Author: Tennessee Star Staff

Former State Senator Debbie Lesko (R-Phoenix) defeated Democrat Hiral Tipirneni by five points, 52 percent to 47 percent, in the special election in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District on Tuesday, thwarting the much hyped Democratic “Blue Wave.” While the results were closer than the 21 point victory President Trump secured in this suburban Phoenix Congressional District in November 2016, the loss took the air out of the balloon for many Democrats and many in the media, who have been predicting a “Blue Wave” in the November midterm elections. The vast majority of the votes in the race were cast during early voting. When those votes were counted one hour after the polls closed at 7 p.m. local time, Lesko had a 9,000 vote lead over Tipirneni, with only 19,000 votes left to count. That meant Tipirneni would have to win those votes by nearly a 3-to-1 margin to pull off the victory. In the end, those numbers simply did not materialize for Tipirneni, a former emergency room physician who now works as a cancer researcher. With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Lesko had 52.6 percent of the vote to Tipirneni’s 47.4 percent. In terms of raw votes, Lesko had 91,390 votes…

Best-selling author Brad Thor, a resident of Nashville, says he “will challenge President Donald Trump in the 2020 Republican primary,” according to the Daily Caller News Foundation, which reported Thor confirmed his challenge on Saturday: The conservative author’s biggest problem with the Trump presidency is the man himself. “He’s mentally unfit,” Thor told TheDCNF. Thor teased out his announcement on Twitter Saturday evening, pledging to run if no other conservative will challenge Trump. “America deserves better leadership,” Thor said. He added a few minutes later: “In fact, let’s make it official. I’m in.” “The pages of history do not care if you were a farmer, a soldier, a doctor, or a butcher,” Thor told TheDCNF. “They care whether or not, when called, if you rose up to serve. Our Republic cries out for leadership, someone who will respect our Constitutional norms and represent the world’s greatest minority – the individual. That is who I am running for.” The White House did not immediately return a request for comment. In May 2016, Thor became entangled in a controversy for comments he made about then-candidate Trump in an interview with radio host Glenn Beck, as Breitbart News reported at the time: Fiction…

Filmmaker Rob Reiner took to Twitter recently to accuse President Donald Trump of being a “childish sociopathic liar.” That’s quite a statement. One might wonder what could have possibly inspired Reiner to push out such extreme rhetoric. “Democracy is being tested. The rule of law and the press are under attack by a childish sociopathic liar.

Combined military by America, British and French forces involved more targets and twice as many weapons as a launched almost exactly a year ago, Secretary of Defense James Mattis said late Friday. Mattis told Pentago reporters that the action was necessary because Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had not been deterred from using chemical weapons against rebel military forces seeking to overthrow him and civilian populations in areas controlled by the insurgents.

Unemployment is low, and the economy is humming, but concern is growing among some conservatives that President Donald Trump risks giving away gains from his historic tax cuts in a trade war with China. The conservative-leaning Tax Foundation earlier this week projected that the $150 billion in tariffs that Trump has proposed would cut gross domestic product (GDP) and wage growth by a tenth of a percentage point over the long run and reduce full-time jobs by 79,000. Middle and lower-income taxpayers would absorb a disproportionate share of the hit, according to the analysis.

The Davidson County Election Commission set Thursday, May 24 as the date of the special election for the Mayor of Nashville at an emergency meeting Wednesday afternoon, the day after the Tennessee Supreme Court struck down their earlier decision to set August 2 as the special election date. “The vacant District 1 council seat that was set to be on the May 1 ballot will also be on the May 24 special election,” WSMV reported: A new deadline to qualify to be on the ballot for mayor and District 1 has been set for Thursday at noon. Early voting would be held May 4-19 at the Howard School and expand to all satellite locations on May 11. A run-off election, if necessary, would be held on June 28. At least fourteen candidates have already qualified for the special election, including Acting Mayor David Briley, At-Large Metro Council Member Erica Gilmore, former Vanderbilt professor Carol Swain, State Rep. Harold Love, jeff obafemi carr, and Ralph Bristol. The final field will be set by the end of day on Thursday, after petitition signatures submitted by any additional candidates prior to the noon deadline are reviewed and verified. From there, it will be…

FRANKLIN, Tennessee–The GOP State Executive Committee (SEC), the governing body for the Tennessee Republican Party, met in Franklin, Tennessee at the Hilton Garden Inn on Saturday and removed eight candidates from the August 2 Republican Primary ballot for failing to qualify as “bona fide” Republicans as defined by party by-laws. Seven of the candidates had filed petitions to run for the U.S. Senate; one had filed to run for Governor. Party by-laws require a candidate to have voted in three of four successive Republican Party primary elections, and/or provide additional evidence of service to the Republican Party in order to qualify. Additional prospective candidates seeking election to U.S. Congress, and the state House and Senate, who do not meet the bona fide Republican standard, are likely to be removed in the next few weeks. Objections had been filed with the State Party regarding at least eight statewide candidates, and after reviewing and confirming that the complainants met the bona fide standard themselves, the Political Committee, chaired by SEC member Jim Looney, reviewed the qualifications of the candidates that were the subject of complaints. A slate of eight candidates were recommended for removal at the SEC meeting, including U.S. Senate candidates…