Star News Network Chief Meteorologist Daphne DeLoren shares her Middle Tennessee Fresh Forecast for Friday night and the weekend of November 5th.
Catch Daphne’s Fresh Forecast weekdays at 5pm and on demand.
Read the full story
Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed R-TN-08 Congressman David Kustoff to the newsmaker line to describe what he sees as top priorities should Republicans take the US House and Senate and how to push legislation through with a Democratic president.
Read the full story
Live from Music Row, Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Williamson County parent, Trisha Lucente with Parents Choice of Tennessee in studio to explain the basis of its 200-page lawsuit citing continued illegal teaching of Wit and Wisdom in K-12 public schools.
Read the full story
Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
Read the full story
The release of the “Nation’s Report Card” on October 24th has led to a variety of pronouncements from a variety of experts. Many have expressed grave concerns over the potential effects on students, due to lost instructional time during the recent COVID pandemic. The value of this national test, designed to measure fourth and eighth-grade student learning, is in of itself a hotly debated issue. While the interpretation of the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which supplies the data for the Report Card, may be open to debate, they do offer a large trove of valuable information that can be used in the consideration and evaluation of policy. In some cases, providing a warning of future outcomes.
This year, Florida is publically celebrating its successful outcomes. In the wake of the positive results, Governor DeSantis sent out a press release using NEAP results to defend his response to COVID and his commitment to keeping schools open,
“We also knew that younger and at-risk students would be the most impacted if schools were closed, and the results speak for themselves. In Florida our 4thgrade students rank #3 in Reading and #4 in Math, achieving top 4 in both English and Math for the first time in state history, while lockdown California and New York aren’t even in the top 30.”.
While Florida’s fourth-grade results are exceptionally positive, they don’t tell the whole story.
Read the full story
The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department continues to plead with the citizens of Nashville to lock their car doors and secure their guns as the number of firearms stolen from vehicles climbs to 1,163 this year.
“It’s become a disturbing trend, and it needs to stop; guns being stolen from vehicles. Criminals are continuously checking door handles, ready to steal, and it guns are left visible, they will do whatever it takes to break in. It takes just seconds for someone to grab your gun and go. Stats from this year shows a tremendous increase in guns being stolen from vehicles,” Chief of Police John Drake said in a video posted by MNPD in September.
Read the full story
President Joe Biden appointed Vanderbilt Peabody College research professor Douglas Fuchs, PhD to the National Board for Education Sciences, the university announced in a Wednesday press release.
Biden selected Fuchs, along with 13 others, to serve as board members on October 27.
Read the full story
Memphis-area Rep. Steve Cohen (R-TN-09) announced on Wednesday that Tennessee will receive $82.2 million towards the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which is administered through the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
In a statement made to The Tennessee Star, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN-02) said, “It’s a shame the Democrats’ reckless spending and war on domestic energy production is causing our energy prices to skyrocket. More East Tennesseans will be dependent on these funds this year because the Biden administration’s policies caused a problem that was avoidable from the start.”
Read the full story
Tennessee Republican Senator Bill Hagerty announced on Thursday that he and his Florida Republican colleague Marco Rubio wrote to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin this week expressing alarm at the removal of America’s F-15-jet fleet from Okinawa, Japan.
The United States Air Force last week publicized its intention to phase out the fleet’s presence at Kadena Air Base on the southeastern Japanese island starting on November 1. The two squadrons now being withdrawn comprise half of the roughly 100 fighter aircraft the United States currently maintains in Japan. Instead of replacing the jets, the Biden administration anticipates periodically sending F-22 planes from Alaska to the base.
Read the full story
After the city of Memphis announced that part of its One Beale project in September – a plan that would have brought a Grand Hyatt Hotel to Memphis – it was announced this week that the plans for the hotel have fallen through.
Developer Chance Carlisle blamed the city, saying that it did not hold up its end of the bargain to provide $46 million in municipal bonds for the project. Instead, those bonds only amounted to $41 million.
Read the full story
A poll published Thursday found 72.7 percent of American voters say they are not likely to vote for candidates running in the midterm elections who support gender transition procedures, such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries, for minors.
The survey, sponsored by Convention of States Action and conducted by The Trafalgar Group, found 63.3 percent of 1,080 likely general election voters say they are not likely to vote for a candidate who supports gender transition medical procedures for minors, and 9.4 percent say somewhat less likely – a total of 72.7 percent who say they are not likely to vote for candidates with those views.
Read the full story
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is warning Tennessee college students about what it calls “sextortion,” which it says is on the rise.
“Tennessee college and university campuses have seen a marked increase in sextortion attempts aimed at students,” said the FBI’s Knoxville branch. “The suspects, often posing as college-aged female students, target unsuspecting students through dating apps and online social media platforms.”
Read the full story
With only four days until the midterm election, Ohio is reporting an increase in early in-person voters compared to 2018.
Ohioans have cast almost 50% more early in-person ballots this year than a week before the 2018 election, according to numbers released by the Ohio Secretary of State’s office on Tuesday.
Read the full story
State Sen. and Majority Whip Sonny Borrelli (R-Havasu City) announced on Friday during a presentation that he has discovered at least 21,202 ballots were likely illegally cast during the 2020 election in Maricopa County. A group of concerned citizens he has been working with examined five percent of the voter registration records from Maricopa County residents who voted, and discovered that 1,298 ballots were cast by dead voters, 17,822 were mismatched ballots, along with thousands of other statutory discrepancies.
Borrelli said the findings, which “are just the tip of the iceberg,” and include many “class two misdemeanors,” will be presented to the new legislature next session. He declared, “This is even more of a reason for Prop. 309 to pass, despite the county recorder saying no.” Borrelli was referring to the comprehensive election integrity measure on the ballot this fall, Arizonans for Voter ID, and taking a dig at Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer. The Arizona Attorney General’s Office is looking into whether Richer allegedly used government resources to oppose Prop. 309. Richer started his own PAC for GOP election fraud deniers.
Read the full story
After a lengthy redistricting battle this year, more than 200 voters cast ballots in the wrong districts at the state or federal level, according to several reports.
“Nothing can be done,” said Davidson County Election Administrator Jeff Roberts. “If you think about it, we voted 45,000+ people early voting. I don’t know which ballots they are. They all go into that scanner, and there’s nothing that identifies who, where, or anything on that ballot.”
Read the full story
Ohio Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Representative Tim Ryan (D-OH-13) continues appeal to possible Republican and independent crossover voters in his U.S. Senate race by not endorsing President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.
But Ryan’s stance is a dramatic departure from his position on the issue prior to 2021.
Read the full story
Attorney General Jason Miyares announced that the national Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force is taking enforcement action against two telecoms providers over their alleged involvement in illegal robocalls. The two companies Avid Telecom and One Eye, LLC have stopped cooperating with the task force’s investigation.
“The enforcement action against Avid Telecom details several instances in which the task force believes Avid Telecom knowingly accepted and routed illegal robocalls. Further, the task force believes Avid Telecom’s CEO, Michael Lansky, helped another telecom provider hide its suspect traffic,” Miyares’s release states. “The enforcement action against One Eye details how an individual closed another voice service provider, PZ Telecommunication, LLC, and became the apparent CEO of One Eye. This transition occurred after the Federal Communications Commission sent PZ Telecom a cease-and-desist letter.”
Read the full story
Law enforcement officials seized 570 grams of fentanyl on Monday in southwest Ohio which the Butler County Sheriff’s Office says is enough to kill 190,000 people, which is roughly half the population of Butler County.
Law enforcement seized the lethal drugs as part of an operation by the Butler County Undercover Regional Narcotics (BURN) Task Force with the assistance of the Hamilton Police Department’s Vice and Neighborhood Police Section.
Read the full story
Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) sidestepped giving the economy a letter grade during his only debate with Connecticut Republican Senate candidate Leora Levy Tuesday night, but when pressed to do so by the panelist, he responded the grade is “ongoing,” and “I don’t think that we can give it a grade midstream.”
Levy, however, plainly answered, “I would grade the economy ‘F.’”
Read the full story
Video from the mid-1990s has surfaced showing Keith Ellison doubting the legal culpability of a convicted police officer killer.
Power Line’s Scott Johnson recently posted unearthed footage from a November 1996 panel discussion Ellison participated in regarding the death penalty.
Read the full story
Early voting has begun in Wisconsin, and so has the Republican election watch.
Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Paul Farrow said Thursday that the party has increased its focus on both poll workers and poll watchers to make sure that there are eyeballs watching to vote count this year.
Read the full story
When in the spotlight at the Mackinac Policy Conference, Wayne County committed $32 million of federal COVID relief to small businesses in impoverished areas.
The New Economy Initiative, a nonprofit that helps small businesses develop, added $22 million of private donations for a total of $54 million. But six months later, the county pulled the plug on the three-year initiative, Crain’s Detroit first reported.
Read the full story
The Georgia Department of Transportation awarded more than $91.4 million for 22 projects in September, officials said.
Nearly half (47.8%) went to bridge projects, while about a third (31.8%) went to resurfacing projects. An additional 19.2% went to safety projects, while 1.1% went to widening and reconstruction projects.
Read the full story
As the midterms approach, one way of looking at America’s current disaster is that we, the American people, were lab rats. And since 2021, the Left were the mad scientists, eager to try out their crackpot leftist experiments on us.
The result is that the housing market is tottering on the verge of collapse.
Read the full story
Governor Glenn Youngkin announced a tutoring partnership between four Richmond and Hampton Roads-area historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to employ their students as tutors and mentors for high school and middle school students. “Sadly last Monday, Virginians woke up to the next of many alarm bells that were ringing as Virginia’s NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress] scores came in. What we saw in those NAEP scores was something that we had seen repeatedly in our SOL scores over the last couple of years: that learning loss was catastrophic; that learning loss was broadening an already existing achievement gap,” Youngkin said during an appearance at Norfolk State University (NSU) on Thursday. The program is a partnership between the Urban Leagues of Hampton Roads and Greater Richmond, and Norfolk State University, Hampton University, Virginia State University, and Virginia Union University. When fully implemented, the program will be able to support 1,300 students in Petersburg, Portsmouth, and Hampton with 175 tutors, but Youngkin said that was just the beginning. “We are going to inspire others to replicate, expand, and touch lives across the entire commonwealth,” he said. NSU President Dr. Javaune Adams-Gaston said in a Youngkin press release that the student…
Read the full story
A new study released this week by a Columbus-based nonprofit observed that, with the exception of Ohio’s capital city and its surrounding suburbs, the Buckeye State is losing population.
The paper by the Greater Ohio Policy Center (GOPC), titled “Ohio + Columbus: A Tale of Two States,” posits that “much of Ohio functions like a legacy state rather than a rapidly growing place.” In other words, many places in the state experienced manufacturing booms a century ago but have seen industrial activity quickly decline in recent decades.
Read the full story
Nikolas Cruz, the gunman in the deadly Parkland school shooting, received a life sentence on Wednesday after previously pleading guilty to multiple counts of murder and attempted murder.
A jury previously declined to recommend the death penalty for Cruz, instead proposing a life sentence with no parole, to which the judge on Wednesday sentenced him, per CNN.
Read the full story
Daniel Mota Dos Reis, 36, the man arrested in connection with burglarizing Democrat gubernatorial Katie Hobbs’ campaign headquarters, is reportedly an illegal immigrant in the United States and has been released from jail on bond. Her Republican opponent, Kari Lake’s, campaign called this another blow-up in Hobbs’ face.
“Katie Hobbs’ wild gambit to blame Kari Lake for the break-in is back-firing spectacularly. It now appears that the suspected burglar of Hobbs’ office is “at large” and out on the streets yet again due to the insane pro-illegal immigration, pro-crime policies pushed by Katie Hobbs and the radical Left,” said the Lake campaign in a statement emailed to reporters. “Kari Lake will fight to put an end to sanctuary cities and the Democrats’ insane bail policies and make sure authorities can’t defy immigration authorities and catch-and-release illegal immigrant criminals back onto the streets. Unfortunately, we can’t say the same about Katie Hobbs.”
Read the full story
Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who is running to be the state’s U.S. senator against Republican physician Mehmet Oz, may have lost up to 7% of voter support following a stroke he suffered earlier this year, according to a new survey by Suffolk University and USA Today.
The survey revealed that as many as 7% of respondents, who would have otherwise voted for Fetterman, are now supporting other candidates due to his stroke. Fetterman suffered the stroke in May, following his victory in the Democratic primary, and spent four months in recovery before returning to the campaign trail.
Read the full story
Arizona’s Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake encouraged voters in Legislative District (LD) 22 to write in Republican Steve Robinson on the November 8th ballot to keep the red wave going across the state.
“Please write in Steve Robinson for LD 22. This would be a huge win for us [Republicans], and it’s not at all out of the realm of possibility,” Lake said. “We will usher in the biggest red wave in history in Arizona, and Steve Robinson must be part of it.”
Read the full story
Textile technology company FyberX will invest $17.5 million into locating its headquarters in Mecklenberg County. The company develops technology to create textile fiber out of industrial hemp.
That’s a product that Virginia and North Carolina farmers who are seeking new crops are already suited to grow CEO Ben Young told The Virginia Star.
Read the full story
Democrats are getting some warning signs in the mail. Voting data in the key states show that mail-in voting, which traditionally favors Democrats, is down. In-person voting, meanwhile, will likely continue to be dominated by Republicans.
Take, for example, my home state of Pennsylvania. In 2020, there were 1,564,483 ballots cast nine days out from Election Day. As of Sunday, nine days out from the midterm election, there were only 777,309 ballots cast. That’s a drop of more than half. And it is even steeper for traditionally Democratic voting groups like black voters. In 2020, approximately 147,539 black Pennsylvanians had voted at this point; now, it’s only 47,830.
Read the full story
When Vice President Kamala Harris visited Mexico last year, she cited poverty, crime, and political instability as “root causes” driving millions of migrants to cross the U.S. border.
But some critics with regional expertise say Biden administration policies, which migrants have interpreted as an invitation to travel north, have severely worsened those root causes, destabilizing large swaths of Central America and Mexico. The torrent of people moving across the region has delivered billions of dollars to the coffers of human smuggling rings and the drug cartels that have taken advantage of America’s overwhelmed border patrol to deliver fentanyl and other deadly substances to the United States.
Read the full story
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released new employment data which showed there are nearly two open jobs for every unemployed worker in the U.S.
The federal data showed the number of job openings rose to 10.7 million in September, up about 437,000 from the previous month after a significant decrease in August.
Read the full story
GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala — Doctors Without Borders, a medical aid nonprofit which is funded by a number of prominent tech companies, is publishing and distributing maps to migrants showing routes through Central America that reach the U.S., according to a copy of the map seen by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Read the full story
NBC News aired a segment on Wednesday claiming, with no evidence, that so-called “transgender people” are “disproportionately” impacted by laws requiring a form of identification in order to vote.
As reported by Fox News, the segment with hosts Joe Fryer and Savannah Sellers claimed that the issue should most affect “Generation Z” voters, with Sellers declaring that “transgender voters are concerned they might be blocked from casting their ballots.”
Read the full story