Employees Retirement System claims Facebook violated federal securities law and purposely misled the public in a lawsuit filed to recover investor losses of more than $100 billion, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said.
The lawsuit Yost filed on behalf of the state retirement system and Facebook investors says Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg and other company officials knew they were making false statements regarding the safety, security and privacy of its platforms.
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A new gun control proposal by Democratic lawmakers in Florida looks to require a background check each time an individual purchases or transfers ammunition.
The legislation, SB 334 and HB 181, is an attempt to tackle a “loophole” in Florida Statutes that only requires a background check before the purchase of a firearm and does not require any further review.
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Michigan State Senator Tom Barrett (R-Charlotte) on Monday officially launched a campaign for Congress in an expected competition against incumbent Democrat Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI-08).
Barrett, who has served in the Armed Services, pledged to stand up to President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate for service members. The mandate served as a factor for Barrett to leave the Army after 21 years.
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Members of the Georgia Senate and the Georgia House of Representatives’ Majority Caucuses released a proposed Congressional Redistricting Map Wednesday that, if passed into law, will influence the state’s political landscape for the next 10 years. But certain members of the political right are displeased with it.
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The Florida House passed HB 1B in its special session yesterday, ensuring businesses would be penalized if they require an employee gets a vaccine mandate. The bill was largely passed along party lines, however, one Democrat, Rep. James Bush (D-FL-109) joined Republicans by voting in the affirmative.
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A Chinese national who has been living and studying in Los Angeles has been accused of stalking and harassing a Minnesota college student. Ki Cheung Yau, age 27, has been arrested and charged with cyberstalking. Yau posed as the victim and created several accounts in their name, “including social media platforms, dating websites, and pornography websites, using the name, photos, and personally identifying information of the victim.”
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The Atlanta City Council passed a new pilot program that will provide direct, monthly cash payments to certain residents of the city.
The initiative, entitled Income Mobility Program for Atlanta Community Transformation (IMPACT), will award a stipend of $500 per month for up to 12 months to individuals who qualify.
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Arizona State Rep. Teresa Martinez (R-Maricopa) is calling for Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs to drop out of the governor’s race due to firing a staffer while at the Arizona Legislature. Talonya Adams won a multimillion dollar jury verdict against the legislature for racial discrimination by Hobbs, her former boss, last week, the second lawsuit she’s won in the case. A jury found that Adams was fired in 2015 because she complained that her relatively lower pay was the result of racial and sex discrimination.
Martinez told The Arizona Sun Times, “I think it’s horrible that we have an elected state official who would have such behavior toward any race. I think anyone running for statewide office should look at people based on the content of their character, not the color of their skin. For this woman to win two lawsuits where two courts found her showing racism — she should not be considered for any post in the state of Arizona, including the one she has now.”
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Representative Bryan Steil (R-WI-01) reacted as the Rittenhouse jury nears a verdict during the second day of deliberations. Steil condemned the unlawful actions in Kenosha in August of 2020 and expressed that people need to act in a “lawful manner” as the verdict is released.
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A federal judge halted a new Tennessee law that prohibits COVID-19 mask mandates in schools on the basis that it violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), but the language of the law shows otherwise.
That judge, Waverly Crenshaw, presides over the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee.
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Tennessee Governor Bill Lee on Wednesday made a nationwide pitch to law enforcement officers to relocate to Tennessee and join the state’s law enforcement agency.
In the video, Lee detailed the benefits of moving to the state for officers who live in Democrat-controlled states like New York and California.
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Like travel agents preparing customers for a cruise, nonprofits working with the Biden administration have created detailed itineraries and information packets to help illegal aliens travel to wherever they want to go in the U.S., according to documents obtained by a Texas congressman.
Often courtesy of American taxpayers struggling to pay their bills during surging inflation, illegals are given free quality hotel rooms, plane tickets and transportation to the airport, travel maps, and instructions to TSA to bypass photo ID requirements, according to the documents shared with Just the News.
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After The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday to keep its stay of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) emergency rule that would require employers of more than 100 employees to mandate COVID-19 vaccines in place, the federal agency says that it will no longer pursue private sector vaccine mandates at this time.
“On November 12, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit granted a motion to stay OSHA’s COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing Emergency Temporary Standard, published on November 5, 2021 (86 Fed. Reg. 61402) (“ETS”),” OSHA said in a statement. “The court ordered that OSHA ‘take no steps to implement or enforce’ the ETS ‘until further court order.’ While OSHA remains confident in its authority to protect workers in emergencies, OSHA has suspended activities related to the implementation and enforcement of the ETS pending future developments in the litigation.”
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Metropolitan Nashville’s (MetroNashville) Council, the legislature for the city of Nashville and Davidson County, is currently preparing to consider a second draft of the its newly revised Council-district map.
A number of Nashville Council’s 35 districts stand to change dramatically, particularly with districts losing land mass in the city’s northeast, as population growth there has not kept pace with the city’s southern area.
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Whatever else can be said about the FBI’s vendetta against James O’Keefe and Project Veritas, his investigative journalism enterprise, it is a useful reminder of two things: 1) that we increasingly live in a two-tier society in which the lower tier can expect the arbitrary intrusion of all the coercive elements of the state, and 2) that the fundamental legitimacy of many important American institutions is draining away rapidly like a full bathtub that is suddenly unplugged.
Scott Johnson at Powerline has an excellent summary of the case thus far.
Last Thursday, the FBI conducted a raid against two former employees of Project Veritas.
A few days later, they conducted a dawn raid against O’Keefe himself. It was the full monty.
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The Williamson County School Board voted to purchase 25 new school busses for the 2022 school year. The board met Monday night, where they discussed the school’s need for the new vehicles.
During the meeting, it was said that due to the country’s supply chain shortages, the school board decided that it was best to order the buses now. Superintendent Jason Golden added that it was because of their current busses age and millage.
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Nashville Mayor John Cooper announced in a press release the new director for the Nashville Department of Transportation. Diana Alarcon will begin her new position on January 10. Cooper said he was grateful for Alarcon to be taking over the position.
“With her deep experience in guiding cities through important periods of transportation and infrastructure growth,” Cooper said, “Diana’s leadership will be central to creating Nashville’s own mobility future.”
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A private Christian school in West Tennessee has triggered LGBTQ activists as well as Shelby County Commissioner Tami Sawyer into an angry frenzy.
Officials at Briarcrest Christian School, in Eads, held a training session for parents and students about how to respond Biblically to gender theory. A flyer for the event, which school officials held November 9, asked participants to “look into the craziness our culture is throwing at our kids.”
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A new poll released Monday shows that President Donald J. Trump is the overwhelming choice of Iowa Republicans with support from 56 percent of respondents compared to 12 percent supporting Florida Ronald D. “Ron” DeSantis in the poll conducted November 3 through November 5, and November 8 and 12, by Neighborhood Research and Media.
Neighborhood Research and Media asked participants: “If the 2024 Iowa Caucus were today, who would be your first choice for president?”
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On Saturday, a meeting of the Wyoming Republican Party led to the passage of a resolution expelling Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) from the party and no longer recognizing her as a member, as reported by CNN.
The resolution was passed by the Wyoming GOP Central Committee, by a vote of 31 to 29. Although the measure does not actually wield any direct power over Cheney, it marks the latest symbolic blow to the incumbent representative as a result of her frequent anti-Trump statements, which have all but eroded her popular support in her own state.
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In his most recent column, George Will, dean of serious American political commentators and high priest of Trump-hate, broke new ground in the reconciliation of buyer’s remorse over last year’s election and visceral aversion to Donald Trump. Will counseled Joe Biden’s entourage to tighten the cocoon that protects him from journalistic scrutiny or any form of spontaneity in public, lest Trump be reelected in 2024.
I have agreed with Will on almost everything between the 1964 and 2016 elections, and we have been cordial acquaintances for 40 years, although among its other regrettable side effects, the Trump phenomenon seems to have paused contact between us. George Will now purports to believe that the disappearance of Trump, which he had assured himself and his readers was inevitable if it were only possible to evict him from office last year, is necessary for the restoration of two-party rule.
With respect, I offer an alternative view. Trump is instrumental in the restoration of two-party rule.
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The budget reconciliation package pushed by Democrats creates a new expanded child tax credit (CTC) that would pay illegal immigrants some $10.5 billion next year. All immigrants with children are eligible, regardless of how they got here and whether their children are U.S.-born. This includes the roughly 600,000 unaccompanied minors and persons in family units stopped at the border in FY2021 and released into the country pending a hearing. Cash welfare to illegal immigrants is not just costly; it also encourages more illegal immigration.
Although it is referred to as a “refundable credit,” the new CTC, like the old additional child tax credit (ACTC) it replaces, pays cash to low-income families who do not pay any federal income tax. The new program significantly increases the maximum cash payment from $1,400 per child to $3,600 for children under 6, and to $3,000 for children ages 6 to 17. After 2022, the maximum payment would be $2,000 per child, but advocates hope the much larger payments will be extended.
In an analysis conducted in October, my colleague Karen Zeigler and I estimated that illegal immigrants with U.S.-born children would receive $8.2 billion from the new CTC. However, we had assumed that the new program, like the old ACTC, would require children claimed as dependents to have Social Security numbers (SSNs). But reconciliation (page 1452, line 14) would permanently repeal this requirement.
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President Joe Biden’s approval rating has dropped to its lowest level since taking office.
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll found that Biden’s approval rating has plummeted in recent months among steadily rising inflation, a difficult withdrawal from Afghanistan, and other economic issues.
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Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt on Tuesday sued one of the state’s largest school districts, alleging it has violated open records laws in an effort to thwart public disclosure of critical race theory training materials for teachers and curriculum for students.
Schmitt’s lawsuit charges the Springfield Public Schools with 13 counts of violating the state Sunshine Law that include charging exorbitant fees for records. The move comes a day after Just the News reported that the school district’s training materials suggested teachers could be engaged in white supremacist behavior just by insisting on English language in classes, calling police on a black suspect or using the term “All lives matter.”
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Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and the Arizona National Guard did respond to queries from The Arizona Sun Times regarding whether Arizona would follow the lead of Oklahoma and its National Guard decision not to enforce the Pentagon’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
A source familiar with the Arizona National Guard’s vaccine policy told that commanders in the Arizona National Guard have already begun ordering troops to get the vaccine.
The source said based on their understanding of the internal dynamics of the Arizona Guard Ducey could reverse this vaccination push and follow Oklahoma’s lead.
While Ducey remains silent, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, now running for the 2022 GOP Senate nomination, sued the Biden administration twice over the mandate.
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Investment bank JP Morgan filed a complaint against Tesla late Monday alleging the electric car company owes the firm over $162 million.
The complaint centers on stock warrants, financial instruments allowing a buyer to purchase shares at a set price within a certain length of time, that JP Morgan bought from Tesla in 2014. The two firms agreed to a “strike price” at the time of purchase, and they agreed that if Tesla’s share price exceeded the strike price within the agreed-upon length of time, the electric car company would have to give JP Morgan stock or cash equivalent to the difference in prices, JP Morgan said in the complaint.
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President Joe Biden is struggling to win in court as well as the court of public opinion when it comes to his response to COVID-19.
Biden’s approval rating on his handling of the pandemic has steadily dropped as he has issued more vaccine mandates, with one of those mandates seemingly dead in the water.
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed official guest host Grant Henry in studio for another edition of Grant’s Rants.
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