For the first time in history, an American sits on the Throne of St. Peter. Pope Leo XIV – born in Dolton, Illinois, and formed at Villanova University – now leads the global Church. At the same moment, President Trump’s new Ambassador to the Holy See, Brian Burch, heads to Rome.
The Catalyst: Pope Leo XIV. His election electrifies the faithful. His modesty, steadiness, and clarity provide a needed counterbalance to the recent era of confusion.
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Since the start of 2025, border security measures have cost the Mexican cartels more than $1 billion, according to estimates by the El Paso Sector of the Border Patrol in Texas.
“We’re hurting them in the pocketbook,” interim Border Patrol Chief for the El Paso Sector Walter Slosar tells The Daily Signal.
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Diversity, equity, and inclusion mandates, race-based hiring, and safe spaces are just a few of the noxious turns that have become the standard in American colleges and universities in recent times.
Examples of universities practicing preferential treatment are countless. John Sailer, director of higher education policy at the Manhattan Institute, reports on a faculty job rubric he obtained from the University of Texas at San Antonio, which listed “female/URM” (underrepresented minority) as a scoring category.
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Federal prosecutors have charged a foreign national in North Carolina with voting in at least two federal elections and believe he may have participated in local elections for the past twenty years.
Denis Bouchard, a 69-year-old Canadian citizen who has resided in the U.S. since the 1960s, never obtained American citizenship, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). Despite this, he is accused of listing himself as a citizen on voter registration applications in the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential election, casting a ballot in both contests.
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After interviewing over 500 artists, I have met some incredibly talented musicians. However, sometimes it can be overwhelming. Besides being a notable vocalist, you need to be unique, different, and especially memorable. Levi Foster fits that bill to a T.
While I am grateful that pop-country is fading a bit and 90s country has made a considerable comeback, there is still something about the music that built the Grand Ole Opry and the country music genre. Music that wasn’t autotuned or slickly produced, but songs made the heart ache. Foster’s debut album, We Made Fire, is such an album.
While I am grateful that pop-country is fading a bit and 90s country has made a considerable comeback, there is still something about the music that built the Grand Ole Opry and the country music genre. Music that wasn’t autotuned or slickly produced, but songs made the heart ache. Foster’s debut album, We Made Fire, is such an album.
Nashville-based country music artist and political pundit Alexis Wilkins on Wednesday filed a defamation lawsuit against Kyle Seraphin, a former FBI agent who blew the whistle against the agency during the Biden administration.
Wilkins alleges in her lawsuit that Seraphin intentionally defamed her during an episode of his podcast, the “Kyle Seraphin Show,” when the former FBI agent claimed Patel had a “honeypot” problem, and described an individual who matched her professional experience, before claiming this unnamed “honeypot” worked for Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency.
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A legal filing submitted by the criminal defense attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia on Thursday night asked U.S. District Court Judge Waverly Crenshaw to issue an order prohibiting Attorney General Pam Bondi, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and other Trump administration officials from making “extrajudicial comments” about the case against the alleged human smuggler.
The motion specifically requested Crenshaw to prohibit the prosecutors, as well as “everyone in their supervisory chain,” plus Bondi and Noem, “from making extrajudicial comments that pose a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing this proceeding.”
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Rutherford County Mayor Joe Carr is calling on the County Commission to formally censure Commissioner Hope Oliver (District 1) and remove her from the Public Safety Committee, condemning her recent remarks comparing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to terrorist organizations as “morally reprehensible.”
During Monday’s meeting of the Public Safety Committee, Rutherford County Sheriff Mike Fitzhugh defended the sheriff’s office’s (RCSO) pending 287(g) partnership with ICE, which allows local law enforcement to assist federal immigration efforts.
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The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced the cancellation of nearly $5 billion in funding for a wide array of foreign aid programs Friday morning, building on the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on spending determined to be wasteful.
President Donald Trump sent House Speaker Mike Johnson a letter Thursday evening of his intent to rescind $4.9 billion in congressionally approved funding for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department through the rarely-used “pocket rescission” maneuver. The administration is seeking to clawback more than $3 billion in funding for USAID, roughly $300 million for the USAID-States Democracy Fund as well as State Department contributions to peacekeeping activities and international organizations, the New York Post first reported.
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The deadly shooting at a Minnesota Catholic school should prompt school security review and an investigation into how the transgender-identifying attacker was radicalized, experts say.
The attack, which left two students dead and more than a dozen injured after Robin Westman, a transgender-identifying 23-year-old, targeted students at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis while they were attending a back-to-school Mass at the church of the same name. Westman had previously posted disturbing and incoherent content on social media, including images of weapons with “Kill Donald Trump” and “Nuke India” written on them.
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Republican Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst will reportedly not seek reelection for a third Senate term.
Ernst, who began serving in the upper chamber in 2015, will announce next Thursday that she will not run for reelection in 2026, CBS News first reported. Ernst’s decision to pass on running for reelection comes after the White House and Senate GOP leadership lobbied her to seek a third Senate term.
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Axios A federal appellate court on Friday upheld a lower-court ruling invalidating the bulk of President Trump’s sweeping global tariffs. The ruling could quickly upend the global trade order Trump has built, cutting off a major new source of cash for the government and raising huge questions about what businesses are supposed to do next. Trump said the ruling would “literally destroy the United States of America” if it stands, and promised an appeal to the Supreme Court. READ THE FULL STORY
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Breitbart Florida police have discovered how migrants who cannot speak English have been getting licenses to drive 18-wheelers on the nation’s highways. With news breaking all across the country of major highway accidents that have killed Americans perpetrated by non-English speaking migrants behind the wheels of massive semi trucks, many have wondered how they could be getting their licenses. Investigators in Florida have discovered that one way is by using hidden cameras and ear pieces when they enter a drive’s license facility to take their commercial truck driving license (CDL) test, WTLV-TV reported. Investigators from the Florida State Police have discovered that some foreign-born applicants are using a camera and an ear piece connected to someone outside the DMV facility who speaks their language to cheat on the tests. The applicant uses the camera to scan the test so his cohort can read the questions, then they tell the applicant how to answer the test questions over the ear piece. That way, the migrants can pass the test without having read a single question or understood any of the answers. READ THE FULL STORY
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KVUE On Friday morning, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he has signed House Bill 4, which redraws the state’s congressional districts. The governor posted a video on his X account, saying, “Today, I signed the One Big Beautiful Map. This map ensures fairer representation in Congress. Texas will be more RED in Congress.” The newly signed law will shift districts in Austin, Houston, North Texas and the Rio Grande Valley, in hopes of creating five more Republican seats in the U.S. House. READ THE FULL STORY
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Sevier County will have a new mayor in 2027 as Mayor Larry Waters announced on Friday that he will not seek reelection.
Waters has been the mayor of Sevier County since 1978, which makes him the longest-serving county mayor in the state’s history, according to Sevier County.
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A manufacturing company announced this week it will be expanding its operations in Tennessee.
MAHLE said it will invest over $10 million in its Morristown facility. This investment will allow the company to start production of electric compressors used on fuel-cell electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid vehicles, and full electric vehicles.
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Voters in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District must register soon to vote in the special primary election on October 7.
Voters in the 7th District – which includes Stewart, Montgomery, Robertson, Houston, Dickson, Cheatham, Humphreys, Hickman, Perry, Decatur, Wayne, and parts of Davidson, Benton, and Williamson counties – must be registered to vote in the special primary by the end of September 8.
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A comprehensive New York Times report is sounding the alarm bells for Democrats ahead of important gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, and the 2026 midterm elections next year.
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Axios couldn’t resist. The minute Cracker Barrel listened to its customers and ditched its ill-fated logo redesign, the headlines wrote themselves: “MAGA backlash.” “Trump weighs in.”
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A major liberal dark money group is reportedly paying Democratic social media influencers thousands of dollars a month to promote progressive messaging online, WIRED reported Wednesday.
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The Volunteer State’s oldest and largest pro-life advocacy organization, Tennessee Right to Life, is celebrating three years of the state’s Human Life Protection Act being in effect.
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State Representative Lee Reeves (R-Franklin), who is running for the Republican nomination in the race for Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District, and U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) were featured during a live segment filmed in Nashville during Thursday’s edition of Fox News’ “Fox and Friends.”
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Three of the attorneys representing Kilmar Abrego Garcia in his second civil lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), filed to prevent his anticipated deportation to Uganda, are part of the New York firm, Quinn Emanuel Trial Lawyers, where they previously represented prestigious clients including Elon Musk and Tesla, the global investment bank Credit Suisse, and debtors owed money by Sam Bankman-Fried’s bankrupt cryptocurrency company, FTX Trading Ltd.
Paperless orders signed on Wednesday by a deputy clerk confirm that Andrew J. Rossman, Sascha N. Rand, and Olivia G. Horton were admitted to represent Abrego Garcia in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland pro hac vice, a Latin legal phrase meaning for this occasion only.
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The U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday it has filed charges against a Tennessee woman accused of threatening U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn.
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Two of the criminal defense attorneys representing Kilmar Abrego Garcia in his federal human smuggling case in Tennessee did not respond to Thursday press inquiries from The Tennessee Star, which sought to confirm that Abrego Garcia reviewed and rejected a plea deal that would have seen him ultimately deported to Costa Rica.
Neither Rascoe Dean of the Nashville-based Sherrard Roe Voight & Harbison, nor Sean Hecker of the New York law firm, Hecker & Fink, replied to the Thursday morning request from The Star to clarify their Saturday filing, which revealed the existence of the plea deal for the first time.
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Tennessee U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) was named in the third annual TIME100 AI list, which recognizes the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI).
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It was reported on Thursday that the Legal Clinic operated by the Tennessee Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence (TCEDSV), a taxpayer-funded nonprofit, closed due to a loss of state funding. The nonprofit’s website, which contains both English and Spanish language instructions to visitors, confirms that the Legal Clinic closed on June 30.
While The Tennessee Lookout reported on Thursday that the Legal Clinic served “immigrant crime victims,” a listing of services by the Immigration Advocates Network suggests the legal clinic provided a variety of legal services to illegal immigrants, including those who did not claim to be the victim of a crime.
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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) rolled out a new rule on Thursday limiting how long foreign students can remain in the country, closing a loophole that officials say has allowed some foreign nationals to become “forever students.”
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State Representative Gino Bulso’s (R-Brentwood) campaign launched its first television ad in the Republican primary race for Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District.
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Republicans are calling for 35 inland counties to secede from California and create a new state.
The GOP announced the plan Wednesday as their response to Democrats’ congressional redistricting efforts.
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The Tennessee Public Charter School Commission reversed a decision by Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools and approved an application for a school designed for at-risk youth.
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Among the litany of mistakes and falsehoods pushed by U.S. military commanders and President Biden in 2021 was the fiction that Afghanistan fell in only “eleven days” in mid-August 2021. In reality, the Taliban takeover unfolded over multiple months following then-President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal “Go-to-Zero” order on April 14, 2021. The architect responsible for that house of cards was then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley.
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Over half of Americans approve of how President Donald Trump is handling crime, according to an AP-NORC poll released Wednesday.
Of those surveyed, 53% said they approve of Trump’s approach to tackling crime, including 46% of independents and 16% of Democrats, according to the poll. The survey was conducted after the president announced on Aug. 11 that he is deploying the National Guard to help stamp out violent crime in the Washington, D.C.
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My mother’s cousin Henrietta (not her real name), up until that point a solid Democrat, was approaching her Chicago polling place in 1980 when she was greeted by her Democratic precinct worker. “Sorry, George,” she said, “I can’t bring myself to vote for Jimmy Carter again.” “That is all right, Henrietta,” George said without a pause. “We don’t care how you vote on the national ticket.”
Lost to history is whether George was expressing his own or the Chicago Democratic machine’s disaffection from President Carter, whom native son Ronald Reagan would beat in Illinois by almost 8%, or whether George was simply professional enough a political hack to pick his persuasion battles. But to understand why the US Constitution leaves the question of redistricting to the states, George’s “we don’t care” offers a helpful signpost both to what our Founders anticipated and to what we have now.
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A Tuesday legal filing by the immigration attorneys representing Kilmar Abrego Garcia in the two lawsuits filed by the alleged human smuggler against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed that Abrego Garcia will remain within the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as his latest claims are evaluated by District Court Judge Paula Xinis.
The confirmation came through a proposed schedule for legal filings submitted by Abrego Garcia’s attorneys for his new civil lawsuit. Though the filing highlighted a series of disagreements with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys representing the Trump administration, it confirmed that both parties were in agreement on custody arrangements.
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Pollster John McLaughlin is expressing doubts about the validity and methodology of a new poll released Tuesday by Americans for Prosperity (AFP) Foundation that shows a statistical four-way tie in the Republican primary for Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District.
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Months after he refused to charge Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election for using a private, unauthorized server to transmit classified information, then-FBI Director James Comey’s inner circle used personal email accounts to further a plan to make an “unauthorized disclosure” to journalists, newly declassified memos reveal.
When investigators in a criminal probe codenamed “TROPIC VORTEX” sought permission in 2019 to gain access to those private emails, federal prosecutors turned them down, according to the memos recently uncovered by current FBI Director Kash Patel and declassified for release to Congress by Attorney General Pam Bondi.
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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., announced Wednesday that the Food and Drug Administration rescinded emergency use authorizations for COVID-19 vaccines.
“I promised 4 things: 1. to end covid vaccine mandates. 2. to keep vaccines available to people who want them, especially the vulnerable. 3. to demand placebo-controlled trials from companies. 4. to end the emergency,” Kennedy posted on X.
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Immigration attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, who represents Kilmar Abrego Garcia through the immigration law firm Murray Osorio, said during a Monday appearance on PBS that his client would agree to be deported to Costa Rica “tomorrow” if the Trump administration wants the citizen of El Salvador removed from the country “as quickly as possible.”
Sandoval-Moshenberg made the remarks during an appearance on “PBS News Hour,” when asked whether Abrego Garcia declined the plea deal offered in his federal human smuggling case last week.
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The Gates Foundation quietly halted supporting a major left-wing dark money network with ties to the Democratic Party earlier this summer, the New York Times (NYT) reported Tuesday.
A June 24 internal foundation announcement obtained by the NYT shows that the Gates Foundation chose to stop making grants to nonprofit funds administered by Arabella Advisors. The foundation’s June announcement, which was sent to some employees who supervise grant programs, did not directly bring up politics, according to the NYT.
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House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., is planning to reintroducing legislation to reform U.S. election laws, including banning states from counting ballots that arrive after polls close on Election Day.
“We’ll be reintroducing legislation in the weeks ahead, putting forward that gold standard for states about how you should be operating and running your elections, and putting in enforcement mechanisms for states that fail to meet a high standard,” Steil told the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show on Monday. “The obvious standard that I think should be the most obvious is that ballots need to be in by the time the polls close.”
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Democratic Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey scolded any Christian who is offering their “prayers” for the victims of the Annunciation Catholic School shooting on Wednesday.
A now-deceased suspect killed two children, aged eight and ten, and injured 17 others after he opened fire inside the school’s church on Wednesday. Following the tragedy, the mayor told people not to offer their “thoughts and prayers” to the victims and their families, despite these children sitting inside a church at the time of the shooting.
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The Hill Susan Monarez, the longtime government scientist recently confirmed as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has been let go from her position after less than a month in the role. A source familiar with the situation confirmed to The Hill that Monarez was ousted as CDC director. The Senate confirmed her July 29. “Susan Monarez is no longer director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We thank her for her dedicated service to the American people. @SecKennedy has full confidence in his team at @CDCgov who will continue to be vigilant in protecting Americans against infectious diseases at home and abroad,” the X account for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) posted. READ THE FULL STORY
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Breitbart A U.S. Coast Guard cutter offloaded 76,140 pounds of illegal drugs valued at $473 million in Port Everglades, Florida, this week — the largest drug offload in the service branch’s history. As part of an effort called Operation Pacific Viper, the offload by the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Hamilton included approximately 61,740 pounds of cocaine and approximately 14,400 pounds of marijuana. The seized contraband was the result of 19 interdictions in international waters in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea. The operation is part of a wider, ongoing effort ordered by President Donald Trump to combat foreign drug cartels in Latin America. READ THE FULL STORY
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Axios Multiple FEMA staff who signed an open letter criticizing the Trump administration’s budget cuts to disaster preparedness were placed on leave Tuesday, the Washington Post first reported. Among the workers who signed the letter are “individuals who were directly helping relief efforts in Kerr County, Texas” following July’s deadly floods, said a spokesperson for Stand Up for Science, the nonprofit that publicized the declaration, in a Tuesday night email that called the administration’s action “illegal.” The letter warns against cuts to FEMA, opposes administration moves to end climate change research and criticizes officials including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose department oversees the agency, for their leadership decisions. READ THE FULL STORY
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State Representative Gino Bulso’s (R-Brentwood) congressional campaign hailed the Americans for Prosperity (AFP) Foundation poll released Tuesday—which shows Bulso in a statistical tie among the top Republican candidates running for Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District—as a “major milestone” in the race.
The AFP poll shows the Republican primary for the 7th District to be a statistical tie among the top four candidates—Bulso, State Reps. Lee Reeves (R-Franklin) and Jody Barrett (R-Dickson), and former Lee administration official Matt Van Epps—with 57 percent of voters still undecided.
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Robin Westman, who on Wednesday was named as the 22-year-old biological male who identified as a transgender female prior to killing two during at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, reportedly uploaded a video to social media showing his weapons and equipment, which has since been deleted but reposted to the social media platform X.
On one rifle magazine, the alleged killer wrote, “Kill Donald Trump,” while one of the weapons contained the words, “Kill Trump Now!”
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National Guard troops will not be deployed or accepted to patrol Memphis, according to Governor Bill Lee.
“We have no plans to put the National Guard there now,” Lee told reporters Tuesday, according to The Tennessee Lookout.
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The person responsible for the attack on the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which saw two children killed and 17 injured during morning Mass, was identified by multiple sources on Wednesday as Robin Westman, who took his own life following the attack. Born male biologically, Westman reportedly identified as a transgender woman.
Liz Collin, a reporter at the Minnesota-based Alpha News, reported just hours after the shooting, “Multiple sources confirm Robin Westman as the gunman in this morning’s mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic School.”
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Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, said the federal judiciary—particularly Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland—is acting politically and unethically in the ongoing legal battle over Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the illegal alien with a final deportation order who faces allegations of human smuggling.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) took Abrego Garcia into custody in Baltimore on Monday morning, following his release last week from DOJ custody in Tennessee, where he had been held on federal human smuggling charges.
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