New England communities unserved and underserved in high-speed internet are sharing more than $1.097 billion in federal funding.
From $42.45 billion of high-speed internet grants in the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program, Maine will receive $271 million, Vermont $228 million, New Hampshire $196 million, Massachusetts $147 million, Connecticut $144 million and Rhode Island $108 million.
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Gov. Katie Hobbs signed an executive order that pulls prosecutorial authority away from counties looking to enforce the state’s abortion laws. Critics are calling the move an overstep of authority.
The executive order has four main points to protect abortion.
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Governor Brian Kemp and the State Road and Tollway Authority (SRTA) Board of Directors announced on Tuesday the approval of $17.3 million in Georgia Transportation Infrastructure Bank (GTIB) loans and grants to fund seven transportation infrastructure projects across the state.
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Forty-five years ago, anti-communist dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn caused a stir at Harvard with a famous commencement speech deploring the decadence of the West. The rivalry of the Cold War was not as neat as it appeared, he said.
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With the help of pediatricians from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), Democrats in the Maine House and Senate killed a bill Friday that would have prohibited public school staff from helping children to socially transition to another gender by allowing them to use new names and pronouns without written consent from parents.
LD 678 was defeated by house Democrats by a vote of 76-52, and by senate Democrats, 20-12.
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The Navy and Marine Corps are bumping up enlistment bonuses for people looking to fill highly technical occupations as the military battles to find sufficient numbers of new recruits.
The Marine Corps announced recruits joining the cyber and crypto operations enlistment field would get up to an extra $15,000 for the remainder of fiscal year 2023, the largest enlistment bonus currently being offered, according to a memo posted Monday. Service officials have attributed recent recruiting struggles to a historically low number of Americans who are both eligible to serve and express an interest, as well as intense competition and often better-paying, less demanding offers from the private sector.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a health advisory for malaria after cases were found in Florida and Texas within the past two months, marking the first time in two decades that people acquired the disease from mosquitoes in the United States.
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The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against North Carolina Republicans, who were fighting for a congressional map that would be in their favor.
The justices ruled 6-3, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett siding with the court’s three liberal members.
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The Republican House agenda has in recent weeks been dominated by impeachment resolutions following testimony from former special prosecutor John Durham on the Russian collusion probe and IRS whistleblower revelations about the Hunter Biden investigation – with calls ranging from ousting Attorney General Merrick Garland to expunging the two impeachments President Trump received.
In addition to Garland, whom critics say runs a “two-tiered” justice system in America, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is also a target – largely over his handling of record migration and its often overwhelming consequences from U.S. borders to the rest of the country.
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Former U.S. Assistant Attorney and current Director of Litigation for the Southeastern Legal Foundation Braden Boucek joined The Tennessee Star Report’s Michael Patrick Leahy in studio Tuesday to discuss the how the widely-broadcast recording of former President Donald Trump made it’s way from Mar-a-Lago into the hands of the Department of Justice and then CNN.
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Endocrinologist Dr. Roy Eappen warns that while other nations have already urged caution in the use of transgender hormone drugs for children and teens, America is “standing still, or, perhaps, going backward.”
In a recent op-ed at the Daily Herald in Chicago, the senior fellow at Do No Harm, an organization of physicians, other healthcare professionals, and policymakers seeking to “protect patients, physicians, and healthcare itself from radical, divisive ideology,” urged Americans to be aware that “European countries are rapidly pulling back” from transgender drug treatments, “based on growing evidence that children are suffering.”
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A new Morning Consult poll shows former President Donald Trump widening the gap against his closest competitors, while former Vice President Mike Pence and Ohio entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy make some noise among the crowded field of Republican Party presidential hopefuls.
The poll, conducted June 23-25, finds frontrunner Trump at 57 percent, nearly 40 percentage points up on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (19%), his closest rival.
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Kari Lake is releasing new book, Unafraid: Just Getting Started, on June 27. The Arizona Sun Times was provided with a review copy in advance. In the book, which contains a forward by Donald Trump, Lake went over the bias she discovered while working in media, her race for governor, election fraud, and other issues like border security that she has championed.
Lake explained in detail why she decided to leave her anchorwoman job, discussing how she observed the tactics broadcast TV used to make Republicans look bad and Democrats look good. She asked God for guidance when she became troubled about saying things on air regarding COVID-19 she knew were wrong. She opened her Bible and 1 Timothy 6:7 jumped out at her, “For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.”
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First Lady Jill Biden made an appearance at the Nashville Pride festival over the weekend, sharing a message of support on behalf of herself and President Joe Biden.
“Today I’m here on behalf of Joe my husband, Kamala and Doug to say loud and clear that you belong, that you are beautiful, that you are loved,” she reportedly said.
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by James Cohen A United Nations (U.N.) policy proposal that outlines how to combat online “mis- and disinformation and hate speech,” including through demonetization, is informed by work from groups that actively push to censor conservative speech online. The policy brief, titled “Information Integrity on Digital Platforms,” is intended to help develop an online “code of conduct” that the U.N. plans to unveil during its Summit of the Future in 2024, calls for demonetization and suppressing the spread of what it considers “mis- and disinformation and hate speech.” As examples of effective strategies, the policy proposal routinely cites organizations that have explicitly worked to censor conservatives or have advocated for the censoring of conservative viewpoints. “The American public should be skeptical of any attempt by the U.N. to monitor, regulate, or control speech,” Michael Chamberlain, director of Protect the Public’s Trust, a government watchdog that among other things monitors state-directed censorship efforts, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “It is not surprising that the organization that elevates the likes of Iran, North Korea, China, and other oppressive regimes would reference or partner with entities that participate in efforts to suppress speech that does not fit approved narratives.” The global organization’s brief…
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Tennessee U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburm (R-TN) and Bill Hagerty (R-TN) recently led a group of their Senate colleagues in sending a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging the crackdown on Mexican drug cartels through sanctions.
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Tennessee Governor Bill Lee and Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development (TNECD) Commissioner Stuart McWhorter recently wrapped up a six-day economic development trip to France and Italy, Lee’s office announced Monday.
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Second Amendment expert and Tennessee Firearms Association Executive Director John Harris continued his Monday interview with The Tennessee Star Report’s Michael Patrick Leahy to outline the requirements and limitations of Governor Bill Lee regarding a proposed special session in August, along with a warning about scenario that could result in red flag legislation passing both chambers of the legislature.
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When the 2023/2024 school year opens for Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) there will be 23 new principals employed by the district. A slightly higher number than in previous years, due to several veteran principals choosing to either retire or accept a position with a surrounding district. In some instances, MNPS has chosen not to renew a seated principal’s contract.
On Friday, the district revealed upcoming assignments for the new school leaders. They also named three new executive leadership placements, including one for the district’s long-term chief spokesman.
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A chemistry professor testified during a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) fact-finding hearing that the controlled burn of vinyl chloride from the Norfolk Southern train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio earlier this year may not have been necessary.
Norfolk Southern officials says that the unified command made the decision to vent and burn the vinyl chloride, out of concern for polymerization, a molecular chemical reaction that may have caused the tanker cars to rise in temperature resulting in a disastrous explosion.
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Montana Republican legislators are the latest GOP state officials to be targeted, receiving threatening letters containing white powder after Tennessee and Kansas Republicans received similar suspicious mail in recent days, officials say.
Meanwhile, four days after the Cordell Hull Building legislative offices in Nashville were locked down upon Republican leaders received threatening mail, an FBI official tells The Tennessee Star that the incident remains under investigation and that the agency has no comment at this time.
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The Chamblee Police Department (CPD) recently launched a new K9 program following approval from the city council.
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A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by four transgender plaintiffs who argued that the state of Tennessee should allow them to change their biological sex on their birth certificates to match the gender they currently identify as.
Judge Eli Richardson, a Trump appointee, said in his 74-page decision late last week that it is not up to the “Court to say what Tennessee’s policy should be,” but instead to decide whether the current policy violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights, as they argued it did. Richardson said the plaintiffs could not prove that the policy violated their rights, and he dismissed the suit.
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Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger wants state lawmakers to increase the penalties for anyone who tampers or tries to tamper with voting machines in the state.
According to Raffensperger’s office, anyone convicted of attempting to interfere with a voting machine — a felony in Georgia— faces between one and 10 years in prison and a maximum $10,000 penalty.
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Just four days remain until June 30, Pennsylvania’s Fiscal Year 2023-24 budget deadline and much still divides Republicans who control the state Senate from Governor Josh Shapiro and his fellow Democrats who control the House of Representatives.
The school-choice debate is among the most concerning facets of budget negotiations so far for the GOP. Shapiro indicated last year that he wanted the commonwealth to create “lifeline scholarships,” i.e. a private-school choice program for economically disadvantaged students in poorly performing schools. Republicans hoped they could coalesce with him around the policy’s enactment.
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GOP businessman Russell Prescott is preparing to make another run for Congress in the First Congressional District, multiple sources tell NHJournal. He would be the first Republican to take concrete steps toward entering the race.
Prescott, 62, previously served as a state senator and executive councilor. His political claim to fame is that he defeated U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan in head-to-head state Senate races — twice — most recently in 2010. However, he finished in fourth place with 10 percent of the vote in the 2022 NH-01 primary.
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“Democrats have a deep bench. They had better prepare now to turn to it.”
That was former Bloomberg News executive editor Al Hunt writing for The Messenger on June 25, pontificating about the prospects of replacing President Joe Biden in 2024 as the Democratic Party nominee as the incumbent president’s poll numbers still appear gloomy even after Biden’s Justice Department brought his top political opponent, former President Donald Trump, who is standing for election once again in 2024, up on charges over documents retained after the Trump administration that Trump says he declassified.
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Ohio Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who is an undeclared candidate for the U.S. Senate, told The Ohio Star that he hopes to make an announcement for a run for U.S. Senate against Ohio Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) in 2024 “soon.”
“It is a big logistical undertaking. You don’t undertake an effort this big without figuring out how you can do it successfully. I think it’s vitally important that we beat him (Sherrod Brown) next year. If I can do it right I want to do it. I hope to make an announcement soon,” LaRose told The Star.
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The majority of a unit of nursing support, clerical and environmental staff have voted to remove a union’s officials from power at Mankato Mayo Clinic.
Members of the unit signed the petition May 9 to oust American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 1856 union officials, according to a National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation news release. Mankato Mayo employee Melody Morris, with free legal aid from the foundation, filed the petition asking the National Labor Relations Board to hold a union decertification vote at the hospital. The majority of her coworkers supported the petition, the release said.
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Arizona Senate Republicans have announced the cancellation of a Senate Committee on Director Nominations hearing on Tuesday in order to better focus on and determine Governor Katie Hobbs’ “future intentions to further act beyond her authority” amid her recent enactment of an executive order regarding abortions.
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State Representative Janel Brandtjen (R-Menomonee Falls) is urging the Wisconsin Elections Commission to fire Meagan Wolfe, WEC’s controversial administrator.
The commission meets at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday to take up Wolfe’s re-appointment to a four-year term. Her current term ends Friday.
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In a campaign stop in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Monday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis presented his border security plan as part of his platform to win the Republican nomination for president.
The plan includes reinstating several policies implemented by the Trump administration, including ending catch and release, reinstating the Remain in Mexico policy, among others. His plan also includes using the U.S. military to work with Border Patrol agents “on day one, and they’ll continue to help until the [border] wall is finished,” according to a campaign document obtained by The Center Square.
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Pennsylvania’s Senate State Government Committee on Monday recommended confirming secretary of the commonwealth nominee Al Schmidt.
The panel voted 10-1 to back the Republican acting secretary and former Philadelphia city commissioner. In a subsequent, off-the-floor meeting, the committee approved a bill to facilitate removal of Pennsylvania from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a controversial multi-state data-sharing program supporters say helps states maintain accurate voter rolls. The bill would permit the state to use the Social Security death database and change-of-address records to identify voter-registry errors.
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After Michigan taxpayers gave $1.75 billion for Ford’s Marshall electric vehicle factory, the company will lay off workers.
Michigan gave the money under the promise of creating 2,500 jobs, but the company cut 3,000 jobs last summer and expects a $3 billion loss on EVs in 2023. After those job cuts, a Ford spokesman said the company has nothing to announce.
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With his Republican opponent still to be determined, Democratic State Sen. Jeremy McPike is a winner in Virginia’s District 29, accepting a concession on Sunday from Del. Elizabeth Guzman.
The Republican race from last Tuesday remains too close to call. In the most recent announced tabulation, only two votes separate candidates Nikki Rattray Baldwin, the leader, and Maria Martin.
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by Bethany Blankley Leaders from Florida law enforcement agencies are praising Gov. Ron DeSantis’ fiscal 2023-2024 budget, which prioritizes public safety to the tune of several hundred million dollars. The budget allocates salary increases for correctional officers, enhancements to officer safety, and additional mechanisms to combat the fentanyl crisis stemming from the southern border. Over the last year, law enforcement leaders statewide have acknowledged that Florida is benefiting from a 50-year record-low crime rate. Year-over-year crime in Florida is also down nearly 10%, according to state data. Florida’s new “Framework for Freedom Budget” allocates an additional $20 million for a second round of $5,000 recruitment bonuses for new recruits and those who relocate from out of state. The budget also allocates $110 million to provide one-time recognition bonuses for eligible local first responders and nearly $100 million to boost pay for correctional and probation officers. Since last July, when the Law Enforcement Recruitment Bonus Program was launched, over 2,000 people have joined Florida law enforcement agencies. Among them are nearly 600 new recruits from out of state with over 200 relocating from New York, California, Texas and Pennsylvania. Florida Sheriffs Association president and Hernando County Sheriff Al Nienhuis said…
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U.S. Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI-08) is criticizing a long-awaited report on the origins of COVID-19, saying it failed to answer significant questions surrounding researchers at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology who became sick with an unspecified illness in November 2019.
The 10-page report, finally declassified by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), underscores the fact that the intelligence community remains divided on the origins of a virus that is believed to have killed more than 1.13 million people in the United States, and nearly 7 million worldwide.
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Georgia U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA-14) suggested this week that somebody attempted to spy on her through a television in her Washington D.C. residence.
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An Arizona lawmaker wants the state’s collegiate governing body to investigate why an Arizona State University employee lost her job shortly after organizing an event featuring conservative speaker.
State Rep. Austin Smith, R-Surprise, wrote to the Arizona Board of Regents on June 21 following the decision by ASU to terminate the employment of administrator Ann Atkinson.
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A Georgia State Senate study committee will explore how the state can help mitigate the truck driver shortage.
In April 2022, Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, issued an executive order, which, in part, allowed heavier trucks to operate on Peach State roads. The governor subsequently renewed the executive order, but it expired in March.
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The country’s two largest teachers unions had direct access to the Education Department during the pandemic while parents had “no voice,” says a watchdog group of retired and former public servants.
Michael Chamberlin, the director of the group, Protect the Public’s Trust, made the claim in a recent episode of the “John Solomon Reports” podcast, saying research found “extensive coordination between … the two main teachers unions and high-level officials in the Department of Education,” namely the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association.
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An Illinois children’s hospital is charging school districts thousands of dollars for a sex education workshop that features lessons on how to teach kids about anal sex and gender identity, according to documents obtained through a public records request by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago is charging school districts up to $1,500 for a presentation to educators on “inclusive sexual health ed practices” that promotes the National Sexuality Education Standards (NSES), a K-12 sexual education curriculum, according to a copy of the presentation obtained by the DCNF through a public records request. The presentation recommends that fifth graders should learn several different sexual orientations, while eighth graders should be taught about anal and oral sex.
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A pair of academics affiliated with York University in Canada believe that allowing parents to opt out their children from drag storytime events is a “dangerous setback for 2SLGBTQ+ human rights education.”
Writing in the Toronto Star, Beyhan Farhadi, a fellow at York’s Institute for Research on Digital Literacies, and “community educator”/York M.Ed student Joy Henderson say the Toronto School Board’s decision to allow opt-outs from the “family-friendly” activity “sends a message that [queer] rights are debatable.”
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Nearly half of Californians are considering leaving the state, according to a June California Community poll.
The top cited reasons residents had for wanting to leave the state included the cost of living and political disagreement, according to the poll results. The poll was conducted between June 6 and June 16 and is an “ongoing partnership between Strategies 360 the Los Angeles Times,” the website reads.
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The Supreme Court threw out Democratic lawmakers’ lawsuit seeking to compel an executive agency to disclose records relating to the Trump hotel formerly located in the Old Post Office building in Washington, D.C.
Though the Supreme Court agreed in May to hear the case, which questioned whether individual members of Congress can sue executive agencies to compel records disclosures, Democrats voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit in a June 7 filing. In an unsigned order Monday, the Supreme Court tossed the case.
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by Victor Davis Hanson The present-day Left bears little resemblance to the old civil-libertarian, integrationist Democratic Party that existed from the 1960s through 2000. The antecedents to its current madness were once previewed in the old party’s extremist wing of campus radicals of the 1960s and 1970s. They were accentuated by Black Lives Matter and Antifa during the Obama years, forged during the COVID lockdown and George Floyd riots, and polished during the era of Trump derangement syndrome. On almost every issue, Democrats have repudiated their prior reverence for the Supreme Court. They distrust individual liberty and free expression. They now worship the money and clout of corporate America. Racial ecumenicalism and integration are seen as passé. There is little need for borders to protect vulnerable American workers, given the advantages of inviting in millions of poor illegal immigrants without audits. Democrats have transmogrified into a Soviet-style socialist binary of rich and poor, run by an elite nomenklatura that dictates its orders to its foot soldiers of the underclass. An entire new left-wing vocabulary — clingers, deplorables, irredeemables, dregs, chumps, ultra-MAGA, semi-fascists — has come to express their hatred of the middle class. On the Supreme Court The Left…
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Republican Texas Rep. August Pfluger and West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito introduced legislation Monday morning aiming to preempt any possible attempt by President Joe Biden to use emergency powers to circumvent congressional checks on his administration’s sweeping climate agenda.
“The Real Emergencies Act” would clarify that the president is unable to invoke emergency powers permitted by the National Emergencies Act, the Disaster Relief and Emergencies Act and the Public Health Service Act on the basis of a perceived climate change crisis. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other left-wing congressional lawmakers have called for Biden to declare a national climate emergency to further his administration’s aggressive climate agenda.
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The Quad-City Times has apologized for a political cartoon that GOP Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy described as “shameful.”
The cartoon depicts Ramaswamy, a second-generation Indian American at a sparsely attended campaign stop of “MAGA friends” — a reference to former President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan, but more so what the cartoonist apparently believes to be the slack-jawed, racist yokels who support the MAGA movement.
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GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy published an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal on Sunday vowing to ask Congress to repeal the Espionage Act of 1917 if elected in 2024.
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by John Solomon When the Justice Department discovered from journalists a storage locker containing evidence against ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, a search was executed immediately. But when IRS agents found a similar storage area containing evidence in the Hunter Biden criminal tax probe, they were denied the right to search despite meeting the probable cause standard, then Biden’s lawyers were tipped off, according to new congressional testimony. Likewise, when federal prosecutors believed there was evidence of crimes at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, they launched an unprecedented and full scale-raid on the former president. But when agents wanted to execute a search warrant at Joe Biden’s Delaware home because they had probable cause to believe evidence of Hunter Biden tax crimes, they were turned down for a warrant to raid the guest house in which the first son was living. And when FBI agents believed former Trump adviser Michael Flynn had committed no crime in the Russia collusion case, they nonetheless conducted an interview with him in what a supervisor concluded smacked of an effort to lure him into a lying charge. But when IRS and FBI agents wanted to interview witnesses in the Biden case, they were told most were…
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