Michael Patrick Leahy, editor-in-chief and CEO of The Tennessee Star, vowed to help “lead the charge” to retire Tennessee State Representative Todd Warner (R-Chapel Hill) in response to the lawmaker’s vote against Governor Bill Lee’s proposed school voucher program.
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Tennessee State Representative Gino Bulso (R-Brentwood) said he expects his bill prohibiting the displaying of certain flags on or in a public school, including LGBTQ pride flags, to soon pass the Senate and be signed into law by Governor Bill Lee.
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JC Bowman, founder and president of Professional Educators of Tennessee, and Michael Patrick Leahy, editor-in-chief and CEO of The Tennessee Star, debated an audio recording slated to be released by News Channel 5’s Phil Williams supposedly addressing the “origin of school vouchers” in Tennessee.
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Tennessee U.S. Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07) said the feedback he got from constituents and lawmakers after he initially announced his plans to retire from Congress were “overwhelming” and ultimately led him to reconsider his decision and instead run for reelection.
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Aaron Gulbransen, executive director of the Tennessee Faith and Freedom Coalition, and Michael Patrick Leahy, editor-in-chief and CEO of The Tennessee Star, condemned Tennessee State Representative Todd Warner’s (R-Chapel Hill) vote against Governor Bill Lee’s proposed school voucher program.
On Tuesday, state lawmakers on the K-12 Subcommittee voted 6-2 to pass the House version of the governor’s school voucher program, which would make Education Freedom Scholarships worth $7,000 available to students in every county of the state.
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Corey DeAngelis, a school choice activist and senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, detailed how implementing a universal school choice program in Tennessee could motivate public schools to respect and strive to meet parents’ expectations in order to compete with schools attracting families with vouchers.
On Tuesday, state lawmakers on the K-12 Subcommittee voted 6-2 to pass the House version of Governor Bill Lee’s proposed school voucher program, which would make Education Freedom Scholarships worth $7,000 available to students in every county of the state.
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Steve Cortes, former senior spokesman and strategist for the 2016 and 2020 Trump campaigns and current head of the League of American Workers, said the murder of 22-year-old Georgia nursing student Laken Riley was “100 percent preventable” if it weren’t for the “radical open borders agenda” of President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Jose Ibarra, a 26-year-old illegal alien from Venezuela, was arrested and charged last week for his alleged murder of Riley, who died from blunt-force trauma to her head.
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Mark Elrod, who is currently serving as interim sheriff of Williamson County amid former Sheriff Dusty Rhoades’ retirement, said his department would assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in carrying out deportations of illegal immigrants under a potential Trump presidency beginning in 2025.
If elected, former President Donald Trump has said he would immediately mobilize ICE to deport illegal immigrants as part of his goal to carry out the “largest deportation operation” in the nation’s history.
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Tennessee House Majority Whip Johnny Garrett (R-Goodlettsville) said the Democrats in the Tennessee General Assembly are “frustrated” and “divided” by the actions and conduct of a select few of its own members.
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Executive Director Mark Krikorian, Senior National Security Fellow Todd Bensman, and Director of Policy Studies Jessica Vaughan with the Center for Immigration Studies explained how immigration – both legal and illegal – into the U.S. must be reduced in order to balance out the nation’s rapidly rising foreign-born population.
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Tennessee State Representative Jason Zachary (R-Knoxville) is pushing back against California Governor Gavin Newsom, whose super PAC released an advertisement attacking Tennessee for proposing a parental rights bill.
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Senior National Security Fellow Todd Bensman with the Center for Immigration Studies warned there is “mass immigration asylum fraud” taking place in the U.S.
Bensman, who has interviewed thousands of migrants over the years, explained on Thursday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy how migrants, specifically from Venezuela and Haiti, often live in other more stable countries – including Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador – for years before making their way to the United States to work and live a prosperous life.
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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said his consumer protection lawsuit against BlackRock’s Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) investing will force the company to disclose if it is mixing ESG factors when making investment decisions instead of focusing on financial factors relative to the rate of return.
Skrmetti filed his lawsuit against BlackRock in December 2023, alleging that the hedge fund has misled consumers in Tennessee about the scale and impacts of its ESG initiatives for several years.
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Executive Director Mark Krikorian, Senior National Security Fellow Todd Bensman, and Director of Policy Studies Jessica Vaughan with the Center for Immigration Studies said Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives could immediately use their slim-margin majority to help correct the nation’s border crisis by cutting funding for programs and entities that fuel illegal immigration.
One idea the trio discussed during Thursday’s episode of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – other than impeaching and convicting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas – was lawmakers’ ability to cut funding for the United Nations (UN), which has been providing illegal immigrants with cash cards as they make their journey to North America.
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Tennessee State Representative Jason Zachary (R-Knoxville) said California Governor Gavin Newsom should pay more attention to his state’s problems after Newsom’s super PAC released an advertisement attacking Tennessee for proposing a parental rights bill.
Zachary made his comments in a phone interview on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Monday.
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Krikorian said a second Biden term would force illegal migrants to Nashville as the capacity of current sanctuary cities including Chicago, Denver, and New York City would be full.
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Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, said a number of steps would have to be taken for a “mass deportation” strategy to be implemented on day one of a second Trump presidency.
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Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, explained different ways the Metro Nashville City Council’s new Immigrant Caucus may aid illegal aliens in Music City.
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Roger Simon, the co-founder of PJMedia and current columnist for The Epoch Times, attended former President Donald Trump’s speech at the National Religious Broadcasters International Christian Media Convention in Nashville on Thursday,
Simon, noting how Trump was nearly two hours late to the event after having delivered a speech at an earlier fundraiser event, said the former president was a “force of nature,” proving those who believe he has “lost a step” wrong.
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National political reporter Neil W. McCabe said the tone of this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is “completely Trump,” noting how the “Trump-hating corporate conservative establishment” is not present this time around.
“It’s completely Trump,” McCabe explained on Friday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy. “In the past you would kind of have sort of the Trump-hating corporate conservative establishment, but they’re not here.”
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Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the U.S. is on track to encounter more than 600,000 illegal aliens that have traveled through the Darién Gap, which is the only land path connecting Central America and South America, to get to the U.S.-Mexico border this year.
The Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama consists of more than 60 miles of dense rainforest, steep mountains, and vast swamps. Illegal immigrants from South America and other parts of the world use the land path as a passageway to get to North America.
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Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, said migrants who are crossing illegally into the U.S. are not being thoroughly screened for illnesses or criminal backgrounds.
“They often screen them before they go to detention, but they’re not being detained,” Krikorian explained on Thursday’s episode of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy. “As far as criminal behavior, they do run their names through some databases before they let them go, but that only works if we have records of them having committed crimes in the United States. The problem always with vetting is garbage in, garbage out. Do you think that the Somalia DMV or the medical records office or whatever in Venezuela is going to tell us anything about people? Of course not. So, yes, there is some kind of pro forma screening but it doesn’t really screen very much.”
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Tennessee State Representative Scott Cepicky (R-Culleoka), who chairs the Education Instruction Subcommittee, said Governor Bill Lee’s universal school choice bill, known as the Education Freedom Scholarship Act, will likely be revealed next week.
Cepicky said there was a meeting on Wednesday for the committee chairs and caucus members to go over the bill’s language, making tweaks to ensure the bill will “function properly” and is “constitutional.”
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Phillip Schwenk, the founding head of school at Rutherford Classical Academy, said one of the reasons why parents are drawn to the charter school is due to the classical education model assuming that the parent is the primary educator for their children.
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Tennessee U.S. Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN-05) said he has received a response from the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Memphis in regards to his request for inmate Stewart Parks, who is serving his eight month sentence for being present at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, to be moved to the prison’s minimum security satellite camp.
On February 13, Ogles sent a letter to Warden F.J. Bowers of the FCI in Memphis requesting that Parks be moved to the satellite camp for the duration of his incarceration, as previously reported by The Tennessee Star.
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Steve Cortes, former senior spokesman and strategist for the 2016 and 2020 Trump campaigns and current head of the League of American Workers, said there is a consensus among Americans that Chinese companies should not be allowed to buy and control American resources, including farmland.
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Editor-in-Chief and CEO of The Tennessee Star Michael Patrick Leahy and Crom Carmichael, original all-star panelist of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy, discussed on Monday a bill recently introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives that would give state attorneys general a greater standing to sue the Department of Homeland Security when it fails to enforce existing immigration laws passed by Congress.
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Editor-in-Chief and CEO of The Tennessee Star Michael Patrick Leahy said the John Fredericks Radio Network is the only radio network left in the country that hosts independent, America First personalities as other networks, like Audacy, are being bought out and transformed into left-wing outlets by the likes of George Soros.
Leahy, who hosts The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on 760 AM WENO “The Flame,” Nashville’s only America First Newstalk station, said Soros, a Democrat mega-donor, is buying up radio networks across the country as a “2024 campaign contribution for the Democrats.”
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Former chair of the Williamson County Republican Party, Dr. Omar Hamada, said he plans to decide on launching a bid for Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District “sooner than later” following incumbent U.S. Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07) announcing his retirement.
Hamada, who said he spoke with Green shortly after he announced his retirement, explained how he feels he is being “thrust” into the race in a way, adding, “I feel like the Lord is leading me in that direction.”
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The Davidson County Republican Party is set to host a Shooting Stars event at the GlockStore next month.
Lonnie Spivak, chairman of the Davidson County GOP, said the event is “going to be a lot of fun.”
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Steve Cortes, former senior spokesman and strategist for the 2016 and 2020 Trump campaigns and current head of the League of American Workers, said Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Mike Turner’s (R-OH-10) Wednesday statement warning of a “serious national security threat” was “vague,” adding it “smells bad for a lot of reasons.”
On Wednesday, Turner released a statement urging the Biden administration to “declassify all information” related to the “serious national security threat,” so that the appropriate parties can “discuss the actions necessary” in response.
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With early voting underway for the March 5 Presidential Preference Primary and County Primary Elections, Tennessee Republican Party Chairman Scott Golden explained how voters elect delegates in the Volunteer State.
In addition to the presidential and county candidates, two types of delegates are elected by Republican voters on the primary ballot – at-large delegates, which represent the entire state and appear on the ballot in every county, and delegates that represent each congressional district.
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Tennessee Republican Party Chairman Scott Golden said he was surprised when Tennessee U.S. Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07) announced his retirement from Congress.
Green, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, announced his retirement on Wednesday, just one day after leading the House in a historic vote to impeach Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
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Activist Amy Miller with the newest initiative of Children’s Health Defense, Reform Pharma, and private citizen Bernadette Pajer explained how a recent bill filed in the Tennessee General Assembly would help determine the link between Big Pharma drugs and mass shooters.
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Sheila Matthews, co-founder of the national non-profit parent organization AbleChild, detailed her work on crafting an “outstanding” bill recently filed in the Tennessee General Assembly that is focused on reforming the process medical examiner’s offices must follow in terms of testing for psychotropic drugs when performing autopsies on the bodies of mass shooters.
HB 2933, if enacted, would require a medical examiner’s office or regional forensic center to determine and document current both psychotropic and prescription drug use from the past 10 years by a deceased individual who died under “suspicious, unusual, or unnatural circumstances.”
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Aaron Gulbransen, executive director of the Tennessee Faith and Freedom Coalition, said the current session of the Tennessee General Assembly is “pretty normal” despite state lawmakers still reeling from last year’s events by the “Tennessee Three” Democrats and the special session.
“It’s kind of normal, to be honest with you. Now, I will say, I think everybody has a little bit of PTSD after last year with all the shenanigans that Justin Jones, Justin Pearson, and Gloria Johnson pulled and then the contentiousness of the special session and the lead up to that and right after that. But it’s relatively normal,” Gulbransen explained on Tuesday’s episode of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy.
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Dr. Carol M. Swain said First Lady Jill Biden held a “discreet” meeting at the Richland Country Club at the same time Swain’s nonprofit organization Be the People’s American Dream Conference was taking place on Friday evening in Nashville.
Biden initially traveled to Franklin for a “political event” reportedly occurring at the home of country music star Brad Paisley, however, also held an unannounced event at the Richland Country Club on Friday, according to Swain.
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Tennessee State Senator Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) said Memphis will become the “butt of every joke” and the “example of a failed city” if its bail system and crime crisis are not addressed.
Noting how Detroit was once an example of a “failed city” and a “shell of its former self,” Taylor explained what steps the city has taken to reduce crime and how Memphis should follow its lead.
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Tennessee State Senator Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) said the 20-year old suspect charged in a recent violent crime spree in Memphis had charges dismissed by Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy two days before allegedly committing the multiple acts of violence.
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School choice activist Corey A. DeAngelis joined Wednesday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy to discuss the future of school choice in the U.S., specifically in Democrat-run states.
Leahy kicked off the segment by noting how Vermont has the oldest operating school voucher program in the country’s history with its Town Tuitioning Program.
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Roger Simon, co-founder of PJMedia and current columnist for The Epoch Times, joined Friday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy where he discussed the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) latest attack on Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) Jr. ‘s presidential campaign and the super PAC supporting him.
On Friday, the DNC filed a Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint against RFK Jr.’s campaign and the American Values Super PAC on allegations the two are colluding to get the candidate ballot access.
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Roger Simon, co-founder of PJMedia and current columnist for The Epoch Times, joined Friday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy to discuss Tucker Carlson’s two-hour interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Simon said he was “absolutely riveted” by the interview, adding the amount of information discussed was “impossible to digest immediately.”
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Metro Nashville Council Member Jeff Eslick joined Thursday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy to discuss the latest developments and work from the Metro Nashville Council.
Eslick said the council’s meeting on Tuesday consisted of some good discussions on issues; however, it was dragged out by council members trying to convince other members on how to vote on certain ordinances as well as activists taking advantage of the public comment period to speak on the current situation in the Middle East.
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Metro Nashville Council Member Jeff Eslick joined Thursday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy where he discussed an ordinance proposed to the metro council that would change the zoning laws to allow for more multifamily dwellings.
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Tom Pappert, lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, joined Wednesday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy to discuss the decades-long smuggling issue at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Memphis where January 6 defendant Stewart Parks self-reported on Tuesday to serve his eight-month prison sentence for being present at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
Parks was sentenced in November 2023 to three years imprisonment on misdemeanor trespassing, disorderly conduct, and theft charges by D.C. Circuit Court Judge Amit P. Mehta, who has presided over several trials related to the January 6 Capitol riots. Parks, however, is serving his sentence concurrently, reducing his term to eight months behind bars.
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Metro Nashville Council Member Jeff Eslick joined Thursday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy to discuss what may be included in Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s anticipated multimodal transportation plan.
O’Connell, who was elected mayor in last year’s runoff election, vowed during his campaign to address Nashville’s “infrastructure and transit concerns” and is expected to release a multimodal plan in the near future.
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Matthew Giffin, reporter at The Tennessee Star and student at Middle Tennessee State University, joined Wednesday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy to discuss former Wyoming U.S. Representative Liz Cheney’s appearance at an event at Vanderbilt University this week.
On Tuesday, Cheney joined Jon Meacham, former MSNBC contributor and current co-chair of the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy, for an event titled “Defending Our Democracy” where the pair discussed Cheney’s work on the January 6th Committee and the “health of democracy and the presidency.”
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Scott Bessent, billionaire investor and founder of Key Square Capital Management Fund, joined Wednesday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy to discuss how the stock market’s rally coincides with former President Donald Trump being ahead in the 2024 presidential election polls.
In a letter to investors, which was recently leaked to Bloomberg, Bessent’s Key Square Capital Management Fund said it believes that equity markets are “in the midst of a ‘Trump Rally’ that will last as long as he remains ahead of Biden in the polls.”
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State Senator Kerry Roberts (R-Springfield) joined Tuesday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy to discuss Governor Bill Lee’s State of the State Address delivered the prior night.
Throughout Lee’s address to state lawmakers and Tennesseans, he was repeatedly interrupted by hecklers, who first became vocal as the governor announced his plans to expand school choice and public education funding in the Volunteer State.
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All-star panelist Clint Brewer joined Tuesday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy where he offered his thoughts on Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s antitrust lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).
Skrmetti joined Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares in filing the lawsuit against the NCAA last week, arguing the organization violates federal antitrust laws with its “anticompetitive restrictions on the ability of current and future student-athletes to benefit from their name, image, and likeness (NIL).”
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