Commentary: Governor Bill Lee Calls for Unconstitutional Red Flag in the Last Days of Legislative Session

On April 19, 2023, reports are suddenly surfacing that Governor Bill Lee has released a 13 page bill that would substantially change Tennessee’s criminal code and mental health codes to implement a “Red Flag” law. The proposed amendment which was released this afternoon does not indicate which bills are being amended, who the sponsors are, when the bill would be heard in a committee or give anyone outside of government the opportunity to review, comment on or oppose the legislation. (The entire amendment is on the TFA’s news post)    It is the typical move of a tyrant. 

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Senior IRS Agent Blows Whistle, Alleging Biden DOJ Thwarting Criminal Prosecution of Hunter Biden

Adecorated supervisory IRS agent has reported to the Justice Department’s top watchdog that federal prosecutors appointed by Joe Biden have engaged in “preferential treatment and politics” to block criminal tax charges against presidential son Hunter Biden, providing evidence as a whistleblower that conflicts with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s recent testimony to Congress that the decision to bring charges against Biden was being left to the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for Delaware.

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State Rep. Justin Jones Attempts to Bring Child-Sized Casket into Capitol Chamber as Gun Control Prop

In yet another protest in favor of gun control, recently embattled State Rep. Justin Jones (D-Nashville) attempted to bring a child-sized casket into the Tennessee House Chamber, before he was forced to drop the prop. 

“The rally made it inside the Capitol going through security,” News Channel 5’s Kelsey Gibbs reported. “Rep. Justin Jones and Bishop Barber are trying to enter the chamber with a casket. The sergeant of arms went to check and tells them they can’t bring the casket inside the House chamber.”

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Europe Imposes First-Ever ‘Climate Tax’ on Imported Goods

The European Parliament finalized legislation Tuesday that will impose taxes on imports based on the greenhouse gas emissions made during their production, despite the objections raised by companies in the U.S. and China.

The European Union’s (E.U.) Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) would first take effect in 2026, and first cover emissions from companies producing iron, steel, cement, aluminum, fertilisers, electricity and hydrogen, according to the European Parliament. The taxes have been criticized by firms in the U.S., who are concerned about unnecessary regulation and red tape, and firms in China and the developing world, who use less green sources of energy than competitors in the U.S. and E.U., according to the Wall Street Journal.

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Tennessee to Require Tipton County Schools to Take TCAP Tests

Despite having two schools recently destroyed by tornados, Tipton County students will still be required to participate in the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP). Crestview Elementary and Crestview Middle School were the two elementary schools destroyed during the tornados. 

Tipton County, a rural conservative county that borders the Mississippi River, had appealed directly to Governor Lee for relief from the burden of testing this year, due to the county still dealing with the after facts of two tornadoes that struck on March 31. According to a report from television station WREG, “The tornadoes damaged 540 structures, causing more than $37 million in damages.”

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Biden Administration Loses Track of Tens of Thousands of Migrant Children

Group of immigrants at border

Four years after Democrats made political hay out of migrant children being separated from their parents at the border, Republicans have turned the tables on the issue amid evidence the Biden administration has lost track of as many as 85,000 minors it allowed to enter the country unaccompanied by parents, leaving many prey to cartel extortion, forced labor, abuse and trafficking.

The extraordinary political boomerang will be on full display Tuesday when Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) Director Robin Dunn Marcos is grilled by a House Oversight subcommittee on the failure of the Department of Health and Human Services to vet, monitor and track unaccompanied migrant children, whose arrival at the border has grown more than 10-fold since Joe Biden took office.

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North Carolina School District Votes to Require Parental Notification of Pronoun Changes

The Moore County School Board in North Carolina voted Monday night to approve a “parents’ bill of rights” policy that requires school personnel to notify parents if their children desire pronoun and name changes in keeping with a new gender identification.

The policy, which passed by a vote of 6-1, requires that teachers in the district’s schools notify parents of a child’s claim of a desire for pronoun or name change before making the changes in school, reported WRAL.

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MNPS Leaders Present Proposed Upcoming School Year Budget to School Board

Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) leaders presented their proposed budget for the 2023/2024 school year to the school board.

Included in the presentation were numbers for a baseline budget that allows MNPS to maintain this year’s services, along with requests for additional money to fund new programs. The baseline budget called for an extra $55 million to account for inflation and raised the needed funding to just over $1.1 billion.

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Numbers and Methodology Questions Surround Polls Showing DeSantis More Competitive Against Biden Than Trump

New polls in battleground Arizona and Pennsylvania suggest Florida Governor Ron DeSantis — not former President Donald Trump — could prevail in a matchup against President Joe Biden. 

But the Public Opinion Strategies (POS) polls again are raising questions about methodology — and the people behind the DeSantis-friendly poll. 

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Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs Vetoes More Bills Including Election Policies and School Safety

Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs revealed another batch of legislative actions Tuesday, including four more vetoes for Republican-led legislation.

“Katie Hobbs just vetoed my bill that would have affirmed that courts are to interpret election laws in the interests of transparency – insane,” shared State Representative Alexander Kolodin (R-Scottsdale).

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Michigan Bill Aims for Agencies to Make Rules Stricter than Federal Standard

A Michigan bill aims to make it easier for state agencies to adopt or promulgate rules more stringent than federal standards.

Bill sponsor Sen. Sean McCann, D-Kalamazoo, said Senate Bill 14 aims to repeal the no stricter than federal law signed into law in 2018. The law prohibited state agencies from setting rules more stringent than federal law, in most cases. 

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‘You Couldn’t Cut It:’ DeSantis Team Launches Beer Ad Spoof Mocking Men Competing in Women’s Sports

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis launched a spoof beer advertisement on Monday night mocking male athletes who compete in women’s sports.

The advertisement, posted on the DeSantis War Room Twitter account, is a spin-off of the popular Bud Light commercial “Real Men of Genius” that aired in the early 2000s, and comes on the heels of a conservative-led boycott of the beer company after it revealed its partnership with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney. The ad features transgender athletes including former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas and mockingly congratulates them on their performances in the women’s division, according to the video.

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Ohio Republican Party Says If U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown Cared About Ohio He Would Not Help Fund Biden’s Radical Agenda

The Ohio Republican Party said in a press release Tuesday that if U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) cared about the working people of Ohio, he would cooperate with Republicans on the other side of the political aisle to restrict spending and reduce costs rather than take money out of Ohioans’ pockets to fund President Joe Biden’s radical agenda.

According to the Ohio Republican Party’s Communication Director Dan Lusheck, tax day is the Democrats’ “favorite day of the year.”

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Thousands of Deceased Voters Removed from Virginia Rolls

Nearly 19,000 voters will be removed from the voter rolls in Virginia after the Department of Elections discovered death records had not been previously shared.

The Virginia Department of Elections has announced it has begun instituting improvements to cull its voter rolls of voters “who are known to be deceased.” General registrars made a request to allow more ways to confirm the death of registered voters.

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Connecticut Lawmakers Weigh Tax Relief for Middle Income Earners

Connecticut lawmakers are looking to provide more relief for middle-income pensioners as part of a broader tax package working its way through the legislative process. 

The proposal, which is being considered by the Legislature’s Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee this week, would exempt more middle-income retirees in Connecticut from paying state taxes on earnings from pensions and annuities. 

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Pennsylvania Lawmaker Proposes Notifying ICE of Illegals Trying to Buy Guns

A Pennsylvania state lawmaker is urging colleagues to back emerging legislation ensuring illegal aliens who try to get firearms are reported to federal and state authorities. 

State Representative Ryan Mackenzie’s (R-Macungie) measure would direct the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) to inform the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) and the Pennsylvania Attorney General of all such purchase attempts. 

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Commentary: House GOP Needs to Take the Road Show Home

The House Judiciary Committee held a raucous hearing in the Big Apple on Monday to discuss New York City’s rising crime problem. Republicans sought to highlight the poor performance of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is refusing to prosecute various crimes as he instead pursues a criminal case against Donald Trump, and leaving a tide of victims in his wake.

It’s fine, and perhaps politically shrewd, for the GOP to shine a light on crime-enabling local prosecutors jeopardizing the safety of their cities in exchange for partisan witch-hunts. But for the next hearing, congressional Republicans need only walk a few blocks from their House offices to the office of Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

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DFL Scales Back Rebate Checks, Social Security Tax Elimination in Minnesota Tax Bill

With under six weeks remaining in the 2023 legislative session, budget bills are making their way to the floors of the House and Senate. And so is a way to pay for them.

House DFLers who unveiled their tax bill on Monday said it represents the largest tax cut in state history and is aimed at helping those who need it most. Senate Republicans returned serve and claimed that provisions Democrats have touted — if approved without any concessions — would add up to nearly $10 billion in tax hikes on Minnesotans over the next four years.

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Home Fashion Company Announces Georgia County Distribution Facility

A design house concentrated on home fashion plans to open a new Liberty County distribution and light manufacturing facility.

New Jersey-based Creative Home Ideas, a YMF company, plans to spend more than $15 million on the facility, which state officials said will create 70 jobs. Operations at the new facility at 1962 Sunbury Road in Midway should start in 2024.

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Provisional Ballots May Flip Arizona Attorney General Race for Hamadeh: Analysis

An analysis of uncounted provisional ballots shows the 2022 Arizona attorney general’s race may be called for GOP nominee Abe Hamadeh instead of the now-Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes.

Hamadeh is challenging the election in court, suing Mayes to ensure all votes were counted in their midterm election contest, which Hamadeh lost by just 280 votes, according to an automatic statewide recount.

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Commentary: After Decades of Outsourcing to China, the U.S. is Running Out of Children’s Antibiotics

Acute shortages of orally delivered amoxicillin, penicillin and other children’s antibiotics throughout the 2022 and 2023 cold and flu season have made it difficult for doctors to treat normal childhood illnesses like ear infections, bronchitis, strep throat and rarer cases of infections caused after suffering Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), and also sickle cell disease—for months.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning about the amoxicillin shortage in Oct. 2022 just at the start of the cold and flu season. But since then, no statement has been issued by President Joe Biden about what appears to be an underreported public health crisis.

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Maricopa County Loses First Amendment Lawsuit from The Gateway Pundit, Agrees to Pay $175,000 for Banning Reporter from Elections

Maricopa County agreed last week to pay The Gateway Pundit (TGP) and its reporter Jordan Conradson $175,000 to settle their lawsuit over refusing to provide Conradson with a press pass to cover elections. An Obama-appointed trial court judge sided with the county in November, but after an injunction from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals followed by oral arguments that revealed the three-judge panel was likely to fully reverse the lower court, the Maricopa County Supervisors voted to settle. 

The controversy began in September 2022, when the county implemented a press pass regulation blocking journalists from election press conferences if they showed “conflicts of interest” and were not “free of associations that would compromise journalistic integrity or damage credibility.” The county cited Conradson’s attendance at Republican events as a conflict of interest, and told him, “[Y]ou are not a bona fide correspondent of repute in your profession.” 

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Philadelphia Children’s Hospital Quietly Scrubbed Videos Discussing Transgender Surgeries Amid Public Backlash

The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), which operates a gender clinic, removed numerous videos and posts discussing childhood gender transitions, including irreversible surgeries, from its website amid public backlash, the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

The CHOP Gender and Sexuality Development Program came under scrutiny in September 2022 after some of its training videos on childhood gender transitions were circulated online, and the clinic said it was tightening its security that October due to threats. Resources including videos in which clinic staff promoted cross-sex medical interventions for minors and advised school workers to keep children’s gender identity secret from their families have since disappeared from CHOP’s website; these pages are saved in online archives, but their links either redirect to error pages or go to pages that have been heavily altered with certain links removed.

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Tucson Border Patrol Chief Warns Quick Cash Is Not Worth It as Human Smuggling Continues to Rise

Tucson Sector Chief Board Patrol Agent John Modlin released a warning Monday that American citizens need to be wary of being recruited by criminal organizations to smuggle illegal immigrants across the border because any promises of quick cash do not erase the real punishments smugglers face.

“Criminal organizations will exploit anyone to do their dirty work,” Modlin shared. “Recognize the traps on social media. Don’t fall victim to false promises: Smuggling is a felony.”

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Ohio Narcotic Intelligence Center Warns People of Varying Forms of Fentanyl Found in State

The Ohio Narcotics Intelligence Center (ONIC) has released a public safety notice in order to warn Ohioans of the various forms of fentanyl being found across the state.

According to ONIC Executive Director Cynthia Peterma, ONIC has found fentanyl in six different physical forms in Ohio, including powder, tablets, chalk, rocks, black tar, and gum. The various forms reported in Ohio contained fentanyl primarily mixed with other substances.

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Pennsylvania Committee Passes Amendment Allowing More Time for Sex Abuse Lawsuits

Pennsylvania lawmakers on Tuesday took a corrective step in their effort to change state law to give adults who suffered sexual abuse as children more time to sue.

Current state policy gives underage victims of molestation or sexual assault a 12-year period to litigate against their perpetrators or those perpetrators’ institutions. House and Senate versions of a measure to give the would-be plaintiffs a new two-year window to file claims passed the House Judiciary Committee in early March but the panel took them up again this week. Some lawmakers insisted House rules called for a public hearing on the legislation, which the committee conducted two weeks ago, to precede voting.  

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Former Vice President Mike Pence to Headline Ohio Christian Fundraiser

Republican former Vice President Mike Pence, who is reportedly considering a 2024 presidential bid, will deliver the keynote address at a gala fundraiser thrown by the Center for Christian Virtue (CCV) in Cincinnati, Ohio next month.

The Cincinnati Celebration Gala for the Center for Christian Virtue, Ohio’s largest Christian public policy organization, will take place at the Duke Energy Convention Center on Tuesday, May 9th, 2023. According to the Center for Christian Virtue, it will be an evening of music, inspiration, and fellowship. They highlight that Pence will be speaking on the pro-life battle facing both Ohio and the nation.

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Universal Empowerment Scholarship Account Participation Soars in Arizona

A new report for the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute (GI) Monday revealed that participation in the state’s universal Empowerment Scholarship Account program is soaring, and so is Arizona’s economy.

“Arizona’s bet on universal school choice is already paying off. At the same time that enrollment in the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program is surging, the state’s revenue surplus has gone through the roof,” wrote Matt Beienburg, Director of Education Policy at the GI. “In the first four months of 2023 alone, enrollment in Arizona’s ESA program has soared by 7,000 students, bringing the total number of children served to over 51,000.”

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Music Spotlight: Kinsey Rose

NASHVILLE, Tennessee- From the first few measures of a twangy guitar, I knew instantly when I heard “Speed of Broken Heart” that Kinsey Rose was going to be an artist I would want to feature. As they say, people who date have a “type”; the same can be said for me regarding country music artists. I have a type and when I hear it, I know it’s going to be gold.

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Elon Musk Tells Tucker Carlson AI Could ‘Absolutely’ Take Control of Civilization

Elon Musk told Fox News host Tucker Carlson Monday that it was “absolutely” possible for artificial intelligence to take control of civilization and make decisions for people.

“That’s real? It is conceivable that AI could take control and reach a point where you couldn’t turn it off and it would be making the decisions for people?” Carlson, a co-founder of the Daily Caller and Daily Caller News Foundation, asked Musk during an interview that aired Monday.

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Harlan Crow Refutes Accusations, Speaks Out on Clarence Thomas Attacks: ‘Political Hit Job’

Harlan Crow said media reports on his friendship with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas are “factually incorrect” and part of a “political hit job” in an interview Monday with The Dallas Morning News.

Crow said it’s possible for people to simply be friends without having an “angle” and slammed the media for attempting to spin his friendship with Thomas into something it’s not. “I think that the media, and this ProPublica group in particular, funded by leftists, has an agenda to destabilize the [Supreme] Court,” Crow told The Dallas Morning News.

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The House GOP Effort to Defund ‘Wokeness’

Through executive orders and budget requests, the Biden administration has sought to embed “diversity, equity, and inclusion” principles across the entirety of the federal government – and in turn to touch the lives of every American. Now members of the Republican House majority, who see this whole-of-government effort as a woke assault on America and its core values, are working to combat it using the power of the purse.

In a series of letters to House appropriations leaders, Rep. Jim Banks and like-minded colleagues have identified and called for the defunding of all “‘woke’ programs and initiatives that are rooted in discrimination and promote far-left ideology in the federal government” in 2024 spending bills.

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