Delegates celebrated happily Thursday night as they waited during the Republican National Convention to hear Donald Trump accept his party’s nomination for the third time — only five days after he was nearly killed by an assassin’s bullet.
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The Tennessee Department of Treasury (TDOT) said Wednesday that it returned more than $68 million in unclaimed property to Tennesseans in Fiscal Year 2023, a record for the state department.
“Unclaimed property is money that has been turned over to the State by businesses and organizations unable to locate the rightful owners, such as utility refunds, uncashed paychecks, credit balances for overpayments, rental deposit refunds, gift certificates, securities, and abandoned bank accounts,” the department explained. “The Unclaimed Property program is a consumer protection program of the Department of Treasury that works to reunite this missing money with its rightful owner.”
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The Tennessee Education Lottery Corporation announced Tuesday that it raised $519,322,000 for education in the Volunteer State during Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24), setting a new Fiscal Year record for the amount generated for education.
FY23, which spanned from July 1, 2023, through June 30, 2024, surpassed Fiscal Year 2023’s proceeds – the previous fiscal year record – by more than $4 million.
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Corey Comperatore died after shielding his family from the gunfire at the rally, which injured Trump and two attendees
Former President Trump is reportedly planning to attend the funeral for the firefighter killed by a gunman at his rally in Butler, Pa. on Saturday.
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Ford is reversing course on plans to manufacture electric vehicles (EVs) at a major plant and instead will produce gas-powered, heavy-duty pickup trucks at the facility, Reuters reported Thursday.
The company initially planned to build three-row electric SUVs at its facility in Oakville, Canada, between 2025 and 2027, but the plant will now add capacity to produce 100,000 F-Series Super Duty trucks at the plant, according to Reuters. Ford said that it is still committed to producing those EVs on that timeline, though it is unclear which of its plants will handle that production.
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A school district in Southern California filed a lawsuit against Governor Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) over a new law he signed that would forbid schools from notifying parents if their children start to “transition” their gender
As Fox News reports, the lawsuit was filed by Chino Valley Unified School District, which is being represented by the Liberty Justice Center (LJC). The lawsuit argues that the new law, which was signed on Monday, violates parents’ Constitutional rights.
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Democrats would overwhelmingly support Vice President Kamala Harris as nominee if President Joe Biden drops out of the race, according to an Economist/YouGov poll released Thursday.
Despite her dismal approval ratings among all voters, 79 percent of Democrats said they would support Harris as the party’s nominee if Biden withdrew from the race, according to the poll. However, less than a third of Democratic voters believe Harris would be more likely than Biden to defeat former President Donald Trump in the November election.
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A 34-year old man from Knoxville was sentenced Wednesday to 20 years in prison followed by 20 years of supervised release for attempting to provide material support to the foreign terrorist organization ISIS, according to the Eastern District of Tennessee U.S. Attorney’s Office.
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Republican U.S. Senate nominee Dave McCormick on Thursday appeared on “Mornings with Maria” and told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo that dehumanizing language and political polarization led to the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
McCormick was present at the rally when 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks attempted to assassinate Trump, piercing his ear, killing rally attendee Corey Comperatore, and injuring two more.
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One Minnesota school system has found itself at the center of controversy over staff trainings regarding Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), along with social justice.
“Rochester Public Schools provides training that has staff participate in a “Social Justice Stretch” [and] staff are taught to embrace LGBTQ ideology with the ‘Genderbread Person,’ [and] staff are told not to tell parents about their children’s gender identity,” according to a watchdog group called Parents Defending Education (PDE).
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Former President Donald Trump has inched ahead of President Joe Biden in Virginia, a state no Republican has won at the presidential level since 2004.
The RealClearPolitics polling average currently shows Trump with 43.8% support to Biden’s 43.4%. The average includes five surveys from Emerson, VCU, NY Times/Siena, Fox News, and Roanoke College.
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According to court-appointed class attorneys, less than 1% of the nearly 200,000 households involved in the East Palestine train derailment settlement opted out of the $600 million deal.
A court filing after the July 1 opt-out and objection deadline showed 0.09% of the 190,887 households in the settlement class opted out of the agreement. The settlement class includes households in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
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Michigan’s governor, secretary of state and three other officials are facing a lawsuitfiled by the Trump campaign this week over granting some government offices the power to conduct voter registration.
Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued an executive order in December meant to designate certain state offices, including the Small Business Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs, to act as voter registration agencies.
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When Donald Trump seemed to have a lock on the 2016 Republican primary, the Democratic Party concluded that the people could not be counted on to do the “right thing” of electing the Democratic candidate in waiting Hillary Clinton.
What followed were eight long years of extralegal efforts to neuter candidate, then President, then ex-President, and then candidate again, Donald Trump.
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Intel is starting up a workforce development program with some help of the state of Arizona in order to bolster the state’s growing semiconductor industry.
The program is meant to train people to become manufacturing facility technicians in a formal apprenticeship, the first of its kind in the United States from the technology company. According to a news release, the apprenticeship will feature educational components from the Maricopa County Community College District.
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The Catholic University of Dayton “recently renovated and rededicated” its “LGBTQ+ Lounge” in honor of a male donor’s “husband.”
But a Catholic higher education group said the Ohio university errs by promoting behavior at odds with Catholic Church teaching.
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Paul Fishbein’s conviction on rent fraud charges in New York City last year was a feast for the tabloids.
The story was crazy enough to get readers to click. Prosecutors said that Fishbein, 51, somehow convinced local housing agencies that he owned dilapidated apartment buildings that he didn’t, enabling him to move in tenants and skim government rent subsidies meant for lower-income, disabled, and elderly residents. Fishbein kept the con going for more than years. His take: $1.8 million.
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Them Dirty Roses is a southern rock band from Gadsden, Alabama. Brothers James Ford and Frank Ford, along with their hometown friends Andrew Davis and Ben Crain, taught themselves to play music by learning how to bend a string and break a heart like Skynyrd and Hank.
In 2014, the foursome piled into a van with their belongings, instruments, and plenty of whiskey on ice and made their way to Nashville, Tennessee.
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Less than five days after the failed assassination attempt on GOP nominee and former President Donald Trump, several questions still remain about how and why the shooter – Thomas Matthew Crooks – was able to gain access to the rooftop with an unobstructed view over the rally and the crowd. Six of the biggest security failures that reportedly occurred at the event raise even more questions for investigators.
The investigation into the assassination attempt that left one attendee dead, and three injured including Trump, is being led by the FBI. However, the bureau has remained relatively quiet on its probe, publishing only one update so far on Monday, July 15.
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Several major whistleblower groups are fighting the Justice Department’s efforts in federal court to permanently hide why it spied on congressional investigators by obtaining their phone records during a leaks investigation years ago.
The whistleblower group, Empower Oversight, whose founder Jason Foster was one of the investigators whose phone records were taken when he was still in a top Senate staffer, had asked a federal judge to unseal the underlying documents that allowed DOJ to acquire the records in 2017.
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When the Supreme Court reversed a preliminary injunction against several federal agencies and officials for “coerc[ing] or significantly encourag[ing] a platform’s content-moderation decisions,” the ideologically hybrid majority concluded that well-documented federal pressure to censor government-disfavored narratives was unlikely to recur.
Justice Samuel Alito, joined by justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, scolded his colleagues for their perceived credulity. The high court just provided “an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think,” he wrote.
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Former President Donald Trump on Thursday used his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention to issue a call for unity in wake of an assassination attempt against him over the weekend, which he described in detail.
“I stand before you this evening with a message of confidence, strength, and hope. Four months from now, we will have an incredible victory, and we will begin the four greatest years in the history of our country,” he opened. “The discord and division in our society must be healed. As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny. We rise together. Or we fall apart. I am running to be president for ALL of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America.”
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Former President Donald Trump on Thursday used his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention to issue a call for unity in wake of an assassination attempt against him over the weekend, which he described in detail.
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CNN is reporting that the Federal Bureau of Investigation now thinks the gunman who shot former President Donald Trump at an outdoor campaign rally last weekend did not write an anonymous message on the gaming platform Steam in the days leading up to the assassination attempt.
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Metro Nashville Council Member Ginny Welsch (District 16) said former President Donald Trump “called for” the July 13 assassination attempt he survived during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Trump was grazed by a single bullet in his upper right ear in what is formally being investigated as a failed assassination attempt during the rally last week.
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Former President Donald Trump on Thursday announced the passing of longtime media personality and conservative commentator Lou Dobbs, host of “The Great America Show.”
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Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper during his failed assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump last Saturday, was reportedly diagnosed with major depressive disorder prior to his death.
It was also reported that Thomas Matthew Crooks foreshadowed his attack, which claimed the life Trump supporter Corey Comperatore and injured two others in addition to piercing the former president’s right ear, on the popular video game storefront and platform Steam.
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Thomas Matthew Crooks, who attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump last Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania, graduated in May with “high honors” from the Community College of Allegheny County, according to a statement by CCAC Public Relations Director Dena Rose Buzila.
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Washington Examiner Former President Barack Obama told allies that President Joe Biden should reevaluate the viability of his candidacy, according to a new report. Obama reportedly told his allies in recent days that Biden’s chances of reelection are greatly diminished, and he should reevaluate his candidacy altogether in light of tanking poll numbers and dissent from Congressional Democrats, according to multiple people briefed on his thinking who spoke with the Washington Post. However, publicly, he has maintained that the final decision is Biden’s to make and that his influence over Biden’s decision-making isn’t decisive. READ THE FULL STORY
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New York Post Ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s campaign account paid a polling firm nearly $68,000 earlier this year to test his popularity as he plots a political comeback — including eyeing a run for New York City mayor Cuomo, the former three-term governor who resigned in disgrace in August 2021 amid a slew of sexual misconduct claims that he denies, paid the firm Expedition Strategies $67,739 on January 20. The purpose? “Polling costs,” the Friends of Andrew Cuomo campaign committee said in its semi-annual report filed with the state Board of Elections. READ THE FULL STORY
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Axios The Biden administration will forgive $1.2 billion in student debt for another 35,000 public service workers, the Department of Education announced on Thursday. The Biden administration’s latest round of debt relief brings the total loan forgiveness it has approved to $168.5 billion for 4.76 million borrowers. The Education Department said that the relief was made possible via its work to overhaul the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. READ THE FULL STORY
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Top Democrats think President Joe Biden will drop out as early as this weekend due to mounting pressure from members of his own party as well as donors, according to a report on Thursday.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., reportedly told Biden he should step aside during a private meeting.
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New allegations that Secret Service training resources were reallocated to “executive leadership bonuses” and DEI-prioritized recruitment are among the torrent of charges leveled against agency Director Kim Cheatle and other top officials in the aftermath of the assassination attempt against Donald Trump.
Inside the main hall of Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum, Republicans Thursday night were enjoying a Make America Great Again lovefest. But on the outside perimeter of the convention center, anger was still spewing over an avalanche of negative information about the layers of Secret Service failures that led to a bullet piercing Trump’s right ear, just millimeters away from killing him, four days ago at a rally in Pennsylvania.
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Ohio GOP Sen. JD Vance on Wednesday recalled his childhood and the downturn of small town America as he grew up, pointing the finger at President Joe Biden and other career politicians in Washington.
Speaking at the Republican National Convention, the Hillbilly Elegy author spoke to the fading prospects for pursuing the American Dream and insisted that former President Donald Trump would give voice to American workers whom he said Washington had neglected.
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Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell on Wednesday declared his controversial transit referendum a “great opportunity” for the city after it was unanimously approved by the Metro Council, with every lawmaker present voting to allow Nashvillians to vote in November on whether to fund the $6.93 billion transportation package called illegal by critics.
After the transit referendum was approved by the Metro Nashville City Council with unanimous support from the lawmakers present, O’Connell declared his approval in a statement, noting the final decision will go to Nashville residents in November.
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Former White House advisor Peter Navarro on Wednesday expressed defiance after leaving prison during his speech at the Republican National Convention.
During the Trump administration, Navarro held the post of director of the United States Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy. This year, he served a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the House Jan. 6 Committee. He delivered his address to the RNC the same day he was released from custody.
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The Arizona delegation is poised to significantly impact the 2024 Republican National Convention, held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, this week. The delegation includes several high-profile figures, including Kari Lake, election security expert Shelby Busch, and three alternate electors with pending court cases. The path to Milwaukee was tumultuous because of internal disputes, such as the attempted replacement of six delegates. The delegation has maintained a strong presence at the convention, and according to the delegates, there has been a powerful show of unity.
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FreedomFest is an annual largely libertarian conference that brings together people from various fields to discuss and promote ideas related to liberty, free markets, and individual freedom. This year in Las Vegas, The Arizona Sun Times interviewed Randy Barnett, whose memoir, “A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist,” offers an insightful look into his life, philosophy, and professional achievements. As one of the most influential legal scholars in constitutional law, Barnett champions liberty and originalism in his book. Originalism, he explains, is the judicial interpretation of the Constitution that aims to closely follow the original intentions of its framers.
Barnett, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, chronicles his journey from prosecutor in Chicago to intellectual scholar. When asked by The Arizona Sun Times what advice he gives to young scholars about pursuing originalism, he responded, “Stick to your principles but keep an open mind.” Barnett emphasized that he has changed his views when warranted and stressed the importance of being open to recognizing weaknesses in one’s views. “If you treat people with respect, they will reciprocate,” he added.
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Tennessee’s Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti Wednesday filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit by State Representative Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville), Nashville abortion activist and attorney Rachel Welty, and others to stop a bill banning the practice of abortion trafficking to take effect.
HB 1895, introduced by State Representative Jason Zachary (R-Knoxville) and signed into law by Gov. Bill Lee (R) in May bans minor seeking a abortions to be transported across state lines by people unrelated to them in order to obtain an abortion.
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President Joe Biden is considering formally supporting reforms to the Supreme Court, including the introduction of term limits for justices and an enforceable ethics code, the Washington Post reported.
Such reforms reflect increasing frustration among Democrats and Joe Biden’s supporters regarding recent controversies involving Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito, as well as landmark rulings by the court’s conservative majority.
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John Deere, the American manufacturing company of agricultural machinery and other heavy equipment, announced its commitment to end a number of its DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) policies for employees after a number of the company’s controversial policies were investigated and exposed by Tennessee political commentator and documentary filmmaker Robby Starbuck.
The company posted a statement explaining changes to a number of its internal policies on socia
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his team are working behind closed doors to win over former President Donald Trump’s approval after the two world leaders had a falling out in 2020, Axios reported on Tuesday.
Netanyahu called President Joe Biden in 2020 following the year’s election and congratulated him on his win, which Trump viewed as an insult and prompted him to stop speaking to the Israeli leader. As Trump’s chance for a win in 2024 increases, Netanyahu’s team is attempting to win Trump’s favor back — but it hasn’t been easy, people in Netanyhu’s orbit told Axios.
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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti joined a coalition of 21 other state attorneys general in “strongly” urging congressional leaders to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act.
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Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance being named Monday night as the GOP’s vice-presidential nominee sparked a flurry of names and interested candidates coming forth to potentially take his Senate seat – from local politicians to former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to the powerful GOP Ohio congressman Jim Jordan.
Ramaswamy has reportedly been angling for the seat since about the time Vance emerged on GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s short list.
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The brother of the illegal migrant accused of killing Georgia nursing student Laken Riley pleaded guilty on Monday to using a fraudulent green card, according to the Department of Justice.
Diego Ibarra — a 28-year-old Venezuelan national and brother of Jose Ibarra, the man who has been arrested for the killing of Riley — pleaded guilty to two counts of possession of a fraudulent document, according to a press release from the Justice Department’s Middle District of Georgia. Ibarra faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, up to three years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine per count.
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Tennessee Coordinator of Elections Mark Goins confirmed on Wednesday that none of the 14,375 voters who received letters from his office seeking to confirm their citizenship status will be removed from the state’s voter rolls.
Goins confirmed in a Tuesday statement to The Associated Press that his office’s June 13 letter to voters, which requested information about their citizenship, “did not threaten to remove a person from the voter list if a person does not respond” and then confirmed to the outlet, “[n]o one will be removed from a voting list for not responding to the June 13 letter.”
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The ‘Secure the Border Act’ will make it onto the November ballot for Arizonans after the Maricopa County Superior Court shot down a lawsuit from activist groups challenging its legality.
The proposition would make it a state crime to cross into Arizona through an illegal point of entry, as well as other provisions to crack down on the high levels of migrant crossings and the fentanyl crisis.
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Less than a week ago, a lone assassin’s bullet came within millimeters of killing Donald Trump. Had it succeeded, the unrest and polarization we already endure in America would have gotten significantly worse. There will be endless theories and explanations about how this near miss will affect the election, inspire more violence, or stimulate calls for unity and calm. But what is it about Trump that has made him a target of relentless and unified defamation, or worse, from every established American institution for nearly a decade?
Trump represents a movement. It is bigger than him, and it is bigger than MAGA. Trump and MAGA have counterparts all over the world, especially in Europe. The people in these movements all share at least two common grievances: they don’t want their national cultures destroyed, and they don’t want their standard of living destroyed. And in every country where these movements have arisen, that is exactly what is happening, and it’s happening fast.
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Kari Lake filed an opening brief with the Arizona Supreme Court last week, appealing the Arizona Court of Appeals’ denial of her second election lawsuit, a Rule 60(b) challenge containing new evidence. A significant part of it emphasized that over 275,000 signatures were not verified on early ballot envelope affidavits. Rule 60(b) of the Rules of Civil Procedure allows a court to “relieve a party or its legal representative from a final judgment, order, or proceeding” based on certain factors, such as new evidence or wrongdoing.
Lake’s opening brief, drafted by attorneys Jennifer Wright and Tim LaSota, emphasized “new information showing that, contrary to Maricopa’s claims of an ‘Election Day hiccup,’ nearly two-thirds of Maricopa’s 446 vote center tabulators failed on a massive scale — averaging over 7,000 ballot rejections every thirty minutes shortly after polls opened to polls closing.”
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The United States is producing more oil now than any nation in the world has ever produced. In 2008, the U.S. produced only 5 million barrels of oil a day. Last year, the country produced 13 million barrels daily.
The United States’ record-breaking production is often used to knock back the argument President Joe Biden’s energy policy aims to minimize domestic fuel fuel production – to cut carbon emission and make way for more renewable energy.
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