Day: August 4, 2025

Agriculture Dept. Approves Waivers Banning Candy, Soda from SNAP Benefits in Six States

Just the News
soda drinker

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Monday announced she has approved waivers in six new state waivers to ban Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) beneficiaries from using the program to purchase junk food like soda and candy.

The waivers come as the Trump administration prioritizes “Making America Healthy Again” by combating the obesity and chronic health crisis in the country. SNAP benefits are intended to help low-income residents cover the costs of groceries but have partly been used in the past on non-healthy items that experts believe have contributed to the rise in obesity and chronic diseases.

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Senate Confirms Sen. Bill Hagerty’s Former Chief of Staff as Assistant Secretary of the Army

Tom Pappert
Adam Telle

The U.S. Senate on Saturday voted to confirm Adam Telle, the former Chief of Staff to Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), to serve as the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works under the Trump administration. 

With Telle having worked for Hagerty since 2021, the senator introduced his nomination to the Senate in May, and said his former chief of staff brought a unique set of skills to his office. 

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ICE Makes 1,000 Job Offers After DHS Secretary Kristi Noem Promised Nashville Would See ‘More Federal Officers’

Tom Pappert
ICE agent

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced on Thursday that it had already extended more than 1,000 tentative job offers in a press release issued just two days after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) unveiled its “Defend the Homeland” campaign to recruit new ICE agents. 

Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said the surge in recruitment represents interest from “patriots who want to serve their country and make a difference in people’s daily lives.” He noted the financial benefits being offered after Congress passed the Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025, which provided nearly $30 million in funding for the agency.

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VA Moves to Scrap Biden-Era Rule Forcing Taxpayers to Cover Abortions

Daily Caller News Foundation
VA logo

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is proposing to end a Biden administration policy of providing publicly-funded abortion and abortion counseling at the agency’s medical facilities.

The VA’s new proposed rule, filed Monday, brings back a policy implemented in 1999 that excluded abortions and abortion counseling from its taxpayer-funded benefits, with exceptions for when a mother’s life is threatened. Former President Joe Biden’s VA removed the exclusions in September 2022 after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision threw abortion supporters into a frenzy for allowing states to restrict the procedure.

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DEI-Based Nonprofit Opposed to Music City Loop Receives Funding from Tennessee Specialty License Plate Program

Tom Pappert
The Equity Alliance

One of the progressive nonprofits opposing the Music City Loop, a tunnel connecting the Nashville International Airport with downtown Nashville to be built by Elon Musk’s Boring Company, receives a portion of its funding through the Tennessee Department of Revenue (DOR) Specialty License Plate program.

The Equity Alliance (TEA), identified last week by State Representative Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville) as an activist group that plans to oppose the Music City Loop, was admitted into Tennessee’s specialty plate program in 2021. A description for the license plate reveals proceeds will be, “Used to equip Tennesseans with tools & strategies to engage in the civic process & empower them to take action on issues affecting their daily lives through civic engagement, voter registration, voter education, [and] other related programs.”

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Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Election Post-Mortem Confirms Plan to Smear Trump with Russia, Like Intel

Just the News
Hillary Clinton

Newly declassified evidence shows the FBI was alerted to intelligence in 2016 indicating Hillary Clinton planned to smear then-candidate Donald Trump by linking him to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and then bureau leaders played right into the campaign’s strategy by conducting a sweeping investigation into false claims of Trump-Russia collusion.

Now a major question hovers over the Justice Department strike force set up by Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate the affair: was it just a political dirty trick or did it rise to the level of a criminal conspiracy?

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Colleges Try New Way to Meet Declining Enrollment, Revenue, Partnering with Senior-Living Providers

Just the News
ASU

Some U.S. colleges and universities facing declining enrollment, amid the country’s decreasing college-age population, have come up with a unique way to ease the problem – partnerships with senior-living providers.

The enrollment decline and related financial problems appears significant but largely under-reported, though Forbes reported earlier this year that about one U.S. college a week closes, most often due to financial collapse. 

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Commentary: Dopamine Is Not Why Kids Love TikTok

RealClearWire
Tiktok User

Nowadays, it seems we can be addicted to anything – not just alcohol and drugs, but pornography, random Internet browsing, video games, and smartphones. Academic research papers have investigated a wide range of other behaviors including gambling, but also “dance addiction,” “fishing addiction,” “milk tea addiction,” and “cat addiction.” One cheeky paper used the standard medical criteria to show young people are “addicted” to their real-life friends.

While this trend involves many factors, perhaps the single most important claim that has transformed what might be devoted or enthusiastic behavior into a presumed medical case of addiction is the presence of the neurotransmitter dopamine.

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Federal Judges Keep Defying Supreme Court Orders Against Trump Admin

Daily Caller News Foundation
SCOTUS

Federal judges are increasingly ruling against the Trump administration’s agenda and in defiance of Supreme Court orders.

The executive branch finds itself fending off endless counter-opinions from federal judges in the courtroom as it continues to implement its hard-line immigration policies. While the Trump administration has scored major victories in the nation’s highest court, including successfully reining in the scope of nationwide injunctions by federal judges, some have chosen to defy Supreme Court rulings.

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Notorious Org’s Members Tried Pushing ‘Developmentally Delayed’ Young Adult into Sex-Change Operation

Daily Caller News Foundation
surgery

Members of a notorious transgender medical organization collaborated to sway a “developmentally delayed” young adult towards pursuing an irreversible sex-change operation, messages from the medical organization’s private online forum show.

In a Google Group for the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH), healthcare providers strategized about how to impose radical gender ideology into clinical settings, including methods for coercing parents to accept child sex-change procedures. The Daily Caller News Foundation obtained more than a hundred pages of messages in the group sent in 2020 through a series of public records requests.

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New Hampshire Becomes First Northeastern State to Ban Gender-Affirming Care for Minors

Admin

The Hill   New Hampshire is the first Northeastern state to ban gender-affirming health care for minors after its Republican governor gave final approval to bills that will ban the use of certain prescription medications and surgeries to treat gender dysphoria beginning next year.  Gov. Kelly Ayotte, a former U.S. senator who won New Hampshire’s gubernatorial election in November, signed two bills Friday restricting access to transition-related care in the state, which already prohibits rare genital surgeries for minors to transition.    H.B. 377 prohibits doctors from administering puberty blockers and hormones to transgender youth starting Jan. 1. Like a handful of other, similar measures adopted by nearly all Republican-led states, New Hampshire’s prohibition includes a “grandfather clause” that allows minors already receiving care to continue doing so even after the law goes into effect.  READ THE FULL STORY                 

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States That Boycott Israeli Companies Will Lose Disaster Relief Funds, DHS Says

Admin

Axios   The Trump administration said states and cities that boycott Israeli companies would be ineligible for disaster relief funds. President Trump has repeatedly dangled emergency funds to advance his political priorities, but this move is largely symbolic. “Recipients must comply with all applicable federal anti-discrimination laws material to the government’s payment decisions,” the Department of Homeland Security said in an April notice. READ THE FULL STORY               

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Report: Companies Are Slashing Jobs Thanks to AI

Admin

Breitbart   AI is already causing tens of thousands of layoffs in the U.S. job market, according to a new report. According to executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, AI is reshaping the technology sector, causing a 36 percent increase in job cuts for that industry. The rising usage of AI technology by private employers resulted in more than 10,000 job cuts in July alone, according to a report released by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which cites AI as one of the top five factors contributing to job losses this year. The executive outplacement firm says “technological updates” involving “automation and AI implementation” have resulted in “20,219 job cuts in 2025,” with another 10,375 explicitly stemming from AI implementation, “suggesting a significant acceleration in AI-related restructuring.” READ THE FULL STORY                 

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Commentary: Senator Hagerty – Please Remember Tennesseans Who Buy Crypto with Physical Cash in Market Structure Legislation

Admin
bitcoin

Since he began representing Tennessee in the U.S. Senate in 2021, Senator Bill Hagerty has wasted no time putting his expertise in economics, investing, and business to good use. Thanks to Senator Hagerty’s leadership, cryptocurrency is on the precipice of its biggest legislative win ever with the GENIUS Act. This comprehensive package – which has been signed by President Trump – establishes common-sense safeguards for stablecoins, upholding the integrity of digital assets and ensuring consumer safety.  

 And the Senator signaled he’s not yet finished with cryptocurrency policy this Congress. Recently, Senator Hagerty and three of his colleagues unveiled the framework for legislation establishing a crypto market structure that will keep the industry safe for consumers in the United States.  

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Blackburn’s New Bipartisan Bill Seeks to Help Entertainers Save Money on Taxes

Zachery Schmidt
singer

Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Raphael Warnock (D-GA) introduced a bill last week that attempts to provide tax relief to entertainers.

The Creative Relief and Expensing for Audio and Television Enterprises (CREATE) Act would permit entertainers, singers, and songwriters to write off production expenses by lengthening Internal Revenue Code (IRC) Section 181 for five years.

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Conservative Former Maricopa County Assessor Develops Stage 3b Kidney Disease in Prison After Lawfare

Rachel Alexander
Paul Petersen

Conservative former Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen, who is serving time in prison related to his work helping mothers from the Marshallese Islands adopt their children out to American parents, has developed kidney disease in prison. It was first diagnosed as stage 2 a few months ago, but has now progressed to stage 3b, which is generally irreversible. The 49-year-old lawyer, who previously chaired the Arizona Chapter of the International Association of Assessing Officers where he was beloved, is on a catheter and has a painful blockage in his intestines, but officials will not release him to home confinement, despite the fact he has earned extensive credit in prison.

Tom Freestone, a longtime respected politician in Arizona who served as a judge, in the Arizona Legislature, and 10 years on the Pardon and Parole Board (later known as the Board of Executive Clemency), told The Arizona Sun Times that Petersen, who has no prior criminal history, is a “safe release” so should not remain imprisoned but released to home arrest.

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MSM Group Lodges Bar Complaint Against FCC Chair Over Trump’s Paramount Settlement Tied to Edited ’60 Minutes’ Harris Interview

Rachel Alexander
FCC Chair Brendan Carr

The Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), whose board members include progressive actor John Cusack, filed a bar complaint against the chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Brendan Carr, related to his involvement in a $16 million settlement with President Donald Trump that Paramount Global was ordered to pay due to selectively editing an interview with Kamala Harris that aired on CBS. The complaint alleged that the FCC hinged approval of Paramount’s merger with Skydance Media on the settlement, since the approval came shortly after the settlement. However, the activity Carr is accused of is unrelated to the practice of law. 

The bar complaint was filed on July 28 with the District of Columbia Court of Appeals’ Office of Disciplinary Counsel, which is currently in the process seeking to disbar Trump’s official Jeffrey Clark over the 2020 election, along with disciplining other Trump-associated attorneys. FPF accused Carr of violating several vague, broad bar ethics rules typically used to target conservative attorneys, that prohibit dishonesty, prejudicial conduct, and abuse of public office for political gain. 

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Bills to Block Foreign Adversaries from Purchasing Farmland, Real Estate, or Partnering with Nation’s Capital Submitted by Senator Blackburn

Tom Pappert
American Farmland

Bills filed last week would prohibit individuals and corporations from nations identified as foreign adversaries from purchasing farmland, order a Congressional study to determine possible legislative responses to these individuals purchasing real estate, and add new scrutiny to the Sister City agreements established by local leaders in Washington, D.C.

U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) revealed the package of legislation on Friday, with a press release first announcing The District of Columbia Sister City Integrity Act. 

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TN-7 Candidate Lee Reeves Says First Bill in Congress Would be to End Birthright Citizenship for Children of Illegal Aliens

Kaitlin Housler
Lee Reeves

Tennessee State Representative Lee Reeves (R-Franklin), who is seeking the Republican nomination in the race for Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District, said the first piece of legislation he plans on introducing if elected to Congress would work to end birthright citizenship for children born to illegal aliens on U.S. soil.

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Over 20 Tennessee Law Enforcement Agencies Now Partnered with ICE, Including 19 County Sheriffs

Tom Pappert
ICE arrest

In total, 21 law enforcement agencies in Tennessee have now entered into 287(g) agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), allowing state and local law enforcement to aid immigration authorities by performing enforcement tasks or providing information to their federal counterparts. 

An ICE database containing names of agencies with active 287(g) agreements reveals that 19 sheriff’s offices throughout the Volunteer State are now listed, including one agency with multiple agreements with ICE.

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