Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, reports from Washington about how states like Tennessee are dealing with Big Army’s June 30, 2022, deadline for National Guardsmen to be 100 percent compliant with the President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s military COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
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Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, investigated how the Tennessee State Guard, a state-funded and state-directed all-volunteer force without a federal role or federal funding is handling the Army’s June 30, 2022, deadline for 100 percent COVID-19 vaccine mandate compliance.
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NASHVILLE, Tennessee – Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life spoke with The Tennessee Star about what the landscape is going to look like in a post-Roe world and addressed the denial of communion to Speaker Nancy Pelosi because of her pro-abortion views and actions in government.
“We’re going to have to work with lawmakers, first of all, in those states that have either trigger laws or pre-existing pro-life laws that have been blocked by the courts – do whatever is necessary quickly to get those laws activated,” he said. “In some cases it’ll take some legislative action, not to the same extent as starting from scratch, but the steps that need to be taken,” Father Pavone said.
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A U.S. senator Friday spoke out against the “woke” policies implemented by the military, which has become especially apparent during LGBT Pride Month of June.
“The United States military should be focused on one objective – creating the most lethal fighting force on planet Earth,” Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) told The Tennessee Star. “Instead, Joe Biden’s military leaders are secretly attempting to turn our brave warfighters into social justice warriors. Communist China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea do not care how woke our military is or what our soldiers’ pronouns are.“
She echoed a similar sentiment on Twitter.
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Tennessee Education Report noted in a report Tuesday that school districts apparently have been informed by the Tennessee Department of Education that TNReady statewide testing scores for third, fourth, and fifth grade were incorrect for several schools and had to be rescored – but not in time to be counted toward students’ final grades.
“Sure, the state pays in excess of $100 million for the test and yes, teachers are evaluated based on the results, but the test is a colossal waste of time year after year after year,” wrote Andy Spears as he provided announcements from several districts about the failure of TNReady testing to contribute to students’ final grades.
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Aaron Gulbransen, a Political Reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network, reported from the Tennessee State University undergraduate commencement in Nashville, Tennessee where Vice President Kamala Harris was the featured speaker.
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Self-appointed news media truth arbiter NewsGuard has not downgraded any mainstream press organization’s trust rating, despite several of those outlets labeling the now-infamous Hunter Biden laptop story “disinformation” just before the 2020 election.
The Washington Post, USA Today and Politico were among the outlets to dismiss the story as possible disinformation, according to the Media Research Center.
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As part of the hearings for her confirmation to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was asked by a Tennessee Senator to define the word “woman.”
Sen. Marsha Blackburn pressed Jackson for a definition, which the judge said she could not provide. The following is the transcript of the dialogue between the pair:
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The former State Department spokesman and candidate in the GOP primary for Tennessee’s Fifth Congressional district is clearly feeling the pressure of and takes issue with The Tennessee Star’s reporting on her parachute candidacy, telling The Star, “You need to stop being mean to me.” Ortagus did not take questions from The Star about her campaign.
Carpetbagger Morgan Ortagus made her unprompted remark to The Star as several people were milling about the room after a local Republican meeting of the Bellevue Breakfast Club, which took place Saturday morning at Plantation Pub. On several occasions prior to the unprompted remark, Ortagus campaign staff told The Star that she didn’t have time for questions about her campaign. Campaign staff made it clear that they would not allow The Star to ask Ortagus questions about the campaign. If allowed, The Star would have asked if Ortagus has attained residency in the district or not.
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Reporter Neil W. McCabe of The Star News Network visits Republican candidate for Tennessee’s Fifth Congressional District, Morgan Ortagus’s fundraiser on the evening of Ash Wednesday with a few questions for notable attendees.
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Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed National Political Editor Neil W. McCabe to the newsmakers line to review the State of the Union address by President Joe Biden.
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A government watchdog Tuesday took the next step in its battle to expose Chinese connections to the National Institute of Health (NIH).
“Empower Oversight filed an amended complaint today against the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation for documents related to a request by Chinese researchers to remove genetic sequences related to the SARS-CoV-2 virus from a database controlled by NIH,” that group said in a press release.
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ORLANDO, Florida – President Donald J. Trump was in full-fighting form, less than two years before the 2024 Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary as he whipped up a packed-out crowd into a frenzy at the 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference.
“The socialists, globalists, Marxists, and communists who are attacking our civilization have no idea of the sleeping giant they have awoken,” said the 45th president to the more than 5,000 conservatives at 95,000-square foot Gatlin Ballroom in Orlando’s Rosen Shingle Creek resort.
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Former Tennessee Titans head coach Jeff Fisher will have the opportunity to control a new football franchise, as he was named the coach and general manager of the Michigan Panthers in the United States Football League (USFL).
Fisher coached in the NFL for more than two decades for multiple teams. He made six playoff appearances, losing Super Bowl 34 as the leader of the Titans. Most recently, Fisher served as an advisor to Eddie George at Tennessee State for the 2021 season.
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FRANKLIN — Quisha King, a former regional engagement coordinator for Black Voices for Trump, said she was once liberal, but the writings of conservative black economists Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams helped steer her on a different path. King said she her community had no prior access to Sowell or Williams.
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State Rep. Regina Young (D-PA-Philadelphia) voted with all Republican House State Government Committee members this week in favor of a bill to require post-election audits.
The legislation to verify the accuracy of election outcomes will thus go before the full Pennsylvania House with at least a modicum of bipartisanship, making it more difficult for Democrats to call the bill merely “a reactionary thing being done because of the last election,” as Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D-Philadelphia) did at the committee meeting.
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Pennsylvania state Rep. Torren Ecker (R-Abbottstown) believes the guarantee of free and fair elections with secret balloting belongs not only in contests for public office but in votes over labor representation.
This week, he announced plans to introduce an amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution intended to cement that guarantee in the Keystone State in anticipation of federal legislation aiming to strengthen labor unions.
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Bipartisan enthusiasm for election-reform legislation appeared solid at a Pennsylvania Senate State Government Committee hearing on Thursday, save for one part: video live-streaming of mail-in-ballot counting.
Elements of the bill, sponsored by Sen. David Argall (R-PA-Pottsville) and Sen. Sharif Street (D-PA-Philadelphia), have arisen largely from recommendations in a June 2021 report by the Senate Special Committee on Election Integrity and Reform. Argall and Street’s proposal excludes some of the ad hoc panel’s more contentious ideas, particularly enhanced voter-identification rules, which Rep. Seth Grove (R-PA-York) is spearheading in separate legislation. (While Gov. Tom Wolf [D] vetoed Grove’s bill in June, the representative has reintroduced it in light of the governor’s subsequent remarks in favor of a strengthened voter-ID requirement.)
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As Pennsylvania Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee Majority Chair Cris Dush (R-Wellsboro) investigates recent elections, Democratic lawmakers against tightening election security must contend with a withering 2019 audit of Pennsylvania’s voter registry.
At his investigation’s initial hearing last Thursday, Dush announced his intention to hold the Department of State (DOS) accountable for the mismanagement identified in the audit by calling the department to testify at the committee’s next hearing to be scheduled soon.
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Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07), a former combat veteran now serving in Congress, penned an opinion piece in The Daily Signal, hammering the Biden Administration for the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal.
The member of the Foreign Affairs committee detailed that Biden’s decision “leaves America just as vulnerable as we were on 9/11.”
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The mother of a U.S. Marine who died during the ISIS-affiliated attack on Kabul’s airport has been suspended from Facebook and its subsidiary, Instagram.
“Shana Chappell, mother of Marine Kareem Nikoui who was killed in Kabul, had her FB and Instagram accounts suspended for posts she made about her son and her feelings about the President and Vice President,” Lynn Afendoulis, former Michigan State Representative, said on Facebook. “This is horrifying. Her son GAVE HIS LIFE FOR OUR COUNTRY. She can say what she wants. Her FB account is back up. For now. God be with her.”
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43,907 of the 61,731 absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes in the November 2020 presidential election in DeKalb County, Georgia–72 percent–were counted in official tallies certified by the county and the state, despite violating chain of custody requirements set forward in Georgia Emergency Rule 183-1-14-1.8-.14 promulgated by the Georgia State Election Board at its July 1, 2020, meeting.
That rule states absentee ballots placed in drop boxes, “shall be immediately transported to the county registrar” by the two person collection team, which is required to sign a ballot transfer form indicating the number of ballots picked up, the time the ballots were picked up, and the location of the drop box, and that, “The county registrar or a designee thereof shall sign the ballot transfer form upon receipt of the ballots from the collection team.”
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An analysis by The Georgia Star News of DeKalb County’s absentee ballot drop box transfer forms from the November 2020 election identified a number of problems that puts the documents out of compliance with the Georgia Board of Election Emergency Rule 183-1-14-1.8-.14.
The Star News reviewed 725 absentee ballot drop box transfer forms, obtained from the DeKalb County law department in response to an open records request, that were used by DeKalb County during the November 2020 election to document the chain of custody of the 61,731 absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes .
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Thales Academy officials have announced they will open a private and low cost K-12 school in Greenville, South Carolina at an unspecified time. Thales Academy is an independent and private school.
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Tennessee Governor Bill Lee commented Saturday evening on the death of Ryan Knauss, an East Tennessean who was one of the 13 American service members killed in a deadly terrorist attack in Kabul, Afghanistan last week “Maria and I are heartbroken and mourning the loss of U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Ryan Knauss, a Tennessean who was killed in the tragic terrorist attack on Kabul. On behalf of all Tennesseans, we offer our full support in the difficult days ahead,” Lee tweeted Saturday.
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Democrats in the Pennsylvania General Assembly hope to increase monthly welfare benefits in Pennsylvania, reasoning that payments under the federally funded Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program have stayed flat since the 1990s, falling well behind inflation.
Legislation being drafted by state Sen. Katie Muth (D-PA-Royersford) and state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D-PA-Philadelphia) would increase Pennsylvania’s TANF benefits, which average $403 per month for a family of three in most counties.
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Written and produced during the COVID pandemic, Sadie Campbell’s ‘Darkroom’ addresses mental health issues in an elegant, yet haunting way. EP is out on August 27th. Listen to the single “Fade” now.
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During COVID-19, Georgia and Tennessee have both fared substantially better economically than Kentucky and Michigan with no significant increase in cases from reopening their economy. This, according to a report that members of the Nashville-based Beacon Center of Tennessee published this month. Beacon is a free market think tank.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have recommended that all schools require mask-wearing indoors by teachers and students, vaccinated or unvaccinated against COVID-19.
And many school districts are adopting that requirement, to the dismay of many parents.
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The Founder of the Blackwater private security firm and the author of a comprehensive plan to save Afghanistan by shifting the country’s security to private contractors and away from the American military told the Star News Network he warned U.S. diplomats the government of President Ashraf Ghani would fall before Labor Day.
“I told a number of ambassadors in the region there; they should expect a collapse of Kabul by Labor Day, and I said that back in April, based on when the U.S. air pressure, when the Air Force really stopped bombing, when that threat largely disappears, then the Taliban would be able to group and mass as they have done, and then they start blowing up cities,” said Erik Prince, the Navy SEAL veteran and national security entrepreneur.
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FRANKLIN, Tennessee – Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he put the nation’s state governors on notice, in an exclusive interview with The Star News Network on Saturday, because they are a real point of influence for the Chinese Communist Party.
The reason, Pompeo explained, is because it is where so much of the commercial activity takes place.
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The founder of CloutHub, a free speech social media network, has responded to former President Donald J. Trump’s class action lawsuit against several Silicon Valley titans, which the forty-fifth president announced Wednesday.
“I am pleased that President Trump is fighting back against Big Tech corporations after enduring months of blatant injustices,” Jeff Brain said in press release. “His lawsuit is based on the infringement of his fundamental free speech rights that powerful companies such as Facebook and Twitter imposed based on their own political bias; a bias that has no place with such important keepers of our national public square online.”
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