President-elect Donald Trump is considering nominating Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Sarah Keeton Campbell to a seat on the Federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that opened up with the retirement of Justice Jane Branstetter Stranch.
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At 9:30 am CT today, September 3, 2024, The Tennessee Star published all 90 pages of the journal written between January and March of 2023 by Audrey Elizabeth Hale, the 28-year-old biological woman who self identified as a transgender man and who, on March 27, 2023 murdered three 9-year-old students and three staff members at the Covenant School and was subsequently killed by Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) officers. Later that same day MNPD obtained this journal and a spiral notebook from the vehicle Hale used to drive to the school. MNPD Chief John Drake initially described this journal and the spiral notebook as the “manifesto” of Hale.
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An FBI agent is identified as the officer who found Covenant Killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale’s suicide note on the afternoon of March 27, 2023 at the residence of the house in Nashville where she resided with her parents, according to an inventory list of items seized from the house that day compiled by the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) and legally obtained from a source familiar with the investigation by The Tennessee Star in June 2024.
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Unjustly incarcerated January 6 defendant Stewart Parks was released from a halfway house in Nashville on Monday. Parks served over five months in Memphis Federal Correction Institute (FCI) until last month, when he was moved to the Dismas Dierson Halfway House in Nashville.
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Former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the 2024 Democrat Party nomination for President.
In a statement posted to X, formerly Twitter, at 2:10 pm CT on Sunday, the Clintons said “Now is the time to support Kamala Harris and fight with everything we’ve got to elect her.”
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President Joe Biden announced in an open letter to Americans on Sunday that he will not accept his party’s nomination for president, and instead will “focus solely” on fulfilling his duties as president for the remainder of his term.
In his letter, Biden stated that he will address the nation later this week on his decision.
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Unjustly incarcerated January 6 defendant Stewart Parks was moved from the Federal Correction Institute (FCI) in Memphis, a low security prison, to a halfway house in Nashville on Tuesday, Parks told The Tennessee Star on Wednesday.
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A political action committee supporting challenger Bobby Harshbarger’s campaign has made disprovable claims about incumbent State Senator John Lundberg’s (R-Bristol) voting history on the issue of allowing in-state tuition for illegal immigrants.
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Former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki said on ABC’s This Week on Sunday that Steve Bannon is “a brain bending communicator” who sounds “almost rational” after the program played ABC’s Jonathan Karl’s exclusive interview with the former Trump White House advisor and current WarRoom host.
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Scott J. Bloch, Special Counsel of the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) under former President George W. Bush from 2003 to 2008, told The Tennessee Star on Saturday that a a provision of the 1939 Hatch Act, now codified as 18 U.S.C. 595, could be used to prosecute Biden Administration Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security officials for election interference and affecting the 2024 election.
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Tuesday afternoon on the Matt Murphy Show, broadcast weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. on SuperTalk 99.7 WTN, host Murphy interviewed Tori Venable, executive director of Americans for Prosperity-Tennessee, about AFP’s support for Governor Bill Lee’s universal school choice bill currently under consideration in The Tennessee General Assembly. During the interview, Venable criticized the reporting of Phil Williams in Monday evening’s broadcast on NewsChannel 5, which featured an interview with State Representative Todd Warner (R-Chapel Hill), as well as a recording of a phone call between Williams and Venable that was obtained without Venable’s consent.
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Todd Bensman, senior fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, told Stephen K. Bannon on Saturday’s edition of WarRoom that the Biden Administration helped cause the current chaos in Haiti by scuttling free and fair elections in that Caribbean nation back in 2021.
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Sources tell The Tennessee Star that 89 prisoners currently incarcerated in the Tennessee Dept of Corrections are receiving gender hormone therapy.
The program apparently began as an unpublicized policy under the Haslam administration. The policy was not available on any public website nor did it follow the normal course of action to become a regulation, which would have required public hearings.
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Bill Ackman, the highly successful hedge fund manager and Harvard graduate whose criticism of Claudine Gay’s history of plagiarism led to her resignation as President of Harvard University, published a lengthy tweet on his X account Sunday evening responding to an article about him published by The Washington Post earlier in the day. Here is that post in its entirety:
I am sure all of us have had the experience of reading a story about a subject you know well and finding it replete with inaccuracies and falsehoods. One then turns the page and reads an article about a subject one knows less well and makes the mistake of believing that this other story is accurate. I am guilty of this sin. I am sadly repeatedly reminded to mistrust what I read in the media, and I am not alone. Destruction of confidence in our media is contributing to societal breakdown, and that is a very unfortunate state of affairs.
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The Tennessee Republican Party State Executive Committee voted in a specially called meeting on Saturday to tighten the standards for candidate eligibility in GOP primaries in the state, effective immediately.
Article IX, Section 1, Paragraph B of the Tennessee Republican Party (TRP) bylaws had been previously amended in a September 7, 2023 meeting of the SEC to state that “Beginning in 2026, notwithstanding anything to the contrary in Article IX, Section 1A, an individual who has voted in any of the most recent four (4) statewide primary elections held by a party other than the applicable Republican Party will be ineligible to seek the Republican nomination for any public office in Tennessee.” (emphasis added)
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In an in-depth interview on Friday, WTN SuperTalk 99.7 afternoon host Matt Murphy spoke with Tennessee Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton about the shooting and death of Belmont University student Jillian Ludwig. The Tennessee Star conducted a FACT CHECK of Speaker Sexton’s claim in that interview that Shaquille Taylor, the alleged killer of 18-year-old Belmont University Jillian Ludwig, who was shot in the head on Tuesday and died on Thursday, would have been in custody if the Tennessee State Senate had passed legislation in the August Special Session that the House had passed. The Star determined that Sexton’s claim is FALSE. The transcript of that interview and the corresponding FACT CHECKS conducted by The Star can be seen below. ——————- Matt Murphy: So, obviously, we’ve been covering this very difficult story involving the passing of a Belmont University student by the name of Lillian, or Jillian, pardon me, Jillian Ludwig, who died Thursday, yesterday morning after being shot in the head while walking near campus Tuesday. EDITOR’S NOTE: Prior to allegedly shooting Belmont University freshman Jillian Taylor in the head on Tuesday, November 7, 2023, Shaquille Taylor was deemed incompetent to stand trial for aggravated assault with a deadly…
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One day after Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and killed 1,400 innocent Israelis, State Senator Heidi Campbell (D-Nashville) issued a statement on X, formerly Twitter, that Israel is an “oppressive regime,” and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a “ruthless dictator.”
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Progressive Democrat activist-turned-State Representative Justin Jones (D-Nashville) called for a ceasefire between Israeli forces and Hamas terrorists in an early Saturday post on X – formerly Twitter.
On October 7, thousands of Hamas terrorists left their base in Gaza and launched a barbaric surprise attack inside Israel, where they killed more than 1,400 Israeli citizens, the vast majority of whom were civilians.
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Several hundred members of the Middle Tennessee Chapter of the Democrat Socialists of America and other leftist groups rallied in Nashville on Saturday to support the terrorist group Hamas and oppose Israel’s actions to defend itself. The rally took place one week after more than 1,200 Israelis were massacred by Hamas terrorists, who launched a sneak attack into Israel from the Gaza strip on October 7.
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Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) blasted the passage of the 45 day Continuing Resolution that included no spending cuts and failed to properly increase funding for U.S. border security.
The bill passed the House on Saturday in a 335 to 91 vote, then passed the Senate in an 88 to 9 vote, and was signed into law by President Biden just hours before the midnight deadline on Saturday, when funding for the 2022-2023 federal fiscal year. The bill continues funding the government at 2022-2023 levels until November 15.
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Six of Tennessee’s nine member delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives voted “no” on Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s last-minute 45 day Continuing Resolution Saturday afternoon. Late Saturday, the U.S. Senate passed the bill in an 88 to 9 vote, just a few hours before the midnight deadline when the current fiscal year ends.
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Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL-01) told The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network at an event in Nashville on Saturday that Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s bold plan to reduce the number of non-military federal employees by 50 percent in one year–a net reduction of 1 million employees from the current level of 2 million – is legally sound and will survive the expected legal challenges.
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Arizona Republican Party Chairman Jeff DeWit promised that the Arizona GOP Executive Committee will hold a vote on a resolution to withdraw the Arizona GOP from a government-run 2024 Presidential Preference Election.
The Presidential Preference Election (PPE) is an election in which voters can choose who they would like to be their presidential candidate in the upcoming General Election. Party winners of the Arizona PPE are officially determined at the party’s national convention.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) was apparently a no-show at this past Saturday’s Tennessee Democratic Party fundraiser held in Nashville.
On August 15, the Tennessee Democratic Party issued a press release announcing Newsom as a featured speaker for the August 26 event.
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Councilman Freddie O’Connell finished in first place in the Nashville mayoral general election on Thursday, and Republican Alice Rolli finished in second place, qualifying both candidates for the two spots in the September 14 runoff election. According to the Nashville Davidson County Charter, a runoff election betweeen the top two finishers in a general election for mayor qualify for a runoff election if no candidate exceeds 50 percent in the general electio, With all early votes counted and 99 percent of precincts reporting as of 9:35 pm, O’ Connell topped the 12 candidate field with 27.1 percent of the vote. The Tennessean called the race for him as one of two runoff qualifiers at 9:00 pm. Republican Alice Rolli finished in second place with 20.2 percent, locking up the second and final spot in the runoff. The Tennessean called the second place finish for Rolli at 9:30 pm. Matt Wilshire finished in third place with 16.9 percent The rest of the field had the following results: Jeff Yarboro 12.1 percent Heidi Campbell 8.2 percent Sharon Hurt 6.0 percent Vivian Wilhoite 4.7 percent Jim Gingrich 1.7 percent Natisha Brooks 1.4 percent – – – Michael Patrick Leahy is the CEO and…
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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti released a statement Saturday morning, hours after the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling granting the state of Tennessee’s emergency motion for a stay of a June 28 preliminary injunction from a federal district judge that temporarily prohibited the full implementation of a law enacted in March 2023. The law, Prohibition on Medical Procedures Performed on Minors Related to Sexual Identity, was originally scheduled to go into effect on July 1. “The case is far from over, but this is a big win. The court of appeals lifted the injunction, meaning the law can be fully enforced, and recognized that Tennessee is likely to win the constitutional argument and the case,” Skrmetti said in a statement released by his office. The law now goes into full effect on July 8, one week after its originally scheduled July 1 effective date. “Tennessee enacted a law that prohibits healthcare providers from performing gender-affirming surgeries and administering hormones or puberty blockers to transgender minors. After determining that the law likely violated the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses, the district court facially enjoined the law’s enforcement as to hormones and puberty blockers and applied the injunction to…
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The Tennessee Faith & Freedom Coalition (TNFFC) called on Gov. Bill Lee (R-TN) Monday to cancel his proposed August 21 special session of the Tennessee General Assembly.
“We are writing you because you have made it clear that you are planning to use your authority to officially call an ill-advised special session of the Tennessee General Assembly on August 21st to address gun issues in the aftermath of the Covenant School shooting tragedy, a heinous and despicable act committed by a mentally ill individual who claimed to be on the transgender spectrum,” the TNFFC said in a letter sent to the governor. A copy of the letter was also sent to all members of the Tennessee General Assembly.
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The Nashville and Davidson County Metro Council is scheduled to meet Monday evening for the purpose of voting on an interim successor to former State Rep. Justin Jones (D-Nashville).
Jones was expelled from the Tennessee House of Representatives on Thursday in a 72 to 25 vote for breaking numerous rules of the House one week earlier on Thursday, March 30, the day over a thousand protestors rioted at the State Capitol and attempted to enter the chamber of the House of Representatives by force.
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Metro Nashville Public Schools and March For Our Lives (MFOL), the anti-gun, New York City-based political action advocacy organization, are politicizing the March 27 Covenant Presbyterian School shootings by encouraging Nashville and Middle Tennessee high school students to participate in two separate anti-gun rallies on Monday.
As The Tennessee Star reported on March 27, three children and three adults were killed by 28-year-old former student Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who identified as transgender, when she forced her way into the school.
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News Channel 5 published an article at 1:23 pm on Wednesday written by long time investigative reporter Phil Williams which stated that Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN-05) “kept the money” raised eight years ago in a GoFundMe campaign meant for a memorial garden in honor of his infant son Hugh Lincoln Ogles, who died in 2014. A total of $23,565 was raised.
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Late Wednesday Tennessee U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN-05) blasted long time News Channel 5 reporter Phil Williams over claims Williams made about the death of Ogle’s son in 2014 in a story published earlier in the day by News Channel 5.
Hugh Lincoln Ogles, the son of future Congressman Ogles and his wife Monica Ogles, died on February 19, 2014, the day of his birth, and was buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in Franklin, Tennessee.
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It is painfully obvious to anyone who has watched the confused public responses of 79-year-old Tennessee Lt. Governor Randy McNally (R-Oak Ridge) to the controversy surrounding his inexplicable social media postings that he has lost a step mentally.
McNally also faces health and physical challenges not unusual for a man of his age. In February he underwent a medical procedure to install a heart pacemaker.
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Saturday Night Live skewered Lt. Governor Randy McNally (R- Oak Ridge) in a devastating skit that featured his bizarre social media posts on Saturday’s broadcast.
“Sorry I’m late, I’ve spent all day printing out Mapquest directions,” the SNL actor portraying Lt. Gov. McNally says at the beginning the skit.
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Congressman Andy Ogles (R-TN-5) released a statement on Sunday that the undergraduate Bachelor of Science degree he was awarded from Middle Tennessee State University in 2007 was in the field of Liberal Studies, not International Relations as he had previously stated.
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Norfolk Southern Corp. CEO Alan Shaw failed to answer five key questions posed to him by The Star News Network on Monday about the February 6 controlled burn of vinyl chloride conducted at the East Palestine, Ohio site of his company’s February 3 trail derailment:
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EPA Administrator Michael Regan tweeted late Monday that he will visit East Palestine, Ohio on Tuesday. The news represents a change of plans for Regan, who was scheduled to leave on Saturday, February 18 for a seven day climate tour of Africa.
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Black Rock owns more than 6 percent of Norfolk Southern Railway, the huge railway company whose train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio on February 3, causing what many are describing as an ecological and health disaster for residents of Ohio and nearby Pennsylvania.
Fintel.io reports that as of February 16, 2023, Black Rock owns 6.8 percent of Norfolk Southern Railway.
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Lonnie Spivak was elected Chairman of the Davidson County GOP in a unanimous vote in a meeting held at the Millennium Maxwell House in Nashville on Saturday.
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Memphis Police Department Public Information Officer Major Karen Rudolph told The Tennessee Star in an emailed statement on Tuesday, “There is no evidence that either of these claims are true,” in response to two questions posed to her by The Star.
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The five former Memphis police officers who were charged last week with second degree murder in the beating death of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols were part of a special, 40-member SCORPION (Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods) unit established in October 2021 by Memphis Police Department Chief Cerelyn Davis and Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, a Democrat.
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Kari Lake scored a significant legal victory on Monday when Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson ruled that two counts of her election contest against Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and Maricopa County Board of Supervisors will go to trial this week. The two day trial is expected to begin on Wednesday, and the judge’s ruling is expected by January 2, 2023, one day before the scheduled January 3 inauguration of Governor-elect Hobbs.
But the standard required to secure the legal remedy she seeks in her lawsuit – either a declaration that she, and not Democrat nominee Katie Hobbs, is the victor in the November 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election or an order that Maricopa County must redo the gubernatorial election – remains high.
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Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson ruled late Monday that Kari Lake’s election contest lawsuit will go to trial on Wednesday.
The judge’s ruling came hours after attorneys for the defendants–Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors–and the plaintiff, GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, delivered oral arguments in court on both sides of the defendants’ motion to dismiss all ten counts set forward in Lake’s 70 page lawsuit.
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American Classical Education (ACE) informed the Tennessee Department of Education and school boards of education in five counties – Rutherford, Montgomery, Madison, Maury, and Robertson – in separate letters last week it intends to apply for public school charters to operate classical schools in those five counties.
“We’ve filed our letters of intent with the school districts and the department,” Dolores Gresham, an ACE board member, former Tennessee State Senator, and former Senate Education Committee Chair, told The Tennessee Star.
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Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer is coming under increasing scrutiny after the botched election in Maricopa County, leading some to question his founding and operation of the Pro-Democracy Republicans PAC, whose stated mission is “to support pro-democracy Arizona Republicans” who reject “conspiracy theorists and demagoguery” from candidates who maintain the 2020 presidential election in Arizona was stolen. In the context of the 2022 election, this is an indication of Richer’s direct opposition to GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, GOP Secretary of State nominee Mark Finchem, several state legislators and candidates for Maricopa County Supervisor.
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The CEO of United Way of West Tennessee’s public statement opposing American Classical Academy Madison’s appeal of the Jackson-Madison County Public School System’s denial of the school’s public charter has drawn heavy criticism from the school’s supporters.
“Matt Marshall, the president and CEO of United Way of West Tennessee, [spoke] in opposition to ACA during the public comment portion of the American Classical Academy Madison County Charter School Appeal Public Hearing on Thursday, September 15, 2022, in Jackson, Tenn.,” The Jackson Sun reported.
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Author and former MSNBC contributor Jon Meacham was named to the Board of Fellows of the University of Tennessee’s newly established Institute for American Civics last week by University of Tennessee President Randy Boyd.
German-owned Politico reported that Meacham helped President Joe Biden “frame” his now infamously divisive “speech from hell” delivered in Philadelphia last week in which he attacked the 74 million Americans who voted for former President Donald Trump as a “threat to American democracy.”
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Public records indicate Georgia gubernatorial hopeful Stacey Abrams sponsored legislation when she was the Georgia House minority leader that was related to her private business interests. The legislation Abrams sponsored in 2015 – with four other Republicans – addressed taxes paid on debt that was not collected.
At the time the legislation was under consideration, Abrams was senior vice president at a company called NOWaccount, according to an archive of the company’s website.
Abrams had started NOWaccount in 2010 with two business partners. The company charged fees to small business for accepting the task of collecting the businesses outstanding receivables.
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An investigation by the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), supported by documents retrieved by FOIA requests, has found that then Georgia House member Stacey Abrams received special treatment related to a government loan program that benefited her private investment in a company she helped start.
On October 7, 2021, the financial technology company Now Corp. (previously NOWaccount) co-founded by Stacey Abrams in 2010, secured $29 million in financing and an equity investment from Brigade Capital Management LP and Virgo Investment Group.
This was a significant milestone given the fact in 2013 NOWaccount had approximately $100,000 in annual revenue.
Less than two months after this announcement, on December 1, 2021, Abrams announced she would run for Georgia governor, setting up a possible rematch with Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp.
And in March 2022, Abrams filed a financial disclosure form which indicated her net worth was $3.17 million, a substantial increase from the net worth of $109,000 when she first ran for governor four years ago.
While most media reports attribute Abrams significant increases in net-worth to speeches and advances for book projects, her investment in Now Corp. has received little attention. Abrams herself has previously claimed that she “walled myself off” from company operations. However, documents indicate she was an integral part of the plan to use the federal program to benefit NOW.
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Many national and local news outlets have reported inaccurately about the process by which the Tennessee Republican Party (TRP) disqualified three candidates from the August 4, 2022 GOP primary ballot in Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District on April 19, 2022.
In the immediate aftermath of this decision made by the TRP in accordance with its bylaws and the laws of Tennessee, Robby Starbuck (legal name Robert Starbuck Newsom), one of the three disqualified candidates, delivered a series of press interviews and social media statements in which he made false claims about the integrity of the TRP’s process in handling his disqualification.
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On Wednesday the sponsor of SB 2616 told The Tennessee Star if the bill becomes law, candidates for the August 2022 GOP primary in Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District would qualify for the primary ballot only if they established Tennessee residency prior to April 7, 2019, three years before the April 7, 2022 filing deadline for this year’s primary.
The bill passed in the State and Local Government Committee of The Tennessee State Senate on Tuesday in a bipartisan 5-1 vote.
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