Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said his office is focused on multiple fronts ranging from issues at the state level to advocating for issues that would impact the entire nation.
Read the full story
The law firm representing The Tennessee Star in its federal lawsuit demanding the FBI release the complete materials left by transgender Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale on Monday contacted the FBI to request an immediate explanation for the agency’s reported decision to release the killer’s writings to independent journalist Megyn Kelly.
Kelly has reported that the FBI gave Hale’s written materials to her organization over the weekend, and in a Monday podcast shared details purportedly from the manifesto left by the killer, who killed six at a Christian school in Nashville on March 27, 2023, that match Hale’s 2023 manifesto.
Read the full story
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville reportedly confirmed in an internal letter last week to members of its community that two students facing possible deportation under President Donald Trump have criminal backgrounds, as claimed by the Trump administration when it changed the immigration status of three students and one university staff member.
UT Chancellor Donda Plowman stated in a purported letter to students and community members on Friday that after the Trump administration changed the immigration status of three students and one staff member, the university was able to locate two of the students’ criminal histories.
Read the full story
After meeting to discuss a number of issues at the White House Monday afternoon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump said that Israel would be eliminating trade barriers with the U.S. and that the U.S. has an important meeting planned with Iran for Saturday.
Read the full story
A newly-released letter sheds more light on how Hunter Biden sought to enlist an American embassy to assist Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company employing him, when his father was serving as vice president.
In a 2016 letter written on Burisma letterhead, Hunter Biden asked then-American ambassador to Italy John R. Phillips to help the company line up meetings with an Italian official to work through regulatory issues pertaining to geothermal energy projects that Burisma wanted to develop in the country, according to The New York Times. Phillips responded in a letter of his own to say that he had tapped an official with the Commerce Department to help out.
Read the full story
Three states banned foreign funding of ballot initiative campaigns as election integrity proponents have raised concerns over non-citizens influencing elections.
Kansas, Kentucky, and Wyoming took action during this year’s legislative sessions after Ohio was the first state to enact a ban on foreign nationals from donating to ballot measure campaigns. The laws followed reports that nonprofits donating to ballot initiative campaigns received funding from foreign nationals. The most noteworthy report was after Texas Attorney General Paxton petitioned the Federal Election Commission to implement more rigorous checks, particularly on the left-wing fundraising platform Act Blue, who, according to The New York Post “changed its fraud policy twice during the 2024 campaign, implementing “more lenient” standards that let foreign and other suspicious donor money flow into US campaigns,” citing internal company documents.
Read the full story
Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee and Virginia Republican Rep. Ben Cline will reintroduce legislation Monday to prevent government workers from engaging in union-related work while on the clock.
Lee and Cline’s No Union Time on the Taxpayer’s Dime Act would end the practice of “official time”— paid time given to federal employees to perform union duties during work hours and using government office space. This practice costs taxpayers more than $100 million annually, according to data from the White House Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
Read the full story
The European Union on Monday proposed a ‘zero-for-zero’ tariff plan to the U.S.
The offer was made by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, following President Donald Trump last week placing a 20% tariff on the EU.
Read the full story
The FBI reportedly provided last week the 1,299 pages written by Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who identified as a transgender man when she killed six at the Nashville school she once attended, to independent media personality Megyn Kelly.
Kelly’s release of the materials, which began on Monday, appears to contain some of the same writings The Tennessee Star legally obtained last June and subsequently published in their entirety in September 2024, suggesting the materials obtained by Kelly are authentic.
Read the full story
Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of Semafor, said the evolution of online media throughout the past two decades has produced significantly “compressed” news cycles.
Smith previously served as the former media columnist for The New York Times and founding editor in chief of BuzzFeed News prior to founding Semafor in 2022.
Read the full story
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled last week that a Tennessee natural gas pipeline may proceed, dismissing the claims raised by the Sierra Club and a North Carolina environmentalist group in 2023 to stall the plans by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to replace a Cumberland coal plant commissioned in the 1970s with natural gas.
After the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) granted approval to the Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company to construct a 32-mile natural gas pipeline running through Dickson, Houston, and Stewart counties in 2023, the plaintiffs sued in August 2023 to invalidate the agency’s water quality certification and block construction of the pipeline.
Read the full story
Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily halted an order directing the Trump administration to bring an alleged MS-13 gang member back into the country.
Read the full story
President Donald Trump reacted to China’s retaliatory tariffs by threatening additional tariffs on the country.
Last week, China announced a 34 percent tariff on American products after Trump unveiled a 34 percent reciprocal tariff on the Chinese.
Read the full story
White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told billionaire Bill Ackman and others to “ease off the rhetoric a little bit” regarding America’s new reciprocal tariffs on its trading partners.
“I would urge everyone, especially Bill, to ease off the rhetoric a little bit,” Hassett told Fox&Friends on Monday.
Read the full story
Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, disagrees with the Metro Nashville Police Department’s (MNPD) conclusion that 28-year-old Audrey Elizabeth Hale, the self-identified transgender man who carried out the Covenant School shooting on March 27, 2023, committed the attack while she was “sane” and out of her desire for “notoriety.”
Read the full story
The Tennessee State Senate last Thursday approved legislation that would make certain nonprofits and charities liable to civil lawsuits if they provide housing to illegal immigrants that are convicted of crimes.
A summary for Senate Bill (SB) 227 by State Senator Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) explains it would modify Tennessee tort law to create a civil claim for individuals who say they were harmed by crimes committed by an illegal immigrant who was knowingly housed by a nonprofit or charity, so long as the harm involved some form of financial loss, damages, physical injury, or death.
Read the full story
The Tennessee Department of Education on Thursday raised the total number of private schools who have indicated they will participate in the scholarships created under the Education Freedom Act of 2025 to 192 institutions throughout the Volunteer State, which the agency said means more than half of eligible schools expressed interest in the program in the less than two months since Governor Bill Lee signed the school choice legislation into law.
The Education Freedom Act creates 20,000 Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) worth about $7,300, which will first be made available to Tennessee students during the 2025-2026 school year, with the goal of providing parents the funding necessary for them to have choices in where their children receive an education.
Read the full story
An investigation into the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) has been recommended by the Davidson County Grand Jury following testimonies from numerous employees which collectively allege systemic misconduct within the department.
Read the full story