Listen to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy weekdays from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm on WENO AM760 The Flame.
Former U.S. Special Envoy for Haiti Dan Foote said in an exclusive interview on The Michael Patrick Leahy Show that former HP CEO Meg Whitman, who now serves as the U.S. Ambassador to Kenya, is the official behind the security deal between Kenya and Haiti.
Read the full story
Rachel Alexander, lead reporter at The Arizona Sun Times, said Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes’ announcement that the State Grand Jury returned indictments to those who agreed to serve as a slate of alternate electors for Donald Trump had he won the 2020 election is “deliberate.”
Read the full story
NewsChannel 5’s chief investigative reporter Phil Williams continues to be criticized for his “journalistic failures” as he dodged an opportunity to confront State Representative Justin Jones (D-Nashville) on his alleged coverup of a 2020 assault of two protesters by a homeless man.
Read the full story
Roger Simon, the co-founder of PJMedia and current columnist for The Epoch Times, said the pro-Hamas protests unfolding on Ivy League college campuses across the nation are comparable to the scene in Germany in 1937.
Simon made the comments on Tuesday’s episode of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show after listening to audio of a clip taken from Columbia University where pro-Palestine protesters formed a human chain to keep Jewish students out of an encampment on the university’s campus.
Read the full story
Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, addressed personal attacks from NewsChannel 5’s chief investigative reporter Phil Williams over the weekend, saying such attacks are “absolute silliness” and a common tactic used by Williams when pressed on his “journalistic failings.”
On Sunday, Pappert reported on an interview between Williams and Dan Mandis, host of Nashville’s Morning News with Dan Mandis on SuperTalk 99.7 WTN, where Williams said that he once asked Tennessee State Representative Justin Jones (D-Nashville) to respond to claims made by his former close colleague Jeneisha Harris on June 18, 2020 that the state lawmaker had covered up the sexual assault of two protesters by a homeless man.
Read the full story
Ben Cunningham, founder of the Nashville Tea Party, said not only does Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s transit referendum appear to be illegal under the IMPROVE Act, but the transit plan’s overall vision of commuters suddenly switching over to public transport is “absurd.”
O’Connell unveiled his $3.1 billion transit plan, called “Choose How You Move: An All-Access Pass to Sidewalks, Signals, Service, and Safety,” last week, which would be funded through a half-cent increase in the city’s sales tax.
Read the full story
National political reporter Neil W. McCabe said the scene of former President Donald Trump visiting a bodega in West Harlem last week “absolutely” resonates with Hispanic and Black voters, which ultimately makes the left “very concerned.”
Read the full story
Bonnie Brezina, who serves as the state director of Marsy’s Law for Tennessee, said the state is in a positive position to vote on Marsy’s Law as a constitutional amendment on the statewide ballot in 2026.
Read the full story
Brent Scher, lead investigative reporter and editor at the Daily Wire, said NewsGuard’s censorship of “disfavored” news through its rating tool for media sites “should not be something that is acceptable in the U.S.”
Read the full story
Cheryl Fritze, director of News Operations for Michigan News Source, explained how an elementary school in Michigan is teaching students about pronouns through a book called They She He Me: Free to Be!, a picture book about “busting gender stereotypes and assumptions one pronoun at a time.”
Read the full story
Aaron Gulbransen, executive director of the Tennessee Faith and Freedom Coalition, said the Tennessee House of Representatives should have introduced a “clean” universal school choice bill instead of attaching additional incentives not particularly related to school choice to the bill.
While the governor’s school choice bill in the House includes additional incentives, the Senate’s version solely focuses on the governor’s proposal.
Read the full story
Michael Patrick Leahy, editor-in-chief and CEO of The Tennessee Star, said as a plaintiff in the case seeking to compel the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) to release the manifesto left behind by the Covenant School shooter, he believes the the full manifesto should be released – not just the “documents in the car” found on the day of the shooting which Metro Legal suggests would satisfy the plaintiffs in the case.
Read the full story
Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation, said 15 years after the Tax Day Tea Party, the movement’s effect on fiscal responsibility, limited government, and free markets in federal politics has been “an abject failure.”
“The Tea Party movement was an abject failure. There’s just no other way to put it. Look at where we are today. When the Tea Party movement started, it was triggered by Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package. Today, that’s a rounding error. The deficit was $10 billion when Obama took over in January 2009. Today, it’s $34 trillion. It’s going up by a trillion dollars every hundred days, and that rate is accelerating,” Phillips explained on Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Read the full story
Roger Simon, the co-founder of PJMedia and current columnist for The Epoch Times, and Ben Cunningham, founder of the Nashville Tea Party, discussed the ongoing legal battle over the release of the Covenant School shooter’s manifesto, agreeing that the “lives of others” are at stake as long as the manifesto’s contents are kept under wraps.
Read the full story
Roger Simon, the co-founder of PJMedia and current columnist for The Epoch Times, said the U.S. government paid for Iran’s Saturday attack on Israel, which saw 300 drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles launched at the country.
Simon said the money trail could be traced back to the Obama administration when billions of dollars were sent to the Mullahs.
Read the full story
Geoff Shepard, former staffer in the Nixon Administration and author of The Nixon Conspiracy: Watergate and the Plot to Remove the President, explained in an exclusive interview with The Michael Patrick Leahy Show how he came to the conclusion that the Watergate scandal had been misinterpreted for nearly 40 years.
Read the full story
Former U.S. Special Envoy for Haiti Dan Foote said in an exclusive interview on The Michael Patrick Leahy Show that the people of Haiti must have a “national dialogue” to begin the process of reforming the country and reclaiming it from violent gangs.
Read the full story
Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, said he believes Tennessee U.S. Representative David Kustoff’s (R-TN-08) vote on Friday against an amendment that would have ended the warrantless spying on United States citizens allowed under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) makes the congressman “ripe for a challenge” this election cycle.
Kustoff and Democrat Congressman Steve Cohen (D-TN-09) were the sole members of Tennessee’s congressional delegation to vote against the amendment on Friday, Pappert previously reported.
Read the full story
Dr. Carol M. Swain, author of The Adversity of Diversity, said the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) standards being pushed today are not the same type of diversity Americans rallied around during the Civil Rights Movement.
Swain said her book points out “everything wrong” with today’s DEI standards and how they violate the U.S. Constitution and Equal Protections Protection Clause.
Read the full story
Dr. Carol M. Swain and national political reporter Neil W. McCabe, while discussing the politics surrounding the topic of abortion, identified how some seemingly pro-life groups and individuals who claim to be Christians “talk the talk and not walk the walk” when it comes to protecting the unborn.
Read the full story
Jason Snead, the director of the Honest Elections Project Action Fund, said the practice of Ranked-Choice Voting is a tool used by the Left to “push politics to the left” and “give more power to the left-wing mega-donors.”
Ranked-Choice Voting, an election process where voters can rank multiple candidates for a single office, is currently used statewide in the states of Alaska and Maine, cities including New York City, and other jurisdictions across the nation.
Read the full story
Shelby County resident Dr. George Flinn, a Republican candidate for U.S. Congress in West Tennessee’s 8th District, said he is running because incumbent U.S. Representative David Kustoff (R-TN-08) needs to be “challenged.”
Flinn, who has run as a Republican and Independent candidate in U.S. Senate and primary races for Tennessee’s 8th and 9th Congressional districts, said he believes Kustoff “should not go unchallenged” considering the incumbent’s recent voting record on bills, particularly spending packages.
Read the full story
Mike Olcott, a Republican who won last month’s primary election for Texas House District 60, invalidated News Channel 5’s Phil Williams’ claims that his opponent he defeated in the race, State Representative Glenn Rogers, was defeated by “billionaire” pro-school voucher “forces.”
Read the full story
Cheryl Fritze, director of News Operations for Michigan News Source, said former President Donald Trump must “stay on message” in order to win the state of Michigan in the November general election.
In the 2020 general election, incumbent President Joe Biden defeated Trump in Michigan by 2.78 percent.
Read the full story
Ben Cunningham, founder of the Nashville Tea Party, said Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s transit plan, which is expected to be on the November ballot, is likely illegal under the IMPROVE Act, which passed the Tennessee General Assembly in 2017.
The 2017 IMPROVE Act, signed by former Governor Bill Haslam, permits local governments to seek a dedicated funding source via surcharge to support mass transportation projects through local referendum.
Read the full story
Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, said he believes that the Best of Tennessee Action Fund’s goal is to “get rid of anybody who will support” former President Donald Trump based on the political candidates the treasurer for the dark money group has donated to in the past.
Read the full story
Metro Nashville Council Member Jeff Eslick detailed how the council has recently taken up resolutions surrounding statewide issues and how some members request that a hand vote be recorded as a “shaming move” against members who oppose the resolutions.
In addition to activists taking advantage of the public comment period during Metro Council meetings to speak on the current situation in the Middle East between Israeli and Hamas forces, Eslick said the council has taken up three different types of resolutions that “condemn or express disappointment with the state” in recent weeks.
Read the full story
Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, detailed how three new fundraising entities in the Volunteer State – collectively called The Best of Tennessee – mirror the agenda of the nationally focused, Never-Trump organization The Lincoln Project.
Read the full story
Matt Giffin, a reporter at The Tennessee Star, and Michael Patrick Leahy, editor-in-chief and CEO of The Star, discussed a recent segment from Steve Bannon’s War Room where host Bannon explained how leftist Christians deceptively cherry-pick elements from the Gospel to push a socialist agenda.
Bannon specifically used Jim Wallis, founder of the non-profit, faith-based organization Sojourners and author of The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Re-founding Democracy, as an example of those using selective elements from the Gospel to paint Jesus as a social justice warrior.
Read the full story
Mike Benz, a former Trump State Department official and current executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, revealed how NewsGuard is making its way into K-12 public schools and “warping” the minds of tens of millions of schoolchildren.
NewsGuard is a for-profit entity dedicated to countering what it calls “misinformation” founded by journalist Steven Brill and former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz.
Read the full story
Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, said News Channel 5’s Phil Williams “ought to be embarrassed” as the investigative journalist continues to provide illegitimate responses to inquiries surrounding the legality of a recorded phone call the network aired during last Monday’s 8-minute anti-school choice hit piece.
Read the full story
Michael Patrick Leahy, editor-in-chief and CEO of The Tennessee Star, dissected a critical revelation in the case of The Covenant School shooter, 28-year-old Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who took six lives last year at the Nashville school.
Hale, who identified as transgender, shot and killed three adults and three students at The Covenant School in Nashville on March 27, 2023.
Read the full story
State Senator Kerry Roberts (R-Springfield) said a bill that would prohibit individuals from transporting illegal aliens into the Volunteer State failed in committee because its language was not “exact.”
The bill, SB 2802, would increase the penalty fine for transporting an illegal alien from $1,000 to $5,000.
Read the full story
Matt Boyle, the national political editor at Breitbart News, said Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives need to “put the heat directly on” President Joe Biden from now until the November 5 General Election in order to “save America.”
Read the full story
Matthew Giffin, a reporter for The Tennessee Star, and Michael Patrick Leahy, editor-in-chief and CEO of The Star, questioned the legality of News Channel 5’s airing of a so-called secret recording of a call between Tennessee State Representative Todd Warner (R-Chapel Hill) and Americans for Prosperity – Tennessee (AFP-TN) State Director Tori Venable.
On Monday, the news outlet ran investigative reporter Phil Williams’ 8-minute anti-school choice hit piece focused on AFP-TN’s push for state lawmakers to advance the governor’s bill.
Read the full story
Steve Baker, a current opinion contributor for Blaze News and an investigative journalist, said he is being treated as a “terrorist” by the weaponized Department of Justice (DOJ) for covering the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, as an independent journalist.
Baker has been charged with four misdemeanors for being present at the Capitol on January 6.
Read the full story
Tennessee Republican Party Chairman Scott Golden explained why the Republican National Committee (RNC) and state Republican parties are pushing voters to vote early in this year’s November general election when the time comes.
Read the full story
Ohio State Representative Beth Lear (R-Galena) said her bill that would modify the timeframe for voters and candidates to declare a political party is a “simple” piece of legislation that would work to make elections fairer in the Buckeye State.
Read the full story
Tom Pappert, reporter for The Georgia Star News and lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, said the conduct of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, specifically amid the aftermath of her decision to appoint her former lover, Nathan Wade, as the special prosecutor overseeing her case against former President Donald Trump, is a “disgrace to the legal profession.”
Read the full story
Americans for Prosperity – Tennessee (AFP-TN) State Director Tori Venable responded to News Channel 5’s investigative segment on Monday accusing the conservative political advocacy group of threatening Tennessee state lawmakers to advance Governor Bill Lee’s universal school choice bill.
Read the full story
Corey DeAngelis, a school choice activist and senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, said it’s time for Tennessee State Representative Todd Warner (R-Chapel Hill) to be voted out of office amid his anti-school choice stunts, including his recent work with News Channel 5’s Phil Williams.
Read the full story
Peter Schweizer, author of Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans, said a majority of U.S. leaders are silent on China’s role in inciting American issues due to their personal, financial entanglement with the foreign nation.
Schweizer said his book focuses on a multitude of American issues – including crime and drugs – and details the “overwhelming evidence” connecting China to such issues.
Read the full story
Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the mainstream media’s refusal to acknowledge how the Biden administration’s compliance in scuttling Haiti’s elections back in 2021 contributes to the chaos currently unfolding in the Caribbean country stems from the fact that the backstory is a “terrible” look for President Joe Biden.
Read the full story
Metro Nashville Council Member Jeff Eslick explained how one aspect of Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s transit plan, which will be on the November ballot, would help control the flow of traffic for drivers in Music City.
Read the full story
Sheila Matthews, co-founder of the national non-profit parent organization AbleChild, and activist Amy Miller with the Reform Pharma initiative of Children’s Health Defense, detailed the progress a bill that would help determine the link between Big Pharma drugs and mass shooters has made in the Tennessee General Assembly since its introduction.
Read the full story
Tom Pappert, lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, said members of the Tennessee congressional delegation have not shown an interest in taking up J6 prisoner Ronald Colton McAbee’s case due to the level of “fear” surrounding the overall defense of J6 defendants.
Last month, McAbee was sentenced to almost six years in prison, three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $32,165 in restitution after being convicted and pleading guilty to six felony charges and one misdemeanor charge for being present at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
Read the full story
Mike Benz, former Trump State Department official and current executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, said the Supreme Court is going to have to exercise “bravery” as opposed to “wisdom” in its ruling of Murthy v. Missouri for the government censorship complex to be dismantled.
Murthy v. Missouri seeks to determine whether the government’s “challenged conduct transformed private social media companies’ content-moderation decisions into state action and violated respondents’ First Amendment rights” related to COVID-19 and the 2020 presidential election.
Read the full story
Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the Biden administration’s compliance in scuttling Haiti’s elections back in 2021 has resulted in the chaos currently unfolding in the Caribbean country as armed gangs have taken over.
In 2021, thousands of Haitians were deported back to Haiti from a Del Rio, Texas migrant camp allegedly in exchange for the country’s elections to be postponed at the request of unelected leader Ariel Henry, who has served as the acting Haiti Prime Minister and the acting president of Haiti since July 2021 after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.
Read the full story
Ben Cunningham, founder of the Nashville Tea Party, said Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s transit plan, which will be on the November ballot, will inevitably lead to property tax increases.
Last month, O’Connell officially announced that his long-awaited transit plan will be on the November 5 ballot, however, he did not release any information regarding what the plan entails.
Read the full story
Joe Allen, author of Dark Aeon: Transhumanism and the War Against Humanity, said he believes the future of artificial intelligence (AI) will be “utterly miserable.”
Allen, on Tuesday’s episode of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, explained how AI will most likely not evolve into a full-out “total doom human extinction” model nor into an “elaborate and spectacular” model that provides cures for diseases and invincible security, but instead evolve into something in between.
Read the full story