Noting that the case departed significantly from that of other police killings in Hennepin County, a judge sentenced former Brooklyn Center Police officer Kimberly Potter to 24 months in prison, with the instruction for her to serve two-thirds of that sentence, or a total of 16 months.
“This is a cop who made a tragic mistake,” Judge Regina Chu said just before sentencing Potter. “She drew her firearm thinking it was her Taser and tragically killed a young man.”
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Minnesota GOP Rep. Jim Hagedorn has died after a two-year battle with kidney cancer, according to a statement Friday morning from his wife.
The 59-year-old had served in the House since 2019, winning a district that his father, Tom Hagedorn, represented in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
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As President Joe Biden visited and spoke in Ohio Thursday, notable Democratic elected officials from around the state were not in attendance.
According to the Ohio Republican Party (ORP), Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley, also a U.S. Senate candidate, was not in attendance for Biden’s speech. Neither was Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) or Representative Tim Ryan (D-OH-13). Ryan, too, is running for U.S. Senate.
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Nashville Metro Council appointed a radical Leftist trans-activist to the Community Oversight Board at its February 15, 2022 meeting.
Metro Council had two community organization nominated vacancies to fill at their last meeting and they appointed appointed Maxine Spencer, a radical Leftist trans-activist nominated by far-Left community organizing group Workers’ Dignity, to serve a term that will expire on January 31, 2025. Michael Milliner, nominated by NAACP-Nashville was also appointed.
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Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Clint Brewer in studio to comment upon recent Triton polling for the Mayoral race in Rutherford County, Tennessee.
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Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed State Representative Diana Harshbarger (R-TN-01) of East Tennessee in-studio to talk about funding her campaign and working in Washington.
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Hillary Clinton’s never-ending shenanigans in 2015-2016 could be summarized as an attempted slow-motion coup.
Four years of national hysteria, a divided nation, and dangerous new tensions with Russia were some of the wages of Clinton’s machinations.
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Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed in-studio guest Clint Brewer to discuss the recent New York state voting record information obtained by The Tennessee Star for Morgan Ortagus.
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Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Clint Brewer in-studio to discuss SB2616 proposed by Senator Frank Nicely that would require state primary election candidates to have three-year residency status.
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Pro-life legislation pending before Tennessee’s General Assembly that would prohibit Local Education Associations (LEA) or public charter schools from doing business with abortion providers continues through the legislative process in the state House, where it has been referred to the Senate Education Committee after passing on second consideration.
State Senator Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald) originally filed SB2158 in state Senate. State Representative Debra Moody (R-Covington) has sponsored the state House companion version, HB2557 and it is continuing to make headway in the House.
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The conservative activist whose tagline is “Make Kindness Great Again” is bringing his #ThePersistence vibe to his tour of Ohio in support of Republican James B. “Jim” Renacci’s gubernatorial campaign.
“Well, I’m not on a bus tour, but I am in a rental vehicle traveling this state of Ohio, and I’m driving myself. I’m not living a fancy life with a chauffeur,” said Scott Presler, who worked as a dog walker and also for a Northern Virginia school system before he dedicated himself to electing Donald J. Trump president in 2016. “I take care of my own business, but I started in Medina, Ohio, doing a Super Bowl, anti-Woke party with Jim Renacci running for governor.”
Presler said he is traveling all over the state to get the word out before the May 3 primary, when Renacci faces Gov. R. Michael DeWine.
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At a Pennsylvania House Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday, the panel’s GOP majority grilled the state’s chief economic-development official on the damage inflicted by COVID-related business restrictions.
In March 17, 2020, Governor Tom Wolf (D) responded to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus by ordering the shuttering of all businesses he deemed “nonessential.” The commonwealth phased out most of the closures that summer, though capacity restrictions on restaurants and other gathering places continued into 2021. Republicans in the General Assembly attempted to end the shutdowns but did not have the two-thirds supermajority needed to override the governor.
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Blackstone Inc. bought out Preferred Apartment Communities and the 12,000 apartments it owned in the Southeast for $5.8 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Blackstone is one the world’s largest commercial property owners, and it purchased the Atlanta-based apartment owner with its largest fund, which raised more than $50 billion in the last five years, according to the WSJ.
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Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed State Representative (R-TN-46) Clark Boyd to the newsmakers line to talk about rural broadband issues and his cybersecurity bill.
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A lawsuit filed against Democrat Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson asserts she illegally accepted private money for the 2020 presidential election to swing the election for President Joe Biden.
The Chicago-based Thomas More Society filed the lawsuit in the Michigan Court of Claims, alleging Benson violated election law by spending private election funding on partisan purposes that denied Michigan voters’ constitutional equal access voting rights.
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A new poll, conducted by the Trafalgar Group, showed Governor Brian Kemp and U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker leading in their respective Republican primary races.
The survey, which spoke to 1,072 likely GOP primary voters, measured opinion on the Senate and gubernatorial races, in addition to efforts of local leaders in Buckhead to separate from the City of Atlanta.
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The Florida State House approved a ban on abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy Thursday morning, adding to the list of Republican-led states that have modeled legislation after the Mississippi law that has been challenged and is now awaiting a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.
HB 5, titled “Reducing Fetal and Infant Mortality,” which prohibits physicians from performing abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, passed the Florida House by a vote of 78-39 following hours of debate.
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After a group of parents sued Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) for forcing students to continue wearing masks despite Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) issuing executive order banning that practice, LCPS declined to comment on the situation.
Wayde B. Byard, LCPS’ public information officer, told The Virginia Star Thursday that the only comment he could offer was already made by Superintendent Scott Ziegler.
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America Pack, a grassroots movement “built to empower citizens to hold elected officials accountable, advocate for honest elections, support law enforcement, and fight for freedom and liberty,” has issued a list of its most important bills this session in the Arizona Legislature. The topics primarily address election integrity, education, and COVID-19. They must be scheduled to be heard in a committee by Feb. 18, or they will die.
Election Integrity – House Government and Elections Committee
HB 2023, sponsored by State Representative Mark Finchem (R-Mesa) with several co-sponsors, requires digital images of ballots to be posted publicly online after elections.
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Acting mayor Cavalier Johnson and former alderman Bob Donovan will advance to the Milwaukee mayoral general election, after the individuals gathered the highest support in the Tuesday primary election.
Johnson collected 42 percent of the vote in the low-turnout contest, compared to Donovan’s 22 percent.
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Former President Donald Trump on Thursday backed state-level legislation that would end crossover voting in Wyoming primary elections.
The bill, introduced by State Senator Bo Biteman (R-Ranchester), would prevent an individual from changing party affiliations on the day of the primary elections.
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Lisa Hanson, a small business owner who was jailed for violating COVID-19 restrictions imposed by Governor Tim Walz, will run for a Minnesota Senate seat.
She will campaign in a new district that covers Freeborn County and parts of Mower, Faribault, Waseca, and Steele counties.
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Thursday morning on The Tennesse Star Report, host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Clint Brewer in studio to compare and contrast the current Tennessee Republican Party bylaws and proposed SB2616 by Senator Frank Niceley.
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Long before FBI computer contractor and Clinton operative Rodney L. Joffe allegedly trolled Internet traffic for dirt on President Trump, he mined direct-marketing contact lists for the names and addresses of unwitting Americans to target in a promotional scam involving a grandfather clock.
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The Arizona redistricting process has made Democrat U.S. Representative Tom O’Halleran even more vulnerable to a Republican challenger.
Prior to redistricting, Representative O’Halleran’s then-AZ-1 had a partisan rating of R+6 according to the website FiveThirtyEight. After redistricting changed boundaries and district numbers, O’Halleran is running in AZ-2, which is now rated a R+15.
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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) submitted a second round of maps for congressional redistricting earlier this week. It comes as the redistricting process has been stalled in the Florida Legislature.
The most controversial part of DeSantis’ first submission was the inclusion of boundaries eliminating District 5 as it currently stands, held by Congressman Al Lawson (R-FL-5), which stretches from Tallahassee to Jacksonville along Florida’s northern boundary with Georgia.
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U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at the Port of Lukeville arrested an Arizona man for attempting to smuggle approximately 1,000 pounds of methamphetamine and fentanyl across the Arizona-Mexico border.
According to a statement from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Phoenix man loaded 880 pounds of meth and 110 pounds of fentanyl in his Roadmaster RV; however, the drugs were detected by a narcotics canine.
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A renowned constitutional scholar said what is happening now at the southern border does constitute an “invasion” under the U.S. Constitution.
“The kind of organized entry that we are seeing now where you got some of the gangs down in Mexico facilitating it and getting paid to put people across the border, that does qualify as an invasion even when no arms are involved,” Rob Natelson, the Independence Institute’s senior fellow in constitutional jurisprudence, said.
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On Thursday, Florida House Representative Allison Tant (District-9, Tallahassee) appeared on The Steve Stewart Show on RealTalk93.3 to discuss the 2022 Florida legislative session.
Tant’s district covers most of downtown Tallahassee and the northern Tallahassee metropolitan area. The district includes Florida State University and the Florida State Capitol. A large college and urban population coupled with a significant number of state employees makes the district an easy win for Democrats. In 2020 Tant beat her Republican opponent by 15%.
As an elected official, Tant, who is a former chair of the Florida Democratic Party, must work with Republicans who control the Florida House. Tant noted that there are “more things that we agree on than we disagree on. It’s just that the splashy issues get all the attention.”
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Sixteen Democrats and two Republicans in the Georgia State Senate filed legislation this week that would, if enacted into law, allow political candidates to use campaign funds on childcare and other caregiving expenses. Senator Nikki Merritt (D-Grayson) is the primary sponsor of the bill, SB 523. On Thursday she did not return The Georgia Star News’ requests for comment.
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Members of a Fulton County grand jury have indicted a former top-ranking state official for allegedly and repeatedly lying that she was pregnant just so she could take advantage of the Family and Medical Leave Act. That woman, Robin Folsom, 43, previously directed external affairs for the Georgia Vocational Rehabilitation Agency. This, according to a statement from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG).
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CHESAPEAKE, Virginia – The day after celebrating his first major legislative win, Governor Glenn Youngkin is anticipating a bigger battle over the budget. On Thursday, he began touring Virginia to tout his tax reduction plans and enlist locals across the commonwealth in an effort to woo legislators. He made stops in Leesburg, Chesterfield, and Chesapeake.
“Now, because we are where we are in our legislative cycle, now there’s another three weeks or so of work to be done. And I need your help,” Youngkin said at his Chesapeake stop to an audience of local politicians and business leaders.
“I need you to talk to your elected representatives. Talk to your delegates. Call your senators. Send them a note. We need to cut taxes,” he said.
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In Friday’s sentencing of former Brooklyn Center Police officer Kimberly Potter, prosecutors will ask the judge to sentence Potter to seven years in prison.
Earlier this week, Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office filed a motion asking that Potter serve 86 months – just more than seven years – for killing Daunte Wright last year.
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The Chairwoman of the Montgomery County School Board says she intends to keep her job after storming out of a meeting earlier this week and offering the position to speaker at the meeting.
“I have not resigned,” Sue Kass told The Virginia Star by email Thursday.
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The Special Forces warrant officer running to unseat renegade Washington Republican Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler in the 3rd Congressional District’s August 2 top-two jungle primary told The Star News Network he is fighting both Beutler and the Republican establishment in an exclusive interview Wednesday.
“I think we’re in the forefront of the Republican civil war because I’m going after an impeachment voter, so we’ve seen the I’d say GOP establishment try to quietly support Jamie Herrera Beutler along with four of the other impeachment voters,” said Joe Kent, who is a combat veteran of more than 20 years of Army service, including 11 deployments, mainly to Iraq.
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After previously being featured in a Music Spotlight column, Australian singer/songwriter Jasmin Bade released her new single, “Rent,” and its accompanying lyric video today with The Tennessee Star. “Rent” provides a bittersweet twist on the struggle to move on from a past relationship. Bade co-wrote the song with Emily Kroll, who penned the No. 1 hit “Just About Over You” by Priscilla Block, and Brian McKenna, son of Nashville songwriting legend Lori McKenna.
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A school board in Pennsylvania has voted to pull a daily on-demand CNN affiliate’s news program from the district’s middle school classrooms.
The Norwin school board voted Monday, by a vote of 5-4, to end mandatory streaming of daily news from CNN 10 to middle school homeroom classrooms.
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The Florida House and Senate have each passed HB 5001, known as Florida’s budget entitled “General Appropriations Act.” The total amount in Florida’s budget for the 2022-2023 Fiscal Year is $105 billion in the House version, and $108 billion in the Senate version.
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The Biden administration missed another deadline to hold quarterly onshore oil drilling lease sales after a federal court ruled it was legally required to do so.
The Department of the Interior (DOI) defied the June 2021 court ruling which ordered the administration to halt its ban on new oil and gas leases, the Western Energy Alliance — a fossil fuel industry group that challenged the ban — said Wednesday. In August 2021, the DOI vowed to publish notices of competitive sales in December and hold a lease sale 45 days later, two promises it failed to keep, in court filings.
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A court ordered that Loudoun County, Virginia Public Schools cannot enforce its mask mandate on students and will need to expunge students’ records if they had been punished for not wearing masks.
Loudoun County schools had intended to end the mask mandate Feb. 22, but the court order requires them to end it immediately. The school district immediately complied with the order and sent a letter to the school community, students and staff that explained the new policy.
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Several major media outlets have run stories over the past few days on the identities of individuals funding the “Freedom Convoy,” including names of donors that leaked during a hack of crowdfunding site GiveSendGo.
Hackers breached GiveSendGo late Sunday and leaked personal information of roughly 90,000 Freedom Convoy donors, including names, email handles, IP addresses and zip codes. The site hosting the leaked data provided it to “journalists and researchers” upon request.
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U.S. Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Texas, represented by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and the state of Texas are suing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, challenging the constitutionality of its requirement that people wear masks on commercial airlines, conveyances, and at transportation hubs.
The lawsuit is likely to go to the U.S. Supreme Court, TPPF said, where they think it will prevail. The statute being used to justify the CDC airline mask mandate is the same one used to justify the eviction moratorium over which TPPF sued and the Supreme Court struck down last year.
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The Biden administration announced Wednesday it will cancel $415 million in student debt for nearly 16,000 borrowers who claim they were misled by for-profit colleges.
The loans for almost 16,000 former students will be canceled under a legal provision called the borrower defense to repayment, which allows students to have their debts erased if they prove a for-profit school defrauded them, the Department of Education (DOE) said in a press release.
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Allowing law enforcement officers to sue for injuries or false claims suffered during riots became closer to becoming law in Ohio.
Democrats and other groups called the bill passed by the Ohio House an attack on free speech, however.
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The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday announced it would retain sole authority to issue airworthiness certificates and perform any final inspections on Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner aircraft.
Meanwhile, two members of Congress, including Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Everett, have asked for an investigation into why the FAA decided not to penalize Boeing for fatal crashes involving its 737 MAX.
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The Chinese government’s Confucius Institutes have steadily disappeared from American college campuses following concerns from lawmakers, law enforcement and academic freedom groups about spying, censorship and propaganda. Florida even banned them in legislation last year.
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A Minneapolis man who allegedly attempted to rape a woman in a downtown bathroom was bailed out by the Minnesota Freedom Fund and arrested three days later when he was caught masturbating in front of children.
According to Crime Watch Minneapolis, Gregory Jones, 28, was arrested on Christmas after being charged in a Nov. 8 attack on a woman at O’Donovan’s Irish Pub. Jones allegedly snuck up on a woman in the bathroom, put his hand over her mouth, grabbed her around the waist and dragged her backwards.
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The Ohio Redistricting Commission announced it will meet Thursday, the same day as a court-ordered deadline to submit its third effort at state legislative maps.
The meeting comes as the two Democrats on the commission have spent the past two weeks calling for meetings and after Republican State Auditor Keith Faber criticized Democrats for not calling a meeting themselves, despite commission rules that require both co-chairs to make the call.
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Tennessee State Rep. David Wright (R-19) told The Tennessee Star on Thursday he intends to amend the effective date of the House version of SB 2616 so that the effective date of the bill’s three year residency requirement to qualify as a candidate for a Congressional primary in the state from 2022 to 2024 because it would be “too confusing” to make it effective this year.
Representative Wright is the main sponsor of HB2764, the state House companion bill to Senator Frank Niceley’s Senate legislation establishing residency requirements for U.S. Senate and U.S. House candidates running in primaries.
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