Shelby County’s District Attorney Wednesday announced more than two dozen new charges against the man who went on a rampage killing spree in Memphis on September 7.
“Ezekiel Kelly has been indicted on 26 additional charges related to the September 7th shooting spree, including two homicides, said Shelby County Dist. Atty. Gen. Steve Mulroy,” according to a release from Mulroy’s office.
Read the full story
A new report by the Beacon Center of Tennessee says that $4 billion worth of federal COVID-19 relief funding allocated to Tennessee’s school systems was largely spent on items unrelated to COVID-19.
“The data suggests that Tennessee public schools have budgeted or spent millions of dollars on areas that had little to nothing to do with COVID or student performance,” said Beacon Research Associate and report author Jason Edmonds. “School districts across the state budgeted tens of millions of dollars for ‘indirect costs’ without any further explanation and also funded pet projects such as walk-in coolers and retractable bleachers.”
Read the full story
Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Tennessee Director of the American Federation for Children John Patton to the newsmakers line to discuss the advancement of the educational savings account program for families in Shelby and Davidson counties.
Read the full story
Governor Bill Lee said last week that more than 2,000 families in Shelby and Davidson counties have already signed up for school vouchers. According to the Tennessee Department of Education, up to 5,000 are available this upcoming school year.
In 2019, the Tennessee General Assembly passed and Governor Bill Lee signed Public Chapter 506, which created the Tennessee Education Savings Account (ESA) program. The Tennessee Supreme Court ruled in May that the school voucher program is constitutional.
Read the full story
According to the governor’s office and the cities of Memphis and Nashville, more than 40 independent have committed to allowing families to enroll in Education Savings Account (ESA) programs beginning in the 2022-2023 academic year.
“There was an urgent need for school choice in 2019, and finally, parents in Memphis and Nashville won’t have to wait another day to choose the best educational fit for their children,” said Gov. Bill Lee (R). “I thank each school that has partnered with us to swiftly implement a program that will change the lives of Tennessee students, and I invite interested families to begin the enrollment process today.”
Read the full story
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued nationwide guidance on mask wearing as community COVID-19 spread levels increase, and included seven Tennessee counties in its assessment.
“COVID-19 Community Levels are a new tool to help communities decide what prevention steps to take based on the latest data,” according to the CDC. “Levels can be low, medium, or high and are determined by looking at hospital beds being used, hospital admissions, and the total number of new COVID-19 cases in an area.”
Read the full story
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) is investigating after Shelby County Sheriff’s deputies shot and injured a man who allegedly attempted to run them over with his car.
The incident occurred Monday night.
Read the full story
Leahy was joined on the newsmaker line by Tennessee State Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, to discuss school choice and Governor Bill Lee’s executive order on school safety.
Read the full story
Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Southeastern Legal Foundation’s Director of Litigation Braden Boucek to the newsmaker line to explain how the educational savings account works and updates on pending litigation that proves the state is not interested in letting parents control their children’s education.
Read the full story
Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Public Affairs Specialist and all-star panelist Clint Brewer in studio to weigh in on recent Democratic lawsuit filed in response to Middle Tennessee’s redistricting.
Read the full story
A bill scheduled to be heard by the House Commerce Committee on Tuesday would enter Tennessee into an interstate compact with Arkansas and Mississippi for the greater Memphis region, creating a quasi-governmental and public entity of unelected commissioners that will be vested with very broad powers, including eminent domain and condemnation of any and all rights or property.
If enacted, the legislation would create the RegionSmart Development District (District) and the RegionSmart Development (RegionSmart Development) Agency of the Greater Memphis Region.
Read the full story
The State of Tennessee will receive a $38 million grant from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to build a nursing home for veterans, according to a release from U.S. Representative David Kustoff (R-TN-08).
The award will help cover construction costs of the new facility in the western part of the state.
Read the full story
Officials in multiple jurisdictions throughout Tennessee have detected cases of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
Shelby County reported the first case of the new variant. New cases were discovered on Thursday by both the Metro Nashville Public Health Department and the Hamilton County Health Department.
Read the full story
Members of the Shelby County GOP and the Shelby County Democratic Party have opted not to put up candidates to run for their local school board. Shelby County Administrator of Elections Linda Phillips relayed the news to The Tennessee Star on Tuesday.
Read the full story
Officials in two Tennessee counties, Shelby and Hamilton, use a bail calculation tool for criminal defendants that is also used in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Waukesha is where suspect Darrell Brooks Jr. faces homicide charges for using his car to kill six people at a recent holiday gathering. Prosecutors handling a previous case of physical abuse and vehicular assault involving Brooks asked a court to set bail bond for the defendant at a mere $1,000. Court officials agreed.
Read the full story
A private Christian school in West Tennessee has triggered LGBTQ activists as well as Shelby County Commissioner Tami Sawyer into an angry frenzy.
Officials at Briarcrest Christian School, in Eads, held a training session for parents and students about how to respond Biblically to gender theory. A flyer for the event, which school officials held November 9, asked participants to “look into the craziness our culture is throwing at our kids.”
Read the full story
Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael in studio to discuss the course events of Shelby County’s mask mandate lawsuit against Governor Lee.
Read the full story
Shelby County has announced a lawsuit against Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) over his executive order allowing parents to opt their children out of mask mandates. The county says that the order puts children at risk of contracting COVID and even dying.
The complaint, filed Tuesday, says that “Governor Lee’s executive order makes the maintenance and support of a system of free public schools impossible.” The lawsuit opens by stating that Shelby County is in the middle of a “global pandemic, the likes of which the world has not seen in over a century.”
Read the full story
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.
Read the full story
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.
Read the full story
Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Speaker Cameron Sexton to the newsmakers line to weigh in on his current letter to Governor Bill Lee requesting a special session to debate COVID mandates in the state.
Read the full story
The Shelby County Health Department director has resigned after a state investigation uncovered potential theft of COVID-19 vaccine doses, evidence that two children were inappropriately vaccinated and a handwritten log as the only record sent to the state documenting expired doses.
Tennessee Health Commissioner Lisa Piercey shared Friday that after a week-long investigation into vaccine waste by the SCHD, the state received only one record of vaccine waste from county health officials: a scrawling six-line, handwritten log labeled “Pfizer waste.”
Read the full story
Tennessee will no longer send the COVID-19 vaccine to the Shelby County Health Department (SCHD) for allocation after a state investigation revealed mismanagement and waste of more than 2,400 vaccine doses this month.
The state instead will send the doses to the city of Memphis and local hospitals.
Read the full story
The Tennessee Legislature is looking into giving local education districts more leeway to open or shut schools during public emergencies — or the governor the power to send students back to campus.
On Monday, Tennessee State Senator Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown) presented Senate Bill 103 to the full Senate. The bill passed the Senate as amended, 27-5.
Read the full story
Tennessee ranks 33rd of the 50 states for the percentage of COVID-19 vaccines it has distributed versus the number of doses it received, data show.
The ranking was revealed by Becker’s Hospital Review, and is available here. Becker’s updated the data on Tuesday.
Read the full story
In a letter to Memphis Mayor Strickland, Governor Bill Lee refuted recent claims that the COVID-19 vaccines weren’t distributed equally to Shelby County.
“[I]t has been reported that Shelby County has not received an equitable share of vaccine doses relative to other counties across the state. However – and I want to be clear and unmistakable about this – any such claims are incorrect,” stated Lee.
Read the full story
Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Tennessee Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton to the newsmakers line to discuss the expediency in which special session is moving bills through.
Read the full story
Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the American Federation for Children’s Tennessee State Director Shaka Mitchell to the newsmakers line to discuss the pending lawsuit for Governor Lee’s new education savings account pilot program.
Read the full story
Shelby County Schools would save more than $2,000 for each student who chooses to utilize Education Savings Accounts, and Metro Nashville Schools would save more than $500 for each student who uses them.
This, according to a new research report that staff at the Beacon Center of Tennessee published Thursday.
Read the full story
U.S. Department of Justice officials announced Monday that they will grant more than $2 million to fight and prevent crime in Memphis and Shelby County.
This, according to a press release that officials with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Tennessee published on their website Monday.
Read the full story
Friday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed the Vice President of Legal Affairs at The Beacon Center Braden Boucek to the show to discuss the recent ruling regarding the school voucher program in Tennessee.
Read the full story
Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to discuss the recent ruling deeming the ESA and school voucher programs for Davidson and Shelby Counties unconstitutional.
Read the full story
When is a COVID-19 patient not a COVID-19 patient? When the person has been dead for six months, as has reportedly happened in Memphis.
Media reports have carried the story, including coverage here by KVUE.
Read the full story
Tennessee’s largest county reported Saturday its highest single-day increase in COVID-19 cases, though officials were trying to figure out if the jump represented a surge in people getting sick or delayed results from testing laboratories.
The Shelby County Health Department in Memphis reported an increase of 385 cases of the new coronavirus, eclipsing the previous single-day spike by more than 100 cases.
Read the full story
As of press time Sunday, exactly 20,145 Tennesseans tested positive for COVID-19.
The virus had hospitalized 1,583 state residents and claimed the lives of 336 Tennesseans.
Read the full story
A new lawsuit seeks the release of inmates at the Shelby County Jail who are at “high risk of severe injury or death from COVID-19.”
As of Friday afternoon, the jail reported 160 confirmed coronavirus cases among detainees, but 156 have already recovered, according to the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office. Another 68 employees have tested positive for the virus, 46 of whom have recovered. Only one current hospitalization was reported among both employees and detainees.
Read the full story
The Shelby County Health Department in Tennessee has issued a drug overdose spike alert lasting from April 6 to May 7 after seeing an unexplained increase in drug overdoses between that time.
Recent data showed that seven separate spike alerts were triggered between those dates, with the most recent reporting 20 suspected overdose events, four of them fatal.
Read the full story
As of Sunday Tennessee had 14,985 confirmed COVID-19 cases, while the virus had claimed the lives of 243 state residents.
This, according to The Covid Tracking Project, which also reported the virus had hospitalized 1,325 Tennesseans.
Read the full story
Public affairs strategist and all-star panelist Clint Brewer 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. – Wednesday morning on the newsmakers line.
Read the full story
A judge ruled that the Tennessee Education Savings Account (ESA) Pilot Program is unconstitutional, and a nonpartisan think tank says that could harm children.
Read the full story
Live from Memphis Tuesday 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 Shelby County resident George Flinn who is seeking to replace Sen. Lamar Alexander in the U.S. Senate.
Read the full story
Governor Bill Lee said Monday that the state shutdown of restaurants to protect against the COVID-19 pandemic was necessary, even if members of the Memphis Restaurant Association reportedly described it as unconstitutional. A member of the media pressed Lee at a press conference Monday as to whether the shutdown could pass constitutional muster. Lee did not seem to answer, at least not directly. “What is most important is that these shutdowns occurred in order to save people’s lives. Tennesseans have done what Tennesseans needed to do. That was to put in place measures and to follow those measures to do just what was necessary to stop the spread of a deadly virus. They have done that,” Lee said at Monday’s press conference. “We certainly cannot entirely stop it, but we can slow it to a point that we can manage that spread and have the capacity in our health care system to take care of it and allow Tennesseans to operate and run their businesses at the same time. That is the goal, and I am grateful that Tennesseans have done what they have done to get us to the place where we are. We are encouraged to move…
Read the full story
Tennessee State Rep. John DeBerry, a black Shelby County Democrat, is an independent thinker, which at the moment makes him Public Enemy No. 1 in the eyes of the state’s Democratic Party.
Earlier this month, with most Americans distracted by the media’s nonstop coronavirus coverage, Janeita Lentz, another Shelby County Democrat and co-chair of the Memphis-Mid South Democratic Socialists of America, advanced a racist, cultist agenda. Her mission: to oust a black Democratic incumbent deemed too uppity for the Tennessee Democratic Party (TNDP) and its white overseers.
Read the full story
As of Sunday night, Shelby County had the highest number of COVID-19 cases in all of Tennessee, with 313 confirmed cases.
This, according to statistics that members of the Tennessee Department of Health released this weekend.
Overall, Tennessee had 1,537 COVID-19 cases, the TDH website reported.
Read the full story
Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris on Monday announced that county and other local officials will enforce a stay-at-home order for residents because of the coronavirus emergency.
Harris announced this at a press conference Monday.
“The coronavirus is a major disruption to our way of life,” Harris said.
“And we have to expect that it could be a long-lasting effect on our way or life.”
Read the full story
Nashville Mayor John Cooper confirmed a case of coronavirus on Sunday, making it the third in Tennessee, coming the same day Shelby County announced a case.
Read the full story
Add Shelby County resident George Flinn to the list of announced candidates seeking to replace U.S. Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander in the U.S. Senate.
Read the full story
Tennessee officials report they have charged residents of Lincoln, Shelby, and Sullivan counties with TennCare fraud.
Read the full story
Officials in Bartlett, in Shelby County, went $90,000 over budget with their School Nutrition Fund, according to an audit Tennessee Comptrollers released this week.
Read the full story
A former middle school majorette coach at Germantown Middle School allegedly stole more than $1,400 in student fees she wasn’t legally allowed to keep.
Read the full story