Illegal border crossings at the southwest border reached their lowest level in U.S. history over the past fiscal year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection preliminary fiscal 2026 data.
Southwest border apprehensions dropped by 95% from Oct. 1, 2025, through Sept. 30, 2026, CBP said.
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by Peter Navarro America is in the midst of a manufacturing renaissance. Unprecedented in its speed, it is driven by Trump’s tariffs and factory-targeted tax cuts. Companies can now expense 100 percent of the cost of building a factory on American soil instead of depreciating those costs over 39 years. The year you pour the concrete is the year you write it off. For a chief financial officer deciding where to build the next plant, that one provision changes the location decision. The Trump tariffs are a protective wall. President Trump has said, If you are a foreign company and you want to avoid our tariffs, build here. Invest here. Hire here. You can see the Trump manufacturing renaissance in the macro data, in the micro data, and along highways across flyover country. Start with the macro. In the Biden administration’s last two years, America lost 230,000 manufacturing jobs. Since December 2025, American manufacturers have added 72,000 jobs, with factory payrolls rising in each of the last four months through September. Through most of 2023 and 2024, the ISM Manufacturing Index languished below 50, the line between contraction and expansion. In January it climbed back above 50, where it…
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Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed Vice President JD Vance’s pledge to combat fraud in taxpayer-funded government programs, joining 25 other governors in supporting the Trump administration’s nationwide effort to crack down on waste, fraud, and abuse.
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New data appear to show that President Donald Trump’s border policies are producing a dual return that is now measurable in both lower crime and lower projected taxpayer costs, as a Council of Economic Advisers analysis warns that Democratic proposals for mass amnesty would reverse those gains and impose $49 trillion in new burdens over a decade.
The report titled, “The Real Cost of Socialism in America,” examines the policy touted by the Democratic Socialists of America, and details the costs for American taxpayers associated with the far-left platform.
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The Biden administration’s “Censorship-Industrial Complex” had grander ambitions than controlling just what Americans said about COVID-19, new documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation show.
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy — who served as the “nation’s doctor” shoulder-to-shoulder with Anthony Fauci during the COVID pandemic — sought to apply “maximum pressure” on social media companies like Meta and to broadly manage “health and medical misinformation” across American society.
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More than one in five Americans financing new cars are now committing to monthly payments of at least $1,000, a record as buyers take on larger loans to afford increasingly expensive vehicles, according to an October report from automotive research firm Edmunds.
The growing financial burden comes as Americans owe more than $1.7 trillion on their vehicles, exceeding the nation’s outstanding credit card debt. Meanwhile, longer repayment periods and mounting delinquencies among higher-risk borrowers are raising concerns about whether consumers can continue managing their auto debt.
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First lady Melania Trump on Monday appeared with President Donald Trump to unveil the White House’s women’s health initiatives, which creates health division for them within the National Institutes of Health.
“This is a transformative moment for women in America,” she said at the Rose Garden signing. “The ‘Advancing Women’s Health to Improve Outcomes in All Phases of Life’ Executive Order establishes a new standard for women’s health in America.”
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Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks, will again face the potential for the death penalty after the Supreme Court denied his appeal Monday.
Justices rejected Mohammed’s bid to reinstate a plea agreement that allowed him and two co-defendants who helped plot the attack to avoid the death penalty. Mohammed and the co-defendants are scheduled to stand trial before a military court beginning June 5, 2028.
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SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said on Monday he’ll give every child a share in the company in 2027.
“This will be the first of many,” Musk said in the post on X.
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U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth visited the University of Tennessee (UT) in Knoxville on Saturday to meet with Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) cadets and administer the enlistment oath to new recruits before the Volunteers defeated the Alabama Crimson Tide at Neyland Stadium.
Hegseth’s visit was part of his “Send Me Tour,” a military outreach and recruitment initiative launched in September.
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The NFL still plans to hold a football game in France despite civil unrest.
This upcoming Sunday, the New Orleans Saints and Pittsburgh Steelers are scheduled to play in Paris at the Stade de France, which seats an estimated 80,000. The game will mark the NFL’s first game in France.
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The Department of Justice on Monday announced a string of arrests related to alleged voter fraud in California.
“This causes real damage to real elections and real damage to American citizens,” a DOJ official said in a press conference. The DOJ also announced that it was bringing charges against 28 noncitizens illegally registered to vote, including some who did cast votes.
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The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday granted a request by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to vacate a lower court decision that threatened construction of a $2.5 billion natural gas power plant in August, determining the publicly owned utility was likely to prevail in its appeal.
Proposed in 2024 to replace the TVA’s coal plant in Kingston, U.S. District Judge Curtis Collier, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, ruled in August that TVA failed to consider a legally sufficient number of alternatives, and determined TVA improperly committed to natural gas by agreeing to build a pipeline for the new facility.
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With more than 13,500 arrests reported since it deployed last year, U.S. Attorney Todd Blanche said the Memphis Safe Task Force (MSTF) would remain in the city, calling it an investment by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and other federal agencies that compose the task force.
Blanche made the comments at a Friday roundtable event held by the DOJ to mark the one-year anniversary of the task force, which President Donald Trump authorized in September 2025 and which was fully deployed by October 2025.
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Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, said independent gubernatorial candidate David Hatley has not explained why he omitted a Virginia misdemeanor conviction from his autobiography, Tested in Tennessee, despite detailing a separate federal fraud conviction in the book.
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American education has never lacked new ideas. Each generation brings reforms, teaching methods, or programs that promise better results. Some help. Others waste time, money, and effort.
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Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, one of the Democrats’ star witnesses in their first impeachment of Donald Trump, received repeated briefings, emails and memos related to the Ukrainian energy company that employed Hunter Biden, according to declassified documents that directly conflict with her and other witnesses’ testimony in the failed bid seven years ago to remove the president from office.
The documents released Friday by the White House Government Transparency Task Force show Yovanovitch and her aides were apprised of corruption concerns about Burisma Holdings, efforts by the company to repair its image or curry U.S. favor that would not “pass The Washington Post sniff test” and even a bid to get the Trump administration to approve a U.S. visa for Burisma’s controversial owner Mykola Zlochevsky, who was banned from American travel.
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The coalition that once convinced Silicon Valley to police your speech now wants to use the midterm elections as a launchpad to reimpose a Trust and Safety regime on Americans.
This time, however, leftist organizers are not pressuring social media companies like Meta and X. They’ve pivoted to “AI-safety.”
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A federal judge on Thursday dissolved an order blocking Tennessee’s state takeover of Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS), clearing the way for an appointed oversight board to assume control of major district decisions after more than three months of legal delays.
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State Representative Justin Pearson (D-Memphis), the Democrats’ nominee for Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District, on Thursday announced that he filed a lawsuit against the City of Memphis after he was prohibited from attending two Memphis City Council meetings following the protest that caused its October 6 meeting to be ended prematurely amid protests.
Justin Pearson announced the lawsuit in a post to social media, revealing his co-plaintiffs include his mother, Dr. Kimberly Owens-Pearson, as well as his brother KeShaun Pearson. Justin Pearson previously launched the Memphis Community Against Pollution (MCAP) activist group, which is now led by KeShaun Pearson.
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John J. Griffin, 16, has been identified as the gunman in Thursday’s deadly school shooting at a Bend, Oregon, elementary school.
Three senior law enforcement officials identified the shooter who killed four people at Silver Rail Elementary, NBC News reported.
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A Virginia jury found transgender former Loudoun County substitute teacher Hadyn Dollery guilty on “two counts of threatening to injure or kill a person, one count of making threats on school grounds, and one count of threatening to damage a building,” charges that bring up to 25 years in prison combined, Loudoun Now reported.
Prosecutors showed evidence that 19-year-old Dollery, able to teach under a state law requiring only a high school diploma to be a substitute, threatened a “murder spree” at John Champe High School, where Dollery taught at the time, after the teacher’s student boyfriend broke up with him.
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Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett on Thursday confirmed a “suspicious package” addressed to the Division of Elections Office was “intercepted,” adding Tennessee to the list of at least seven states where officials have reported similar incidents.
“We can confirm that a suspicious package addressed to the State Division of Elections Office was intercepted,” Hargett said in a social media post he said he published in response to inquiries from both Tennessee and national media outlets.
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U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche visited Memphis on Friday to highlight the Memphis Safe Task Force’s results, crediting the multi-agency operation with reducing overall crime by 34 percent from the previous year.
Blanche said the task force, which launched in September 2025, has helped drive a 33 percent decline in murders, a 25 percent drop in sexual assaults, a 54 percent decrease in motor vehicle thefts, and a 40 percent decline in robberies.
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has moved $1 million to the campaign of Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, the New York Times reported Friday.
“I’m not waking up on November 4th wishing I did more to combat the smears aimed at Abdul. I’m leaving everything I can on the field,” she told the outlet.
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The NCAA sued Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Friday over an executive order he signed that ignored newly established eligibility rules.
NCAA President Charlie Baker said DeWine lacks the authority to “permit Ohio colleges and universities to disregard the rules they have agreed to follow by rostering ineligible student-athletes.
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A memoir released earlier this year by Tennessee independent gubernatorial candidate David Hatley reveals his federal fraud conviction, which stemmed from a scheme in which he wrote checks to himself using an old checkbook he said he found in a condominium.
While revealing the federal crime, Hatley’s book does not disclose a second conviction he received that same year after pleading guilty to misdemeanor petit larceny in a Virginia case that began with felony indictments, according to court records obtained by The Tennessee Star.
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Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is no longer holding the position of Special Envoy to the Shield of Americas coalition.
Though the specific reasoning appears to be unclear, Noem will no longer fill the role of Special Envoy to the Shield of the Americas. However, she will still conduct regional diplomatic business without the Special Envoy title, CBS reports.
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A federal judge on Thursday threw out former CIA Director John Brennan’s lawsuit, which sought to compel the Trump administration to preserve records for his defense against potential criminal charges, ruling that he lacked standing.
The Department of Justice is investigating claims that Brennan and other national security officials conspired to undermine President Donald Trump.
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Less than a month after an injunction freezing Tennessee’s ability to regulate sports-event contracts on prediction markets was dissolved by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, a new lawsuit by another prediction market company was filed against the Volunteer State on Tuesday.
The lawsuit was filed by Underdog Exchange DCM, Inc. and UDM, LLC, which operate the prediction market business of Underdog Sports Holdings, Inc., a company that British financial services firm IG Group agreed to acquire for up to $1.3 billion in July.
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The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Tennessee on Wednesday reported that three tax fraudsters had entered guilty pleas in cases involving a total of $37 million. The three cases reported in West Tennessee are part of over $490 million in tax fraud discovered across the country through the crackdown launched in April by President Donald Trump and led by Vice President JD Vance.
All three of the West Tennessee cases profiled by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) occurred in Memphis. The latest guilty plea came in the case against Lynette Hogue, a 45-year-old Memphis woman, who the DOJ said admitted her guilt on Tuesday to preparing false and fraudulent income tax returns ad failing to file her own tax returns.
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White House press secretary Katie Zacharia was fired after one tumultuous week on the job, the New York Times reported, citing “three people familiar with the matter.”
Earlier in the day, President Donald Trump defended her, saying that the media had treated her unfairly, but said he would leave the decision about her professional future to her.
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Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett addressed false claims circulating on social media about ballot disqualification and confirmed that a suspicious package addressed to the state’s Division of Elections Office was intercepted as early voting began Wednesday ahead of the November 3 general election.
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Tea Party Nation founder and former prosecutor Judson Phillips said the White House failed to properly vet press secretary Katie Zacharia after she acknowledged she never passed a state bar exam, arguing that the controversy has undermined her credibility and could become a lasting problem for President Donald Trump’s administration.
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Tennessee State Rep. Scott Cepicky (R-Culleoka) warned that independent gubernatorial candidate David Hatley’s candidacy could help Democrat Jerri Green surge in the governor’s race by siphoning votes from Republican nominee U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), arguing that Hatley’s past record makes him unfit to lead the state.
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Rep. Ilhan Omar’s past scandals are returning to haunt the Minnesota Democrat with a vengeance as Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) expands its probe, zeroing in on whether the lawmaker misrepresented her date of birth, possibly calling into question her naturalization as a citizen.
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Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley on Wednesday revealed the Biden Justice Department and Special Counsel Jack Smith obtained detailed donor data and voter information on over 639,000 individuals during the Arctic Frost investigation.
The types of information contained in the spreadsheet include: names, dates of birth, addresses, email addresses, party affiliation, places of employment, donation amounts, credit card information, and donor habits.
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Americans are well aware of the issues that stem from allowing large numbers of illegal aliens into the United States, from cheap foreign labor to abuse of welfare systems and legitimate concerns about illegal voting. But there is another glaring issue that illegal immigration causes, and President Donald Trump and his administration are proposing a way to fix it before 2030.
Illegal aliens are currently counted in the United States Census — the census count that is used to form a population baseline for each state and allocate U.S. House seats and Electoral College power among the 50 states every ten years.
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The Educational Oversight Board appointed to take control over Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) told U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw on Wednesday that its chairman will testify that the board is “ready, willing, and able” to begin its duties under the Public School Accountability Act, Tennessee’s new law that allows the state to appoint an oversight board to take over school districts under specific conditions.
U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, previously issued an order on July 1 that instructed Tennessee to maintain the status quo from prior to the passage of the law, but during a hearing earlier this month reportedly said he never intended his order to prevent the board from meeting, and signaled that he would dissolve the order as soon as the board confirmed it was ready to meet.
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President Donald Trump signed a bipartisan bill led by U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) into law to promote music tourism across the United States, including Tennessee’s historic music destinations.
Blackburn’s American Music Tourism Act, filed as S. 195, will direct the U.S. Department of Commerce to identify and promote locations and events important to music tourism, with the goal of increasing domestic and international travel to those destinations.
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U.S. Representative Matt Van Epps (R-TN-07) launched a new reelection ad Wednesday highlighting his perfect congressional voting record and military service as early voting opens across Tennessee ahead of the November 3 general election.
The ad, titled “Mission,” connects Van Epps’ experience as a combat veteran and Army helicopter pilot with his approach to serving in Congress, emphasizing his record of attending every House vote since taking office.
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The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), an independent bureau within the U.S. Treasury Department, on Wednesday released a 47-page report on “debanking activities” by nine of the country’s largest banks, revealing each of them established policies between 2020 and 2025 that resulted in Americans losing or being denied access to financial services “because of their political or religious beliefs or lawful business activities.”
The report states that banks began reconsidering their political debanking policies after states, including Tennessee, Florida, and Idaho, enacted “fair access” laws that prohibit financial institutions from debanking customers based on their political or religious beliefs.
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Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s staff reportedly got her birthdate changed in public records shortly after she was elected to the House in 2018, which would make her a year younger than previously documented, according to records.
The revelation comes amid concerns that the congresswoman misrepresented her age to secure American citizenship. Omar has claimed that she was 17-years-old when she became a citizen in 2000, but previous records noted that she was born in 1981, meaning she was either 18 or 19 when she became a U.S. citizen.
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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday unveiled a series of proposals to tighten eligibility for a tax credit aimed at helping Americans pay for health care.
The proposal would raise verification requirements for the Premium Tax Credit (PTC), with the aim of ensuring that the credit only goes to Americans.
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Authorities arrested a Chinese national studying at a U.S. university after she allegedly poisoned a rival classmate’s cup of tea and then attempted to flee the country.
Prosecutors allege that University of Wyoming microbiology graduate student Aili Wang, 32, was traveling back to China when she was arrested on Oct. 6 at the Los Angeles International Airport, the Associated Press reported Tuesday. At the time of her arrest Wang was in possession of laptops, electronic storage devices and unknown documents.
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Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday announced the purge of 189,000 subsidized Medicare, Medicaid, or CHIP enrollments for deceased persons or duplicate enrollees, saying the move would stop more than $1 billion in erroneous payments to insurance companies annually.
“In 2026, CMS [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] identified 189,000 subsidized enrollments involving duplicate Medicare, Medicaid, or CHIP coverage on record showing the enrollee has died,” he said in a press conference. “CMS acted to remove improper subsidies in all these cases.”
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When a Tennessee adult buys a hemp seltzer at the store today, they show their ID, choose a can from a brand registered with the state Department of Revenue and pay a price that includes a tax of $4.40 per gallon.
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SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey expressed an “openness” to College Football Playoff (CFP) expansion.
At SEC Tipoff, a media event for the upcoming conference’s college basketball season, Sankey said the conference has “never said” the expansion “won’t happen” or that it “won’t be a point of support.”
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The Justice Department on Monday announced the arrest of 16 individuals across nine states for alleged election crimes, including voting by illegal immigrants and fraudulent voter registration.
Pennsylvania had the most arrests in this nationwide sweep, with four people arrested: Hacina Saadi, a 48-year-old illegal immigrant from France; Jamil Ahmad, a 50-year-old lawful permanent resident from Pakistan; Nighat Jamil, a 47-year-old lawful permanent resident from Pakistan; and Paulo Silva, a 54-year-old lawful permanent resident from Portugal. All were charged with illegally voting in the 2024 general election.
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Federal regulators rejected a plan to force data centers and other major electricity users to cut power during grid emergencies, complicating efforts to manage the centers’ surging artificial intelligence-driven demand.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) rejected portions of PJM Interconnection‘s proposal on Oct. 9 that would have allowed the grid operator to require certain large electricity customers to reduce consumption during emergencies if they failed to secure additional power generation. Regulators approved a separate measure allowing PJM to track major electricity users as demand threatens to outpace available supply.
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