A Tennessee State Representative is celebrating this week as a bill that he sponsored enacting harsher penalties for violence against police officers took effect Monday.
The law, called The Back the Blue Act, which was sponsored by State Representative Kip Capley (R-Summertown) makes assault on a police officer a Class E felony. Previously, it was a Class A misdemeanor.
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The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to take up a challenge to Texas’ law intended to prevent minors from accessing porn websites.
Texas’ law, which it enacted in June 2023, requires websites that publish “sexual material harmful to minors” to confirm its users are over 18 years old. A district court initially blocked Texas from enforcing the law, but the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals later allowed it to take effect.
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Lawsuits across six battleground states will significantly impact the November election as laws regarding mail-in balloting are challenged.
In the states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, lawsuits that have either concluded or remain ongoing over laws about mail-in and absentee ballots are shaping how votes will be counted in the general election.
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Former President Donald Trump now leads President Joe Biden by four percentage points in Pennsylvania, according to a Monday poll that also showed Republican U.S. Senate nominee Dave McCormick is “within striking distance” of Senator Bob Casey (D-PA).
Following the Thursday presidential debate, the Cygnal poll found 48.3 percent of Pennsylvanians support Trump compared to 44 percent who support Biden. The former president’s polling lead against Biden is beyond the 3.45 percent margin of error reported by the pollsters.
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A federal judge on Friday afternoon halted part of a new state law barring charitable bail from taking effect while a legal challenge proceeds.
U.S. District Judge Victoria Marie Calvert issued a temporary restraining order for 14 days following a Friday hearing. The ACLU of Georgia and the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center filed the lawsuit asking a judge to declare Section 4 of Georgia Senate Bill 63 unconstitutional.
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A new audit raises questions as to whether Wisconsin’s attorney general will be able to meet a new state requirement to get sexual assault kits tested within six months.
The Legislative Audit Bureau released its new report on the state’s crime recently, saying there are fewer requests for sexual assault DNA kits at the crime labs, but it is taking the labs longer to process each kit.
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A Minnesota district court judge was publicly reprimanded by the Minnesota Board of Judicial Standards after denying several convicted felons the right to vote when issuing probation orders to those felons.
On June 27, Judge Matthew Quinn of Minnesota’s Seventh Judicial District was reprimanded by the Minnesota Board of Judicial Standards (MBJS). According to the Board’s findings, Judge Quinn began issuing probation sentencing orders to convicted felons in October of 2023 which denied those individuals the right to vote.
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Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale received medical diagnoses for five mental disorders, her parents Ronald and Norma Hale told Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) investigators on July 12, 2023, according to a transcript of the interview obtained by The Tennessee Star from a source familiar with the investigation.
Ronald and Norma Hale, with the assistance of their attorney, provided the list of mental disorders after MNPD investigators questioned whether Audrey Hale was formally diagnosed with autism.
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Steve Bannon, former chief strategist to former President Donald Trump and host of the popular show War Room, made contact for the first time from inside the Federal Correctional Institution Danbury in Danbury, Connecticut, where he is currently serving his four-month prison sentence.
Bannon communicated his message through a 5-minute phone call to Grace Chong, who is the CFO and COO of War Room, on Tuesday. Like all federal prisoners incarcerated at FCI Danbury, Bannon is allowed to make 320 minutes of phone calls each month.
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The mother of Covenant School shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale told police investigators her daughter first experienced suicidal thoughts when prescribed the antidepressant Prozac as a high school student, according to a transcript of the interview obtained by The Tennessee Star from a source familiar with the investigation.
Last month, The Star reported that police documents confirmed Audrey Hale was a 22-year mental health patient at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC). Another portion of the transcript of the police interview with Ronald and Norma Hale revealed their daughter avoided inpatient commitment during three separate mental crises.
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An FBI supervisor is blowing the whistle on his own organization, alleging to the Justice Department’s chief watchdog and Congress that the bureau has been improperly suspending or revoking the security clearances of agents it believes hold conservative political views.
The new whistleblower’s allegations surfaced Tuesday in correspondence obtained by “Just the News” that was sent to the House and Senate Judiciary committees and DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, dramatically claiming that as a supervisory special agent he witnessed efforts by senior FBI brass to target employees who supported Donald Trump or opposed COVID-19 vaccines.
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Prosecutors with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office agreed on Tuesday to delay former President Donald Trump’s sentencing, The New York Times reported.
A Manhattan jury convicted Trump May 30 on 34 felony counts of falsification of business records. Bragg’s office agreed to a request to delay the sentencing in light of a recent Supreme Court ruling that found presidents have immunity from prosecution for “official acts” taken in office, but called the motion by Trump’s attorneys meritless, according to the NYT.
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The judge in former President Donald Trump’s hush money case approved a request on Tuesday to push back the former president’s sentencing until Sept. 18.
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Christy Kelly, reporter at The Arizona Sun Times, said the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling on Monday in Trump v. United States that former President Donald Trump is immune from federal prosecution for official acts he took while in office is certain to affect current and past litigation surrounding the former president.
However, the nation’s highest court also ruled that there is no immunity for unofficial acts.
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Trump ally Rudy Giuliani was disbarred Tuesday in New York for his work during the 2020 election.
The New York Appellate Division, First Judicial Department found that Giuliani, former U.S attorney for the Southern District of New York and New York City mayor, “deliberately violated some of the most fundamental tenets of the legal profession” in doing legal work for former President Donald Trump in 2020. Giuliani was admitted to the New York State Bar in 1969.
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President Joe Biden Monday night said the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that the president has “absolute immunity” when acting in his core constitutional duties is “a dangerous precedent” that “undermines the rule of law of this nation.”
Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision ruled that the “president’s exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute. As for his remaining official actions, he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity.”
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Democratic New York Rep. Joe Morelle announced Monday that he will file a constitutional amendment that will virtually invalidate the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity.
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Members of the Tennessee congressional delegation reacted to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling on Monday in Trump v. United States that former President Donald Trump is immune from federal prosecution for official acts he took while in office.
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A federal grand jury has indicted the Newton County Board of Commissioners chairman and a commissioner-elect on federal charges of conspiring to launder money obtained from wire fraud and honest services wire fraud.
A federal grand jury indicted Marcello Banes, 48, of Covington, the board’s chair, and Stephanie Lindsey, 52, of Covington, a real estate broker and attorney who was elected to the county commission earlier this month, on conspiracy to launder money obtained from wire fraud and honest services wire fraud and money laundering. The grand jury also indicted Lindsey for federal income tax fraud and Banes for making materially false statements to FBI special agents.
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A federal judge is weighing whether to grant a preliminary injunction to halt a Georgia law targeting organized online retail crimes set to take effect on Monday.
Earlier this month, NetChoice filed a lawsuit over Senate Bill 472, the “Combating Organized Retail Crime Act.” Proponents of the measure, which Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed on May 6, say it protects businesses against organized online retail crimes.
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Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers moved quickly Monday night to take advantage of the Supreme Court ruling that he enjoyed immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts, sending a letter notifying the judge in his New York hush money case that they intend to ask to set aside the verdict reached by a jury last month, according to multiple sources.
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Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale avoided commitment on three separate occasions, her parents told Metro Nashville Police Department investigators in a June 12, 2023 interview, according to a transcript obtained by The Tennessee Star from a source familiar with the investigation.
The transcript reveals Ronald and Norma Hale told investigators doctors wanted to commit her daughter for inpatient treatment over an eating disorder, and that Audrey Hale was twice considered for inpatient commitment after she expressed suicidal ideation to mental health professionals.
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Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder around 2011, her parents told Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) investigators in a June 12, 2023 interview, according to a transcript obtained by The Tennessee Star from a source familiar with the investigation.
The Star previously reported that police documents revealed Audrey Hale to be a 22-year mental health patient at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and The Star reported on Sunday that Hale’s parents, Ronald and Norma Hale, first learned of their daughter’s purported autism diagnosis from a speech pathologist in the summer of 2001.
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Tennessee State Senator Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) is defending his intent to file a Senate Joint Resolution requiring the removal of Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy during next year’s legislative session of the Tennessee General Assembly despite critics calling the move “an attempt to overturn an election.”
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Former White House strategist Steve Bannon reported to a federal prison on Monday in Connecticut to start his four-month sentence on contempt of Congress charges, calling himself a “political prisoner” of Democrats.
Bannon ignored subpoenas from the House Jan. 6 Select Committee.
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The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that former President Donald Trump is immune from federal prosecution for official acts he took while in office in split 6-3 ruling. However, the court ruled that there is no immunity for unofficial acts.
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Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz say the political lawfare against former President Donald Trump is a return to the McCarthyism of the 1950s.
“I know lawyers who have been asked to defend Donald Trump on First Amendment grounds,” Dershowitz said on the Wednesday edition of the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show. “They would normally take the case, but they say, ‘we can’t afford it for our family because they’re coming after our bar license.’ It’s exactly what happened during McCarthyism.”
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What a week it’s been! We started off with Justice Amy Souter Barrett writing the SCOTUS ruling in Murthy v. Missouri. At issue was whether it was okay for the federal government (the FBI and related elements of the American Stasi) to pressure social media and data-hoovering companies (Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc.) to suppress opinions they didn’t like about things like COVID, the 2020 election, and the Jan 6 jamboree at the Capitol.
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The World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) avoided “evidence-based” reviews of child sex-change procedures on the advice of “social justice lawyers,” a court filing states.
Republican Attorney General Steve Marshall of Alabama filed a motion for summary judgment in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama Wednesday, seeking to beat back a challenge to Alabama’s law restricting the procedures. The Alabama attorney general’s office accused WPATH of placing “advocacy concerns” at the forefront of the creation of the organization’s “Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version 8” (SOC-8), which was based in part on the advice of the “social justice” attorneys who advised the organization to avoid seeking evidence-based recommendations.
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Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale began receiving treatment from a speech pathologist in September 2001, which is when a mental health professional first indicated to the killer’s parents that Audrey Hale suffered from autism, according to a transcript of the July 12, 2023 police interview with Ronald and Norma Hale obtained by The Tennessee Star from a source close to the investigation.
The Star previously published police documents which established Hale was a 22-year mental health patient at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) prior to her March 27, 2023 attack on the Covenant School, when she claimed the lives of three 9-year-old students and three adult staff members before she was heroically shot by two responding police officers.
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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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Attorney General Kris Mayes issued an opinion as abortion policy in the state is likely to be on the ballot in November.
The 15-week law is still on the books in Arizona, and it was signed into law by former Republican Gov. Doug Ducey in 2022. The opinion, which was sent to four Democratic state lawmakers on Thursday, is meant to explain what can be considered a “medical emergency” under the law.
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Human trafficking brings in $236 billion dollars a year, according to the International Labor Organization.
Microsoft’s 2023 revenue totaled $212 billion.
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Republican Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos will not face a recall election after the Wisconsin Elections Commission threw out more than a hundred signatures on a petition.
The WEC voted 4-2 on Thursday afternoon to reject the Vos recall petition after it found the number of signatures submitted by the deadline insufficient. Commission staff had recommended Wednesday the commission accept the petition signatures.
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In a devastating but well-deserved blow to the Department of Justice’s criminal prosecution of January 6 protesters, the U.S. Supreme Court today overturned the DOJ’s use of 18 USC 1512(c)(2), the most prevalent felony in J6 cases.
The statute, commonly referred to as “obstruction of an official proceeding,” has been applied in roughly 350 J6 cases; it also represents two of four counts in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s J6-related criminal indictment of Donald Trump in Washington.
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The New York Times’s Editorial Board released a blithering op-ed on Friday night that called for President Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race after his disastrous debate performance on Thursday.
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The Iowa Supreme Court upheld the state’s six-week abortion ban on Friday.
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Randy Barnett, the Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, said the U.S. Supreme Court’s inconsistent rulings on standing are “frustrating,” especially amid the court’s Wednesday’s ruling in Murthy v. Missouri.
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The Supreme Court on Friday ruled 6-3 that banning homeless camps in public spaces isn’t a violation of the constitution.
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Two former Uvalde school police officers on Thursday for the slow law enforcement response to the 2022 massacre at Robb Elementary school that left 19 children and two teachers dead, two Texas state government sources with knowledge of the indictment told CNN Thursday.
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Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser, must report to prison by Monday after the Supreme Court rejected his appeal on Friday.
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The journal police recovered from the vehicle Audrey Elizabeth Hale drove to the Covenant School, where she claimed the lives of six on March 27, 2023, does not contain evidence Hale harbored “resentment” the five years she spent as a student at the school.
The Tennessee Star confirmed on June 5 it obtained approximately 80 pages of Hale’s writings, in the form of Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) photos, from a source familiar with the Covenant investigation.
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A Supreme Court ruling on Friday limits the scope of obstruction charges against Jan. 6, 2021 rioters, which is the same charge former President Trump faces in his 2020 election interference case.
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The Supreme Court on Friday overturned a landmark decision that gave federal agencies broad regulatory power.
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America First Legal (AFL) filed an amicus brief Wednesday on behalf of Georgia U.S. Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-GA-11), who chairs the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, in support of Stephen K. Bannon’s emergency stay application to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking his continued release pending further appeal of his convictions.
Bannon, former chief of staff to former President Donald Trump and host of the popular show War Room, was sentenced to four months imprisonment for a 2022 conviction on contempt of Congress charges for ignoring a subpoena from the January 6 Select Committee.
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U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) joined many elected officials and conservative leaders who expressed disappointment with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Murthy v. Missouri on Wednesday.
The Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana and five individual plaintiffs brought this court case.
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The Tennessee Department of Children’s Services (DCS) has been sued by an activism group that supports disabled people, claiming that DCS has neglected and mistreated vulnerable disabled children.
“When Youth enter Defendants’ facilities, they struggle to find the basic support that every child needs and deserves, such as education, mental healthcare, medical care, and physical safety,” a lawsuit filed by Disability Rights Tennessee says. “Defendants fail to provide evidence-based services designed to treat or rehabilitate Youth. Indeed, Defendants lack any coherent strategy for rehabilitating young people in their care or addressing behavioral issues, instead defaulting to incarceration. Youth therefore have no meaningful way to progress in their treatment and rehabilitation.”
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Former Chattanooga Police Chief Celeste Murphy, who resigned from her post Wednesday, has been indicted by a Hamilton County grand jury for 17 alleged crimes, some misdemeanors and some felonies.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI), which says it began investigating Murphy in April, first announced the news of her indictment Thursday morning.
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Already accused of lying to Congress about other issues, Hunter Biden’s February impeachment inquiry testimony distancing himself from a controversial securities firm directly conflicts with evidence the FBI seized years ago, including his signature on an employment contract that made him the firm’s vice chairman.
The documents were gathered by FBI and SEC agents back in 2016 and were recently obtained by Congress and shared with Just the News, but not until after Hunter Biden had already given his deposition in February to the U.S. House as part of his father’s impeachment inquiry.
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In Kanawha County, West Virginia, Donald Ray Lantz, 63, and Jeanne Kay Whitefeather, 62, face serious charges after being charged with forcing their adopted African-American children to work in inhumane conditions and keeping them locked up in A barn.
Lantz and Whitefeather pleaded not guilty in Kanawha County court on Tuesday . The charges include trafficking of minors, use of minors in forced labor and child neglect with significant risk of causing serious injury or death.
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