Tennessee U.S. Representative Tim Burchett (R-TN-02) was one of the Republicans who met with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance at the White House on Wednesday to negotiate the “big beautiful bill.”
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Progress on President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” ground to a halt Wednesday in the U.S. House as Republican leaders continue to haggle with fiscal hardliners behind the scenes.
As of early Wednesday evening, four Republicans continue to refrain from voting on an amendment that would allow House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to delay or reschedule the vote on the bill’s final passage if needed.
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Putnam County Sheriff Eddie Farris on Tuesday claimed reports indicating the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office (PCSO) entered into a full 287(g) agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were misreported by Tennessee media outlets, telling the Herald-Citizen that his agency is only working with federal immigration officials to screen inmates after their arrest.
While agreements between ICE and local law enforcement agencies allow police and sheriff’s deputies to perform a wide range of immigration enforcement actions with federal oversight, Farris told the outlet that the agreement between PCSO and ICE only involves additional screening capabilities for arrested suspects.
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State Representative Justin Jones (D-Nashville) on Monday filed legislation that would establish a new criminal offense for law enforcement officers, including federal agents at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to wear face masks when dealing with the public.
Titled the Stop American Gestapo Act (SAGA), the Democrat’s House Bill (HB) 1442 would make it a Class C misdemeanor in Tennessee for law enforcement officers, including federal agents, to “wear a mask, face covering, or personal disguise while interacting with the public in the performance of the law enforcement officer’s official duties.”
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Washington Examiner The Food and Drug Administration’s chief medical and scientific officer, Dr. Vinay Prasad, rejected two COVID-19 vaccines in May due to unknown risks despite experts’ confidence that they were safe, documents revealed. While both the Novavax vaccine and the newest generation of the mRNA Moderna vaccines had been signed off on by about 30 FDA vaccine officials, Prasad ended up writing overrides for each, restricting their use. Prasad argued that the threat of COVID-19 had decreased, changing the cost-benefit weight of receiving such a vaccine. “Even rare vaccination-related harms, both known and unknown, now have a higher chance of outweighing potential benefits in non-high-risk populations,” Prasad said in the Novavax override memo. READ THE FULL STORY
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Breitbart A joint task force of federal, state, and local law enforcement officials led to the arrest of 16 members of the Venezuelan “Anti-Tren” gang, a spinoff faction of the Tren de Aragua foreign terrorist organization. Officials called it the “largest takedown of suspected Anti-Tren members and associates by the FBI, so far.” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas Nicholas J. Ganjei wrote, “The Southern District’s twin priorities are securing our border and the eradication of violent crime. This case implicates both.” In an announcement on Monday, Ganjei said law enforcement officers with the FBI Houston Field Office, DEA, U.S. Marshals, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, Texas Department of Public Safety, Harris County Sheriff’s Office, and the Houston Police Department teamed up to arrest 16 members of the Anti-Tren gang. He said the charges, which include drug trafficking and weapons offenses, were filed against former members and associates of Tren de Aragua (TdA). READ THE FULL STORY
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From China to Houston to cities and military bases in Oregon, Washington and California, federal agents tracked down and arrested two alleged Chinese spies for acting as agents of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) targeting U.S. Navy personnel.
Last week, the culmination of a multi-agency investigation resulted in law enforcement officers disrupting a “clandestine PRC Ministry of State Security Intelligence network operating in the United States,” the Department of Justice said.
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CIA Director John Ratcliffe on Wednesday released a scathing review of the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment of Russian influence in the 2016 election, criticizing then-CIA Director John Brennan for joining the FBI in pushing to include British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s baseless anti-Trump dossier.
In the review, Ratcliffe also critiqued the CIA and FBI’s “high confidence” assessment that Russian leader Vladimir Putin had “aspired” to help Trump win.
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Former Republican South Carolina Lt. Gov. André Bauer on Wednesday mounted a bid to unseat Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham in the 2026 GOP primary.
Bauer, a former CNN contributor, emphasized his relationship with President Donald Trump, saying in his announcement that he “will unapologetically stand with … the America First agenda.” The former two-term lieutenant governor’s announcement video also showed Trump introducing Bauer at a rally as a man who could “run for almost any office and win,” and it highlighted Trump’s unsuccessful nomination of Bauer to be the U.S. Ambassador to Belize.
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The Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down the state’s abortion ban from 1849 on Wednesday.
The court’s liberal-leaning majority affirmed a lower court ruling overturning the abortion ban in a 4-3 decision. The court ruled that the ban was superseded by a more recent Wisconsin law that criminalizes abortions only after a fetus can survive outside the womb.
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President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced that Israeli officials have agreed to a 60-day ceasefire in its war with Hamas, which will be presented to the terrorist organization by Qatar and Egypt.
The announcement comes ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House next week. Israel has also recently agreed to a ceasefire with Iran, after Israel and the United States bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities.
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Tennessee U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) continues to be praised for her successful effort stripping a 10-year moratorium on state-level laws regulating artificial intelligence (AI) from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
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The American Automobile Association (AAA) projected that 1.6 million Tennesseans will be traveling during the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
AAA considers this weekend from June 28 to July 6.
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The Department of Justice (DOJ) charged three Tennesseans as part of the department’s largest ever crackdown on health care fraud.
Kossie Lamon Simmons, Katina Marzie Simmons, and Tritia Margalizita Townsend have been charged with conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud and health care fraud.
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Tennessee U.S. Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN-05) introduced an amendment following the U.S. Senate’s passage of the White House-backed “big beautiful bill” on Tuesday that would revert the Senate-passed version of the bill back to the version the House approved in May.
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Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sent a letter Tuesday to the 50 state governors, urging them to remove distractions from roads, including divisive and distracting political messaging like rainbow crosswalks.
“Roads are for safety, not political messages or artwork,” Duffy said in a statement first provided to The Daily Signal. “Today I am calling on governors in every state to ensure that roadways, intersections, and crosswalks are kept free of distractions.”
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Winning the AI race with China is often framed in terms of expensive, long-term bets: bringing back chip manufacturing, pouring billions of dollars into data centers, and modernizing and expanding the power grid. But as we seek to win the Great Power competition of the 21st century, are we overlooking a crucial resource?
We spent our careers in uniform contributing to our country’s national security. We believe that artificial intelligence is the decisive battlefield of our age – and that the choices we make today will determine whether the United States ultimately prevails.
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A court is allowing a constitutional lawsuit to go ahead against the Arizona Association of Realtors (AAR) by a realtor whom the AAR disciplined for posting conservative memes on social media. This is the first time in the state’s history that a constitutional claim has been allowed against a private organization, according to Ryan Heath, realtor Chad DeVries’ attorney.
Heath wrote on his Substack, “Because the court has permitted his due process claims to proceed, DeVries has now successfully advanced a novel legal theory: that AAR’s control over access to the real estate profession makes it subject to constitutional due process requirements, even though it is a private entity.”
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As I have been exploring bluegrass music more seriously, a band that kept appearing in my emails was the all-girl group Sister Sadie. When my friend and Music Spotlight artist Erin Enderlin mentioned she had co-written three songs on their newest album, I knew it was time to feature them.
Sister Sadie began when a handful of young women gathered at the Station Inn to hang out while they were on Christmas break from their regular gigs. They gathered in a circle, and as soon as they played the first four bars of the intro, they sounded like they had been playing together forever.
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