Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) defended Dr. Anthony Fauci’s COVID-19 advice after President Donald Trump’s remarks.
The senator also stated that people weren’t doing enough to counteract the spread of the virus.
U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) said he believes President Donald Trump should take it back on declaring a national emergency at the border, even as the Senate plans to vote against the president’s declaration. The Washington Examiner reported on Alexander’s remarks Thursday. He said the president should “ask his lawyers to take a second look at an existing funding authority that the president has to consider construction of the 234 miles of border wall that do not require a formal declaration of a national emergency.” Basically, it would set a bad precedent, he said. Part of Alexander’s argument seems to contradict something he said to The Tennessee Star Report recently about the president not having the authority to declare the emergency. He now seems to be arguing what Michael Patrick Leahy argued, that Trump has the authority. According to the Examiner: Alexander said Trump should use the authority (emphasis added) he has to use as much as $4 billion in Defense Department funding however he wants. Trump already identified $2.5 billion to use for the wall as part of his unilateral decision to build the wall on his own, and Alexander said Trump should use most of that authority instead…
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U.S. Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) have introduced a resolution to honor the late Capt. Rosemary Mariner, the Navy’s first female fighter pilot. S. Res. 61 was introduced in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Feb. 7. The resolution’s tracking information is available online here. Mariner was buried on Feb. 2 in Maynardville, Tennessee, Blackburn tweeted. She was honored with the first all-female-pilot flyover in Navy history. The Navy’s first female fighter pilot was laid to rest yesterday, and her life was celebrated with the first all-female flyover in her honor. Thank you, Captain Rosemary Mariner, for your service to our country.🇺🇸 https://t.co/VgwtZ7Xhnq via @knoxnews — Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) February 3, 2019 Mariner’s parents were a Navy nurse and an Air Force pilot who died in a plane crash, NBC News said. According to her obituary, Mariner, 65, died Jan. 24 after a five-year fight with ovarian cancer. Her husband of 40 years, Navy Cmdr. Tommy Mariner (ret.) was by her side. The Harlingen, Texas native graduated from Purdue University at age 19 with a degree in aeronautics. Mariner was one of the first eight women selected to fly military aircraft in 1973, her obituary says. She became…
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A pollster who boldly declared that candidate Donald Trump had “no chance” of becoming President now says Senator Lamar Alexander is polling as a virtual lock for reelection in 2020. Alexander’s longtime pollster, North Star Opinion Research President Whit Ayers, wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece in April, 2016: “A Trump nomination has as much chance of success in the general election as Trump University, or Trump Mortgage, or Trump Shuttle, or Trump Vodka, or Trump Casinos. Trump is an electoral disaster waiting to happen.” That was, of course, before Trump won the White House over Hillary Clinton by a somewhat comfortable electoral margin. That same pollster is now claiming that an internal poll conducted in advance of an expected announcement by Senator Lamar Alexander that he will seek reelection in 2020 shows Alexander with strong approval ratings among Tennessee voters. The Monday internal polling memo from Ayers to the Senator’s campaign team claimed that Alexander’s favorability rating among likely Republican primary voters is 65 percent, just shy of two-thirds support. The 600-person survey was conducted Nov. 26-29. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent. The 78-year-old Alexander told The Tennessee Star last month…
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On Monday’s Tennessee Star Report with Steve Gill and Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am – Gill and Leahy chatted with Tennessee State Senator Lamar Alexander about the Democrat stalling of confirmation efforts and his exchange with Chuck Schumer and the lack of an apology during Schumer’s display of discourtesy on the Senate floor. Gill: Senator Lamar Alexander going all “Lindsey Graham” on Chuck Schumer who not only has disrespected the process of slowing the judicial confirmation process for no good reason. But with a particular nominee for the TVA board, John Ryder, lawyer from Memphis. Excellent lawyer with as Lamar Alexander pointed out, seven to ten million people in the region waiting for a new board member so they can get a new CEO, a new Chairman of the TVA. The Democrats holding up John Ryder’s confirmation after he’s already been through the committee process, holding him up for like a hundred and seventy seven days and basically, Chuck Schumer walking out in the midst of the debate, the conversation between Senator Lamar Alexander and himself over this issue. Did everything but you know, kind…
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The U.S. Senate is on the verge of holding a verbal vote on the Music Modernization Act, leaving many in the industry to say it is a step in the right direction while a few say the legislation is out of tune with established business practices. Nashville Public Radio reports that advocates of the Music Modernization Act say the legislation will clear the U.S. Senate soon. Supporters include U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN). The measure has been stalled in the upper chamber after having passed in the House of Representatives earlier this year. Companies like Sirius XM and private equity firm Blackstone, which owns performance rights organization SESAC, have concerns with the act, Nashville Public Radio says. Streaming services like Sirius XM say they already fairly pay artists. The company sent a letter to the Senate saying the act would force it to pay again for music produced prior to 1972 that it already has licensed, Billboard reported Sunday. The bill was planned for a verbal vote in the Senate early this week, Billboard said in a story Monday. One no vote could force the measure into a formal vote, and time is running out for such action before the…
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There is a reason Republican primary candidates across the state, whether they are running for Senate, Governor, Congress or state legislative positions, are clinging to President Donald Trump’s coattails. A new Tennessee Star statewide poll of 1040 likely Republican Primary voters conducted by Triton Polling from June 25-28, 2018 indicates that President Trump retains a sky high approval rating of 86.5 percent; only 7.9 percent have an unfavorable view of Trump, with 5.6 percent undecided. A Tennessee Star poll a year ago showed almost identical figures for Trump. Likewise, Trump had an 84 percent favorability rating six months ago. Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, who had a campaign rally with President Trump in Nashville just a month ago, is also very popular among likely Tennessee Republican Primary voters. 58.2 percent express approval for Blackburn, 17.8 percent disapprove and 24 percent don’t know or are not sure. A significant portion of the undecided Republican primary voters are in East Tennessee where the remains largely unknown among that large base of GOP voters. Blackburn is running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Senator Bob Corker and will face off against former Democrat Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen in November. Tennessee’s two Senators did…
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The mayor of McKenzie, Tennessee asked Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) to hold Senate hearings on the abuse of Medicare billing revocations by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services [CMS] in a letter sent on Wednesday. Writing “on behalf of the citizens of Northwest Tennessee,” Mayor Jill Holland asked Alexander, “as Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee [to] schedule, at the earliest opportunity, a hearing of the appropriate subcommittee to consider the revocation or modification of a particularly egregious Obama-Era regulation promulgated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in December, 2014, “Medicare Program; Requirements for the Medicare Incentive Reward Program and Provider Enrollment; Final Rule.” “This regulation, and its abusive implementation by CMS, is now jeopardizing the health care of hundreds of eventually thousands of citizens in and around McKenzie, Tennessee, our city of 5,000 residents in Carroll, Henry, and Weakley counties,” Holland wrote. Holland then cites the case of Dr. Bryan Merrick, a beloved local family doctor who has practiced medicine in McKenzie for more than thirty years with an unblemished reputation. Merrick is the West Tennessee doctor who “lost his Medicare reimbursement privileges over $670 in billing errors, and the consequences…
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Senate health committee chairman Lamar Alexander disparaged Republican efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare and called for bipartisan cooperation during a speech on the Senate floor Thursday. Alexander implored his colleagues to support a bipartisan health care reform bill that he introduced with co-sponsor Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, arguing the legislation represents a centrist…
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Johnathon Cox Griswold, a staffer in Senator Lamar Alexander’s Knoxville office, has resigned as a result of felony identity theft charges filed in February. The Knoxville News Sentinel reports: A staffer with U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander’s Knoxville office has resigned after being charged with felony identity theft for allegedly withdrawing approximately $6,000 using a stolen bank debit card, according to an arrest warrant. Jonathan Cox Griswold, 38, was charged Feb. 21 after being captured on a surveillance camera making multiple withdrawals from an ATM at Home Federal Bank, 5538 Kingston Pike, using the victim’s personal identification number and card, the warrant reads. David Cleary, Senator Alexander’s Chief of Staff said in a statement that while the Senator is disappointed to hear of Griswold’s arrest, as far as he knows, the alleged wrongdoing is unconnected to his official duties in Knoxville. Griswold’s arraignment is set for April 13 in Knox County General Sessions Court.
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Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), the two Republicans whose final votes on breaking the threatened Democratic filibuster of the confirmation vote on President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee were uncertain as late as this morning, delivered for the president and their party on Thursday afternoon. “Senate Republicans used the “constitutional option” to change longstanding cloture rules around 12:30 pm Thursday, clearing the way for Judge Neil Gorsuch to receive a vote of the full Senate on his confirmation to the Supreme Court,” Breitbart News reports: Republicans resorted to the party-line 52-48 vote after weeks of wrangling over Gorsuch’s nomination in which Senate Democrats threatened the first partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee in American history. After the Democrats assembled the forty-one votes needed to prevent the end of debate under current rules, the constitutional option allowing cloture on a simple majority became the only remaining path to placing Gorsuch on the Court. Vice-President Mike Pence, who would have been needed to break a tie should any two Republicans have voted to maintain the 60-vote cloture rule, was not present for the vote, indicating Republican confidence their entire caucus would agree to the change. As…
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