Star News Network Chief Meteorologist Daphne DeLoren shares her Middle Tennessee Fresh Forecast for Thursday night and Friday.
Catch Daphne’s Fresh Forecast weekdays at 5pm and on demand.
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Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed the founder of the Pacific Justice Institute, Brad Dacus in studio to discuss their mission and the explosive growth of cases around the country.
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Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Clint Brewer in the studio to comment upon the taxpayer-funded Titan stadium deal.
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Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Roger Simon in studio to comment upon the New York governor debate displaying Governor Kathy Hochul’s denial to the city’s increase in crime and the problem in Pennsylvania.
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Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Clint Brewer in the studio to comment upon GOP momentum heading into the midterm elections and Pennsylvania US Senate candidate John Fetterman’s cognitive performance Tuesday evening.
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The campaign for the constitutional “right-to-work” amendment appearing on this year’s Tennessee election ballot has garnered vocal opposition from labor unions and other left-wing thought leaders. Supporters could have expected that. Less predictably, a Nashville-based Associated Press reporter railed against the effort this week.
In a Twitter post, AP writer Kimberlee Kruesi opined strongly against Governor Bill Lee’s pronouncements on the issue, characterizing them as “false” and “outrageous spin.”
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Tennessee U.S. Representative Tim Burchett (R-TN-02) introduced the Recycled Plastic Asphalt Act last week that would create a research program for using recycled plastic in asphalt.
Burchett said, “If we want to take care of our environment, we need to rely on more innovative green solutions than just wind and solar. Studying the real-world use of RPM asphalt will take us a step closer to building a cleaner infrastructure and a cleaner future.”
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Amid historic inflation that has eaten away at Americans’ paychecks, the mayor of Shelby County is calling for Tennessee’s General Assembly to pass a law increasing the minimum wage.
“Today, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris released his administration’s recommendations for the upcoming session of the Tennessee General Assembly,” said a release from Harris’s office. “Mayor Harris’ priorities center around legislative actions that support youth and families, increase public safety, improve access to healthcare, and strengthen our democracy. One of Mayor Harris’ top legislative priorities is the adoption of a state-wide minimum wage of at least $15.”
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A U.S. Senator from Tennessee slammed President Joe Biden for his open borders policies, and contextualized the amount of illegal aliens who will cross into the United States under the Biden administration.
“With an estimated 5,500,000 illegal border crossings so far, Biden is on track over a 4-year term to allow illegal immigration in an amount nearly double the entire population of Tennessee,” Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) said Tuesday on Twitter.
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“History doesn’t repeat itself,” said Mark Twain, “but it often rhymes.” This is among the reasons we look to the past, straining as best we can through the deepening fog of time to discern lessons for our own day. Analogies to the events that came before are always imperfect, but nevertheless often useful for understanding our present moment. Thus, only a historical myopia can explain why it’s become so common to describe the events involving the covid pandemic as “unprecedented,” even though pandemics have tended to occur every hundred years or so. This nearsightedness is also perilous given, for instance, the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset Initiative” and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s recent pledge to spend $200 million on developing international biometric-based digital identifications.
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The heads of the nation’s largest teachers’ unions had little to say following the release Monday of national test scores that showed massive declines in student math and reading achievement following pandemic school closures the unions insisted were necessary for teacher safety.
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association (NEA) “remained silent,” Fox News reported Monday as results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) revealed the damage tied to school closures during the COVID crisis.
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A former Memphis Police officer was sentenced to more than a decade in prison after pleading guilty to several crimes.
On January 24, 2020, former Memphis Police Officer Sam Blue 63, pled guilty to conspiracy to violate civil rights by using force, violence, and intimidation, and conspiracy to commit robbery affecting interstate commerce,” said a press release from the Department of Justice (DOJ). “On October 25, 2022, United States District Court Judge John T. Fowlkes Jr. sentenced Blue to 144 months in federal prison to be followed by three years’ supervised release. There is no parole in the federal system.”
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Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Rep. Tim Ryan (D-13) claims that he wants to label fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction” although he previously made a pledge to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 2019 to decriminalize all drug possession.
The long time Democrat has consistently opposed efforts to limit the flood of the deadly opioid into the United States and Ohio.
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Concerned voters are ramping up efforts to combat voter fraud, and one innovative election integrity company has created an app to report and share suspicious incidents. VotifyNow is a downloadable app that compiles nationwide reports from observers, such as voters in Arizona complaining about receiving unrequested ballots in the mail. On election day, the app will provide users with information about what incidents are being reported in their localities.
VotifyNow founder Johnny Vieira told The Arizona Sun Times, “Our mission is to restore confidence in elections. We spent the last 16 months developing VotifyNow using very smart code and algorithms to help voters accurately report suspicious incidents with the touch of just a couple buttons. We put this much time into our platform to help users avoid false flags and give them confidence knowing anything they report will be vetted thoroughly before ever being shared with others, unlike other groups and media out there.“
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A new report was released by the Beacon Center of Tennessee on Wednesday examining the return on investment for students and taxpayers at Tennessee’s public universities and colleges.
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Nashville’s East Bank Stadium Committee met Wednesday evening in the Council Chambers at City Hall to take its first critical look at the Tennessee Titans stadium proposal announced last week by Nashville Mayor John Cooper and the team.
The meeting was held a day after the team shared renderings of its new potential stadium, created by the same architectural firm that worked on Las Vegas’s Allegiant Stadium.
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A mail truck engulfed in flames in a Georgia county may have carried midterm absentee ballots up in smoke with it, state officials said this week.
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A jury found the Waukesha, Wisconsin, Christmas parade massacre’s perpetrator guilty of six counts of first-degree intentional homicide Wednesday in a weeks-long trial plagued by his pervasive interruptions.
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Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is ahead of his Democratic opponent, former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, by double digits in the state’s gubernatorial race, according to a new survey released on Wednesday.
DeSantis led Crist by 14%, earning the support of 55% of respondents over Crist’s 41%, according to the University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab, which conducted the survey. The poll, if correct, would mean a landslide win for DeSantis and a marked increase from his 2018 margin of victory over Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, which was 0.4%.
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Three men accused of supporting the plan to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer were found guilty Wednesday of providing “material support” for a terrorist act as part of a paramilitary group.
A Jackson, Michigan, jury also convicted Pete Musico, his son-in-law Joe Morrison and Paul Bellar of a firearms crime and being members of a gang, the Wolverine Watchmen, The Associated Press reported.
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A five-year plan to invest in small businesses in Connecticut is now a reality.
Connecticut will invest $46.6 million in the coming years that will help small business expansion through assistance programs across the state. Nonprofit economic development groups will receive the state grants, authorized at a recent Bond Commission meeting, that will assist small businesses with formation, growth and innovation.
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National Republicans now view the Minnesota gubernatorial contest as a potential pickup and are sending in reinforcements with two weeks to go before the election.
The Republican Governors Association (RGA) transferred $750,000 to a local group called Heal Minnesota Tuesday and more money could be on the way. Heal Minnesota placed an initial ad buy with WCCO.
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A paid “Mark Kelly for Senate” staff member is heard revealing to an undercover Project Veritas Action (PVA) journalist Kelly’s campaign deception strategy to “play both sides” of the abortion issue by saying “Mark Kelly is pro-life” when, in reality, he is not, in order to win over ‘Independents’ and ‘Moderate Republicans’ in Arizona.
In the video released Tuesday, Evynn Bronson of the Mark Kelly for Senate campaign – a Mission for Arizona field organizer – is recorded explaining to the undercover PVA journalist how to win votes from Independents and “moderate Republicans” for the Democrat senator by deceiving Arizonans on the issue of abortion.
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A Columbus-based think tank this week filed its legal response in the Ohio Supreme Court in defense of a Blue Ash man who believes the state cannot make him pay Cincinnati income taxes for a period of time he actually worked from home.
The Buckeye Institute argued that a state law passed in March 2020 to allow jurisdictions encompassing an “employee’s principal place of work” to levy taxes on that worker even when he or she works from home is unconstitutional. Specifically, the institute notes that the federal Constitution’s dormant commerce clause in Article I, Section 8 disallows states to enact statutes that “unduly burden interstate commerce.” Buckeye attorneys also believe the Ohio Constitution constrains lawmakers’ ability to broaden cities and towns’ tax-collection power.
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The Virginia Board of Social Work has changed licensing regulations making it easier for social workers licensed in other states to get licensed in Virginia.
“There is a critical shortage in Virginia of mental health professionals, and this is a significant step by the Board of Social Work to help address this shortage,” Governor Glenn Youngkin said in a Wednesday press release. “A priority of my administration is to reduce state regulations and regulatory barriers, and this action shows how regulations can be streamlined to remove barriers to practice with the goal of bringing more mental health professionals to the Commonwealth.”
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The majority of the audience from Tuesday night’s debate between Democratic Pennsylvania Lt. Gov John Fetterman and Republican challenger Mehmet Oz felt that Fetterman failed to perform, according to a new poll.
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The Virginia Department of Elections has awarded a $13.5 million contract to The Canton Group, which will build a voter registration system scheduled to go live in February 2025.
“As election technology and security requirements have increased, the need to replace our current voter registration system has become imperative. Due to the critical importance of this project, this procurement was subject to the state’s high risk requirements, including review by the Virginia Information Technology Agency and the Office of the Attorney General. There is broad support for replacing VERIS, and we were determined to obtain the best solution capable of serving the Commonwealth for years to come,” Commissioner Susan Beals said in a press release.
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Ohio recorded three-year decreases in scoring across the board for fourth graders and eighth graders in math and reading, respectively, according to a national study released this week.
The Nation’s Report Card, a product of the National Assessment of Educational Progress which began producing the report in 1969, cited an overall trend of decline in the United States. It comes in the COVID-19 era, when schools were closed by governments and students scrambled to learn remotely or get back into classrooms.
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Governor Glenn Youngkin is campaigning heavily for Virginia’s congressional candidates, with a focus on VA-02, VA-07, and VA-10, but he’s also stopping in other areas. On Wednesday morning, he attended a get-out-the-vote rally for Representatives Morgan Griffith (R-VA-09) and Ben Cline (R-VA-06), and by Wednesday evening, he was in Wisconsin supporting GOP gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels.
Youngkin’s Spirit of Virginia PAC, which has reported $4.75 million in contributions in 2022, announced his “Rally for Virginia Early Voting GOTV Tour” last week. The tour has 21 stops through November 7, including six stops supporting state Senator Jen Kiggans (R-Virginia Beach) for VA-02, seven stops for Yesli Vega in VA-07, and four stops for Hung Cao in VA-10. Youngkin’s also spending money to support the candidates; his Empowering Virginia Parents PAC has spent $414,147 in the three districts, according to The Virginia Public Access Project.
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Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) announced Tuesday that the AZ OnTrack Summer Camp (AOTSC) would receive funding for a second year, giving kids another opportunity to catch up on learning lost during the pandemic.
“In light of this barometer of our kids’ success, there’s no time to waste to catch our kids up. We must continue to pour on the gas in our efforts,” said Ducey. “We know our kids lost ground during the pandemic – it was not good for them. In Arizona, we kept schools open, made critical investments in literacy programs and launched a summer camp to prevent further learning loss.”
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GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala — Guatemala’s interior minister has intelligence that large caravans of migrants will try to get to the U.S. in anticipation of the midterm elections, he said in an exclusive sit-down interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Migrants, who believe the midterm elections could end with Republicans taking back control of Congress, are heading to the U.S. border in large caravans, Guatemalan Interior Minister Napoleon Barrientos told the DCNF. The migrants think that they have a short window to make the trek because it may not be as easy to immigrate to the U.S. after the midterm elections, with Republican lawmakers promising to beef up border security and tighten oversight.
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A fundraiser and donor to New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ election campaign heads a non-profit that houses a Chinese overseas police station and works closely with Communist Party influence operations, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found.
Lu Jianshun supported fundraising efforts for Adams through his role as the president of America Changle Association, an organization based in Manhattan’s Chinatown that caters to overseas Chinese from the Changle district of Fuzhou, Fujian province in China, the DCNF found. Lu himself donated $4,000 to Adams’ mayoral campaign under the adopted name “James Lu” between 2019 and 2021, according to public campaign finance records.
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Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who caused a stir this summer by questioning the quality of his party’s candidates, has created a new rift inside the GOP by spending millions to defeat Alaska GOP Senate nominee Kelly Tshibaka.
McConnell’s leadership PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, has been running attack ads against Tshibaka in an effort to boost moderate incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
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I have just listened, courtesy of Fox News, to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson explaining “the threat to democracy” posed by “election deniers.” Benson and her host paid special attention to the MAGA crowd who still question the results of the 2020 presidential election. Fox anchors Eric Shawn and Bret Bair have often expressed annoyance that obtuse and malicious Americans are still contesting an election that, we are assured, has been thoroughly investigated and which shows no evidence of troubling irregularities.
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On Tuesday, a coalition of progressive Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives announced that it would be withdrawing its letter to Joe Biden calling for the White House to lead peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
As reported by Axios, the move comes just one day after the group of 30 lawmakers first released the letter, with signatories including Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-Md.). The sudden about-face appeared to be the result of backlash against the lawmakers, who suggested that negotiations between Russia and Ukraine might be the only option left for bringing about an end to the war that has now been raging for eight months.
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In a compromise, Germany’s cabinet agreed to allow China Ocean Shipping Company a nearly 25 percent stake in the country’s largest port Wednesday, according to Reuters.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Social Democrat ministry leaders pushed the deal through in spite of opposition within the cabinet, landing on a 24.9 percent stake in one of three terminals in Germany’s Hamburg port, Reuters reported. Although officials say they will not allow Cosco any say over port operations or management, it drew sharp criticism from members of the foreign ministry who have grown wary of foreign investment.
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Big Tech stocks dropped this week as firms across the industry posted a series of weak earnings reports, with social media giant Meta set to post a significant slowdown after markets close Wednesday.
This year, Meta, Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Apple have lost $2.5 trillion in market value combined, Reuters reported Wednesday. Meta is expected to post a 5% decline in revenue compared to last year due to reduced ad traffic as users struggle with inflation and spend more time with rival TikTok, according to The Wall Street Journal.
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Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said the leaking of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in endangered the lives of those who were expected to overturn Roe v. Wade, making them targets for assassination.
The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade June 24 in a 6-3 decision, but their preliminary decision was leaked to Politico May 2. Alito, who wrote the Dobbs decision, said the leak made him and other conservative justices targets for assassination attempts in a Tuesday interview with The Heritage Foundation.
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