The Factory at Franklin has been purchased for $56 million by the Nashville office of Holladay Properties, led by Allen Arender. The company plans on transforming the property to create what it believes will be a national model for adaptive re-use of early 20th Century industrial structures.
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Country music legend Dolly Parton is joining her friend Loretta Lynn in providing donations for flood victims of Humphreys County through her Smoky Mountain businesses.
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According to the Tennessee Department of Finance & Administration, two convicted Tennessee women have been ordered by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) to repay the State of Tennessee on charges involving TennCare fraud.
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The Metro Nashville government has formed a COVID-19 Financial Oversight Committee in order to help decide where COVID relief funds are spent. Nashville has received $260 million in American Rescue Plan funding that is supposed to be used to help with COVID response, mitigation, and prevention.
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New street signs have been spotted around Mount Juliet urging people to “Say No to Panhandling”. The sign offers an alternative suggestion which is “Contribute to the Solution – Give to Local Charities”.
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According to data from the Tennessee Department of Education, the number of Tennessee school-aged children testing positive for COVID-19 the last 14 days has seen a significant drop in just 4 days.
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On Tuesday, Bedford County Schools, Hickman County Schools, and Maury County Schools were forced to close for the day due to a second wave of dangerous flooding.
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On Monday, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R-TN) joined 25 other Republican Governors in signing a letter requesting to meet with President Joe Biden regarding the southern border crisis within the next 15 days.
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On Monday, a jury was selected in the trial of Tennessee State Senator Katrina Robinson (D-Memphis) who was charged with stealing more than $600,000 in federal funds.
According to AP News, a 12-person jury was chosen for the trial which could last three weeks. The trial is taking place at the Odell Horton Federal Building in Downtown Memphis.
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In an official press release Tuesday, Tennessee Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07) announced that he and 100 Republican colleagues sent a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, expressing their frustration over a recent IRS data collection proposal to increase tax information reporting requirements on financial institutions.
The proposed measure would require financial institutions to report transactions to the Internal Revenue Service on any bank account with a balance of more than $600. The Treasury Department says the proposal for extra data is being sought to target high earners who underreport their tax liabilities.
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Chiefs for Change, an educational advocacy group, has come out in support of President Joe Biden’s new executive order on vaccine mandates. Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Education, Penny Schwinn, is a part of the group.
In a statement on Thursday, the group applauded the President’s executive order, saying, “The COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective – and they are what will finally end this pandemic. We commend the Biden Administration for requiring staff at all Head Start programs, Department of Defense schools, and Bureau of Indian Education-operated schools to get vaccinated, and we echo the president’s request that states require vaccines for their K-12 employees.”
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In a press release Friday, The Buckeye Institute announced that they are “filing an amicus brief with the Supreme Court of the United States in Carson v. Makin calling on the court to make clear – as it has in many other cases – that it is a violation of the U.S. Constitution to deny students and their families financial aid that is available to all other students on the basis that family chooses to use their aid to send their children to a religious or ‘sectarian’ school.”
Robert Alt, president and chief executive officer of the educational think tank said, “The core constitutional issues before the high court have been asked and answered many times: the government cannot discriminate against religion in administering benefit programs.”
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The $3.5 trillion spending bill set up to follow the $1.1 trillion infrastructure bill (which has little to do with infrastructure) should be called what it really is: The Higher Inflation and Bigger Debt Act.
The Democrats would like you to believe it is only a reconciliation bill. This is vital to them because a reconciliation bill only takes 50 senators and the vice president to pass the U.S. Senate.
However, this additional $3.5 trillion comes after trillions of emergency spending prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Consider what the Congressional Budget Office has written about the fiscal situation before the $1.1 trillion and $3.5 trillion bills are passed:
Here is what the Congressional Budget Office forecasts (not counting Biden’s enormous spending plan):
“By the end of 2021, federal debt held by the public is projected to equal 102 percent of GDP. Debt would reach 107 percent of GDP (surpassing its historical high) in 2031 and would almost double to 202 percent of GDP by 2051. Debt that is high and rising as a percentage of GDP boosts federal and private borrowing costs, slows the growth of economic output, and increases interest payments abroad. A growing debt burden could increase the risk of a fiscal crisis and higher inflation as well as undermine confidence in the U.S. dollar, making it more costly to finance public and private activity in international markets.”
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Judicial Watch announced Tuesday that it has amended its lawsuit against Democratic Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who claims to be “unapologetic” about her previous policy to only grant interviews to journalists of color.
Lightfoot told the New York Times in a podcast released Monday that she “would absolutely” implement the interview policy again. “I’m unapologetic about it because it spurred a very important conversation, a conversation that needed to happen, that should have happened a long time ago,” Lightfoot said.
Judicial Watch, which sued Lightfoot on behalf of the Daily Caller News Foundation and its reporter Thomas Catenacci, said the mayor’s office has ignored calls to sign an agreement to not use race-based criteria for interview requests for the remainder of her term.
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Joe Biden is not mentally or physically fit to be president of the United States. This has been obvious to anyone with eyes or ears for the entirety of his presidency. Acknowledging this simple fact should not be a partisan issue. Regardless of policy disputes, Republicans and Democrats alike should want the leader of the free world to exhibit strength, power, and reassurance on both the national and the world stage. But Biden is merely a figurehead. He is a facsimile of a leader in an office that normally demands sharpness, stamina, and clear-headedness.
No honest assessment can conclude that Biden’s public appearances present a man who is in control of his faculties or who looks sharp and confident. On the contrary, he looks frail, weak, indecisive, unsure of himself, and unsteady. When he speaks, he often says things that simply don’t make sense, even as he almost exclusively reads from a teleprompter or uses notecards. He has repeatedly said that if he takes unscripted questions from the press, he’s “gonna get in trouble” from his staff.
Yet those who do not follow politics closely or ignore conservative outlets could be forgiven for thinking that Biden is fully capable, thanks to the corrupt Fourth Estate that has refused to accurately cover Biden’s ever-increasing list of embarrassing moments.
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Hong Kong’s pro-democracy newspaper, Apple Daily, sold out all 1 million copies of its final edition by 8:30 a.m. Thursday, according to the Associated Press.
The newspaper has been a frequent critic of Chinese and Hong Kong authorities trying to suppress democratic sentiment and the freedoms of the semi-autonomous city, the AP reported. The newspaper was forced to close its doors after it said police froze $2.3 million of its assets, searched its office and arrested five executives and editors last week for alleged foreign collusion, in violation of Beijing’s national security law.
The arrests were the first time the law has been used against journalists for their work, the AP reported. Apple Daily was the last pro-democracy print newspaper in Hong Kong. Its owner, Jimmy Lai has been arrested multiple times and sentenced to 14 months in prison for involvement with the pro-democracy demonstrations.
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COVID’s grip on America is relaxing, not so the Left’s. The Left seized COVID as an unprecedented statist opportunity to advance their agenda. Unsurprisingly, they now resist relinquishing it. Since the Left refuse to let go of America, America must let go of the Left.
Last week the CDC relaxed its guidelines for outdoor mask-wearing by those fully vaccinated against COVID. It was more a rearguard action than a vanguard one, but at least it was a start. Several states are well ahead in their return to normalcy.
America’s virus statistics demonstrate the remission of the virus and validate accelerating relaxation of the lockdowns. On a seven-day moving average, active cases, daily new cases, and daily deaths have been plummeting since the beginning of the year.
On the ledger’s other side, vaccinations began in the U.S. in December, averaging over two million a day since February; as a result, around 31 percent of the population is now fully vaccinated at this writing.
by Jeff Ballabon CNN likes to masquerade as an objective news outlet, but its lawsuit against President Trump and the Secret Service makes its partisanship more nakedly obvious than ever. From the very beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency, CNN has used its platform to demean, denigrate, and deride the president at every opportunity. Their Chief White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, who grandstands on and off the air as Trump’s chief antagonist, is merely the most notorious manifestation of CNN’s rampant bias. Recently, his behavior so violated every norm of White House press corps etiquette that the White House withdrew his access to the White House grounds. CNN sued President Trump and a judge temporarily reinstated Acosta’s access pending outcome of the case. CNN’s legal case rests on the contention that the First Amendment’s freedom of the press guarantees Jim Acosta permanent access to the White House grounds. The judge declined to rule on those grounds, ruling instead that Acosta may have been denied his Fifth Amendment due process rights because he did not have an opportunity to formally appeal the revocation of his pass. CNN likes to pretend it serves a vital public interest through “objective” reporting, and their…
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NoTax4Tracks, a political action committee, announced it is starting a television campaign today, Feb. 20, to encourage Nashville-Davidson County voters to say no to Mayor Megan Barry’s $9 billion transit plan on the May 1 ballot. “We know people are concerned about paying one of the highest sales taxes in the country for a light rail system that does little to help congestion,” said Jeff Eller, spokesman for the campaign. “We’re starting television advertising now, so voters fully understand how much it will cost and how little it will do. That’s why the commercial makes it clear, if this plan passes, Nashville will become Taxville.” The commercial can be viewed here. The commercial will air on Channels 2, 4, 5 and 17, with a heavy focus on news and “high information seekers,” the PAC said. This will be the first of several commercials NoTax4Tracks will air prior to the May 1 election.
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The Mexican government waded deeply into American politics Tuesday, criticizing the Trump administration’s decision to revoke the deportation amnesty for Dreamers, and demanding U.S. lawmakers quickly move to protect Mexicans who face deportation. But Mexico, in a statement released by the government, also said it will take back the hundreds of thousands of its citizens currently…
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