Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman announced the launch of a program ‘MN HEALS 2.0’ on Tuesday morning following several letters asking him to address the crime surge. “The crime rates experienced in our communities in 2021 have raised important questions and concerns about approaches to prevention, law enforcement and prosecutions,” Freeman said.
Read the full story
A Democrat U.S. Senate hopeful from Ohio declared his support for a Cleveland Starbucks store, which aims to become the retail giant’s first unionized coffee shop in the state.
“Something big is brewing in Cleveland. Congratulations and solidarity to the workers taking this critical step to get the fair treatment and respect you deserve,” Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH-17).
Read the full story
A former member of the women’s swimming and diving team at the University of Minnesota has sounded the alarm against the inclusion of biological men in women’s athletics.
On Dec. 19, Jenna Stocker published an article in National Review that called transgender athletes an “affront to the fairness of sports.”
“Nothing has threatened the future of sports more than transgender integration,” she said.
Read the full story
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer will deliver the annual State of the State address remotely, according to a release from her office.
The top executive detailed the event, scheduled for January 26, will be held virtually “to ensure everyone can safely partake” during the coronavirus pandemic.
Read the full story
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (D-CA-23) vowed to remove a Minnesota congresswoman from her House Foreign Affairs Committee assignment if Republicans take back the lower chamber of Congress in 2022.
“The Democrats have created a new thing where they’re picking and choosing who could be on committee. Never in the history have you had the majority tell the minority who could be on committee,” McCarthy told Breitbart.
Read the full story
Iowans are waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for businesses with at least 100 employees. In the meantime, they’re moving ahead with actions of their own.
Iowa Department of Education Communications Director Heather Doe told The Center Square in an emailed statement that since Iowa is a state-plan state, the Iowa Division of Labor typically enforces workplace safety in Iowa instead of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The state is required to notify OSHA whether it will adopt a given Emergency Temporary Standard or provide notice it will not adopt it because its standards are as effective as the new federal standard. Iowa needed to respond to the standard by Jan. 7.
Iowa Labor Commissioner Rod Roberts did so, saying that the Hawkeye State will not adopt or enforce the mandate.
Read the full story
Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake unveiled a border security plan aimed at circumventing the federal government through the creation of an interstate compact.
Titled “Defend Arizona: We will do what Washington will not,” her plan will bring states together to use Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution to “declare their territories as under invasion and declare it their sovereign right to secure the borders of the United States.” Lake told The Arizona Sun Times, “The people of Arizona and the people of this country are dying to have real solutions to bring sanity and the security back to the border.”
Read the full story
Democrat Jackie Glass will represent Virginia’s 89th house district. According to preliminary results in a Tuesday special election, Glass received 75.11 percent of the votes while Republican Giovanni Dolmo got 24.68 percent in a battle to replace former Delegate Jay Jones (D-Norfolk), who announced his resignation in December.
Read the full story
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Tuesday called for a nationwide ban on ballot harvesting. Ballot harvesting permits private individuals to collect other voters’ ballots and then submit those ballots to various polling stations.
Read the full story
State Senator Mike Bell (R-Riceville) and State Representative Michael Curcio (R-Dickson) introduced a bill on Monday to award funding to families impacted by school closures or various COVID mandates.
The legislation, SB1647/HB1671, would award vouchers to parents who choose to relocate their child to a different school because of the issues.
Read the full story
Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles on Monday delivered a bold and unconventional message not only to his employees but also to Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) bureaucrats concerning that agency’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Ogles said that the county will not submit.
Read the full story
Weston Wamp, son of former Tennessee Republican Congressman Zach Wamp, is running for mayor of Hamilton County, and he said Monday he is not his father concerning the latter’s views on former U.S. President Donald Trump.
This, after The Tennessee Star asked Weston Wamp one question about his father and another question concerning Trump.
Read the full story
Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) on Monday called for bipartisanship to address challenges facing Americans over the course of the new year.
In an opinion piece published by The Hill, Hagerty outlined issues, like historic inflation or the border crisis, and urged Democrats to work with Republicans to find solutions.
Read the full story
One-party rule and the destruction of an effective opposition might seem like a counterintuitive goal for “democracy journalists” pushing the “voting rights” legislation. But democracy journalists have been refreshingly candid in their goal to destroy competitive opposition in order to “save democracy.” Don’t believe me? Read below how these self-appointed heroes of democracy explain that nullifying their political opponents will preserve democracy from election results that contradict their political views.
This campaign has gone on for a long time in one form or another. But the New Republic offered this opinion piece early in the 2020 election season, “End the GOP—In order to save our democracy, we must not merely defeat the Republican Party.” Osita Nwanevu wrote:
“We cannot afford to wait the GOP out; its power is not a problem to be worked around. The only way to take on the problems posed by the Republican Party is to take on the Republican Party itself. The forces of demographic change and structural reforms must be joined with direct action. . . . We must wrest that choice back and set the country forward. We must end the GOP.”
Read the full story
A bill introduced in late December by a member of Tennessee’s House of Representatives would mandate that only paper ballots can be used for voting.
House Bill 1662 would mandate. “the use of paper ballots instead of voting machines, and would require such ballots to have a non-visible, non-producible security feature such as a watermark, fluorescence, or digital hologram changed from election to election to prevent fraudulent duplication,” and would also allow poll watchers to video record proceedings at polling locations, according to a Monday press release.
Read the full story
Republicans in the Tennessee General Assembly will reportedly create multiple congressional districts to represent Nashville, and this move will likely benefit the GOP. This, as state legislators redraw new Congressional maps to comply with required redistricting.
Read the full story
Emory University’s student-led law review is facing a revolt by contributors for demanding that one drop “insensitive language” from a “hurtful and unnecessarily divisive” critique of the concept of systemic racism.
Two contributors confirmed to Just the News they withdrew their essays from a forthcoming “festschrift” issue honoring the work of Emory’s Michael Perry, in protest of Emory Law Journal’s attempt to censor an essay by the University of San Diego’s Larry Alexander.
Alexander told Just the News that he, USD’s Steve Smith and Northwestern’s Andrew Koppelman are now publishing their essays in the Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues, which he edits.
Read the full story
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger says he supports a national law that bans ballot harvesting, the third-party gathering and delivering of absentee ballots for voters.
“One thing that I do think we need is to make sure that nationwide there should be a law that bans ballot harvesting,” the Republican politician said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “I don’t think that ballot harvesting is good. The only person that should touch your ballot is you and the election official. So I think that’s one solid election reform measure.”
Ballot harvesting is legal in some states but not in Georgia.
Read the full story
Lanhee Chen, an educator and GOP policy adviser to presidential candidates, could have reconsidered his plans to run for state controller in California after the recall election against Gov. Gavin Newsom flopped so badly in September.
Despite false poll-driven drama over the summer, Newsom easily sailed to victory in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly two to one and Republican registrations have continued to dwindle in recent years.
Chen, 43, certainly doesn’t need the unglamorous and usually thankless job. In recent years, the statewide-elected controller post, California’s top bean-counter and auditor, has mainly operated outside the media spotlight even though the office holder is considered the state’s chief financial officer. That could change if the next controller is willing to shake up business as usual in Sacramento— exactly what Chen is pledging to do.
Read the full story
Indiana may effectively ban Critical Race Theory (CRT) tenets from being taught in public schools and universities.
Senate Bill 167, which is sponsored by seven Republican lawmakers, states that no “state educational institution” can “engage in training, orientation, or therapy” that includes stereotypes on the basis of “sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, [and] political affiliation.”
The state senate bill was read Jan. 4. A House version, House Bill 1040, has been introduced but makes further provisions that prohibit the teaching that “socialism, Marxism, totalitarianism, or similar political systems are compatible with the principles of freedom upon which the United States was founded.”
Read the full story
For the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is acknowledging that comorbidities are behind a vast majority of deaths from the virus.
“The overwhelming number of deaths – over 75 percent – occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities, so really these are people who were unhealthy to begin with,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, said on “Good Morning America.”
Read the full story
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) plans to crack down on private companies, forcing them to disclose financial and operation statements more frequently, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Regulators have grown more concerned over the lack of oversight regarding private fundraising for companies, the WSJ reported. The private investment market has become a popular way for companies to raise money without undergoing the regulatory scrutiny required for public trading.
“When they’re big firms, they can have a huge impact on thousands of people’s lives with absolutely no visibility for investors, employees and their unions, regulators, or the public,” SEC Commissioner Allison Lee told the WSJ. “I’m not interested in forcing medium- and small-sized companies into the reporting regime.”
Read the full story
Nashville Mayor John Cooper held a live-streamed press conference on Monday to outline Metro’s latest COVID response. Cooper, Dr. Alex Jahangir, chair of Metro’s COVID taskforce; Dr. Gill Wright, who directs Nashville’s public health department; and Director and Chief William Swann, of Emergency Management and Nashville Fire Department, all spoke during the conference.
“Cases here are rising quickly, and we know the Omnicron variant spreads easily. Even more easily than previous variants,” the mayor said.
Read the full story
Vanderbilt University announced last week that the CDC awarded the school $10.7 million in grants towards studying the effects of the COVID vaccine. The money will boost the IVY Research Network, which was originally created in 2019 to study the flu vaccination.
The statement from the school said this was the third renewal with IVY (The Influenza and Other Viruses in the Acutely Ill) Research Network, which consists of 21 large adult hospitals in 21 U.S. cities, funded by the CDC and led by Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Read the full story
The Small Business Administration is not taking action against its partner lenders that issued billions of dollars in fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program forgivable loans, Just the News has learned.
Congress appropriated almost $1 trillion in forgivable PPP loans to assist businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Approximately 15% of the $961 billion is projected to have been obtained fraudulently, according to a study.
A House of Representatives panel estimated that $84 billion in PPP funds was issued fraudulently.
Read the full story
The majority of Americans believe members of Congress should be banned from trading stocks while in office, according to a new poll.
Among a sample of Americans likely to vote in general elections, 76% believed lawmakers should not be allowed to trade stocks, according to a Trafalgar Group/Convention of States Action poll first reported by The Hill.
Just 5% of respondents approved of lawmakers trading stocks, and 19% had no opinion.
Read the full story
The controversial new District Attorney for Manhattan, New York City has ordered his prosecutors to stop seeking harsh sentences against murderers and terrorists, including life sentences without the possibility of parole.
The Washington Free Beacon reports that District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D-N.Y.) issued a memo on January 3rd prohibiting his staff from pursuing sentences such as life in prison, and even went so far as to suggest that they never pursue sentences any harsher than 20 years behind bars.
“My commitment to making incarceration a matter of last resort is immutable,” Bragg said in the memo. “In exceptionally serious cases such as homicides where lengthy periods of incarceration are justified, ADAs shall consider the use of restorative justice as a mitigating factor in determining the length of the sentence, only when victims or their loved ones consent.”
Read the full story
Comedian Bob Saget passed away Sunday at the age of 65 in an Orlando, Florida hotel room, TMZ reports.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Office reports that detectives on the scene “found no signs of foul play or drug use in this case.”
Ritz-Carlton Hotel security reportedly found Saget in his room and called emergency personel. Saget was pronounced dead on the scene, and his death is still under investigation.
Saget is remembered for starring as host of “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and as father Danny Tanner in “Full House.”
Read the full story
Erec Smith is an associate professor of Rhetoric and Composition at York College of Pennsylvania. After experiencing cancel culture 2019, he has since become an advocate for viewpoint diversity, especially in the Black community.
In a June 2021 “On the Media” podcast, Smith discussed the incident that led him to be “canceled” in higher education.
He spoke to WNYC Studios’ Shamed and Confused podcast about “Feeling ‘canceled’ in Academia,” and was featured in a December 2021 segment on Reputation.Erec Smith is an associate professor of Rhetoric and Composition at York College of Pennsylvania. After experiencing cancel culture 2019, he has since become an advocate for viewpoint diversity, especially in the Black community.
In a June 2021 “On the Media” podcast, Smith discussed the incident that led him to be “canceled” in higher education.
He spoke to WNYC Studios’ Shamed and Confused podcast about “Feeling ‘canceled’ in Academia,” and was featured in a December 2021 segment on Reputation.
Read the full story
The liberal justices on the Supreme Court demonstrated a stunningly weak grasp of basic facts concerning the COVID-19 pandemic Friday, as they defended the Biden regime’s policies during oral arguments over vaccine mandates in the workplace.
The court heard separate oral arguments over federal vaccine mandates for employers with more than 100 employees, and for health care workers at facilities receiving Medicaid and Medicare funding.
Justice Stephen Breyer at one point seemed to suggest outrageously that the OSHA mandate would prevent 100 percent of daily US COVID cases. It is common knowledge now that the vaccinated people can still spread the disease.
Read the full story
Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Kingsport City, Tennessee School Board President Jim Welch to the newsmaker line to discuss his background and how his view on non-partisan school board members.
Read the full story
The Big Insight: Regulatory changes could help alleviate a trucker shortage making our supply chain problems worse.
There are many causes of the ongoing supply chain slowdowns impacting the U.S., but one of them is a shortage of truckers, who move the bulk of goods to stores and consumers. Many jobs are being posted, but onerous certification and age requirements are preventing some of them from being filled.
Read the full story
Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Metro Nashville School Board candidate Kelli Phillips for District Four to the newsmaker line to discuss her first priority and why she’s running.
Read the full story
Less than 40% of Americans view the coronavirus as a top-five issue to address in 2022, a new poll shows.
The Associated Press-NORC survey found that just 33% of Americans labeled virus concerns as a top issue, down 16 points from a year ago. On the other hand, 68% of respondents said that the economy was the top issue on which to focus this year, with subtopics ranging from inflation to unemployment and the national debt.
The results come as inflation has hit a multi-decade high and supply chain bottlenecks continue to affect Americans’ lives. However, it also comes as the Omicron coronavirus variant has fueled daily case counts near record-highs, with the U.S. now averaging over 650,000 new infections per day.
Read the full story
The founder and CEO of the Sarasota, Florida, based Cyber Ninjas told The Star News Network that politically-motivated reporters let their bias taint their coverage of his company’s audit of the ballots from the 2020 presidential voting held in Maricopa County, Arizona.
One of the frustrating parts of his effort to be open and transparent with the public was the constant twisting of facts and events by journalists, who were opposed to the audit from the very beginning, despite their protestations that they were objective, said Doug Logan, the Guilford College, Greensboro, North Carolina, graduate, who founded the company in 2013.
Read the full story
The City of Portsmouth has settled with Senator Louse Lucas (D-Portsmouth) in her lawsuit against former Chief Angela Greene and Sergeant Kevin McGee, with the city agreeing to pay Lucas $300,000, according to a Greene press release. In June, Lucas sued Greene and McGee for $6.75 million after the police department filed felony charges against Lucas over her alleged involvement in the destruction of the Portsmouth confederate monument in June 2020.
A court dismissed the charges and Portsmouth fired Greene. Lucas’ lawsuit alleges that Greene and McGee committed malicious prosecution, defamation, false imprisonment, and gross negligence. In a statement Friday, Lucas said she’d donate the funds to charity.
Read the full story
New findings from the University of Florida (UF) show the omicron variant’s sweep through Florida will likely peak around mid-January 2022. The findings also showed the newest variant will likely result in fewer deaths due to being the least severe of the COVID variants.
Read the full story
The Founder and CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the cybersecurity firm tapped by the Arizona State Senate to audit Maricopa County’s 2020 presidential election tallies, told The Star News Network his company shut down because the Republican-controlled State Senate did not fulfill its contractual obligations to the firm.
“At the end of the day, this is the call of Senator Fann,” said Doug Logan, speaking of Arizona State Senate President Karen Fann. Logan told employees in early December that the company would close its doors unless the State Senate fulfilled its contractual obligations.
Read the full story
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost rejected a citizens’ petition on a proposed law that would support vaccine choice and privacy for the second time because it did not contain enough verified signatures.
Yost originally turned down the submission last month. It proposed the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Choice and Anti-Discrimination law that would require the state to protect the privacy and freedom of Ohioans in their ability to refuse vaccinations or gene therapy.
The proposed law would require the state to protect Ohioans’ privacy regarding vaccination choice from vaccine registries and discrimination, provide transparency, reinforce schools must honor vaccine choice and privacy, protect Ohio businesses honoring vaccine choice and provide legal recourse for vaccine choice and privacy violations.
Read the full story
Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed the mayor of Waverly, Tennessee, Buddy Frazier to the newsmakers line to recount the damage of the city’s August 21st flooding and ongoing recovery efforts.
Read the full story
The state of Iowa on Friday sued the city of Sioux City regarding discharge of wastewater.
In the lawsuit, the state asks the Iowa District Court for Woodbury County to make the city pay up to $5,000 per day of violations of state wastewater treatment regulations (Iowa Code section 455B.186(1), 567 Iowa Admin. Code 64.3(1)) and the city’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit. It seeks a permanent injunction preventing Sioux City from further violations of these state laws and the treatment permit requirements.
The state said that for periods between March 15, 2012, and June 8, 2015, Sioux City’s treatment facility would only properly disinfect water discharges on days it collected and submitted samples for E. coli contamination to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, the lawsuit said.
Read the full story
Iowa Senate leaders have decided press will no longer have seating at the press bench at the front of the Senate chamber floor.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, most state legislatures allowed access to the chamber floors, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures April 2019 state-by-state report on media access and credentialing.
“Media access to the people who make laws is a critical component of representative government,” the Iowa Capitol Press Association said in a statement Friday. “Primarily for this reason, the Iowa Capitol Press Association is extremely disappointed in the Iowa Senate’s decision to move reporters out of the press work stations on the chamber floor and into the upstairs gallery.”
Read the full story
Wisconsin GOP gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Kleefisch collected more than $3 million during the first four months of her effort to defeat Governor Tony Evers, according to a release from her campaign.
Kleefisch hauled in approximately $3.3 million during the fundraising quarter, a number that outpaces previous campaigns for the state’s top position.
Read the full story
A Genesee County judge denied Attorney General Dana Nessel’s request to overturn a Nov. 19 order that Michigan stop using documents that might violate attorney-client privilege until reviewed by independent investigators.
The Associated Press first reported the story.
Emails obtained by the conservative Michigan Rising Action show Nessel’s prosecutors were warned they acquired records protected by attorney-client privilege when they gained access to as many as 20 million documents related to the Flint Water Crisis.
Read the full story
In 1995, Minneapolis saw a record-setting 97 homicides. Operating by the strict definition of a homicide as an event where one person intentionally kills another, there were 97 homicides in the city last year.
The final homicide of 2021 occurred just hours before the new year as a 15-year-old boy was gunned down in north Minneapolis. No arrests have been made. The shooters are believed to have fired from a vehicle.
Some homicides, like the killing of Winston Smith in June, were justified and non-criminal. Technicalities aside, most share a concern about the high number of murders in 2021.
Read the full story
Former Republican senator and current Georgia gubernatorial candidate David Perdue on Monday published a Georgia Parents’ Bill of Rights that he said protects children from overzealous school administrators. Perdue’s proposal borrows from federal legislation that U.S. Senator Josh Hawley(R-MO) proposed last year.
Read the full story
Republicans in Virginia’s newly-redistricted seventh congressional district voted to hold a primary for the nomination of their candidate to challenge likely Democratic nominee incumbent Abigail Spanberger (D-Virginia-07.) At the Saturday morning meeting, the Seventh Congressional District Republican Committee also adjusted their leadership to compensate for shifts due to redistricting; they picked Caroline County GOP Chairman Jeff Sili to lead the committee until they elect a new chairman in the spring.
“It’s like offering the vote to the whole state. Also, a primary provides lots of data to both parties,” Susan Sili told The Virginia Star.
Read the full story
Yesterday, a Pennsylvania House of Representatives panel passed a series of redistricting and election reforms, including a bill establishing a citizens’ commission for redrawing legislative districts.
The redistricting bill, sponsored by Rep. Seth Grove (R-PA-York), chair of the House State Government Committee which vetted the measure, would ditch the current process for creating legislative-district maps. Such maps are drawn anew every decade in response to population shifts revealed by the U.S. Census. Presently, a five-member Legislative Reapportionment Commission (LRC), made up of Republican and Democratic leaders from both state-legislative chambers and chaired by an appointee of the state Supreme Court, oversees district remapping.
Read the full story
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA-23) on Monday endorsed congressional candidate Juan Ciscomani in the race to represent Arizona’s new 6th Congressional District.
Ciscomani, an advisor to Governor Doug Ducey on the Arizona-Mexico Commission, is a native of Southern Arizona and looking to fill the vacant seat, following the retirement of Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ-02).
Read the full story
The campaign for U.S. Representative and Democratic candidate in Florida’s 2022 gubernatorial race Charlie Crist announced $670,000 raised in December to round out 2021 and make his starting cash on hand for 2022, $3.8 million.
December fundraising numbers for Crist’s campaign were initially reported by Florida Politics on Tuesday, prior to official numbers being released by the Florida Elections Commission (FEC) late Monday. The actual number was $670,833.25.
Read the full story