In 2024, Hawkins County voters gave President Donald Trump a very clear mandate.
Voters there chose the president by giving him 84 percent of the vote, making it one the Volunteer State’s top 20 Trump supporting counties.
Read the full story
As a physician, my top priority has been and will always be achieving the best outcomes for my patients. Many existing medicines and treatments are tried and true. Likewise, scientific research and development as well as innovative new technologies should not be overlooked or even rejected outright. After all, we know many advancements in medicine today were at one time revolutionary ideas.
Read the full story
I spent decades working with abused, abandoned, and neglected animals before I ever served in the Florida Legislature, and one thing became obvious very early: good intentions only get you so far.
Read the full story
When I was five years old, my family fled communist Cuba. We left behind a regime built on government decrees, central planning, and the false promise that state mandates could magically cure economic pain. I learned a lesson early in life that has stayed with me ever since: government can order a price to be lower on paper, but it cannot order a scientist to discover a cure, an entrepreneur to risk capital, or a business to survive in a broken or fixed market.
That history drives my work today. At Latinos for Tennessee, our advocacy is rooted in free enterprise and free-market principles—limited government, fiscal responsibility, and individual liberty. When we talk about healthcare affordability, we have to be careful. Well-intentioned policy ideas can easily destroy the very engine of scientific progress that makes American medicine the best in the world.
Read the full story
East Tennessee recently saw three local defendants sentenced for their roles in a multimillion-dollar prescription fraud scheme. Fraud on that scale understandably makes headlines. But what about schemes that, on the surface, seem to cause less damage? Or worse, the ones that go completely unnoticed?
Read the full story
In Philadelphia 235 years ago today, 39 delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the U.S. Constitution. Eleven years had passed since the Declaration of Independence was adopted, and this historic event marked an important milestone for our remarkable experiment in self-government.
Read the full story
Tennessee’s pension system is one of the best-funded in the nation, and that is no accident. Every session, my colleagues and I on the Finance, Ways, and Means Committee make hard choices, keep our commitments, and make sure the numbers pencil out because the people depending on Tennessee’s retirement system spent decades earning those benefits and deserve to know they’ll be there.
Our discipline has paid off. In fiscal year 2025, the K-12 teachers’ pension plans were funded at approximately 106%. We’ve made a secure retirement a top priority, and we need Washington to do the same.
Read the full story
Mark Twain famously published that “There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Were Twain with us today he might add a fourth type of lie – political polling. Specifically, those polls released for public consumption.
Most campaign polling is internal, unpublicized, and genuinely used by campaigns to understand where a race stands. You will likely never hear about most of it, because that isn’t its purpose. These are legitimate benchmark and brushfire polls.
Read the full story
I can’t believe I am saying this, but I have to defend LSU and Lane Kiffin here. I don’t enjoy it.
Read the full story
I spent 21 years in the Army before I spent years representing Montgomery County, a district shaped by Fort Campbell. In that overlap, I sat with more veterans than I can count who told me some version of the same thing. The hardest part of coming home wasn’t the transition itself. It was learning to live without the people who understood them.
Read the full story
Tennessee just took Big Tech to task.
Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti negotiated a historic $17 billion settlement with Meta, delivering real money, real platform changes and real accountability. As a school board member in Williamson County, I’ve spent the past year immersed in the research and the reality of what these platforms are doing to our kids: the anxiety, the sleep deprivation, the self-worth tied to a Like count. Each one of the settlement’s painstaking concessions – platform curfews, screen time limits, non-personalized feeds, and disabled Like counts – are the kind of baseline protections I’ve been waiting years to see implemented.
Read the full story
I was born in communist Cuba, where the government believed it could manage the economy better than ordinary people. It set prices. It controlled markets. It decided what things should cost and, too often, who could get them.
That experience shaped the way I look at Washington’s new approach to prescription drugs.
Read the full story
For many families in Knox County, the dream of homeownership feels further away today than it did just a few years ago. Rent has climbed drastically. Home prices remain high.
Read the full story
The most important healthcare document released this year wasn’t another regulation, another Inspector General report, or another congressional hearing.
Read the full story
Knox County takes pride in creating a favorable environment for businesses. However, the housing market has been hampered by unnecessary red tape, resulting in a housing shortage. That’s why I am concerned that the Knox County Commission is considering adding more regulations that will not improve housing affordability.
Rather than encouraging the market to build more homes, county commissioners proposed a cap on the number of single-family rentals that larger housing providers can purchase. The real issue facing Knox County isn’t who owns homes; it’s that we don’t have enough of them. Working families need more housing options, not additional government restrictions.
Read the full story
On August 6, Tennessee held primary elections for statewide offices and the general election for county offices. In Williamson County, Tennessee, the results were shocking, to put it mildly.
To begin with, some background is in order. I moved to Williamson County in 1997. While Tennessee had been a blue state for over a century, things were changing, and Williamson County was already bright red. The county officials were almost all republicans. Democrats ran as independents because they would never be elected as democrats. The Williamson County Republican Party was very dynamic. It had an office on Main Street in Franklin. It was staffed full time, and the location was a can’t-miss location.
Read the full story
For the most part, I’ve been open about supporting Marsha Blackburn and have intentionally avoided criticizing the other candidates. But after this week, I can’t stay silent any longer.
Read the full story
Republicans have never been shy about saying they stand with law enforcement. It’s a principle that has defined conservative politics for decades. Communities are safer when the men and women wearing the badge have the tools they need to stop criminals, solve crimes, and protect innocent people.
Read the full story
For our republic, nothing is more fundamental than the principle of one person, one vote. During his Thursday night address, President Trump revealed deeply troubling information showing that this bedrock of our election system is under attack.
Citing recently declassified documents, President Trump disclosed that Communist China in 2020 stole 220 million U.S. voter files, including data containing names, addresses, and party affiliations. Yet when Deep State actors discovered the breach, they concealed it from President Trump during the closing months of his first term. Rogue bureaucrats even buried intelligence that China attempted to manufacture fraudulent ballots supporting then-candidate Joe Biden.
Read the full story
Earlier this year, some state lawmakers pushed for new mandates to block Tennesseans from receiving medical treatments that use mRNA technology.
Read the full story
Nearly 11 years ago, Volkswagen admitted to covertly installing “defeat devices” in millions of its vehicles as part of a ploy to evade government emissions tests. This scandal, infamously known as “Dieselgate,” resulted in vehicles emitting up to 40 times more nitrous oxide (NOx) on the road than legally permitted by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Dieselgate rocked the global automobile industry, embroiling several of the world’s leading car manufacturers in legal troubles, including the conviction of four former Volkswagen managers.
As litigation efforts for Dieselgate ramp up overseas, experts are questioning whether the cheating scandal deserves renewed scrutiny from U.S. regulators and courts. For the people of Tennessee, the answer to that question should be a resounding “yes.”
Read the full story
As Americans, few things are more sacred than our citizenship. It’s what empowers us to defend our freedoms, choose our elected representatives, and serve our nation. It’s what delineates our rights and responsibilities as Americans. And it’s what makes us We the People. Yet for years, one industry has undermined this cherished institution: birth tourism.
Each year, tens of thousands of foreign visitors give birth in our country with the intention of securing U.S. citizenship for their children. These tourists—often wealthy nationals from China and Russia—typically return to their home countries as soon as they receive their child’s U.S. passport. Many return to America multiple times to repeat this process. Behind this appalling practice is a multimillion-dollar industry that coaches clients on how to exploit our nation’s immigration laws.
Read the full story
In 2021, Governor Bill Lee and state officials celebrated Microvast’s announcement of a $220 million battery manufacturing facility in Clarksville, promising nearly 300 jobs and positioning the state as a leader in the electric vehicle and energy storage supply chain. The project, which received significant economic development incentives and was sold as a win for American manufacturing and clean energy jobs, has become a troubling example of how Chinese-linked companies continue to benefit from U.S. taxpayer incentives despite serious national security and human rights concerns.
Microvast Holdings, Inc. has long derived most of its revenue and assets from operations in China, previously raising $400 million in funding from state-run CITIC Securities and Chinese private equity firm CDH Investments, which holds roughly 11% through affiliated entities, with board representation. While Microvast maintains a U.S. headquarters and public listing, its supply chains and core production remain heavily dependent on China, with almost all its manufacturing capacity, a 75,000 square foot R&D center and four subsidiaries in China. These connections raise legitimate questions under evolving U.S. policy aimed at strengthening national security by reducing reliance on adversarial supply chains.
Read the full story
A few days ago, my dad and I were talking about gratitude, and I shared something with him that happened recently.
Read the full story
The Protect College Sports Act is the newest proposed “fix” to the problems impacting college sports. And there are plenty of problems that need fixing. But instead of addressing them, U.S. Senators Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell wrote a 111-page license for politicians to micromanage the industry
Read the full story
When a predator or an abuser takes a child, the clock starts ticking. License Plate Reader cameras scan public roadways and cross-reference law enforcement databases in real time. If a vehicle matches an AMBER Alert, a stolen car report, or an active warrant, officers are notified instantly.
Read the full story
Could the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Director Bill Pulte be making decisions that will destabilize the U.S. housing market and lead to another financial crisis? That’s what many right-of-center organizations are warning.
Read the full story
Tennessee families are being squeezed from every direction. Grocery bills are up. Fuel costs more. And when something breaks, whether it’s a car, an appliance, or a piece of farm equipment, getting it fixed has become its own financial ordeal. Some of that is inflation. But some of it is federal policy, and that part is fixable.
Read the full story
The obesity crisis sweeping across the United States is profound. However, with the advent of GLP-1 medications, Americans have a real chance to combat chronic illnesses like heart disease and other obesity-related complications. While GLP-1 medications are incredibly effective, patients need to make sure they are getting the real FDA-approved version and not a counterfeit, copycat or illicit compounded material, which could jeopardize patient health and safety.
Unfortunately, between non-FDA approved compounded versions, aggressive digital marketing campaigns of GLP-1s that might appear to be FDA approved, but really aren’t and an illicit and counterfeit market of drugs coming across the border that oftentimes contain active pharmaceutical ingredients from China that are mislabeled, aren’t intended for humans (e.g. made for animals), have major safety violations and countless other issues endangering patient safety.
Read the full story
Tennessee has received $813 million in federal taxpayer money to expand broadband access across our state under the Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment Program (BEAD). Nationwide, the federal government is dispensing nearly $43 billion across all 50 states and six territories.
When Governor Bill Lee took office in 2019, 20 percent of Tennesseans lacked high-speed broadband internet – including the Governor at his farm. A few months ago at the AI Summit in Nashville, Tennessee Economic and Community Development Commissioner and Deputy Governor Stuart McWhorter estimated that less than two percent of Tennesseans currently lack access to broadband. The gap has seriously been closed.
Read the full story
For years, parents like me have watched technology evolve faster than the laws designed to protect our children from it. It seems like every time one threat is addressed, another pops up. Predators have adapted, tools have evolved, and the burden of keeping up always falls on the families who are often harmed before anyone acts.
Read the full story
Tennessee has sent a message that local officials across the country would be wise to hear. When city leaders put partisan politics ahead of the people they serve, state officials have every legal right – and increasingly, the political will – to step in and set things right.
Last month, the General Assembly passed legislation giving state leaders greater, and frankly fairer, control over Tennessee’s airports. Going forward, the governor, lieutenant governor, and speaker of the state House will appoint six of the nine members on each major airport authority board. Local officials will still appoint three.
Read the full story
Every American should be grateful that President Trump, Vice President Vance, Cabinet officials, and the thousands of other attendees at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner were unharmed during last month’s disturbing shooting. It is clear that the shooter attempted to kill the President in yet another assassination attempt on his life since he returned to office. In a manifesto, the alleged shooter, Cole Tomas Allen, wrote that he intended to target administration officials, “prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest.”
Read the full story
Tennessee lawmakers spent this session advancing the priorities and values voters sent them to Nashville to fight for. From empowering parents with school choice to cracking down on illegal immigration, expanding Second Amendment rights to protecting free speech on college campuses, the 114th General Assembly moved aggressively on nearly every front.
Read the full story
Tennessee is on the verge of a meaningful step forward for patients, families, and the future of healthcare in our state. With overwhelming bipartisan support—passing the House 94-0 and the Senate 29-1—HB 484 / SB 435 reflects a powerful shared commitment to improving patient access to modern, evidence-based care.
Read the full story
The Trump administration and state leadership are working relentlessly to obtain private, federal and state investments and grants, as well as foreign direct investment in new enrichment technology, advanced nuclear power plants, and other innovations that are being built and deployed in partnership with the Tennessee Valley Authority and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).
Read the full story
There’s a growing concern about how young people are experiencing the digital world. I have spoken out about this very issue myself. I’m relieved to see parents, educators, and especially policymakers are focusing on the risks and emerging challenges posed by artificial intelligence and social media addiction. These are serious issues, and they demand thoughtful, effective solutions.
Read the full story
Jeb Boasberg is now the Rory McIlroy of the D.C. Circuit Court—but the Obama appointee won’t receive a green jacket or a lifetime membership at Augusta National.
Read the full story
Why is the Trump-appointed head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency continuing, and even expanding, a Biden-era policy that economists warn could cause another housing crash?
Read the full story
Artificial intelligence is expected to drive economic growth for decades, but one question matters most. Where are those jobs going to be created?
Read the full story
As Director of The Amistad Project, I have spent years examining how private money, political influence, and nonprofit networks intersect with election administration. That work has repeatedly brought me into direct contact with evidence that the infusion of private funds into the 2020 election was not a neutral act of civic charity but a targeted intervention designed to benefit one candidate—Mr. Biden.
Yet throughout this period, major media outlets insisted there was “no evidence” of such influence, and when the factual record became too substantial to ignore, they shifted to the equally misleading claim that there was “no proof.”
Read the full story
Last year, Georgia enacted the Promise Scholarship Act, which Mesha helped pass in 2024 by a single vote in the statehouse. This program provides up to $6,500 per year for students in the attendance zones of the lowest performing 25% of state public schools. These funds are a lifeline for Georgia families stuck in failing schools, giving them the opportunity they need to get the education they deserve.
Read the full story
Picture a Nashville warehouse supervisor. He is a churchgoer, soccer dad, and cardiology patient. No criminal record. No active investigation. But over the past two years, a private company’s license plate readers and cellular data aggregators have quietly assembled a record of nearly everywhere he’s been. Under current Tennessee law, a government official can query that record without asking a judge, establishing probable cause, or explaining why.
This is the current standard practice. House Bill 2608 and Senate Bill 2215, the Protecting Everyone from Excessive Police Surveillance (PEEPS) Act, would change it by requiring law enforcement to obtain a warrant before accessing Tennesseans’ historical location data.
Read the full story
Artificial intelligence is often described as a breakthrough technology with enormous potential. In many cases, that promise is real. Innovation can improve lives, expand economic opportunity and help us address challenges that once seemed impossible to solve. But as we discuss the opportunities AI presents, we must also be honest about the risks that accompany it.
One system drawing increasing scrutiny is Grok, an artificial intelligence tool embedded within the social media platform X. Unlike traditional internet platforms that primarily host content created by their users, Grok generates images in response to prompts. Recent reporting suggests that the system has been used to create sexually explicit images of real people without their consent. Most troubling of all, this includes images involving minors.
Read the full story
When tragedy strikes or major policy changes are enacted, the first question I ask is simple: who bears the risk? In Tennessee, a proposed bill (SB2040/HB1959) that would force numerous pharmacies to close. Pharmacies are not interchangeable storefronts. They are a necessary part of the health infrastructure. If we shutter a significant share of that infrastructure without a thoughtful transition plan, patients – not policymakers – will absorb the shock.
As a former public-safety leader and police chief who has managed large-scale crises, I’ve seen how critical pharmacies are to the health and resilience of communities. During the opioid epidemic, when our city’s Level I trauma center was overwhelmed with overdose patients, it was local round-the-clock pharmacies that stepped up. They became reliable sources of Narcan for individuals struggling with substance use disorder and for nonprofit harm-reduction agencies working to prevent deaths. That access saved lives and reduced pressure on emergency departments.
Pharmacies are also one of the primary access points for naloxone, the medication that reverses opioid overdoses. Wider access to Narcan saves lives before first responders arrive and reduces strain on emergency services. Policies that reduce pharmacy access risk reversing that progress.
In America, we like to believe that creating a trust is the gold standard of financial responsibility. For the elderly, for parents wanting to leave something behind for their children, or for anyone concerned about preserving wealth and legacy, a trust is sold as the ultimate safeguard.
Read the full story
Few things make voters’ blood boil on a bipartisan basis than legislators’ self-dealing and passing regulations that hit consumers in the pocketbook. Yet it seems there is a staggering level of disregard for that political reality in Nashville when it comes to the debate over the so-called FAIR Rx legislation.
SB 2040/HB 1959, currently under consideration, would force pharmacies who also own and operate a pharmacy benefit manager or PBM to either restructure or be barred from doing business in the Volunteer state. PBMs are essentially a middleman that negotiates pricing for drugs with health plans, manages the availability of drugs and oversees a network of pharmacies. The largest of these in Tennessee is connected to CVS Pharmacies but the bill would also ban operations by mail-in pharmacy companies and specialty drug providers that handle rare prescriptions like those used for cancer and other serious conditions.
Read the full story
The first time I held my daughter, she was an hour old. Her birth mother had chosen me, trusted me, to raise this child she loved but couldn’t care for. In the days that followed, as a new mom with a baby I did not carry, I understood something no law had ever conveyed to me: family is neither defined by blood nor a bureaucratic designation. It is built during bath time, in middle-of-the-night feedings, in the thousand small moments that accumulate into a shared life. It is a state of being, not a coincidence or an assignment.
Read the full story
In recent years Tennessee has experienced an explosion of growth fueled by migration of new residents coming here to escape high-tax, over-regulated, woke blue states. This has produced a consistent warning from conservatives to new arrivals: “Don’t California my Tennessee.”
This admonition is not only sound conservative thinking, it is also common sense. All you need to do is look at California to understand why Tennessee should never copy its policies. California residents are crushed by punishing taxes, burdened with one-third of the nation’s homeless population, plagued by failing schools controlled by the teacher unions, governed by laws that punish law-abiding gun owners while going easy on violent criminals, and have a state constitution that protects late-term abortions.
Read the full story
Tennessee proudly calls Nashville our nation’s “health care capital” as we are home to some of the largest hospital systems in America and a hub that shapes care far beyond our borders. Yet for many Tennessee families, health care feels less like a source of pride and more like a source of anxiety.
More than three in four Tennesseans, an incredible 76 percent, say they worry about affording care, and medical debt remains one of the most common financial burdens in our state. How can the epicenter of American healthcare also be a place where so many fear the cost of getting sick?
Read the full story