Michael Patrick Leahy, editor-in-chief and CEO of The Tennessee Star, slammed News Channel 5’s Phil Williams for his omission of a key comment submitted by Mark Gill in response to the outlet’s attack piece featuring an undercover video recording taken during a strategy session for school vouchers in 2016.
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Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the Biden administration has “industrialized parole authority” through its program that has flown 320,000 inadmissible aliens into 43 American airports over the past year.
“[The migrants] are coming in on an authority called parole. That’s supposed to be for two or three immigrants a year on a case by case basis, like an emergency medical treatment or, they need somebody to testify in an important case, and then they turn them right back,” Bensman explained on Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show. “The Biden administration has industrialized parole authority. Now they’re just letting hundreds of thousands in all at once instead of two or three as the law says on a case by case basis.”
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Arizona Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema announced Tuesday not running for 2024 reelection.
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An executive assistant at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Memphis told The Tennessee Star on Sunday that Warden F.J. Bowers will not respond to a letter from Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN-05) requesting action for a J6 defendant until the congressman follows the “proper channels” for communication.
Ogles sent a letter to the facility on February 13 after The Star reported the conditions inside FCI Memphis as relayed by Stewart Parks, a former Tennessee candidate for U.S. House and unjustly convicted January 6 defendant who began serving an eight-month sentence at FCI Memphis in February.
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U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) has endorsed U.S. Representative Andy Ogles’ (R-TN-05) reelection bid for Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District.
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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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The Tennessee Legislature’s debate on education savings accounts will continue Wednesday when competing versions of the bill are heard by the Senate Education Committee and House Education Administration.
Both versions involve a significant number of the ESAs, which will start at $7,075 and can be spent by students and families on school-related expenses such as private school tuition.
Both proposals involve 20,000 ESAs statewide starting in the fall with eligibility determined on some level by income.
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Tennessee’s governor Saturday announced that more Tennessee National Guard members will be deployed to the U.S. southern border with Mexico.
“America continues to face an unprecedented border crisis, and people across the nation are experiencing the devastating consequences of rising crime, drug trafficking and human trafficking,” said Gov. Bill Lee (R) in a press release. “Governors are working together, taking immediate action to do what the federal government won’t do, and that is secure our border. I commend Tennessee’s National Guard troops for answering this important call to service and providing critical support.”
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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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Members of the Tennessee Congressional Delegation applauded the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in Trump v. Anderson, which restores former President Donald Trump’s name on the Colorado ballot.
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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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Jeff Clark, former acting assistant attorney general during the Trump administration, said the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. Anderson, which restores former President Donald Trump’s name on the Colorado ballot, will also protect a future Trump administration from a “whole bunch of Section 3 litigation in 2025.”
Clark said in addition to the unanimous 9-0 decision in the case, five of the Supreme Court justices went on to “decide another set of issues” in regards to states’ enforcement of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to regulate federal candidates.
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Former chief of Brentwood Police Jeff Hughes, who is running for Williamson County Sheriff, addressed controversy surrounding his stance in 2022 against a bill in the Tennessee General Assembly allowing for the permitless carry of firearms.
Hughes said his stance against the bill was coming from a matter of “public safety and officer safety,” specifically regarding the bill’s lack of training requirement for gun owners.
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A left wing group posted the personal business information of Tennessee State Senator Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) to social media on Sunday, prompting the lawmaker to reply that he does not “intimidate easily.”
In a Sunday post to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, the account Decarcerate Memphis posted a real estate listing for Taylor’s Memphis home, and gave information about the lawmaker’s private sector job as the owner of a funeral home.
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The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that former President Donald Trump can remain on the 2024 presidential ballot in a decision that comes one day before the Colorado Republican primary after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the top Republican contender is ineligible.
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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti joined in filing an amicus brief with 21 other state attorneys general in a case being considered by the U.S. Supreme Court that could decide the fate of a popular abortion pill.
“This case is about protecting the authority of the people of Tennessee to govern themselves,” Skrmetti stated, according to the attorney general’s website. “In our system, major policy decisions are made by the people through their elected representatives and decisions about abortion law are made by state governments. The U.S. Constitution prevents federal bureaucrats from undermining Tennessee’s Human Life Protection Act no matter how much they disagree with it.”
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The Tennessee House voted Thursday to allow the Tennessee Department of Tourism to keep contracts hidden for up to 10 years for events such as a Super Bowl.
House Bill 1692 expands the number of records that can be kept concealed and the length of time.
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Tennessee schools saw an 18.4% increase in inflation-adjusted per student funding between 2002 and 2020, according to a new report.
Spending on employee benefits increased by 56.5% over the same period, according to Reason Foundation’s Education Spending Across 50 States report.
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Thanks to an ongoing Center for Immigration Studies Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, the public now knows that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has approved secretive flights that last year alone ferried hundreds of thousands of inadmissible aliens from foreign airports into some 43 American ones over the past year, all pre-approved on a cell phone app.
But while large immigrant-receiving cities and media lay blame for the influx on Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s busing program, CBP has withheld from the Center – and apparently will not disclose – the names of the 43 U.S. airports that have received 320,000 inadmissible aliens from January through December 2023, nor the foreign airports from which they departed. The agency’s lawyers have cited a general “law enforcement exception” without elaborating – until recently – on how releasing airport locations would harm public safety beyond citing “the sensitivity of the information.”
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Memphis Mayor Paul Young revealed on Wednesday that met with a number of gang leaders with the goal of brokering a ceasefire between them to lower crime in the city in early February.
The meeting occurred months after Young promised to unveil a sophisticated crime plan within 100 days after taking office that would address the surge in criminality the Tennessee city experienced last year.
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Hundreds of Davidson County residents showed up to Nashville’s Essential Structures for Togetherness (NEST) Community Informational Meeting and Workshop on Saturday at Belmont University hoping to provide and inquire input on nine pieces of legislation concerning zoning laws being debated by the Metro Nashville City Council.
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Donald Trump swept the Missouri and Idaho Republican caucuses on Saturday and captured all 39 delegates at the Michigan GOP convention ahead of Super Tuesday as he marched toward a third straight presidential nomination.
As he easily dispatched of Nikki Haley and rolled up new delegates in three states, Trump stumped for votes in Virginia ahead of Tuesday’s 15-state primary bonanza.
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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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A veterans memorial at East Tennessee State University (ETSU) was recently vandalized with anti-Israel messages. University officials reportedly told a local news outlet that they were working to remove the vandalism from the site Friday night.
The top of the memorial statue was vandalized with messages saying “Free Palestine,” “We have failed ourselves,” and “How many must die?”
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Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett stated that state Democrat lawmakers are trying to “weaponize” the United States Department of Justice against the state.
“Tennesseans should not be surprised that some want to weaponize the Department of Justice against the state ranked number one in election integrity,” Hargett said in the statement obtained by The Tennessee Star on Friday.
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The Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV) came to U.S. Representative Andy Ogles’ (R-TN-05) defense over comments he issued last month in response to an activist who pressed him on the situation unfolding in the Middle East, specifically between Israeli and Hamas forces in Gaza.
“Given that Rep. Ogles stated unequivocally that he was speaking about Hamas, a terror organization that has both declared and evidenced its intent to massacre all Jews, his is the only morally correct position,” CJV Midwestern Regional President Rabbi Ze’ev Smason said in a statement. “It is deplorable that organizations and even left-wing media outlets have deliberately falsified his words in order to malign and slander him.”
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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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January 6 defendant Ronald McAbee was sentenced on Thursday to 70 months in federal prison for the actions prosecutors said he took on January 6.
Ronald McAbee previously argued in court that video showed him attempting to help a member of Capitol police, with the Tennessee man telling a fallen officer that he was helping and wanted to separate him from the crowd. He was convicted in October 2023.
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Joe Allen, author of Dark Aeon: Transhumanism and the War Against Humanity, said transhumanism in artificial intelligence, commonly known as AI, is a war against the “very concept of the human.”
Allen, on Friday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report, described transhumanism as a “quest to go beyond our current human state by way of science and technology – to transform the some portion of the human species and some versions of it or to transform the entire human species using everything from genetic engineering to artificial intelligence, a kind of symbiosis with artificial intelligence, a partnership, and, of course, using whatever means are available to connect the brain to artificial intelligence.”
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A criminal investigation is underway after Foremost Group CEO Angela Chao, sister-in-law of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), was found dead in a vehicle submerged in a pond in a small Texas town near Austin.
“This incident was not a typical accident,” the Blanco County Sheriff’s Office reportedly wrote in a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday. “Although the preliminary investigation indicated this was an unfortunate accident, the Sheriff’s Office is still investigating this accident as a criminal matter until they have sufficient evidence to rule out criminal activity.”
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A poll touted by Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell on Wednesday, which claims the majority of the city’s residents want greater investments into public transits, admittedly over sampled black and Hispanic citizens in a bid to achieve “greater insight” into city’s mood.
The Imagine Nashville survey claimed that 74 percent of Nashville residents strongly agree with the city spending additional money on public transportation. The pollsters further claimed that 33 percent of respondents cited a lack of public transportation as an issue where the city needs to improve.
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Long-time pollster John McLaughlin said if the 2024 presidential general election was held today, former President Donald Trump would win over incumbent President Joe Biden “in a landslide.”
McLaughlin, citing Trump’s lead in national polling, said the former president would win both an electoral and popular vote landslide if the election were held now, however, noted how the Left is actively “trying to put him in jail.”
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Six Tennessee U.S. representatives voted against a continuing resolution on Thursday that would fund the government through March 8 and March 22.
The continuing resolution passed the House of Representatives by a 320-99 vote.
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Tom Pappert, reporter for The Georgia Star News and lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, said he believes diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies were part of the explanation as to how Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, special prosecutor Nathan Wade, and attorney Terrance Bradley were hired into positions of influence.
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Lara Trump, former President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, launched her bid for co-chair of the Republican National Committee one day after current RNC chair Ronna McDaniel said she would resign from her position after Super Tuesday.
“I promise you that I will be laser-focused on election integrity, voter turn out, and ensuring every dollar spent goes towards winning!” Lara Trump said Wednesday on X, formerly Twitter, in an announcement about her candidacy.
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Congressman Mark Green (R-TN-07) announced on Thursday that he has reconsidered his decision to retire from Congress and will now run for re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2024 election.
“While my strong desire was to leave Congress at the end of this year, since my announcement, I have received countless calls from constituents, colleagues, and President Trump urging me to reconsider,” Green said in a statement released by his office to 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 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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The office of Tennessee Governor Bill Lee on Tuesday pushed back on claims by Democrats in the Tennessee House of Representatives who claim that Lizzette Reynolds, the Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE), lacks the constitutional qualifications required for the position.
Reynolds has faced calls for her resignation by Democrats since late January, when Democrats claimed in a press conference that Reynolds is not eligible to lead TDOE citing the Tennessee Constitution.
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Tennessee State Senator Kerry Roberts (R-Springfield) has doubled down on his call for incumbent U.S. Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07) to reconsider retiring from Congress and instead run for re-election.
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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 U.S. Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN-05) has picked up notable endorsements in his re-election bid for Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District.
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The Tennessee House of Representatives voted 70-24 on Monday to pass HB 1605, a bill prohibiting the displaying of certain flags on or in a public school, including LGBTQ pride flags.
The bill, introduced by State Representative Gino Bulso (R-Brentwood) in November, now heads to the Senate.
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Mark Elrod, who is currently serving as interim sheriff of Williamson County amid former Sheriff Dusty Rhoades’ retirement, said the biggest issues affecting the county in regards to crime are drugs and fentanyl.
“I would say that probably one of our biggest issues is drugs, narcotics, fentanyl. We’ve had an uptick in that as well as heroin over the last several years. With Williamson County, we’re a transient community where a lot of the drugs and other crimes come in from other areas into Williamson County. It’s not so much your next door neighbor or the people down the street, although there is some of that, but most of it is coming from other places…Davidson County, out of Nashville, out of the city of Columbia. We have four interstates that come through the county, so it could be, you know, really coming from anywhere, everywhere,” Elrod said on Tuesday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy.
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The Tennessee General Assembly is considering a bill that would restrict the state’s Department of Child Services from requiring prospective adoptive or foster parents to get vaccinated.
The State House Children and Family Affairs Subcommittee voted to pass the State House version of the legislation today after discussion and testimony. It is now on the calendar for the State Senate for February 29.
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Tennessee Comptroller Jason Mumpower announced an audit of Shelby County due to the alleged “incompetence and willful neglect” of the county by Shelby County Clerk Wanda Halbert.
Mumpower announced his intention in a letter to Mayor Lee Harris and the Shelby County Commission, expressing “deep concern and lack of confidence” in Halbert’s office.
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A coalition of Republican state attorneys general led by Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti is fighting a federal agency’s proposal to massively reduce the amount of single-use plastics consumed by the government.
The General Services Administration (GSA) — which provides centralized procurement for the federal government and offers office products and other services to federal agencies — proposed a rule in late December 2023 that would put the federal government on track to significantly reduce its use of single-use plastic packaging in an effort to be environmentally friendly. Skrmetti and 13 other state attorneys general argued in comments filed Monday that the policy exceeds the agency’s authority, and that it would decrease the efficiency of federal procurement and increase costs while failing to do much for the environment.
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Tennessee U.S. Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07), who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas demanding information to assist the committee in its investigation into the murder of 22-year old nursing student Laken Riley.
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