The Franklin County Court of Common Pleas issued a temporary restraining order on Tuesday to prevent House Bill 68 from taking immediate effect.
House Bill 68, which includes the SAFE Act and the Save Women’s Sports Act, was set to take effect next week on April 24.
Read the full story
For more than 20 years the Minnesota Department of Education has released to the public aggregated results of the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment test during the first weeks of the school year — before or by Sept. 1, to be exact. That’s almost certain to change.
Last week DFL lawmakers who control the House stood firm in defending a provision in their education policy bill that would give MDE a 12-week extension to release MCA results to the public.
Read the full story
A progressive polling firm released data on Tuesday that claims Republicans are divided over the decision by the Arizona Supreme Court to enact a 19th-century law that bans most abortions, including in the event of rape or incest.
Pollsters at Data for Progress asked likely U.S. voters whether they approve of the state Supreme Court’s decision to ban all abortions “with exceptions only for when the life of the mother is in danger” and with “no exceptions for pregnancy resulting from rape or incest.”
Read the full story
Gov. Mike DeWine’s push to ban cell phones in Ohio classrooms is meeting resistance from Republicans and Democrats.
In last week’s State of the State address, DeWine called cell phones a major distraction in state schools and asked lawmakers to develop legislation that would eliminate the usage in most classroom settings.
Read the full story
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an education reform bill into law on Tuesday that will have long-reaching implications for the state’s education system.
House Bill 1285 does several things, including addressing school districts with “Turn-Around” status, repeals the Florida College System’s employment equity and accountability program and requires the State Board of Education to establish specialized teaching certificates for classical school educators.
Read the full story
State agencies across the commonwealth gather data on jobs, employment, and the economy — but they struggle to share it, hamstringing how useful it is.
Legislators have taken notice and are looking to compel some digital cooperation.
Read the full story
There is now a legal challenge to Gov. Tony Evers’ 400-year school funding veto.
The WMC Litigation Center on Monday asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to take up their challenge to the governor’s summer veto that increased per-pupil funding for the next four centuries.
Read the full story
Tens of thousands of Connecticut state workers could be getting a bump in their paychecks with lawmakers advancing a proposal to give them a 2.5% across-the-board pay raise.
A proposal approved by the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee on Friday would authorize a 2.5% wage increase for an estimated 46,000 state employees that was hammered out in negotiations earlier this year by Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration and the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition, which represents unionized workers.
Read the full story
The newest buzzword in politics is “Lawfare,” the effort to cripple political opponents through legal initiatives, preferably by bringing criminal cases. Today’s favorite target is former President Trump, who has been indicted in various state and federal jurisdictions for some ninety-one felonies.
Amazingly, Wikipedia’s current “Lawfare” entry goes into great detail concerning the term’s origins and current application – defining Lawfare as “the use of legal systems and institutions to damage or delegitimize an opponent, or to deter an individual’s usage of their legal rights” without any mention whatsoever of its current use against Trump.
Read the full story
Fulton County Sheriff’s candidate Kirt Beasley, who is challenging embattled Sheriff Pat Labat in the Democratic primary, questioned the veracity of reports about the Fulton County Jail that began during Labat’s tenure.
Reports from the jail claim the walls are crumbling to such a degree that inmates are able to disassemble them to create makeshift weapons, and at least two inmates were entrusted by Labat to testify about the jail’s conditions to the Fulton County Commission last year.
Read the full story
A new report found Michigan school districts spent their COVID-19 funds similarly to their general budget, with nearly half spent on employee compensation and benefits.
A Mackinac Center for Public Policy report shows how school districts have spent $2.5 billion of the $6 billion in federal pandemic aid between the 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years.
Read the full story
A coalition of conservative leaders in Virginia praised Governor Glenn Youngkin for his “Common Ground Budget” and record vetoes on Monday.
The Virginia Conservative Leaders Coalition celebrated the governor’s “thoughtful navigation of Virginia’s fiscal priorities” in a Tuesday press release by Virginia Institute Action. The group claims the compromise budget proposed by Youngkin “exemplifies his leadership in bridging divides.”
Read the full story
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office claimed in court papers that it is “an entity not capable of being sued” and has moved to dismiss an open records lawsuit from Just the News to obtain communications between her office and the Biden White House.
The district attorney’s office cites unsettled immunities under Georgia law and claims the records requested are “statutorily exempt from disclosure under the Open Records Act,” according to the court filing earlier this month.
Read the full story
State Senator Wendy Rogers (R-Flagstaff) said squatters are a “real problem” in Arizona and explained how her bill, SB 1129, returns power to homeowners. An amended version of the legislation passed in a House vote (39-19) recently and is awaiting further action since its return to the Senate.
“Squatters in homes in Arizona is becoming a real problem,” Rogers said.
Read the full story
Republican lawmakers in Arizona are trying to fast-track ballot initiatives to counter an abortion amendment that will likely be in front of voters this fall, according to Axios.
Activists have been working to get an amendment on the ballot that would enshrine abortion as a right in the state’s constitution and in April, proponents of the measure claimed that they had enough signatures to get the proposal on the ballot in November, according to NBC News. GOP state representatives, however, are considering a series of initiatives that would protect the legislature’s ability to limit abortion and enshrine a law restricting abortion to before the first day of the 15th week of pregnancy, according to Axios.
Read the full story
An effort to recall a George Soros-funded California district attorney has received enough signatures to advance, according to a county document.
Organizers seeking to oust Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price have collected 74,757 verified signatures in support of their effort to hold a recall election, over 1,000 more than needed, the Alameda County Registrar of Voters announced Monday. Save Alameda for Everyone, one of the primary committees campaigning for Price’s removal, argues that Price has been prioritizing offenders over victims, contributing to an uptick in crime in their community.
Read the full story
In July 2023, Joshua Youngerman was arrested in California on five misdemeanors for his participation in the events of January 6. According to charging documents, Youngerman entered the Capitol at 2:37 p.m. — 20 minutes after the House went into recess amid the escalating chaos — through an open door as Capitol Police stood by. He exited through the same door two minutes later. But just last week, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves added another charge to Youngerman’s case: 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2), obstruction of an official proceeding. Youngerman is one of more than 330 J6ers charged with the evidence-destroying statute passed in the wake of the Enron-Arthur Anderson accounting scandal that Joe Biden’s Justice Department has weaponized to punish Americans who protested Biden’s election that afternoon. The count also is included in both of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictments against Donald Trump. Graves’ decision to indict Youngerman now is a stunning act of hubris and defiance. Why? Because the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments this Tuesday in Joseph Fischer v. USA, which challenges the government’s interpretation of the obstruction count in Jan 6 cases. Many legal and court observers expect the court to wholly or partially overturn how the…
Read the full story
August came early to the nation’s capital with last week’s round of March inflation data. The late summer weather in Washington, D.C., is notoriously hot and sticky, two accurate descriptors of the latest price increases facing families and businesses alike. Inflation is stubbornly high, and the Biden administration’s spendthrift public policies are to blame.
In the past 12 months, consumer prices rose 3.5 percent, the second month of accelerating annual inflation. In March alone, prices rose 0.4 percent. That may not sound like much, but it’s actually terrible. If that monthly inflation rate holds steady, prices will double in less than 16 years.
Read the full story
Lindy Boone, daughter of Pat Boone and sister to Debby Boone, Cherry Boone, and Laurey Boone, has been singing all her life.
They attended a church that didn’t use musical instruments, so everyone learned to sing instead. Their mama, singer Shirley Lee Foley, taught her daughters to sing harmony.
Read the full story
In a 2-1 ruling, the court ruled that the law violated Title IX, which prohibits gender discrimination in schools.
A federal appeals court on Tuesday overturned a West Virginia law that banned transgender girls from playing on girls’ sports teams.
Read the full story
Daily Caller One of the left’s biggest political targets recently found himself “de-banked” with no warning and little avenue for recourse, the Daily Caller has learned. John Eastman, once an attorney for former President Donald Trump, was de-banked twice in the span of several months by two prominent financial institutions, Bank of America and USAA, he told the Daily Caller. His accounts were closed as he faced substantial backlash for his work advising Trump around the time of the 2020 election. Eastman said he had switched most of his banking from Bank of America to USAA, a company that provides financial services exclusively to military veterans as well as their families, due to the former’s “wokeness.” Both corporations are federally insured, and Bank of America was bailed out with billions of dollars in taxpayer funds during the global financial crisis. READ THE FULL STORY
Read the full story
Roger Simon, the co-founder of PJMedia and current columnist for The Epoch Times, and Ben Cunningham, founder of the Nashville Tea Party, discussed the ongoing legal battle over the release of the Covenant School shooter’s manifesto, agreeing that the “lives of others” are at stake as long as the manifesto’s contents are kept under wraps.
Read the full story
Tennessee U.S. Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07), who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, was among those who delivered two articles of impeachment against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the U.S. Senate on Tuesday.
Read the full story
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee joined the governors of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas in issuing a joint statement in opposition of the United Auto Workers’ (UAW) unionization campaign.
The coalition of governors said it is “highly concerned” about the unionization campaign, adding such efforts are “driven by misinformation and scare tactics.”
Read the full story
Metro Nashville attorney Lora Fox confirmed on Tuesday there is no objection to the release of the manifesto written by Covenant School shooter Audrey Hale with limited redactions.
Fox told Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea L. Myles the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) maintains the position previously articulated by Assistant Chief Mike Hagar in an affidavit which declared a redacted version of the manifesto could be released without harming MNPD investigations.
Read the full story
Roger Simon, the co-founder of PJMedia and current columnist for The Epoch Times, said the U.S. government paid for Iran’s Saturday attack on Israel, which saw 300 drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles launched at the country.
Simon said the money trail could be traced back to the Obama administration when billions of dollars were sent to the Mullahs.
Read the full story
The Trump Media & Technology Group Corporation, which runs the social media platform Truth Social, announced on Tuesday that it is formally launching a “new live TV streaming platform and will begin scaling up its own content delivery network,” according to a news release.
Read the full story
Vanderbilt University hosted Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Admiral Rachel L. Levine last week to headline a talk on “transgender health and policy in Tennessee, the South, and the United States.”
Read the full story
The man who allegedly shot six outside a Nashville nightclub on Sunday was previously released from jail on a $50,000 bond, the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) confirmed.
Williams is accused of injuring six in a shooting near the Soho Lounge in South Nashville, with MNPD reporting officers were initially responding to a call about “persons with guns fighting.”
Read the full story
Federal legislation has been proposed, led in part by a North Carolina congressman, to increase the rates of compensation for veterans with service-connected disabilities and military survivors under the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The Veterans’ Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act, known by the acronym COLA Act, could go into effect as soon as Dec. 1, with adjustment parallel to the annual COLA adjustment to Social Security benefits, as determined by the Social Security Administration.
Read the full story
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley will serve as the next Walter P. Stern Chair of the conservative Hudson Institute following her suspended 2024 presidential run, according to a Monday press release.
Haley was the last remaining challenger to former President Donald Trump in the Republican primary until she dropped out of the race following a slew of Super Tuesday losses. The former ambassador and South Carolina governor, who received a Global Leadership Award from the foreign policy think tank in 2018, said she will seek to “defend the principles that make America the greatest country in the world,” according to the press release.
Read the full story
The man accused of kidnapping and murdering Eliza Fletcher in a high profile 2022 case was convicted late last week for raping another woman a year before Fletcher’s murder, according to several reports.
Cleotha Abston was reportedly convicted in Memphis of three counts of aggravated rape, especially aggravated kidnapping and unlawful possession of a weapon.
Read the full story
Metro Councilwoman Courtney Johnston, who is challenging Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN-05) in the Republican primary for the 5th Congressional district, previously cosponsored a resolution in to set an official day for Nashville to recognize the Transgender Day of Remembrance in 2023.
Johnston is listed among the 29 sponsors of RS 2023-99, which was titled, “A Resolution recognizing November 20, 2023, as Transgender Day of Remembrance in Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee.”
Read the full story
The Intercept is losing money amid left-wing megadonor Pierre Omidyar’s choice to stop providing funds to the outlet, Semafor reported on Sunday.
The Intercept is hemorrhaging around $300,000 monthly and is on pace to possess less than 1 million dollars in reserves by November, according to internal data distributed inside the outlet in March, Semafor reported. The outlet could potentially deplete its cash reserves entirely by May 2025 after Omidyar’s First Look Media decided to terminate its funding in late 2022.
Read the full story
A new narrative is making its way through major media outlets about major oil corporations: climate change that they purportedly caused is taking lives, and they could be held liable for homicide.
In recent weeks, numerous outlets have run stories or opinion pieces promoting or otherwise examining the novel legal theory, which is the subject of a new paper published by the Harvard Environmental Law Review, according to a Tuesday E&E News report detailing the architects’ efforts to market their idea to prosecutors. The Boston Globe, The Guardian, Newsweek, Inside Climate News and other outlets have all recently published pieces promoting the idea that leading oil companies could or should be charged with murder for their role in climate change, which the theory’s architects claim has caused thousands of deaths in the U.S.
Read the full story
Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake of Arizona brought in $4.1 million in the first fundraising quarter of 2024, her campaign announced on Sunday.
Lake’s haul is roughly twice as much as she raised in 2023’s last fundraising quarter, and she now has $2.5 million in cash on hand, according to her campaign. The Republican’s opponent, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, announced on April 2 that his campaign topped $7.5 million in the first fundraising quarter with more than $9.6 million in the bank.
Read the full story
The Atlanta Police Department (APD) confirmed on Monday that the controversial Atlanta Public Safety Training Center is slated to open in January 2025 despite years of protests, demonstrations and violence aimed at preventing its construction.
A video posted to the social media platform X by APD on Monday showed former Chief Rodney Bryant and former Assitant Chief Todd Coyt viewing the site of the safety training center. Bryant was previously instrumental in pushing for the center.
Read the full story
A bill passed by the Tennessee General Assembly prevents credit card companies from monitoring and tracking gun purchasers through merchant category codes (MCCs).
HB 2762, also known as the Second Amendment Financial Privacy Act, was sent to Republican Gov. Bill Lee’s desk last week.
Read the full story
A new public service announcement by the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association (VHHA) asks patients to behave appropriately while receiving treatment or otherwise in healthcare settings. It was released amid rising workplace violence for health workers in hospitals.
The VHHA press release explains the “Help Us, Help You” campaign “draws attention to the heightened risk of workplace violence faced by health care professionals.”
Read the full story
Two of Arizona’s most high profile Democrats have publicly disagreed about the correct course of action after the Arizona Supreme Court approved a 19th century law that effectively bans most abortions.
In a Friday appearance on The View, Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs urged the Arizona State Legislature to immediately repeal the 1864 law that predates Arizona’s statehood.
Read the full story
The election of Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana to Speaker of the House has thrown into stark relief the difference between what one might call “personal conservatives” and those of us who consider ourselves to be part of the conservative movement, or movement conservatives.
There’s no doubt that Speaker Johnson lives his life according to a set of conservative principles: He’s a church-going man known for his personal rectitude; he married his wife in a “covenant marriage;” as a lawyer he advocated a constitutional “textualist” approach to his cases; he spent many years actively involved in advancing the Right-to-Life; he opposes same sex marriages, and in 2015 he took one of his daughters to a purity ball.
Read the full story
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose applauded former President Donald Trump and Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Mike Johnson’s (R-LA-04) election integrity proposal to ensure that only U.S. citizens are allowed to register and vote in American elections.
Read the full story
The Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP) submitted a joint Amicus Curiae brief on Thursday with the Georgia Republican Party and the Republican State Committee of Delaware supporting Kari Lake’s and Mark Finchem’s Petition for Certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court. The pair are appealing the lower courts’ decisions against their lawsuit challenging the use of electronic voting machine tabulators in elections. Under the new leadership of AZGOP Chair Gina Swoboda, who has a lengthy history in election integrity work including heading the Voter Reference Foundation, the AZGOP is heavily focused on election integrity.
Authored by attorney William J. Olson, the brief argues that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals erred by dismissing the case claiming Lake and Finchem lacked standing. The court affirmed the trial court’s granting of the defendants’ motion to dismiss, asserting that the pair lacked standing because “speculative allegations that voting machines may be hackable are insufficient to establish an injury in fact under Article III.” The complaint emphasized that the lower courts “conflated standing with merits, twisting the standing rules to require much more — that the complaint prove facts sufficient to grant relief.”
Read the full story
A bill that would allow qualified employees to concealed carry firearms in a school is scheduled to be discussed by the Tennessee House on Wednesday.
Senate Bill 1325 includes a list of requirements before an employee – which includes teachers, administrators and other staff – is approved for concealed carry.
Read the full story
Just when it appeared that skilled trades and vocational schools appeared to be on a permanent decline in the United States, members of Generation Z are beginning to embrace such professions in what may mark the beginning of a comeback.
According to Axios, the amount of enrollments in vocational programs has been gradually increasing as members of Gen Z, also known as “Zoomers,” are turning to trade schools as a cheaper alternative to the more expensive four-year universities.
Read the full story
Former President Donald Trump led among voters above the age of 30 years old in the latest Emerson national poll taken April 2-3 over incumbent President Joe Biden, who only led among younger voters 18 to 29, 50.2 percent to 39.6 percent.
Read the full story
An advocacy group is recruiting students from both major political parties to push for university divestment from Chinese government-controlled entities.
Athenai Institute co-founder Caleb Max told The College Fix the organization is working to build on the victories it has achieved since he and two other George Mason University students founded it in 2020.
Read the full story
Geoff Shepard, former staffer in the Nixon Administration and author of The Nixon Conspiracy: Watergate and the Plot to Remove the President, explained in an exclusive interview with The Michael Patrick Leahy Show how he came to the conclusion that the Watergate scandal had been misinterpreted for nearly 40 years.
Read the full story
The Supreme Court declined Monday to stop a police officer’s lawsuit against a Black Lives Matter activist who led the 2016 protest where he was injured by another individual.
Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson had asked the justices to decide whether the First Amendment prevents a protest leader from being held personally liable for violence perpetrated by another individual when the organizer “neither authorized, directed, nor ratified” the act.
Read the full story
Former U.S. Special Envoy for Haiti Dan Foote said in an exclusive interview on The Michael Patrick Leahy Show that the people of Haiti must have a “national dialogue” to begin the process of reforming the country and reclaiming it from violent gangs.
Read the full story