Virginia State Senator L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth) used her position as Senate Finance Committee chair to block a Democrat effort to prevent public utility companies from donating to political campaigns in the commonwealth.
State Senator Danica Roem (D-Manassas) introduced SB 326, which aimed to ban candidates “from soliciting or accepting contributions from any public utility” and prohibit such companies from making political contributions.
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U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake was endorsed on Tuesday by Senator Steve Daines (R-MT), who is the chair of the influential National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC).
In a post to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, the NRSC published a statement announcing the endorsement for Lake.
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Chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio Algenon L. Marbley granted NetChoice’s request for a preliminary injunction that stops the state’s Social Media Parental Notification Act from being enforced on Monday.
Last month, NetChoice sued Ohio to block the Social Media Parental Notification Act from taking effect.
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Connecticut’s congressional delegation is calling on the Army to provide more details about its decision to reject a local company’s bid for a multimillion-dollar defense contract to build long-range helicopters.
Sikorsky Aircraft, maker of the iconic Blackhawk helicopters, submitted a proposal to the Army in 2018 to develop a new armed scout helicopter. But last week, the Army announced that it was scrapping its Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft program, delivering a major blow to the company.
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A bill that would have possibly prevented Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis from sending the Florida State Guard to the nation’s southern border has been rewritten to remove that provision.
Instead, House Bill 1551, sponsored by state Rep. Mike Giallombardo, R- Cape Coral, was replaced by a committee substitute authored by the Infrastructure & Tourism Appropriations Subcommittee.
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Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell will face the same challenger in the Republican primary this year as she did in the 2022 special election Gina Godbehere.
Godbehere announced her campaign last week. The Maricopa County Supervisors chose Mitchell in early 2022 to replace the previous county attorney, Alistar Adel, who resigned from office due to health issues. Adel passed away in 2022. Mitchell has accumulated considerable criticism from Republicans for actions such as representing the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors (MCBOS) twice, asking for sanctions against Kari Lake’s election attorneys.
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Governor Brian Kem said up to 20 additional Georgia National Guard members will support Texas Governor Gregg Abbott in his efforts to secure the state’s southern border in his standoff with the Biden administration.
In a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, Kemp pledged 15 to 20 additional Georgia National Guard troops to assist with constructing a command post at the border.
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Wisconsin’s election managers say as long as there is a house number and a street name, absentee voting witness slips don’t need a city, the state, a zip code or anything else.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission clarified the rule for absentee ballot witnesses address information.
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Republicans in the Minnesota House of Representatives wasted no time in the opening moments of the 2024 legislative session in attempting to fast-track passage of a seemingly bipartisan proposal to fix a new law enacted last year that has hampered the work of school resource officers in several public schools across the state.
But the author of that bill ended up being the GOP’s biggest stumbling block in attempting to pass it on the House floor Monday.
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The South Carolina House advanced a clean Constitutional Carry bill, returning the measure to the state Senate and potentially setting up another showdown.
The state House rejected a Senate-amended version of H.3594, the South Carolina Constitutional Carry/Second Amendment Preservation Act of 2023. In a letter, the head of a pro-gun rights group said Senate-introduced amendments violate the Second Amendment.
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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer says the proposed 2025 budget wouldn’t raise taxes but it would dump a 1,200% increase in trash fees onto local taxpayers.
The budget aims to raise the landfill tipping fee rate for state landfills from 36 cents to $5 per ton – a 1,288% increase.
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The use of tax credits and state subsidies has grown significantly in recent years, and the trend is expected to intensify in the near future.
A report from the Independent Fiscal Office noted that Pennsylvania awarded $857 million in tax credits in fiscal year 2022-23, and the IFO projects that $1.23 billion will be given away in 2023-24.
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An administrator of the Harvard Extension School (HES) was accused of plagiarism in an anonymous complaint sent to the school Friday, according to The Harvard Crimson.
Shirley Greene, an HES administrator who handles Title IX compliance, was accused of 42 instances of plagiarism in her 2008 dissertation, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by the Crimson. The allegations mark the latest plagiarism scandal to hit the university after a string of allegations against high-ranking university faculty members, including former Harvard President Claudine Gay.
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American companies are reversing the multiyear trend of hiring more employees in roles related to environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) issues in an effort to increase profitability and address investor pushback, according to The Wall Street Journal.
U.S. companies shed 3,071 employees with positions related to ESG in December while only adding 2,897, continuing the trend that has been seen in half of the months in the last year of a net loss of ESG positions, according to the WSJ. The shift is in response to investors pulling their funds from companies heavily involved in ESG practices and placing their money in firms where they can get higher returns.
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Fewer Americans are planning to celebrate Valentine’s Day in 2024 than in years past.
America isn’t totally losing its love for the saccharine holiday, though. In fact, spending on Valentine’s Day gifts—for everyone from a significant other to one’s cat—has increased.
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In 1986, an upstart public health researcher named Arline Geronimus challenged the conventional wisdom that condemned the alarming rise of inner-city teen pregnancies. While activist minister Jesse Jackson and health care leaders were decrying the crisis of “babies having babies” as a ghetto pathology, Geronimus contended that teenage pregnancy was a rational response to urban poverty where low-income black people have fewer healthy years before the onset of heart problems, diabetes, and other chronic conditions.
Although Geronimus’ claims gained little traction at the time, the concept she pioneered – “weathering” – eventually became a foundation for the social justice ideology that is now upending medicine and social policy. She has stated in interviews and in her writings that the term “weathering” was intended to evoke the idea of erosion and resilience.
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Ash Wednesday is—oddly perhaps—a day I have long associated with bushfires, better known in the American hemisphere as wildfires.
I come from the Adelaide Hills in South Australia, where on Ash Wednesday in 1983, catastrophic bushfires, driven by 70-mph winds and fueled by years of drought-ravaged eucalyptus forest, tragically claimed 28 lives. In the neighboring state of Victoria, even more lives were lost under similar conditions. In total, 75 Australians perished and 3,000 homes were destroyed in what were the nation’s deadliest bushfires up to that point.
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One of my favorite country music couples is T.G. Sheppard and Kelly Lang.
I learned last year that the pair were planning a new duets album for 2024. They decided the first song they would release off the upcoming album would be a cover of Shania Twain’s “You’re Still the One.”
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A former Hunter Biden business partner involved in early contacts with a Chinese energy conglomerate that paid the first son millions is set to appear in a closed-door deposition before the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday.
Tony Bobulinski, who worked with the younger Biden to form an investment company with CEFC China Energy, is a key witness in the House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry because he had a front row seat to the Biden family’s plans for its partnership with the Chinese company.
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All eight Tennessee Republican U.S. Representatives were among the majority of members that voted ‘Yes’ on two articles of impeachment against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday.
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The GOP-led House passed an impeachment resolution against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday night 214-213, marking the first time a sitting cabinet secretary has been impeached.
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A motion to intervene filed on Monday in the court case seeking to compel the release of the manifesto written by Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale claims the shooter’s motivation for committing the attack may stem from an alleged child abuse coverup at the school.
The motion was filed by Austin Davis, who claimed in a signed affidavit to be “a former Covenant Presbyterian deacon and church member, and a former Covenant School father” who also purports to be a “child sex abuse whistleblower.” The Tennessee man claimed to face retaliation for the claims he made against the school.
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The U.S. Senate passed a $95 billion foreign aid bill for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan after days of delay from Republicans who did not want to pass the funding without provisions to secure the southern border.
The legislation passed early Tuesday morning after a filibuster largely led by U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., ended. Now the legislation goes to the House, where it remains unclear if they can get the votes.
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The New York Post Several CBS News reporters were caught up in layoffs at Paramount Global that claimed 800 jobs, including one who is embroiled in a high-stakes First Amendment fight — and another who has reportedly weathered HR probes over his workplace behavior, The Post has learned. Catherine Herridge — an award-winning senior correspondent whose First Amendment case is being closely watched by journalists nationwide — was among the hundreds of employees at CBS parent Paramount who got pink slips on Tuesday, sources told The Post. The carnage provoked outrage from the rank-and-file at CBS, with some focusing their ire on Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish, who pulled down $32 million in total compensation last year despite the company’s ever-shrinking financial profile. READ THE FULL STORY
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Dr. Carol M. Swain said First Lady Jill Biden held a “discreet” meeting at the Richland Country Club at the same time Swain’s nonprofit organization Be the People’s American Dream Conference was taking place on Friday evening in Nashville.
Biden initially traveled to Franklin for a “political event” reportedly occurring at the home of country music star Brad Paisley, however, also held an unannounced event at the Richland Country Club on Friday, according to Swain.
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U.S. Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN-05) sent a letter to the Warden F.J. Bowers of the Federal Correctional Institution in Memphis on Tuesday which urged him to immediately transfer unjustly convicted J6 defendant Stewart Parks to the facility’s minimum security camp.
Ogles sent his letter following the Sunday report from The Tennessee Star that revealed Parks is not in the minimum security camp where he was originally expected to serve his sentence, and is instead in a part of the federal prison that houses gang members, murderers and child molesters.
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Tennessee State Senator Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) said Memphis will become the “butt of every joke” and the “example of a failed city” if its bail system and crime crisis are not addressed.
Noting how Detroit was once an example of a “failed city” and a “shell of its former self,” Taylor explained what steps the city has taken to reduce crime and how Memphis should follow its lead.
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Wednesday is the first day of early voting for the March 5 Presidential Preference Primary and County Primary Elections in Tennessee.
“Early voting begins on Valentine’s Day, and we want to remind voters our robust early voting period provides Tennesseans with a convenient way to make their voices heard,” Secretary of State Tre Hargett said in a statement.
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Breitbart News Republican House Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (NY) on Tuesday issued a 64-page letter to the New York Committee on Professional Standards demanding the disbarment of New York Attorney General Letitia James for allegedly violating “principles of fairness and impartiality” by engaging in “relentless lawfare” on social media against former President Donald Trump. If James is disbarred, it would substantially increase Trump’s chances of defeating James’ prosecution. James seeks to essentially bankrupt Trump by calling for a $370 million fine and a lifetime of earnings from the real estate industry in New York State. James claims Trump committed financial fraud. READ THE FULL STORY
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The Epoch Times A shooter who was killed by off-duty police officers after opening fire at a Houston megachurch while seemingly using a 7-year-old child as a human shield has been identified as a woman named Genesse Moreno, who police said also identified as a man named Jeffrey Escalante. Police said a woman in her early 30s entered Lakewood Church on Feb. 11 wearing a trench coat and backpack, armed with a long rifle, and began firing. Before managing to kill anyone, the shooter was taken down by two off-duty officers, one a Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission agent and the other a Houston police officer, according to Houston Police Chief Troy Finner. READ THE FULL STORY
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Investors flush with cash are looking to buy up commercial real estate properties that developers are putting on the market at deep discounts as companies struggle to pay debts, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Many investment firms are looking to buy up discounted real estate after stacking up cash during the COVID-19 pandemic, including Ares Management, which is buying up 3 million square feet of office space with offers to buy up assets related to $500 million in high-priority property debt, according to the WSJ. Commercial real estate is facing around $2.81 trillion in loans that are set to expire through 2028 at a time when the industry is struggling with low demand and huge debt costs from high interest rates.
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Tennessee saw $467 million in gross wagers and $8.6 million in privilege tax paid in January, making it the third highest amount of wagers the state has seen since betting began in November 2020.
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Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell is reportedly planning to introduce a major mass transit project this year that will need to be approved by voters in November, and would likely require an increase to the city’s sales tax.
A report published Monday by Axios claims O’Connell is days away from announcing a “mass transit funding proposal” that will be “less downtown and tourist-focused than” the proposal previously defeated by voters in Metro Nashville in 2018.
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Former President Donald Trump has been endorsed by more than 100 faith leaders in South Carolina ahead of the state’s Republican presidential primary on February 24.
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Key Virginia Democrats pulled their support from the proposal by Governor Glenn Youngkin to build a new sports complex in Alexandria, Virginia for the Washington Wizards and Capitals, and did not place a bill to advance the initiative on the Senate schedule on Monday.
State Senator Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth) first indicated she would use her power as the Senate Finance Chair to block the bill in a Saturday post to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, in which she slammed Youngkin for suggesting Democrats do not want “a strong America” in his speech at the 28th Mock Convention at Washington and Lee University.
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Republicans in the Arizona House of Representatives have invoked their legal right on Monday to request an investigation by Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) over their concerns regarding how federal COVID-19 money was spent by Yuma County officials.
In a letter, lawmakers asked Mayes to launch an investigation to determine if the appointment of Nebraska-based Allo Communications by Yuma County to build rural Internet infrastructure violated both “state law and the Gift Clause of the Arizona Constitution,” in addition to “favoritism and abuse through a fundamentally flawed and potentially illegal procurement process.”
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Former President Donald Trump will hold a Get Out the Vote Rally Wednesday in North Charleston.
The event will be held at the Charleston Area Convention Center, and attendees are encouraged to register for the event on Trump’s campaign website.
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Attorney General Kris Mayes is in support of a crackdown on “junk fees.”
Junk fees are added charges that are typically not shown until a purchase is right about to be made, and it may not serve a clear purpose. The Federal Trade Commission is pushing for a Trade Regulation Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees in order to prevent companies employing the controversial practice.
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It is hard to destroy a naturally beautiful city like San Francisco, with ideal weather and stunning infrastructure inherited from far better earlier generations.
Yet San Francisco continues its much-publicized and self-inflicted doom loop. The productive classes still flee the increasingly crime-ridden city and its self-induced pathologies. The city is eroding not because of the doomsayers and not because of what people say about San Francisco, but because of what San Franciscans have done to San Francisco.
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As a campus ambassador at the University of Tennessee for two prominent non-profit conservative political organizations, the Leadership Institute and Turning Point USA, I’ve come to understand the complexities of health care, both as a public policy issue and as an industry. One critical aspect of health care policy that demands our attention nationwide is the protection of pharmacy benefits, a lifeline for many Americans when it comes to accessing essential prescription medications. As a student, I want to ensure we are preserving free market principles in our health care system for years to come.
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An Arizona bill would increase the criminal penalties for those convicted in a fentanyl-related death.
Senate Bill 1344, introduced by state Sen. Anthony Kern, would make certain fentanyl drug deaths classified as first-degree murder. This means someone could face life behind bars or the death penalty if they are found guilty, according to a state law.
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Former South Carolina Republican Gov. Nikki Haley’s aspirations against former President Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination appear to all come down to the state of South Carolina in the Feb. 24 GOP primary there, with Trump heavily favored to win after easily sweeping Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.
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Several large credit card companies are taking steps to track gun purchases in California with a new code, CBS News reported on Monday.
American Express, Visa and Mastercard are working on putting a merchant code in place for firearm and ammunition stores, CBS News reported. They are doing this to adhere to a California law that could enable banks to monitor certain gun purchases that are deemed suspect to forward to law enforcement agencies, which Second Amendment advocates have pushed back against.
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If the delusional but dead serious demands coming out of the international climate crisis community are to be believed, and as documented in the earlier two segments of this report, achieving universal energy security in the world will require wind energy capacity to increase by a factor of 60, while solar capacity increases by a factor of 100. The mix between wind and solar can vary, of course, but the required overall increase is indisputable. As noted in Part One of this report, that would be a very best-case scenario, where extraordinary improvements in energy efficiency meant that total energy production worldwide would only have to increase to 1,000 exajoules per year, from an estimated 600 exajoules in 2022.
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Tennessee State Senator Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) said the 20-year old suspect charged in a recent violent crime spree in Memphis had charges dismissed by Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy two days before allegedly committing the multiple acts of violence.
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The IRS failed to revoke access to sensitive tax systems from contractors who failed background checks and doesn’t have protections for some of those systems to prevent unauthorized removal of taxpayer data, the agency’s chief watchdog warns in a stinging rebuke that comes on the heels of a devastating criminal leak of tax records.
“The fact remains that for some sensitive systems, the IRS does not have adequate controls to detect or prevent the unauthorized removal of data by users,” the Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) concluded in a report this month.
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By all metrics, President Biden has made things worse for our country.
Under Biden, almost two-thirds of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and now more Americans are working part-time for economic reasons.
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On the heels of the long-awaited report by Justice Department special counsel Robert Hur on the possession and potential mishandling of classified documents by President Joe Biden, several of the memos cited in the report that were found in Biden’s possession are eliciting questions from Congress about why Biden retained those documents related specifically to countries where his son was conducting his foreign business dealings. The House Oversight Committee has demanded that the Department of Justice provide them access to the classified documents uncovered by the special counsel’s investigation.
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Hard to Kill is a Steven Seagal action thriller from 1990 that garnered scornful reviews, though I loved it as a then-teenager. But that phrase, “hard to kill,” also aptly describes the “Very Fine People” hoax surrounding Charlottesville and the lingering myth that President Trump praised bigots there.
In recent days, liberal social media rabble-rouser actor Michael Rapaport stated on the Patrick Bet-David podcast that “the Charlottesville, that I ranted about, I was wrong… that there’s good people on both sides, and when you see the full quote, that wasn’t what he [Trump] said.” Rapaport has been a prolific Trump hater, producing vitriolic online rants that frequently go viral, earning him nearly 700,000 followers on X/Twitter.
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Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee warned on Monday that District Attorney Fani Willis could face “disqualification” from prosecuting her case against former President Donald Trump as a result of her admitted relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, who she appointed to oversee the case.
McAfee, an appointee of Governor Brian Kemp, made the remarks during a court appearance sparked by Willis’ desire to block a subpoena from Trump’s co-defendant, Michael Roman, who originally made the allegations of a corrupt relationship between Willis and Wade.
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