Just days after two professors at the University of North Georgia resigned instead of teaching classes in person, another professor at a public university in Georgia has decided to call it quits over COVID-19 concerns.
Irwin Bernstein, am 88-year-old retiree-rehire at the University of Georgia, abruptly quit his position in the middle of a class after a student refused to pull her mask over her nose, according to WSBTV.
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The ACLU on Tuesday announced it is bringing a lawsuit against South Carolina over its mask policy.
The Palmetto State is one of seven states—along with Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Arizona, Utah, and Florida— that have policies in place banning schools from having mask policies. Thirteen states, meanwhile, have laws that mandate masks in schools. The majority of states (30) allow school districts to determine their own mask policies.
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Republican lawmakers are talking about suing the University of Wisconsin over mask mandates and test requirements for those who haven’t received a coronavirus vaccine.
State Senator Steve Nass (R-WI) said he will ask permission to begin legal proceedings if the UW System doesn’t change its mind about coronavirus restrictions by next week.
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Anoka-Hennepin School District, the largest district in the state of Minnesota, updated its face mask guidance this week following 90 minutes of heated public comment.
At its August 23 meeting, the school board adopted a recommendation from the district superintendent to require masks on a case matrix model.
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles in studio to revisit mask mandates imposed by the Biden administration and the lack of data to support it.
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Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed American radio talk show host and political commentator, Jeri Thompson in studio to discuss mask mandates imposed by local school boards and the challenge facing Governor Bill Lee’s executive order.
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The back-to-school mask wars have been heating up for weeks, but the Biden administration just took them to a whole new level. On Wednesday, the president ordered the US Department of Education to use all available measures to prohibit states from banning school mask mandates.
In his remarks, Biden decried the contentious school board meetings that have occurred in districts across the country as parents argue for and against school mask mandates. He indicated that the “intimidation and the threats we’re seeing across the country,” from concerned citizens who oppose mask mandates “are wrong. They’re unacceptable.”
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Live from Music Row Friday 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. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to weigh in on the recent federal civil rights lawsuit charging governors who block mask mandates in their state. Leahy: In-studio, the original all-star panelist, Crom Carmichael. Crom, the federal government is suffering from mask madness or perhaps mask hysteria. Carmichael: It’s really more command and control. Masks are just the latest way of trying to force governors and individuals to bend a knee. Leahy: Exactly. Now we have a story up at WKRN that just broke late last night. The Biden administration is taking aim at states that are blocking mask mandates for school districts. U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona wrote a letter to Governor Bill Lee and Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn regarding Tennessee’s decision or the executive order from Bill Lee to allow parents to opt-out of local mass mandates. Of course, Williamson County Schools had a mask mandate. They appear to be complying with the governor’s executive order. But Metro Nashville Public…
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President Biden is ratcheting up opposition to Republican governors blocking COVID mask mandates in schools, putting in charge the Education Department, which is raising the possibility of using its civil rights arm to oppose such policies.
Biden on Wednesday ordered Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to “assess all available tools” that can be used against states that fail to protect students amid surging coronavirus cases.
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Joe Biden’s Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, admitted to having spoken directly with faculty members from school districts that are defying the law and forcing mask mandates on their students, even if their states have banned such mandates, ABC News reports.
Cardona said that some such schools fear repercussions from the state governments if they continue defying the bans, including in Texas and Florida. “I have had the conversations with superintendents,” Cardona said in an interview on Tuesday. “And they have asked, if this goes in that direction, how do we get support? My message is, open the schools safely; we got your back.”
Cardona had previously sent a letter to several school districts in Florida promising that the federal government would fund the schools directly in the event that Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) follows through on his promise to suspend the salaries of all superintendents who force such mandates onto their students in defiance of state law.
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In Alan Parker’s 1982 film, “Pink Floyd—The Wall,” a young boy’s reality turns into a nightmare. It’s post-war England, and the boy—now in his teens and fatherless—sits in a classroom tuning out his bland math lesson and composing poems instead. The teacher—a pedagogical sadist—mocks the boy, and then proceeds to mete out some good, old-fashioned corporal punishment. The boy winces, and overwhelmed with anxiety begins to see his world as an unbearable nightmare of human oppression.
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host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist, Dr. Carol Swain, in studio to advise of her upcoming in-store appearance at Puffy Muffin where she will be signing her new book Black Eye for America this Saturday, and governor Lee’s lack of Republican leadership.
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles in studio to examine the Tennessee state constitution relating to whether or not Governor Bill Lee has the authority to extend emergency powers.
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles in studio to discuss the lack of clarity in Bill Lee’s executive order for K12 mask mandates.
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As overreach in classrooms by progressive school administrators, nonprofits and the federal government has reached new heights, parents are stepping up to fight back.
Moms for Liberty, Informed Parents of California, EdFirstNC, NJ Parental Rights, No Left Turn in Education and Parents Against Critical Theory are just a few of the hundreds of new parent groups that have emerged across the country in recent months. Many parents have become education activists because of schools’ failure to bring children back into the classroom or their continued imposition of mask mandates.
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The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh of The Walsh Show confronted the Metro Nashville Public School Board last Tuesday night in Williamson County regarding the newly decided reimplementation of mask mandates for elementary students. Walsh in turn schooled the board with his speech of facts and referenced mask-wearing as a form of child abuse which gained cheers from other parents.
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Republican gubernatorial candidate Steven Gaynor wants Gov. Doug Ducey to issue an executive order in response to local school mask mandates.
Gaynor is a Republican businessman from Paradise Valley who announced his run to replace Ducey in 2022. He narrowly lost to Katie Hobbs in the 2018 race for secretary of state.
In an Aug. 9 press release, Gaynor asked for an executive order to provide Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA) to parents of students in school districts that enforce mask and vaccine mandates.
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Friday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Bridgeway Academy’s CEO Jessica Parnell to the newsmakers line to discuss the boom in homeschooling and information about their curriculum and services that help homeschool parents.
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Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed California refugee Craig Huey in studio to examine the actions of Director of Schools Jason Golden and Dr. Adrienne Battle’s stupid mask mandates for elementary school students.
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Fox News host Tucker Carlson welcomed Williamson County, Tennessee parent and co-host Clay Travis of The Clay Travis and Bux Sexton Show Thursday morning regarding the outpouring of parental concern as local school boards push anti-American curriculum on elementary students. Travis stated that this was a “mom-led revolution” and hinted that it will grow with speed around the country.
Carlson: The speech that you gave and God bless you for doing it. And it was entirely fact-based. The reaction from the other people in the room really struck me. What is your sense of where parents are right now with what’s happening in schools?
Travis: First, Tucker, thanks for having me.
Carlson: Of course.
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Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed California refugee Craig Huey in studio to weigh in on Tuesday nights Williams County meeting where parent Leanne Baker made clear her rights as an American against mandated vaccinations and masks for her children.
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In direct defiance of legislation banning vaccine passports and mask mandates, three major Arizona universities will require masks for students, setting up a showdown between the schools and the state government.
“All three Arizona universities said Wednesday they are going to require face masks on campus in certain situations, regardless of new state legislation apparently designed to preclude them from doing that,” Tuscon.com reported. “And more than half the Republican state legislators are asking Gov. Doug Ducey to withhold funds from schools who they say are violating a different ban on mask mandates and take the errant districts to court.”
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed MNPS School Board Member for District Six, Fran Bush in studio to discuss Tuesday evening’s school board-parent debate on mask mandates for students.
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Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed MNPS District Six school board member Fran Bush in studio who expressed the priority of getting kids back on academic track instead of focusing on mask mandates.
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A famous Tennessee music festival is set to require its patrons to be vaccinated, or submit to compulsory testing.
“The safety of our patrons and staff is our number one priority. As such a full COVID-19 vaccination or negative COVID-19 test will be required to attend Bonnaroo 2021,” Bonnaroo said on Twitter. “Bonnaroo strongly encourages vaccination. The last day to receive the second shot of Moderna or Pfizer, or a single dose of Johnson and Johnson is Thursday, August 19th.”
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With the new school year less than a month away, politicians are not in agreement on whether Virginia state law requires school divisions to impose mask mandates for students, teachers and faculty.
Gov. Ralph Northam said current law requires school divisions to enforce universal mask requirements, but some Republican leaders have accused him of lying and falsely interpreting the law.
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Less than a week after Phoenix Union High School District (PXU) issued a mask mandate in defiance of state law, a high school biology teacher has sued the school district.
“Douglas Hester, who teaches Biology 1 and 2 at Metro Tech High School, filed a motion for a restraining order on Monday against its superintendent and its governing board, according to the Maricopa County Superior Court,” Fox News reported.
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Flight attendants’ and teachers’ unions whose members are on the front lines of disputed Covid safety protocols are ardent enforcers of mask mandates for the public but do not require their members to get vaccinated. Such inoculation is widely acknowledged as the most effective step in stopping the spread of the new Delta variant, while masking is viewed as of secondary importance, and many are highly skeptical of its effectiveness and critical of its inconvenience.
As the Association of Flight Attendants continues to urge federal authorities to allow flight attendants to police passengers for masking – a policy that has led to fisticuffs on some flights – the union has struck an agreement with at least one airline, United, to allow unvaccinated members to fly. American Airlines and Southwest Air say they also do not require their flight attendants or other employees to vaccinate. Flight attendants for both airlines are unionized.
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Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp reiterated his opposition to mask mandates in schools Wednesday.
Mandates “don’t work,” Kemp told Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt during an on-air interview.
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, guest host Ben Cunningham welcomed Davidson County GOP Chair Jim Garrett to the newsmakers line to discuss the 2022 election and his decision to push back on MNPS mask mandates.
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Joining a growing and bipartisan list of governors, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) said Sunday that he will not bring back lockdowns and mask mandates as cases of COVID-19 once again rise.
“We are seeing the virus go up,” DeWine told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “We think the delta variant is certainly the dominant one in Ohio yet, but the whole game today is vaccinations, and we have room to grow. We think that we can get more people vaccinated.”
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Last March, I followed the CDC’s advice and got fully vaccinated against COVID-19. I did so more out of a sense of civic duty than any actual fear that I might contract the virus. It was just an easy and scientifically sound way to help slow its spread. Naturally, I was delighted when the CDC finally announced that fully vaccinated people could safely participate in indoor and outdoor activities without wearing inconvenient and clinically useless face masks. Now, the CDC has reversed itself and issued new guidance telling 163.6 million fully vaccinated Americans to put our masks back on. Sorry, no sale.
First, the CDC published no data supporting its bizarre reversal. The Washington Post reports: “In the text of the updated masking guidance, the agency merely cited ‘CDC COVID-19 Response Team, unpublished data, 2021.’” Moreover, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky is struggling to produce a plausible explanation. She claimed without evidence on ABC News that “new science” has emerged showing that fully vaccinated people should be masking.
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Major Florida Corporations, Publix, Disney World, and Universal Orlando, have updated their COVID-19 policies to coordinate with the new Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines.
The new CDC guidelines have reversed course due to the surge in delta variant cases across the nation, with Florida being responsible for one-fifth of those cases.
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Friday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael in studio to discuss the Biden administration’s inconsistent messaging.
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Friday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs to the newsmakers line to discuss his position on mask mandates and the power of county health boards.
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Democrat and Republican governors alike are promising not to implement new mask mandates as COVID-19 cases rise again.
“All Virginians should consider wearing a mask in public indoor settings where there is increased risk of [COVID-19] transmission, as the new [CDC] guidance recommends. This is not a requirement, but a recommendation,” Gov. Ralph Northam (D) said Thursday on Twitter.
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School districts across the country are beginning to impose mask mandates for all students and staff this fall. Officials in Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, and Washington, DC declared last week that everyone in school buildings will be required to wear masks, regardless of vaccination status.
These school districts are going beyond current CDC guidelines, which recommend masking for unvaccinated students and staff only. Instead, they seem to be embracing the masking stance of the American Academy of Pediatrics which announced last week that all students over age two, as well as staff, should wear masks at school even if they are vaccinated.
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Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Roger Simon in studio to discuss the contradictory and ever-changing mask mandates and vaccination data.
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There will not be any new shutdowns or mask mandates in Georgia, as concerns over the recent uptick in COVID-19 cases grows.
“Georgia will not lock down or impose statewide mask mandates,” Gov. Brian Kemp said Wednesday on Twitter. “As the first state in the country to reopen over a year ago, we’ve proven that Georgians know how to come together and protect themselves and their loved ones.”
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RICHMOND,Virginia – Glenn Youngkin announced his $5.8 billion plan for spending Virginia’s surplus revenue and federal American Rescue Plan Act [ARPA] funds at a press conference Thursday morning. The list include $1.5 for taxpayer and family relief; $2.6 billion for jobs, small business, and broadband; $1.2 billion for education; and $0.5 billion for public safety and mental health.
“Thanks to the McAuliffe-Northam failures, the murder rate in Virginia is at a 20-year high. Our economy has fallen behind, jobs have come back slower, and our cost of living is way too high. Our schools are underperforming, and as a result, taxpayers, families, seniors, and our children are suffering,” Youngkin said. “The change we need will not come from a failed politician with stale ideas that he failed to deliver when he had his chance as governor.”
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Rochester Public Schools Tuesday said that it will require students aged two to 12 to wear masks inside all school facilities during the upcoming school year, citing the fact that the COVID-19 has not been approved for children between those ages.
“When we have the opportunity as is anticipated to vaccinate younger children, and those rates of vaccination are sufficiently high, we could remove the requirement for our youngest learners,” Interim Superintendent Kent Pekel said. “So I wish I could tell the board that this is the last time that you’d be dealing with this, but I think it’s very likely that we need to continue to be responsive to this situation over time.”
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Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) Monday held a press conference with medical professionals, a concerned parent, a student to discuss mask mandates in schools for the upcoming school year.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University and research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research (NEBR), H. Cody Meissner, MD, a pediatrician and Chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Disease and Professor of Pediatrics at the Tufts University School of Medicine, and Mark McDonald, MD, a clinical child psychiatrist, all participated in the roundtable.
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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has maintained Florida will not go back into lockdown and will not implement mask mandates, however Jacksonville doctor Dr. Sunil Joshi is calling on DeSantis to order Florida back into a state of emergency.
Joshi, an immunologist, said the rise in hospitalizations should be enough to force Florida back to consider how serious the virus still is.
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If you want to know, up close and personal, the banality of evil, attend a school board meeting. With critical race theory and forced vaccination and masking all the rage, I did just that last night.
This board meeting wasn’t my first. When I was a kid, my dad ran for school board and won after a terrible teacher (a feel-good hippie) allowed one of my classmates to steal my work all year and put his name on it. Said teacher taught us second-graders macramé and little else. My family had moved from a high-performing school district to this less-than-stellar place. For about three years, I learned nothing new. My parents were incensed. So my dad ran for board treasurer, got elected, and promptly pissed everyone off.
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A court of appeals in Michigan will hear a case from a Catholic school arguing mask mandates violate religious liberty because they cover “God’s image and likeness.”
“Unfortunately, a mask shields our humanity and because God created us in His image, we are masking that image,” the institution – the Resurrection School, in Lansing – told The Washington Post.
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In a press conference yesterday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis took time to comment on the upcoming school year saying school mask mandates and lockdowns will not be happening in Florida.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki called DeSantis’ comments “greatly concerning” and said her kids were used to wearing masks.
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PHOENIX, Arizona – Last week, the Arizona legislature banned the state from mandating COVID-19 vaccine passports. These were provisions packed into legislation concerning the budget – a version of which was passed by the House on Friday.
The legislation banning COVID-19 vaccine passports applies to the state and all cities, towns, and counties – it passed along party lines. That legislation also bars government entities from requiring businesses to obtain proof of vaccination in order to allow patrons to enter. An amendment adopted onto that bill also specifies that emergency use authorization (EUA) vaccines may not be required for school attendance, and obligates employers to accommodate employees who decline the COVID-19 vaccine based on religious beliefs, practices, or observances.
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed liberal feminist and renowned author Dr. Naomi Wolf to the newsmakers line to weigh in on her recent permanent Twitter ban after questioning the COVID vaccines.
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Friday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, guest host Christina Botteri welcomed Fox Nation’s ‘No Interruption’ host Tomi Lahren to the newsmakers line live from California where she detailed the homelessness issues plaguing the state.
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Georgia Governor Brian Kemp announced that he will take action to prevent public schools across the state from implementing mask mandates for students.
Kemp announced on Wednesday that he will sign an executive order to prevent the mandates. However, though not required, Kemp highlighted that students will be allowed to wear a mask if they choose to do so.
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