Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Tim Head, the national executive director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, to the newsmaker line to discuss getting religious conservatives out to vote and keeping young voters engaged.
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While Maricopa County released a report on the election failures of the 2022 elections, Arizona election lawsuits continue as 2022 GOP nominees Kari Lake and Mark Finchem file motions for reconsideration in their respective races for governor and secretary of state.
On Monday, Maricopa County released a report by former Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth McGregor on the causes of the ballot printer issues that occurred at more than 70 vote centers on Election Day last year, which resulted in long lines as many voters’ ballots were unreadable by tabulator machines.
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Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Tuesday reportedly sued Rep. Jim Jordan to keep him and other congressional Republicans from interfering in his office’s criminal case against former GOP President Donald Trump. The 50-page suit was filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York and accuses Jordan, chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, of a “brazen and unconstitutional attack” on the prosecution Trump and a “transparent campaign to intimidate and attack” on Bragg, according to The New York Times.
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Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed a federal lawsuit last week against the Oregon Department of Human Services (ODHS) on behalf of a woman whose application to adopt siblings from foster care was denied because her Christian faith beliefs do not allow her to agree to support the “sexual orientation, gender identity, [and] gender expression” of children placed in her home.
“Oregon’s policy amounts to an ideological litmus test: people who hold secular or ‘progressive’ views on sexual orientation and gender identity are eligible to participate in child welfare programs, while people of faith with religiously informed views are disqualified because they don’t agree with the state’s orthodoxy,” said ADF Senior Counsel Jonathan Scruggs, who runs the ADF Center for Conscience Initiatives.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Tennessee House of Representative’s Majority Whip Johnny Garrett (R-Goodlettsville) in studio to talk about the chances of Justin Jones taking over a House session and the mechanics of his re-election.
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The Tennessee House is expected to vote on a bill Monday that would prevent Metro Nashville from requiring a super majority vote to approve demolition to build a new Fairgrounds Speedway.
Currently, any project that requires demolition would require a super majority vote of Nashville’s council. That could impact a Bristol Motor Speedway project to rebuild the Fairgrounds Speedway.
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After Monday’s reinstatement of State Rep. Justin Jones (D-Nashville) by the Nashville Metro Council, the Shelby County Commission Wednesday will hold a special meeting to consider whether to reappoint expelled former State Rep. Justin Pearson (D-Memphis).
Over the weekend, Shelby County Commissioner Mickell Lowry released the following statement on his Facebook page:
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Two teachers challenging the constitutionality of compelled antiracism training have been ordered to pay nearly $313,000 in their Missouri school district’s legal fees, under a ruling their lawyers called “overtly hostile” and “meant to scare off future lawsuits by parents and teachers.”
The Southeastern Legal Foundation is appealing U.S. District Judge Douglas Harpool’s summary judgment in favor of Springfield Public Schools and the six-figure award against their clients Brooke Henderson and Jennifer Lumley, according to an 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals notice Friday.
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About 30 states have placed restrictions on the social media app TikTok mostly related to government devices, but there is momentum for a larger ban on personal devices.
A growing number of lawmakers in the U.S. have raised national security concerns about the short-form video app because of TikTok’s ties to China through its parent company ByteDance.
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For months, the National Archives and Records Administration has insisted it had nothing to do with the federal criminal investigation into memos containing classified markings that were found at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate since it referred the matter to the FBI in February 2022.
“When NARA identified items marked as classified national security information within the 15 boxes, NARA referred this issue to the DOJ,” acting Archivist Debra Wall wrote Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), now the House Intelligence Committee chairman, on August 16. “Since that time, the DOJ has been exclusively responsible for all aspects of this investigation, and NARA has not been involved in the DOJ investigation or any searches that it has conducted.”
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Over 200 former employees of federal surveillance agencies have since joined the corporate ranks of Big Tech companies in recent years, thus increasing the likelihood of systematic censorship of conservative accounts by such platforms.
According to the Daily Caller, the four social media companies Google, Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok have recruited 248 former employees from the FBI, CIA, Department of Justice (DOJ), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as proven by searches of the professional job listing and networking platform LinkedIn. The bulk of these hires were made between 2017 and 2022, with some of the former federal employees moving on to top executive positions within the social media companies.
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A three-judge panel in Tennessee Chancery Court has blocked a law that would have required Metro Nashville’s Council to be reduced from 40 to 20 members.
The panel ruled Nashville would likely prevail in its argument related to the Local Legislation Clause, stating the law was local in effect but did not provide Metro Nashville with the right to approve the measure.
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During a special meeting called on Monday, the Nashville Metro City Council unanimously voted to reinstate State Representative Justin Jones (D-Nashville) to the Tennessee House of Representatives after he and another Democrat representative were expelled last week.
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The Gatlinburg Police Department (GPD) has named a new police chief to lead the department for the first time since 2004. Ronnie Barrett has been named as the 11th Chief in the city’s history, the department recently announced.
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This tax season, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) introduced a new course for students in tax preparation that provides the necessary information and credentials needed to prepare taxes for members of the community.
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A well-funded push to make Minnesota a ranked choice voting state appears to have run out of steam — at least this session at the Minnesota Legislature.
On Monday, State Sen. Jim Carlson, DFL-Eagan, told his colleagues in the Senate Elections Committee that a bill introduced last month that would implement ranked choice voting for statewide and legislative races by 2026 “is much more complicated than we originally thought.”
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In a video released Monday morning, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer touted Democrat’s accomplishments in their first 100 days of office.
She again claimed that she “secured” 35,000 auto jobs since 2019.
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State Representative Jessica Benham (D-PA-Carrick) is asking colleagues to cosponsor her new bill to pay rail-safety inspectors at the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) more and hire more of them.
Benham’s is the latest in a profusion of measures offered by Keystone State lawmakers to address freight-rail concerns in light of the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio that occurred two months ago. A memorandum she authored describing her bill suggests the commonwealth needs more than its current 10 rail-safety inspectors who oversee more than 5,600 miles of track.
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In advance of a potential November referendum on an proposed constitutional amendment aiming to legalize abortion throughout the state, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said he wants the General Assembly to consider strengthening Ohio’s “heartbeat law.”
According to DeWine, to avoid passage of the abortion amendment, Ohio needs to revisit the heartbeat law and ensure that Ohio has sustainable legislation that voters will not overturn at the polls.
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Gross interest owed on the $31.4 trillion national debt — that is, interest owed on both the $24.9 trillion publicly traded debt and the $6.7 trillion debt in the Social Security, Medicare and other trust funds — will reach a gargantuan $1 trillion in 2024 for the first time in American history, according to the latest data gathered by the White House Office of Management and budget.
To put that into perspective, that is more than is spent on national defense related spending, currently $814 billion.
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Republican lawmakers are ripping Gov. Evers after a new audit shows many former inmates are not being sent back to prison for new crimes.
The Legislative Audit Bureau released its report into the state’s Community Corrections Program on Friday. It says the Department of Corrections is not following-up on former inmates well enough, and says Department of Corrections agents are not reporting crimes that could send ex-convicts back to prison.
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Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz (D) said she was “proud to be from Connecticut” as she appeared with four Democrat state lawmakers on Friday night’s episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race where four drag queens with ties to the Constitution State were present.
“I am joined today by our small but mighty LGBTQ+ caucus with one thing that we’d like to say: Hey, you, Amethyst, Robin, Loosey, Jax. You’ve made us all proud here in Connecticut,” Bysiewicz touted as she stood with Connecticut State Reps. Jeff Currey (D-East Hartford), Raghib Allie-Brennan (D-Bethel), Marcus Brown (D-Bridgeport), and Dominique Johnson (D-Norwalk).
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An expanding list of lawmakers in the politically-divided Virginia General Assembly have announced they will not seek re-election or will seek another office under new district lines this election cycle.
Come this November, all 140 seats in the General Assembly will be on the ballot. The upcoming election cycle will be the first one under new maps drawn via the independent redistricting process in 2021.
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A New College of Florida (NCF) professor wrote that he would burn down campus buildings if he were not “more patriotic,” according to a letter sent to interim President Richard Corcoran.
Aaron Hillegass, NCF director of applied data science, wrote to Corcoran to inform that he would not be renewing his contract when it expires on August 22, according to the letter posted to Twitter. The notice came in opposition to turning the Florida college into “The Hillsdale of the South,” a nod to the conservative Michigan school, after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed six conservative members to the Board of Trustees in January.
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The Wisconsin Department of Justice on Monday identified the two northern Wisconsin police officers killed over the weekend during a traffic stop, as two small communities continued to mourn.
Chetek Officer Emily Breidenbach, 32, and Cameron Officer Hunter Scheel, 23, were fatally shot early Saturday morning by Glenn Douglas Perry, 50 in the Village of Cameron, according to the DOJ.
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Two Palmetto State Republican presidential hopefuls are heading back to Iowa this week for another round of campaigning.
U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley plan multiple stops in the Hawkeye State.
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Arizona State Senator John Kavanaugh (R-Fountain Hills) shared that several of his bills successfully passed the House and committees last week in his most recent update to constituents. This includes a Senate Bill (SB) aiming to ensure laws signed by the Governor receive legal protection from the Attorney General (AG).
“The Attorney General’s duty is to defend these laws, and this bill ensures that they can, but there are safeguards so they can back out if they so want to,” Kavanaugh said.
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The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) took more than a year to open an investigation into allegedly intentional racial segregation in Atlanta Public Schools and purported retaliation against parents who complained.
The feds may soon face a similar complaint: keeping predominantly black and white elementary schools apart in a summer program intended to mitigate learning loss due to COVID-19 policies.
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New Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs is piling up vetoes of bills sent to her from the Republican-dominated Arizona Legislature. By Thursday, she had vetoed 37 bills this session, more than any other governor in Arizona’s history except Democrat Janet Napolitano. The progressive Phoenix New Times dubbed her the “Veto Queen.”
The Kari Lake War Room Twitter account had a strong reaction to all of the vetoes. “.@katiehobbs is Arizona’s very own Ron Burgundy,” the account tweeted. “She’s wedded to the teleprompter and she’ll VETO anything that’s put in front of her. Even when it’s language that she herself (supposedly) wrote. She’s not even reading these bills. Hobbs isn’t a Governor. She’s a clown.”
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Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb filed to run for Senate in Arizona on Monday.
Lamb has not officially announced, but a filing with the Federal Election Commission marks the formation of his campaign committee.
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Four environmental groups have filed a lawsuit in an attempt to block a new law requiring Ohio to accept private petitions to drill for oil and gas beneath state parks.
House Bill (HB) 507 which Republicans passed at the end of the 134th General Assembly modified Ohio’s code so that state agencies must lease the properties they hold for oil and gas extraction, as opposed to just allowing them to. The legislation also instructed the Oil and Gas Land Management Commission to create a set of guidelines for applications.
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Pennsylvania state Senator Jarrett Coleman (R-Allentown) last week sent a memo to colleagues asking them to support an upcoming resolution to audit Allentown’s Neighborhood Improvement Zone (NIZ).
Under the program state lawmakers established in 2009, developers can use state and local tax money to offset the debts they incur on construction and rehabilitation projects in designated parts of Pennsylvania’s third-largest city. Areas within the NIZ include the Lehigh River’s westside waterfront north of Union Street and south of American Parkway as well as the PPL Center hockey arena and many of its surrounding blocks. Allentown is the only city with a neighborhood subject to this program, but the state has created similar zones in Bethlehem and Lancaster.
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On February 1, 2023, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) proposed an “energy efficiency standard” for gas cooking products. For those who are unaware, this is a blatant backdoor attempt to ban gas appliances—at least half of gas stove models sold in the United States today would not comply with this regulation according to DOE. The American people deserve answers to stop this draconian measure that would be detrimental for families, small businesses, and rural communities across our nation.
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Switzerland’s Federal Office of Public Health said no COVID-19 vaccination is recommended this spring/summer season, including for people at high risk of becoming seriously sick from the virus.
“Nearly everyone in Switzerland has been vaccinated and/or contracted and recovered from COVID-19. Their immune system has therefore been exposed to the coronavirus,” the Swiss health agency said.
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