Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Rutherford County Mayor Joe Carr to the newsmaker line to explain the details of the proposed 2023 Property Taxpayers Protection Act.
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Amid allegations that Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs withheld evidence last year as secretary of state during an election trial regarding the state attorney general race, new Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes is shifting the focus of the AG’s election integrity unit to voter suppression.
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Four men have received federal prison sentences after being convicted of carjacking, assaulting a federal officer, and using a weapon during the crimes committed in Memphis nearly two years ago.
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The highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) was recently detected in a commercial broiler chicken flock at a farm in Weakley County, the Tennessee State Veterinarian announced.
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Wall Street Journal (WSJ) editorial board member Allysia Finley took to task both the federal government and the pharmaceutical giants profiting from the sale of their COVID mRNA booster shots for a “deceptive advertising” push for Americans to continue taking boosters without proof of their safety or effectiveness.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and its health and regulatory agencies are engaged in a “deceptive advertising” campaign, wrote Finley Sunday, suggesting the pressure tactics “shouldn’t come as a surprise,” since the federal government “took the unprecedented step of ordering vaccine makers to produce them and recommending them without data supporting their safety or efficacy.”
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An audit of Dickson County schools found Director of Schools Danny Weeks received $13,700 in compensation as part of a federal grant that was not part of his contract.
That payment also was not approved by the Dickson County Schools board.
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The Vermont Supreme Court ruled in favor of a law permitting noncitizens to vote in local, municipal elections.
In 2021, the state Legislature backed bills to change the local charters of Montpelier and Winooski to permit noncitizen voting in local elections. Though Republican Gov. Phil Scott vetoed those measures, the Democratic Legislature overrode his objections, the Associated Press reported.
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A recent report found that Catholic churches have suffered 118 attacks since the leak of the Supreme Court draft majority opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center in May 2022.
Churches and pregnancy centers across the United States came under attack after the opinion was leaked to Politico, indicating that the Supreme Court intended to overturn Roe v. Wade. CatholicVote (CV) updated its tracker Sunday that keeps track of assaults on Catholic Churches and found that 118 churches had reported attacks since May 2022.
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The work of a Planned Parenthood sex educator whose viral TikTok videos instruct children and young teens to use “spicy toys” and fruits and vegetables for sexual pleasure has been condemned by a former sex educator also trained by the abortion industry giant.
Monica Cline, who, prior to her conversion, educated children as young as middle schoolers to engage in sex acts “safely,” said in comments sent to The Star News Network that Planned Parenthood sex educator and digital creator Mariah Caudillo is engaged in a “crime against children” paid for by American taxpayers.
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The Biden Administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) is preparing to file an antitrust lawsuit against Google, alleging that the company has an unfair dominance over the digital ad market.
As reported by the New York Post, the federal lawsuit could be filed as soon as Tuesday against Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc. The suit will target Google’s lucrative advertising business, which accounts for 80 percent of Google’s overall revenue; in 2023, Google is projected to make at least $73.8 billion from advertising alone.
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In his fifth State of the State address Tuesday evening, Gov. Tony Evers began laying out how he plans to use Wisconsin’s $6.6 billion surplus, pitching a spending bender of big government initiatives already with a price tag to date of around $1.3 billion. But there’s more to come. Evers is still constructing his biennial budget plan, set for release in a few weeks.
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Those who are 18 to 20 can now openly carry firearms in Tennessee after a settlement was reached between the Firearms Policy Coalition and the state.
The settlement came as the result of a suit following Tennessee’s law on open carry restricting those who are 18 to 21 from being part of the allowance.
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The CEO of Minnesota’s largest abortion provider is also a sitting legislator who is sponsoring and voting on bills to expand abortion access.
Rep. Ruth Richardson, DFL-Mendota Heights, voted in favor of the “Protect Reproductive Options (PRO) Act” last week, a bill that would enshrine the “fundamental right” to abortion in Minnesota law.
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Pro-life activists expect Georgia Republicans to file two bills granting equal rights to the unborn; the bills would impact exceptions currently in place under Georgia’s heartbeat law that bans abortions after six weeks.
Georgia Right to Life (GRL) Executive Director Zemmie Fleck said the heartbeat bill grants some rights, mostly to the mother, including counting the unborn in the census. It includes exceptions for certain circumstances surrounding conception or health.
“This would actually say all of those children who are classified in the rape and incest category or the fetal anomaly category, or the life of the mother category, those children also — they have equal protection of their life, and they have the equal recognition that they are persons to be treated just like a born person,” she said.
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The election committee of the Arizona Senate held a hearing on Monday featuring the results of an investigation into Maricopa County’s 2022 midterm election conducted by the election integrity group We the People AZ (WPAZ). Commissioned by outgoing Senate President Karen Fann (R-Prescott), the group submitted public records requests to Maricopa County Elections Department to obtain the data. The leader of WPAZ, Shelby Busch, testified to the committee chaired by State Senator Wendy Rogers (R-Flagstaff) that 464,926 ballots fed into tabulators on Election Day in Maricopa County, 217,305 were rejected, which is nearly a 50 percent failure rate.
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In a letter to Rittman residents, city officials announced that they overtaxed municipal income tax for the past 15 years, and refunds will not be given for all the years of human error because doing so would “bankrupt” the city.
In particular, Rittman has been collecting municipal income taxes for the past 15 years at a rate of 1.5 percent when the correct, permitted rate was 1 percent.
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A Democratic California congressman this week weighed in on President Joe Biden’s classified-document scandal, characterizing the president’s housing of restricted records in his University of Pennsylvania office and his Delaware home as indefensible.
A member of the House Oversight and Armed Services committees, U.S. Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA-17) told Fox News that Biden warrants scrutiny for keeping numerous records he obtained during his earlier service as a U.S. senator and later as vice president. Khanna noted that the law requires classified federal documents to be kept in “sensitive compartmented information facilities” (SCIFs). While presidents can sometimes temporarily designate rooms within their personal properties as SCIFs, Biden has never suggested any spaces in his home or office were deemed to be such areas.
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Last week, a woman was filling up her vehicle at a convenience store in the 2700 block of Madison’s E. Washington Avenue when a “man pointed a gun at her face and demanded she give him the keys,” according to the Madison Police Department incident report.
A man.
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The Michigan Court of Claims has entered an order certifying the $20 million class-action settlement against the Unemployment Insurance Agency.
The settlement resolves a class-action lawsuit against the agency claimed in 2013 it falsely accused unemployment recipients of fraud and seized private property without due process.
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The Virginia House of Delegates passed Governor Glenn Youngkin’s bills to cut the business tax rate from six to five percent and the top individual income tax bracket from 5.75 to 5.5 percent. The two bills would also increase individual and business income tax deductions.
“Virginians are still overtaxed, they deserve to keep more of their hard-earned paychecks and today’s significant move by the House of Delegates means Virginians are one step closer to additional relief,” Governor Glenn Youngkin said in a release after the bills passed out of the House on Wednesday.
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After Gov. Tony Evers finally relented and ordered TikTok banned from state government devices, Wisconsin’s Republican congressional delegation asked University of Wisconsin System President Jay Rothman to follow suit. A UW System spokesman on Wednesday said the schools will follow part of the lawmakers’ request and restrict TikTok from UW System-owned devices.
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Last week, CBS “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan asked Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman why President Biden would dispatch his personal attorney, who didn’t have proper security clearance, to his Delaware home to search for classified documents. Presumably, Brennan believed that when searching for classified documents, one should have the credentials to actually read them. Brennan’s focus on who was reviewing Biden’s papers touched on a potentially interesting line of inquiry. The question hanging in the air, however, relates to the discovery that started this whole process: Why would lawyers be “packing up” Biden’s office in the Penn Biden Center in the first place?
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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis held a news conference in Jacksonville on Monday to propose sweeping changes to education, including a Teacher’s Bill of Rights which will empower educators to be leaders in their classrooms.
In the proposed legislation, teachers will have their paychecks protected, while $1 billion will go towards teacher pay increases. School board members will have a maximum term of eight years, instead of twelve.
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The organizers of a Milwaukee-area event on the dangers of woke indoctrination say they’re working with local law enforcement after receiving a number of threats.
Meanwhile, a theater in suburban Chicago has canceled a “reforming sex education” event after reportedly being bombarded with threats.
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The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) announced Friday that it had made multiple discoveries of suspected fentanyl pills being smuggled by newly booked inmates into the Intake, Transfer, and Release Facility (ITRF).
“This week alone MCSO detention officers have seized approximately 260 pills in the jail system, suspected to be fentanyl and pending lab analysis. The seizures were a compilation of three unique incidents,” according to the office.
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When Katie Chubb wanted to open a new birthing center in Augusta, she wasn’t surprised the local community would support the new service.
Rather, it was who opposed it: three local hospitals.
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Ohio will soon receive an influx of federal funding intended to improve kindergarten readiness.
According to a statement from Governor Mike DeWine’s Office, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services will receive a total of $48 million over three years to support and increase access to quality early childhood care and education as part of the Preschool Development Grant Birth to Five from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families.
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State Senate Republicans have introduced two bills that target Arizona’s grocery and rental taxes to give local families a financial break. Kim Quintero, the spokeswoman for the Senate Republican Caucus, told The Arizona Sun Times that it would be unwise for Governor Katie Hobbs (D) to veto bills like these should they pass the legislature.
“It would not be wise of the Governor to veto the food tax bill, as this will provide immediate inflation relief to those living paycheck to paycheck, and it’s something that resonates with a large portion of her voter base,” Quintero said via email.
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New Ohio House Speaker Jason Stephens (R-Kitts Hill) has released his list of committee chairs and vice chairs with about 50 percent of those positions going to 20 of the 22 Republicans who supported him for speaker including most of the major committees, such as finance.
Earlier this month, lawmakers elected moderate Republican Stephens as the new Speaker of the Ohio House to succeed state Representative Bob Cupp (R-Lima). The choice came despite the Republican Caucus‘ previous selection in November of state Representative Derek Merrin (R-Moncolva) as the new Speaker. Although the GOP caucus voted for Merrin as Speaker of the House in December, Stephen fought in collaboration with the Democrats to collect votes and garner a win.
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As Congress and the courts delve deeper into federally sanctioned censorship by Big Tech, a troubling revolving door has emerged between the U.S. intelligence community and the Big Tech giants on the front lines of one of the fiercest battles over free speech in modern American history.
A Just the News review of LinkedIn employment histories of senior Big Tech executives found that at least 200 former workers of the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency, National Security Council and Homeland Security Department have landed Silicon Valley jobs, many within content moderation units regulating supposed “disinformation” and disproportionately throttling news and opinion deviating from approved, left-tilting norms.
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Fewer than 3% of likely Hispanic voters support amnesty for illegal immigrants as they continue to overwhelm authorities stationed on the southern border, according to a poll conducted by Convention of States Action and The Trafalgar Group.
Just 2.8% of Hispanic likely voters believe that both individuals with pending asylum cases and those who entered the country illegally should be granted amnesty and eventual citizenship, according to the Tuesday poll. The findings come amid a record surge in illegal migration at the U.S.-Mexico border, where U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded more than 250,000 migrant encounters in December alone and more than 2.3 million in fiscal year 2022.
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Two of the largest left-wing nonprofit organizations in the country collectively sent at least $39 million to China in 2021, according to IRS tax filings.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sent a total of $30 million to various Chinese organizations and government entities, which included $2.5 million to China’s National Health Commission and $1.4 million to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. The Ford Foundation sent another $9.3 million, which included donations to at least three universities that are under the direct supervision of the government’s defense industry agency.
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A former senior FBI counterintelligence official involved in the Trump-Russia probe was arrested and charged over the weekend for money laundering and violating sanctions against Russia while secretly working with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who the U.S. government sanctioned.
Charles McGonigal was the special agent in charge of counterintelligence in the FBI’s New York Field Office until he retired in 2018. McGonigal was arrested Saturday afternoon at JFK Airport, following travels in Sri Lanka, according to Fox News sources.
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Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, commemorated National School Choice Week by filing two bills to advance school choice, one of which his staff said would be the most significant educational reform since the GI bill.
“We need to provide students with a variety of educational options to fit their needs,” Cruz told The Daily Signal in an email statement Tuesday. “I have often said that school choice is the civil rights issue of the 21st century, and I believe no differently today than I did when I began serving in the Senate a decade ago.
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America is overpopulated. Unchecked population growth over the last 70 years, driven by immigration rather than a healthy birth rate, now poses a serious ecological threat in the American West and a monumental social and political challenge in the rest of the country.
Since the passage of the Hart-Cellar Act in 1965, which radically overhauled American immigration policy to favor third-world migrants, tens of millions of additional human beings legally and illegally entered the country. Pew Research estimates that without the Hart-Cellar Act, the United States would have had 72 million fewer people as of 2015.
That would have been a much better America.
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A group of 20 Republican-led states are suing the Biden administration over its migrant program that allows a set monthly amount of migrants to enter the U.S. from select countries. Texas, supported by 19 other states and America First Legal, filed the suit asserting that the Department of Homeland Security had effectively created a visa program without congressional approval \
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed education reporter Lawrence Wilson for The Epoch Times to the newsmaker line to talk about the national decline of public-school enrollment and its financial repercussions in big cities.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed education reporter for The Tennessee Star, TC Weber and official guest host, Aaron Gulbransen in studio to define literacy testing and discuss the Tennessee General Assembly’s big issues.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed education reporter for The Tennessee Star, TC Weber in studio to explain the group, Chiefs for Change and Tennessee’s third-grade retention bill.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed education reporter for The Tennessee Star, TC Weber in studio to comment upon Bill Lee’s 2023 priorities absent of education and questions the whereabouts of Penny Schwinn.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed official guest host Aaron Gulbransen in studio to examine who would benefit from Biden’s classified document debacle and why.
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Former Vice President Mike Pence informed Congress on Tuesday that his team has discovered document in his Indiana home that from his time in the Trump White House and marked as classified.
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Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s team announced Monday that there’s more evidence to come regarding her election lawsuit soon after Democrat Gov. Katie Hobbs requested the case be thrown out.
“Yesterday @katiehobbs filed to get our lawsuit thrown out,” the Kari Lake War Room tweeted. “Today, records revealed nearly a quarter of a million ballots were rejected on Election Day in Maricopa County in a race that came down to just 17K votes. She’s illegitimate & she knows it. More evidence to come.”
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Tennesse’s school districts have started preparing their individual budgets for the 2023-2024 school year. They are doing it while contending with a new state funding formula and with limited guidance from the Tennessee Department of Education(TDOE). The change in formula completely alters how district allocations from the state are calculated. In the past, the state has provided calculations for local districts. This year, that too will change.
In notes obtained by The Tennessee Star from a call between the TDOE and the Superintendent Study Council, local officials were informed that the department will soon be sending out Data Verification Packets to districts that will include district-specific data from 1st, 2nd, and 3rd 20-day reporting periods. Districts are required to report attendance counts at 20-day intervals throughout the year.
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A taxpayer-funded National Institutes of Health (NIH) study that drew the conclusion that teens who receive puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones have greater life satisfaction has come under fire.
The study, published at the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), states researchers from the Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago sought to investigate the psychosocial functioning of 315 transgender and nonbinary young people, aged 12-20 years, over a period of two years after “gender-affirming hormones” (GAH), i.e., testosterone or estradiol, had been administered for gender dysphoria.
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Audio streaming platform Spotify is laying off 6% of its staff, becoming the latest in a series of tech firms to make major cuts, the company announced Monday.
The cuts come less than a week after Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet both laid off more than 10,000 employees each as Big Tech firms cut costs following pandemic-related spending sprees. Spotify had roughly 9,800 employees through September 2022, so the company will likely cut less than 600 staffers Monday, according to Reuters.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci’s questionable work leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic and his equally questionable actions in managing the pandemic have raised a lot of eyebrows.
Now, a majority of voters believe congress should investigate the former longtime medical adviser to the White House and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, according to a new poll by Convention of States Action.
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The Metro Nashville Mayor’s Office is completing what its are calling the definitive documents for a new deal on a $2.2 billion Tennessee Titans stadium and plan to present the final documents to Metro’s council by March.
Before that begins, East Bank Stadium Committee Chair Bob Mendes sent a list of three questions to the mayor’s office following last week’s committee meeting asking for specifics on when the legislation will be filed, if legislation to rebuild Nashville’s Fairgrounds Speedway into a NASCAR cup-worthy track would come at the same time and specifics of when the capital spending on the Titans stadium project will occur.
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Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Joan Sinclair issued a ruling Friday in favor of the City of Scottsdale, blocking a stay request against the city cutting off water to the Rio Verde Foothills (RVF) area.
“The city remains confident in its legal position and continues to encourage Maricopa County – the elected local government for the residents of Rio Verde Foothills – to implement a solution on behalf of their constituents,” according to the city.
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The Tennessee Department of Revenue and the Tennessee Department of Agriculture has issued a public reminder noting that a new law that took effect in the new year made certain items tax-free for qualified farmers, timber harvesters, and nursery operators.
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