Data from the Tennesse Secretary of State’s Office shows that new business filings in Tennessee for the fourth quarter of 2022 were the second highest in the state’s history.
In the fourth quarter of 2022, 16,780 new entities were filed in the state, bringing the total number of business entities operating in the Volunteer State to 485,995, according to the Tennessee Quarterly Business and Economic Indicators report.
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Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville) has laid out the next step required for Tennessee to possibly reject federal education dollars in the future. On Monday, he filed legislation (add an attachment here) that would create an 11-member task force, helmed by Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn, to study the process required for the state to forego federal funding.
The proposed committee would begin meeting monthly in August and would be expected to deliver a strategic plan to Governor Lee and the General Assembly by December 1. The legislation further requires that Commissioner Schwinn, in her role as chair, notify the US Department of Education by August 31 and advise them on Tennessee’s intent to explore the possibility of Tennessee rejecting federal funding.
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A bill to add toll lanes and fund future highway and road improvements in Tennessee passed a key Senate committee Tuesday.
The Tennessee Transportation Modernization Act passed the Finance, Ways and Means Committee with a 10-1 vote and will head to the full Senate after it goes through the Senate Calendar Committee. The House Finance, Ways and Means Committee is set to hear the companion House bill Wednesday.
Senate Bill 273 will open the door for toll lanes operated by private companies to build new lanes on the state’s highways and install tolling on those lanes. Sen. Becky Massey, R-Knoxville, presented the bill and said terms on the toll lanes will be negotiated, giving an example of an 80% to 20% split of road construction costs with a private company paying the larger portion and then getting the first dollars that come in from tolls.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the head of Institute for the American Worker, Vinnie Vernuccio to the newsmaker line to discuss how Tennessee is leading the way in right to work reform.
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U.S. Tennessee Congressman and Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security Mark Green (R-TN-07) condemned Democrats for “abruptly” deciding not to participate in this week’s field hearing in Texas on the U.S.-Mexico border crisis.
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Tennessee U.S. Congressman Tim Burchett (R-TN-02), along with Representatives Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05) and Eric Burlison (R-MO-07), arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas on Sunday night and claimed the situation is “worse than anything you see on the news.”
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Americans for Prosperity – Tennessee (AFP-TN) applauded the state Senate’s passing of a bill that requires the Tennessee Treasurer to make investment decisions based on financial factors – not based on environmental, social, or governance (ESG) factors.
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A bill to both raise the minimum Tennessee teacher salary to $50,000 by 2026-27 and eliminate the option of districts collecting Tennessee Education Association dues from paychecks passed the Senate Education Committee this week.
The bill is sponsored by State Sen. Jack Johnson, R-Franklin, but was termed an administration bill supported by Gov. Bill Lee. When asked why the two topics were combined by both a Republican and Democratic member of the committee, representatives from the Tennessee Department of Education said that was the choice of Lee.
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While Tennessee state lawmakers debate third-grade reading retention policies, and local school superintendents implement Tennessee’s new school funding formula, Tennessee’s Commissioner of Education continues to travel the country promoting Tennessee’s education initiatives.
Last quarter’s travel expenses filed with the state, reveal trips to Austin, Arlington, Boston, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, and Washington D.C. In February she was in D.C. to help the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) launch the Alliance for Learning Innovation (ALI), a bipartisan initiative co-led with Lewis-Burke Associates, LLC, to increase education research and development investments across the federal government.
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A bill making its way through the Tennessee General Assembly seeks to restore the state’s sovereignty by establishing a process for the nullification of unconstitutional federal actions.
HB0726 and companion SB1092 sponsored by Rep. Bud Hulsey (R-Kingsport) and Senator Janice Bowling (R-Tullahoma), respectively, is officially titled “Restoring State Sovereignty Through Nullification Act.”
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Saturday Night Live skewered Lt. Governor Randy McNally (R- Oak Ridge) in a devastating skit that featured his bizarre social media posts on Saturday’s broadcast.
“Sorry I’m late, I’ve spent all day printing out Mapquest directions,” the SNL actor portraying Lt. Gov. McNally says at the beginning the skit.
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State Senator Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville) introduced legislation that would exempt teachers from the state requirement of cataloging books in their personal classroom libraries in a manner that would not undermine current law as it applies to school libraries.
According to Yarbro’s legislation, if passed into law, this bill would free teachers up while creating a policy that ensures parents and legal guardians have multiple opportunities throughout the school year to view books in their student’s classroom libraries. Also, a provision prohibits teachers from knowingly or intentionally using their classroom libraries to circumvent the current law. This ensures that inappropriate books for the school’s library can not be included in classroom libraries.
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Knoxville city leaders recently announced the new multi-use stadium that will host Tennessee Smokies games and other events in the city is now estimated to cost $114 million – up from the project’s original estimate of $65 million.
According to the city, the inflated final guaranteed maximum price (GMP) for the stadium is due in part to “inflation and record-high construction costs.”
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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Davidson County Republican Party Chairman Lonnie Spivak in studio to acknowledge quick legislation passage, social media platform use, and how the Left tries to make something out of nothing.
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Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Tennessee Firearms Association Director Richard Archie to the newsmaker line to discuss protecting Tennessee’s gun owners’ Second Amendment rights as it pertains to the Bruen case.
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U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said this week that recent revelations about Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman make clear that leftists in the media and the political class should have originally scrutinized him as carefully as she did.
Blackburn was among Vindman’s most outspoken critics after he testified in Congress’s first impeachment hearings concerning then-President Donald Trump in 2019. The Ukrainian-born retired U.S. Army officer was then serving as director for European Affairs at the United States National Security Council (NSC). Trump transferred him out of that position back to an Army command post the following winter.
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Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Phil Schwenk of American Classical Education in studio to describe the difference between a public school and a public charter school.
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New legislation backed by Governor Bill Lee is going through the Tennessee General Assembly that if passed, would raise teacher salaries and end to payroll dues deductions for labor organizations.
An amendment released Monday and attached to SB 0281 will be heard at this week’s Senate Education Committee meeting.
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A Tennessee woman has been charged with Domestic Terrorism by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) for participating in the Sunday attack on Atlanta police officers and construction equipment at the proposed Atlanta Public Safety Training Center.
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In an internal email obtained by The Tennessee Star from two individuals asking for anonymity, the dean of medicine at East Tennessee State University’s Quillen College of Medicine ridiculed an article published last week highlighting how woke equity policies have infiltrated Tennessee medical schools, claiming it is a “fact” that such diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology has been “repeatedly proven to improve outcomes for our patients and make[s] us better doctors.”
William Block, M.D., dean of medicine at East Tennessee State University’s Quillen College of Medicine, sent out an email, in which he defined the words “equity” as “the quality of being fair and impartial,” and “woke” as “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).”
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Senator Joey Hensley in studio to talk about his background and growing up in Hohenwald, Tennessee.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Tennessee State Senator Joey Hensley in studio to discuss his top legislative items for the 2023 session.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti to the newsmaker line to discuss the amicus brief filed against Chinese-owned TikTok and the possibility of litigation that could outlaw its platform in the state.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Aaron Gulbransen in studio to describe the recent bills that have passed in both the State House and State Senate.
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Governor Lee is an avid advocate for literacy in Tennessee. In that spirit, he has proclaimed March 2023 as Tennessee Literacy Month, and throughout the month, the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) will be highlighting how reading is an essential skill for all students.
Commissioner Schwinn and the TDOE invite all Tennesseans to celebrate Tennessee Literacy Month, by spotlighting the Reading 360 initiative and the focus Tennessee’s educators, families, elected officials, and community partners have placed on improving literacy rates for all learners in the state.
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Forty-six attorneys general joined Tennessee in requesting that a state court force TikTok to comply with an ongoing multistate investigation into the platform’s impact on children.
Following TikTok’s failure to comply with a Request for Information (RFI) last week, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti filed a motion Monday to require the Chinese-owned social media company to preserve documents and internal messages, his office announced. Colorado and 45 other states also filed an amicus brief Monday in support of Skrmetti’s motion, arguing that TikTok’s failure to respond impedes “the State’s ability to protect their citizens.”
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Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed conservative mayoral candidate for Jackson Tennessee, Ray Condray to the newsmaker line to talk about his top priorities if elected.
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The Tennessee Department of Military announced that the state’s Army and Air National Guard will be conducting an international joint readiness exercise, named Thracian Sentry 2023, throughout the nation of Bulgaria in June.
From June 12th-30th, “more than 170 military personnel from the Bulgarian Armed Forces, the Hellenic Air Force in Greece, and the Tennessee Army and Air National Guard will focus on developing and improving skills which include combat medical care, aircraft fire rescue, joint operations, logistics and sustainment, aeromedical evacuation, and weapons training,” the Tennessee Department of Military said in a Thursday statement.
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Democrat California Governor Gavin Newsom caught the attention of Tennessee Governor Bill Lee on Twitter over the weekend after criticizing legislation recently signed into law in the Volunteer State.
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The White House condemned Tennessee Governor Bill Lee for signing two pieces of legislation this week that regulate drag shows and ban minors from getting sex-change operations.
On Thursday, Lee signed SB3/HB9, which outlaws drag shows in public spaces and restricts them to age-appropriate venues, and SB1/HB1, which prohibits minors from receiving puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and transgender surgeries.
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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, guest host Gulbransen welcomed Tennessee State Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-Williamson County) to the newsmaker line to talk about the laws Governor Bill Lee signed Thursday that protect children in Tennessee.
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Tennessee’s testing vendor, Pearson, testified on Tuesday to House Education Instruction Committee members. Pearson supplies Tennessee schools with both the state’s annual TNReady test and the recently adopted universal reading screener, AimsWeb Plus. The company took over the multi-million dollar state contract to create and administer the annual standardized test in 2020 after several years of missteps by then-vendor Queststar.
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Wednesday morning host Leahy welcomed top gov tracker Neil W. McCabe to the newsmaker line to discuss Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee creating a woke National Guard and Ron DeSantis’s legislative agenda and presidential aspirations.
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Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Tennessee attorney John Harris in studio to explain how the Bruen decision applies to the state of Tennessee’s gun laws.
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Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed the founder and president of the Tennessee Firearms Association, John Harris in studio to discuss what first prompted his interest in the Second Amendment.
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To learn more about the problems residents have encountered regarding the negative effects of social media on kids, the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office announced that it will host three town hall meetings across the state this month.
The town hall meetings come as Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti is leading a 50-state coalition in putting together a case investigating certain Big Tech companies. Skremtti told The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy that these town hall meetings will focus on “the effects of social media on kids and the mental health impact of social media on teenagers.”
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Director of Tennessee’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, Aaron Gulbransen in studio to talk about the group’s 2023 agenda.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Aaron Gulbransen in studio to discuss House Majority Leader William Lambert’s HB 48 which is on the docket for the Finance Ways and Means Committee today limiting metropolitan and municipal government members.
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Tennessee Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Bill Hagerty (R-TN) have introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate that would establish more oversight and increased transparency from the work of the World Health Organization (WHO).
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Tennessee Right to Life is calling upon state lawmakers to vote against legislation that would rewrite the Human Life Protection Act by introducing “exceptions” which, the group says, would make the law “unenforceable.”
Senate Bill 745/House Bill 883 is slated to be heard in the state Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, February 28. Its companion bill in the state House will be heard in that chamber’s Health Committee Wednesday, March 1.
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Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
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More than $31.4 million in lawsuit settlement funds have been dispersed to all of Tennessee’s 95 counties by the state’s Opioid Abatement Council, the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services announced in a recent press release.
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Even as Tennessee’s third-grade retention law moves closer to implementation, talks on improving the law continue.
The State House Education Administration Committee held a hearing this week on the third-grade retention law. The committee provided a variety of literacy experts an opportunity to share their knowledge and experience in teaching kids to read.
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On Thursday, Tennessee State Legislators heard directly from Tennessee Comptroller Jason Mumpower on issues outlined in a newly released report on Tennessee State University’s housing crisis. The report, came after his office received 14 separate complaints involving TSU’s lack of student housing. While the housing issue was the focus of the report, the comptroller also found issues in other separate areas.
The report cites the university’s lack of a sound final policy, offering several examples of leaders giving conflicting statements and several instances of them not approving funding in a timely fashion. It was determined that TSU’s lack of planning and management, especially regarding scholarship practices, exacerbated the university’s housing problem. Furthermore, it is the belief of the comptroller’s office that TSU will continue to face a housing crisis for the foreseeable future.
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A final budget proposal for how the new Tennessee Titans football stadium will be funded has been submitted to the Nashville Metro Council by Nashville Mayor John Cooper and the football team.
The legislation will be subject to three readings, beginning at the council’s next meeting on March 7th. April 4th is the earliest possible date for the agreement to be finalized.
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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed the executive director of Tennessee Independent Baptists for Religious Liberty, Aaron Snodderly in studio to talk about its upcoming event at the state capitol and fighting for religious liberty.
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The Tennessee House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday that, if enacted, would ban “adult cabaret” performances – such as drag shows – on public property or anywhere they “could be viewed by a person who is not an adult.”
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The Tennessee Comptrollers Office has released a report questioning the effectiveness of the leadership at Tennessee State University (TSU). The primary focus of the report is on the University’s recent housing controversy, and its need to explore alternative options due to overcrowding. However, the report also covers TSU’s policies around the awarding of scholarships, the governing board’s competency, and the university’s financial management.
Like many universities across the country, TSU has seen a growth in enrollments during the post-pandemic years. Coupled with an increasing interest in traditional Historic Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) from students planning to enroll in college, TCU has seen its enrollment from Fall 2021 to Fall 2022 increase by 1,141 students. Simultaneously, the university’s scholarship budget grew from $6.4 million to $28.3.
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A report obtained by The Tennessee Star, published by an organization of physicians, healthcare professionals, medical students, patients, and policymakers, reveals the pervasive infiltration of woke diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideologies in Tennessee medical school curricula and programs.
The report from Do No Harm, titled The DEI Bureaucracy in Tennessee’s Medical Schools: Woke Ideologies Are Reshaping Medical Education in the Volunteer State,” warns of vast implications for medical students and all who receive medical care in the state of Tennessee.
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A Tennessee bill barring sex change procedures for minors passed in the state Senate Thursday and is headed to Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s desk, a spokesman for the state’s Senate Republican Caucus told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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