Report: Joel Osteen Church Shooter Identified as Genesse Moreno, Also Went by ‘Jeffrey’

Post Millennial The individual who walked into Joel Osteen’s Lakewood, Texas church on Sunday, pulled out a gun and opened fire, has been identified as Genesse Ivonne Moreno, 36. Moreno had a 5-year-old child when entering the church wearing a trenchcoat and opened fire when enterring the church. Local news reports that multiple sources have said that Genesse Ivonne Moreno is suspected of being the “armed woman” who was killed at the church Sunday. Reports indicated that the shooter was female, but it has since been revealed that Moreno was male. Moreno was shot and killed by two off-duty officers. Moreno’s weapon was emblazoned with the slogan “Free Palestine.” READ THE FULL STORY    

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Corey DeAngelis: Vermont Has Had a Successful School Choice Program Since 1869

School choice activist Corey A. DeAngelis joined Wednesday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy to discuss the future of school choice in the U.S., specifically in Democrat-run states.

Leahy kicked off the segment by noting how Vermont has the oldest operating school voucher program in the country’s history with its Town Tuitioning Program.

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Report: Farm, Food Prices Rise Under Net-Zero Climate Rules

Farmer Working

Farms and families will pay significantly more under the Biden administration’s net-zero climate policies, a new report from an Ohio-based policy group says.

The Buckeye Institute’s Net-Zero Climate-Control Policies Will Fail the Farm shows farmers will see a 34% rise in operational costs under the policies and family grocery bills will increase 15% based on modeling.

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CJ Pearson Will Seek Impeachment of Fani Willis Due to ‘Clear Impropriety’ with Nathan Wade if Elected to Georgia State House

C.J. Pearson, who is on the ballot Tuesday for the special election in 125th District to fill a recently-vacated seat in Georgia’s State House, told The Georgia Star News about his “incredible journey” that began as a preteen political commentator nearly a decade ago and may have landed him within days of officially entering politics as an elected official.

Pearson, who has faced intense criticism from parties connected to Governor Brian Kemp that he previously characterized as “rogue,” answered his critics, told Star News what his priorities will be if elected, and promised to leverage his potential status as the youngest black politician to help Georgia Republicans achieve new heights if elected.

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America First Legal Lawsuit Against Maricopa County Over Election Illegalities Raises Issues Other Judges Previously Found Had Merit in 2020 Election Cases

America First Legal (AFL) filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against Maricopa County, alleging numerous violations of election law since 2020. Some of the issues raised in the complaint were brought up in similar lawsuits brought around the country challenging irregularities in the 2020 election, where judges found they had merit.

The AFL listed eight issues in its complaint, and mainly asked for declaratory judgment to stop the county from repeating the wrongdoing and comply with law. The first was lack of chain of custody for tens of thousands of ballots, a class 2 misdemeanor. The second was failure to conduct reconciliation as required by law, which refers to comparing the number of votes cast at polling centers to the number of voters who checked in. The third was the failure of the voting center printers, disenfranchising voters. The fourth was the racially discriminatory location of vote centers, disadvantaging Native Americans and whites who lived farther from the locations than others. 

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Trump Leads Haley by Wide Margin in South Carolina, Mace Draws No-Show Primary Challenger

As the February 24 Republican primary elections approach in South Carolina, former President Donald J. Trump has a commanding lead in the polls against his only challenger, former South Carolina Governor Nimrata “Nikki” Haley.

According to the poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight, Trump is dominating Haley on her own home turf by a margin of about 65 percent to Haley’s 32 percent. 

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Bill to Ban Satanic Displays in Government Advances in Arizona as Sen. Jake Hoffman Calls Satanism ‘Antithesis of Religion’

A bill advanced on Thursday in the Arizona Senate that would prohibit the display of Satanic displays on public property in the state. The bill’s sponsor, Senator Jake Hoffman (R-Queen Creek), warns that satanism should not have a place on public property as the “antithesis of religion.”

Hoffman celebrated after SB 1279 passed a committee vote in a post to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

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D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser Reveals Efforts to Stop Gov. Youngkin’s Plan to Move Wizards, Capitals to Virginia

Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on Sunday authored an opinion column offering reasons why Monumental Sports and Entertainment should abandon its plans to move to Alexandria, Virginia, where Governor Glenn Youngkin is working with the General Assembly to build a new entertainment complex for the Washington Wizards and Capitals.

Bowser revealed the offer made to keep the sports teams in the district, stressed the city’s ownership position over the Capital One Arena property and outlined a series of concerns about the possible move.

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Georgia State Sen. Bill Cowsert Promises Nonpartisan Investigation of DA Fani Willis to Determine Possible Misuse of Taxpayer Funds with Nathan Wade

Bill Cowsert

The Georgia Senate Special Committee on Investigations met for the first time on Friday since it was created following the adoption of SR 465, which allowed for the formation of the Senate committee to investigate the allegations surrounding embattled Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

The committee is chaired by Senator Bill Cowsert (R-Athena), who promised that the Senate’s work will not seek to undermine any of Willis’ ongoing criminal cases, including her election case against former President Donald Trump. However, Cowsert suggested future funding for district attorneys could depend on the investigation’s findings.

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Teacher Who Exposed School’s ‘Woke Kindergarten’ Program Put on Leave

The San Francisco-area elementary school whose test scores dropped following implementation of the so-called “Woke Kindergarten” program suspended the teacher who exposed the controversial program.

On Thursday, the teacher who blew the whistle on the program was “summoned […] to a video conference” during which he was told to “turn in his keys and laptop and not return to his classroom […] until further notice,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

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Report: Unfunded Cost of Retirement Benefits Reaches $1.14 Trillion

New Jersey Capitol

New Jersey, California, New York, Texas and Illinois face a hundred billion plus deficit when it comes to paying for the benefits other than pensions promised to state retirees.

The State of New Jersey’s unfunded liability for post-retirement benefits other than pensions in state health care plans reached $174.9 billion in 2022. That was the highest in the country, according to a report by the American Legislative Exchange Council. The report stated the nationwide costs of state-sponsored post-retirement benefits reached $1.14 trillion in 2022.

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Commentary: Far from Environmentalists’ ‘Immoral’ Claim – We Need Children Now More than Ever

New Born Baby

In a recent television interview, environmental activist Donnachadh McCarthy informed the public that having more than two kids is selfish. McCarthy states in the interview that humanity has destroyed 70 percent of “nature” in one generation, presumably due to our so-called carbon footprint, although he doesn’t explain exactly how this has occurred.

“There’s a moral issue here,” he says. “How can we pass that on to the next generation? Every child in an industrial country like ours has around 505 hundred tonnes of carbon over their lifetime. That’s equivalent to 1000 years of electricity for a household. So each child has an impact, and we’re saying one is great, two is plenty, and three is selfish.”

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Joe Biden Mocked Mercilessly for Mumbling, Bumbling ‘Shrinkflation’ Video Released on Super Bowl Sunday

President Joe Biden was mocked by conservatives on Sunday for a video he released ahead of the Super Bowl which derided “shrinkflation,” when manufacturers lower the size or quantity of items included for a given price without informing the consumer as a result of inflation, with pundits uniformly reminding the embattled president that his inflationary policies preceded the shrinkflation.

In the video, posted to the official government account for Biden on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, the president appears to be sitting in the White House movie theater while various shots reveal he is surrounded by packages of junk food. Looking into the camera, Biden remarked, “if you’re like me you like to be surrounded by a snack or two while watching the big game.”

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Jill Biden Commits Inadvertent ‘Umbrella Assault’ Against Nashville Mayor During Trip to Tennessee

Nashville Mayor Freddie O'Connell Greets First Lady Jill Biden

First Lady Jill Biden committed an inadvertent “umbrella assault” against Metro Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell during her visit to Tennessee, which was reportedly aimed at securing endorsements from the country music “influencer” community at an event held by country music artist Brad Paisley.

Video appears to show O’Connell being poked by the umbrella before deftly maneuvering around and underneath the umbrella as Biden raised it higher to avoid a second attack.

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Sec Def Austin Back in Hospital

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was taken to the hospital again on Sunday afternoon, Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a statement, in a change after the secretary’s secret hospitalization in January triggered a firestorm of criticism.

Austin’s security staff brought him to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center at 2:20 p.m. on Sunday for “symptoms suggesting an emergent bladder issue,” the statement read. The secretary will retain his duties, although the statement pointed out that Austin’s deputy, the top U.S. military officer, the White House staff and other officials have been notified within hours, a major break from January when key national security officials did not know of his absence.

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Bill Ackman on Washington Post Hit Piece: ‘The Public Has Been Again Misled’

Bill Ackman, the highly successful hedge fund manager and Harvard graduate whose criticism of Claudine Gay’s history of plagiarism led to her resignation as President of Harvard University, published a lengthy tweet on his X account Sunday evening responding to an article about him published by The Washington Post earlier in the day. Here is that post in its entirety:

I am sure all of us have had the experience of reading a story about a subject you know well and finding it replete with inaccuracies and falsehoods. One then turns the page and reads an article about a subject one knows less well and makes the mistake of believing that this other story is accurate. I am guilty of this sin. I am sadly repeatedly reminded to mistrust what I read in the media, and I am not alone. Destruction of confidence in our media is contributing to societal breakdown, and that is a very unfortunate state of affairs.

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Roger Simon Analyzes RFK Jr.’s Campaign amid DNC’s FEC Complaint

RFK JR

Roger Simon, co-founder of PJMedia and current columnist for The Epoch Times, joined Friday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy where he discussed the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) latest attack on Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) Jr. ‘s presidential campaign and the super PAC supporting him.

On Friday, the DNC filed a Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint against RFK Jr.’s campaign and the American Values Super PAC on allegations the two are colluding to get the candidate ballot access.

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EXCLUSIVE: Imprisoned J6 Defendant Stewart Parks Tells The Tennessee Star, ‘There Are Murderers and Child Molesters Here. No J6 Defendant Should Be in Such a Situation’

Unjustly convicted J6 defendant Stewart Parks spoke with Tennessee Star CEO Michael Patrick Leahy in a 15-minute phone call placed on Friday afternoon from the Federal Correctional Institution in Memphis, Tennessee. Parks self-reported to begin serving an eight-month sentence on Tuesday.

The Star and Leahy have filed a Freedom of Information Act request with FCI Memphis to obtain the 15-minute audio recording of that call. Inmates incarcerated at FCI are allowed to make 500 minutes of out bound phone calls per month, but each call is recorded and is limited to 15 minutes in length.

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Greg Abbott: Texas Set to Build More Border Wall than Trump

Greg Abbott

On Thursday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R-Texas) claimed that the state of Texas is on track to build more wall along the southern border than was constructed during President Donald Trump’s first term.

As the New York Post reports, Abbott made his remarks during a press conference in Shelby Park, the territory that Texas state authorities seized from the Border Patrol and other federal agencies following Abbott’s declaration of an invasion.

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Julie Kelly Commentary: Joe Biden’s Handling of Classified Records is Worse than Trump’s Case

Joe Biden

According to the report released last week by Special Counsel Robert Hur, Joe Biden has a long history of mishandling classified material.

Witnesses told Hur during the course of his year-long investigation that as vice president, Biden routinely took classified files and did not return them as required. “Mr. Biden was known to remove and keep classified material from his briefing books for future use, and his staff struggled – and sometimes failed – to retrieve these materials,” Hur disclosed in the special counsel’s damning 388-page report.

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Trump Endorses Tim Sheehy for Montana GOP Senate over Matt Rosendale

Trump Montana

Former President Donald Trump weighed in on the GOP Montana Senate primary, endorsing former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy over Republican Rep. Matt Rosendale.

“I LOVE MONTANA! Tim Sheehy is an American Hero and highly successful Businessman from the Great State of Montana,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “He is strongly supported by our incredible Chairman of the NRSC, Steve Daines, and many other patriotic Senators and Republicans who have endorsed our Campaign to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

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Report: Amazon Censored Books on COVID Vaccine After Pressure from Biden White House

Vaccine Shot

New internal emails from Amazon reveal that the tech giant ultimately censored books discussing the topic of Chinese Coronavirus vaccines after being pressured to do so by the Biden Administration.

As reported by the New York Post, the emails and other documents were released by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Monday in a series of posts on X, which Jordan referred to as “The Amazon Files.” The communications were obtained by a subpoena from the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which was established with the purpose of exposing abuse of federal powers to target political opponents, including collusion between the government and private sector entities such as Big Tech.

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Ohio Appalachian Region Getting $85 Million Assistance for Innovation Centers

Gov. Mike DeWine

Ohio plans to funnel $85 million in federal taxpayer dollars to its Appalachian region to develop new community innovation centers to help with education, behavioral health care and jobs.

The money is available for K-12 school districts, joint vocational school districts, regional councils of government or other political subdivisions in the state’s 32-county Appalachian region.

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Virginia Legislation to Limit Removal of Explicit Content from Schools Advances

Democratic-sponsored bills meant to inhibit censorship of books with sexually explicit content are advancing through the Virginia House of Delegates and the Senate this session — and not just along party lines.

House Bill 571, sponsored by Del. Karrie Delaney, D-Fairfax, passed the House Education Committee Wednesday 14-8, with two Republicans — Del. Carrie Coyner, R-Chesterfield, and Del. Baxter Ennis, R-Chesapeake — voting for the legislation. 

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Trump Tied with Biden in Battleground Wisconsin: Poll

Trump Biden Wisconsin

Former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden are locked in a tight race to claim Wisconsin, should both become their respective parties’ nominees in the 2024 White House race.

The pair earned 49% each in a recent Marquette Law School Poll of registered voters, when undecided respondents were asked to choose. Trump held a narrow edge of 50% to 49% among likely voters. Among independent registered voters, Biden led Trump 49% to 42%.

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Actress Gina Carano to Sue Disney for Wrongful Termination

Gina Carano

Gina Carano, the actress and former MMA fighter who was fired by The Walt Disney Company for expressing sympathy to conservative viewpoints, announced her intentions to sue the entertainment company for wrongful termination.

As Fox News reports, the actress had a starring role in the Disney series “The Mandalorian” prior to her firing, which came after she made a post on social media comparing the current persecution of conservative Americans to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany. In the post, Carano commented on how the first step towards oppression is to dehumanize a certain group of people so the broader population will feel no sympathy for them.

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Americans Increasingly Turning Away from Political News as 2024 Election Nears

The American public is focusing less and less on political news in recent months, even as a crucial presidential election draws nearer.

According to Axios, Americans are instead turning back to consumption of non-political content such as sports and entertainment, indicating a decline in political interest that spiked in 2020 ahead of that year’s presidential race. While numerous events in 2020, such as the nationwide race riots and the lockdowns as the result of the Chinese Coronavirus, led to increased political engagement and culminated in record-high voter turnout, there have been fewer major events in the lead-up to 2024.

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Commentary: Battles We Can Win Are on Family, Morality, and Education

Family

In “Burke on Our Crisis of Character,” which appeared in the December 2023 issue of Chronicles, Bruce Frohnen notes, “The American Way was real, rooted in families whose rights trumped the demands of the state because families were more natural and fundamental than the state.” The following month in the same magazine, Stephen Baskerville reviews a collection of essays, Up from Conservatism, in which he briefly addresses the pernicious effects of government welfare on family life and fatherhood.

As is the case in nearly everything that the federal government touches, be it education, health care, or anything else, its policies in the last 50 years have severely damaged the American family. Given the additional harms done by government in the first quarter of the 21st century—trillions of dollars in wasted expenses, woefully ignorant public school graduates, divisions along the lines of race, politics, and gender, a diminished pride in our past, the attacks on our liberties—some people I know despair about the future. Others of us want to restore the good that has been lost but feel frustrated and even defeated by the immensity of the task. We vote, we grouse (as I am doing here), yet each day brings some new assault on the culture, some new governmental dictate or intrusion, and we just want to hunker down in the trenches hoping that this bombardment will end of its own accord.

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Commentary: America’s Public Education Crisis

Teacher Teaching

In April 1983, U.S. Secretary of Education Terrell Bell created the National Commission on Excellence in Education, directing it to “examine the quality of education in the United States.” The panel found that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”

The report famously asserted, “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might have viewed it as an act of war.” It also insists that “…academic excellence [is] the primary goal of schooling [and it] seems to be fading across…American education.”

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Trump Co-defendant Says Nathan Wade Associate Will Refute Timeline of Fani Willis Relationship

The Epoch Times Trump co-defendant Michael Roman filed a motion on Friday identifying a witness who could testify that Fulton County’s district attorney and a prosecutor she hired began a romantic relationship before they pursued the election case, refuting sworn testimony. In the 122-page filing, Mr. Roman’s lawyer said a former associate of prosecutor Nathan Wade would refute the prosecutor’s timeline of his relationship with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Mr. Wade and Ms. Willis recently admitted under oath to having a “personal relationship,” which Mr. Wade said began after the election case began in 2022. READ THE FULL STORY           

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Roger Simon Calls Tucker Carlson’s Interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin a ‘Monument of Journalism’

Carlson Putin

Roger Simon, co-founder of PJMedia and current columnist for The Epoch Times, joined Friday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy to discuss Tucker Carlson’s two-hour interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Simon said he was “absolutely riveted” by the interview, adding the amount of information discussed was “impossible to digest immediately.”

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South Carolina House Republicans Plan Clean ‘Constitutional Carry’ Measure

The South Carolina House Republicans plan to introduce a clean “Constitutional Carry” measure after declining to proceed with an amended version the state Senate passed, exposing a rift within Republican ranks over one of the party’s top priorities.

The state House rejected H.3594, the South Carolina Constitutional Carry/Second Amendment Preservation Act of 2023, which the Senate passed last week. However, the head of a pro-gun rights group sent a letter to House members saying the Senate’s amended version violates the Second Amendment

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GOP Rep. Mike Gallagher Won’t Run for Re-Election

NBC News Wisconsin GOP Rep. Mike Gallagher, who made news earlier this week with his vote against impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, announced on Saturday that he won’t run for re-election this year. “The Framers intended citizens to serve in Congress for a season and then return to their private lives. Electoral politics was never supposed to be a career and, trust me, Congress is no place to grow old. And so, with a heavy heart, I have decided not to run for re-election,” Gallagher said in his statement. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which was one of the first outlets to report the news of Gallagher’s retirement from the House alongside The Wall Street Journal, reported Saturday that the congressman “said his future work will be in-line with his national security goals and focus on defense policy.” READ THE FULL STORY                   

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Biden Classified Memos Report Re-Ignites Debates About Dual Justice, ‘Diminished’ President

Biden Speaking

Special Counsel Robert Hur’s final report on Joe Biden’s willful retention and dissemination of highly classified information is rocking Washington, re-igniting concerns of a dual system of justice while putting the full weight of the government behind the notion that America is currently being served by a president with “diminished faculties.”

Hur’s 388-page report released Thursday may have spared Biden the spectacle of a criminal prosecution similar to that his Justice Department imposed on Donald Trump, but it delivered a devastating blow to the 46th president’s re-election hopes by going out of its way to explain criminal charges weren’t levied in part because jurors might see Biden as a dottering, forgetful old man incapable of criminal intent.

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Jack Smith Makes Another Push to Keep Documents Under Seal

Jack Smith

Special Counsel Jack Smith asked Judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday to reconsider her decision to unseal certain documents prosecutors wanted to keep from the public docket.

Cannon, who is overseeing the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump in Florida, ruled Tuesday that certain discovery material Smith wanted to keep under seal because it could impact the safety of potential witnesses would be disclosed out of the “strong presumption of public access in criminal proceedings.” Smith urged Cannon to reconsider her decision, arguing that she “applied the wrong legal standard and issued orders that, in practice, will expose witnesses and others to intolerable and needless risks.”

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Shelby County Judge Bill Anderson Publicly Reprimanded by State Board After He Railed Against Bail, Belittled Police Sergeant

The Tennessee Board of Judicial Conduct (BJC) Shelby County General Sessions publicly reprimanded Judge Bill Anderson on Tuesday after he belittled a police sergeant and revealed his disdain for the “bail bond system” in Tennessee.

The BJC served Anderson the public reprimand after he declared his opposition to the concept of bail and bail bonding companies in September 2023, when the judge claimed bail bonding companies “don’t do anything but collect money from poor people” during a meeting of the Shelby County Commission, and declared, “I detest the bail bond system in Shelby County, I detest it across this state.”

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