Thales College marked the commencement of the private institution’s first inaugural undergraduate class on Tuesday during a ceremony held at The Sutherland in Wake Forest, North Carolina.
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All eleven members of the Tennessee congressional delegation sent a letter to President Donald Trump requesting that he approve Governor Bill Lee’s request for a Major Disaster Declaration following severe weather in the Volunteer State earlier this month.
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Court records documenting the charges levied against human smuggler and illegal immigrant Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, obtained by The Tennessee Star on Wednesday, illustrate a stark contrast between the traffic December 4, 2019 stop of the vehicle containing Hernandez Reyes, and the December 1, 2022 stop by Tennessee Highway Patrol of a vehicle owned by Hernandez Reyes but operated by the citizen of El Salvador who was deported last month under the Trump administration, Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
The Star was first to report last week that Abrego Garcia was stopped by highway patrol in 2022, when he was transporting eight passengers from Texas to Maryland, with a claimed journey through Missouri, before reaching Tennessee.
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U.S. Immigration Judge David M. Jones, who wrote the final deportation order which granted a “withholding of removal” for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, appeared to have favored asylum claims brought before him in the city where the deported citizen of El Salvador was arrested in 2019.
Legal decisions tracked by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a research organization at Syracuse University, reveal that Jones served on both the Hyattsville and Baltimore immigration courts from 2019 until 2024, the period covered by its most recent report.
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President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday requiring American universities to be more transparent about any foreign donations they accept.
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Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin is demanding a company that deliberately sends sulfur dioxide into the air to combat global warming provide detailed information on its practices. Critics of the practice, which is called geoengineering, say it puts potentially harmful pollutants into the air and needs more oversight.
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It was reported on Wednesday that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the citizen of El Salvador who was deported by the Trump administration last month but previously lived in Maryland as an illegal immigrant, was driving a vehicle owned by Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes when he was stopped by the Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) in December 2022, and subsequently released at the instruction of the “Biden-era FBI,” despite officers at the scene suspecting he was engaged in human trafficking.
Hernandez Reyes is another citizen of El Salvador who was illegally residing in the United States prior to his 2020 conviction for human smuggling, and the preceding criminal complaint filed by a Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Special Agent, part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, reveals Hernandez Reyes told law enforcement “he previously lived in Maryland, but now lives in Houston Texas.”
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One thing that President Donald Trump has proven since taking office is that to secure the border, all it takes is a president with the political will to do what is necessary, with encounters on the southwest border in March down to 11,017, a 94 percent decrease from 189,359 encounters in March 2024, according to data compiled by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Similarly, in February there were just 11,709 such encounters.
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Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, said that the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security’s continued slow walk of releasing information requested by The Star of the 2022 traffic stop in Putnam County of Kilmar Abrego Garcia by Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) officers suggests that the state agency is participating in a cover up of Biden-era Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) failures.
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As the Justice Department pursues a historic racketeering indictment against drug cartels and gangs, President Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor is suggesting such organizations could face military action and should be treated more like ISIS than the Cosa Nostra.
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President Donald Trump said in a post on TruthSocial on Wednesday that he is suing the Democratic law firm Perkins Coie for “egregious and unlawful acts.” Previously, Trump issued an executive order on March 6 titled “Addressing Risks from Perkins Coie LLP,” which suspended the attorneys’ security clearances, restricted them from entering federal buildings, and terminated the firm’s federal government contacts.
“I’m suing the law firm of Perkins Coie for their egregious and unlawful acts, in particular the conduct of a specific member of this firm, only to find out that the Judge assigned to this case is Beryl Howell, an Obama appointment, and a highly biased and unfair disaster,” he said. Trump did not name the attorney he was referring to. Howell is presiding over the firm’s lawsuit challenging his executive order.
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Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, suggests the 2019 deportation order of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the El Salvadoran who was deported by the Trump administration last month, authorized by former U.S. Immigration Judge David M. Jones is widely to blame for the current confusion surrounding Abrego Garcia’s deportation to El Salvador.
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President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order aimed at improving outcomes in higher education by holding college and university accreditors more accountable.
“Accreditors – the gatekeepers that decide which colleges and universities can access over $100 billion in annual Federal student loans and Pell Grants – have routinely approved low-quality institutions, ultimately failing students, families, and American taxpayers,” the order reads. “Accreditors have failed to ensure quality, with a national six-year undergraduate graduation rate of just 64% in 2020.”
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Several prominent Arizona Democrats and moderate Republicans who served in office have a cozy relationship with Arizona State University (ASU), often landing plum jobs with the woke university after leaving elected office. Some of them directed funding or other assistance to the university while serving in office, sparking concerns about a quid pro quo.
A prominent former Arizona official told The Arizona Sun Times that ASU rewards politicians who vote to give the school money with “cushy” positions after they leave office. The former official noted that conservative Republicans are not provided these opportunities.
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Unprecedentedly high tariffs on imports from China are the latest escalation in a new cold war that may eventually turn hot, a war that we could lose. The new “adversary” is China, a fascist, racist, expansionist, deceitful, dishonest, and manipulative superpower that wants to impose on the whole world the authoritarian hellscape it’s imposed on its own population.
For the skeptics and the appeasers who don’t think China is a serious threat, or that human rights in China are no better or worse than they are here in America, it’s time to resurrect arguments from the last Cold War, arguments that worked then and ought to work now: America is a mess. A flawed, divided, fractious, chaotic melange of oligarchs and jingoists, crackers and crips, soft corporate censorship and bureaucratic gridlock, with bursting prisons and broken ghettos, with wealth inequality and simmering racial tension. We’re not perfect!
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In 2025, the Tennessee General Assembly has remained a powerhouse of conservative governance, delivering bold, principled policies that mirror the transformative leadership of President Donald J. Trump. With a conservative supermajority and an unwavering commitment to Tennessee’s values, the first half of the 114th General Assembly has not only strengthened our state but also set a gold standard for conservative action that complements the America First agenda sweeping the nation. As President Trump reshapes the country with his decisive leadership, Tennessee’s lawmakers are proving that conservative principles—freedom, security, and opportunity—can deliver unparalleled results.
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When I met KC Johns at CRS 2025, I was instantly drawn to her energy. More importantly, her music matched her electrifying can-do attitude.
Johns was born in Memphis and raised in Hernando, Mississippi, a small town along the Tennessee-Mississippi line. Most of her family hails from Florida. Her mother and stepfather met on the rodeo circuit, where her mother participated in barrel racing, and her stepfather was a bull rider. While neither of her parents was a musical performer, she was always surrounded by it and was even named after KC and the Sunshine Band.
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