Former Detroit, Michigan Police Chief James Craig, a Republican who is exploring a run for governor, announced Monday the formation of his Law Enforcement Action Team (LEAT), an advisory panel to craft legislation to strengthen public safety.
The group is made up of lawmakers and law-enforcement officials, including two Democrats: Macomb County Sheriff Anthony Wickersham and Gladwin County Sheriff Mike Shea.
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Former President Donald Trump called on President Joe Biden Sunday evening to resign over a number of policy outcomes, foremost among them Afghanistan’s looming fall to the Taliban after the withdrawal of American troops.
The former president also chided the current commander-in-chief over his management of the U.S.-Mexico border where enforcement personnel encounter over 200,000 illegal entrants each month.
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Republican members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Friday urged that committee’s chair to commence an investigation into the decisions of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) and several other governors to discharge COVID-19-infected patients into their states’ nursing homes in 2020.
In addition to Whitmer, Tom Wolf (D-PA), Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) and Phil Murphy (D-NJ) are specifically criticized in the letter written to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL).
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The nonprofit Voters Not Politicians (VNP) has stridently criticized the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission (MICRC) for hiring a GOP-aligned law firm, but VNP’s own leftist agenda and political ties are getting little media attention.
The Lansing-based “nonpartisan” organization spearheaded the Proposal 2 referendum which created the MICRC to oversee legislative and congressional redistricting free of gerrymandering.
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On Thursday, a Dickson County, Tennessee jury sentenced Steven Wiggins to death for murdering Sergeant Daniel Baker.
Earlier that day, District Attorney General Ray Crouch and defense lawyer Luke Evans presented their closing arguments to jurors, who were tasked with deciding between the death penalty and life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
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Michigan voters upset with mask mandates and other school-board actions can organize recall efforts, as Mount Pleasant Public Schools parents are now doing.
Three directors of that central-Michigan school district could be electorally removed owing to public backlash over a requirement that all students up to the age of 12 wear masks in school.
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According to the Michigan Restaurant and Lodging Association (MRLA), about nine out of 10 restaurants and hotels are operating with too few employees.
On June 22, state officials lifted COVID-related restrictions on restaurant capacity.
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Second-term Michigan State Rep. Ryan Berman (R-Commerce Township) this week became the first Republican to announce a 2022 run for state attorney general.
Whoever the GOP nominates at its state convention next year will likely face incumbent Democrat Dana Nessel.
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During sentencing for Dickson County, Tennessee murderer Steven Wiggins this week, prosecutors played a recording wherein Wiggins spoke to his 10-year-old son on the phone from prison and asked the child to “kick [the child’s pregnant mother] in the stomach.”
The prisoner’s command of his son came in response to the child telling Wiggins about the mother’s pregnancy.
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Fulton County, Pennsylvania election officials are defending their decision to conduct an audit of the 2020 election in their jurisdiction and their right to continue use of their voting machines.
Attorneys from Dillon, McCandless, King, Coulter & Graham LLP who are affiliated with an election-integrity nonprofit known as the Amistad Project, will be handling the case for the small county of about 14,500 residents, situated about 90 miles southwest of Harrisburg.
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Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey (R-Clarklake) has indicated he plans to skip the Mackinac Policy Conference, which is hosted annually by the Detroit Regional Chamber, citing the conference’s COVID vaccine requirement.
The Republican leader reportedly said he is already immune, having gotten COVID-19, and therefore chooses not to get vaccinated.
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Michigan’s Board of Education passed a resolution Tuesday evening allowing individual school districts to either adopt or reject masking for students and staff to prevent COVID-19’s spread.
The Democrat-run board adopted the resolution instead of another offered by the panel’s two Republican members, Tom McMillin (Oakland Township) and Nikki Snyder (Dexter), who wanted a statewide policy against district mask mandates.
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Judge David D. Wolfe of Tennessee’s 23rd Judicial District, presiding over sentencing of convicted murderer Steven Wiggins, advised witnesses on Tuesday that they may not testify to their own philosophical opinion against the use of the death penalty in all cases.
The judge thus struck a portion of the testimony Peter Schaffer gave Monday during sentencing proceedings to determine what punishment Wiggins will receive for the shooting death of Dickson County Sergeant Daniel Baker: life imprisonment or death.
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By a vote of 69 to 30, the U.S. Senate on Tuesday passed a $1.2 billion infrastructure bill that Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) warns is an endeavor to “fundamentally move America toward Western-Europe-style socialism.”
“Investing in infrastructure the right way is a wise investment in America’s future and in our long-term competitiveness, but that’s not what we’re being asked to vote on here,” Hagerty told fellow senators in the run-up to Tuesday’s vote.
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Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, speaking remotely to the American Bar Association on Monday, called for “educating voters” about supposed GOP efforts underway to “undermine democracy,” but questions remain regarding her role with the “voter education” efforts of a Mark Zuckerberg-funded nonprofit she founded.
Benson is a former president of the Michigan Center for Election Law and Administration (MCELA), an organization that received $12 million in grants from the D.C.-based Center for Election Innovation and Research.
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Michigan’s local health departments are plotting new restrictions as bureaucrats are alarmed by a rise in COVID-19 cases that apparently are not being blunted with vaccinations.
WZZM speculated another lockdown may be “in sight.”
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Supporters of former President Donald Trump held a “Trump Won” rally in Livonia, Michigan on Tuesday.
Organizers of the event, affiliated with the Michigan Conservative Coalition (MCC), want the state legislature to commission a forensic audit to verify the reliability of the 2020 presidential-election results in the Great Lake State.
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When a Dickson County, Tennessee jury reconvened Monday on sentencing Steven Wiggins for killing Sergeant Daniel Baker, counsel for the the defendant argued Wiggins suffered mitigating mental-health issues.
Defense attorney David Hopkins emphasized to jurors that their determination of Wiggins’s guilt last week was not being challenged and that the task at hand is deciding whether life without the possibility of parole or the death penalty is deserved.
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As U.S. Senate leaders expect to pass a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill Tuesday morning, both of Tennessee’s senators, Marsha Blackburn (R) and Bill Hagerty (R) are vehemently opposing the legislation, alarmed by its potential to worsen the national debt.
Senate Democrats have expressed their intention to use a process called reconciliation to avoid any possible filibuster, thus allowing themselves expand the measure to encompass $3.5 trillion in federal spending.
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Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty (R) on Thursday night halted a move by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to expedite advancement of a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill.
The spending package is not dead yet, but it will not have the accelerated path to passage it would have enjoyed had all 100 senators consented to quickly moving through over a dozen amendment votes Thursday evening and sending the bill to the House of Representatives.
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A Dickson County, Tennessee jury Thursday found Steven Wiggins guilty of premeditated first-degree murder and nine other charges related to the 2018 shooting death of Sergeant Daniel Baker.
“Some people obviously had some tears, but I had some sort of sense of relief,” Baker’s widow Lisa told reporters after the verdict was announced.
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Ned Staebler, the university administrator who notoriously spouted a furious tirade against two Wayne County Republican election officials in a public meeting last November, is also treasurer of an entity promoted by Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) for “nonpartisan voter education.”
On November 17, 2020, Staebler, vice president for economic development at Wayne State University and head of the business-development organization TechTown Detroit, blasted county Board of Canvassers’ members Monica Palmer and William Hartmann for initially voting to block the certification of votes in Wayne County.
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Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) elevated Michigan’s level of COVID-19 spread to “substantial” on Wednesday, daily death totals statewide due to COVID remain in single digits.
According to the widely cited tracking website worldometers.info, the seven-day moving average of COVID deaths per day in Michigan has stayed under double digits since July 1st.
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Republican leaders in either chamber of Michigan’s state legislature, both of which have GOP majorities, have yet to indicate whether they intend to investigate expenditures made by an election-related nonprofit that was founded by Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D).
The Michigan Center for Election Law and Administration (MCELA), as The Michigan Star has reported, received a $12 million grant in September 2020 from a national nonprofit, the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR).
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Crystal Ivey, broadband director at Tennessee’s Department of Economic and Community Development (ECD), said Wednesday that $500 million in taxpayer money bestowed upon Tennessee in the latest round of federal COVID-19 relief will go toward broadband expansion.
ECD officials and Governor Bill Lee (R) have stressed the heightened importance of telecommuting, e-commerce, telemedicine and distance learning after the pandemic hit.
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Open Door, Inc. and Alumni Music, Inc., both based in Shelby County, have been determined to not be using their federal Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) funds to provide meals to children, the Tennessee Comptroller’s Office asserted Wednesday.
A probe was conducted cooperatively by the Comptroller of the Treasury and the Tennessee Department of Human Services (DHS) during summer 2020 to ascertain what nourishment the two companies were providing to minors.
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Approaching three days into the trial of Steven Wiggins for the 2018 shooting death of Dickson County, Tennessee Sergeant Daniel Baker, jurors were shown body camera footage of the sheriff deputy’s deadly encounter with the defendant.
Wiggins is charged with premeditated first-degree murder and other counts associated with Baker’s death.
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Leftists in Detroit, Michigan were dealt a blow at the ballot box Tuesday with the defeat of Proposal P, which received under 33 percent of voters’ support.
Over 69,000 Motor City residents cast ballots in this week’s primary election, of which nearly 47,000 voted to reject the progressive rewriting of the city charter offered by the Detroit Charter Revision Commission.
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On Tuesday, the second day of Steven Wiggins’s trial for killing 32-year-old Dickson County, Tennessee Sergeant Daniel Baker in 2018, jurors heard from the law-enforcement officers who found the slain sheriff’s deputy.
Drug Task Force (DTF) Agent Nathaniel Proctor of the 23rd Judicial District was the first to take the stand in the Charlotte courtroom, followed by his colleague Darren Adams.
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Carolyn Mullins and her son William “Larry” Mullins are charged with theft of $83,710.82 from Peakland Baptist Church in Decatur, Tennessee, state Comptroller Jason Mumpower announced Tuesday.
The church’s sanctuary area was consumed by fire on February 18th, 2019, according to the Comptroller’s Office. When insurance proceeds totaling $189,000 became available, members of the congregation—four altogether—decided to rebuild. Disbursement of the reconstruction funds was entrusted solely to Larry and Carolyn Mullins, then the treasurer and assistant treasurer of the church, respectively. They were the only authorized signers on the church’s bank accounts.
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U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Stafford entered a not-guilty plea for a silent Detroit City Councilman André L. Spivey in U.S. District Court in Detroit Tuesday to accepting over $35,000 in exchange for council votes.
Spivey was released on a $10,000 unsecured bond. Stafford reportedly agreed to the release under the conditions that Spivey to give up his enhanced driver’s license, his passport and his expired concealed-carry permit.
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Trial officially commenced in Charlotte, Tennessee, Monday for Steven Wiggins who stands accused in the May 2018 shooting death of Dickson County Sergeant Daniel Baker.
Wiggins has pleaded not guilty to all charges, foremost among them premeditated first-degree murder.
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In a video revealed Monday, Democratic Virginia delegate candidate Katie Sponsler amplified her recently publicized comment about police violence with pointed words to someone filming and questioning her about it: “Enjoy your soulless life.”
An audio recording that came to light last week showed the candidate for House District 66 saying of police, “There’s definitely some who are murderers.”
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A complaint filed by the nonprofit Michigan Freedom Fund (MFF) last week alleges that that state’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, has taken illegal advantage of a campaign-finance loophole to raise unlawful amounts of cash.
Individuals may contribute up to $7,150 according to state law, though a 1984 administrative ruling by then Michigan Secretary of State Richard Austin (D) sought to negate that limit for candidates facing recalls. Whitmer has relied on that ruling in surpassing the contribution limit.
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Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) said Friday he plans to hire more investigators and anticipates allowing more time for a probe into the 2020 presidential contest for Wisconsin’s 10 Electoral-College votes, the Associated Press has reported.
The official vote count in Wisconsin last November put Joe Biden ahead of Donald Trump by 20,682 votes. The margin was just over 0.6 percent of the nearly 3.3 million votes cast statewide.
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As the U.S. Senate prepared to approve a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill Friday, Congressman Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN-3) advised against expanding the legislation to include non-infrastructure spending at an added cost of over $2 trillion at least.
The bill passed by a vote of 66 to 28, with 16 Republicans joining all Democrats in favor.
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Tennessee’s U.S. Senators, Marsha Blackburn (R) and Bill Hagerty (R), this week joined Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) in sponsoring legislation forbidding the executive branch from publishing guidelines on country-of-origin product labels that disfavor Israel.
Per a 1995 Clinton-era policy, U.S. labeling regulations used to require that products manufactured in Judea and Samaria be labeled as “Made in West Bank.”
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When Detroit, Michigan voters head to the polls for next Tuesday’s primary, they will decide on a referendum concerning a major proposed revision of the city charter which would institute numerous left-wing programs and reforms.
The ballot item, known as “Proposal P,” provides for the creation of a new “Task Force on Reparations and African American Justice,” an “Office of Economic Justice and Consumer Empowerment,” a “Department of Environmental Justice and Sustainability” and an “Office of Immigrant Affairs,” among other new government offices.
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In House floor remarks on Thursday, Representative John Rose (R-TN-06) called out President Joe Biden for insisting in a CNN Town Hall with host Don Lemon a week ago that “crime is down” even as murder rates rise.
The current rise in violent crime has been broadly acknowledged by an array of journalistic and academic observers, and even by liberal outlets like the Atlantic Monthly.
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Virginia Supreme Court Justice William C. Mims, a Republican who earlier served as a state lawmaker and state attorney general, has announced his plans to retire from the court next spring.
Mims, who would have been eligible for reappointment in anticipation of his term ending March 31, wrote in a letter to Gov. Ralph Northam (D), House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn (D-Springfield) and Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw (D-Alexandria) that he wants to “discern other opportunities to serve” as he turns 65 next year.
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Dr. Michelle Fiscus, the recently fired director of the Tennessee Department of Health’s (TDH) Vaccine-Preventable Diseases and Immunization Program (VPDIP), blasted Tennessee Health Commissioner Lisa Piercey this week for the latter’s handling of a $26.5 million COVID-testing contract.
“We knew that she was not being truthful with that committee,” Fiscus said to NewsChannel 5, referring to testimony Piercey gave before the state legislature last December.
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U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and U.S. Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX-10) introduced a bill Wednesday to counteract authoritarian regimes’ clout within the United Nations.
The legislation is designed to contravene “malign influence, require transparency, and promote accountability within the United Nations system.…”
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The Beacon Center of Tennessee, a Nashville-based policy institute and fiscal watchdog, has added its voice to those calling for an investigation into Metro Nashville Public Schools’ (MNPS) contract with Meharry Medical College Ventures.
The contract provided COVID-19 testing and other services, including a COVID website for the school district—one that cost about $1.8 million.
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Nine suspected members of the Mara Salvatrucha (or MS-13) Salavadoran criminal gang received a 60-count indictment from a federal grand jury in Nashville, TN, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on Wednesday.
The alleged gangsters face charges of seven murders and other racketeering-related offenses, including kidnappings, thefts, assaults and drug purveyance.
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Former Detroit, Michigan police chief and Republican gubernatorial candidate James Craig, speaking on Fox News on Monday, denounced progressive public officials who retain security professionals while bashing police and firearm owners.
Craig expressed his reprehension in response to reports of campaign-finance documents showing Representative Cori Bush (D-MO-1) has spent $70,000 on private security professionals.
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Kacey Criswell, formerly the Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) president and treasurer at Gibson County’s Spring Hill School, allegedly stole at least $17,586 from the organization from July 2015 and November 2019, the Tennessee Comptroller’s Office stated Tuesday.
After officials of the elementary school reported that the PTO was missing funds, a county grand jury was empaneled and investigatory findings were presented to District 28 Attorney General Frederick Hardy Agee on July 12th supporting an indictment for theft of property over $10,000.
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When Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) line-item vetoed a $155 million program for K-5 reading scholarships in the $17 billion school budget she signed earlier this month, teachers’ unions and other school choice opponents likened the scholarships to vouchers.
Many proponents of the scholarship expenditure are responding that while they would welcome broader choice-oriented education reform, a plain reading of the program does not jibe with unions’ and school administrators stated concerns about impact on public education.
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On Monday, jury selection commenced for the trial of accused murderer Steven Wiggins in Knoxville, with 23rd Judicial District Judge David D. Wolfe presiding.
Wiggins, who has been in jail in Robertson County prior to his transfer to Knoxville for trial, is alleged to have shot to death, and subsequently incinerated, Dickson County Sergeant Daniel Baker on May 30, 2018.
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Speaking to iHeartRadio host Sara Carter on Thursday, Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn condemned the Biden administration’s professed “flagging” of what it terms “disinformation” regarding COVID-19 for social-media companies.
“What they’ve set up is basically a premise that if your message is not government-approved, then what you’re going to experience is state-sponsored censorship….” Blackburn said.
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Tennessee’s State Building Commission voted Thursday to remove Confederate Army General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s bust from the State Capitol building.
The statue will be relocated to the Tennessee State Museum, along with the busts of Admirals David Farragut and Albert Gleaves.
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