Tennessee lawmakers on Thursday approved legislation that will allow for “blended sentences” of minors who were aged at least 16 when committing a crime, meaning some juvenile offenders will receive adult sentences for their crimes.
The Tennessee Senate on Thursday passed SB 624, sponsored by Senator Brent Taylor (R-Memphis), after the Senate version of the bill was adopted in the Tennessee State House. It now awaits a signature from Governor Bill Lee.
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The Ohio House of Representatives recently passed the Saving Ohio Communities Act which would work to combat the drug and human trafficking crises in the Buckeye State through a number of measures.
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Do not believe the White House/mainstream media-concocted narrative that the four criminal court cases—prosecuted by Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Jack Smith, and Fani Willis—were not in part coordinated, synchronized, and timed to reach their courtroom psychodramatic finales right during the 2024 campaign season.
These local, state, and federal Lilliputian agendas were designed to tie down, gag, confine, bankrupt, and destroy Trump psychologically and physically. They are the final lawfare denouement to years of extra-legal efforts to emasculate him.
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As inflation persists, Pennsylvania voters are rejecting increased government spending, according to new polling data released by the Commonwealth Foundation.
Inflation and the rising cost of living remain Pennsylvanians’ chief concerns. With more than two-thirds of voters saying that high prices are eating away at their standard of living, it’s no wonder that a plurality reports their family is worse off than two years ago.
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A coalition of major airlines has formed a group supporting a tax credit pushed by President Joe Biden that experts say could jack up food prices.
More than 40 companies, including Boeing, American Airlines, JetBlue and United as well as ethanol trade groups, are pushing the federal government to “expand” existing tax credits for “sustainable aviation fuel” (SAF) and to pass legislation to increase the fuel’s availability, Axios reported. Corn-based ethanol is a common component in SAF and experts previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation that increasing the demand for corn by incentivizing its use in jet fuel could indirectly raise food costs for Americans.
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Forget the $500 hammer. The newest report from the Government Accountability Office puts the cost of America’s ailing Lightning II F-35 joint strike fighter at an estimated $2 trillion.
Have all those zeros bought the American taxpayer an invincible flying machine?
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Tennessee school staff are now eligible to concealed carry firearms at school if they have met the criteria and gained proper approval.
The law went into effect after it was signed by Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee. Several school districts have already said they will not take part in the concealed carry option, which requires the approval of the school principal, superintendent and local law enforcement department.
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Federal data released Friday showed that inflation remains elevated. The figures came out on the heels of other data showing the U.S. Gross Domestic Product underperformed in the first quarter of this year.
Both the inflation and GDP data points raised concerns among economists and renewed criticism of President Joe Biden among Republicans.
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A bill making it a misdemeanor punishable by just less than a year of imprisonment for assisting in bringing a minor across state lines for an abortion without parental permission is headed to the desk of Gov. Bill Lee.
An amended Senate Bill 1971 was concurred by the Senate 25-4 after passing the House 74-24.
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Oil and gas groups, along with labor associations, have applauded the Ohio Senate for pushing back against the Biden administration’s pause in natural gas permitting.
Senate Resolution 121 unanimously passed with an amendment that amplifies the importance of U.S. liquefied natural gas to the economy, national security and position in the world.
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Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a measure to create a new offense of unlawful squatting following widespread reports in Georgia and beyond of squatters taking over people’s properties
House Bill 1017, the “Georgia Squatter Reform Act,” defines the crime as entering and residing on a property without an owner’s consent. Anyone cited for squatting has three business days to provide proof of their authorization to be on a property, such as a “properly executed lease or rental agreement or proof of rental payments.”
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The Virginia Board of Education recently reviewed takeaways from 15 listening sessions it hosted as part of its “Accreditation and Accountability Redesign.”
“Virginia is one of the few states that continues to combine an accreditation and accountability system,” said Todd Reid, assistant superintendent of strategic communications for the state’s Department of Education. “Combining these systems into one measurement makes it virtually impossible to really determine how the students are academically performing at that school and how the school is shaping educational outcomes.”
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The administration’s announcement refers to carbon capture as “proven and cost-effective control technologies,” but critics have argued that the technology is expensive to scale up to a degree it can have any impact on carbon dioxide emissions and will drive up energy costs.
The Biden administration finalized four rules regarding power plants Thursday. One of the Environmental Protection Agency’s rules will require all existing coal plants and new natural gas-fired power plants to implement carbon capture technology.
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U.S. annual economic growth measured just 1.6 percent in the first quarter of 2024, following a report of persistently high inflation in March of 3.5 percent year-over-year. The combination of both low growth and high inflation, in conjunction with continuously high amounts of government spending and debt, has led to signs of stagflation in the U.S. economy, which wreaked havoc on U.S. consumers throughout the 1970’s, according to experts who spoke to the DCNF.
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A high school theater troupe is staging the risque musical “Kinky Boots” just outside the nation’s capital “in collaboration” with a leading Virginia school syste’’s “Pride” programs, prompting concern and questions from some parents.
The Beyond the Page Theatre Company at West Potomac High School in Alexandria, Virginia, will perform “Kinky Boots” eight times between Thursday and May 4, according to emails obtained by The Daily Signal.
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Georgia officials are paying more than $400,000 to remove 167 variable speed limit signs in metro Atlanta.
Georgia transportation officials approved the plan for the signs on Interstate 285 in 2012 and subsequently started introducing them along the interstate’s northern portion, according to various media reports from the time. However, reports suggest that the system wasn’t activated until about October 2014.
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A bill aimed at preventing people from blocking Tennessee roadways was amended and passed by both chambers of the Tennessee Legislature before it next heads to the desk of Gov. Bill Lee along with a glut of late-session bills.
Rather than creating an increased felony charge, Senate Bill 2570 was amended to allow for lawsuits to be filed if a person or company suffers a loss because a “defendant intentionally obstructed a highway, street, or other place used for the passage of vehicles or conveyances.”
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A watchdog group filed a lawsuit against the Air Force on Wednesday for allegedly withholding records shedding light on the service’s efforts to set racial diversity quotas when taking on new officers, the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.
Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., then Air Force’s top officer, updated demographic goals for applicants to become officers in the Air Force in an August 2022 memo, calling the effort “aspirational.” The Center to Advance Security in America (CASA), a watchdog group focused on security and civil liberties, requested communications related to the memo using a federal transparency law the following year, and when the Air Force said it couldn’t find anything, CASA decided to sue, according to a copy of the filing obtained by the DCNF in advance.
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Connecticut law enforcement officials released an illegal alien convicted of sex crimes against a minor while ignoring a detainer request, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
ICE agents apprehended a 27-year-old Ecuadorian national convicted of indecent assault and second degree assault of a Connecticut child earlier this month, the agency announced in a press release on Wednesday. The agency is faulting local officials for releasing the alien, despite an immigration detainer placed on him.
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Federal regulators recently launched a lawsuit against popular convenience chain Sheetz that could have implications for whether businesses will be able to screen applicants for criminal convictions.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC) suit, announced April 18, alleged that Sheetz discriminated against minority applicants by screening all job seekers for criminal convictions, arguing that doing so disproportionally targets black, Native American and multiracial applicants. Many businesses have already stopped screening employees based on earlier guidance and pressure from regulators, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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To convince the Supreme Court that the Biden administration could use federal Medicare funding to force hospitals to perform abortions in violation of Idaho law, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar conceived and gave birth to some unusual arguments Wednesday.
She reached for a 129-year-old precedent that crippled the labor movement for decades, neutered legal obligations to the “unborn child” in the federal law that allegedly requires abortions in certain situations, and didn’t deny a Republican administration could use her rationale to functionally ban abortion and even transgender care nationwide.
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Republican secretaries of state and state legislators are pushing back against “Bidenbucks,” what call the federalization of voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts, claiming that the executive order is unlawful.
West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner and Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson, along with Republicans in the Pennsylvania legislature, are fighting President Biden’s Executive Order 14019 from March 2021, which turns federal agencies into “Get Out The Vote” (GOTV) centers across all states.
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Legislation that would fine the parents of delinquent children who commit additional crimes has the support of the Tennessee General Assembly after the State House passed it on Monday. The legislation will go to Governor Bill Lee for final approval before becoming law.
The bill, titled the Parental Accountability Act, will require juvenile courts to levy a $1,000 fine against children who are “found to be delinquent for a second or subsequent delinquent act” after already being found guilty of delinquency. Those unable to pay the fine may be granted community service.
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Governor Glenn Youngkin announced on Wednesday he will embark on a week-long “international trade mission” to Europe as lawmakers continue work on the biennial Virginia budget ahead of the May special legislative session.
The governor’s office confirmed Youngkin’s “third international trade mission” will include stops in Germany, Denmark, Finland and Swizterland between April 28 to May 3. He plans to meet with business leaders, public officials and Finnish President Alexander Stubb.
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A proposed University of Minnesota policy would require scholars to obtain permission from Native American groups when doing research involving their cultures.
However, an anthropologist has concerns about the proposal.
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Partisan divides remain for Pennsylvania’s energy future, but the state’s electric grid keeps posting drops in emissions.
PJM, the 13-state grid that stretches from Illinois to North Carolina, noted a trend that’s continued for two decades: dramatic declines in pollutants.
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South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed a measure that aims to help landowners use voluntary conservation easements to preserve working agricultural lands.
H. 3951, the Working Agricultural Lands Preservation Act, creates the Working Farmland Protection Fund within the South Carolina Conservation Bank. The measure ostensibly complements the agricultural projects the bank funds by establishing a matching grant payment for qualified projects.
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Ohio plans to spend $156 million in taxpayer funds to encourage solar power in what the state calls disadvantaged areas.
The Ohio Air Quality Development Authority and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency are offering both grants and low-cost financing for residential and community solar projects to lower electricity bills in low- to moderate-income households.
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Gov. Ron DeSantis signed two new bills Wednesday intended to strengthen Florida homes against hurricanes and other severe weather events.
DeSantis signed Senate Bill 7028, which will add another $200 million in funding for the My Safe Florida Home Program which allows homes to be assessed after major storm events and assists in improving resilience in structures.
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Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed multiple anti-human trafficking bills into law on Wednesday to hold both “traffickers and buyers” accountable.
“For years Georgia was considered a hot spot for human trafficking,” said Governor Kemp in a press release on Wednesday, “but thanks to the GRACE Commission, under the leadership of First Lady Marty Kemp, we have established Georgia as a national leader in this fight by passing legislation that cracks down on both traffickers and buyers while also, and even more importantly, empowering survivors.”
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An incident involving a physical attack by a female Secret Service agent tasked with protecting Vice President Kamala Harris is raising questions about whether the agency had thoroughly vetted her during her hiring and whether an ongoing push to increase the numbers of women in the service and boost overall workforce staff played a role in her selection.
The Secret Service agent assigned to Vice President Kamala Harris was removed from her duties Wednesday after physically attacking the commanding agent in charge and other agents trying to subdue her, according to an agency spokesman and knowledgeable Secret Service sources.
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Supporters of the legislation claim that the app poses a national security risk because it is owned by a Chinese company, and thereby could expose sensitive U.S. data to the Chinese government.
President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign said on Wednesday that it still plans to stay on the controversial app TikTok, despite the president’s signing a foreign aid package that could eventually ban it in the United States.
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The Tennessee General Assembly passed a bill sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-Franklin) on Tuesday that addresses the state’s towing, parking, and vehicle booting laws.
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President Joe Biden signed a $95 billion foreign aid bill Wednesday, ending a months-long trudge through Congress.
“It’s a good day for America, it’s a good day for Europe, and it’s a good day for world peace,” Biden said to kick off his remarks after the signing.
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Just weeks after learning Joe Biden had improperly retained government documents, his administration began working with federal bureaucrats in spring and fall 2021 to increase pressure on Donald Trump for similar issues and eventually prompt a criminal prosecution of the 45th president, according to government memos newly unsealed by a federal judge.
The correspondence, released this week by U.S. District Judge Eileen Cannon in Florida, provide the the most extensive accounting so far of how the Biden White House worked with federal bureaucrats to escalate pressure on Trump to return documents to the National Archives even as it slow-walked similar issues involving its own boss.
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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a final rule Tuesday banning noncompete agreements nationwide, affecting millions of Americans.
Regulators argue that banning noncompetes will promote competition by giving workers greater ability to switch jobs, increasing innovation and leading to more businesses being created, according to an announcement from the FTC. The FTC estimates that around 18 percent of U.S. workers, or 30 million people, are covered under a noncompete, with the new rule applying to anyone not in a senior executive role, which is defined as someone who is making more than $151,164 and in a policy-making position.
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Tennessee’s two U.S. senators were among only a handful who voted against a bill that will send nearly $100 billion to foreign nations.
Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) both voted against the Senate’s version of H.R. 815, a bill that was initially meant to help veterans receive more healthcare reimbursements but quickly ballooned into a funding package mainly for the country of Ukraine.
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The Biden administration spent taxpayer dollars meant to fund a border wall to pay for “environmental planning,” according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
At the request of Republican Reps. Jack Bergman of Michigan and Jodey Arrington of Texas, the GAO investigated whether the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) broke the law when it effectively blocked the use of taxpayer dollars to build a wall along the southern border. While GAO’s final report clears the DHS of breaking the law, it confirmed that DHS used congressionally-appropriated funds meant for the wall to pay for “environmental planning” and efforts “to remediate or mitigate environmental damage from past border wall construction.”
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Locker rooms and bathrooms at schools that accept public funding are about to become dangerous places for women — even in states that have the kind of commonsense legislation intended to keep women’s private spaces private.
Last week, the Biden administration released a host of changes to Title IX, the federal legislation that is best known for dictating equal treatment of men and women in sports and for governing the way schools handle sexual assault charges. While the administration hasn’t yet decided whether biological men who identify as female should be allowed to compete in women’s sports, it redefined “sex” as “gender identity” in almost every other context while simultaneously allowing schools to violate the due process rights of students accused of sexual assault.
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The justification for rapidly transitioning the global energy economy to renewables is to avert a catastrophic environmental crisis. It is based on the premise that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, primarily from the combustion of coal, natural gas, and oil, are altering our atmosphere, which in turn is leading to a host of negative consequences too numerous to mention.
It is possible nowadays to find almost anything, from crime and disease and mental health to species extinctions, deforestation and disappearing coral reefs, being attributed to climate change. And if you research almost anything involving the design of civilization, not just the production and consumption of energy but housing, mining, ranching, farming, shipping, transportation, waste management, water treatment, etc., the data most prominently reported are always carbon and CO2. The actual units of energy or water, or tonnage of product, or any other practical data necessary to inform management and logistics, has now become secondary. It’s all about carbon.
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An Arizona grand jury on Wednesday indicted former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, and five other former aides to former President Donald Trump on felony charges related to alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
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Democratic governors are vetoing election integrity legislation passed by Republican-led state legislatures, despite allegations, investigations, and convictions of election fraud occurring across the U.S. Those convictions require proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the crime, in fact, occurred.
Over the last few months, Democratic governors in Arizona, North Carolina, and Wisconsin have vetoed legislation that Republican-led state legislatures passed to help secure elections, arguing that their concerns are unfounded or their solutions unnecessary. However, there has been recent election fraud investigations and convictions in those states that led to the passing of the legislation.
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Tennessee Governor Bill Lee joined a coalition of 24 other governors in issuing a joint statement demanding that the Biden administration lift its pause on new liquified natural gas (LNG) export approvals.
In January, the Biden administration temporarily paused pending decisions on LNG exports to “non-FTA countries until the Department of Energy can update the underlying analyses for authorizations” in the name of “climate change.”
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The Environmental Protection Agency has awarded Michigan $159 million in solar subsidies for low-income households.
The Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund will be administered through the MI Solar for All program, which aims to increase access to affordable solar energy for eligible families.
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On Friday, the 31st anniversary of the massacre of Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, the ATF issued new regulations that make it more difficult to comply with federal laws regulating gun dealing and background checks.
Since the 1930s, federal law has required gun dealers to be registered as Federal Firearms Licensees (FFL). The requirements hinged on the meaning of “engaged in the business of” gun dealing. This language has always been ambiguous, and there has never been (even after the announcement of the new rules) a true “bright line” that distinguishes when one graduates from selling a few guns from one’s personal collection into full-fledged gun dealing.
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South Carolina state officials are determining how to proceed with a $1.8 billion balance discovered in a state account and Republican Gov. Henry McMaster has given leaders a July 1 deadline to chart a course forward.
On Oct. 31, 2023, South Carolina Comptroller General Brian Gaines sent a letter to South Carolina Treasurer Curtis Loftis, directing Loftis to research the account’s origins. It marked the start of a months-long Senate investigation that exposed what a Senate Finance Committee Constitutional Subcommittee report dubbed “financial irregularities” in the state treasurer’s office.
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A Republican Congresswoman plans to introduce a bill that would forbid the waving of foreign flags inside Congress after a viral video circulated of dozens of members waving Ukrainian flags following a vote to pass another Ukrainian aid package.
As Breitbart reports, Congresswoman Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) announced the planned legislation following the unexpected display of a foreign nation’s flag on the floor of the House, which was widely mocked on social media.
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Although the Badger State is 2000 miles away from Mexico, the fallout of Biden’s open border bleeds into the American heartland, literally so in many cases. In reality, the Biden-Harris open borders agenda transforms every jurisdiction in America into a border town, including small villages like Whitewater, Wisconsin. That previously tranquil small town of 15,000 in southern Wisconsin has been flooded with about 1,000 new migrants during Biden’s term, mostly from Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Such a mass influx places intense strain upon public resources, including schools ill-prepared to handle so many new students, many of whom do not speak English. Whitewater city council member Brienne Brown told Wisconsin PBS that “we are a poor town that has limited resources.”
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Even as Americans grow increasingly pessimistic and agitated about their personal finances, Congress is about to ask struggling families to cover the cost of more funding for Ukraine.
The $95 billion foreign aid package adopted Saturday by the House and facing near-certain passage in the Senate includes an additional $61 billion for Ukraine. Once added to the money already appropriated for Ukraine since 2022, the United States will have spent approximately $173 billion.
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A county judge dismissed 140 cases against migrants charged with rioting at the U.S. southern border, finding there was no reason to arrest them.
El Paso County Court at Law 7 Judge Ruben Morales on Monday found no probable cause from Texas Department of Public Safety state troopers to restrain the 140 migrants who were arrested earlier this month for rioting, according to the El Paso Times. The charges stemmed from an incident on April 12 when a group of migrants in El Paso’s Lower Valley cut through concertina wire at the border and then rushed into the U.S.
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