On Nashville’s Morning News, host Mandis spoke with Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton regarding the proposed $500 million bond for a retractable roof on Titans Stadium and its benefits for Nashville and the state.
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A bill that would strip some funding from schools who break Tennessee’s new law on transgender athletes Thursday passed the Tennessee State House of Representatives.
“I’m very pleased that the House passed this legislation and I’m confident the Senate chamber will pass it as well. It’s illogical to think sporting competitions involving speed, strength and endurance with males competing against females is a fair contest,” State Rep. John Ragan (R-District 33), the primary sponsor of the bill, told The Tennessee Star Friday.
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The Twitter account known as Libs of Tik Tok featured a video of a Florida first-grade teacher bemoaning how she can possibly proceed with teaching the six-year-olds in her class when the state’s new Parental Rights in Education Act prevents her from discussing personal details about her “marriage” to a “trans-fem person.”
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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Carol Swain in studio to talk about her book signing today at the Puffy Muffin in Brentwood from 3 pm to 4 pm.
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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed former House Speaker and TN5 Congressional GOP Candidate, Beth Harwell to the newsmaker line to weigh in on the residency bill lawsuit and running a campaign today.
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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Carol Swain in studio to talk about her Be Truthful event in Bismark, North Dakota.
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Gino Bulso, an attorney and resident of Williamson County, on Friday launched his campaign to represent the people of District 61 in the Tennessee House of Representatives.
Bulso runs his own law firm in Brentwood and has lived in the area for more than two decades.
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They’re not exactly schools, but they’re not homeschools either. They have elements of structured curriculum and institutional learning, while offering maximum educational freedom and flexibility. They provide a consistent, off-site community of teachers and learners, and prioritize abundant time at home with family. They are not cheap but they are also not exorbitant, with annual tuition costs typically half that of traditional private schools.
Hybrid schools are, in the words of Kennesaw State University Professor Eric Wearne, the “best of both worlds,” drawing out the top elements of both schooling and homeschooling while not being tied too tightly to either learning model.
Wearne studies hybrid schools and is the director of the National Hybrid Schools Project which seeks to better understand this educational approach and why it’s been gaining popularity in recent years. Wearne joined me on this week’s episode of the LiberatED Podcast to talk more about hybrid schools and how they are reshaping American education.
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A bill that will change the funding mechanism for Tennessee’s public schools passed the Legislature on the final day of session on Thursday.
Senate Bill 2396, known as the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement, could set up a new formula for Tennessee’s schools to be funded beginning in the 2023-24 fiscal year.
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The Biden administration released documents Thursday that endorse children and adolescents with claims of gender dysphoria to experience “gender-affirming care,” including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and body-mutilating transgender surgeries, including elective double mastectomies and castrations.
Biden appeared in a video endorsing transgender treatments and surgeries for children.
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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Dr. K. to the newsmaker line to give his thoughts and predictions on the Final Four.
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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Tennessee State Representative (R-TN-20) Bob Ramsey to the newsmaker line to discuss HB946 and comment on the proposed budget for Titans Stadium.
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U.S. District Judge Mark Walker wrote a decision striking down parts of an election integrity bill passed by the Florida Legislature and signed into law by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) last year. The provisions that were struck down were the parts that limited the use of ballot drop boxes to voting hours and requiring a third-party to issue a warning to potential voters that their registration application might not be turned in before the voter registration deadline or within the required 14 days.
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An appellate court this week upheld a lower court’s ruling that a local bakery was defamed by Oberlin College, a private liberal arts schools in Ohio.
In 2019, Oberlin was ordered to pay the maximum of $11 million in compensatory damages, $33 million in punitive damages, plus more than $6 million in attorneys fees to Gibson’s Bakery, a town staple that had served students at the school for generations, and even had a contract to sell some of its products to the school.
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Governor Glenn Youngkin launched the Safe and Sound Task force to create safe placements for children in foster care, and said that from February 1 through July 30 2021, 163 children spent at least one night in unsuitable arrangements such as local social services departments, hotels, and emergency rooms.
“It is unacceptable that last year over 150 children in foster care spent the night in places that just simply are not meant for kids. When this challenge came to our attention, my administration knew we had to act swiftly to ensure that every child has a safe place to belong,” Youngkin said in a Friday press release.
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Georgians soon could be able to carry guns outside their houses without a license.
The Georgia House voted, 100-67, Wednesday in favor of Senate Bill 319 to eliminate the need for a permit. Currently, Georgians must obtain a firearms license, which costs about $75 but may vary by county.
The “constitutional carry” measure now returns to the Senate to consider changes the House made to the bill. A similar piece of legislation, House Bill 1358, is pending in the state Senate.
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Minnesota saw more deaths that were wholly attributable to alcohol in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic than in the previous three years, Minnesota Department of Public Health data show.
“The majority of alcohol-attributable deaths are related to chronic conditions that develop after many years of excessive drinking,” MDH Public Information Officer Erin McHenry told The Center Square in an emailed statement Wednesday.
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Small businesses worry about the power of larger corporations in the marketplace, but they’re also unhappy with the subsidies and tax breaks big businesses get from the government.
A survey of independent small businesses published by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance showed that small businesses perceive a business climate that favors bigger companies. A majority of respondents were retailers, and businesses had an average size of 15 employees.
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Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, interviewed veteran Washington reporter and editor John Solomon about the stories he broke about corruption in Ukraine, many of them involving the Biden family, for The Hill newspaper.
Although, there was a newsroom protest against Solomon, who as a news columnist had more latitude than staff reporters, an editorial review of his articles showed that all of them were factual.
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Jurors in the case against four Michigan men accused of plotting to kidnap Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer are hearing closing arguments Friday, starting with a prosecutor urging them to convict and arguing the defendants were “filled with rage.”
The closing arguments are being delivered by Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler in federal court in Grand Rapids, according to the Associated Press.
Defendants Adam Fox, Barry Croft Jr., Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta are charged with conspiracy.
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Connecticut’s plan to reduce the pain at the gas pump for its residents took effect Friday.
HB 5501 passed the state legislature last week. It, like laws in many other states, provides for a gas tax holiday as prices at the pump continue to hover at near record levels.
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A lawsuit contends negligence on the part of Grand Ledge Public Schools caused the death of a Michigan fourth grader.
Attorney Steve Kallman filed the suit Tuesday on behalf of the family of Malachi Williams. The suit alleges the school district is at fault for the death of the 9-year-old student.
Williams died after he was struck by a GLPS school bus while riding his bicycle in a crosswalk in front of the school at 3:17 p.m. on May 17, 2021.
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Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs has come under fire for her handling of the electronic system used to collect online signatures for political candidates, E-Qual. The system was not updated to accommodate new redistricting, which has made it very difficult for campaigns to collect enough signatures in time to make the ballot this fall. On March 17, Hobbs took the entire system offline, making it impossible to collect any signatures at all online, so Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich asked Cochise County Attorney Brian McIntyre on March 29 to “investigate and take any appropriate enforcement actions (civil and criminal).”
McIntyre told the Arizona Sun Times, “I can confirm that we have received the request and begun the investigative process.”
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Ian Flanigan hails from Hudson Valley’s Catskill Mountains in upstate New York, not far from the site of the famed Woodstock festival.
But where you might remember him is from Season 19 of NBC’s The Voice.
I wanted to find out how he got from there to The Voice and now living just outside of Nashville.
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The Transportation Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security announced new, gender-neutral security measures Thursday.
The TSA will update its advanced imaging technology (AIT) at airport checkpoints with the help of $18.6 million from Congress, according to a press release shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. The new AIT system will be gender-neutral.
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President Joe Biden asked Congress to hit oil companies with fines for not producing energy on permitted leases as part of his sweeping plan to address U.S. energy prices.
“Today, President Biden is calling on Congress to make companies pay fees on wells from their leases that they haven’t used in years and on acres of public lands that they are hoarding without producing,” the White House said in a fact sheet on Thursday.
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Sarah Palin, the Alaskan original who made Momma Grizzly Bears a political term of art as governor and then as the GOP’s first female vice presidential candidate, is officially making a political comeback.
Palin, 58, announced Friday night she will run for the open House seat vacated in Alaska by the death of longtime Rep. Don Young.
“Public service is a calling, and I would be honored to represent the men and women of Alaska in Congress, just as Rep. Young did for 49 years,” Palin said in her announcement. “I realize that I have very big shoes to fill, and I plan to honor Rep. Young’s legacy by offering myself up in the name of service to the state he loved and fought for, because I share that passion for Alaska and the United States of America.
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Three Democratic senators joined Republicans on Wednesday to kill the nomination of David Weil to head the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, Politico reported.
In a final vote of 47-53, the Senate chose not to move forward with considering Weil’s nomination after intense criticism from Republicans over his tenure in the Obama administration, Politico reported. Arizona Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly, along with West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, were the only Democrats to vote against Weil.
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The U.S. economy recorded an increase of 431,000 jobs in March as COVID-19 concerns ease and more Americans seek work to combat the surging cost of living.
Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 431,000 in March while the unemployment rate dipped to 3.6%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Economists surveyed by Dow Jones predicted the U.S. economy would add 490,000 jobs.
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The spread between 10-year treasuries and 2-year treasuries, a leading recession indicator whose inversions have predicted almost all of the U.S. economic recessions in modern history, on March 31 inverted for the first time since Sept. 2019.
When the 10-year, 2-year spread inverts, a recession tends to result on average 14 months afterward, sometimes sooner, sometimes later. The one time there was a head fake on the 10-year, 2-year was in the mid-1990s at a time when inflation was much lower Visit Site than it is now.
As an aside, potentially the Sept. 2019 inversion might have ended up being a premature indicator, too, but then Covid and global economic lockdowns in early 2020 went ahead and ensured a recession even if one was not due. On the other hand, at that point it had been 11 years since the prior recession and so the business cycle was going to end sooner or later.
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With many of his executive orders enshrined into law, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has opted to end the state’s COVID-19 emergency declaration.
The governor terminated the declaration as thresholds set by state agencies show the threat of the disease is nowhere near what it once was.
“Thanks to the hard work of many – health care workers, businesses, public and private sector employees – COVID-19 is no longer an emergency in Arizona,” Ducey said. “This virus isn’t completely gone, but because of the vaccine and other life-saving measures, today, we are better positioned to manage and mitigate it.”
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Nashville Mayor John Cooper’s chief of staff told The Tennessee Star she thinks it’s great that T.J. Ducklo, the Biden White House press secretary, fired for threatening a White House reporter with: “I will destroy you,” joined the mayor’s staff. “T.J’s experience and energy will be a valuable addition to our team, and we are thrilled to have him on board,” said Chief of Staff Jennifer Rasmussen-Sagen. The mayor’s office did not issue a press release, but in addition to the statement from Rasmussen-Sagen, Bradon Marshall, the mayor’s digital director, told The Star he was happy Ducklo was coming home. “T.J. made a mistake, for which he apologized and paid the consequences. He’s good at what he does, and we are excited to have him back in Nashville,” he said. Marshall also told The Star that Ducklo would have the full authority and discretion expected with his job. “T.J. will serve in the full role of chief communications officer, including working with reporters,” he said. Vanity Fair reported Feb. 12, 2021, that Ducklo had a direct and robust conversion with Politico reporter Tara Palmeri on Inauguration Day after she and another reporter reached out to him about his intimate relationship…
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