Officials serving under Governor Bill Lee are reportedly in disagreement about the fate of Christa Pike, who was convicted 30 years ago for murdering Colleen Slemmer during a prolonged attack in 1995.
Lee paused all executions scheduled for the remainder of 2026 after Pike survived two doses of lethal injection administered under the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) last month.
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Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell approved the Metro Council’s legislation to implement the “legacy business” grants described earlier this year, in response to business owners warning that soaring property taxes were undermining their ability to succeed financially in the city.
After property taxes drew headlines when Acme Feed & Seed warned that a 356 percent property tax hike on its leased property would raise its property tax bill from $129,000 to about $589,000, the O’Connell administration announced a “legacy business” program the mayor said would support Nashville business owners.
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The Iran war — among the most unpopular conflicts in modern U.S. history — has reportedly cost the average American household approximately $2,000, according to a new analysis.
Mark Zandi, the chief economist of financial intelligence firm Moody’s Analytics calculated the past eight months of war cost the American household this amount by analyzing fuel costs, interest rates, and tax dollars allotted towards the military, according to his Tuesday post to X.
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A child soldier lies dead in a marsh from starvation.
The Red Army pauses to mourn the little martyr for a moment before the Long March moves on — and the kindergarten play ends.
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CBS News House Speaker Mike Johnson said he intends to serve as GOP leader if Republicans lose their House majority in November — but he remains bullish about the party’s chances despite significant headwinds. “In the unlikely scenario where we lost the majority, I would expect my colleagues would ask me to continue leading this conference, even if we have divided government,” Johnson told CBS News’ Robert Costa in an interview near Johnson’s hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana. Johnson, who has led House Republicans as speaker since 2023, has repeatedly pushed back on questions about his plans if the GOP loses the majority in the lower chamber in November. Known for his optimistic outlook, the speaker has expressed confidence that Republicans will hold on to the chamber, or even grow their narrow majority. But midterm dynamics traditionally boost the party opposing the party in control of the White House, and the unpopular war in Iran, high gas and diesel prices and other controversial Trump administration policies have added to those challenges for the GOP. READ THE FULL STORY
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Washington Examiner New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is calling for a comprehensive review of the New York City Police Department’s use-of-force policies over the coming months after several high-profile incidents involving police and renewed calls from progressives for change. “When the government uses force against a New Yorker, the standard for accountability must be at its highest,” Mamdani said. “Every New Yorker deserves to know that force will be used lawfully, carefully and only when necessary.” The reforms include measures to prevent officers facing disciplinary charges from avoiding accountability by retiring before their cases are resolved, ensure compliance with state reporting requirements for police-involved deaths, and standardize how the department shares information with families after critical incidents. The NYPD will also submit personnel information to the state Division of Criminal Justice Services when officers retire with pending disciplinary charges, helping prevent them from being hired by other New York law enforcement agencies. READ THE FULL STORY
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The Hill Frank Bisignano, the commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA), said Monday the program will last another 90 years. “This is a long journey. It’s 90 years old. It’ll be around for another 90 years,” Bisignano said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” The SSA will release its annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) on Wednesday, after the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports data for September inflation, as measured by the consumer price index (CPI). READ THE FULL STORY
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New York Attorney General Letitia James is facing a bar ethics complaint over comments she made about the alleged sexual assault at Cornell University involving seven fraternity members, raising questions about her impartiality as special prosecutor.
According to the New York Post, the National Legal and Policy Center filed a nine-page complaint arguing that James’ public expression of support for the alleged victim, posted shortly before her appointment to the case, could undermine confidence in a fair investigation.
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Ex-prosecutor Jack Smith’s team got permission to monitor the phone of Donald Trump’s top aide from two federal judges openly critical of the president and did not reveal in their written request to those judges it would be secretly tracking contacts with criminal defense lawyers, according to freshly unsealed court records.
The documents made public Monday by the White House Government Transparency Task Force include two applications by the former special counsel to use a pen register and a tap and trace device to monitor the incoming and outgoing calls of current White House chief of staff Susie Wiles’s phone while she led Trump’s fundraising operation at the SAVE America PAC.
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A group of four Republican and two Democratic senators are saying that President Donald Trump’s plan to import Russian diesel breaks a 2022 law that bans Russian energy imports.
The Treasury Department issued a license Friday allowing Russian diesel into the U.S. through April 7, 2027, after Trump said Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to ship millions of tons of the fuel to bring down near-record prices. Two days later, a half dozen senators across both parties said the deal violated a Biden-era law signed months after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
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Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., said on Monday that she “will not be silenced” by the federal raid on her Washington, D.C., home, arguing that the Trump administration has weaponized federal law enforcement against its political enemies.
“I’m ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation,” Omar said in a post to X.
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Nearly a year after TikTok’s American operations were separated from Chinese parent company ByteDance, the social media giant continues relying on Chinese-developed technology and maintaining close operational ties with its former owner, raising questions about whether the deal adequately addresses national security concerns.
According to a Politico investigation, TikTok USDS Joint Venture, established in January 2026, still uses ByteDance’s internal messaging platform, Lark, and an artificial intelligence assistant called Aime, also developed by the Chinese company.
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The College Football Playoff (CFP) Management Committee announced Saturday it will continue talks with ESPN about expanding the playoff system.
ESPN held an exclusive 30-day negotiating period with the CFP Management Committee to discuss expanding the playoff from 12 to 24 teams, which ended Friday.
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Tech mogul Elon Musk has emerged as the Republican Party’s most important midterm donor, funneling more than $276 million into Republican campaigns and political action committees since July.
The enormous sum makes Musk the largest known midterm donor, according to campaign finance records Musk’s team shared with The New York Times on Monday.
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Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, detailed new developments in The Star’s ongoing legal fight to obtain records related to the 2023 Covenant School shooting, including a table of contents identifying documents Metro Nashville officials may soon release and correspondence between the police department and the FBI concerning a memo about mass shooters’ writings.
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The Tennessee Public Charter School Commission voted Friday to approve appeals from Music City Academy and The Gate School, overturning Metro Nashville Public Schools’ (MNPS) decisions to deny both proposed charter schools.
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Today we remember the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, who in October 1492 landed in the Bahamas and became the first Western European to discover what the Europeans would call the New World.
When Columbus and his crew of approximately 200 sailors left Spain in three crowded ships – the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria – they set their sails toward an unknown horizon. They expected to discover a trade route to India. (Most Europeans at the time knew the earth was round – but they were unaware of the North and South American continents.) Instead of finding a route to Southeast Asia, Columbus and his crew landed on a continent of new opportunities. Columbus’s accidental discovery opened a permanent passage across the Atlantic and redrew the known map of the world.
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