Former Tennessee Speaker of the House of Representatives Beth Harwell announced Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy her candidacy for the Republican nomination for Tennessee’s Fifth Congressional district.
Harwell, a Tennessee resident for more than thirty years, was the first woman to serve as the Speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives.
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Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine has already left at least 40 Russian soldiers and “a few” Ukrainian civilians dead as of Thursday, multiple sources reported.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” in Ukraine early Thursday as air strike sirens rang in Kyiv and Russian missiles reportedly struck multiple cities across the country.
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Country music singer-songwriter and Nashvillian John Rich testified before the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee Wednesday regarding legislation dealing with pornographic and obscene material in K-12 Tennessee schools.
According to the sponsor of HB1944, Representative Scott Cepicky (R-Culleoka), alluding to the turmoil expressed across the state, the bill creates a process to deal with such materials that have found their way into classrooms and libraries.
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Representative Dave Wright, the Tennessee House sponsor of legislation that would establish three-year residency requirements for Congressional and Senate candidates running in Tennessee, motioned to roll his bill back for consideration by one week in the House Elections & Campaign Finance Subcommittee.
Wright said that he intends to amend the bill to have the three-year residency requirements, an effective date of one day after this year’s November general election, and an exemption for incumbents at the next scheduled subcommittee meeting.
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In a Metro Nashville School Board (MNSB) meeting that turned heated Tuesday night, one of the school board members directed a curse towards parents.
Parents who attended the meeting – but were not allowed to speak – cheered when the board voted seven to one in favor of ending the school system’s mask mandate on March 21, when students return from their spring break.
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Congressman Tim Burchett (R-TN-02) on Tuesday argued that President Joe Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal laid the foundation for Russian leader Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine.
The Ukraine-Russia conflict has reached a boiling point amid weeks of increasing tensions. In an address to Russian citizens, Putin recognized the “independence” of two regions in Ukraine. Following the speech, he ordered troops into the regions to keep “peace.”
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Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Metro Nashville School Board member Fran Bush to the newsmakers line to recap Tuesday night’s mask vote.
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A study released last week has found more than one in three children in grades K-3 are unlikely to be reading on grade level by the end of the current school year unless they receive major remedial help.
Curriculum and assessment company Amplify analyzed data from more than 400,000 students in kindergarten through fifth grade and found that, while students have begun to rebound from the learning loss suffered during school closures amid the coronavirus pandemic, considerable gaps remain in basic reading skills, Education Week reported.
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The National Cornbread Festival is set to return this year after being canceled the past two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This year’s festival will be held in South Pittsburg on April 23rd and April 24th.
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Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael in studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
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There is always a tweet, so says the online aphorism, developed during the chaotic Trump years, that now seems to hold true across administrations and perhaps even with increased significance after a Russian strongman decided to invade an eastern European neighbor over the holiday weekend.
The Russian in question is Vladimir Putin. The country invaded, Ukraine, or more specifically the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics that Russia recently recognized diplomatically. And the tweet, well, that came from Joe Biden.
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Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed National Political Editor for The Tennessee Star, Neil W. McCabe to the newsmaker line to comment upon Morgan Ortagus’s upcoming fundraiser contributors and the current Republican strategy.
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Tennessee Congressman Jim Cooper (D-TN-05) told CBS News this week that it’s in Democrats’ best interests to befriend rural voters.“There are other things we could do for rural voters, but primarily it is a values question, Senator [Daniel Patrick] Moynahan said ‘The central conservative truth is that culture trumps politics. The central liberal truth is that politics eventually can change culture,’” Cooper told the network.
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A conservative group in Michigan is duking it out in court with Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) claiming that the elected official allowed money from Silicon Valley titan Facebook to have a partisan impact on the state’s 2020 elections.
“This is what happened in 2020,” co-founder of the Michigan Conservative Coalition Marian Sheridan said in a press release. “Zuck Bucks, which is private money, was used by elected officials through public entities to promote voting, but only promoted among selected potential voter groups. Not to all citizens. Every voter should have received the benefit of a fair portion of the funds unfairly used by elected officials. They cannot selectively promote anything.”
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A new poll in the Arizona gubernatorial race shows Trump-endorsed Kari Lake still far ahead of other Republican candidates in the race, and the only Republican beating the Democratic frontrunner, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, in the general election. Arizona-based pollster Data Orbital found that Lake has 36.5% of the support of Republicans, with her nearest competitor Matt Salmon at 13%.
“President Trump knows how to pick winners, and new polling proves the President was correct, once again,” Lake said in a statement. She told the Arizona Sun Times, “This is a huge poll. These fools have been saying I can’t win in the general election, when this poll shows THEY can’t win. First poll released that shows general election match ups.”
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A proposed amendment requiring parental involvement when gender and sexuality issues arise at schools was withdrawn after LGBTQ advocates argued that informing parents would be dangerous to students.
The amendment, sponsored by Republican Representative Joe Harding, required school officials to facilitate a meeting between a student and parents to disclose child-specific information.
The amendment states that the “school principal or his or her designee shall develop a plan, using all available governmental resources, to disclose such information within six weeks after the decision to withhold such information from the parent.”
Florida Representative Carlos Smith (D – Orlando), an outspoken LGBTQ advocate, said the amendment would “make it even more dangerous for vulnerable kids with a STATE-MANDATED outing of LGBTQ students to parents, specifically in cases of abuse, abandonment + neglect. This will have devastating consequences for our youth..”
This position – that parents should not be notified when these issues arise – has been adopted through policies in many school districts throughout Florida via LGBTQ guides.
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A small liberal arts college in St. Peter, Minnesota, has canceled a de facto non-whites-only appreciation lunch following a federal civil rights complaint and a report by Alpha News.
Gustavus Adolphus College intended to hold its “People of Color & International Faculty and Staff Appreciation Lunch” on Friday, Feb. 25, but Mark Perry, a man who has filed civil rights complaints against more than 400 colleges and universities since 2018, caught wind of the event and took swift action against it.
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Democrat-controlled Senate committees have been killing House Republican bills, blocking policy changes on elections, guns, and the environment. More bills on education, abortion, and taxes are set to be heard in committees that have already killed similar Senate bills. However, even if those bills are killed, some of them still have a chance to be included in the budget.
“There’s still a lot of time left, we got the budget document we’re working on. A lot of our funding opportunities are in the budget,” House Majority Leader Terry Kilgore (R-Gate City) told The Virginia Star. “A lot of these bills that we’re talking about are in the budget. We took out RGGI [Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative] in our budget.”
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Three U.S. Senators who this week endorsed Ohio Republican candidate Jane Timken for U.S. Senate are silent after The Ohio Star reached out to ask about Timken’s alleged mismanagement of Ohio Republican Party (ORP) funds.
Tuesday, Senators Joni Ernst (R-IA), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) and Deb Fischer (R-NE) endorsed Timken in the hotly contested primary race that includes candidates J.D. Vance, Mike Gibbons and Josh Mandel.
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Democrats celebrated and Republicans demurred Wednesday after the Democrat-controlled Pennsylvania Supreme Court selected the state’s new congressional map.
In so doing, the court overturned a decision earlier this month by Commonwealth Court Judge Patricia A. McCullough (R) to allow implementation of a redistricting plan passed by the GOP-led General Assembly but vetoed by Governor Tom Wolf (D). The initial version of the legislature-approved map was drawn by a private citizen, Amanda Holt of Lehigh County, though legislators modified her plan somewhat.
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The Wisconsin Assembly approved multiple pieces of legislation focused on education-related issues, sending the bills to the Wisconsin Senate for full legislative approval.
One of the bills is a “parental bill of rights” that would establish certain legal rights for parents throughout the state, like maintaining a voice surrounding education curriculum taught to their child or choice in medical decisions.
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Georgia gubernatorial candidate David Perdue on Wednesday released a new campaign ad that highlights former U.S. President Donald Trump’s endorsement. According to a statement, Perdue’s advertisement will run across the state with a $600,000 buy.
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The Senate Finance Committee killed a bill that would have blocked the City of Richmond from holding another casino referendum, after voters voted against a casino proposal in 2021. The bill would have granted the opportunity to build the casino to nearby Petersburg instead, and some committee members expressed a desire to study the potential implications of a Petersburg casino. The February 10 vote against the bill left the door open for Richmond to try again, and take the last of five casino licenses in Virginia. Now, Senator Joe Morrissey (D-Richmond) is pushing to block Richmond through a budget amendment.
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NRCC targeted Democrat incumbent U.S. Representative Elissa Slotkin has a towering financial advantage in the race for Michigan’s 7th Congressional District seat.
Slotkin has raised $3,476,331.42 for the 2022 election cycle and is currently sitting on $4,508,719.04 cash on hand. Republican state Senator and U.S. Army veteran Tom Barrett has raised $311,971.14 with $254,171.87 cash on hand. Barrett declared for the race in November of 2021.
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The Florida Senate is set to hear HB 7065, a priority piece of legislation for Florida House Speaker Chris Sprowls (R-Palm Harbor), that would designate $70 million for addressing Florida’s “fatherhood crisis.”
The Senate Appropriations Committee recently approved the bill and full Senate consideration is its next stop.
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Connecticut Senate Republicans are proposing measures to help stem the tide of drug overdose deaths, particularly from fentanyl.
Senate Republican Leader Kevin Kelly, R-Monroe, told the The Center Square the opioid epidemic is a public health and safety crisis in the state.
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The Los Angeles Association of Deputy District Attorneys (ADDA), a union which represents the vast majority of Los Angeles County prosecutors, voted overwhelmingly to support the recall of District Attorney George Gascon.
Gascon, who received over $2 million in financial backing from left-wing financier George Soros according to The Los Angeles Times, is currently facing a recall petition spurred by backlash to his perceived lenient stance on crime.
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Newly uncovered federal grant documents show that the U.S. Department of Education awarded roughly $2.5 million in taxpayer dollars to a Florida-based education program that trains future teachers and other professionals in, among other things, critical race theory.
The funding came through two grants, one in 2017 and another in 2021. Both grants went to faculty at Florida State University, which has partnered with Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University.
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According to Hans Rosling “Critical thinking is always difficult, but it’s almost impossible when we are scared. There’s no room for facts when our minds are occupied by fear.” The American Psychological Association indicates the use of fear to influence behavior is effective, especially among women. For fear to be a successful change agent, it must be viewed as a legitimate warning about what will happen if behavior does or does not occur.
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President Joe Biden suggested that Americans may be negatively impacted at the pump as a result of a sanctions package targeting Russia he unveiled Tuesday.
“As we respond, my administration is using every tool at our disposal to protect American businesses and consumers from rising prices at the pump,” the president remarked at the White House on Tuesday. “As I said last week, defending freedom will have costs for us as well and here at home. We need to be honest about that.”
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Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib will deliver a response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Tuesday on behalf of the left-wing Working Families’ Party.
News of her speech, first reported by Politico, comes weeks after Democratic moderates have slowed much of Biden’s domestic agenda, much to the chagrin of their colleagues further to the left. According to a summary of the remarks obtained by the outlet, Tlaib is expected to hammer the moderates responsible for the obstruction, which all but killed Biden’s plan to boost domestic spending and fight climate change.
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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Wednesday signed into law three bills aiming to reduce the price of prescription drugs.
“I am proud to sign this bipartisan legislation that helps us lower the cost of prescription drugs,” Whitmer said in a statement. “For too long, unlicensed pharmacy benefit managers have been able to engage in practices that drive up costs for Michiganders whose lives and health depend on critical prescription drugs like insulin. This bill brings much-needed transparency to our healthcare system and is a testament to what we can do when we put Michiganders first.”
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Election integrity issues from the 2020 presidential election have yet to be resolved, “so we are not ready for 2024,” Phill Kline, Director of the Amistad Project, warned on Monday.
Kline was asked by “Just the News, Not Noise” TV show cohosts John Solomon and Amanda Head if election integrity issues had been solved after the 2020 election. “No, we still have many of the same problems,” he replied, explaining that this is “because the legislatures have not taken the time to understand the problem.”
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Mortgage applications plummeted to their lowest level in three years as rates continued to edge higher, hitting home buyers and refinancers.
Mortgage applications decreased 13.1% in the week ending Feb. 18, the lowest level since December 2019, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Application Survey. The survey, which measures mortgage loan application volume, found refinancing activity decreased 15% on a weekly basis and was 56% lower than the same period one year prior.
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Former Director of National Intelligence and the first openly gay cabinet member in U.S. History, Ric Grenell, has endorsed Morgan Ortagus for Tennessee’s 5th Congressional district seat.
Prior to redistricting, Grenell had endorsed Robby Starbuck but he has pulled that endorsement. Both the Ortagus campaign and the Starbuck campaign have confirmed that Grenell’s previous endorsement of Starbuck was pulled.
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