Mysterious Email Supporting Property Assessor Rob Mitchell Sent to Rutherford County Employees

Rob Mitchell

Several Rutherford County officials received a mysterious email message cautioning them to support incumbent property assessor candidate Rob Mitchell following a Tennessee Star report about his hiring practices, according to an email obtained by The Star.

Ahead of Mitchell’s bid for reelection, he hired the son of two Rutherford County officials, Michael Maxwell, for a position in the property assessor’s office created for Maxwell after determining he was unqualified for the original job posting, The Star previously reported.

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WikiLeaks Founder Assange Begins Major Legal Fight Against Extradition to U.S.

Julian Assange Trial

Julian Assange’s attorneys on Tuesday began a major legal challenge in the United Kingdom to stop the WikiLeaks founder’s extradition to the United States on espionage charges. 

Assange, who has been in a maximum security prison in London for the past five years, was unable to attend the first day of a two-day High Court hearing due to his health, his attorney, Edward Fitzgerald, said, according to The Associated Press. 

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U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty Travels to the U.S.-Mexico Border

Senator Bill Hagerty at Southern Border

Tennessee U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border on Tuesday with Tennessee sheriffs and mayors to meet with law enforcement and property owners.

“I’m back at the southern border here in Texas,” Hagerty said in a video message posted to X. “We’re just in the outskirts of Eagle Pass right now. I brought another delegation of sheriffs and mayors and law enforcement from Tennessee just like I did two years ago. What we’re seeing is even worse than it was two year ago.”

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Memphis Prison Warden Ignores Request from Rep. Ogles to Move Unjustly Imprisoned J6 Defendant to Minimum Security Camp

Warden F.J. Bowers of the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Memphis ignored the request made by Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN-05) last week to move unjustly imprisoned J6 defendant Stewart Parks to the prison’s minimum security satellite camp, where Parks was originally told he would spend his eight month sentence.

Citing reporting by The Tennessee Star exposing the conditions inside FCI Memphis as relayed by Parks, Ogles demanded in a February 12 letter to Bowers for Parks to be moved from the primary prison facility to its minimum security satellite campus. Ogles gave Bowers until February 17 to respond, and Bowers did not return a press inquiry from The Star sent prior to Ogles’ deadline.

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‘I Would Love to See the Monument Go Away’: Rancher Suing Biden Over Arizona Land Grab Sounds Off

A rancher, who is suing President Joe Biden over the creation of a national monument in Arizona blocking the use of nearly 1 million acres for mining and other uses, told the Daily Caller News Foundation he wants to see it “go away.”

President Joe Biden created the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument in August 2023, hailing it as a step forward in the effort to “protect tribal lands.” The Pacific Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit to overturn the designation on behalf of rancher Chris Heaton, who the DCNF interviewed on Wednesday, on Feb. 12, according to a release.

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Congressional Watchdog Questions Reliability of U.S. Financial Statements, Cites ‘Serious Financial Management Problems at the Department of Defense’

The Pentagon

A Congressional watchdog said Friday that it was again unable to determine if the federal government’s consolidated financial statements were reliable.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office, which is Congress’s research arm, said it was hampered by “serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense,” problems in accounting for transactions between federal agencies, weaknesses in the process for preparing the statements and inadequate support for the cost of loan programs from the Small Business Administration and Department of Education.

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New Study Finds That CO2 is Increasing the Rate by Which the Globe is Greening, Even Under Drought

Coal Plant

A new study finds that human-caused carbon dioxide emissions are driving increased plant growth that’s greening the Earth, even in areas experiencing drought.

The peer-reviewed study, which was published in the scientific journal Global Ecology and Conservation, finds that the phenomenon known as “global greening” is an indisputable fact. The rate of global greening has increased slightly, and drought has only slowed, but not stopped, the process.

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Attorney General Skrmetti Declares Tennessee House Ticketing System Follows State Constitution

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti confirmed on Thursday that the new ticketing system for members of the public to attend meetings of the Tennessee House of Representatives follows the Tennessee Constitution.

The legal opinion was requested after House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville) announced a new ticketing system that limits half of the public gallery to media members, with members of the public and congressional staff only allowed with a ticket. Lawmakers are each given one ticket to distribute as they see fit.

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Arizona Senate Advances Bill to Void Low Turnout Elections, Reschedule Votes to Coincide with Statewide or Federal Races

An Arizona bill that would void the results of low turnout elections and reschedule them to coincide with statewide or federal races advanced past the Senate Committee on Elections and will now go to a full vote in the Arizona Senate, so long as the legislation is deemed constitutional by the Rules Committee.

The bill, SB 1131, would nullify the results of a local election that does not coincide with a statewide or federal election if less than 25 percent of possible voters turn out to vote.

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Virginia AG Jason Miyares Joins Coalition Demanding Federal Funding to Support Commonwealth Crime Victims

Virginia A.G. Jason Miyares

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares confirmed on Friday that he joined a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general calling on the Department of Justice’s Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) Fund to provide additional resources to commonwealth citizens who are victims of crimes.

The VOCA Fund, originally established by a federal law signed in 1984, is financed by fines and penalties paid by individuals convicted in federal cases and funds to provide various services, including financial assistance, to victims of crimes.

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Fani Willis Took Over $8,500 from First Campaign as ‘Repayment’ for Loans Missing Paperwork, Submitted Without Date and Signature

Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis claimed during her Thursday testimony at the hearing to disqualify her from the Georgia election case against former President Donald Trump that she took a significant amount of cash from her first election and used it to replenish her physical cash reserves. Willis claimed to use the physical cash to repay her former lover, special prosecutor Nathan Wade, for luxurious vacations.

Willis made the claim about keeping “some of the cash” from her first campaign when asked about the origin of her cash savings. The district attorney claimed she has been saving physical cash “all my life,” and gave as an example, “When I took out a large amount of money on my first campaign, I kept some of the cash of that.”

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Commentary: Non-Citizens Have Been Voting Since 2008

Why would a president running for reelection refuse to meet with the Speaker of the House to discuss a national crisis that most voters blame on the president himself? This would be regarded as bizarre behavior under any circumstances, but it’s particularly perverse considering that the crisis in question is illegal immigration — the signature issue of Biden’s probable challenger in November. Moreover, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, 63 percent of the voters disapprove of the way he has handled immigration. Yet Biden refuses to discuss the problem. It’s almost as if he thinks it somehow works to his advantage.

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Lawmakers Consider Bill to Prevent Arizona Cities from Defunding Local Police Departments

Police Officer

The Arizona House Rules Committee is scheduled to discuss legislation on Monday that would prevent cities from decreasing funding to their local police departments.

Rep. David Marshall, R-Snowflake, is the sponsor of House Bill 2120, and it has already passed the House Military Affairs & Public Safety committee in an 8-7 party-line vote this past Monday.

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New Data Centers Set to Stress U.S. Electric Grid Further

Electric Substation

For the past couple of years, assessments of the national electric grid’s ability to deliver power during peak demand periods, such as heat waves and cold snaps, have shown increasing risk for blackouts.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, the nation’s grid watchdog, finds the main cause is retirements of coal plants without enough natural gas plants coming online.

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Julie Kelly Commentary: Navalny’s Death Demonstrates Selective Outrage over Political Prisoners

Joe Biden wasted no time before shuffling to a White House podium last Friday to denounce the sudden death of Alexey Navalny, the celebrated anti-Kremlin activist.

According to Russian officials, Navalny, 47, lost consciousness after taking a walk at the Arctic penal colony where he had been serving a 19-year prison sentence for allegedly inciting “extremist” activities and other offenses. An outspoken foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Navalny won fans around the world including Hollywood celebrities and government leaders of all political persuasions.

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Michael Patrick Leahy and Crom Carmichael Debate Bill That Would Allow State Attorneys General to Sue DHS

Editor-in-Chief and CEO of The Tennessee Star Michael Patrick Leahy and Crom Carmichael, original all-star panelist of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy, discussed on Monday a bill recently introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives that would give state attorneys general a greater standing to sue the Department of Homeland Security when it fails to enforce existing immigration laws passed by Congress.

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Fani Willis Appears to Suggest She’s Under Divine Protection in Church Sermon After Heated Court Hearing

Fani Willis

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis appeared to suggest in a sermon Saturday that God is protecting her from “weapons” that have “formed” against her, adding that they will not “prosper.”

Willis’ sermon follows a Thursday and Friday hearing on whether she should be disqualified from her election interference case against former President Donald Trump. Willis allegedly gained financial benefits from appointing special prosecutor Nathan Wade to the case, but they both testified that their relationship commenced after the appointment and that she always reimbursed him in cash for their vacations and outings.

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University Hospital: Trans-Women’s Breast ‘Milk’ Just as Good as Biological Women’s

Baby with Parents

A UK university hospital system has claimed that milk produced by trans-women “is as good for babies” as biological women’s breast milk.

The Telegraph reports a University of Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust’s (USHT) “letter to campaigners” noted that “after a combination of drugs,” trans-women’s milk is “comparable to that produced following the birth of a baby.”

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Commentary: Chronically Absent Students Need an Alternative

Empty Chairs

It’s no secret that chronic absenteeism has skyrocketed since the pandemic. As The 74s Linda Jacobson writes, a new analysis of federal data released in late 2023 shows the problem may be even worse than previously understood.

The report from Johns Hopkins University shows that two out of three students were enrolled in schools with high or extreme chronic absenteeism rates during the 2021-22 school year—more than double the rate in 2017-18. (Students who miss at least 10% of the school year, or roughly 18 days, are considered chronically absent.)

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Foreign Billionaire-Backed ‘Climate Power’ Pressuring Broadcasters to Censor Ads Critical of Biden’s EV Mandate

President Joe Biden

A green nonprofit that is indirectly funded by a foreign billionaire is pressuring broadcasters to drop advertisements that criticize the Biden administration’s massive electric vehicle (EV) agenda.

Climate Power wrote to numerous broadcasters this week demanding that they stop airing American Fuel and Petrochemicals Manufacturers (AFPM)-funded advertisements in swing state markets that rail against President Joe Biden’s plans to impose widespread EV adoption in the coming years. The charitable organization affiliated with Hansjorg Wyss, a Swiss health care mogul and billionaire philanthropist, donates millions of dollars to the Fund for a Better Future, which was the fiscal sponsor for Climate Power until 2023, a spokesperson for Climate Power previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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Charting the ‘Cash Stash’ District Attorney Fani Willis Claims She Used to Repay Nathan Wade for Luxurious Vacations

Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis testified on Thursday that she keeps cash reserves in her residence, and that she used those reserves to repay her former lover, special prosecutor Nathan Wade, for the luxurious vacations he paid for using his business credit card.

An estimate of Willis’ cash savings since 2018, when she admitted to being “broke” as the result of a fierce primary campaign, suggests that Willis could have paid Wade in cash while increasing her reserves through cash back during shopping trips, as she implied.

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Gov. Youngkin Defends Democratic House Speaker Don Scott After VAGOP Called Attention to Prison Record

House of Del Speaker Don Scott and Gov Glenn Youngkin

Governor Glenn Youngkin wrote in defense of the Democratic Speaker of the House of Delegates on Thursday after the Republican Party of Virginia (VAGOP) cited the felony drug conviction of Speaker Don Scott (D-Portsmouth) and claimed he wants to lower the penalties for drug crimes to help drug dealers in a post to social media.

In a now-deleted post to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, the VAGOP reportedly wrote, “Is it any surprise that [Scott] spent 8 years in federal prison for peddling drugs to college kids, and now he’s obsessed with legislation to cut breaks for drug dealers? Anything for your buddies, right?”

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Abe Hamadeh Files Response to Arizona Election Officials’ Motions to Dismiss His Quo Warranto Action to Remove Kris Mayes from Office

Abe Hamadeh

Abe Hamadeh continues his election litigation challenging his 280-vote loss to Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes, including filing a Petition for Writ of Quo Warranto to remove Mayes from office. This past week, he filed a response to the Arizona officials’ Motions to Dismiss that lawsuit.

Represented by Ryan Heath of Heath Law, Hamadeh laid out the status of the case in the opening of his 43-page Response. “Respondent Kris Mays, Defendant Fontes, and the Maricopa County Defendants seek to deny Petitioner and many other voters their fundamental rights guaranteed by the Arizona Constitution for the sake of expediency,” he said. “The Maricopa County Defendants also seek to avoid accountability for their failures, which plausibly resulted in thousands (and likely hundreds of thousands) of illegal votes affecting the results of the 2022 General Election for the office of Attorney General (the ‘Contested Race’). Due to Maricopa County officials’ lack of candor, the circumstances permitting Petitioner to bring this action were not known — and could not have been known — until more than half a year after the official canvass was taken for the Contested Race.’

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Commentary: The Democrats’ Coming ‘September Switcheroo’ to Bench Biden and Nominate Michelle

Michelle Obama

President Biden’s poll numbers seem set in quicksand. Now the special counsel’s justification for not recommending charges against Biden for having “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials” is damning: Biden’s memory has such “significant limitations” that the special counsel believed he could not convince a jury that Biden has a “mental state of willfulness” that a serious felony (or, presumably, serving as president) requires. Cue the campaign commercials.

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Retiring Rep. Debbie Lesko Now Seeks Election to Maricopa County Board of Supervisors

Debbi Lesko

Representative Debbie Lesko (R-AZ-08), who recently announced she will retire from the U.S. Congress at the end of her term, is now reportedly seeking election to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.

Multiple reports reveal Lesko announced her candidacy for the District 4 seat on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors within hours of the Thursday announcement when Supervisor Clint Hickman confirmed he will not seek another term in office.

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Commentary: Progressives’ Cunning Blueprint to Possess the Levers of State Power

by Joshua Bandoch   Illinois public-sector unions are perfecting and promulgating a model for subjugating Americans to union interests. Their model has three steps: control the kids, control politicians and control the law. It’s highly effective, and toxic to the future of any state that embraces it. Kids are at the heart of Illinois unions’ domination strategy. After all, in Animal Farm, Napoleon the pig (representing Josef Stalin) says, “education of the young was more important than anything that could be done for those who were already grown up.” Illinois strives to be avant-garde in controlling kids through forced consumption of pro-union propaganda in schools. Behold House Bill 4417, in many ways the logical consequence of years of union domination. This bill, which is currently working its way through Illinois’ House of Representatives, would force all public high schools to “designate and observe ‘Workplace Readiness Week.’” This innocuous-sounding bill is sinister. Rather than preparing high school students to communicate professionally or interview successfully, students would be forced to consume information on the right to organize a union. Schools can even spread this propaganda “during special events after regular school hours.” Perhaps the next step will be testing students on their ability to regurgitate…

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Transit Ridership Slightly Climbing but Still 22 Percent Short of Pre-COVID Levels

Bus Riders

Transit ridership has seen a significant decline across the U.S. since the beginning of COVID-19. Although now rising slowly, transit agencies are still seeing a 22% drop from peak pre-COVID ridership.

Overall weekly ridership went from 196.3 million the week of Jan. 26-Feb. 1, 2020 to 152.7 million the week of Feb. 4-10, 2024. That’s according to reports from the American Public Transportation Association.

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Documents: FDA, CDC Could Soon Employ ‘Indigenous Knowledge’

Scientist in Lab

The Biden Administration’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) could soon employ the use of so-called “indigenous knowledge” in research efforts going forward, according to internal documents.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, the document in question is a planned revision of scientific integrity guidelines within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which includes such agencies as the FDA, the CDC, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The document calls for all agencies to utilize “multiple forms of evidence, such as indigenous knowledge,” when conducting research.

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School District Allows LGBTQ Lesson Opt-Outs After Legal Threat by Muslim Parents

Christian, Jewish and Muslim families in suburban D.C. are waiting for a federal appeals court to determine whether their school district can continue requiring their children to read LGBTQ “storybooks” without parental knowledge or consent.

Eleven hundred miles away in a similarly blue jurisdiction led by the United States’ first known Somali-American mayor, Muslim immigrant families who escaped a war-torn country didn’t have to go to court to have their parental rights honored.

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The Soros Empire Expands Its Reach into Media with Latest Radio Acquisition

Radio Studio

Earlier this month, the investment firm founded by George Soros acquired over $400 million worth of debt owed by the nation’s second-largest radio network in a ploy to gain a stake in the media conglomerate, the latest in a series of media-related moves made by organizations tied to Soros.

Soros Fund Management has acquired over $400 million worth of debt owed by Audacy, the nation’s second-largest network of radio stations, bankruptcy filings show. Soros and entities linked to him have previously poured money into local news operations, funded the acquisition of newspapers, purchased other radio stations and bankrolled pro-Democrat news websites.

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Commentary: The Pandemic Years Accelerated Gen Z’s Departure from the Institutional Left

Young Conservatives

The pandemic years have all but disappeared from mainstream political discourse, which has now hinged onto the nebulous goal of “preserving democracy”.

Despite representing one of the most pivotal Black Swan events in modern history – maybe even in human history – the pandemic and its impact on culture has been relegated to an occasional footnote in modern politics.

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Commentary: More Cows Needed to Reverse Climate Change, Experts Say

Cows

In a little-noticed presentation on Dec. 9, 2023, at COP28 in Dubai, a panel of soil experts presented the case for cows as climate allies, not gas-spewing destroyers. The event, titled “Conscious Livestock Rearing and Soil Health,” discussed “animal rearing’s impact on soil health, and its place as a part of the climate solution.” Contrary to the anti-cow cacophony of the climate crisis crowd, these experts explained the vital role ruminants like cows play in nourishing and rebuilding precious soils. It turns out, grazing cows sequester massive amounts of carbon.

On the panel of experts was Seth J. Itzkan, co-founder of SOIL4Climate, Inc., a nonprofit that “promotes soil restoration as a climate solution,” and a man akin to a Lorax for the cows.

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Anonymous Demonstrators Who Waved Nazi Flags in Nashville Are Connected to ‘Boneface’ Provocateur Who Claimed to Fight with Neo-Nazi Battalion in Ukraine

A group of masked, anonymous demonstrators who waved Nazi flags at the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville on Saturday are apparently part of the same Blood Tribe neo-Nazi group as Kent “Boneface” McLellan, the American neo-Nazi who gained notoriety in 2023 after he claimed to fight alongside a Ukrainian military unit that regularly uses fascist imagery and is accused of harboring neo-Nazi views.

Media reports suggest the group of individuals who were holding Nazi flags in the viral video recorded by Representative Justin Jones (D-Nashville) on Saturday are affiliated with the Blood Tribe, which the Anti-Defamation League explains is a “growing neo-Nazi group” that purportedly has chapters in the United States and Canada.

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Texas Girl, 11, Raped and Murdered by Catch-and-Release Illegal Migrant

Daily Mail UK The main suspect in the murder of an 11-year-old girl found strangled to death under her bed in Texas is a Guatemalan immigrant who entered the US in January, police said on Friday – revealing that a key left behind in the little girl’s home was a vital piece of evidence. Maria Gonzalez’s body found by her father at their home in Pasadena, Texas, on Saturday, August 12, when he returned home from work. She had also been sexually assaulted, police said. Pasadena Police Department on Friday named Juan Carlos Garcia-Rodriguez, 18, as a ‘person of interest’ and the main suspect in the case. READ THE FULL STORY        

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Top Election Lawsuits to Watch Ahead of the 2024 Presidential Election

People Voting

There are multiple ongoing or just-filed election lawsuits this year that could have wide-ranging impact on the 2024 elections, as plaintiffs from both sides of the political aisle challenge election laws or applications of them.

In 2020, there were as many as 400 lawsuits brought by both Republicans and Democrats regarding election procedures and laws as election administration was quickly changed during the COVID-19 lockdowns leading up to the presidential election. This year, new election lawsuits are focusing on candidate eligibility, different changes in law, and alleged violation of election laws. All of these lawsuits may greatly impact how the 2024 presidential election will be conducted.

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