The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked opioid maker Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy settlement which would have provided immunity to the Sackler family from facing lawsuits over their role in the opioid crisis.
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Far-left member of the Tennessee General Assembly earlier this week filed a lawsuit against 11 district attorneys general over a soon-to-be enacted abortion trafficking law signed by Governor Bill Lee (R).
State Representative Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville) and Nashville abortion activist and attorney Rachel Welty are listed as the plaintiffs in the case.
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Opponents of foreign funding of U.S. ballot measures expect momentum at both the federal level and in states.
In May, the House Administration Committee advanced a bill to amend federal election law to prevent foreign nationals from contributing to ballot initiatives by closing a loophole, since federal law and most state laws prohibit foreign contributions to candidates. The bill, with bipartisan support, is headed to the House floor for a vote.
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The GOP-led House Rules Committee has rejected an amendment by Republican Rep. Matt Rosendale to keep taxpayer-funded IVF treatments for Pentagon personnel out of the chamber’s propose defense spending bill.
The amendment by the Montana congressman was among 193 proposed for the bill.
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Two weeks after a U.S. Tennessee representative sent out a warning about members of the terrorist group ISIS crossing the open southern border, news has emerged that an ISIS smuggling network has brought more than 400 illegal migrants into the country.
Three Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials told NBC News that “over 400 immigrants from Central Asia and elsewhere who crossed into the U.S. in the past three years as ‘subjects of concern’ because they were brought by an ISIS-affiliated human smuggling network.”
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A Nevada political action committee (PAC) has submitted signatures in support of a Voter ID ballot initiative.
Repair The Vote PAC gave state and county election officials more than 179,000 signatures. The required number is 102,362, with an equal number of signatures coming from every congressional district.
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The U.S. House of Representatives passed Tennessee congressman Tim Burchett’s (R-TN-02) bill that would discourage countries that receive U.S. foreign aid from sending money to the Taliban.
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Tennessee U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Georgia U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) launched a bipartisan inquiry with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) about reports of children being abused, neglected, and even cases of death while in custody awaiting processing at Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facilities.
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The outgoing president of Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital (VPH), part of Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), combined the hospital’s services to patients in psychiatric crisis in 2016, three years before the Covenant School killer was referred to VPH for commitment and instead enrolled in an Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP).
The Tennessee Star reported on June 7 that Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) investigators learned within hours of Hale’s March 27, 2023 attack on the Covenant School, which claimed the lives of six, that the killer was a 22-year mental health patient of VUMC.
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A Maricopa County Superior Court judge shot down prevailing wage ordinances in Phoenix and Tucson.
“As both ordinances here violate the intact prevailing wage prohibition, they are preempted and cannot stand,” court documents stated.
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An economic public policy group believes a minimum wage increase would save thousands of lives across the state.
Columbus-based Scioto Analysis recently released a new cost-benefit analysis of the impact of raising the minimum wage. The analysis says raising the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour would save about 4,100 lives over the next decade.
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A Monday poll found former President Donald Trump holds a five-point lead over President Joe Biden in Georgia ahead of the Thursday presidential debate in Atlanta, which will mark the first time the presidents have shared a stage since their final debate prior to the 2020 election.
The poll found Trump has the support of 43 percent of Peach State voters, giving him a five-percent lead over Joe Biden, who had just 38 percent of support.
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Just before Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton faced off in their second presidential debate, then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper met in the White House with a small group of advisers to President Obama to hatch a plan to put out a first-of-its-kind intelligence report warning the voting public that “the Russian government” was interfering in the election by allegedly breaching the Clinton campaign’s email system.
On Oct. 7, 2016 – just two days before the presidential debate between Trump and Clinton – Clapper issued the unprecedented intelligence advisory with Obama’s personal blessing. It seemed to lend credence to what the Clinton camp was telling the media — that Trump was working with Russian President Vladimir Putin through a secret back channel to steal the election. Sure enough, the Democratic nominee pounced on it to smear Trump at the debate.
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Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and presumptive Green Party presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein both claim their campaigns have obtained enough signatures to qualify for the ballot in Pennsylvania, setting the stage for multiple potential spoilers as former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden prepare for a rematch in the Keystone State.
Kennedy filed paperwork with Pennsylvania election officials last week, with Pennsylvania Capital-Star reporting the Kennedy campaign claimed to submit 9,000 signatures, which the outlet noted is nearly twice the legally required number of signatures.
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The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the nation’s preeminent pediatric medical organization, worked “very closely” with a transgender medical activist group to advocate for children to receive sex changes, according to emails obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Numerous Republican-led states have recently passed protective legislation banning minors from accessing experimental procedures, such as puberty blockers and genital surgery, as more and more evidence emerged challenging the justification for child sex changes. To combat these bans, the AAP quietly partnered with the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH), a group that’s been widely criticized for pushing transgender ideology over sound medical science.
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The U.S. Surgeon General on Tuesday declared firearm violence a public health crisis in America.
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy’s advisory is the first publication from the Office of the Surgeon General focused on the issue.
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The editor-in-chief and publisher of The Tennessee Star was ordered to appear in court last week and threatened with charges of contempt after his newspaper reported on an anonymously leaked collection of documents authored by Nashville mass shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale. Michael Patrick Leahy was joined by his attorneys in court on Monday for a “show-cause hearing,” where the journalist was asked by Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea Myles to demonstrate why his outlet’s reporting does not subject him to contempt proceedings and sanctions.
On March 27, 2023, Hale (born Audrey Elizabeth Hale) entered the Covenant School armed with three semiautomatic guns and murdered six people, including three 9-year-old children. Hale, who was eventually shot and killed by police in the school, was a transgender man and former student at Covenant who harbored extremist sentiments on race, gender, and politics. The massacre remains the deadliest mass shooting in Tennessee history.
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Chair of the Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP) Gina Swoboda called the alleged theft of a security fob and keys from the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center (MCTEC) by a temporary worker a “critical security incident” and “critical risk to the election.”
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Breitbart President Joe Biden’s aides are reportedly furious CNN will not live fact-check former President Donald Trump during Thursday’s debate. The debate is “not the ideal arena for live fact-checking” Trump, CNN political director David Chalian told the New York Times on Monday. Chalian later told the Associated Press that debate hosts Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, extreme Trump critics, can correct an “egregious” misstatement from either candidate “that needs to be checked or the record needs to be made clear,” but he claimed Tapper and Bash are “not here to participate in this debate.” READ THE FULL STORY
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Fox News Officials from the National Transportation Safety Board offered scathing testimony during a hearing Tuesday marking the conclusion of their investigation into the catastrophic February 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy accused Norfolk Southern railroad of interfering in the federal probe on multiple occasions. She claimed a Norfolk Southern contractor lied when he said he did not keep written records on temperatures within the tanker cars – which were carrying the caustic vinyl chloride that was later burned off or had spilled into the local aquifer. READ THE FULL STORY
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Center for Immigration Studies The U.S. government is withholding the names of two illegal alien Jordanian nationals, one of whom illegally crossed the Southwest Border, who on May 3 tried to ram a box truck into the Quantico Marine Corps base, citing as grounds that their personal privacy outweighs “minimal” public interest in knowing who they are, according to a government letter responding to the Center for Immigration Studies’ Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The second illegally present Jordanian in the truck overstayed a student visa. READ THE FULL STORY
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The Associated Press A judge on Tuesday struck down a Montana law that defined “sex” in state law as only male or female, finding that it was unconstitutional. District Court Judge Shane Vannatta in Missoula ruled the law, passed last year, violated the state constitution because the description of the legislation did not clearly state its purpose. Transgender, nonbinary, intersex and other plaintiffs challenged the law, similar to ones passed in Kansas and Tennessee, because they said it denies legal recognition and protections to people who are gender-nonconforming. Vannatta did not address that argument, simply finding that the bill’s title did not explain whether the word “sex” referred to sexual intercourse or gender, and did not indicate that the words “female” and “male” would be defined in the body of the bill. READ THE FULL STORY
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Washington Examiner A new poll shows voters from swing states trust former President Donald Trump to protect America’s democracy more than President Joe Biden. The Washington Post/Schar School released a survey Wednesday that found 38% of voters across six swing states favored Trump to handle threats to democracy, compared to 29% who backed Biden. The poll was conducted across Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. A similar PBS poll conducted earlier this month showed 29% of voters found preserving democracy to be their top priority, coming barely under 30% who said inflation was their top concern. READ THE FULL STORY
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The Georgia Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that Douglas County Probate Judge Christina Peterson should be removed from the bench following a recent nightclub arrest.
Peterson allegedly pushed an Atlanta police officer outside of the club, according to body cam footage.
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Ben Cunningham, founder of the Nashville Tea Party, and Michael Patrick Leahy, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of The Tennessee Star, praised the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 which is a conservative playbook with the goal to “take back our government” by “paving the way for an effective conservative administration” beginning in January 2025.
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Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs will face increased scrutiny following revelations of an alleged “pay-for-play” scheme uncovered by a left-leaning publication with media ads hitting the airwaves this week. State-solutions, Inc., affiliated with the Republican Governor’s Association, has invested in a six-figure advertisement campaign to highlight the investigation into Hobbs. Media attention is intensifying, with the ad urging, “Tell Hobbs to cooperate and cut the corruption.” Both Attorney General Mayes, a Democrat, and Republican County Attorney Mitchell have asserted claims over the investigation. Attorney Gina Godbehere, who is challenging Mitchell in a competitive primary told The Arizona Sun Times, “My opponent [Mitchell] should be more concerned about the effect of her lenient policies on our community, the victims, and law enforcement rather than chasing the political spotlight.
The story broke after the progressive news organization revealed Sunshine Residential, a significant donor to the Hobbs Inaugural fund and the Democrats, received a nearly 60% increase in state contracts. The ad released this week told Arizonas, “Three days after a state agency denied a contractor’s request to charge taxpayers higher rates, a donation appeared: One hundred thousand dollars from the same company… into a slush fund controlled by Governor Katie Hobbs. Within months the Hobbs administration reversed course, approving the request for more taxpayer money. Pay-to-play so brazen, Democrat Attorney General Kris Mayes has launched a criminal investigation.”
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The Supreme Court inadvertently posted a copy of a ruling on its website Wednesday in the Biden administration’s challenge to Idaho’s abortion ban, a court spokesperson confirmed.
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The House subcommittee chairman investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot’s intelligence and security failures made an extraordinary intervention Wednesday at the Supreme Court, telling the justices he believes an earlier Democrat-led investigation into the tragedy was “factually and procedurally invalid” and therefore could not lawfully hold ex-Trump adviser Stephen Bannon in contempt.
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The Supreme Court issued a ruling Wednesday siding with the Biden administration in a landmark case that challenged the federal government’s ability to pressure social media companies to censor speech.
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An Arizona State Capitol insider with knowledge of recent incidents there told The Arizona Sun Times that progressive activist Walter Ringfield, Jr. – the same man who was arrested for allegedly stealing an election machine tabulator key fob – was caught breaking and entering into the Arizona Senate recently. Video surveillance footage allegedly caught him stealing collectible coins from the security area and walking around on the third floor unauthorized. When apprehended by security, he was asked to leave. The insiders said that Ringfield told security he was there to deliver some documents to State Senator Juan Mendez (D-Tempe).
News reports about the election key fob theft broke a Monday. According to a police report obtained by The Sun Times, surveillance video shows Ringfield putting the set into his pocket.
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Tennessee State Senator Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) announced Monday that his office has set up a hotline for crime victims and current or former staff members of the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office to gather complaints against District Attorney Steve Mulroy.
Last week, Taylor announced that he intends to file a Senate Joint Resolution immediately following the November election requiring the removal of Mulroy.
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Illegal immigration is one of the most important problems for Americans, and a new “Illegal Alien Crime” map as well as a poll about language surrounding the issue highlights the significance of the border crisis in the minds of voters ahead of the 2024 election.
Polling from Gallup shows that U.S. adults have consistently ranked immigration as a top issue every month since at least November 2023. The polls come as the Biden administration has overseen record numbers of illegal immigrant encounters.
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Obama-appointed federal judges blocked parts of the Biden administration’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan on Monday in response to Republican states’ lawsuits.
Judge John A. Ross of Missouri and Judge Daniel Crabtree of Kansas blocked parts of the administration’s SAVE plan, which was an income-driven repayment program intended to lower monthly costs for borrowers. The court rulings prohibit the Department of Education from further lowering payments or eliminating more debt through the program, Politico reported.
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The Biden administration has overseen an enormous increase of illegal migrant crossings along the U.S.-Canada border over the past four years.
There have so far been 12,859 illegal migrant crossings along the northern border in fiscal year 2024, with several months still left to go, according to the latest data provided by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Despite only eight months of data available, the number of illegal border crossings this fiscal year have already surpassed all other years of President Joe Biden’s tenure, and represent a marked increase from his first year in office.
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Former President Donald Trump appears poised to invest heavily in Virginia in the 2024 election as new polling data suggests the Old Dominion could be competitive for Republicans for the first time in 20 years.
The state has not backed a Republican for president since George W. Bush in 2004 and trended increasingly Democratic over the years until GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s upset win in 2021 reignited Republican hopes in the commonwealth. The GOP struggled, however, in the 2023 legislative elections, with many analysts pinning the blame on the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, which forced Republicans to play defense on the issue of abortion during that cycle. The party lost control of the House of Delegates and failed to seize control of the state Senate in those elections.
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Tennessee U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) led a bipartisan group of 14 other senators in sending a letter to the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) requesting that the agency work to increase patient access to Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) scans.
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Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale wrote in the journal police recovered from her vehicle an entry that appears to include instructions for the media about how to refer to the killer.
The Tennessee Star confirmed on June 5 it obtained about 80 pages of Hale’s writings from a source familiar with the Covenant investigation.
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Two groups have filed a federal lawsuit to stop elements of a state law they say bars charitable bail activity.
The ACLU of Georgia and the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center filed the lawsuit on Friday, asking a judge to declare Section 4 of Georgia Senate Bill 63 unconstitutional and issue a temporary restraining order barring the law from taking effect on July 1.
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U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) confirmed last Thursday that Democrats are still making decisions about tax cuts, including whether they will reverse the 2017 tax cuts championed by former President Donald Trump and other Republicans, including U.S. Senate nominee Dave McCormick.
Casey made the remarks to Roll Call after the publication noted that allowing the reduced tax rates established in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 to expire would violate President Joe Biden’s pledge not to increase taxes on those earning less than $400,000 per year.
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While sometimes it is unavoidable, lawyers do everything they can not to become witnesses in their own cases. Such a contingency may require new counsel, adding to client expense. It also leads to some real ethical minefields. While as a witness they are obliged to tell the truth, they are also bound as lawyers by their duties of confidentiality and zealous advocacy for their clients, creating conflicts between these competing obligations.
Journalists, too, used to have certain ethical restrictions, some formal and some that arose as part of the culture. One of those restrictions is similar to that facing lawyers: journalists are not supposed to “become the story.” Journalists should be neutral conduits through which the facts are presented.
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Independent candidate for president Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been officially approved to appear on the 2024 presidential ballot in Minnesota, officials with Secretary of State Steve Simon’s office have confirmed.
Field staff for Kennedy’s campaign in Minnesota submitted their ballot petition — which includes the requisite minimum of 2,500 signatures and a list of presidential elector nominees — to the secretary of state on Jun 7. The secretary of state then engaged in a standard review of the signatures and application materials.
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A new Michigan policy could cost Oakland and Macomb county households thousands in higher property taxes.
The Michigan House recently approved House Bill 4177, seeking to subsidize two nonprofit museums run through the Wright and Detroit Historical Societies. Because they likely could not stay open through admission fees and donations alone, Oakland and Macomb County residents would pay up to $200,000 in property taxes over the next 10 years.
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Recent critical remarks from top-ranking state officials, including Gov. Josh Shapiro, have not deterred Palestinian support among progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups in Pennsylvania.
Earlier this month, Sens. Kristin Phillips-Hill, R-Jacobus, and Steven Santarsiero, D-Doylestown, announced a bill to prevent state-funded institutions from divesting from Israel. The legislation explicitly names schools like Penn and Pitt whose encampments made headlines across the globe.
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South Carolina’s attorney general called a federal judge’s decision to block part of President Joe Biden’s latest push to delay or cancel roughly half a trillion dollars in student debt “a huge win for South Carolina.”
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree in Kansas and U.S. District Judge John Ross in Missouri issued separate rulings halting Biden’s plan, dubbed the Saving on a Valuable Education — or SAVE — Plan. Republican attorneys general, including South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, filed a lawsuit challenging the plan.
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A new report says Whitewater’s immigration problems did not end when the city’s police chief sent a letter to the White House late last year.
The Institute for Reforming Government on Monday released a report that uses 4,000 open records requests to paint a picture of the continued problems that a flood of illegal immigrants has caused in Whitewater.
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Despite years of warnings that China operates an illicit biological weapons program, the U.S. military remains unable to determine whether it sends American tax dollars to Beijing for research that could make pathogens more dangerous or deadly, the Pentagon’s chief watchdog declared in a stunning new warning to policymakers.
“The DoD did not track funding at the level of detail necessary to determine whether the DoD provided funding to Chinese research laboratories or other foreign countries for research related to enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential,” the Pentagon inspector general concluded in a report released this month.
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The United States Postal Service (USPS) gave law enforcement thousands of names, addresses and other details from the letters and packages of Americans without court approval, The Washington Post reported Monday.
The USPS said it generally only granted information requests from law enforcement agencies when it aided in tracking down a crime suspect; however, records obtained by the Post showed that 97 percent of the 60,000 requests from law enforcement were approved over an eight-year period. Between 2015 and 2023, over 312,000 letters and packages were recorded without receiving judicial approval.
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How do the Democrats complain? Let us count the ways.
In January 2017, seven House Democrats (Jim McGovern, Jamie Raskin, Pramila Jayapal, Raul Grijalva, Sheila Jackson Lee, Barbara Lee, and Maxine Waters) formally objected to the certification of state elections.
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A new judge has been assigned to oversee Steve Bannon’s upcoming criminal fraud trial in New York, according to an email sent to all parties in the case on Friday.
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The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that the approval of what would have been the nation’s first publicly-funded religious school was unconstitutional, according to court records.
Oklahoma’s Virtual Charter School Board voted to approve an application for a virtual religious charter school in June 2023, prompting state Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond to file a lawsuit in October to block the funding, calling it “an irreparable violation of our individual religious liberty” and “an unthinkable waste of our tax dollars.” The Oklahoma Supreme Court ultimately sided with Drummond on Tuesday, finding that “under Oklahoma law, a charter school is a public school” and that “as such, a charter school must be nonsectarian,” per court filings.
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