Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Senator Joey Hensley in studio to talk about his background and growing up in Hohenwald, Tennessee.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Tennessee State Senator Joey Hensley in studio to discuss his top legislative items for the 2023 session.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti to the newsmaker line to discuss the amicus brief filed against Chinese-owned TikTok and the possibility of litigation that could outlaw its platform in the state.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Aaron Gulbransen in studio to describe the recent bills that have passed in both the State House and State Senate.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Aaron Gulbransen in studio to discuss proposed legislation that is likely to pass reducing the size of Metro Nashville Council members from 40 to 20.
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The Tennessee House voted Monday night to approve a bill to cut the Metro Nashville council from 40 to 20 members. The bill caps all cities and metro governments at 20 voting members, a rule that only currently applies to Nashville.
A fiscal note on House Bill 48 says that it will save Nashville $510,000 annually if the bill goes into full effect.
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Two Democratic lawmakers are making a push for transparency on how much businesses pay in tax to the state of Tennessee.
Senate Bill 1009 would require tax bills paid by businesses to be public information. The bill sponsors say hiding the bills paid, or not, by large corporations make it difficult to know the impact of tax policy in the state.
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Governor Lee is an avid advocate for literacy in Tennessee. In that spirit, he has proclaimed March 2023 as Tennessee Literacy Month, and throughout the month, the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) will be highlighting how reading is an essential skill for all students.
Commissioner Schwinn and the TDOE invite all Tennesseans to celebrate Tennessee Literacy Month, by spotlighting the Reading 360 initiative and the focus Tennessee’s educators, families, elected officials, and community partners have placed on improving literacy rates for all learners in the state.
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Family scale farmers in the Midwest may lose a lot to large agribusinesses through carbon markets, a new report says.
According to the report, “Agricultural Carbon Markets, Payments and Data: Big Ag’s Latest Power Grab” by Open Markets Institute and Friends of the Earth, carbon markets programs will entrench chemical-intensive farming practices and increase corporate control of agriculture rather than reduce greenhouse gas emissions like politicians assert.
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With an upcoming Country Radio Seminar (CRS) performance on Monday, March 13, 2023, at the Omni Hotel, Molly will be showcasing her newest single, “Better Than You, along with some of her other most popular singles that precede it.
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Forty-six attorneys general joined Tennessee in requesting that a state court force TikTok to comply with an ongoing multistate investigation into the platform’s impact on children.
Following TikTok’s failure to comply with a Request for Information (RFI) last week, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti filed a motion Monday to require the Chinese-owned social media company to preserve documents and internal messages, his office announced. Colorado and 45 other states also filed an amicus brief Monday in support of Skrmetti’s motion, arguing that TikTok’s failure to respond impedes “the State’s ability to protect their citizens.”
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Global carbon dioxide emissions hit a record high of more than 36 billion tons in 2022, although emissions grew more slowly than anticipated, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported Thursday.
Emissions from coal surged by 1.6%, to a record breaking 15.5 billion tons, as Europe turned to coal after Russia slashed exports of natural gas following its invasion of Ukraine, the IEA reported. Growth in renewable energy sources mitigated more than half a billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions, helping keep emissions growth below expectations, and accounted for roughly 90% of all new power generation.
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Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said Monday he was offered second place in the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll if he paid a consultant.
“One of the things you see as an outsider is how corrupt the system is. You know something funny about this? I’ve attended CPAC before. I didn’t know it works this way,” Ramaswamy told Fox Business host Stuart Varney. “A consultant calls my campaign shortly after I declared, says ‘Hey, we can get you up to number two on there if you pay us a few hundred thousand dollars.’ I was shocked, you know … there’s a lot of people making money not only off of me, but every presidential campaign.”
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The Atlanta Police Department said 35 people are in custody after a violent mob attacked police officers and destroyed construction equipment at the site of the proposed law enforcement training center.
Police said Sunday “a group of violent agitators used the cover of a peaceful protest of the proposed Atlanta Public Safety Training Center to conduct a coordinated attack on construction equipment and police officers.”
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After the Park Committee voted unanimously last week to remove audio recording devices from Green Bay City Hall, the full City Council is expected to take up the issue at Tuesday evening’s meeting.
The action item comes after a Brown County judge issued a temporary injunction demanding the city shut down the bugs while a lawsuit proceeds.
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The last time your phone asked you to allow this or that app access to your location data, you may have had some trepidation about how much Apple or Google know about you. You may have worried about what might come of that, or read about China’s use of the data to track anti-lockdown protesters. What you probably didn’t realize is Google has already searched your data on behalf of the federal government to see if you were involved with January 6th.
But last month, the federal district court in DC issued an opinion in the case of one of the many defendants who stands accused of sacking the Capitol in the wake of the 2020 election.
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In a Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) poll, more than 84 percent of parents are not in favor of a gender-inclusive sexual education curriculum for children in grades four through eight, according to ABC 7 News.
Parents were asked about the proposed “Family Life Education Instructional Materials” (FLE), a sexual education curriculum which focuses on making lessons “gender inclusive,” stating that puberty is not gender-specific, according to ABC 7 News. FCPS, the school board and the FLE Curriculum Advisory Committee allegedly withheld the survey results from the community, drawing backlash from parents.
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University of Florida (UF) health centers reported an uptick in the number of transgender patients, fulfilling a request by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration in January, UF student newspaper the Independent Florida Alligator reported.
The Florida Office of Policy and Budget sent a memo to university leaders on Jan. 11 demanding reports about the number of patients treated for gender dysphoria at affiliated health centers. UF Health reported an increase in sex change treatments including puberty blocker prescription, hormone therapy, surgery and behavioral services at its various clinics since 2018, according to the reports obtained by the Alligator.
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“If abortions arnt safe neither r u [sic].”
That was just one of the phrases scrawled across a Christian pro-life pregnancy resource center in Minneapolis over the weekend where windows were also shattered by vandals.
Police were flagged down just after 1 a.m. Saturday by a Metro Transit bus driver who had witnessed suspects causing damage to property on a building at 2015 Chicago Avenue in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis, according to dispatch audio.
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Florida’s legislative session will reconvene on Tuesday, and several GOP-backed bills are set to make their way to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk ahead of a possible 2024 campaign launch, according to Politico.
The Republican supermajority legislature will propose various conservative bills over the next two months, including legislation relating largely to education, along with other gun rights, immigration and death penalty proposals, Politico reported. These GOP-led efforts come before a likely presidential announcement by the governor to give him more legislative successes to campaign on, according to Politico.
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With the exception of a dip during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Florida’s tourism industry has continued to grow since 2019 and predictions are that the good times will continue to roll for the Sunshine State.
A report from Visit Florida, showed that the Sunshine State had approximately 33.2 million visitors in total during the fourth quarter of 2022. This is 6% higher than the same time period in 2021, and 7.8% higher than October 2019 through December 2019.
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State. Senator Brad Zaun’s bill that would reinstate the death penalty in Iowa for those who sexually assault and then murder children survived the Legislature’s famous Funnel Week.
Zaun, R-Urbandale, joined The Iowa Star Monday on NewsTalk 1040 WHO to talk about the legislation and other bills moving forward in the Legislature.
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Michigan’s largest teachers union and its health insurance affiliate must repay the U.S. government more than $200,000 after taking $12.5 million in federal loans for which they were ineligible.
Lawmakers intended Paycheck Protection Program loans to help small businesses afford to pay their employees during the initial COVID-19 shutdowns.
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Several leftist members of the Pennsylvania state Senate announced on Monday they are reintroducing a series of bills to help transgender residents change their names — including one measure that would force taxpayers to assist those who are going through the process.
Senators Tim Kearney (D-Springfield), Amanda Cappelletti (D-Norristown), Katie Muth (D-Royersford) and Lindsey Williams (D-Pittsburgh) complained that transgender constituents often tell them the process of changing their names is onerous. State Representatives Ben Sanchez (D-Abington) and Melissa Shusterman (D-Phoenixville) have reintroduced a House version of the legislation which would allot $2 million to a “Compassionate Name Change Assistance Grant Fund.”
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After its second train derailment in Ohio within a matter of weeks, Norfolk Southern on Monday unveiled a “six-point strategy” to increase safety.
Although Norfolk Southern claimed there were no dangerous commodities on the train, around 20 of a 212-car train derailed on Saturday in Springfield, Ohio. The incident happened about a month after a derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which contained hazardous materials and required hundreds of nearby residents to evacuate for several days.
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Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell (R) announced Friday that former prosecutor and defense attorney Edward Maldonado, 48, will face six years of jail time for sexual abuse.
“Justice prevailed today for the victims of a lawyer who took advantage of his position and his stature to sexually abuse and take advantage of women in the legal profession,” said Mitchell. “I am very proud of this office for standing up for these victims and helping them find justice.”
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Less than a month from the election, liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Janet Protasiewicz is hiding, Republicans insist.
It’s gotten so bad the mainstream media is starting to cover Protasiewicz’s absence.
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Norfolk Southern agreed this week to reimburse first responders, county relief funds and state agencies nearly $7.4 million in the wake of the February 3 train derailment near the Pennsylvania-Ohio border.
Gov. Josh Shapiro said Monday he secured a deal with Alan Shaw, the railroad’s chief executive officer, to cover all of the costs the state incurred responding to the accident, as well as establishing a $1 million community relief fund in Beaver and Lawrence counties for impacted residents and businesses.
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Alex Triantafilou, the newly elected head of the Ohio Republican Party, stopped in Lima for the Allen County Republican Party’s monthly luncheon to discuss his vision of what the party can anticipate this year.
According to Triantafilou, they will strive to keep Ohio a “red” state and will concentrate on removing U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and President Joe Biden from office.
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According to a report by Jonathan Masters and Will Merrow, since Russia’s invasion in February of 2022, Ukraine has become far and away the top recipient of U.S. foreign aid. It’s the first time that a European country has held the top spot since the Harry S. Truman administration directed vast sums into rebuilding the continent through the Marshall Plan after World War II.
Since the war began, the Biden administration and the U.S. Congress have directed about $75 billion in assistance to Ukraine, which includes humanitarian, financial, and military support. The number is documented in a report by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German research institute, analyzed by Masters and Merrow.
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Arizona State Sen. Anthony Kern (R-Glendale) released a statement Friday calling for Tamillia Valenzuela to resign from the Washington Elementary School District (WESD) Governing Board after making anti-Christian remarks during a recent meeting.
“While we’re facing a shortage of teachers, Valenzuela is impugning the motives of teachers with certain religious beliefs. This is NOT what our country was founded on,” said Kern.
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Georgia leaders plan to review the state’s various tax credits, saying they want to ensure any credits provide a “significant return on investment” for Georgia’s taxpayers.
The review, announced Thursday, will include the oft-lauded film tax credit. House and Senate members will work with various industry stakeholders and state offices, including the Georgia Department of Economic Development, the Governor’s Office of Planning & Budget and the Georgia Department of Revenue.
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The state of Ohio intends to invest almost $1 million on training small, rural first-responder teams to respond to train derailments.
On March 1st, Governor Mike DeWine announced that he had discussed the necessity of more extensive train derailment response training for first responders with the CEOs of both Norfolk Southern and CSX railroads.
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We live in politically divided times. How we describe the sources of our divisions, though, varies. Some focus on principles such as equality, justice, liberty, and order. Some take up policy disputes related to those principles while others look to economic class, race, or even geography.
Does using these lenses to view our divisions violate our founding principles? Since humans will disagree about justice, especially its application, one can defend principled lines. Indeed, our Founders created mechanisms of elections and deliberative bodies to adjudicate those differences. Moreover, one can rightly conclude that race presents a troubling source of division in light of our commitment to human equality.
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