Georgia reported decreased monthly tax collections for the fourth consecutive month.
Georgia’s net tax collections of more than $2.8 billion in June decreased 0.4 percent, or $10.9 million, compared to a year ago. The Peach State reported decreased tax collections in March, April and May.
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The city of Detroit is targeting $95 million of federal money to take care of blight.
That’s in addition to the city’s $250 million bond that voters approved in 2020 to also address blight remediation. The city estimates it has 16,000 vacant homes in the city limits.
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Ron DeSantis, Florida governor and presidential candidate, addressed approximately 1,850 attendees as the keynote speaker for the Tennessee Republican Party’s 46th annual Statesmen’s Dinner on Saturday at the Music City Center in Nashville.
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He’s young. He’s successful. And he’s extremely confident. Some might say cocky.
Rising in the Republican presidential primary polls, Ohio biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy is not only predicting he will be the GOP candidate for president in 2024, he’ll force Democrats to drive President Joe Biden out of the race.
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Former Vice President Mike Pence has long been a standard bearer for the evangelical Christian movement in American politics.
On Friday, before a gathering of hundreds of Christian faithful at the 12th Annual Family Leadership Summit in downtown Des Moines, it felt, to some degree, that the GOP candidate for president had lost a good portion of that faithful base.
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U.S Senator Tim Scott said there shouldn’t be American military “boots on the ground” in Ukraine. But the South Carolina Republican campaigning for president remains supportive in the U.S. providing the weapons and resources Ukraine needs to push back Russia’s invasion.
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson hit Scott with tough questions on Ukraine, the border and more at Friday’s Family Leadership Summit, which included a cattle call of GOP presidential candidates.
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The Franklin soccer coach who has been charged with rape and sexual exploitation of a minor is an illegal alien, according to new reports.
WZTV reported Wednesday that Camilo Hurtado Campos was unlawfully present in the United States, and that he has been here illegally for at least 20 years.
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Only 19% of Americans are interested in purchasing an electric vehicle, while Tennessee makes a massive investment in a Ford plant that will produce electric vehicle batteries.
The General Assembly in 2021 passed a law to spend $884 million in order to push the Ford deal through.
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An annual report issued this week by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) shows that violent crimes are decreasing.
The 437 page report compiles data submitted to TBI from local law enforcement agencies through the Tennessee Incident-Based Reporting System (TIBRS).
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Despite the fact that nearly all elected Republicans who hold federal office in Tennessee have endorsed former President Donald Trump in his 2024 reelection bid, the Tennessee Republican Party (TNGOP) has invited Trump’s main primary opponent to speak at its annual Statesman’s Dinner.
The dinner, which will be held at the end of July, will feature Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) as the keynote speaker, according to a video posted by the TNGOP on its website.
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Authorities in Tennessee do not know exactly which soccer teams or clubs alleged child rapist Camilo Hurtado Campos, but are urging parents to contact them if they believe their child may have had contact with the disgraced coach.
“I don’t know and quite honestly, we’re trying not to be disarming to parents if they don’t hear a club named that their kids were affiliated with,” Franklin Police Public Information Officer Lt. Charles Warner told The Tennessee Star when asked whether authorities had identified which team or teams Campos coached. “We’re urging parents whose kids had contact with Campos, regardless of any program or location to contact us.”
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U.S. Senator JD Vance (R-OH) is urging Ivy League universities and two Ohio colleges to preserve admission records following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling overturning affirmative action.
On June 29th the U.S. Supreme Court decided in the case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that declaring racial preferences in college admissions is unconstitutional.
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Georgia’s Qualified Education Expense Tax Credit (QEEC) could save the state and local school districts millions of dollars in expenses.
However, the Georgia Department of Audits & Accounts could not determine the exact fiscal impact because the “switcher rate” — the number of scholarship recipients who would have attended a public school without a Student Scholarship Organizations scholarship — is unknown.
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Democrat Governor Tony Evers’ “creative” partial veto that boosts public education spending for the next four centuries “proves he’s a liar,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said during a Sunday morning interview.
The Rochester Republican said the governor’s “unprecedented” veto trick leaves Republicans — and taxpayers who would be on the hook for 400-plus years of spending increases — with “little option” but to take the governor to court.
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A U.S. District court judge has blocked a Florida election law that criminalized noncitizens from collecting voter registration forms, a statute some say was aimed at Hispanic migrants and asylum seekers.
The law, which was overruled last week would have gone into effect this month, resulting in fines for as much as $50,000 against non-citizens “collecting or handling” voter registration forms.
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Gov. Josh Shapiro touted federal money for broadband expansion in western Pennsylvania on Friday, arguing for bipartisanship and efficient governance.
“I wanted to be here today because Beaver County’s got its act together,” Shapiro said. “Folks want people in government — regardless of what party they’re in — to find ways to work together, to come together and actually solve problems, and to get stuff done.”
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Minnesota lawmakers say a $352 million mistake in a recently passed tax bill shouldn’t affect residents, as long as they update the tax bill in the 2024 legislative session.
In 2019, lawmakers doubled the standard deduction and set the amount for a married joint filer at $24,400 and a single filer at $12,200. The law directs the commissioner for each subsequent year to adjust those amounts for inflation. After four years of inflation adjustments, the 2023 standard deduction for a married joint filer is $27,650 and $13,825 for a single filer.
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When Allie Herkenroder applied for the digital equity director position of Michigan’s High-Speed Internet Office (MIHI), she admitted no experience working in state government, broadband, or as an ombudsman.
She still got the job.
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July is about to heat up on the presidential campaign trail in the first-in-the-nation caucus state.
On Tuesday, Ohio businessman and top tier Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will hold a press conference at 10:30 a.m. on the steps of the Iowa State Capitol.
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The Virginia Board of Education took another step in its efforts toward improving students’ literacy when it approved a new list of core instructional programs for grades K-3 on Thursday.
“I believe that the Board of Education’s vote to approve these research-based literacy programs will prove to be one of the most consequential actions of my seven years on the board,” said Board President Dan Gecker.
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GOP presidential hopeful Nikki Haley says her campaign has banked $15.6 million since she launched her bid for the White House in February.
The former South Carolina governor on Monday announced that her campaign raised $7.3 million in the second quarter of the year, which wrapped up June 30.
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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathon Skrmetti joined The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on the newsmaker line Monday to discuss the nation’s first-ever decision by the Court to uphold a prohibition on medical procedures performed on minors.
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Tennessee should move forward on plans to pursue a passenger rail line from Nashville to Chattanooga to Atlanta, according to a new report from the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations.
The TACIR report asked the Tennessee Department of Transportation to move forward to determine the cost and engineering of adding that rail service.
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A Republican Ohio lawmaker introduced a bill into the Ohio House of Representatives to reduce the size of Ohio’s State Board of Education and remove governor-appointed positions.
House Bill (HB) 235 sponsored by State Representative Sarah Fowler Arthur (R-Ashtabula), and former state education board member, looks to downsize the 19-member Board of Education to fifteen members by 2027. It also aims to remove the eight positions appointed to the Board of Education by the governor beginning in 2025.
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The Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice should improve its data collection and analysis and increase its management oversight.
Those are among the findings of a new audit from the Georgia Department of Audits & Accounts.
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Despite the vibe you may be getting from the national media, the presidential election is still more than a year away. But that doesn’t mean voters won’t have a ballot to fill out this November.
The 2023 election cycle in Minnesota won’t be eventful for most voters. There are no legislative seats or congressional or statewide offices on the ballot. But school district communities representing about 1.7 million residents across the state — which combined, steward well over $4 billion in tax dollars — will be holding elections this fall.
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Arizona, known from its beginnings as the “Desert State,” has long sought new ways to provide water for its residents. But a roughly 19-year drought has created a host of new, urgent problems including how to regulate foreign and out-of-state businesses trying to capitalize on the demand.
“Eighty percent of our water is for agriculture, and a lot of it is unregulated,” community organizer Jacob Martinez recently told Just the News. “A California company can come into Arizona, put in a well and grow crops and go back to California and reap the benefits of that. We have no regulations, which is a problem.”
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Miami-based agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, working with Border Patrol agents, arrested 18 criminal foreign nationals who they say pose a danger to their communities.
The four-day operation was conducted from June 26 to June 30 by officials working in ICE ERO Miami Stuart suboffice. The majority arrested are Guatemalan citizens, followed by citizens of Mexico, Honduras, Brazil and Saint Lucia.
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Tennessee had a record number of business formations and renewals in the first quarter of 2023.
There were 21,516 new business filings and 199,309 businesses firms renewed their active status by filing annual reports, the largest totals in the 25-year history of the Quarterly Business and Economic Indicators report from the Secretary of State’s Office and University of Tennessee’s Boyd Center.
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Three of Virginia’s National Guard units will lead Joint Task Force Cardinal as part of Operation Lone Star to help secure the southern border.
Troops will be deployed from the Guard’s Portsmouth-based 2nd Squadron, 183rd Cavalry Regiment and the 116th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, with assistance from Army and Air National Guard units from Lynchburg, Winchester, Fredericksburg, Danville, Staunton and Hampton.
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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Growing Michigan Together Council includes one person under 40 and no one from the Upper Peninsula.
The Council will advise Whitmer on policies to reach a population goal for 2050 and prepare Michigan’s workforce for in-demand jobs and emerging industries. The council will develop long-term, sustainable transportation, and water infrastructure funding solutions.
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Connecticut is coming up short on revenue from a controversial highway tax on truckers, with the state bringing in less money than expected during the first few months of the new levy.
Figures from the state Department of Revenue Services show the Highway Use Tax generated only $18.6 million from January through April, roughly half of what state budget writers had anticipated.
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Dane County’s public health managers have agreed to drop the COVID-era tickets against a local dance studio over its Nutcracker production.
Public Health Madison & Dane County fined A Leap Above dance studio in Oregon, Wisc., $24,000 for 119 counts of violating local pandemic protocols for its 2020 Christmas time performance.
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A state-backed hydroelectric plant is on track to come to the former steel town of Braddock, but permitting delays have slowed the project and driven up costs.
The Thursday meeting of the Pennsylvania Energy Development Authority, an independent public financing entity that funds “clean, advanced energy projects,” featured upbeat officials on the success of their funded projects, but also noted the slow pace of bureaucracy can slow down a project.
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A poll published last week by German-owned Politico Magazine insists that “most Americans — including a large number of Republicans … “ agree that the former President Donald Trump’s trial on federal charges he mishandled classified documents should take place before the Republican Party primary.
And nearly half, according to the Ipsos poll of more than 1,000 “adults,” believe Trump is guilty.
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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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