Thales Academy, a college preparatory network of Pre-K-12 independent schools, announced Friday that it is offering a significant tuition reduction for its new campus in Franklin, Tennessee.
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Gov. Mike DeWine announced Thursday he will extended – both in duration and scope – Ohio’s “Stay-at-Home” Order until May 1. The original order was set to expire on Monday, April 6.. Ohio Department of Health Director Amy Acton signed the updated order on Thursday. The new stay-at-home measure will take effect midnight on Monday. “We understand that this is tough – it is very difficult. But, I would not be making these decisions if it wasn’t a matter of life and death,” said Governor DeWine. “We have to keep this monster down. It’s not dead – it’s very much alive.” Ohio is one of 38 states that are currently on a stay-at-home order, according to The Hill. DeWine has been one of the most aggressive governors in combating the Chinese virus. In March, the governor closed down schools, banned mass gatherings, shut down restaurants and delayed Ohio’s presidential primary. With the stay-at-home order extension, unemployment numbers will likely increase during April. In the last two weeks, 468,414 Ohioans have filed for unemployment benefits, which is more than all of the 364,603 jobless claims that happened in 2019. To help Ohioans through the coronavirus pandemic, DeWine created an economic…
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Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Thursday that she will form a bipartisan select committee on the coronavirus crisis to oversee the spending of $2.3 trillion that Congress has approved to respond to the pandemic.
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Mike Rowe took a swipe at the rising cost of college tuition during an interview Tuesday with Fox News, asking, “what are we paying for?”
Calling what students are paying to attend college courses “somewhere between egregious and obscene,” the host of “Dirty Jobs” said that he predicts “one of the silver linings” from the coronavirus pandemic will be Americans’ commitments “truly to learning” and that the crisis could “completely redefine” how people learn moving forward.
Rowe told viewers that just the week before, he watched an online lecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – Leahy was joined on the newsmakers line by all-star panelist Dr. Carol Swain.
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Unemployment claims in Tennessee and nationwide continue to skyrocket because of the Chinese COVID-19 shutdown of businesses.
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Former Ambassador to Japan and TN Senate Candidate Bill Hagerty joined The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – Thursday morning on the newsmakers line.
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Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon said his office is exploring a number of “pandemic election options,” including conducting the entire presidential election by mail-in ballots.
“The current public health crisis has been a serious test for all Minnesotans. It has also been a test for our democracy. I’ve heard from many Minnesotans who wonder how, or even if, we will vote in this high-stakes election year,” Simon said in a statement released last week.
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State Senator Karin Housley (R-St. Mary’s Point) said the Minnesota Department of Health’s decision to withhold information about the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on nursing homes “only brings unnecessary grief and frustration to many Minnesota families.”
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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has declared of a state of disaster for Michigan as well as extended the state of emergency, she announced on Wednesday.
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Michigan schools will be closed for the rest of the school year or until coronavirus restrictions are lifted, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced on Thursday. Distance learning will take place instead, she said.
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Gov. Bill Lee announced Thursday that he will sign an executive order requiring Tennesseans to stay home unless they are engaging in essential activities.
Lee issued an executive order Monday that urged, but didn’t require, residents to stay at home to help slow the spread of the coronavirus. Under his new order, staying at home isn’t “an option – it’s a requirement for the swift defeat of COVID-19,” said Lee.
The governor said data from the Tennessee Department of Transportation indicated that travel started trending upwards again on March 30 after traffic patterns showed a steep drop-off in vehicle movement between March 13 and 29.
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The federal government has granted more flexibility to TennCare – Tennessee’s state Medicaid program – to help the state handle the COVID-19 outbreak.
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U.S. Rep. Mark Green, (R-TN-07) has scheduled a second coronavirus tele-town hall for later this week.
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Given the spread of misinformation about Covid-19, Just Facts is providing a trove of rigorously documented facts about this disease and its impacts. These include some vital facts that have been absent or misreported in much of the media’s coverage of this issue. This research also includes a groundbreaking study to determine the lethality of Covid-19 based on the most comprehensive available measure: the total years of life that it will rob from people.
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Grants are now available for small businesses looking to retool their companies to help manufacture goods in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation announced on Wednesday.
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House Republican leaders sent a letter Friday to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz asking him to clarify the status of surgical abortions during the coronavirus pandemic.
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A new model produced by the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) predicts that 159 people will die in a single day at the peak of the coronavirus pandemic in Tennessee.
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On March 12, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the human coronavirus a pandemic, which is defined as a global outbreak of a disease. The existence of the coronavirus has created a worldwide panic. Among the things I don’t understand: why this virus, compared with others before it, warrants shutting down the United States and killing its economy. Our nation survived 9/11, Swine Flu, and H1N1. But coronavirus (COVID-19), together with the politics behind it, threatens to annihilate us.
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On Tuesday’s Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – Michael Patrick Leahy spoke with special guest former Breitbart colleague and Washington journalist Neil McCabe.
During the third hour, McCabe talked about how he felt President Trump was in a position where he had to use a combination of his gut and statistics most of which are in use from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Washington State University’s funded IHME. Nearing the end of the segment, Leahy and McCabe discussed whether the 2020 presidential election was a topic of discussion in Washington circles and pondered an internal DNC coup by Cuomo.
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Whole Foods workers across the country called in sick Tuesday as part of a national day of protest against the work conditions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic.
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A top Chinese health official said Wednesday that the government will begin counting coronavirus patients without symptoms in its official tally of cases of the virus, in what is a tacit acknowledgement that Beijing has underreported data on the pandemic.
China’s National Health Commission disclosed that the government is monitoring 1,541 people who have tested positive for coronavirus but have no symptoms.
Chang Jile, the head of the health agency, said at a press conference in Wuhan that the government will start reporting asymptomatic patient numbers Wednesday.
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The Beacon Center of Tennessee released a set of 20 policy solutions focused on what policies the state should and shouldn’t enact moving forward when it deals with COVID-19.
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A new epidemiological model cited by White House officials shows that Ohio hospitals have sufficient regular hospital bed and ICU hospital bed capacity for when the peak of the coronavirus hits the state in the upcoming weeks. According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) model, Ohio is projected to see its resources peak on April 20. The model shows that the Buckeye State will need 5,609 beds; however, the state presently has 14,290 beds available, according to the study. Furthermore, Ohio is expected to need 854 intensive care unit (ICU) beds by April 20, the date the model projects the pandemic will peak in Ohio, but it already has 12,238 ICU beds ready to go. In terms of deaths, the IHME model predicts Ohio will have 1,672 by August 4. As of Tuesday, Ohio Department of Health (ODH) numbers show 55 people have died from the coronavirus. Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force adviser, said recently IHME model, which is funded by the University of Washington and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, shows projections very much in line with how the federal government viewed the situation. Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci recently…
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President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign digitized its entire field operation within 24 hours after staffers were forced to work from home because of the coronavirus pandemic, sources told The Minnesota Sun.
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The Ohio Department of Health is extending its order to keep schools closed through the end of April, Gov. Mike DeWine announced.
The previous order was to expire on April 3, but the new directive extends the closure through May 1.
The decision is the latest action to slow the spread of COVID-19 in Ohio, where there are 1,933 confirmed cases and 39 deaths.
“There is the real possibility that our schools could stay closed longer than this, but we want to give parents and teachers as much notice and flexibility as we can,” DeWine said in a news release. “Schools should continue to do what they’re doing now – providing the best remote learning that they can, serving meals to students in new ways, and planning for what the rest of the year may look like.”
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State Rep. Triston Cole (R-Mancelona) asked Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to allow some nonessential businesses to reopen if they follow social distancing guidelines.
Cole sent a letter to Whitmer on Monday, claiming her stay-at-home order hurt small businesses, including those in the construction and landscaping industry. Both of those industries, said Cole, allowed workers to work safely while staying apart from each other.
“I certainly understand where our governor is coming from. Public safety must always be the main priority,” Cole said in a statement. “However, keeping people employed and businesses operating must also be a priority.”
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The Michigan Department of Natural Resources announced that it has closed Tippy Dam Recreation Area in Manistee County after a surge in visitors led to instances of improper social distancing and nonessential travel.
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Nashville Mayor John Cooper announced during his virtual State of the Metro address Tuesday that he plans to “sharply increase” the city’s property tax rate.
Cooper said the Nashville Finance Department predicts that revenue from sales taxes and other activities will be down between $200 and $300 million because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Because of the unusual circumstances, Cooper didn’t have a budget proposal to discuss but said the budget ordinance he plans to present to the Metro Council in April will “sharply” increase the city’s property tax rate. Cooper said the final rate will still be lower than other cities throughout Tennessee.
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More than 100 residents and staff of a nursing home in Sumner County, Tennessee have tested positive for the coronavirus, Gov. Bill Lee’s office said Sunday.
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Mark Twain once famously said, “Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”*
Twain said and wrote a lot of quirky/funny things in his lifetime but this particular observation is one of his most relevant and quotable because its analogical truth fits just about any situation. And the wisdom certainly works these days when thinking about the hegemonic and totalitarian nation that is communist China. American politicians have been griping and moaning about Asia’s self-possessed and secretive Middle Kingdom for a generation, but none — except for President Donald Trump — ever seriously proposed backing up the rhetoric with actual policy gravitas.
Trump’s concentration and emphasis on trade has been a refreshing departure from previous presidents of both parties who waxed poetically about “fair trade” and “helping American producers” but then went about making sure global powers like China had much leeway to dictate their own terms for sending goods across the seas while maintaining barriers to United States-made products at home. In China’s case, the country has manipulated its currency for years so as to protect Chinese industries — a gigantic corporate welfare subsidy that makes consumer goods — and everything else — appear inexpensive to the world’s buying public.
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Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast live from Music Row on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – Leahy was joined on the newsmakers line by the all-star panelist Crom Carmichael.
During the second hour, Leahy and Carmichael discussed the recent announcement made by Dr. Fauci where he referenced models and how they expect to see a sharp decline on the V graph by end of the second quarter and then a gradual increase by third quarters end.
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U.S. Rep. Phil Roe (R-TN-01) said Monday that people are working, “at an unprecedented speed,” to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, although the public might not have it for a while.
But for right now, and before the market can offer that vaccine, Roe, a physician, said different regions of the United States won’t likely recover from the virus all at once.
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Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and Lt. Governor Jon Husted on Sunday thanked President Trump and Dr. Stephen Hahn of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for approving a plan to sterilize N95 masks to fight the coronavirus.
Earlier Sunday, DeWine called an emergency press conference to express his “deep disappointment” with the FDA for limiting the use of the new technology, The Ohio Star reported.
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Several liberal organizations sent a letter to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine Friday urging him to “immediately reduce state and local incarcerated populations” during the coronavirus pandemic.
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Michigan is keeping pace with some of the most-infected states in the country, with more than 35 percent of tests coming back with confirmed positive cases of the coronavirus, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project.
As of Monday evening, Michigan has 6,498 confirmed positive cases out of 18,391 total tested — an infection rate of 35.3 percent. By comparison, New Jersey has an infection rate of 39.7 percent with 16,636 confirmed cases and New York has an infection rate of 35.7 percent with 66,497 confirmed cases. New York and New Jersey are the top two most-infected states in the country, followed by Michigan. California is currently the fourth most-infected state with 6,447 confirmed cases and an infection rate of 21.5 percent.
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Two Michigan counties and the City of Detroit carry more than 70 percent of all cases in Michigan, with more than 4,500 cases between them.
Oakland and Wayne counties, combined with the City of Detroit, have 4,560 confirmed cases out of the 6,498 in Michigan, according to data from Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
Detroit, which the DHHS said is tracked separately from its home of Wayne County, has 1,801 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of Monday night. This makes up 27.7 percent of all Michigan confirmed cases and makes it the area in Michigan which has the most confirmed cases of the coronavirus. It also has 54 of the 184 deaths from the virus in the state, or 28.3 percent — the highest in Michigan.
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Officials at the Clarksville-based Austin Peay State University announced they will move all of this year’s face-to-face summer classes online, or to other forms of non-face-to-face instruction.
“We appreciate everyone’s hard work and flexibility as we continue to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic,” APSU President Dr. Alisa White wrote in an email to students, faculty and staff.
“In order to continue to do what we can to mitigate the spread of the virus and ‘flatten the curve,’ we have decided to move all face-to-face Summer 2020 classes to non-face-to-face instruction.”
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by Chuck Ross Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top expert on infectious diseases, predicted Sunday that the United States will end up with “millions” of cases of coronavirus and up to 200,000 deaths by the time the pandemic ends, though he cautioned that any projection of mortality statistics could “easily” end up being wrong. “Looking at what we’re seeing now, I would say between 100,000-200,000 [deaths],” Fauci said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We’re going to have millions of cases.” As of Sunday, the United States has more than 125,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus, and nearly 2,200 deaths. Fauci and other health officials expect those numbers to rise dramatically over the next few weeks as people infected with coronavirus begin showing symptoms and going into the hospital. Fauci, who is a leading member on the White House coronavirus task force, also poured cold water on several doomsday scenarios projecting millions of deaths in the U.S. during the pandemic. He said that models projecting between 1 million and 2 million deaths are “almost…certainly off the chart.” One projection that has received widespread attention, from Imperial College in the United Kingdom, projected 2.2 million deaths in the U.S., but only if…
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Hundreds of thousands of Chinese-made KN95 protective masks distributed to hospitals treating the COVID-19 Chinese coronavirus in the Netherlands have proven to be unreliable and are being recalled, according to a report.
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Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine called an emergency press conference Sunday to express his “deep disappointment” with the Food and Drug Administration for limiting the use of a new technology to sterilize face masks.
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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued an executive order to reconnect residents’ water services that had been shut off.
The governor signed the $2 million Water Restart Grant Program on Saturday. The suspension of the public utility shut-offs were mandated effective immediately.
“This is a critical step both for the health of families living without a reliable water source, and for slowing the spread of the Coronavirus,” Whitmer said in a statement. “We continue to work to provide all Michiganders – regardless of their geography or income level – the tools they need to keep themselves and their communities protected.”
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Attorney General Keith Ellison said his office received more than 500 complaints about price gouging in Minnesota last week alone.
The influx of complaints is part of Ellison’s effort to stop companies from hiking their prices on essential products during the coronavirus pandemic. Doing so is now illegal under an executive order issued by Gov. Tim Walz, which will remain in effect for the duration of Minnesota’s peacetime emergency.
Ellison’s office announced a statewide crackdown on businesses engaged in “pandemic profiteering” last week and encouraged Minnesotans to report instances of price gouging to his office.
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President Trump’s emphasis on collaborating with U.S. businesses will go a long way toward allowing us to curb the coronavirus outbreak in Ohio and across the country.
The President has been hard at work implementing a bold and innovative strategy to address the evolving global health crisis. In addition to restrictions on international travel, which limited the early spread of the disease in our communities, President Trump has also negotiated deals with some of America’s largest businesses, which are eager to do their part to stop the coronavirus pandemic.
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The Tennessee Medical Association (TMA) sent a letter to every mayor in the state Friday asking them to request authority from Gov. Bill Lee to issue shelter-in-place orders for their communities.
Lee has thus far declined to issue a statewide shelter-in-place order, which prompted more than 2,000 health care workers to sign a petition asking him to change course, The Tennessee Star reported. As of Sunday, 26 states had issued stay-at-home orders, including the neighboring states of North Carolina and Kentucky.
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U.S. President Donald Trump signed a $2.2 trillion stimulus bill Friday to bolster the economy while he also used government powers to compel General Motors to manufacture ventilators to help COVID-19 patients as the United States became the first country in the world to surpass 100,000 coronavirus cases.
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Several unaccompanied alien children have tested positive for coronavirus, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, making them the first minors in the agency’s custody to carry the disease.
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A coalition of immigrant rights groups is urging the Supreme Court to reject the Trump administration’s attempt to undo Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
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President Trump has met and passed his supreme test. This has left his Democratic opponents desperately espousing gloom and demanding that the economic shut-down continue, according to frequent semi-high-brow Democratic ideologue and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, for up to seven months.
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Gov. Mike DeWine claimed in a Friday press conference that projections based on a controversial model introduced earlier this month by Ohio Department of Health Director Amy Acton show hospitals in Ohio will be hit hard by the coronavirus in the upcoming weeks. While the daily increase of confirmed cases of coronavirus in Ohio is undeniable, neither DeWine nor Acton have provided much in the way of factual details related to the methodology of the model, the assumptions and data used in it, or the specific identities of the researchers who have created it. And some of the claims made by Acton and DeWine about the model’s predictions stretch credulity. “This is another take on our curves and our graphs,” Acton said at the press conference (at about the 42:43min mark), pointing to a chart on a screen behind her, which is identical to the chart shown below. “But you can see a shadow – this our unmitigated curve – meaning that if we’d done nothing – if we did not take aggressive, decisive action, but we did, and we’ve made a difference, and we’ve shifted over to the model that we’ve wanted to see,” Acton said, pointing…
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