Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon sent a letter to the Knoxville-Knox County Planning Committee on Monday, saying she will introduce an ordinance seeking a one-year moratorium on large data centers in Knoxville.
Kincannon is pursuing “recommendations” about “guardrails for the site selection and operational requirements of data centers within the city.”
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Travelers Excess & Surplus Lines Co., the insurance provider for Metro Nashville’s public library parking garage, filed a lawsuit accusing the nonprofit Nashville Downtown Partnership (NDP) and the public security and sanitation company Block by Block of creating a storage yard containing “combustible materials” inside the garage before the June 2025 fire that reportedly caused more than $10 million in damages.
The lawsuit accuses NDP of creating the storage yard and allowing Block by Block to use the facility sometime prior to June 10, 2025, when the lawsuit alleges a fire caused more than $10 million in damages to the property, causing Travelers to make payments on behalf of Metro Nashville under the policy.
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The Nashville Metropolitan Clerk on Monday confirmed to The Tennessee Star that the over $1.4 million in grants proposed for two nonprofits that support illegal aliens in Tennessee are continuations of previous grants awarded by the city. However, the proposed grants for Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 will shift the funding source from Biden-era stimulus money to Nashville taxpayers.
It was reported last month that the budget proposed by Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell requests $735,000 for the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC) and $718,000 for Tennessee Justice for Our Neighbors (TNJFON), who previously received a combined $3.7 million as the result of a contract with the city.
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Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, raised questions about Metro Nashville’s past and proposed funding for two immigration-related nonprofits, arguing that state officials should closely examine the grants and consider whether they comply with Tennessee law.
Pappert, during an appearance on The Michael Patrick Leahy Show on Monday, discussed a contract that provided millions of dollars in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds to the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC) and Tennessee Justice for Our Neighbors (TNJFON) beginning in 2022.
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Dozens of driverless trucks are hitting the road as industries rush toward automation.
PepsiCo is partnering with autonomous vehicle startup Gatik to rollout a fleet of 35 driverless trucks, Wall Street Journal reported Monday. It’s reportedly the first time a U.S. company disclosed using autonomous trucks on public highways.
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The Hill President Trump on Monday called on Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) to “immediately fire” Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough to clear the way for Senate Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo ID to cast a ballot. “Senate Majority Leader John Thune should immediately fire the parliamentarian, who treats Republicans and everything they stand for horribly!” Trump posted on Truth Social, arguing that she’s an obstacle to enacting the SAVE America Act. “Just the other night, as an example, she ruled against us on a proposal that would have easily been approved, and should have been, by anyone else,” Trump posted. READ THE FULL STORY
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CBS News President Trump nominated Todd Blanche to serve as attorney general on Monday, aiming to formalize the onetime Trump defense lawyer’s control over the Justice Department. Blanche has served as acting attorney general since Mr. Trump fired Pam Bondi from the post in April. He previously spent just over a year as deputy attorney general, the No. 2 official who is responsible for overseeing all of the Justice Department’s criminal and national security work. The White House formally sent Blanche’s nomination to the Senate on Monday. The president indicated during a White House Rose Garden dinner last week that he would nominate Blanche to the post, according to a video White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino posted to X. READ THE FULL STORY
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Breitbart Republican leaders in New Jersey have reportedly found hundreds of noncitizens listed on voter rolls, and some of them had a voting record. The New Jersey Republican Party (NJGOP) and the Republican National Committee (RNC) uncovered the information when they asked for the voter rolls from all 21 counties, Fox News reported Monday. Those individuals were reportedly seeking naturalization and wanted their names removed. Many of them were registered as Democrats but claimed they did not know they had been registered and were concerned it might disqualify them from becoming citizens. READ THE FULL STORY
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A federal judge in Massachusetts on Monday blocked President Donald Trump’s policy seeking to implement a $100,000 fee on visas for highly skilled foreign workers.
U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin said Trump’s order imposing a $100,000 fee on H-1B visa recipients is “unlawful.”
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The Trump administration’s Department of War is expressing concern that Israel is spying on the U.S. — including on its negotiations to end the Iran war, according to multiple reports.
The Pentagon is ramping up in its responses to alleged Israeli espionage, including recently raising the country’s counterintelligence threat level to “critical,” NBC News reported Friday, citing three anonymous current and former U.S. officials. U.S. intelligence reports also indicate Israel had made efforts to listen in on conversations involving senior U.S. officials such as Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, one of the lead negotiators in the peace talks with Iran, The New York Times reported Saturday afternoon.
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Five people were stabbed Sunday night inside New York City’s Penn Station, which is adjacent to the Madison Square Garden arena where President Donald Trump is slated to attend the NBA championship game on Monday, police said.
Police said one person was taken into custody, and it was believed to be a random attack.
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The Trump administration on Monday announced plans to revoke the citizenship of 17 U.S. citizens who are accused of immigration fraud.
The Justice Department said the revocations will be the largest denaturalization effort by the federal government, which previous administrations have rarely invoked, CBS News reported.
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Key portions of a bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Matt Van Epps (R-TN-07) to increase financial support for the families of fallen service members has advanced as part of the House Fiscal Year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
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Full-time Tennessee K-12 teachers are now eligible for reduced interest rates on home loans through an expansion of the Tennessee Housing Development Agency’s (THDA) Homeownership for Heroes program.
The program, which previously served veterans, active-duty military personnel, firefighters, EMTs, paramedics, and law enforcement officers, now includes full-time classroom teachers employed in Tennessee public and private schools.
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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison knew about widespread taxpayer fraud in the state’s welfare programs as early as spring 2019, but took no action and instead the state retaliated against workers who tried to expose the abuses, a bombshell congressional report released Monday concluded.
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee referred its findings from a months-long probe into $9 billion-plus in fraud schemes in Minnesota to Vice President JD Vance, raising serious concerns Democrats in the state turned a blind eye to the taxpayer losses because they feared “political retribution from the politically active Somali community.”
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President Donald Trump early Monday demanded that Iran and Israel stop firing missiles at each other after a weekend of violence between the two threatened a fragile Mideast ceasefire.
“Israel and Iran must immediately stop ‘shooting,'” the president wrote on his Truth Social account.
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The University of Notre Dame says it cannot find any American to teach English and so it must fill the job with a foreign worker visa.
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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced on Thursday that it will contribute more than $46 million toward a “comprehensive coal revitalization” plan at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Cumberland Fossil Fuel Plant, with the total project valued at about $116 million.
According to the Thursday release by the DOE, “This project aims to restore reliability, enhance efficiency, and extend the operational life of the coal-fired assets to meet regional demand for dispatchable power.”
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Dr. Omar Hamada discussed the promise of Bioscope.AI during an exclusive interview Friday with The Tennessee Star’s CEO and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy, explaining how the platform aims to shift medicine from a reactive model to a predictive one by identifying an individual’s health risks before serious disease develops.
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