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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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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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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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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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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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 Representative Jason Zachary (R-Knoxville) and Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-Franklin) have proposed legislation that would prohibit America’s largest financial institutions from discriminating against customers based on their religious or political beliefs.
Their bills, HB 2100 and SB 2148, would specifically prohibit banks, insurers and other financial institutions from “denying or canceling services to a person, or otherwise discriminating against a person, based upon the use of a social credit score or other factors.”
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Tennessee Attorney General Jonthan Skrmetti was among the 22 attorneys general who joined the amicus brief filed by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach on Friday in support of Texas and Governor Greg Abbott in their in its legal fight with the federal government over the governor’s decision to protect the southern border.
The amicus brief argues that individual states “have a constitutional right to defend themselves that federal law cannot override absent” a declaration from U.S. Congress, and Skrmetti told The Tennessee Star the question ultimately relates to the sovereignty of states.
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State Representative Jason Zachary (R-Knoxville) challenged California Governor Gavin Newsom to a debate after the Democrat targeted Tennessee for its pro-life legislation to protect unborn children using funds from a Super PAC that some speculate could lay the foundations of a campaign to oust President Joe Biden.
In a Sunday post to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, the California governor falsely claimed Tennessee’s pro-life legislation offers no exceptions, including for rape or incest, and asserted that “Republicans in Tennessee are trying to punish young women” who travel to abort their children.
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Tennessee State Senator Kerry Roberts (R-Springfield) is calling on incumbent U.S. Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07) to reconsider retiring from Congress and instead run for re-election.
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After several years of rapidly increasing spending and tax collections, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has proposed a budget that would spend nearly $10 billion less next year.
That includes $52.6 billion in spending with $25.4 billion from the state and $19.8 billion from federal funds.
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The Eastern District Court of Tennessee granted Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s preliminary injunction request in his lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) illegal name, image, and likeness (NIL)-recruitment ban on Friday.
Through its NIL recruitment ban, the NCAA prohibits prospective student-athletes from discussing potential NIL opportunities with schools and collectives prior to enrolling. Specifically, the ban prohibits student-athletes from negotiating with collectives, reviewing NIL offers before making enrollment decisions, and adequately considering the full scope of NIL-related services a school might offer upon enrollment.
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Republican lawmakers and a former immigration official are sounding a new alarm about the national security threats facing the U.S. at the U.S.-Mexico border.
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The Tennessee State Senate on Thursday passed a bill that would ban politicians in the state from seeking more than one elected office simultaneously.
SB 1968 passed the Tennessee Senate on Thursday with 17 votes in favor and 15 votes against. The bill, introduced by Senator Richard Briggs (R-Knoxville), would prohibit an individual from holding multiple elected offices in Tennessee, and would also ban any politician in the state from actively campaigning for more than one elected position.
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Tennessee State Senator Bill Powers (R-Clarksville) has announced he has “no plans” to run for Congress in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District amid the announcement of incumbent U.S. Representative Mark Green’s (R-TN-07) retirement.
“For me, family is more important than any congressional title in Washington DC. I’m honored to be your state senator and have no plans to run for congress,” Powers wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday.
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Shelby County Criminal Court Judge Paula Skahan was publicly reprimanded in a disciplinary action by the Tennessee Board of Judicial Conduct (TBJC) on Wednesday as a result of her actions that led to Tennessee briefly freeing a man in 2022 after he was previously sentenced to a 162-year prison sentence.
Skahan in 2022 arranged for the release of Courtney Anderson, who spent months outside of prison before Tennessee Court of Appeals Judge J. Ross Dyer ruled Skahan “illegally” released him and ordered Anderson remanded back into the state’s custody.
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Warden F.J. Bowers of the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Memphis ignored the request made by Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN-05) last week to move unjustly imprisoned J6 defendant Stewart Parks to the prison’s minimum security satellite camp, where Parks was originally told he would spend his eight month sentence.
Citing reporting by The Tennessee Star exposing the conditions inside FCI Memphis as relayed by Parks, Ogles demanded in a February 12 letter to Bowers for Parks to be moved from the primary prison facility to its minimum security satellite campus. Ogles gave Bowers until February 17 to respond, and Bowers did not return a press inquiry from The Star sent prior to Ogles’ deadline.
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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti confirmed on Thursday that the new ticketing system for members of the public to attend meetings of the Tennessee House of Representatives follows the Tennessee Constitution.
The legal opinion was requested after House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville) announced a new ticketing system that limits half of the public gallery to media members, with members of the public and congressional staff only allowed with a ticket. Lawmakers are each given one ticket to distribute as they see fit.
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A group of masked, anonymous demonstrators who waved Nazi flags at the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville on Saturday are apparently part of the same Blood Tribe neo-Nazi group as Kent “Boneface” McLellan, the American neo-Nazi who gained notoriety in 2023 after he claimed to fight alongside a Ukrainian military unit that regularly uses fascist imagery and is accused of harboring neo-Nazi views.
Media reports suggest the group of individuals who were holding Nazi flags in the viral video recorded by Representative Justin Jones (D-Nashville) on Saturday are affiliated with the Blood Tribe, which the Anti-Defamation League explains is a “growing neo-Nazi group” that purportedly has chapters in the United States and Canada.
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A bill seeking to ban retail sales of cold beer in Tennessee has reportedly received a lukewarm reception by lawmakers, with even Republicans unsure about the legislation.
State Representative Ron Gant (R-Piperton) filed HB 2845 late last month which would prohibit retail companies who are currently permitted to sell beer under Tennessee law from selling “refrigerated or cold beer to consumers.”
Representative Ron Gant (R-Piperton) filed HB 2845 late last month which would prohibit retail companies who are currently permitted to sell beer under Tennessee law from selling “refrigerated or cold beer to consumers.”
Warden F.J. Bowers of the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Memphis did not reply to an inquiry from The Tennessee Star regarding the letter sent to him on Monday by Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN-05), which requested unjustly imprisoned J6 defendant Stewart Parks be moved to the prison’s minimum security satellite camp.
As of Friday afternoon, The Star has not received a response to a Tuesday inquiry sent via email to a publicly available address listed for Bowers’ executive assistant, which sought confirmation that Bowers received Ogles’ letter and additionally to ascertain whether Parks will be moved to the prison’s minimum security camp, if there are issues at FCI Memphis preventing the move, and if Bowers intends to reply to the congressman.
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Four possible Republican candidates expressed an interest in representing Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District to The Tennessee Star when asked on Thursday after Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07) announced his intention to retire from Congress at the end of his term.
The Star asked Dr. Omar Hamada, Robby Starbuck, Jeff Beierlein, Dr. Manny Sethi, and State Senators Bill Powers (R-Clarksville) and Kerry Roberts (R-Springfield) about their interest in running for office.
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U.S. Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07) announced his retirement from Congress on Wednesday, just one day after leading the House in a historic vote to impeach Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Green, who served as chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he is “ready to return home” after delivering on his promise to “pass legislation to secure our borders and to hold Secretary Mayorkas accountable” by leading the passage of H.R. 2 and two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas.
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U.S. Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN-05) sent a letter to the Warden F.J. Bowers of the Federal Correctional Institution in Memphis on Tuesday which urged him to immediately transfer unjustly convicted J6 defendant Stewart Parks to the facility’s minimum security camp.
Ogles sent his letter following the Sunday report from The Tennessee Star that revealed Parks is not in the minimum security camp where he was originally expected to serve his sentence, and is instead in a part of the federal prison that houses gang members, murderers and child molesters.
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Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell is reportedly planning to introduce a major mass transit project this year that will need to be approved by voters in November, and would likely require an increase to the city’s sales tax.
A report published Monday by Axios claims O’Connell is days away from announcing a “mass transit funding proposal” that will be “less downtown and tourist-focused than” the proposal previously defeated by voters in Metro Nashville in 2018.
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Unjustly convicted J6 defendant Stewart Parks spoke with Tennessee Star CEO Michael Patrick Leahy in a 15-minute phone call placed on Friday afternoon from the Federal Correctional Institution in Memphis, Tennessee. Parks self-reported to begin serving an eight-month sentence on Tuesday.
The Star and Leahy have filed a Freedom of Information Act request with FCI Memphis to obtain the 15-minute audio recording of that call. Inmates incarcerated at FCI are allowed to make 500 minutes of out bound phone calls per month, but each call is recorded and is limited to 15 minutes in length.
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Tennessee’s airports are proposed to get $82.5 million in direct state funding with a projected additional $13 million from the state’s Transportation Equity Fund in Gov. Bill Lee’s budget proposal.
That includes $59.5 million in recurring budget along with a proposed $23 million in one-time funding.
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The Tennessee Board of Judicial Conduct (BJC) Shelby County General Sessions publicly reprimanded Judge Bill Anderson on Tuesday after he belittled a police sergeant and revealed his disdain for the “bail bond system” in Tennessee.
The BJC served Anderson the public reprimand after he declared his opposition to the concept of bail and bail bonding companies in September 2023, when the judge claimed bail bonding companies “don’t do anything but collect money from poor people” during a meeting of the Shelby County Commission, and declared, “I detest the bail bond system in Shelby County, I detest it across this state.”
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The City of Murfreesboro settled a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) over public drag performances, according to the legal nonprofit.
“American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Tennessee, Ballard Spahr, and Burr & Forman have settled a lawsuit filed against the City of Murfreesboro over its anti-LGBTQ+ ordinance and local policy denying all special event permit requests from the Tennessee Equality Project (TEP), founder and host of the annual BoroPride Festival,” according to a release from the ACLU.
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Democrat State Representative Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville) intends to file for reelection to the Tennessee House of Representatives despite being five months into her longshot U.S. Senate bid to unseat incumbent Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), according to a report by Knox News.
Johnson is one of the “Tennessee Three” lawmakers who commandeered the House floor to demand gun control in the wake of the Covenant School last year.
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Tennessee State Senator Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) and State Representative Jody Barrett (R-Dickson) recently filed legislation to make blocking a highway a Class D felony.
Under current law, it is classified as a Class A misdemeanor when a defendant “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly” obstructs a public highway, street, sidewalk, railway, waterway, elevator, aisle, or hallway.
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Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee Mark Green (R-TN-07) presented two articles of impeachment against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday.
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Tennessee Governor Bill Lee held his sixth State of the State Address on Monday, outlining his vision for Tennessee for the next year and the remainder of his administration. After highlighting the shared history and heritage of Tennesseans, and the strong economic position of Tennessee, the governor highlighted school choice, artificial intelligence (AI), and a streamlined regulatory framework among his goals for 2024. “As we enter our sixth year of working together, the State of our State is strong, and resilient, and ready for the future, and that is thanks to the hard work of the people in this room.” Lee began, “But there is more work to do, the world around us is changing every day, brings new challenges, unique challenges, Tennesseans are counting on us to face those challenges with wisdom and discernment.” “I’ve got three years left, there’s a lot to do, and we cannot, should not slow down, not for a second,” the governor declared. Throughout Lee’s address, 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 Tennessee. As he attempted to turn to a different subject, a heckler appeared…
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Stewart Parks, a local entrepreneur and former candidate to represent Tennessee’s 5th congressional district, joined Monday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy to discuss his last-minute plans and overall thoughts before reporting to the Federal Correctional Institution in Memphis on Tuesday to serve an 8-month sentence for being present at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
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Tennessee Governor Bill Lee joined a coalition of 12 other governors in traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday to participate in a border security briefing held by Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
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U.S. Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN-05) introduced a bill on Thursday that would designate the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
Ogles’ bill, H.R.7206, comes after nine employees from the United Nations Relief Works Agency were fired last week after being accused of involvement in the terrorist group Hamas’ October 7 attacks on Israel.
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Tennessee State Senator Heidi Campbell (D-Nashville) joined Friday’s edition of The Matt Murphy Show on SuperTalk 99.7 WTN to discuss Governor Bill Lee’s universal school choice plan, known as the Education Freedom Scholarship Act.
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A group of Tennessee lawmakers have spoken out denouncing a notice sent by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last year to the City of Franklin advising the possible influx of nearly 600 migrants to Middle Tennessee.
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Tennessee U.S. Representative and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee Mark Green (R-TN-07) joined Thursday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy to discuss his efforts in the impeachment process of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Green, who led his Republican colleagues in voting to advance two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas out of committee on Wednesday, told Leahy that Mayorkas not only refused to enforce the law himself, but directed his staff to do the same.
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A Republican member of Tennessee’s General Assembly is critical of a Democrat colleague’s new bill.
HB 2193, introduced by State Representative Bo Mitchell (D-Nashville), “imposes an additional 15-percent tax on the retail sale of firearms [and] requires revenue from the firearms tax to be deposited into the K-12 mental health counselor fund to be administered by the department of education and used exclusively to provide school counselors in elementary and secondary public schools and public charter schools in this state and for mental health assessments and services for students pursuant to a school counselor’s referral.”
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After fifteen hours of debating two articles of impeachment against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security Mark Green (R-TN-07) led his Republican colleagues in voting to advance the articles out of committee.
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A new bill introduced in the Tennessee General Assembly would increase the penalty for trafficking illegal aliens in the Volunteer State.
HB 2078 “prohibits any person from transporting an illegal alien into this state [and] increases from $1,000 to $5,000 the fine for transporting illegal aliens.”
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The Tennessee Star obtained on Monday a draft of the forthcoming Education Freedom Scholarship Act previously announced by Governor Bill Lee in November.
Lee announced in November that he would champion new school choice legislation in 2024 that will ultimately allow all Tennessee families to choose where their children are educated.
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A hearing in the public records lawsuit against the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County related to release of records from The Covenant School shooting took place before Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea Myles on Monday.
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The Tennessee Republican Party State Executive Committee voted in a specially called meeting on Saturday to tighten the standards for candidate eligibility in GOP primaries in the state, effective immediately.
Article IX, Section 1, Paragraph B of the Tennessee Republican Party (TRP) bylaws had been previously amended in a September 7, 2023 meeting of the SEC to state that “Beginning in 2026, notwithstanding anything to the contrary in Article IX, Section 1A, an individual who has voted in any of the most recent four (4) statewide primary elections held by a party other than the applicable Republican Party will be ineligible to seek the Republican nomination for any public office in Tennessee.” (emphasis added)
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House Republicans on Sunday released their articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The first article alleges Mayorkas participated in a “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law,” while the second article says he breached the public’s trust for his handling of the southern border amid record illegal immigration numbers.
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Outspoken former President Donald Trump critic Jon Meacham, who compared Trump’s rhetoric to that of Nazi Germany’s Third Reich, serves as a co-chair of Vanderbilt University’s “Project on Unity and American Democracy.”
Vanderbilt launched the project in 2021 because the United States “has become disconnected from evidence and reason” and suffers from political and ideological polarization, according to its website.
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Tennessee U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) introduced a bill this week that would ensure only U.S. citizens are factored into the count for Congressional districts and the Electoral College map that determines presidential elections.
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A New York jury on Friday awarded Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in damages over defamatory statements the former president made in 2019 after she came forward with allegations against him, CNN reported.
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Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville) and Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-Franklin) joined Memphis Mayor Paul Young and a number of lawmakers from both major political parties at a Friday press event in Memphis to call for an amendment to the Tennessee Constitution that would empower judges to deny bail more often.
Sexton, Johnson and Young were joined by State Senator Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) and State Representative Antonio Parkinson (D-Memphis), and other local leaders, to call for the constitutional amendment.
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