Florida Governor Ron DeSantis officially launched his presidential campaign Wednesday, ending months of speculation and ratcheting up what promises to be an intense battle for the Republican Party nomination.
DeSantis enters the race as a top tier candidate, but still lagging far behind frontrunner Donald Trump, according to just about every poll out there.
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Target’s market value plunged $9 billion in one week after anger erupted over the store’s new “PRIDE” collection, which features clothing for children and babies as well as a chest-binding swim top and a “tuck-friendly” women’s bathing suit.
Social media users and conservative activists began calling for boycotts of Target following the release of their PRIDE line last week. The company was valued at $160.96 per share on May 17, at a market value of $74.3 billion; as of Thursday morning each share was valued at $139.84, the lowest in over a year, at a market value of $64.54 billion, according to MarketWatch data.
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After President Joe Biden said he would invoke the 14th Amendment if Congress did not agree to raise the debt ceiling, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti led other state attorneys general from across the country in telling Biden that such an action would be unlawful.
“We, the undersigned chief legal officers of 19 states, write in response to your recent assertion that you have the authority to ignore federal law and raise the debt ceiling without congressional approval,” Skrmetti wrote in letter signed by 19 other state attorneys general. “You do not. Our constitutional system may be frustrating at times, but it is the fundamental guarantor of American liberty, and we must all abide by the oaths we swore to defend it.”
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Tennessee’s Department of Economic and Community Development has awarded six grants of $1 million or more through the first five months of 2023, with the highest being a $9 million grant to SK Food Group in January.
The FastTrack grants are state grants sent to help offset costs of expanding or moving into the state with the goal of increasing the number of full-time jobs and the average wages of jobs available in an area.
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Governor Bill Lee announced Wednesday evening that he authorized the deployment of 100 Tennessee National Guard troops to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.
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The Left is waging a full-fledged cultural revolution against traditional America. And the Maoist results are often as absurd as they are terrifying.
Special-counsel John Durham just issued his final report on wrongdoing within the FBI, CIA, and the Department of Justice.
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Tweets by a key leftist organization pushing the Ohio abortion ballot initiative that could end parental involvement in minors’ medical decisions reveal that the goal of Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity’s (URGE) is to cut parents out of their children’s lives.
Protect Women Ohio (PWO), a self-described “coalition of concerned family and life leaders, parents, health and medical experts, and faith leaders in Ohio,” posted a thread to Twitter Tuesday showing URGE has been “working to abolish parental consent and notification laws for years.”
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A glitchy start to the Ron DeSantis campaign, Tim Scott fires back at “The View,” Vivek Ramaswamy takes on Target, and Nikki Haley gets a CNN Town Hall.
There’s no rest for the weary on the expanded presidential campaign trail.
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The Arizona Center for Policy (CAP) shared Wednesday that it has entered the legal battle surrounding Arizona’s territorial-era limitations on abortions with an amicus brief to the state Supreme Court.
“State lawmakers kept the state’s pre-Roe law on the books as they passed dozens of laws protecting life while Roe forbade them from going further,” said CAP President Cathi Herrod. “Allowing the lower court ruling to stand threatens thousands of lives a year, as well as the integrity of the judiciary, and the Legislature’s power to govern.”
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A group of parents in Minnesota filed a lawsuit against Democratic Gov. Tim Walz Wednesday over a new law amending the Post Secondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) program to prohibit granting funds to schools that require a “faith statement.”
Walz signed a $72 billion budget Wednesday that included an amendment to the PSEO program, barring students who wish to attend a school requiring a “faith statement” from using funds from the program, according to the budget. Several parents filed a lawsuit later that day with Becket Law against the governor, state Commissioner Of Education Willie Jett and the state Department of Education (DOE) over the new rule, arguing that it unfairly discriminates against their children who wish to attend Christian colleges.
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Unemployment in Michigan’s 17 labor markets decreased by a median rate reduction of 0.8 percentage points in April compared to April 2022, according to data released Thursday morning by the Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget.
All but one of Michigan’s 83 counties saw a reduction in unemployment rates between March and April. The median decrease was reported by the DTMB as 1.7 percentage points. Year-over-year rate reductions were experienced in 79 counties.
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A group of Virginia bipartisan congressional leaders are leading the charge with legislation to improve access to mental health services and reduce suicides among Navy sailors.
Reps. Jennifer Kiggans, Rob Wittman, Bobby Scott and Jennifer McClennan are leading efforts to increase access to mental health resources while requiring mental health screenings for sailors on limited duty, entitled the Sailor Standard Care Act.
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Pennsylvania state Senator Jarrett Coleman (R-Allentown) this week introduced a measure requiring colleagues to take defined-contribution (DC) savings plans rather than traditional pensions.
Coleman, an airline pilot and former Parkland School District director, won his first Senate election last year on a reformist platform and has since briskly worked to effect change regarding education, election integrity, regulation and other issues. Now he’s asking members of his chamber to consider a policy directly affecting their own bottom lines. He believes it’s an important initial step toward more making the commonwealth’s employee retirement programs more solvent.
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While much of the focus has been on the southern border ahead of the public health authority Title 42 ending May 11, Title 42 never applied to those interdicted at sea.
And a new policy implemented April 27 makes Cubans and Haitians attempting to enter illegally by sea indefinitely disqualified from a new Department of Homeland Security parole process.
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Connecticut House Republicans are calling for a public hearing on a proposal by the state’s court system that would reduce bail for some criminal defendants, a move they argue could jeopardize public safety.
The judicial branch’s Rules Committee voted earlier this month to approve a plan to lower the percentage of bail a person must post to be released after they are arrested from 10% to 7% and increase the cap on bonds that can be posted through the court clerk’s office to $50,000 from $20,000, among other changes.
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For the second time, Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell is representing Maricopa County officials asking for sanctions against Kari Lake and her attorneys related to the 2022 election. The first request was over Lake and Mark Finchem’s lawsuit last year which sought to stop the use of electronic voting machine tabulators in the election. The second request was filed on Tuesday after Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson ruled a second time against Lake’s election lawsuit, following a second trial that he conducted after being remanded back from the Arizona Supreme Court.
Mitchell was not required to represent the county officials in the lawsuit; if she had disagreed with it, she could have asked outside counsel or another county attorney to replace her. Mitchell ran for office last year with a barrage of campaign literature labeling herself the “conservative” candidate.
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A Democratic-backed group that opposes Ohio State Issue 1 which aims to alter the process of how initiative petitions can propose constitutional amendments and an August special election to vote on it has filed a lawsuit against the Ohio Ballot Board over the language they adopted to go before voters.
The group One Person One Vote filed the lawsuit with the Ohio Supreme Court in response to the Ohio Ballot Board adopting the summary language of Issue 1, the amendment to mandate a 60 percent approval percentage for any future constitutional amendments, call for signatures from all 88 counties and do away with the opportunity to “cure” petitions by collecting additional signatures if necessary, last week.
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The Arizona District of the U.S. Attorney’s Office (District) announced Wednesday the results of a multi-agency collaboration under Operations Blue Lotus and Four Horsemen that has resulted in “more than a ton of fentanyl” being confiscated along Arizona’s border between March 6th and May 8th.
“Thanks to the efforts of our partners at the Department of Homeland Security, we prevented substantial amounts of fentanyl and other drugs from reaching Arizona neighborhoods,” said United States Attorney Gary Restaino.
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Governor Mike DeWine announced on Thursday that Ohio is awarding $3 million in new grant funding to local law enforcement agencies to support their drug task forces’ fight against illegal drug activity and to uphold the state’s drug laws.
According to DeWine, the funding will “support local authorities” as they work to take illegal drugs out of communities across the state.
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Only a country that has lost the will to survive would tolerate the invasion underway all across America. There is no longer a southern border to speak of. From Arizona to Maine, towns are under siege by a relentless, surging mass of humanity. The lowly citizen has been trampled underfoot to make lebensraum for the hallowed “asylum seeker,” whose conquering steps are greeted with suppliant knee.
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Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee are demanding an FBI briefing on the status of their January 6 Pipe Bomb Investigation following disclosures that the feds have enough information to identify a suspect.
In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) said the slow progression of the Bureau’s investigation into the pipe bombs “raises significant concerns about the FBI’s prioritization of that case in relation to other January 6 investigations.”
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South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) signed the Fetal Heartbeat and Protection from Abortion Act Thursday morning, legislation that protects babies in the state from abortion from the time a heartbeat is detected.
McMaster’s signature on the bill now makes South Carolina the 23rd state to protect babies with a heartbeat, and marks that half of the United States is now protecting babies from abortion at or before 12 weeks.
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Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, guest host Aaron Gulbransen welcomed all-star panelist Roger Simon in studio to discuss the Musk-DeSantis Twitter Space wanna-be town square.
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Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, guest host Aaron Gulbransen welcomed Fox contributor and finance guru Liz Peek to the newsmaker line to give her take on the debt ceiling debacle and Janet Yellen’s job.
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Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, guest host Aaron Gulbransen welcomed Chelsey Youman, Texas state director and national legislative advisor for the Human Coalition Action, to the newsmaker line to describe the pro-life services Human Coalition Action offers to pregnant women.
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Tennessee State Senator Heidi Campbell (D-Nashville) is condemning a group of Republican state lawmakers for signing onto an open letter urging Governor Bill Lee to cancel the special legislative session that the governor called earlier this month.
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After The Tennessee Star exposed the far-left’s plan to disrupt and commit acts of violence during the August special session of the Tennessee General Assembly, Gov. Bill Lee’s office could not even be reached for comment.
The Star followed up with Lee’s office on its series of exclusive reporting of audio obtained from inside a far-left gathering hosted by Tennessee Advocates for Planned Parenthood, but the phone number for Lee’s spokesperson goes directly to a voicemail box that is full, and cannot take new messages.
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U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Wednesday that the White House must agree to spending cuts as part of a debt deal.
“You have to spend less than you did last year,” McCarthy said at a news conference. “That’s not that difficult to do, but in Washington, somehow, that is a problem.”
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The Biden administration is using “threats, pressure, inducement, and coercion” to censor social media groups for COVID-19 vaccine injuries and prevent them from raising money, according to a new First Amendment lawsuit based in part on legal discovery from ongoing state-led litigation.
Plaintiffs Brianne Dressen, Shaun Barcavage, Kristi Dobbs, Nikki Holland and Suzanna Newell allege they “suffered –and continue to experience – serious and debilitating medical injuries within days (and, in many cases, hours)” of COVID vaccination. And plaintiff Ernest Ramirez says his 16-year-old son died of cardiac arrest five days after the boy’s first Pfizer dose.
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Meco Corporation officials recently announced that the company will invest $27.8 million to expand its headquarters in Greene County.
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Representatives from the State Freedom Caucus Network issued a statement of support Wednesday for the Tennessee House members who publicly rejected Governor Bill Lee’s call for a special session to pass gun control and red flag laws.
Earlier Wednesday, Tennessee State Representatives Bryan Richey (R-Maryville) issued an open letter to the governor, signed on to by Representatives Ed Butler (R-Rickman) and Todd Warner (R-Chapel Hill), urging the abandonment of the special session scheduled for August 21.
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U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) want Special Counsel John Durham to explain why former high-level government officials refused to cooperate with his investigation exposing the FBI for its many failures in the bogus Trump-Russia collusion probe.
Grassley, ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, and Johnson, ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, sent Durham a letter Tuesday asking why former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and former FBI Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division Peter Strzok declined to fully cooperate.
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Most NATO countries have failed to meet pledges to inflate defense spending made in reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine despite voicing concerns about the intense security environment in Europe, according to The Wall Street Journal.
NATO countries on the eastern flank, most notably Poland, are girding for war as the conflict in Ukraine shows no sign of abating in the near term, prompting renewed commitments to beefing up their own and Ukraine’s militaries in line with the U.S., according to the WSJ. Others believe that Russia’s poor performance in Ukraine, illustrated in recent days by an incursion of pro-Ukrainian partisans into a Russian border territory with little initial resistance, means there is less urgency to increase spending on weapons and military equipment than previously imagined, according to the outlet.
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The official Black Lives Matter organization lost millions of dollars in 2022, according to recently unearthed tax returns.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, the Black Lives Matter Global Foundation Network saw a deficit of $8.5 million in 2022, and also lost $10 million from its investment accounts. In addition, the group recorded a loss of $961,000 on a securities sale of $172,000, amounting to a roughly 85 percent loss as a result of the transaction.
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The South Carolina Legislature gave final approval to its heartbeat bill Tuesday, one that would ban abortions from the time a fetal heartbeat is detected and a move that will continue the trend in the southern states to restrict abortion.
The state senate passed the Fetal Heartbeat and Protection from Abortion Act (S. 474) Tuesday by a vote of 27-19 and sent the measure to the desk of Governor Henry McMaster (R), who said he “look[s] forward to signing this bill into law as soon as possible.”
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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti has joined a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general in suing a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service provider accused of initiating and facilitating millions of Americans with billions of illegal robocalls.
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Richey and his colleagues urge the governor to abandon the special session proposed for August 21 in response to The Covenant School tragedy, because the General Assembly can discuss and consider legitimate measures to improve public safety when it reconvenes in January 2024.
While acknowledging that the governor has the constitutional authority to call a special session, the letters states that it “will be a political event to put pressure on conservative Republicans to grow government and ignore the will of their constituents in service to the national woke mob that will descend on the Capitol.”
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We learned this week that Metro Nashville’s lawyers deliberately attempted to slow down court proceedings on the lawsuit seeking the release of the Covenant Killer’s manifesto and related documents.
Such delay tactics raise an important question: Is the city government colluding with the Covenant Presbyterian School and families of the private Christian elementary school to keep the records from the public?
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“We need to criticize the people who got us here,” says Alex Epstein, founder of the Center for Industrial Progress and author of Fossil Future. “We can’t keep treating these designated experts as real experts. They are not real experts, they are destroyers. They are anti-energy, non-experts. And that needs to be made clear.”
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It’s not a bonding year at the legislature, but that didn’t stop lawmakers — every Democrat and a number of Republicans — at the Minnesota Capitol from giving the green light to about $2.6 billion worth of bonding and “cash-only” capital investment projects across the state before time ran out on the 2023 session.
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The Michigan Supreme Court agreed to decide whether the government can use drones to surveil private property without a warrant and then use that evidence in court for zoning violations.
For two years, Long Lake Township zoning officials flew a drone over Todd and Heather Maxon’s property in northern Michigan, taking photographs and videos as part of a zoning dispute.
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At Acting Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt’s initial confirmation hearing on Wednesday, many senators inquired about the commonwealth’s participation in a controversial voter data-sharing program.
Schmidt, a moderate Republican former Philadelphia city commissioner who subsequently was president of the left-leaning nonprofit Committee of Seventy, will sit for a second hearing covering non-electoral issues his department oversees (e.g., professional licensure). But Senate State Government Committee Chair Cris Dush (R-Bellefonte) suggested discussion of Pennsylvania’s participation in the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) will come up then as well.
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Virginia’s labor participation rate rose to the highest recorded in nearly a decade, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics Local Area Unemployment Statistics.
April’s labor force participation rate increased by 0.3% to 66.2%, the highest since June 2014. The labor force in the commonwealth has risen by 21,687 this month. The BLS recorded more than 25,000 Virginians were employed in April than in March – leading the decline in unemployment to 3.1%.
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A new Tennessee law forbids public higher education from requiring allegiance to “divisive concepts,” including some tenets of “antiracism” and diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI.
The legislation becomes binding July 1, according to the Tennessee General Assembly. The bill passed the Tennessee House and Senate in late April, and Gov. Bill Lee signed it April 28.
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While Governor Katie Hobbs has been busy vetoing bills this legislative session, some Republican-backed measures have been able to become law. Most recently, the House Majority Caucus announced Tuesday that one of those bills was HB 2607, sponsored by Representative Barbara Parker (R-Mesa), which aims to give more power to property owners.
Under the law, members of a condominium owner’s or planned community association can call for removing a board member if they feel that member is not serving them well. Community members must submit a petition that contains a certain percentage of members. An association of 1,000 requires 25 percent of members to approve, while larger associations only require ten percent.
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Ohio Governor Mike DeWine included additional millions of dollars in the 2024-2025 state budget presented to the Ohio General Assembly so that even more can be done to help individuals coming out of prison to reintegrate into society.
For fiscal year 2024, DeWine requested $2.3 billion in funds to operate the Ohio Department of Corrections, a 7.9 percent increase from 2023.
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A group of Republicans have launched a campaign in support of State Issue 1 the proposal aimed at altering the process of how initiative petitions can propose constitutional amendments.
The campaign group called Protect Our Constitution is co-chaired by State Senate President Matt Huffman (R-Lima) and State Representative Jim Hoops (R-Napoleon) and is backed by three major business groups in the state including the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, the Ohio Restaurant Association, and the National Federation of Independent Business.
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Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said that he intends to vote for Ohio State Issue 1 aimed at altering the process of how initiative petitions can propose constitutional amendments at the statewide special election in August.
Issue 1, if approved by voters, would mandate a 60 percent approval percentage for any future constitutional amendments, call for signatures from all 88 counties, and do away with the opportunity to “cure” petitions by collecting additional signatures if necessary.
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A law professor at Ohio Northern University (ONU) said he was recently removed from his classroom by school security officers and banned from campus—and administrators refuse to explain why.
“Armed town police followed me down the hall. My students appeared shocked and frightened. I know I was,” Scott Gerber, a faculty member at the private Methodist university since 2001, described in a May 9 op-ed for The Wall Street Journal.
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Arguing before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Wednesday, one state agency alleged another improperly refused to publish an executive action implementing a de facto carbon tax, effectively halting the polcy.
At issue is a decision made by the Pennsylvania Legislative Reference Bureau (LRB) not to publicize a regulation decreed by then-Governor Tom Wolf (D) entering the state into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). The LRB, which drafts all state legislation upon lawmakers’ requests and provides other policy reference services, declined to promulgate the rule enrolling the commonwealth in the multistate compact, citing a state House of Representatives resolution opposing it.
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