Tenn 2
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PRIMARY 10 25 TO LOCATE, ALSO MARTIAL LAW
MERRI OK
SEE ICE SUPPORT 2 26 POST GOOD PRETTI
GOV BILL LEE MARTIAL LAW 10 25
see school shoot
BLACKBURN RUN GOV 10 26
see voter suppression
xian nat?
SEE GERRY
see justin Tenn3 pEARSON
ACTIV SUPPRESS?
html significant amt
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congrats TN tag CRT
https://www.alternet.org/2021/08/this-tennessee-teacher-was-fired-for-teaching-a-ta-nehisi-coates-essay-were-not-challenging-our-students/
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supermajority? gerry? some ran unopposed?
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#1 cause kid death
https://www.alternet.org/tennessee-gun-laws/
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AN 10 26
Democratic candidates in much of the Volunteer State, especially in its rural areas, face a steep hill to climb. Perhaps that is most true in East Tennessee, a region that has voted reliably red for decades.
Hamilton County, the urban anchor of Southeast Tennessee with Chattanooga as its seat, hasn’t voted for a Democratic county mayor since the early 1990s, and a majority of its voters haven’t cast a ballot for a Democratic president since Harry Truman in 1948.
The ideological leanings of both major parties have changed drastically throughout American history, but voters in Tennessee’s 2nd Congressional District, centered around Knox County, have elected a Republican to Congress in every election cycle since 1867.
But if the local municipal elections in August are any indication, East Tennessee may be starting to swing left.
Democrats in the Hamilton County elections narrowed the Republican majorities on the county commission and school board, flipping three seats among both governing bodies — with double-digit swings in a district President Donald Trump carried in the 2024 presidential election.
There were similar results in Knox County. Democrats flipped a school board seat, winning majority control of the board. On the county commission, the party gained a district Trump carried by 10 percentage points in 2024.
In both Hamilton and Knox, the Democratic county mayoral candidates — Mark Herndon and Beau Hawk, respectively, who both fell short of victory — dwindled double-digit point losses for the party in both the 2024 presidential election and the 2022 county mayor contests down to four points in both counties.
These gains for the Democratic Party are part of a national and regional trend since Trump returned to office in 2025.
In a December special election for Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District, for instance, state Rep. Aftyn Behn, a Nashville Democrat, lost the race by just nine percentage points in a district Trump carried by 22 in 2024.
In Georgia, Democrats flipped two seats on the state Public Service Commission in November, marking the first time since 2006 that the party has won statewide constitutional offices. A month later in December, Georgia Democrats narrowly flipped a state House seat that Republicans had controlled since 2019.
In a special election months later for Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, previously held by former Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene before she resigned after a widely publicized conflict with the president, Republican Rep. Clay Fuller won by just 12 points in a district Trump carried by 37 in 2024.
For Jeremy Strickler, an associate professor of political science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, this could be the beginning of an electoral shift, from Washington, D.C. down to the local level in Tennessee, in reaction to the Trump administration polling in the negative on major issues.
“I think what we’re seeing is certainly an emerging, what I would call, a small-d democratic coalition, a coalition of those supporting American democracy,” Strickler said. “That carried over electorally to a lot of these special elections, and particularly in the South, you just see a lot of what feels like the ground is shifting under our feet in a way.”
A matter of turnout
Before Josh Wichman ran for District 8 on the Hamilton County Commission this past election, a Democrat hadn’t contested the seat since 2014. In turn, the district, centered around East Ridge, had been mired by low turnout — just 9.21% of voters in East Ridge showed up to the polls for the local elections in August 2024, compared to over 13% countywide that same cycle.
Fueling Wichman’s win last month — a 10-point swing for Democrats in a district Trump carried by eight in 2024 — turnout in East Ridge shot up to 28.61%, nearly matching the countywide rate of 30.12%.
“I had that same perception that it was more conservative than it actually is,” Wichman said of his district. “I feel like it’s been neglected by Democrats.”
The surge in turnout was seen throughout Hamilton County. The August election saw the most voters go to polls, over 30% of all registered voters, among all local August elections of the past decade, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported. That was up from the 21.3% turnout in 2022, the previous local election for county mayor and the county commission.
Knox County experienced a comparable increase in turnout. Among the county’s nearly 270,000 registered voters, 33.43% cast ballots last month, up from 18.07% in the last local countywide races in 2022.
Knox County Commissioner Brandon Huckaby, the Democrat who flipped a seat previously held by a Republican attributed some of the low turnout of the past to Democratic-leaning voters assuming elections are already lost before they are decided.
“The thing I battled the most in the campaign, even talking to very dedicated Democrats, was, ‘This is a red territory. Good luck. I’ll vote for you, but I don’t think you have a chance,’” Huckaby said.
“They lost the election before Election Day because they have what I call blue-dot syndrome,” he continued. “They think they’re the only Democrat on their street.”
But with a close loss for Democrats in the district in 2022 — just 87 votes — Huckaby said his strategy was to drive Democratic turnout. “We knocked the heck out of some doors,” he said. “We knocked probably 6,000 likely Democratic doors to drive that turnout.”
Even with this relatively high turnout, most local county seats in Hamilton and Knox are still held by the GOP. As Hawk, the Democratic candidate for mayor of Knox County, pointed out, more Republicans showed up to vote as well.
“We had a dramatic, relatively speaking, surge in Democratic voter participation in this county election,” Hawk said in an interview. “But it was also a higher turnout for Republicans as well, and I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. I think everybody should be engaged in the process.”
Still, for Tennessee Democrats throughout the rest of the state, the key to building upon the momentum from August may not be assuming an inherent conservatism among the electorate and seeking to persuade those Republicans to vote Democratic; it may be convincing people to vote at all.
“Tennessee is not a red state,” Wichman said. “It’s a non-voting state.”
‘An anti-MAGA wave’
In the August election, Democrat Brandy Jenkins, new member of the Knox County Board of Education, did not face an established Republican incumbent, but an upstart candidate more in line with the party’s MAGA arm.
In the GOP’s May primary for the seat, Kristi Kristy, a Republican who had held the seat since 2018, was defeated from her right flank by Bill Sofield, who was endorsed by Moms for Liberty, an organization designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a far-right extremist group. With local chapters throughout the country, Moms for Liberty is known to advocate against LGBTQ+ inclusion in public education and for book bans at schools and public libraries.
Before being reinstated in Knox County after a backlash, one of those books was “Roots,” an account of the horrors of chattel slavery published in 1976 and authored by Alex Haley, a Black American who lived in Tennessee during several periods of his life.=
Haley is such a prominent figure in the state that Gov. Bill Lee designated “Roots” as an official state book two years ago. In Knoxville, there is a 13-foot statue of Haley. “It’s a very important book in our city,” Jenkins said.
“Roots” was banned by the Knox County school board in May under a state law enacted in 2022 that requires public libraries to filter content deemed inappropriate for children; in the book, there is a depiction of rape of an enslaved woman that Republicans on the school board had initially found in violation of the state law for detailing “sadomasochistic abuse.”
Following nationwide pushback, Superintendent Jon Rysewyk reversed the board’s decision. In June, previous Republican member Kristy voted with Democrats on the school board to urge the state to reconsider its criteria for book bans. With Sofield running on the GOP ticket in Kristy’s place, Jenkins flipped the seat.
“Why are we discussing this?” Jenkins said how she would respond when questioned by those seeking to ban books. “Let’s talk about what’s really happening in our schools.”
This grounded approach seemed to work, not just for Jenkins, but Huckaby on the county commission as well. His opponent was Sheri Super, vice chair and former chair of the local Moms for Liberty chapter. In the GOP primary, she beat former incumbent Gina Oster, who is closer to the center.
For Huckaby, he doesn’t see the election as a transformational shift away from Republicans, but a backlash against the party’s far-right arm.
“I don’t see an anti-Republican wave in Knox County. What I see is an anti-MAGA wave,” Huckaby said. “It was me, a commonsense candidate against a far-right candidate. It was easy to get those commonsense voters.”
In the election for mayor of Knox County, Hawk saw his relative success as a sign that voters are growing tired of what he described as “pointless national culture war stuff.” The messaging against Hawk on the Republican side, mirroring the party’s national electoral strategy, was largely accusations that the Democratic candidate is a socialist.
One major point of criticism from Republicans was Hawk’s appearance at a 2020 march in Venezuela in support of then-president Nicolás Maduro, a self-identified socialist whom the Trump administration kidnapped and jailed earlier this year.
“I was young and dumb,” Hawk, who is now 35, told the Knoxville News Sentinel in June. Hawk told the Tennessee Lookout that the socialist label and messaging is absurd.
“I’m not even sure how you could enact any kind of socialist agenda when you’re just dealing with potholes and libraries and things like that,” Hawk said. “Do you want to actually have a functioning government or not is the question. If that’s socialist, I guess yeah, I’m a socialist.”
Hawk eventually lost, but only narrowly by four points. Prior Republican County Mayor Glenn Jacobs, the term-limited former WWE wrestler better known by his stage name Kane, won in 2022 by 10 points and in 2018 by 28.
In Hamilton County, Mayor Weston Wamp faced Herndon, who said he felt compelled to get involved in local politics last year after Republicans on the school board voted to end supplementary mental health services for students.
The local GOP had criticized what it called the provider’s introduction to students of “matters of identity, sexuality and gender” in a statement to the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Herndon’s son Silas, a member of the LGBTQ+ community, died by suicide a few weeks prior to the school board ending the services.
After much local pushback, including from Herndon, the school board eventually reinstated the vendor, along with other options for parents.
Nearly a year later, months after he started his campaign, Herndon found himself in the midst of a local controversy just before the election when it was revealed that he had sent threatening text messages to Republican school board members just after their decision to end the services. (Herndon has since apologized for sending the texts.)
The county GOP and many local Republican officials used the texts to discredit Herndon. Even still, like Knox’s county mayor race, Wamp won by just four points, down from his 16-point victory in 2022.
Wamp, his office and the Hamilton County Republican Party did not respond to questions or requests for interviews. Neither did the Knox County GOP or the recently inaugurated County Mayor Betsy Henderson.
Strickler, the UTC political science professor, said that much of what has fueled the GOP’s success over the past decade is Trump convincing these more fringe elements within the party, normally electorally dormant, to turn out and vote.
“The main kind of political effect of Trumpism electorally since he entered the arena in 2016 was bringing out people who had traditionally been disaffected voters,” Strickler said. “Well, they could much easily just go back to not caring about politics.”
In turn, he said, when Trump isn’t on the ballot, like with these local elections, Republicans don’t do as well, leaving an opportunity for Democrats to campaign on anti-MAGA.
“The number of his support has really seemed to be shrinking and independents are very much turned against Trump,” Strickler said. “I think that’s what we’re seeing, but whether or not it’s durable is the open question.”
The future of Tennessee Democrats
Even with the party’s gains last month, Tennessee Democrats face a high hurdle in forming a meaningful coalition. Not only do Republicans control most local seats in Hamilton and Knox counties, the statehouse has been governed by a GOP supermajority since 2013.
For Democrats like Wichman in Hamilton County, turning the tide for the party starts with delivering results locally. As seen elsewhere across the country, that means, he said, focusing on making life more affordable.
“We have a really good opportunity right now to show residents of Hamilton County what Democrats are interested in and what we can do, but we have to be able to show action,” Wichman said. “We have to be able to show them that we can get things done.”
In Knox County, Huckaby said Democrats must start tying the struggling economy to the Republican Party more broadly, not just its MAGA wing.
“The Republicans have been in control. Affordability isn’t getting better. Infrastructure is getting worse,” he said. “Then you can tie it to a party instead of a faction.”
Hawk, who recently announced his run for Knoxville mayor in the election next year, said there needs to be more politicians willing to enact meaningful change — in both parties.
“So many of the issues that we are dealing with from the local level to the national level, they are solvable. It’s just a matter of political will. Do we want to actually put government to work for everyday people or not?” Hawk said. “I think there’s a lot of people in both parties that would prefer to just keep it as is.”
For Herndon, creating true change falls on the public.
“We’ve got to raise the bar. The bar has been lowered so much that people have forgotten that we have to hold our elected officials accountable to something, to someone,” Herndon said. “That someone, when everything else fails, is us.”
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AN 10 26 OMG 2X
Newsweek reports all four active U.S. district judges in Middle Tennessee have recused themselves from a lawsuit brought by Republican Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn against former special counsel Jack Smith over the collection of her phone records. This includes two judges that Trump himself appointed.
Blackburn filed the lawsuit on September 30 over Smith’s Arctic Frost investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election. As part of that inquiry, Newsweek reports investigators “obtained phone metadata linked to Blackburn and several other lawmakers.”
“Through his Arctic Frost witch hunt that targeted conservatives across America and even the President of the United States, Jack Smith perpetrated one of the worst abuses of government power in our nation's history," said Blackburn. "This lawsuit is solely about holding Mr. Smith accountable and ensuring that our nation's justice system can never again be weaponized against the American people."
This issue goes back to Trump appointee Judge Aileen Cannon's ruling that Smith was not a legal special counsel because she claimed he was not approved by the U.S. Senate. Until Smith, no special counsels were required to be approved by the U.S. Senate.
Blackburn claims that obtaining the records violated her constitutional rights, even though Smith said the records did not include call contents and that his office consulted the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section before issuing the subpoenas. Her lawsuit alleges violations of the Speech or Debate Clause, First Amendment and Fourth Amendment, and also challenges the legality of Smith’s appointment as special counsel.
But now, Newsweek reports, an order filed October 5 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee reveals that no judge is willing to take up Blackburn’s argument.
“All District Judges of the Middle District of Tennessee have recused in this matter.”
“The order, signed by Chief U.S. District Judge William L. Campbell Jr., said a judge from outside the district will now be designated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and the case will then be reassigned,” reports Newsweek. “The October 5 order does not give a reason for the recusals, and it does not say that any judge has a specific conflict of interest or bias in connection with the litigation. Two of the judges were appointed by President Donald Trump, while one was appointed by Bill Clinton and another by Barack Obama.”
Blackwell’s complaint points out that Smith and others who worked on the investigation subpoenaed toll records associated with a cellphone she used for legislative purposes. The lawsuit said those records revealed who Blackburn communicated with and the times and duration of the communications. But Blackburn herself does not allege that investigators intercepted the contents of her calls.
Blackburn is currently running for the governor's mansion in her state.
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7 26 AN
A new list ranking the 10 worst states to live in has just been released, and MAGA is not happy that the whole ranking is deep red.
The list was compiled by CNBC, and according to the Daily Beast, it “factored in several ‘Quality of Life’ issues, such as healthcare and reproductive rights, crime rates, air quality, civil rights laws, and inclusivity.” Using this methodology, CNBC determined that Tennessee delivers the worst quality of life, followed by Texas, Indiana, Louisiana, Georgia, Utah, Missouri, Alabama, Oklahoma and Arkansas. There is a clear red trend to the list, as each state is led by a Republican governor and voted for President Donald Trump in 2024.
CNBC published the list on Saturday, and by Tuesday, MAGA had fomented into a full-blown freakout as Trump loyalists attempted to deflect from failing living conditions in conservative states.
“CNBC says the ability to kill unborn babies and engage in woke racism makes states better to live in,” top Trump ally Tom Fitton, president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, posted on X. Pete Mundo, a conservative Kansas City radio host, echoed these sentiments, fuming, “These are some of the highest in-bound migration states in the country, but because you can’t abort babies til month 9, and trans your kids at will, it ranks low on the CNBC rankings.”
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AN 10 26
Christa Pike, the woman who survived two execution attempts in Tennessee earlier this week, remains hospitalized in critical condition, where presumably medical staff is at work trying to keep her alive.
If she wakes from the coma she had entered, Tennessee officials want to start anew to inject lethal drugs into her seemingly too-small veins to kill her and carry out the state death warrant. Pike also is being treated for “significant injuries to both arms” sustained when two lethal injections of pentobarbital failed to kill her. If she dies, there will be no need to try again.
As we know by now, Tennessee tried to put Pike to death Wednesday night by lethal injection for a murder she committed when she was 18. She would have been the first woman executed in the state in 200 years.
There is just a simple, if total disconnect in the actions. When the state missed – twice – with its lethal injections, at what point did Tennessee become subject of inflicting “cruel and unusual punishment,” as barred by the Constitution? If we don’t know how to carry out an effective lethal injection on a 32-year Death Row inmate, would a few days make a difference to figure out how to do the job right.
Is anyone bothered by the idea that millions protest in the street to protect the unborn, but no one in official circles even thinks there is a question about keeping Pike artificially alive so that we can kill her all over again?
Legal, Medical and Moral Issues
Sure, there are legal issues here. Pike’s lawyers have told the state to preserve all its records on the botched execution attempts. As the details emerge – Pike was known to have small veins that might not handle the injection, the state had no emergency oxygen nearby if the execution attempt went south, that Pike apparently lay in the death chamber whimpering – the story just gets worse.
The execution process lasted more than two hours, allowing her lawyers time to file emergency legal papers to stay the process to no avail. Even then, “attorneys for the State of Tennessee argued that (the Department of Corrections) had no obligation to render life-saving care to Ms. Pike,” argued the lawyers.
Doctors were telling news reporters – not the state or the courts – that Pike’s condition was such that the pentobarbital was flowing into her arm instead of straight into her veins, making for an unusually painful, if ineffective, process.
In May, Tennessee was forced to call off the planned execution of Tony Carruthers, who killed three people in 1994, after the medical team failed to find a vein to insert the pentobarbital used under the new execution protocol
Pike was convicted in 1995 murder case with two other teenagers.
Generally, execution misses have made finding the supply of legally acceptable death injections more difficult, and there are newer procedures in place in some states other than Tennessee to require practice injections.
What’s Happened
Frank Strada, the prisons chief, resigned on Saturday, and Gov. Bill Lee announced an independent investigation into what went wrong. Strada had been in the job since 2023, moving from a top prison job in Arizona, where had overseen three problem-plagued executions.
Nevertheless, Marsha Blackburn, who is favored to replace Lee as governor in November, said the state would seek to kill Pike anew. She said she would follow recommendations for process changes, but not for Pike.
Capital punishment in Tennessee has been criticized since 2022, when Gov. Lee was forced to cancel an execution because the drugs had not been properly tested.
This summer, The Gallup Poll found that a slight majority — 52% of U.S. adults — consider the death penalty morally acceptable, hovering near historic five-decade lows. The Pew Research Center says about two-thirds of Americans (66%) favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder, while 32% oppose it, marking an uptick compared to prior recent years.
Support for the death penalty is much higher among Republicans than Democrats, the opposite of, say, abortion law. Younger adults show significantly lower support. Only about 41% of adults aged 18 to 34 favor the death penalty, compared to higher approval among older generations.
Botched executions are not going to help any moral debate here. As a society, we are confused about who should live and who should die, with all the legal – and now medical – complications to make it more difficult to decide what is “cruel and unusual punishment.”
Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.
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6 26
karen hao coal and clean coal; anthrip is partner in memphis ai plant ~ ej [gerry?!]
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SCOTUS CALLAIS VRA
5 26 MEMPHIS WILL BE THE ONLY AA MAJ DISTRICT?
AN 5 26
Tennessee schools bans Pulitzer Prize-winning book 'Roots' - Alternet.org
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AN 2 26
NO LNX
History shows what Trump is doing — and what comes next
Thom Hartmann February 06, 2026
As people testified before Congress on Tuesday about the brutality and violence they’d suffered at the hands of ICE, that massive paramilitary organization was shopping for giant warehouse-style facilities they can retrofit into what they euphemistically call “detention centers.”
Cable news people call them “prison camps” or “Trump prison camps,” but look in any dictionary: prisons are where people convicted of crimes are held. As Merriam-Webster notes, a prison is:
“[A]n institution for confinement of persons convicted of serious crimes.”
Jails are where people accused of crimes but still waiting for their day in court are held, as Merriam-Webster notes:
“[S]uch a place under the jurisdiction of a local government for the confinement of persons awaiting trial or those convicted of minor crimes.”
But what do you call a place where people who’ve committed no criminal offense (immigration violations are civil, not criminal, infractions)? The fine dictionary people at Merriam-Webster note the proper term is “concentration camp”:
“[A] place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard.”
The British originated the term “concentration camp” to describe facilities where “rebel” or “undesirable” civilians were held in South Africa during the Second Anglo‑Boer War (1899–1902) to control and punish a rebellious population.
They were facilities where the “bad elements of society” were “concentrated” into one location so they could be easily controlled and would lose access to society and thus could not spread their messages of resistance against the British Empire.
The Germans adopted the term in 1933 when Hitler took power and created his first camp for communists, socialists, union leaders, and, by the end of the year, Hitler’s political opponents. They Germanized the phrase into “Konzentrationslager” and referred to the process of their incarceration as “protective custody.”
The first camp was built at Dachau just weeks after Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, and by the end of the year there were around 70 of them operating across the country.
When Louise and I lived in Germany in 1986-87, we visited Dachau with our three children. The crematoriums shocked our kids, but even more so because this was simply a “detention facility” and not one of Hitler’s death camps (which were all located outside Germany to ensure deniability).
The ovens at Dachau were for those who had been worked to death or killed by cholera or other disease, much like the 35+ people who’ve recently died in ICE’s concentration camps.
When American friends would visit us and we’d take them to Dachau (we lived just an hour up the road) they’d invariably be surprised when I told them that by the time of the war there were over 500 substantial camps and an additional few hundred very small ones all over the country.
“How could the people not know what was going on?” they’d ask.
The answer was simple: the people did know. These were where the “undesirables,” the “criminal troublemakers,” and the “aliens” were held, and were broadly supported by the German people. (It wasn’t until 1938, following Kristallnacht, that the Nazis began systematically arresting and imprisoning non-political Jews, first at Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen.)
By the end of his first year, Hitler had around 50,000 people held in his roughly 70 concentration camps, facilities that were often improvised in factories, prisons, castles, and other buildings.
By comparison, today ICE is holding over 70,000 people in 225 concentration camps across America, and Trump, Homan, Miller, and Noem hope to more than double both numbers in the coming months.
In Tennessee, the Guardian reports that Miller has been coordinating with Republican leaders to create legislation that would turn every local cop, teacher, social worker, and helper in the state into an official agent of ICE and criminalize efforts by cities to refuse cooperation. It also makes it a felony crime to identify any of ICE’s masked agents or disclose conditions within the concentration camps to the public.
Germans didn’t have the benefit of warnings from a fascist history they could look back on; much of what Hitler did took them by surprise, as I’ve noted in previous articles.
In 2026 America, however, operating with the benefit of historical hindsight, entire communities are rebelling at Trump’s effort to beat Germany’s 1933-1934 prisoner numbers.
In city after city, Americans are organizing to deprive ICE of their coveted spaces, putting pressure on companies not to sell and on cities and counties not to permit any more concentration camps.
Because immigration violations are labeled “civil,” people in ICE concentration camps are stripped of many of the normal constitutional protections that apply to people in criminal incarceration. This has created a legal black hole that ICE and the Trump regime exploit, where indefinite imprisonment, abuse, and medical neglect flourish with little to no oversight or accountability.
Human rights organizations like the ACLU describe pervasive patterns of abuse in ICE detention: hazardous living conditions, chronic medical neglect, sexual assault, retaliation for grievances, and extensive use of solitary confinement.
Detainees who have committed no crime other than being in the United States without documentation report being shackled for long periods, packed into freezing, overcrowded cells under constant fluorescent light, and denied hygiene and timely care. Meanwhile, GOP-aligned private prison companies are making billions off the program.
Inspections and oversight are inconsistent: one recent investigation found that as detentions and deaths surged in 2025, formal inspections of facilities actually dropped by over a third. ICE regularly refuses to allow attorneys, family members, and even members of Congress to access their concentration camps; the issue is now being litigated through federal courts.
History shows us that once a nation builds a mass detention apparatus, it never remains limited to its original targets. Future generations of Americans — our children and grandchildren — won’t ask us whether ICE followed civil detention statutes: they’ll want to know why we allowed concentration camps to exist in America at all.
Germany’s concentration camps didn’t start as instruments of mass murder, and neither have ours; both started as facilities for people the government’s leader said were a problem. And that’s exactly what ICE is building now.
History isn’t whispering its warning: it’s shouting.
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an 12 25
In rural Appalachian areas of Tennessee and Kentucky, Josh Abbotoy operates a real estate company called Ridgerunner. And he uses socially conservative rhetoric to promote his company, declaring, "Faith, family and freedom — those are the values that we try to celebrate."
According to BBC reporters Ellie House and Mike Wendling, some of Abbotoy's clients are far-right Christian nationalists who openly push extreme ideas like repealing the U.S. Constitution's 19th Amendment — which gave women the right vote — and overturning civil rights legislation of the 1960s.
"Initially, he didn't attract much local attention after setting up shop in Jackson County, (Tennessee)," House and Wendling explain in a late December article. "But in late 2024, a local TV news report broadcast controversial statements made by two of Mr. Abbotoy's first, and most outspoken, customers: Andrew Isker, a pastor and author originally from Minnesota, and C. Jay Engel, a businessman from California. They are self-described 'Christian nationalists' who question modern values, such as whether female suffrage and the civil rights movement were good ideas, and call for mass deportations of legal immigrants far in excess of President Donald Trump's current plan. Another thing they sometimes say: 'Repeal the 20th Century.'"
The BBC reporters note that although "Abbotoy himself does not identify as a Christian nationalist," his tenants' extreme views are worrying their neighbors."
House and Wendling quote Jackson County resident Nan Coons as saying, "You don't know who these people are, or what they're capable of. And so, it's scary."
Engel has even called for deportations of legal non-white immigrants, writing, "Peoples like Indians, or South East Asians or Ecuadorians or immigrated Africans are the least capable of fitting in and should be sent home immediately."
Gainesboro, Tennessee resident Diana Mandli, however, is calling Isker's church out.
Mandli told the BBC, "I believe that they have been attempting to brand our town and our county as a headquarters for their ideology of Christian nationalism."
*Read the full BBC article at this link.
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RWW
12/18/2025
by
- Perry Stein and Jeremy Roebuck @ The Washington Post: Dan Bongino announces he is leaving FBI deputy director job in January
Bongino told colleagues more than a week ago that he would not be returning to Washington headquarters this year, according to people familiar with the matter.
- Erkki Forster @ The Daily Beast: Trump Rants Incoherently at 2X Speed in Bonkers TV Address
The billionaire president’s delivery grew frantic as his speech on the economy wore on, ending with him practically shouting.
- Anna Merlan @ Mother Jones: How Benny Johnson Went From BuzzFeed Plagiarist to MAGA’s Chief Content Creator
He says he did “some very bad things.” But in Trumpworld, that’s a plus.
- Nicholas Confessore and Julie Tate @ The New York Times: ‘Don’s Best Friend’: How Epstein and Trump Bonded Over the Pursuit of Women
The president has tried to minimize their friendship, but documents and interviews reveal an intense and complicated relationship. Chasing women was a game of ego and dominance. Female bodies were currency.
- Warren Throckmorton: Tennessee Says Yes to Christian Nationalism
State partners with Turning Point USA to form clubs in every Tennessee school.
- Tess Owen @ Slate: Trad-Wife in Chief
Katie Miller, the wife of Trump henchman Stephen Miller, is trying to reinvent herself as a squeaky-clean model for MAGA women. People who knew her growing up saw someone far different.
- Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: Handpicked Kennedy Center board members vote to rename it the ‘Trump-Kennedy Center’
The president’s obsession with self-aggrandizement and self-glorification is pitiful, and it’s getting worse.
- Hemant Mehta @ Friend Atheist: Oklahoma's Supreme Court overturns Ryan Walters' Bible-heavy Social Studies standards
The judges rejected a Christian Nationalist curriculum that downplayed systemic racism, spread election lies, and pretended the Bible was history.
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an 10 25
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an 11 25
Public libraries in Tennessee have begun to shut down as they carry out an order from state officials to remove children’s books containing LGBTQ+ themes or characters.
For Popular Information, Rebecca Crosby and Noel Sims reported Tuesday that the “book purge” is required to be carried out at all 181 libraries in the Tennessee Regional Library System, which encompasses most of the state, aside from cities like Nashville and Memphis.
It comes after Tennessee’s Republican Secretary of State, Tre Hargett, sent a pair of letters earlier this fall. The first, sent on September 8, said that in order to receive state and federal grants, which run through his office, libraries needed to comply with a Tennessee law banning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices from agencies, as well as President Donald Trump’s executive order on “gender ideology,” which effectively ended the federal recognition of transgender and nonbinary individuals.
As the report notes, neither of these orders says anything about library books. However, Hargett argued that compliance with the executive order mandated book bans because it states that “federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology.”
Not only do executive orders typically not apply to state and local governments, but the federal funds Tennessee’s libraries receive are not used to purchase books at all. Instead, according to the secretary of state’s website, they “provide all state residents with online access to essential library and information resources, including licensed databases, a statewide library catalog and interlibrary loan system, bibliographic services, and materials for the disadvantaged.”
The Every Library Institute, an advocacy group that supports federal funding for libraries, said that Hargett’s instructions “contain significant errors, likely exceeding the secretary’s authority and reflecting a political agenda rather than a neutral or accurate interpretation of federal or state law.”
“Hargett is setting a dangerous precedent by placing Tennessee’s state and municipal government under the authority of any executive order by any president,” the group continued. “Executive orders are not laws.”
But Crosby and Sims argued: “Even if the executive order did apply to Tennessee local libraries, simply having books with LGBTQ stories and characters does not constitute ‘promoting gender ideology.’ The classic fairytale Little Red Riding Hood involves a wolf eating a little girl, but does not promote violence. Children’s books are stories, not instruction manuals.”
On October 27, Hargett sent another letter, giving libraries 60 days to undertake an “age appropriateness review” of all books in their children’s section to find any books that may be inconsistent either with Tennessee’s age appropriateness law or with Trump’s executive order.
As Ken Paulson, the director of Middle Tennessee University’s Free Speech Center, noted, the age appropriateness law, which was last updated in 2024, “is modeled after obscenity laws and prohibits nudity, excessive violence, and explicit sexuality, hardly the stuff of children’s sections. Further, the law applies to school libraries, not public libraries.”
Though Hargett provided no criteria for how to assess what books would need to be purged, he did provide an example of one he felt violated both orders: Fred Gets Dressed, a 2021 picture book by the New York Times bestselling author Peter Brown. As Popular Information noted:
The book, which was written by a straight, cisgender man, does not feature any LGBTQ characters. Instead it is based on a childhood experience of the author in which he tried on his mother’s clothing and makeup. If a book about a boy trying on his mother’s clothes is the strongest example of “promoting gender ideology” that Hargett could identify, it raises questions about the necessity of the review.
Earlier this month, the state’s Rutherford County Library System, which serves the cities of Smyrna and Murfreesboro, shut down several of its library branches for up to a week to “meet new reporting requirements” from Hargett’s office.
It’s unclear why the Rutherford County system determined it needed to shut down in order to carry out the review, nor has it been made clear whether other library systems will be expected to do the same.
As former librarian Kelly Jensen noted for the blog Book Riot, the Rutherford County system has made its own efforts to ban transgender-friendly books, but backed off from the policy earlier this summer for fear of litigation after a Murfreesboro law branding “homosexuality” as a form of “public indecency” resulted in the city being forced to settle a lawsuit for $500,000.
Kelly wrote that for Rutherford library system’s board, Hargett’s order is “a convenient means of subverting their fears of litigation, which drove them to change their anti-trans book policy earlier this summer. If the directive is from the state, then they ‘have to’ comply. The Tennessee secretary of state is granting permission slips to public library boards to ban away.”
This week, a group of 33 major publishers, library advocacy groups, and free speech and civil rights organizations signed onto a letter to Hargett expressing “profound concern” over its review mandate.
The coalition included PEN America, the American Library Association, the National Coalition Against Censorship, and the transgender rights advocacy organization GLAAD. Major publishing houses also signed on, including Penguin Random House, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster.
“These types of reviews create immense administrative burdens for library systems and often lead to illegal censorship, which raises liability risks for local communities and the state,” the groups said. “Many libraries, uncertain about the legal and procedural basis for the mandate, have had to redirect limited resources, with some temporarily closing branches to complete these reviews, which are implied to be necessary for future funding.”
“The demands in your letter need immediate clarification, as it is not reasonable to expect libraries to follow directives that would risk violating applicable law, including the US Constitution,” they added. “It is illegal to remove books from public libraries because some people do not like them. This is a well-settled legal principle.”
The Rutherford County Library Alliance, which has challenged municipal anti-LGBTQ+ laws as well as the censorship policies of the library’s own board, said that “we have seen firsthand the concrete harm of the Secretary’s directives—library closures during story time, intimidation of professional librarians, and the breakdown of democratic representation in our public library system.”
“We hope Secretary Hargett will fulfill their duty to promote library development by supporting our constitutionally-guaranteed rights and our highly trained librarians,” the alliance added, “rather than enabling censorship from 0.001% of our community for 100% of our community.”
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Black Memphis Residents 'don't feel safe' following harassment from Trump's cops
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Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett notified the president he is referring 42 “potential non-U.S. citizens” to the FBI for illegal votes.
Those potential illegal voters account for 0.0001% of all registered voters in Tennessee.
Responding to a letter from President Donald Trump congratulating him for using the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system, Hargett thanked the president for improving the system to help Tennessee “protect our voter rolls.”
“The collaborative spirit and speed with which your administration worked to improve SAVE and make it available is unprecedented,” Hargett said in a letter posted on Facebook.
Hargett said his office is referring those who might not be U.S. citizens to the FBI for investigation.
The SAVE system is designed to help states verify citizenship and immigration status of people seeking government benefits. But states such as Tennessee use it to check people’s citizenship status for voting, even though some groups question its effectiveness.
The Brennan Center, a nonpartisan law and policy institute that advocates for democracy and justice, reports that information from SAVE is sometimes incomplete or old, making the program useful but not fully reliable in determining a person’s citizenship.
The institute also said a move by the Department of Homeland Security to expand the amount of information accessible through SAVE increases the risk of states erroneously purging eligible voters from their rolls.
Tennessee had about 4.3 million registered voters as of June after purging some 276,000, according to the Secretary of State’s website.
Trump offered the program free of charge to states in March with an executive order to protect election integrity and make sure only U.S. citizens cast ballots.
“You were one of the first leaders to step up and protect the integrity of our elections by using the SAVE system — and I commend you for your decisive action,” Trump said in his letter to Hargett.
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Following the launch of a massive federal interagency task force in partnership with state law enforcement, Tennessee Republican Governor Bill Lee pledged that the “Memphis Safe Task Force” would be a permanent fixture.
Last month, the White House published a presidential memorandum titled “Restoring Law and Order in Memphis,” which orders thirteen federal government agencies and offices to coordinate. It states the “objective shall be to end street and violent crime in Memphis to the greatest possible extent,” and lists actions including “hypervigilant policing, aggressive prosecution, complex investigations, financial enforcement, and large-scale saturation of besieged neighborhoods with law enforcement personnel.”
Memphis is among the most violent cities in the country.
“The Memphis Safe Task Force began operations on September 29, with the National Guard joining efforts this past Friday,” Action5 News reported on Monday.
Governor Lee told reporters on Tuesday, “we’ve just begun,” and said the program will last “for months,” before stating that in some form it will continue “forever.”
“We do know that this is gonna last for months, and we have just begun. In fact, I will tell you that it will last forever,” he said. “Because what we believe will happen is the numbers of law enforcement agents from different agencies will change, depending on the mission at the moment.”
He described a “collaboration that is happening right now between U.S. Marshal Service and the Memphis Police Department, and the FBI, and the DEA, and the Tennessee Highway Patrol.”
“That collaboration will be here from now on,” said Lee. “So this operation, in some ways, may never end.”
Critics blasted the governor.
“As I predicted,” noted authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the “aim is a ‘domestic forever war.'”
The Atlantic’s Dr. Norman Ornstein, a political scientist, wrote: “Fascist. Pure fascist.”
Columnist and “recovering attorney” Wajahat Ali added, “Forever occupation, eh?”
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Tennessee Republican sentenced to 30 months in prison for 'intricate' money laundering
Sam Stockard, Tennessee Lookout
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Reeling from a federal campaign finance investigation, U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles landed approval for a legal expense trust fund to pay nearly $120,500 he owes four law firms, documents show.
Ogles, a Maury County Republican who dodged a criminal investigation into his finances, sent a letter to House Committee on Ethics chairs in October 2024 requesting permission to set up the trust fund to pay legal expenses connected to the probe of reporting errors in his Federal Election Commission and financial disclosure reports, according to records obtained by the Lookout.
James Appel of GOP Compliance LLC will serve as trustee of the fund, which cannot take donations from lobbyists or foreign agents, documents show. Appel reported to ethics leaders he’s had no connection to Ogles for two years, which is a requirement to take the job.
“I understand that I will be bound by the Committee’s Legal Expense Fund Regulations, effective May 1, 2024, and that while the Trustee will oversee the Trust, I bear ultimate responsibility for the proper administration of the Trust,” Ogles said in his letter.
A spokesperson for Ogles did not return email questions Thursday.
The committee approved the request in December 2024 for Ogles to pay $75,000 in legal fees, before he incurred $50,000 more in legal expenses this year. Chairs Michael Guest, a Mississippi Republican, and Mark DeSaulnier, a California Democrat, signed the letter notifying him of the requirements for setting up such a trust, including the filing of quarterly reports.
U.S. House ethics board calls for more investigation of Tennessee 5th District congressman
Ogles owes the money for legal representation from October 2024 through June 2025 after an Ethics Committee panel started looking into discrepancies in his campaign finance reporting. It found he likely violated federal campaign finance laws, mainly by reporting an inflated personal loan to make his bid for office look stronger in 2022.
Running in Tennessee’s redrawn 5th Congressional District, which state lawmakers gerrymandered to help Republicans to take over the Democratic stronghold of Nashville, Ogles in 2022 reported receiving a $320,000 personal loan for his campaign. Ogles initially said he raised $450,000 for the race, yet his first FEC report showed he brought in only $250,000.
Ogles amended campaign finance reports in May 2024 and acknowledged making a $20,000 loan to his campaign and saying the additional $300,000 was in a joint account he shared with his wife. Still, he and his campaign manager couldn’t confirm the source of the $20,000.
The ethics board voted 6-0 to call for a closer look at Ogles’ finances because “there is substantial reason to believe that Rep. Ogles omitted or misrepresented required information in his finance disclosure statements or FEC candidate committee reports.”
Despite the congressional investigation, U.S. prosecutors dropped a fraud probe of Ogles after he filed legislation this year to allow President Donald Trump to serve three terms.
Federal election officials threaten Ogles with campaign finance audit or enforcement – again
Before his problematic financial reporting, Ogles inflated his resume, reports show, including claiming to have a degree from Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management when he obtained only a certificate for a weekend seminar.
In his second term, the former Tennessee director of Americans for Prosperity recently went after Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell for his opposition to a federal sweep of South Nashville for immigrants. Ogles also called for an investigation into Belmont University for allegedly enrolling students without permanent legal documentation of citizenship and disguising its diversity and equity program.
Based on his fundraising this year, Ogles clearly needs financial help to pay his attorneys.
He has a little more than $59,000 in his campaign account, according to FEC reports, a paltry sum for a sitting member of Congress.
If he can’t bring in any more than that to boost his re-election campaign for 2026, it’s going to be tough to find enough donors to fill up his legal defense trust fund. That is, unless Trump keeps him afloat with some of the $240 million his organizations such as the new super PAC, MAGA Inc., collected to back his agenda, which usually means keeping supporters at his beck and call.
No need to change execution protocol
Gov. Bill Lee won’t look into the execution of Byron Black to determine whether he suffered terribly in the moments before his recent death.
Asked by an Associated Press reporter who witnessed the deadly moment in which Black gasped, moved his head and said it “hurts so bad,” Lee said he sees no need for more review. He explained that the state already went through a “long process” on execution protocol after he suspended the death penalty for two years. The guidelines, which involve the use of pentobarbital to put inmates such as Black to death, were approved by the federal and state Supreme Courts, he said.
While this eliminates one of the possible causes of the reason that Mr. Black lifted his head, groaned, and cried out in pain after the execution began, it leaves many questions unanswered.
– Kelley Henry, attorney for Byron Black
“There’s been an exhaustive review of that process, and that was the process utilized, so I’m not expecting further investigation of that,” Lee said.
Black was on death row for 35 years for the 1988 murders of his girlfriend, Angela Clay, and her two children. His attorneys tried to stop the execution, claiming he was mentally incompetent and arguing that the Supreme Court should review the case to decide whether he should be executed without deactivating an implanted defibrillator, that could keep him alive even as drugs were administered, violating a constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
Black’s attorney, Kelley Henry, sent out a statement afterward saying the initial evaluation of his defibrillator showed it didn’t shock him during the execution.
“While this eliminates one of the possible causes of the reason that Mr. Black lifted his head, groaned, and cried out in pain after the execution began, it leaves many questions unanswered,” Henry said.
An autopsy report could take eight to 12 weeks, and Henry said more information will be sought to figure out what went wrong.
“But make no mistake, we all saw with our own eyes that the pentobarbital did not work like the state’s expert testified that it would,” Henry said. “Mr. Black suffered.”
Complaint could backfire
Tennessee’s Ethics Commission could take action against Memphis area residents after dismissing their sworn complaint against Sen. Brent Taylor for critical remarks he made against participants of a “No Kings” rally there.
Commission members and state ethics director Bill Young raised questions this week about whether the residents tried to “weaponize” the process to go after Taylor, a Shelby County Republican who blasted people who rallied against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies in June, calling them “idiots” and warning the police would arrest them for an illegal protest. Taylor spoke on a Memphis radio station and then posted comments on the X, formerly Twitter, calling the protesters “purple-haired Jihadis.”
The Left’s violence masquerading as free speech is a stain on our republic, and it’s escalating at a terrifying pace. From assassination attempts on President Trump—twice in two months—to torching cars at Tesla dealerships during Tesla Takedowns. Members of “Progressive” groups… pic.twitter.com/cQcTUEjcNb
— Senator Brent Taylor (@SenBrentTaylor) June 14, 2025
Five people who filed identical complaints against him said he used his official position “to spread false, inflammatory and dangerous misinformation about a peaceful protest event,” endangering constituents and inciting harassment.
Young told the commission it didn’t have jurisdiction to cite Taylor, in part, because he didn’t benefit financially from the criticism. The executive director also told the commission it could hold a hearing to determine whether civil penalties should be levied against the complainants for filing a “frivolous” complaint, potentially leading to a $10,000 civil penalty.
Commission members agreed it’s “not unethical” for Taylor to state his opinion and that voters should decide whether he remains in office. Ultimately, they decided to defer action until their next meeting when two members who were absent this week could attend.
Taylor’s attorney, Allan Wade, said in a letter to the commissioner the complaints were “merely personal grievances about Brent Taylor’s dislike of complainants and their political views, which is not a proper subject of an ethics complaint under the Ethics Act.”
That could be true, but the ultimate question is whether the Ethics Commission is more concerned with making an example of people who, wrong or right, see it as a last resort for justice or giving politicians the freedom to bad-mouth the public.
Endorsement or not
The day after U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn announced her candidacy for governor, she sent out a list of political luminaries from which she “garners tremendous support” and topped it with a comment from Gov. Lee.
The governor, though, told reporters this week he is not endorsing in the governor’s race, which so far pits Blackburn against U.S. Rep. John Rose of Cookeville.
“I didn’t see what she put out, but I’ve been friends with Marsha for a long time,” Lee told reporters (both are from Williamson County). “She served as my congressman and representative in the General Assembly, so I’m proud that we have really good people running for governor in this state, grateful that the 51st governor will be someone who can continue to move this state forward.”
We love it when Lee takes a strong stand.
In issuing a list of supporters, though, Blackburn seems to be massaging words or, maybe, even pulling a page from Ogles’ political playbook.
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Shock and anger in Memphis as 3 cops are acquitted on state murder charges
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One high-ranking Republican state senator from Tennessee was recently arrested for allegedly driving under the influence while on vacation in Jekyll Island, Georgia.
On Thursday, Newsweek reported that Yager, who is chairman of the Tennessee Senate Republican Caucus, was pulled over in his Ford Edge by Georgia State Patrol troopers on Tuesday. In the video of his field sobriety test, Yager — who is 77 years old — is seen having difficulty standing, and a stream of liquid is seen spreading across the front of his khaki pants in the process. Earlier that day, a Ford Edge fitting the description of Yager's vehicle was reportedly involved in a hit-and-run accident.....
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court blocks Tennessee GOP’s 'unprecedent disenfranchisement' of Nashville voters
https://www.alternet.org/tennessee-court-hb-48/)
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in Franklin, Tennessee (an upscale Nashville suburb), MAGA Republican Gabrielle Hanson's chaotic mayoral campaign ended in defeat when, on Tuesday, October 24, Democratic incumbent Ken Moore enjoyed a landslide reelection and won by around 59 percent.
Hanson, a Franklin alderperson and local real estate developer, ran as a severe culture warrior. She had tried to block a gay pride event in the spring, and according to the Daily Beast, she wouldn't disavow some white supremacists who supported her. But in the end, Franklin voters rejected her extremism.
The Daily Beast's Josh Fiallo, in an article published on October 25, stresses that Hanson's "myriad scandals" were "too much to stomach."
Fiallo explains, "Tuesday's result puts a cap on a chaotic campaign for Hanson, who seemingly found herself embroiled in new controversies weekly on the home stretch of her election bid…. She loudly lambasted the city for planning to install historical markers about historical racial injustice in the area — memorials she deemed to be 'racial terror' markers. She was grilled for threatening to retaliate against a local airport for supporting a Juneteenth festival and was slammed by Nashville cops for spreading false information about a horrific mass shooting at the city's Covenant School."
Hanson, Fiallo notes, "cozied up to white supremacists," including members of a group called the Tennessee Active Club.
"Despite calls from local politicians," the reporter explains, "Hanson never disavowed the group, which was spotted carrying Nazi flags at a drag brunch in Cookeville, Tennessee, earlier this year. She insisted she didn't invite the group to her forum personally, but Active Club members disputed that, saying they were invited over concerns related to 'Antifa.' Hanson's initial efforts to distance herself from the group didn't last long — she was photographed Wednesday grinning next to the hate group's leader, Sean Kauffmann, who has described himself as being an 'actual literal Nazi.'"
Fiallo adds, "In an October 10 board meeting, Hanson claimed she didn’t disavow the group because they were against Antifa. She strangely said to city officials in the meeting, 'This is exactly the seeds that you sowed, and your harvest is now here.'"
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A lingering legal battle that was poised to settle this summer, leading to a clearer pathway for tens of thousands of Tennesseans to restore their voting rights, has instead reignited into a contentious court fight with no certain outcome ahead of the next presidential election.
One in five Black voting-age Tennesseans lacks the right to vote due to a past criminal conviction — likely the highest rate of African-American disenfranchisement in the nation, according to the Sentencing Project. Overall, nearly 10% of the Tennessee electorate — 470,000 people — have lost their right to vote due to convictions.
In a lawsuit filed in December 2020, the Tennessee Conference of the NAACP and five residents denied the right to vote alleged Tennessee officials failed to follow state laws that allow individuals to legally restore their voting rights after serving their sentences and completing parole. Instead, the state implemented inaccessible and opaque processes that impede legal pathways for restoring rights, the lawsuit claimed.
Close to settling key claims in the case over the summer — potentially ahead of high profile local elections in Nashville, Memphis and for state office — attorneys for the state abruptly broke off talks in late July, catching lawyers for the NAACP by surprise, legal filings show. Then, on August 2, lawyers for the Tennessee Attorney General filed motions asking a judge to reject the claims entirely.
“The Elections Division, TDOC, and Governor’s office had the opportunity this summer to create accessible, transparent, and uniform procedures to allow the over 470,000 disenfranchised Tennesseans a fair shot at getting their voting rights restored and rejoining their communities as full citizens,” Blair Bowie, an attorney representing the NAACP with the DC-based Campaign Legal Center, said Friday.
“Instead, they blew up the voting rights restoration system entirely and imposed effectively permanent disenfranchisement on July 21,” she said.
A spokesperson for the Tennessee Attorney General did not respond to emailed questions on Friday.
The breakdown in the federal case came shortly after a June 29 ruling by the Tennessee Supreme Court against Ernest Falls, who was denied the right to vote in Tennessee in 2020 after receiving clemency in Virginia for a decades-old crime.
The Supreme Court ruled that Falls, also represented by the Campaign Legal Center, was required to show he had paid all outstanding court costs, restitution and child support obligations in Virginia to establish his voting rights — in addition to proof of the Virginia clemency.
Secretary of State Mark Goins then issued a memo that incorporated expanded requirements for all state residents seeking to restore their voting rights — regardless of where their conviction took place. In addition to the process of demonstrating they, too, had paid court costs and other financial obligations related to their crime, in-state residents must now show they also “have been pardoned by a Governor, U.S. President, or other appropriate authority of a state or have had their full rights of citizenship restored as prescribed by law.”
The memo wasn’t shared with attorneys for the NAACP who had been involved with them in settlement negotiations for months, legal filings said.
“Plaintiffs learned from publicreporting that Defendant Goins had that day issued guidance to county election officials changing his interpretation of the State’s requirements for individuals with felony convictions to restore their voting rights,” court records said.
In seeking a ruling dismissing major elements of the case, state lawyers have argued in motions for summary judgement that the five individuals names in the suit lack standing in court.
Tennessee does have a process in place for restoration of rights, one that provides a pathway to restoring rights while preserving election integrity, they argued.
“Tennessee does not reject all voter registration forms on which the applicant affirmed that they have a felony conviction,” the state’s filings said. “Moreover, Tennessee’s practice is rationally related to its legitimate interest in combatting voter fraud, safeguarding voter confidence, and ensuring accurate record keeping.”
The Sentencing Project’s national voting rights study found that that 3,415 Tennessee voting-age citizens have been granted Certificates of Restoration since 2016 — fewer than 1% of those with prior felony convictions estimated to be eligible to vote under Tennessee law.
The NAACP lawsuit argues that the current administration of voting right restoration certificates violate the U.S. Constitution’s due process and the equal protection rights.
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.
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an 8 23 vid
https://www.alternet.org/tennessee-three-blasts-speaker-silencing/ spk off topic
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'Not what democracy looks like': TN GOP lawmakers order police to oust silent protestor from pro-gun hearing
Two protestors holding up signs during Tennessee GOP lawmakers' pro-guns hearing (August 22, 2023), Image via screengrab/News Channel 5 chief Investigative reporter Phil Williams.
David Badashand The New Civil Rights Movement August 22, 2023
Tennessee House Republicans holding a hearing on legislation to allow guns in schools ordered state troopers to physically remove a woman who was silently protesting by holding a small sign. She was among a group of people in the gallery opposing the bill, a few of them were holding signs. Among them was at least one parent of children who attend Nashville’s Covenant Elementary School, where six people including three children were killed in a mass shooting earlier this year.
“And deny our First Amendment rights? I am not leaving,” the protestor, identified as Allison Polidor, said while still seated before she was removed, according to video (below) posted by NewsChannel 5’s Phil Williams. “We have rights to hold a sign. If you have to drag me out, so be it.
As state troopers grabbed her and removed her from the room she shouted, “This isn’t what democracy looks like.”
The protestors in the House Judiciary Committee’s Civil Justice subcommittee hearing sat quietly holding signs that read, “1 kid > all the guns,” (one kid is greater than all the guns).
READ MORE: Suspect in Killing of Storeowner Over LGBTQ Flag Was Far-Right Conspiracist Who Promoted Christian Nationalism: Report
Lawmakers had convened for a special session on public safety to respond to the March school mass shooting that left three children and three adults dead.
Before Polidor was removed, off-camera a voice could be heard saying if anyone is holding a sign, “we’ll just clear the whole room.” Ultimately, NewsChannel 5 reports, the entire room was cleared.
Later, Polidor told NewsChannel 5, “It’s an attack on First Amendment rights.”
“I mean, I am here for my kids — everyone’s kids. They are making these laws or lack of laws. I am here representing everyone’s kids. No one should worry if their kids are going to come home from school or not. I feel like you can’t sit by. When we’ve come to the point you can’t hold up a sign, it’s not OK.”
Sarah Shoop Neumann, whose bio reads, “Grounded in faith, fierce advocate for the oppressed, proudCovenant School mama,” through tears told reporters, “I don’t think these people get what this means. We’re here for six people who were killed in our school. We’re just trying to do something.”
READ MORE: Fox News Tells Viewers ‘They’ Let Tropical Storm Hilary Into the US ‘Because It’s Biden’s America’
“It’s hard to be here,” she continued, noting the presence of the Proud Boys and the Tennessee Firearms Association, according to WKRN.
“And I’m just trying to sit quiet. I already got told I can’t have my sign that says, ‘I’m a Covenant mom.’ That dignity’s been taken away,” she continued. “This is life or death for people.”
WKRN reports Chairman Lowell Russell made the decision to have state troopers remove the protestors holding signs.
Tennessee House Democratic Minority Leader Karen Camper via social media said, “People are at the TN Capitol in 100 degree heat & paying to park to be thrown out of committee rooms for sitting QUIETLY?! What are we doing?! This is not how it works. This is shameful & an abuse of power! No chanting, no yelling: sitting quietly. Give me a break!”
Tennessee Senate Democrats, also Tuesday afternoon, accused Republicans of blocking 20 gun safety bills, refusing to even allow debate.
Watch the videos above or at this link.
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
'You let the bullies win': Parents confront Tennessee school board after it cancels Mother’s Day event ›
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no lnx vid atl mo is tenn democ?
'One-party rule' has made 'radicalized' Tennessee Republicans act like far-right authoritarians: report
Alex Henderson July 18, 2023
Republicans in the Tennessee State Legislature sparked a national outcry earlier this year when they voted to expel two Democratic lawmakers, Rep. Justin Jones and Rep. Justin Pearson, in response to their participation in a gun control protest. A third Democrat, Gloria Johnson, escaped expulsion during a vote. While Johnson is white, Jones and Pearson are both Black.
The Tennessee Republicans who voted for expulsion had no interest in debating Jones and Pearson on the merits of gun control. They simply wanted to see them removed from office.
Journalist Anne Applebaum takes an in-depth — and very unfavorable — look at Tennessee's political environmentin an essay/think piece published by The Atlantic on July 18. Tennessee, she laments, has become a one-party state ruled by far-right ideologues she compares to authoritarians like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán or Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
READ MORE: 'Miscarriage of justice': Metro Nashville council reappoints Justin Jones
Technically, Orbán and Erdogan are not dictators. They don't enjoy dictator-for-life status like Spain's Gen. Francisco Franco, a.k.a. El Generalísimo, or Chile's Gen. Augusto Pinochet, and they were reelected. But they have seriously undermined their countries' systems of checks and balances, which, Applebaum argues, is also what MAGA Republicans have been doing in Tennessee.
"Just as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán fights with opposition-controlled Budapest — and Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan fights with Istanbul, and Poland's Jarosław Kaczyński fights with Warsaw — so do Tennessee Republicans fight with opposition-controlled Nashville," Applebaum observes. But ultimately, she says, Tennessee now has "one-party rule," not serious debates. And the state's MAGA Republicans believe they are governing on behalf of God when they push "restrictive voting laws" or try to "shut down debate."
"As in Hungary or Poland or as in Venezuela," Applebaum warns, "the experience of radicalism can make people more radical. Total control of a political system can make the victors not more magnanimous, but more frustrated, not least because they learn that total control still doesn't deliver what they think it should. No county commission or state legislature can possibly meet the demands of a quasi-religious movement that believes it has God on its side and that its opponents herald the apocalypse."
Applebaum discussed her Atlantic essay during a July 18 appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
READ MORE: Tennessee lawmaker: 'Partisan' GOP efforts to oust him were a 'gross miscalculation'
The journalist told host Mika Brzezinski, "One of the effects of having a supermajority, which the Republicans have in Tennessee, is that they don't really have to listen to anybody. They don't have to listen to the public. They don't have to listen to the Democrats. They don't have to listen to political opponents…. Because they're there based on a tiny group of partisans who show up to vote. And the lesson, again, is that when you have that kind of control, it doesn't make you nicer…. It's becoming more and more difficult for Democrats to be heard in the (Tennessee State) Legislature and more broadly."
READ MORE: Tennessee pride celebrations showcase queer joy amid neo-Nazi threats and legal attacks
Watch the video below or at this link.
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RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
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no lnx twt
tennessee State RepresentativeJustin Jones (D-52nd District), fresh off his reinstatement to the legislature after Republicans expelled him for protesting their indifference to gun violence, issued a brutal takedown of State Representative Dennis Powers (R-36th District) on Friday after Powers denied that climate change exists.
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Despite the consensus of the world's scientists, numerous reports from international bodies such as the United Nations, and the impacts of the continued burning of fossil fuels playing out in real-time, Powers claimed that Earth is not getting hotter and that environmentalism is a racket.
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"Climate change is just a way of risk, redistribution of wealth. There is no climate change," said Powers, who on March 3rd had to apologize for adding "hanging by a tree" to an amendment on a bill that also recommended execution by firing squad for death row inmates. "We're always gonna have climate change because the ice age never came. And also the heat a, a heating age, or global warming, never came, which is why they changed it to climate change. And you can sit there and argue, argue all you want to about that, but we all know the truth."
READ MORE: 'Miscarriage of justice': Metro Nashville Council reappoints Justin Jones
In response, Jones went right for the jugular.
"Thank you, Representative, for making the case why we need to fund more money into our education, into our public schools, so we can educate our students and they don't grow up with these conspiracy theories," Jones said.
"Um, I I, what you said was very troubling to me. I, I, I'm, I'm just very thrown aback and I'm glad that we have that on the record what you said," Jones added. "And I hope your district looks at what you said because that is very troubling, that we're challenging science, we're challenging reality, and we're living in this alternative universe of conspiracy theories that are not rooted in fact, and not rooted in, in what we can see with our own eyes and what we're experiencing in the world right now. And so I, I just, I have no other words, but, um, let us invest in education so we do not have lawmakers who have this mentality."
Jones was not alone in his rebuke of Powers. Twitter users were also exasperated at Powers' obtuseness.
READ MORE: 'Weaponized nonsense': Lauren Boebert ripped for calling climate change a 'religion'
Bryan Dawson: "Meanwhile, the US saw its first climate refugees as Louisiana island residents had to be resettled as their island disappeared. Atmospheric CO2 surpassed 421 ppm. Last time it was that high was 4 million years ago when seas were up to 82 ft higher. Republicans are a bunch of stupids."
SMITTY: "Mr. Powers should be challenged for that seat by someone from a younger generation who can recognize the significance of ignoring what is happening all around us. Crop reduction in Europe is a real thing. It's only a matter of time before the US has the same problems."
tfranchi: "Every time they start waving their hands around you know they're lying."
Zinn Ed Project: "Rep. Jones is right. We need to invest in public ed. AND we need to allow the teaching of lessons on climate change and environmental racism, which are currently restricted in many states by laws banning teaching about systemic racism."
Kschrdr: "Burning fossil fuels, cutting down forests, and farming livestock are influencing climate and the earth's temperature. This adds enormous amounts of greenhouse gases to those naturally occurring in the atmosphere, increasing the greenhouse effect & global warming."
Aviva Hadara: "Good Grief. This would be funny if it weren't so pathetic."
Invisible Hamburger: "No ice age? What a weirdo. Justin nails it."
Me, Myself, and Irony: "He says 'There is no climate change' immediately followed by 'We're always going to have climate change.'"
Mar: "Dennis Powers looks and acts like a cartoon character"
Weebay Wally: "That toupee is outrageous."
Watch below or at this link.
READ MORE: Tinpot legislators: Their one-party rule will be ruinous for the Earth
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no lnx vid etc
'The worst case of blackface': Matt Walsh's racist attack on Justin Pearson
Brandon Gage April 12, 2023
Right-wing Daily Wire host Matt Walsh called Tennessee State Representative Justin Pearson (D-86th District) a "gutless fraud" and accused Pearson of "doing blackface" as Nashville officials were voting to reinstate him to his office on Wednesday afternoon.
Pearson and State Representative Justin Jones (D-52nd District) – both of whom are Black – were expelled from the chamber last week by Republicans because they protested the GOP's lack of action to prevent gun violence following the deadly mass shooting at the Covenant School in late March.
A third legislator, State Representative Gloria Johnson (D-90th District), who is white, was spared. Jones was reinstated on Tuesday.
READ MORE: 'Miscarriage of justice': Metro Nashville council reappoints Justin Jones
On Easter Sunday, Pearson delivered a Resurrection-themed sermon at the Church of the River in Memphis in which he blasted his right-wing colleagues for their unprecedented assault on the democratic process.
"The Republican-led supermajority of the Tennessee assembly sought to have a political lynching of three of its members because we spoke out of turn against the status quo of the government after the tragic deaths of six people at the Covenant school in Nashville," Pearson said. "The movement for democracy lives or dies in Memphis. The movement to end gun violence lives or dies in Memphis. We’ve seen those who want to kill the movement in the Republican-led supermajority."
Pearson compared Governor Bill Lee to Pontius Pilate, the biblical Roman official who condemned Jesus Christ to crucifixion.
"Because we walked to the well of the house out of turn, resolutions were unjustly and undemocratically filed against us on these trumped-up charges," Pearson stated. "Because we spoke out against the empire of the NRA of the gun lobbyists; because we demanded an end to gun violence, an end to the proliferation of weapons on our streets, an end to the funerals we attend day after day and week after week and month after month and year after year — because we did that, the Republican-led General Assembly with the support of folks even in this district like Mark White, from our own community, thought it better to get rid of our democratic representation in District 86 than to actually solve the problem."
READ MORE: Tennessee lawmaker: 'Partisan' GOP efforts to oust him were a 'gross miscalculation'
Pearson also penned a blistering CNN editorial on Wednesday in which he admonished Republicans for their "gross miscalculation" in having him removed.
"The spectacle was a gross miscalculation by Republicans in the chamber," Pearson argued. "It turns out that most Americans care deeply about democracy. Most people care about equality and progress. And over two-thirds of Americans — including four out of 10 Republicans — support the kind of common-sense gun safety laws that Rep. Jones, Rep. Johnson and I were protesting in favor of, in the wake of the senseless March 27 Covenant School massacre."
Pearson's powerful oratory triggered a vengeful reaction from Walsh, who launched a racist attack against Pearson:
You know, he doesn't, he, he doesn't really sound like a 1960s civil rights figure, which is what he is trying to sound like and look like. Uh, he sounds like he's doing a parody of one. You know, this is, this is the worst case of blackface that we've seen since Justin Trudeau, except that Pearson's actually Black and he's still doing blackface. Nevertheless, he, he is performing and we know he is performing because now we know what he sounded like before theperformance. It's not at all a convincing performance, of course, in fact, I didn't think I'd see a performance less convincing than Bill and Mulvaney's portrayal of womanhood until Pearson came along. Pearson's really given him a run for his money. This is what the left promotes and encourages – empty performance taken to comical, almost surreal extremes. You know, they give us heroes and leaders who are cartoons. Who are hollow and paper thin, who are, it always turns out conniving, cowards, gutless frauds, andself-aggrandizing performance artists.
Watch below or at this link.
READ MORE: Judges axe Tennessee GOP's halving of Nashville Metropolitan Council: report
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
'Fascism, full stop': Progressives in Congress condemn expulsion of Tennessee Democrats ›
'Can’t expel truth': Ousted TN lawmaker Justin Pearson highlights hypocrisy of 'country built on a protest' ›
Democrat Justin Pearson erupts at Republicans ahead of vote to expel him from the Tennessee House ›
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
Justin Pearson of 'Tennessee Three' Could Be Reinstated ... ›
Justin J. Pearson: Memphis officials set to vote on returning ousted ... ›
Will Justin Pearson, expelled Tennessee lawmaker, regain his seat ... ›
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no lnx pop info 8 23 ymail
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UPDATE: Tennessee House Speaker silences critic, avoids vote on alleged residency fraud
JUDD LEGUM
AUG 30
Tennessee Representative Justin Jones (D) speaks in front of the state capitol on April 10, 2023 (Photo by Seth Herald/Getty Images)
On Monday, Tennessee Representative Justin Jones (D) distributed a letter to his colleagues in the Tennessee House announcing his intention to call a vote of no confidence in House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R). The first two issues highlighted in Jones' letter are Sexton "misrepresenting his residency and being unqualified to represent Tennessee's 25th State House District" and "defrauding Tennessee taxpayers" by accepting an excessive per diem reimbursement for his actual residence in Nashville.
In April 2023, Popular Information broke the news that Sexton secretly purchased a $600,000 home in Nashville. Our reporting forced Sexton to admit that his family lives in Nashville and raised serious questions about whether Sexton can legally represent a district two hours away. We also revealed that Sexton overcharged Tennessee taxpayers $78,000 by collecting per diem payments reserved for representatives who live more than 50 miles from Nashville. In response, a non-profit watchdog group called for state and federal criminal investigations into Sexton's conduct, and more than a dozen residents of Sexton's district filed a civil complaint with the Tennessee Attorney General
The House clerk told Jones he would be permitted to call for a vote of no confidence before the conclusion of Monday's session during a period called "unfinished business." But before Jones got a chance, Sexton orchestrated a vote stripping Jones' right to speak.
The reason that the Tennessee House was meeting is that Governor Bill Lee (R) called a special session of the legislature to address public safety issues in response to a mass shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville this March that left three children and three adults dead. Shortly after the massacre, Jones and another Democratic representative, Justin Pearson, were expelled by Sexton and Tennessee House Republicans for supposedly violating decorum by speaking out on gun safety on the House floor. Both easily won reelection in a special election earlier this month and regained their positions.
At the outset of the special session, House Republicans pushed through new rules permitting the body to temporarily silence any member who speaks "off-topic" more than once. They also banned members of the gallery from holding signs, but that restriction was blocked by a federal judge as unconstitutional.
Under the new rules, Sexton is the sole arbiter of whether any comments made by a House member are off-topic. On Monday, Sexton first said Jones was off-topic when Jones described a proposal to "allow private schools with pre-kindergarten classes to have policies allowing guns on campus" as "asinine" and "insulting." Sexton found Jones off-topic a second time when Jones criticized a bill to station more armed police officers in schools, saying the policy was ineffective and "what our schools need are mental health professionals." A debate on any legislative proposal involves evaluating the efficacy of the proposal and comparing it to potential alternatives. Prohibiting such discussion is effectively prohibiting any dissent.
Nevertheless, after his second ruling, Sexton called for a vote to prohibit Jones from speaking for the rest of the day. House Republicans followed along, and Jones was silenced. House Democrats left the chamber in protest, and the body quickly recessed.
As a result, Jones was not able to call for a vote of no confidence. That vote and associated debate would have highlighted politically damaging facts about Sexton's real place of residence and his alleged misuse of taxpayer funds.
Jones said he was silenced because of "the vote of no confidence I was going to call for" and vowed to continue fighting. "The House is out of order under Cameron Sexton's leadership. This is very disheartening, this is very troubling. This is a step toward authoritarianism, and we should all be troubled by this," Jones said. "Our Democratic caucus was united. We walked out because that's a charade, a sham happening in there. And the people are united in challenging authoritarianism."
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a new robocall is falsely accusing the three Tennessee Democrats targeted by Republicans for expulsion from the state legislature of being violent "Antifa" radicals.
Audio of the call, which was obtained by the Tennessee Holler, describes Tennessee Democrats Justin Pearson, Justin Jones, and Gloria Johnson as "radical activists posing as elected officials” who purportedly "led an angry mob of Antifa intending violence" to the Tennessee State Capitol building earlier this month.
The robocall also falsely claimed that law enforcement officials confiscated "pipe bombs" from demonstrators protesting against the three Democrats' expulsion.
According to the Tennessee Holler, the calls were funded by right-wing organization Enlighten Tennessee, whose stated goal is to "preserve the Conservative economic principles which make Tennessee the greatest state in the country to live."
Gloria Johnson, the one Tennessee Democrat who survived the expulsion vote, reacted angrily to the robocall, which she decried as "disgusting."
"Antifa? Pipe bombs?" she asked incredulously. "I guess parents brought them in strollers with their babies and toddlers. I didn’t know they made brass knuckles for children. This is disgusting, disgraceful, and it’s going to get someone hurt."
Johnson also hinted at legal action against the call and revealed that she's "already have had my lawyer on the phone" to talk about options.
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May 25, 2023
- Hannah Rabinowitz and Katelyn Polantz @ CNN: Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes sentenced to 18 years in prison for plot to keep Trump in power.
- Tommy Christopher @ Mediaite: Charlie Kirk Incites Viewers to Go After Target Using Financial ‘Force’ Over Pride Merchandise.
- Rebecca Crosby and Tesnim Zekeria @ Popular Info: Tennessee Speaker appoints conspiracy theorist to develop state social studies standards.
- Yonat Shimron @ Religion News Service: In fight against ‘tyranny,’ Michigan board declares itself ‘constitutional county.’
- Ben Jacobs @ Intelligencer: CPAC Is Rocked by a Resignation.
- Nicole Narea and Li Zhou @ Vox: A guide to Ron DeSantis’s most extreme policies in Florida.
- Decca Muldowney and Kelly Weill @ The Daily Beast: Florida Mom Behind Amanda Gorman Book Ban Has Proud Boy Links.
- Media Matters: Daily Wire host: “The Pride flag symbol, we need to make that toxic.”
Tags: Charlie Kirk Laurie Cardoza-Moore Matt Trewhella Michael Knowles Ron DeSantis Stewart Rhodes Round-Up CPAC
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5 23 kinsgston ff plant with a natural gas plant by one of the most powerful utilities in the U.S. At the same time, Tennessee lawmakers are defining gas as “clean energy.” Source: Paul Harris/Getty Images
It was a big deal when Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed a law designating methane gas as “green energy” in January. The bill’s passage was covered by local news, national news, industry publications and glossy magazines.
So when we recently learned that Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed a similar law last month—HB 0946, which legally defines methane gas as “clean energy”—we were a bit surprised. Aside from Caroline Eggers at Nashville’s WPLN News, who has done two great stories on the bill, we couldn’t find any coverage of the legislation.
It’s possible that most local and national media were distracted. The bill, which states that public utilities must count “natural gas” as a “permissible source” of clean energy, was signed into law on April 12, 2023—the same day state lawmaker Justin J. Pearson was reinstated to the Tennessee Legislature after being infamously expelled for protesting on the chamber floor. (Heck, that’s what we were covering at the time).
Whatever the reason, Tennessee’s new law deserves the same level of scrutiny as Ohio’s, as it’s a key part of a growing industry-funded strategy to delay climate action by codifying misinformation about natural gas into law. Like gas, the strategy is most harmful when people don’t notice it seeping in. So today, we’re belatedly...>When deceptive marketing becomes the law zzz...the industry brands as “natural gas,” is not a “clean” or “green” source of energy. It is a fossil fuel primarily made of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Methane gas has “contributed to the largest increase in global fossil CO2 emissions in recent years,”&...That’s why many scientists say Despite all this, the fossil fuel industry has been marketing gas as a climate solution for decades. This marketing has only intensified as the public has gotten more serious about tackling climate change.
But industry-created climate misinformation is no longer just infiltrating podcasts and social media feeds. It’s also infiltrating the law. The phenomenon started in Europe last year, when the European Parliament voted to label certain uses of natural gas as “green.” That meant billions of dollars that were intended to fund climate-friendly projects could legally be used for methane power plants and terminals.
Now, industry climate misinformation has also started making its way into U.S. state law—albeit in slightly different ways.
Ohio’s bill labeling gas as “green,” for one, appears to be more of a public relations stunt than anything. Ohio Governor DeWine’s press secretary told Natural Gas Intelligence that “the legislative language did not affect any funding or regulations,” adding that it was “more of an opinion statement.” The Ohio bill’s own sponsor doesn’t even seem to know what it does; he told Energy News Network he hoped the law would help companies in the gas business meet Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) investing standards. But he added: “I don’t know if it will work.”
Tennessee’s new law, on the other hand, has a specific, anti-climate policy intent. It doesn’t just vaguely say that “gas is clean energy;” it says that local governments attempting to set “clean energy” standards must include gas in that definition. “That makes it a kindred spirit with the now over 20 states who have passed ‘preemption bills’ attempting to prohibit cities from limiting the use of gas in buildings,” said David Pomerantz, the executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute.
The common thread: industry influence
What unites these new state laws is their connection to fossil fuel interests. Ohio’s green energy law was funded by a dark money group with ties to the gas industry, the Washington Post reported in January. The conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) shared with Ohio lawmakers a “model bill” with talking points about how methane gas is clean energy, according to emails obtained by the Energy and Policy Institute. Those emails explicitly spell out how the industry creates laws to keep itself in business.
We don’t have the same smoking gun private emails linking the gas industry and dark money groups to Tennessee’s bill. But there are a few very public connections between the lawmakers who supported the Tennessee bill and fossil fuel interests, including some of the same fossil fuel groups that created Ohio’s bill.
Three of the Tennessee bill’s co-sponsors are ALEC members:Rep. Chris Todd, who is an ALEC “state chair”, Rep. Susan Lynn, who is on ALEC’s board of directors, and Sen. Ed Jackson, also an ALEC state chair. Tennessee lawmakers have also publicly aligned themselves with the same dark money group that funded Ohio’s law, by signing The Empowerment Alliance’s “Declaration of Energy Independence.” Signers of the declaration, which calls methane gas the “environmentally responsible bridge to our energy future”, include Governor Bill Lee and multiple state senators—including bill co-sponsor Sen. Walley.
Representative Clark Boyd, who first sponsored HB 0946, has received $10,000 in donations from the oil and gas industry and $13,500 from electric utilities from 2018 to 2023. But his largest industry donation—$8,000 between 2018 to 2023—comes from the Tennessee Electric Cooperative Association (TECA), which has also donated to every state senator who sponsored the bill.
TECA is a trade association representing the state’s utility companies, all of which get their power from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). TECA thus advocates for the interests of TVA—and TVA has big plans to expand its methane gas production in Tennessee. Specifically, TVA is currently working on $3.5 billion worth of gas projects that, if completed, will constitute the second-largest utility gas expansion in the country by 2030, according to the Sierra Club.
TVA has received significant pushpack to its planned gas expansion. In January, 112 organizations signed a letter to the EPA calling for a stop to the projects. In the letter, the groups cited the need for actual clean energy. "The EPA can either use its legal power to advance the clean energy economy, or…can needlessly sign off on dangerous fossil fuel expansion,” they wrote.
The fact that methane gas is now legally “clean energy” in Tennessee is a benefit for TVA and its planned methane gas expansion. And it’s not the only recent bill that benefits TVA. Last month, Rep. Clark Boyd sponsored a bill that makes it a Class C felony to interrupt or interfere with “critical infrastructure” like pipelines. In February, Boyd also sponsored a bill to block any future bans of gas stoves. Last year, Tennessee lawmakers passed the Tennessee Natural Gas Innovation Act, which legally categorized methane gas as a source of “clean energy” for utilities. They also passed laws preventing local governments from blocking fossil fuel infrastructure and the state from working with banks that divest from fossil fuel companies.
Clearly, state governments have become the battleground for America’s energy transition—and fossil fuel interests are fighting hard. So we’ll continue to follow this story in Tennessee, and the fossil fuel industry’s fight to codify misinformation into law. If you see anything similar happening with clean energy laws in your state, let us know—especially if you have proof of industry influence. Because to avoid the dangers of gas, you first have to be able to detect it.
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red flag makes worse?!
tn
https://www.alternet.org/tennessee-republican-taking-dangerous-people/
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https://www.alternet.org/judges-axe-tennessee-gops-halving/ cty commissioners? jones?
https://www.alternet.org/love-each-other-news-founder/ prog house shot
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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/right-wing-media-celebrate-expulsion-tennessee-lawmakers-and-liken-it-january-6
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https://www.alternet.org/Bank/radley-balko-tennessee-gop-bigotry/
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expell 2 AA young guns, 1 wht woman spared by 1 vote
https://www.alternet.org/tennessee-house-defined-by-partisan-vitriol-pique-scandal-racism-and-olympic-level-pettiness-for-years-beat-reporter-2659757170/
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republicans in the Tennessee State Legislature have been pushing a socially conservative agenda designed to please the Religious Right, from anti-abortion proposals to anti-transgender bills to calls to end same-sex marriage. Yet conservative Republican Lt. Gov. Randy McNally has stirred controversy with his activities on social media, which include making suggestive comments to a 20-year-old gay man and "liking" some off-color posts.
The 79-year-old McNally addressed that controversy during an interview with Channel 5 News Nashville aired on Thursday, March 9.
McNally told Channel 5 News, "I'm really, really sorry if I've embarrassed my family, embarrassed my friends, embarrassed any of the members of the legislature with the posts. It was not my intent to (embarrass them) and not my intent to hurt them."
McNally, during the interview, said that he befriended the young man on Facebook and Instagram. The Tennessee Republican, responding to a post that showed him scantily clad, posted, "You can turn a rainy day into rainbows and sunshine." And McNally "liked" some posts in which he made risqué comments. In one post, the man wrote that he was a "hoe" but "not a whore." He also wrote, "I’m the one that gets free weed for giving h**d."
McNally was asked, "When people see these posts, what should they take away from them?" And he told Channel 5 News, "Well, I don't know that they should take away a whole lot."
When asked if it was appropriate for him to be liking some of the more risqué posts, the Republican replied, "Probably not. Probably not."
READ MORE:'Every state can decide her destiny': This Tennessee Repu
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nashville school sht xian fail 3 23
gov
https://www.alternet.org/send/bill-lee/
18 yo can carry ar15?
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Heritage and its political arm, Heritage Action for America, have spent tens of millions of dollars promoting their own model bills that impose strict restrictions on voting. They have targeted the investment on key battleground states such as Arizona, Georgia and Michigan that could hold the balance of power in the 2024 presidential race.
Heritage began hosting annual gatherings of Republican secretaries of state at the start of the Trump presidency in 2017. February’s in-person conference was the first to be sponsored by three rightwing powerhouses of election denial and voter suppression – Heritage, together with the Public Interest Legal Foundation (Pilf), and the Honest Elections Project (HEP).
Pilf is a conservative legal group that sues election officials to force them to purge voter rolls, a process that has affected eligible US voters. The group is led by J Christian Adams, a former justice department lawyer who tried to use the Voting Rights Act to claim voting discrimination against white people.
Trump’s former lawyer Cleta Mitchell also sits on the Pilf board.
HEP is a conservative dark-money group closely tied to the Republican operative Leonard Leo who was instrumental in engineering the current conservative supermajority on the US supreme court. Reporting by ProPublica and the New York Times last year revealed that Leo has received control of a staggering $1.6bn to advance rightwing causes.
Concern about the potential of top election officials to subvert democracy intensified during the 2022 midterm elections when a number of individuals committed to Trump’s stolen election lie also ran for office. They formed the “America First Secretary of State Coalition” which became a conduit of far-right conspiracy theories linked to QAnon.
Most of those candidates failed in their bid to take over the reins of election administration in their states. But the Heritage conference suggests that the desire to deploy Republican secretaries of state as channels of voter suppression and election misinformation remains very much alive.
Though chief election officials are tasked with ensuring that ballots are fair and impartial, the Heritage conference was attended only by Republican secretaries of state.
The Guardian asked Heritage to explain why its conference was held in secret and with only Republican attendees. The group did not answer those questions.
Von Spakovsky said that the event was an “educational summit intended to provide information on current issues in elections and ensure that our election process protects the right to vote for American citizens by making it easy to vote and hard to cheat”.
He disputed the argument that security measures at the ballot box such as voter ID suppressed turnout. “The claim that secure elections somehow promote greater restrictions is outrageous and has been clearly disproven,” he said.
Von Spakovsky also pointed to Heritage’s election fraud database, which he said sampled “proven instances of election fraud from across the country”. The database records 1,422 “proven instances of voter fraud” stretching back to 1982 – a 41-year period during which billions of votes have been cast in the US.
Several of the participants at the conference have election denial and voter suppression track records. They include Florida’s secretary of state, Cord Byrd,who, soon after beingappointed by Governor Ron DeSantis last spring, refused to say whether Joe Biden had wonthe 2020 presidential election.
Byrd runs Florida’s “election integrity unit” that was set up by DeSantis last year to investigate election crimes, even though there is scant evidence of substantial voter fraud. More than a dozen citizens accused of illegally voting have been arrested at gunpointunder DeSantis’s crackdown on supposed voter fraud.
Another attendee – Jay Ashcroft, secretary of state of Missouri – has been a leading proponent of that state’s new restrictive voting law. His office has been named in numerous lawsuits in the last year for imposing extreme constraints on voter registration, including a recent lawsuit accusing Ashcroft of illegally blocking a ballot measure.
Tennessee’s secretary of state, Tre Hargett, another listed participant, has been accused by Democratic leaders in Tennessee of purging thousands of voters from the official rolls.
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steve cohen my new hero benghazi BS
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Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee is at war with drag performers in his state. Lee says he plans to sign a recently passed bill restricting "adult cabaret performances" and banning gender-affirming care for the state's minors.
But when confronted with his own past on Monday, after a 1977 photo emerged on Reddit of Lee wearing a miniskirt cheerleader outfit, complete with a wig and a string of pearls, the governor’s officeclaimed to The Daily Beast, it's "different."
Lee was caught off-guard when a Tennessee Holler reporter confronted him about the photo, asking if he "remembered dressing in drag in 1977." Lee said it was "ridiculous, […] conflating something like that to sexualized entertainment in front of children, which is a very serious subject," Lee snarled.
Before scrambling into his SUV, the governor added:
I think the concern is what's right there in that building. Children that are potentially exposed to sexualized entertainment, to obscenity. And we need to make sure they're not. I think that's something that should happen in Tennessee and it will because of this bill.
[twt]
hB 0009does not specifically ban drag shows; it bars "adult cabaret performances" on public property or in a location where they could be viewed by a minor. The bill cites topless dancers, go-go dancers, exotic dancers, strippers, and male or female impersonators.
The bill passed in the Tennessee House 74-19, and will return to the Senate for a procedural vote, and then to Lee's desk for his signature.
The Tennessee ACLU writes that the anti-transgender bills are not only in violation of the First Amendment to express oneself, but they're "written so broadly and vaguely that they would allow government officials to censor performers based on their own subjective viewpoints of what they deem appropriate on any given day," and describing the bills as a "malicious attempt to remove LGBTQ people from public life. These bans are being fueled by the same paranoia banning books and censoring teachers."
Lee's term has been notoriously anti-LGBTQ and anti-trans.
In 2021, the governorsigned HB 3, an anti-transgender bill banning trans girls and women in the state from playing on teams that align with their gender identity.
The bill states: "a student's gender for purposes of participation in a public middle school or high school interscholastic athletic activity or event be determined by the student's sex at the time of the student's birth, as indicated on the student's original birth certificate.”
Lee’' apparent drag photo isn't the first offensive photo to become public.
In 2019, NBC News reported on Lee's time at Auburn University in the Kappa Alpha fraternity, where he and other members dressed in Confederate uniforms for an "Old South" shindig.
Lee was seen in the 1980 yearbook photo wearing a Confederate soldier costume and is seen standing beside a woman in an antebellum dress. One photo (not with Lee) is captioned, "The South shall rise again, right Bill! When the band plays 'Dixie,' a tear comes to our eyes. I'd do anything, Lee, but she comes first."
Lee was forced to apologize when the photo became public.
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Although Tennessee abolished slavery after the Civil War, an article in the state's constitution says that "slavery and involuntary servitude" are allowed for someone who has been convicted of a crime. Understandably, there's a strong push to strip that language out — but four Republicans in the Tennessee Senate have voted against removing it.
The bill to remove that article from the Tennessee Constitution was sponsored by Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Memphis Democrat who serves in the Tennessee Senate. When the bill came up for a vote, Sen. Brian Kelsey and three other Republicans voted against it.
Article I, Section 33 of the Tennessee Constitution presently states that "slavery and involuntary servitude" are "prohibited in this state" except "as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."
The 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery, contained a similar exception:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Many argue that this exception has permitted gross abuses, exploitation, and cruel forced labor of the incarceration population.
Most Republicans in the Tennessee Senate, however, voted for Akbari's bill along with Democrats. And on Tuesday, the Tennessee House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on it.
If the bill passes in the Tennessee House of Representatives, it would go to the desk of Republican Gov. Bill Lee — who could either sign it into law or veto it. Tennessee, a red state, presently has two Republican U.S. senators: Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty. And both houses of its state legislature are Republican-controlled.
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amy w put blk woman in jail for trying to reg to woke after 2 agy told her she cd, 80x days in jail, proved inno "suffiecient"
https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/republican-voter-suppression-loses-reelection/Tenn memphis
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// texas woman arrested for murder morn after pill?
https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/tennessee-report-drug-overdoses-police/
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https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/tennessee-enhanced-gun-carrry-permit/
cand self deputize 100$
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wtf?
https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/tennessee-republicans-eliminate-marriage-age/
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you'd think that scopes trial inherit the wind thing would slow them down:
Orwellian': Tennessee school board just banned a Pulitzer Prize graphic novel from Holocaust curriculum
January 27, 2022
TheMcMinn County School board in Tennessee just voted 10-0 to ban the use of the Pulitzer Prize winning novelMAUS by Art Spiegelman, from the school’s 8th grade curriculum. The graphic novel is considered by...
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starbuck candace owen ~
https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/madison-cawthorn-2656485066/
igor salon
Top allies of former President Donald Trump pushed back after he endorsed a former administration aide over a conservative influencer who is highly popular on the far right.
On Tuesday, Trump endorsed Morgan Ortagus, a former State Department spokeswoman and Fox News contributor, in the upcoming Republican primary in Tennessee's 5th congressional district. Incumbent Rep. Jim Cooper, a Democrat, has announced that he will retire, saying that Republicans had "dismembered" his longtime Nashville district for partisan gain.
"Morgan was fantastic in her role working with Secretary Mike Pompeo at the U.S. State Departmentand understands the threats posed by China, Russia, Iran and others, and will be tough, not just roll over like the Democrats and RINOs," Trump said in a statement. "She won't bow to the Woke Mob or the Leftist LameStream Media. Morgan Ortagus will have my Complete and Total Endorsement if she decides to run!"
That statement brought immediate and highly unusual pushback from some of Trump's most ardent supporters.
"Nope. Trump has this completely wrong," tweeted conservative pundit Candace Owens, writing that the "correct pick" is Robby Starbuck, a former music video producer running as a pro-MAGA Republican in the district.
Former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka and former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis echoed that sentiment.
Starbuck is running on a platform to crack down on ballot access, so-called Critical Race Theory, LGBTQ rights and Big Tech companies. It's unclear why Trump snubbed Starbuck in favor of Ortagus, who called him "disgusting" during his 2016 campaign before joining his administration.
Numerous other Trump allies joined in backing Starbuck over Trump's preferred candidate.
"I endorsed [Starbuck] months ago and I stand by my endorsement," tweeted Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C.
"I endorsed Robby months ago & believe he's exactly what we need in these difficult times," wrote Trump-backed Arizona gubernatorial candidateKari Lake. "He's a God-fearing man who loves his wonderful family — he's a true 'citizen politician.'"
The Republican scramble comes after the GOP-dominated state legislature carved up Cooper's Nashville-area district. Cooper, who has trounced every Republican challengers for decades and ran unopposed in 2020, said the Republican plan to split reliably blue Nashville into three Republican-leaning districts made it impossible for him to win.
"Despite my strength at the polls, I could not stop the General Assembly from dismembering Nashville," he said in a statement. "No one tried harder to keep our city whole. I explored every possible way, including lawsuits, to stop the gerrymandering and to win one of the three new congressional districts that now divide Nashville. There's no way, at least for me in this election cycle, but there may be a path for other worthy candidates."
The Tennessee House of Representatives on Monday approved a new congressional map that would split Nashville, combining areas of the state's largest city with more conservative parts of the state. Cooper, who represented a district President Joe Biden won by 24 points, was drawn into a new district that former Trump carried by nine points, according to Cook Political Report editor Dave Wasserman.
"Our Republican legislature has savaged Nashville in order to get one more vote in Congress," Cooper told Axios. "This is a cruel blow to all people of Nashville, certainly to minority groups, but to every resident of Nashville," he added.
Although Republicans have not been as aggressive at carving out new districts in other states, many of the Republican-drawn maps have been perceived as intended to dilute the power of voters of color. Several Republican-drawn maps have already been struck down and Democrats have vowed to continue to litigate partisan and racial gerrymanders.
"The maps passed by Tennessee Republicans are blatant partisan gerrymanders," former Attorney General Eric Holder, the chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement. "The congressional map splits Nashville into three separate districts, weakening the voting power of the region's economic powerhouse and the city's black community. This map is an obvious attempt to deliver illegitimate political power to the Republican Party for the next decade."
Republicans already hold a 7-2 edge in the state's congressional delegation but the Nashville redistricting could give the GOP eight of the state's nine House seats. Cooper suggested that the aggressive gerrymander was unnecessary, since Republicans are likely to win back control of the House in November anyway. Cooper is the 29th Democratic incumbent to announce he won't seek re-election ahead of a likely power shift.
While Cooper said the redistricting plan would prevent him from winning re-election, it's unclear whether progressive primary challenger Odessa Kelly plans to continue her campaign after comparing the effect of the redistricting to Jim Crow-era laws that prevented Black people from voting.
"I joined the congressman in fighting back against the Tennessee General Assembly's racist gerrymandering that will erase the voices of Black and brown voters in Nashville," Kelly told Tennessee Lookout. "But I know one thing is true: People-powered movements in this state have been building power for years and no map is going to slow it down."
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an 1021
The FBI has opened up a criminal campaign-finance investigation into possible "misdeeds" committed by the right wing organization headed by conservative lobbyist and Trump confidant Matt Schlapp.
The group, the American Conservative Union, is best known for its annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) event that attracts right wing politicians and activists from across the country.
Citing sources, The Dispatch reports "federal investigators are currently looking into possible criminal campaign-finance misdeeds at ACU during Schlapp's tenure. As part of the investigation, the FBI has interviewed former and current ACU employees about the financial dealings of the organization and its leaders—and in particular, as one source said, about their 'knowledge of the events leading up to the endorsement of Brian Kelsey.'."
Kelsey is a Tennessee state senator who in 2016 ran for the GOP nomination for a seat in Congress.
Since 2015 Schlapp has been the chairman of the ACU.
The allegations in our complaint—they're really quite bad," Adav Noti, chief of staff at the Campaign Legal Center, told The Dispatch. The CLC is the organization that filed the FEC complaint. "This is not run-of-the-mill shenanigans. It's true that $100,000 isn't an overwhelmingamount of money, but it's not nothing for a congressional race in Tennessee, either. And the two-part scheme to route it back to the campaign—if that is indeed what happened, it's a very serious violation. It's not a ticky-tack or a technical issue."
Read the entire report at The Dispatch.
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wwf pix?
Republican mayor of Tennessee county vows to defy Biden’s vaccine mandate despite high 'COVID-19 rates'
Alex Henderson
Frustrated by the fact that many Americans remain unvaccinated during the current coronavirus surge, President Joe Biden recently mandated that employees of th...
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https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/pipeline-plans/
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an 721
'Triumph for environmental justice': Oil companies scrap pipeline plans amid grassroots pressure
Julia Conley and Common Dreams July 04, 2021
Community activists in Memphis, Tennessee and northwest Mississippi celebrated a grassroots victory on Saturday after two oil companies canceled plans to build a pipeline that would have run through wetlands and several low-income, majority-Black neighborhoods.
Valero and Plains All American Pipeline had long planned to construct the Byhalia Connection pipeline, which would have been 49 miles long and linked two pipelines that transport crude oil to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.
The two companies announced they were canceling the project "due to lower U.S. oil production resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic," but opponents of the pipeline noted that the announcement followed grassroots organizing by climate action advocates, homeowners, and elected officials at the local and federal levels.
"This is a win for the entire community of Memphis, Tennessee, but especially those in the Black community who fought it courageously," Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign, tweeted.
Community members in Memphis neighborhoods including White Chapel, Westwood, and Boxtown objected to the pipeline project, which would have run over the Memphis Sand Aquifer—leading to fears that an oil spill would pollute the drinking water of about one million people.
Local organizations Protect Our Aquifer and Memphis Community Against the Pipeline (MCAP) led rallies and garnered the support of former Vice President Al Gore and Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), while the Memphis City Council weighed an ordinance to make it harder for the companies to begin construction.
MCAP leader Justin J. Pearson organized canvassers and lobbied the city council, and called Friday's announcement "an extraordinary testament to what Memphis and Shelby County can do when citizens build power toward justice."
A representative of the two oil companies sparked local outrage when they said South Memphis, where the Boxtown community was established in the 1860s by people who had been enslaved, had been identified as "the point of least resistance."
"We've shown them that we aren't the path of least resistance," said Pearson. "We are the path of resilience."
Lawyers for the two companies began legal proceedings against local landowners who refused to make deals with project officials; they planned to invoke eminent domain against the property owners.Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in a separate case in New Jersey that a company could use eminent domain to build a natural gas pipeline on state land.
"Their playbooks are the same everywhere," Pearson said on Twitter on Friday. "Find the poor. Appease the rich and politically powerful. Misinform the community. Make local leaders afraid to stop them. Exploit the poor. Reap billions in profits from the deaths of the poor and marginalized."
The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), which helped landowners fight the two companies in the legal battle, called Friday's announcement "a triumph for environmental justice."
"We are so inspired by the people of Boxtown, Westwood, and White Chapel, and the work of our amazing partners MCAP and Protect Our Aquifer, for showing what is possible when a community stands together," said Amanda Garcia, director of the SELC's Tennessee office.
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https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/tennessee/
no lnx twt
Trump administration approves Tennessee's 'reckless' plan to slash Medicaid as pandemic rages
Portrait of Seema Verma, President-elect Donald Trump's choice for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator
Andrea Germanos and Common Dreams January 10, 2021
Healthcare advocates are criticizing the Trump administration's approval—amid overwhelming opposition, a global pandemic, and as the number of uninsured Americans grows—of Tennessee's plan to overhaul funding of its Medicaid program, calling the decision "reckless" and "irresponsible."
Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown Center for Children and Families, called it "a radical waiver that puts Tennessee's Medicaid beneficiaries at risk."
The state's Medicaid program, TennCare, covers 1.5 million people, or about one in five of the state's residents. The proposal would "fundamentally" transform how TennCare is managed and funded, The Tennessean reported. When Republican Gov. Bill Lee rolled out the plan in fall, the outlet added, the state received 1,800 written comments, of which just 11 were in support.
Kaiser Health News reported:
With just a dozen days left in power, the Trump administration on Friday approved a radically different Medicaid financing system in Tennessee that for the first time would give the state broader authority in running the health insurance program for the poor in exchange for capping its annual federal funding.
The approval is a 10-year "experiment." Instead of the open-ended federal funding that rises with higher enrollment and health costs, Tennessee will instead get an annual block grant. The approach has been pushed for decades by conservatives who say states too often chafe under strict federal guidelines about enrollment and coverage and can find ways to provide care more efficiently.
But under the agreement, Tennessee's annual funding cap will increase if enrollment grows. What's different is that unlike other states, federal Medicaid funding in Tennessee won't automatically keep up with rising per-person Medicaid expenses.
The approval, however, faces an uncertain future because the incoming Biden administration is likely to oppose such a move. But to unravel it, officials would need to set up a review that includes a public hearing.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the approval Friday. "It's no exaggeration to say that this carefully crafted demonstration could be a national model moving forward," said CMS Administrator Seema Verma—a Trump appointed official who's pushed attacks on Medicaid and has been described as "the architect of Indiana's punitive restrictions on Medicaid patients."
Michele Johnson, executive director of the Tennessee Justice Center, said in response to the approval that "no other state has sought a block grant, and for good reason," and warned of its impacts to those "in nursing homes, those struggling with mental illness, diabetes, cancer, and countless other complex conditions."
"Tennessee is one of a handful of states still denying Medicaid to its working uninsured, and the block grant is just another example of putting politics ahead of healthcare during this pandemic," said Johnson. "It's a political gimmick that jeopardizes access to healthcare for hundreds of thousands of Tennesseans by creating a state budget booby trap."
"State officials have an abysmal record of mismanaging programs that help those in need. The block grant will allow these same state officials to inflict further damage on Tennessee's healthcare system," she said.
The approval also drew outrage from a coalition of 21 patient and consumer groups including the American Lung Association, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, and National Alliance on Mental Illness. They called the plan's approval "a reckless move that would reduce Tennesseans' ability to get needed healthcare" and urged the incoming Biden administration to halt its implementation.
"Our organizations have clearly and repeatedly voiced our deep concerns with Tennessee's proposal, as well as our strong opposition to block grants in Medicaid in general," the groups said Friday in a joint statement. "Per capita caps and block grants are designed to cap or limit the amount of federal funding provided to states, forcing them to either make up the difference with their own funds or make cuts to their programs reducing access to care for the patients we represent."
Such cuts, they warned, "will likely result in enrollment limits, benefit reductions, reductions in provider payments, or increased out-of-pocket cost-sharing for Medicaid enrollees. The approval specifically includes authority to limit prescription drug coverage, a dangerous proposal for patients."
Referencing the coronavirus pandemic, the groups added, "It is irresponsible to approve this waiver during this public health crisis, and especially to do so for an unprecedented 10-year period." Implementation of the plan stands to "limit Tennessee's flexibility in responding to recessions, pandemics, new treatments, and natural disasters," and thus "moves in the opposite direction of the lessons learned from 2020."
The Tennessean further noted:
The block grant approval, negotiated over about a year with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, still must get final approval from state lawmakers before it can be implemented. Lee now intends to present a joint resolution on the plan for the General Assembly's "immediate consideration," according to a news release.
The Tennessee Justice Center is urging its supporters to pressure lawmakers to block the plan.
"We are not surprised but are unsettled by this eleventh-hour action by the federal government during the height of the pandemic," said Jane Perkins, legal director for the National Health Law Program. "The approval raises so many issues," she said, "from the process the government used to approve this project to the specifics of how the government has cut into the healthcare safety net. Our legal team is investigating the enforcement and litigation options at this time."
Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicaid, also sounded alarm.
"This is an illegal move that could threaten access to healthcare for vulnerable people in the middle of a pandemic," Pallone tweeted Friday. He also expressed hope the incoming Biden administration would "move quickly to roll back this harmful policy as soon as possible."
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prOSECUTORS AND LAWMAKERS in several states have responded to mass protests against police brutality by charging demonstrators with committing felonies, including terrorism charges. The trend of criminalizing protest has been on the uptick since the 2016 protests against the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock, during and after which numerous states upped charges for protests “near critical infrastructure” as felonies.
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Since 2016, 14 states have enacted new laws to restrict the right to peaceful assembly,a**ccording to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, which tracks related state and federal legislation. But in the wake of the nationwide movement in support of Black lives, numerous states have increased the severity of criminal penalties for protesters along political lines and are prosecuting them more aggressively, as demonstrations continue with no sign of slowing down.
just last week, following more than 60 days of demonstrations outside the State Capitol, Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed a law that made it a felony to participate in some types of protests, including camping out overnight on state property.Charges for the same activity were previously classified as a misdemeanor.In Tennessee, people convicted of felonies lose their voting rights — making the new law a tool for disenfranchisement.
Earlier this month, police in Muscatine, Iowa, apprehended two people they say were attempting to drive a vehicle into the city Public Safety Building and got stuck on a planter. They charged both men with numerous counts, including terrorism. That follows an Oklahoma district attorney’s pursuit ofterrorism chargesagainst five young people, including three teenagers and two people in their 20s. The fourth-term prosecutor also threw felony charges at numerous other people in relation to protests and damage to local and police property in late May.
The terrorism charges reveal a “false equivalency between people who kill, and people who commit acts of property damage,” said Kate Chatfield, policy director at the Justice Collaborative, a policy and media organization focused on mass criminalization and incarceration. “Maybe not a great thing.”
“To say that the power of the state will be wielded in this way against political enemies is incredibly frightening,” Chatfield said, drawing a parallel to the post-9/11 era, when many people who had never committed an act of violence were prosecuted for terrorism. “Let’s not ignore the fact that we have a history of this in this country. A very recent history. And a continuing history, unfortunately.”
The nationwide protests prompted by George Floyd’s killing have continued through the summer, though at a lower intensity over the last month — before picking back up this week. Streets across the country swelled with demonstrators after police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shot 29-year-old Jacob Blake in the back seven times, in front of his children. Blake is paralyzed from the waist down, his father told the Chicago Sun-Times on Tuesday. Protesters burned down a state Department of Corrections building on Monday. The following night, armed white members of a militia group organized counterdemonstrations to protect local property. Video footage from Kenosha shows the militia members chatting with the police. Shortly after the video was captured, one member of the militia shot and killed two protesters, and left a third in serious condition. Police arrested 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse in Illinois on Wednesday and charged him with first-degree intentional homicide.
“When you hear our president talk about Black Lives Matter as a terrorist organization, or antifa as a terrorist organization, it is the kind of thing that — his statement holds no weight in law, but it sends a message to prosecutors like this that they’ll be supported,” said Thomas Harvey, justice project director at the Advancement Project, a non-profit civil rights group. “And even more frighteningly, I think it sends a message to people like the militia members we saw in Kenosha, and gives them the state and the latitude to commit even more violence than what we see on a daily basis in this country against black and brown folks.”
IN SOME STATES where police have charged protesters en masse with felonies, prosecutors have swiftly dropped them, calling into question the reasoning behind the original charges.
In Louisville, Kentucky, police arrested 87 protesters who had staged a sit-in on the lawn of a home belonging to state Attorney General Daniel Cameron last month — part of an ongoing call for accountability in the killing of Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old EMT whom three Louisville police officers shot at least eight timesinside her home in March. (The officers were acting on a no-knock warrant in connection with a suspect who did not live at Taylor’s residence. The police department fired one of the three officers who were involved in June. Local activists including Louisville Black Lives Matter worked with Taylor’s family to develop a list of demands, including firing, charging, and convicting the three officers.) Three days later, Jefferson County Attorney Mike O’Connell dismissed the felony charges and said his office would consider misdemeanors and other violations for prosecution at a later date. On Tuesday, Louisville police arrested another 68 protesters and charged them with obstructing a highway and disorderly conduct, both misdemeanors.
Earlier this month in Washington, D.C., police arrested 41 protesters in the Adams Morgan neighborhood on charges of felony rioting and assaulting police officers. The Metropolitan Police Department said in a tweet on August 14 that it only arrested people “engaged in rioting behaviors.” Between May 30 and June 1, District police arrested more than 100 people on charges of burglary, destroying property, and violating curfew, including at least 40 charges of felony rioting.Prosecutorsdropped most of the charges in both sets of arrests.
In Salt Lake City on Friday, a judge droppedpossible life sentence charges facing protesters who poured paint, broke windows, and posted signs at the District Attorney’s Office building, reducing some charges to lower-class felonies and misdemeanors. In June, West Valley police and FBI agents arrested two men in Salt Lake who had allegedly threatened officers and were headed to protests armed with multiple weapons. Prosecutors later charged one man with terrorism.
Also in early June, police officers in Columbia, South Carolina, arrested more than 80 protesters and charged three men with instigating a riot, typically a low-level felony or misdemeanor.
Elected officials participating in the protest have also been caught in the crackdown.In Portsmouth, Virginia, on Monday, sheriff’s deputies delivered a summons charge to the vice mayor, after a resident pressed misdemeanor criminal charges against her for calling on the Portsmouth police chief to resign. Earlier this month, police brought felony charges against the Virginia State Senate pro tempore, a local school board member, local NAACP leaders, and public defenders for injury to a monument and conspiracy, in relation to the destruction of confederate statues in June.
Federal authorities have also carried out their own crackdown on demonstrations, arresting protesters in Portland, Oregon, and New York City in recent months. The FBI has opened some 300 domestic terrorism investigations since late May. Last year, according to the agency, most federal arrests for domestic terrorism involved white supremacy, though the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Analysis Unit has also investigated a fictional “black identity extremists” movement. The FBI has also quietly investigated white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement in recent years, The Intercept reported.
AMONG THE MOST serious recent charges against protesters are those of terrorism in Oklahoma. There,Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater charged three teenagers and two other people in their 20s with terrorism related to their alleged activity during protests in late May.
“We found it especially inappropriate — and unconstitutional — because it was made with the explicit purpose of silencing protesters who are standing up for Black lives,” American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma Staff Attorney Megan Lambert told The Intercept, regarding the recent terrorism charges. “We didn’t even see terrorism charges for the Murrah bombing,” she added, referring to the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City.
Read Our Complete CoverageProtests for Black Lives
The terrorism charges, which were filed in June and July, stem from allegations that protesters set fire to a sheriff’s van and caused damage to a local bail bond business. Last month, Prater charged two other teenagers with terrorism in connection to demonstrations at the end of May, bringing the total to five. The DA also charged multiple people with rioting, assaulting officers, andat least five others for incitement to riot for painting murals in the city’s downtown area in June.
Oklahoma Democratic Party Chair Alicia Andrews, the ACLUof Oklahoma, and Oklahoma City Black Lives Matter founder and Executive Director Rev. T. Sheri Dickerson slammed Prater’s move, saying that the charges of terrorism were far too harsh. During a press conference early last month, Andrews said she didn’t condone vandalism or destruction of property but that Prater was using the charges to silence protesters. “‘Use your First Amendment right in a way that we don’t like, and we will ruin your future.’ These charges are an attempt to send a message, ‘We’re tired of hearing about Black lives,’” she said.
Prater took office in 2007 and is currently serving his fourth term as DA. His current term ends in 2023.He started his career in law enforcement at age 19 as a deputy sheriff, according to his bio. “These people are speaking out against violence that Prater himself has largely been complicit in,” Lambert said. “This is just another example in a pattern from David Prater’s office of upholding white supremacy.” Prater’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Last May, Prater declined to charge officers who killed 17-year-old Isaiah Lewis, who was in the middle of a mental health crisis when police shot him in Edmond. Over the last few months, local activists have brought renewed attention to Lewis’s killing, which has been a focus of some demonstrations in the area. Other cases have gotten less attention, Dickerson pointed out. Derrick Scott, 42, died last May after being apprehended and restrained by Oklahoma City police. In video footage of the arrest released in June, Scott tells officers he can’t breathe and asks them repeatedly to give him his medicine. An officer replies, “I don’t care.”
“The Scott family is not receiving any justice,” Dickerson said, adding that Scott’s killing was eerily similar to Floyd’s. Earlier this month, police shot 32-year-old James Harmon in the head, saying that he had a weapon in his hand (Oklahoma is an open-carry state). Harmon is still in the hospital.
“Systemic racism, institutional racism, and white supremacy is so deep-rooted,” Dickerson said, agreeing with Lambert’s characterization of Prater’s office. “There’s really nothing more Oklahoman than that.”
“This was a state that was formed basically for them to literally lump Natives and Blacks here together,” she said. “And so it has always been very intentional and deliberate, for us to be victims of what I consider state-sanctioned violence and state-targeted violence.”
For the Oklahoma City teens and young adults facing terror charges, “what’s next is they fight for their lives,” Lambert said. The statute carries a maximum of life in prison. “Many of these charged protesters are young teenagers. … So they are facing spending their entire lives in prison simply for, in some cases, attending a protest to try and hold police accountable.” Criminal defense attorneys are still working to get those charges dropped or significantly reduced.
“Some of the young people were saying, ‘We should go to Kenosha and stand with the young people there,” Dickerson said. “And I was like, ‘How do you choose?’”
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this White House task force member using the pandemic to bankroll his Senate campaign?
Roger Sollenberger / SalonMay 27, 2020
Bill Hagerty, a former U.S. ambassador to Japan who is now a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Tennessee, has secured campaign funds from a number of people and corporate entities…
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rww 1119
...NOBODY PAID MUCH ATTENTION last summer when an upstart group called the Tennessee Black Voter Project began dispatching canvassers across Memphis, Nashville, and countless small towns to register voters for the midterm elections. After all, few states are as deep-red as Tennessee, a one-time Democratic bastion in the South where Donald Trump bested Hillary Clinton by a margin of more than 25 percent in 2016. A decade’s worth of voter-suppression tactics, including mass purges of mostly black voters from the rolls and a Voter ID law that made it impossible for many college students to vote, has seemingly convinced many Tennesseans to the left of Trump that voting is no longer worth the bother. The state ranked 50th in turnout in 2016, and a sad 45th in voter registration. A band of millennial African Americans with clipboards and pens would surely be powerless to change that state of affairs.
Tequila Johnson, co-founder of The Equity Alliance and a manager in last year’s elections for the Tennessee Black Voter Project, speaks to reporters, Tuesday, April 2, 2019, at the Cordell Hull legislative building in Nashville, Tenn., after a news conference in opposition to a bill that would stiffen penalties if voter registration groups violate new restrictions. (AP Photo/Jonathan Mattise)]
But organizers like Tequila Johnson, co-founder of the civil rights group The Equity Alliance and manager of the Black Voter Project, saw “both a need and an opportunity,” she told me. They’d seen what happened when black voters had been fully engaged in Alabama the previous December, boosting Democrat Doug Jones to a shocking win in a U.S. Senate special election, and they knew that Stacey Abrams’s New Georgia Project was registering hundreds of thousands and threatening to upend the politics of one of Tennessee’s near neighbors. They also knew that even though people weren’t voting, they certainly weren’t happy and content; as Republicans accrued near-absolute power over the last decade, they’d moved one of the South’s traditionally moderate states further and further to the right, even gutting the state’s popular and progressive health-care program, TennCare.
“People look at Tennessee and say, ‘It’s red and it’ll never change,’” Johnson says. “The state actually hasn’t been red for all that long, but people increasingly thought, ‘my vote doesn’t matter,’ and our Democratic Party has not done a good job of outreach.But people are suffering from these right-wing policies. And millennials like me, including in rural parts of the state, are more open to change and accepting differences than the generations before us.”
So the Black Voter Project got to work. Canvassers set up shop outside church services, jails, and courthouses; they snagged grocery-shoppers and signed up club-goers; they went to housing projects and “100-percent immigrant communities,” as Johnson says. By October, they’d submitted more than 90,000 registration forms to stunned election officials, mainly in Shelby County (Memphis) and Davidson County (Nashville). The new voters weren’t enough to tilt the balance of power statewide, but black turnout soared—from 31 percent in 2014 to 45 percent in 2018—and helped Democrats recapture a majority on the Shelby County Commission while ousting a Republican county mayor and sheriff. In Nashville, where turnout nearly doubled from four years earlier, new voters helped pass a ballot initiative to create a community oversight board for police.
Johnson knew what to expect next. “We weren’t naive enough to think that our voter-participation numbers had happened by mistake,” she says. Tennessee had recently reduced early-voting periods and required proof of citizenship at the polls. “We knew it was by design. For us to be radical enough to say, ‘We’re gonna register people,’ for us to be bold enough to call ourselves the Tennessee Black Voter Project—we knew there would be a push-back.”
Sure enough, when Republican lawmakers convened in Nashville this winter, they were determined to snuff out this “radical” voter-registration effort in its infancy. Citing inflated figures of erroneous forms submitted, implying that mass voter fraud was underway, and echoing complaints by overwhelmed county election officials, Republican lawmakers like Rep. Mike Carter called the Black Voter Project a “debacle,” claiming that it had somehow prevented “honest voters” from being able to cast their ballots.
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In April, Tennessee’s GOP majority passed a sledgehammer of a bill, making it a crime for groups with paid canvassers (as opposed to volunteers) to submit incomplete or inaccurate registration forms: Up to $2,000 in fines will be assessed for each county where an organization submits more than 100 deficient forms, and up to $10,000 if the number exceeds 500. Organizers also face criminal sanctions if they don’t attend training sessions run by local officials, or if they fail to mail in voter-registration forms within 10 days—a short window by most states’ standards. (A lawsuit against the measure, which has kept it from being enforced thus far, continues to move through the courts.)
While other states have imposed regulations on voter-registration drives, there’s never been anything like this law. For Black Voter Project co-founder Charlane Oliver, the upshot was plain to see: “They don’t want black people to vote.”
They don’t want black people to vote.
CHARLANE OLIVER, BLACK VOTER PROJECT]
Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, which works to engage African Americans in the South and assisted the Tennessee project in its start-up phase, says the Republicans’ aim was to keep voter-registration drives small and localized. “They know it’s very hard to do large-scale voter operations without paying canvassers. You can’t make a dent in a state like Tennessee with some mom-and-pop organization that relies on volunteers. The people who wrote this legislation don’t mind ad-hoc efforts. But they don’t want to see 90,000 people registered in one cycle.” The legislation, he says, will make it harder for groups to sign up paid canvassers going forward. “People will be reluctant to take that chance,” he says. “It’s intimidation, period.”
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/gop-lawmaker-cut-the-mic-on-black-womans-facts-but-let-white-men-spew-lunacy-and-lies-report/
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VOICES: Tennessee governor and Volkswagen give middle finger to workers
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee recently led an anti-union meeting at Chattanooga's Volkswagen plant, where last month workers petitioned for an election to join the United Auto Workers. The public and journalists were shut out of the event, which showed how government officials and corporations in the South work together to bust unions. (5/3/2019)
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courts:
Two years later, the US Chamber of Commerce, under the leadership of an aggressive new president named Tom Donohue, picked up on Rove’s strategy.Pledging to “play hardball” against “frivolous” lawsuits, the Chamber spent $10 million on judicial races in 2000 alone. It pumped $4.4 million into Ohio’s Supreme Court election—the largest expenditure from a single source on a court race in US history. In the following years, the Chamber injected tens of millions into races in Illinois, Michigan, Mississippi, and Wisconsin. Corporate America had grasped the potential to install friendly judges who could crack down on costly class actions and neutralize the efforts of consumer advocates. “We’re clearly engaged in hand-to-hand combat,” as Donohue put it, “and we’ve got to step it up if we’re going to survive.”
Unions spent millions on these races as well—particularly across the Upper Midwest, as labor leaders recognized they could get a great return on investment by backing justices sympathetic to workers’ rights. As an official with the Ohio AFL-CIO once said: “We figured out a long time ago that it’s easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.”
A major showdown came in 2004, in West Virginia’s Supreme Court election.Don Blankenship, the former CEO of Massey Energy, donated $3 million to Republican candidate Brent Benjamin. Meanwhile, a nonprofit funded primarily by Massey Energy ran TV ads accusing incumbent Justice Warren McGraw of getting a child rapist out of prison and into a job at a high school. After Benjamin won, the investment paid off big time: He later cast the deciding vote to overturn a lower court’s $50 million verdict against Massey Energy. Two years later, the US Supreme Court ruled that Benjamin should have recused himself. It overturned the decision and sent the case back to West Virginia. (Massey Energy ultimately prevailed in state court.)
Corporate interests also reaped a huge return on investment in the 2004 Supreme Court election in Illinois. Five years earlier, a jury had handed down a $1.19 billion penalty to the insurance company State Farm for requiring millions of claimants to accept subpar replacement auto parts. State Farm and its employees—working through the US Chamber, the Illinois Republican Party, and an Illinois-based tort reform group—steered $4 million to elect a sympathetic judge named Lloyd Karmeier to the Supreme Court, which was considering State Farm’s appeal of the auto parts verdict. Karmeier, his opponent, and various outside groups spent a record $9.3 million on the race. Karmeier, who would later acknowledge that the sum was “obscene,” won easily. And the millions State Farm spent were a pittance compared with what it gained: The next year, Karmeier cast the deciding vote to overturn the more than $1 billion verdict against State Farm.
Up to this point, the big spenders were mostly targeting contested judicial elections—ones in which a candidate challenged a sitting justice. Then came the Iowa Supreme Court’s 2009 decision in Varnum v. Brien, in which the seven justices unanimously ruled that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage violated the state constitution. Social-conservative groups leapt into action, targeting three of the seven justices who were up for retention election—ones where voters only check “yes” or “no.” The National Organization for Marriage and its allies spent nearly $1 million and defeated all three. “They wanted to make sure we were punished for our decision and that other judges witnessed that so they wouldn’t do it either,” former Justice Marsha Ternus told me.
The strategy of turning sleepy retention elections into political showdowns has been spreading. In Florida’s 2012 retention elections, theKoch-backed Americans for Prosperityand the Republican Party of Florida spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to unseat three sitting justices. A group called Defend Justice From Politics spent $3.1 million on the justices’ behalf, helping them prevail. In Michigan in 2012, two anonymously funded nonprofits, the Judicial Crisis Network and Americans for Job Security, poured $2.1 million into attack ads against five judges on Michigan’s 6th Circuit Court, though the judges won out. And earlier this year,Tennessee’s lieutenant governor, Ron Ramsey, took it upon himself to spearhead an effort to unseat three sitting state Supreme Court justices—and, along with them, the attorney general, who is appointed by the court. Ramsey’s PAC pumped $425,000 into a group running negative ads that blasted the three justices as “liberal on crime”and for “helping advance Obamacare.”Funds were also contributed by Americans for Prosperity and the GOP’s State Government Leadership Foundation, which said it planned to spend an additional $5 million in 2014 on judicial races in North Carolina, Tennessee, and elsewhere.
Though the three Tennessee justices prevailed in the end, one of them, Connie Clark, told me she’s concerned about the precedent set by the fight. “As long as there are no limits on outside money,” she says, “then this will become the new normal.”
The transformation of judicial campaigns has alarmed another veteran of the court system. “Judicial elections pose a serious threat,” former US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor told Mother Jones. “If judicial decisions are in fact not fair and impartial—or even if they are perceived as being biased—the basis of support for our courts crumbles.”
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https://www.ecowatch.com/koch-brothers-public-transit-2579462053.html
Koch brothers are pouring money into grassroots state efforts to defeat public transit proposals, The New York Times reported.
Local chapters of Koch advocacy group Americans for Prosperity have worked in at least seven states since 2015 to sway voters against public transit proposals, with some notable successes: the group was partially responsible for the defeat of a popular light rail and bus improvement plan in traffic-choked Nashville this May, after making more than 42,000 phone calls and knocking on 6,000 doors.
Koch Industries is deeply embedded in the automobile industry, and the group has also launched attacks on electric vehicles in recent years. "Stopping higher taxes is their rallying cry," Ashley Robbins of Virginia Tech told The New York Times. "But at the end of the day, fuel consumption helps them."
As reported by The New York Times:
"Supporters of transit investments point to research that shows that they reduce traffic, spur economic development and fight global warming by reducing emissions. Americans for Prosperity counters that public transit plans waste taxpayer money on unpopular, outdated technology like trains and buses just as the world is moving toward cleaner, driverless vehicles.
...
The paucity of federal funding for transit projects means that local ballots are critical in shaping how Americans travel, with decades-long repercussions for the economy and the environment. Highway funding has historically been built into state and federal budgets, but transit funding usually requires a vote to raise taxes, creating what experts call a systemic bias toward cars over trains and buses. The United States transportation sector emits more earth-warming carbon dioxide than any other part of the nation's economy.
The Trump administration had initially raised hopes of more funding for transit by advocating a trillion-dollar infrastructure push. However, when that proposed plan was made public it reduced funding for transit-related grants."
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
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- The Increasingly Ugly Battle Over Transit in Nashville - CityLab ›
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/04/26/koch-brothers-and-dark-money-gang-up-on-nashville-transit-referendum/
Koch brothers are at it again in Nashville.
Three years after funding a campaign to sink the city’s high-profile BRT project, the world’s richest climate deniers are paying their minions to wage a vicious fight against Nashville’s potentially transformative $5 billion transit referendum.
Transit policy experts view the package of bus and light rail improvements as a breakthrough that will deliver on its promise to create service people will want to use. On May 1, voters will decide whether to proceed with expanded bus service, new light rail and bus rapid transit routes, and pedestrian safety improvements, to be funded mainly by a sales tax bump.
As the election draws near, Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity Tennessee and a swarm of opposition groups funded by dark money have mounted a vicious disinformation campaign to prevent the proposal from passing, undermining years of public consensus building.
A single group, “NoTax4Tracks,” raised about $950,000 in three months to fight the transit package, reports the Tennessean. Most of it — $750,000 — was from a separate dark money organization whose donors are secret.
Meanwhile, the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity has been phone banking, sending opposition mailers, and organizing against the transit referendum.
The closer the election gets, the dirtier the tricks.
One of the transit opposition groups goes by the confusing name “Better Transit for Nashville.” The Tennessean recently published an op-ed submitted by the group, but was forced to print an apology after it was revealed that the byline was fake.
In another display of absolute shamelessness, the same group posted on Facebookthat approving the transit referendum would “bring crime” like the Waffle House shooting, in which four people of color were killed by a 29-year-old white man with an AR-15. According to the Tennessean, the shooter arrived by truck.
Nora Kern, director of Bike Walk Nashville, which is one of 130 groups backing the referendum, says the debate has definitely taken an ugly turn in the last few weeks.
“The transit for Nashville side is trying to explain a really complicated infrastructure referendum,” she said. “The opposition just needs to make people confused or scared and they win.”
But Kern thinks the optimistic message from the pro-transit coalition can carry the day. Supporters expect the vote to be close and the outcome to come down to turnout.
“Our city desperately needs transportation options,” she said. “If you don’t have a car in Nashville you’re a second-class citizen. The only way we’re really going to move our city forward is to have dedicated funding for transit and walking. This is our city’s opportunity.“
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https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/04/nashvilles-transit-fight-just-got-weird/559085/
no lnx twt
Nashville's Transit Fight Just Got Weird
STEVE HARUCH APR 27, 2018
On May 1, voters will decide the fate of a massive regional transit overhaul. And things are getting ugly.
On May 1, Nashville voters are set to decide the fate of a $5.4 billion transit plan known as Let’s Move Nashville. It’s a potentially transformative proposal, one that could reshape Music City for generations. If passed, the plan will create five new light rail lines totaling 26 miles, a 1.8 mile downtown transit tunnel, 19 transit centers around the city, four new bus rapid transit lines, four new crosstown bus routes, and a slew of signal, sidewalk, and bike infrastructure improvements. Thanks to a legal opening created by some creative political work, funding will come from raising four city taxes. The bulk of the revenue will come from an increase in sales tax, which by 2023 will go up a full point to 10.25 percent.
The referendum has ignited a passionate, often downright strange public debate, one that’s in keeping with the plan’s sweeping ambitions and serious price tag. (The plan is also referred to as a $8.9 billion transit plan, since Nashville’s Metro Council voted to include both dollar amounts on the ballot; the larger number includes interest and operating expenses.) There’s only one thing people seem to agree on: This is the biggest decision to come down the pike, so to speak, in Nashville for a long time.
“I can’t think of a single more important moment for the city expressed as an election,” says Nashville Metro Council member Freddie O’Connell, “maybe since the city and county consolidated.” That happened in 1962.
The terms of the debate are generally being framed on starkly ideological and geographical lines, with progressive urbanites squaring off against conservatives in the suburbs. On the pro side, boosters of the plan have posited the plan as the logical next dot on the city’s timeline on forward progress, rhetoric befitting the city’s image as a liberal haven in a deeply conservative state. In an op-ed in The Tennessean, Dave Goetz, a finance commissioner under former Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen, compared the moral weight of this moment to desegregating the city’s lunch counters and voting down an anti-immigrant English-only ordinance in 2009.
Not surprisingly, opposition to the referendum has hopped on the same metaphor, but in the reverse direction. “It really is a look back,” according to Jeff Eller, senior advisor for the No Tax 4 Tracks PAC, which has been the biggest and most visible opponent of the plan. The group balks at the proposal’s high price and lack of utility for non-city residents, and insists that the additional taxes will place a burden on seniors and small-business owners. “We think you’ve got to start on May 2 having a conversation about things that work now, using new technology and different ideas than the light rail scenario of the past.”
Amid considerable fanfare, Nashville Mayor Megan Barry introduced the plan to the public in October 2017. Barry was then considered a rising Democratic star, and the plan was hailed as a politically audacious bid to secure a lasting legacy. But just four months later she was out of office. The mayor resigned on March 6 after pleading guilty to felony theft, related to $170,000 in overtime paid to her head of security, with whom she had admitted in January to having an extramarital affair. It’s unclear how much the resignation affected the chances of the referendum she championed. But it’s worth noting that among the candidates to formally replace her in the May 24 special election, only Barry’s interim successor, David Briley, supports the plan.
The Barry scandal definitely added a twist to the public debate over the transit referendum, which frankly didn’t require any further drama. Indeed, it only got weirder as May 1 approached.
In recent weeks, referendum-related stories have utterly dominated the local media, especially on the opinion pages of The Tennessean, Nashville’s daily paper, where you can find op-eds describing the transit plan as, variously, “a bold step forward,” the product of “funny math and flawed reasoning“ and “the only option.” Other recent op-eds claim the plan “will improve our health,” “can help economically disadvantaged,” “would create gridlock“ and “will not stop gentrification.” Still others claim the plan “fixes the right problem the wrong way“ and that it “won’t fix traffic congestion, but that’s not the point.”
The Tennessean also unwittingly became part of the story when it published a piece by a local writer named Matt Johnson headlined “Five reasons to oppose Nashville transit plan.” One problem: Matt Johnson does not exist. In a follow-up, Tennessean reporter Adam Tamburin explained that a self-described volunteer advocacy organization—confusingly called Better Transit for Nashville—used “a fake name and a misappropriated photo.”
In the wake of this, David Plazas, The Tennessean’s opinion page editor, published a soul-searching editorial that asked “Why can’t we be more civil on the Nashville transit debate?“ (The paper’s editorial board has since endorsed the plan.)
Alas, things only got uglier. Hours after the Waffle House mass shooting on April 22, in which four people were killed in the Nashville neighborhood of Antioch, Better Transit for Nashville referenced the killings on its Facebook page. “[W]e are sorry to post this, but ‘transit’ will bring more crime like this,” said the post, which was later deleted.
Steve Cavendish
?
@scavendish
Looks like the Better Transit 4 Nashville folks have deleted this utterly horrific post ...
9:29 AM - Apr 23, 2018
29
21 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy
A spokesman for the group, Jim Harwell, told The Tennessean that the page has many admins, and that the post was “made by one volunteer and does not represent what our group stands for.” But the implication that improving mobility would be a conduit for urban mayhem brought swift rebuttals from transit advocates nationwide.
Jarrett Walker
?
@humantransit
Let me be clear: If you say that your fear of crime justifies preventing others from moving around the city, you're advocating incarceration without evidence or trial. Being unable to travel is a limitation on freedom, just as prison walls are. #Nashville
Jarrett Walker
?
@humantransit
This is not a campaign against transit. In claiming we can prevent crime by preventing people from moving around the city, it's attacking the whole idea of freedom. https://twitter.com/StreetsblogUSA/status/989554799476723712 …
On the other side, a group called Nashville for Transit, which supports the referendum, has also been outspoken about the larger political currents running underneath the proposal. One recent mailer describes the referendum’s opponents as using “Trump-Style Lies” and counting among their ranks “far-right donors and out-of-state special interests—including one bankrolled by the oil billionaire Koch Brothers.”
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==
AG 180 DACA:
In July 2017, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton led a group of Republican Attorneys General from nine other states, including Marshall, plus Idaho Governor Butch Otter, in threatening the Donald J. Trumpadministration that they would litigate if the president did not terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy that had been put into place by president Barack Obama. Tennessee Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery, III subsequently reversed his position and withdrew his participation from the proposed suit on August 31st. Slatery went further to urge passage of the DREAM Act.[5][6] The other Attorneys General who joined in making the threats against Trump included Lawrence Wasden of Idaho, Leslie Rutledge of Arkansas, Derek Schmidt of Kansas, Jeff Landry of Louisiana, Doug Peterson of Nebraska, Alan Wilson of South Carolina, and Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia.[7]^
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http://kdvr.com/2017/02/13/tennessee-bill-would-make-drivers-immune-from-civil-liability-if-they-hit-protesters-blocking-street/
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A Tennessee state representative wants to stop protesters taking to the streets, WSMV reported.
State Rep. Rep. Matthew Hill has filed a bill that says if a driver hits a protester who is blocking traffic in a public right-of-way, then that driver would be immune to civic liability if the demonstrator is hit and hurt, as long as it wasn’t intentional.
“If you want to protest, fine, I am for peaceful protesting, not lawless rioters,” Hill said. “We don’t want anyone to be hurt, but people should not knowingly put themselves in harm’s way when you’ve got moms and dads trying to get their kids to school.”
When protesters took to the sidewalks in Nashville after the executive order from President Trump calling for a travel ban, they say they made a decision to be peaceful and stay on the sidewalk as people drove by.
But things took a turn when safety volunteers say they were hit by a car that rolled through a crosswalk.
“These people were legally in a crosswalk at the time that they had the permission to go,” said Julie Franklin, who said she witnessed the incident.
Franklin said the volunteers, who were wearing orange safety vests, were struck while ushering demonstrators across the street in the crosswalk. She said they’d been waiting for the walk signal to maintain safety.
Franklin said volunteers jumped on the hood of the man’s car when they were struck, trying to get him to stop. But the man kept driving.
Spencer DesAutels said he was one of the volunteers who was hit.
“They saw me. They looked right at me,” said DesAutels, who said he was hit by an older man who was driving with his wife past the protesters. “They stopped, and then they decided that they didn’t want to stop anymore and they just drove through me.”
DesAutels said the man drove with the volunteers on the hood of his car until police made him stop.
“My reaction was I don’t want to be caught underneath this car. It was a big car, so I got up on the hood of the car to say I’m not going to get run over any further than he hit,” DesAutels said.
“I am not advocating anyone being hurt or run over. That’s very, very silly that anyone would think that,” Hill said. “Peaceful protesters have nothing to be concerned about. … This is an attempt to have some public safety and inject some common sense.”
Still, DesAutels, Williams and Franklin feel it opens the door for other drivers to possibly hurt protesters.
“I think it’s inhumane to treat human beings like they’re just traffic cones that you just don’t want to abide by, and that’s exactly what that man did,” Franklin said.
Williams and DesAutels believe the move is politically motivated.
“I think this bill shows that they’re scared. That they know that the people have a voice and it’s being heard, and they don’t like it,” Williams said.
Hill and Sen. Bill Ketron, who is the co-sponsor, defended the measure in written statements.
...
==
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Tennessee_ALEC_Politicians
- Sen. Bill Ketron (R-13), ALEC State Chair,[17] ALEC Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force[9] and Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force member,[8] attended 2011[18] and 2015 ALEC Annual Meetings.[15]Ketron told The Tennessean that 6 other senators and 22 Tennessee legislators attended the 2015 ALEC meeting.[15]^
- Sen. Jim Kyle (D-28)[19]^
==
https://theintercept.com/2016/02/16/greatest-threat-to-free-speech-in-the-west-criminalizing-activism-against-israeli-occupation/
...This attempt to formalize suppression of anti-occupation advocacy on college campuses is long-standing and widespread. The New York state legislature actually passed “a bill that would suspend funding to educational institutions which fund groups that boycott Israel.” Such legislation is becoming commonplace, as the group United With Israel boasted just last month:
Florida became the fifth state in the U.S. to introduce a resolution to confront the anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement when it passed a law on December 21, similar to the first anti-BDS legislation introduced in Tennessee last April.
By doing so, Florida has joined Tennessee, New York, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. Another 35 states are reportedly considering similar legislation.
The commendably consistent pro-campus-speech group FIRE, while expressing some criticisms of the BDS movement, has repeatedly documented and denounced attempts to suppress BDS advocacy on campus:...
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kingston tva coal slurry spill
https://www.facingsouth.org/2010/05/disaster-in-east-tennessee.html
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http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/5-most-dangerous-states-live-and-5-safest
According to the study, the five safest states to live in are Massachusetts, Vermont, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Hawaii.The least safe states to live in are New Mexico, Tennessee,Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Mississippi. Massachusetts is the state with the lowest share of residents who lack health insurance, the second fewest number of fatal occupational injuries, and the second lowest rate of fatal automobile accidents.
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3/15 altnernet
A segment of Tennessee Republican lawmakers are crusading for a bill that would override local regulations against allowing guns in public parks. Yesterday, House Republicans held a press conference where the gun issue arose, giving reporters a chance to peppers lawmakers with questions about the bill.
At one point, a reporter asked if they have any concern about accidents, which make up a large percentage of injuries from guns. The lawmaker replied that he isn't all too worried about this because bicycles in parks arejust as deadly [3]:
Reporter: I’m not trying to debate, but these are the questions that we’re being asked about this. And one of the things that keep getting pointed out to me, is you guys keep talking about criminals, but there are accidents. Permit holders have accidents.
McCormick: Certainly.
Reporter: So, if there’s an accident and a permit holder is in a park, there’s a high chance it’s going to hit a child.
Casada: There’s accidents with bicycles in parks. Should we outlaw bicycles?
Reporter: Yeah, but bikes very rarely kill people.
Casada: That's not true, I disagree with that statement.
Reporter: Guns are weapons. Are you saying a gun is as safe as bicycle?
Casada: If used properly I am. If used properly.
Reporter: In the event of an accident, which is more likely to kill someone?
Casada: Now we're back in theoretical. I think in Tennessee we're dealing with a lot more questions than guns in parks. I think this is a minor thing in the scope of what we're doing good in Tennessee.
Reporter: If someone is hit accidently with a bullet, you guys are fine defending this bill?
Casada: If someone gets run over by an automobile accidently, there's nothing I can do about that. These are things beyond, they're called acts of God, they're beyond our control.
For what it's worth, in 2012 around 726 Americans [4] were killed while using their bicycles. Annual gun deaths are closer to 30,000 [5].
The guns-in-parks bill continues to move at the state legislature, and one Senate Democrat successfully attached what may end up being a poison pill to the bill: an amendment [6] that would allow guns into the state capitol itself. “If we're going to pass a law that requires local governments to have guns in their parks, we should apply the same standards to ourselves,” said Senator Jeff Yarbro.
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http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/comcasts-worst-nightmare-how-tennessee-could-save-americas
AlterNet [1] / By David Sirota [2]
Comcast’s Worst Nightmare: How Tennessee Could Save America’s Internet
July 18, 2014 |
The business lobby often demands that government get out of the way of private corporations, so that competition can flourish and high-quality services can be efficiently delivered to as many consumers as possible. Yet, in an epic fight over telecommunications policy, the paradigm is now being flipped on its head, with corporate forces demanding the government squelch competition and halt the expansion of those high-quality services. Whether and how federal officials act may ultimately shape the future of America's information economy.
The front line in this fight is Chattanooga, Tennessee, where officials at the city's public electric utility, EPB, realized that smart-grid energy infrastructure could also provide consumers super-fast Internet speeds at competitive prices. A few years ago, those officials decided to act on that revelation. Like a publicly traded corporation, the utility issued bonds to raise resources to invest in the new broadband project. Similarly, just as many private corporations ended up receiving federal stimulus dollars, so did EPB, which put those monies into its new network.
The result is a system that now provides the nation's fastest broadband speeds at prices often cheaper than the private competition. As the Chattanooga Times Free Press noted a few years back, "EPB offers faster Internet speeds for the money, and shows equal pep in both uploading and downloading content, with Comcast and AT&T trailing on quickness." Meanwhile, EPB officials tell the Washington Post that the utility's telecom services have become "a great profit center" -- an assertion confirmed by a Standard & Poor credit upgrade notice pointing out that the utility "is now covering all costs from telephone, video and Internet revenue, as well as providing significant financial benefit to the electric system."
This is great news for local businesses and taxpayers -- but it is terrible news for private telecom companies, who not only fear being outcompeted and outperformed in Chattanooga, but also fear the Chattanooga model being promoted in other cities. In response, those telecom firms have been abandoning the standard argument about the private sector. Indeed, as the Times Free Press reported last week, rather than insisting the private sector has inherent advantages over the public sector, the firms have gone to court insisting "that EPB, as a public entity, would have an edge when competing against private companies, which would be at a disadvantage when facing an entity owned by taxpayers."
To date, those court cases have been thwarted by EPB. However, it is a different story in state legislatures. Once again abandoning the business lobby's typical call for less government intervention, telecom firms have successfully pushed 20 states to pass laws limiting the reach of community-owned utilities like EPB.
That's where Washington comes in. With Census figures showing more than 1 in 5 Tennessee residents having no Internet connection, EPB is now proposing to offer its ultra-fast services to new communities. But it needs the Federal Communications Commission to preempt the Tennessee statute prohibiting the utility from competing with private telecom companies outside its current market.
For EPB, the good news is that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has repeatedly pledged that in the name of competition and broadband access, he will support preempting state laws like Tennessee's. However, in a capital run by money, EPB may still be politically overpowered. After all, as a community-owned utility in a midsized city, EPB does not have the lobbyists and campaign cash to match those of behemoths like Comcast and AT&T. What the utility does have is a solid track record and a pro-consumer, pro-competition argument.
The question is: Will that be enough to prevent Wheeler from backing down or being blocked by Congress? The future of the Internet may be at stake in the answer.
See more stories tagged with:
telecommunications [4],
competition [5],
corporations [6],
tennessee [7]
---
Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/comcasts-worst-nightmare-how-tennessee-could-save-americas
Links:
[1] http://alternet.org
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/david-sirota-2
[3] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Comcast’s Worst Nightmare: How Tennessee Could Save America’s Internet
[4] http://www.alternet.org/tags/telecommunications
[5] http://www.alternet.org/tags/competition-0
[6] http://www.alternet.org/tags/corporations
[7] http://www.alternet.org/tags/tennessee
[8] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
==
5. Tennessee Outlaws High-Speed Mass Transit
A proposed high-speed bus system in Nashville got on the bad side of the Tennessee legislature last month. But rather than fix or alter the suggested plans, Tennessee senators solved the matter by passing a bill against high-speed mass transit altogether.
The Amp was designed as a 7-mile high-speed bus line connecting various parts of Nashville, which would make it Tennessee’s first mass transit system [9], and had the support of the business community. With Nashville’s congestion getting worse and a million residents expected to move to the city over the next twenty years, the plan seemed like a no-brainer.
But to work, the high-speed bus systems needed a dedicated line and traffic signal priority. This angered drivers. Wealthier residents began complaining [10] of the undesirable elements the transit system could bring through their neighborhood, with one expressing the fear that it could bring “burger flippers” through her neighborhood. Then a major auto-dealer began sponsoring lawn signs opposing the plan, fearing a functional mass transit system could hurt sales.
That’s when the Koch Brothers got involved. Americans for Prosperity-Tennessee sprung into existence, staffed entirely with lobbyists and blessed with an undisclosed budget. Shortly thereafter, a bill appeared in the Tennessee legislature making it illegal “for buses to pick up or drop off passengers in the center lane of a state road”—effectively outlawing the Amp and any transit system like it. The bill’s sponsor said [11] he worried parking spaces might be sacrificed to make room for the line—the ultimate expression of a car-centered culture bewildered by the need, to say nothing of the desire, for public transportation.
The bill passed the state Senate without much opposition. But in the end, this was too much, even for Tennessee. The single-lane legislation was ultimately rendered irrelevant [12] when the Tennessee legislature negotiated a deal to allow the project to go forward with greater oversight from the legislature.
But the Kochs had shown how easy it could be to derail a city’s much-needed mass transit project with a friendly congressman and an indomitable fear of taking away a single parking space.
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http://www.salon.com/2014/04/01/why_are_the_kochs_trying_to_stop_a_transit_project_in_nashville/ afp
In other words, AFP suggested the bill and a friendly legislator sponsored it.
According to Ogles, Americans for Prosperity-Tennessee was founded nine months ago, with a “sizable” undisclosed budget and three employees (two of whom are registered lobbyists). Why Tennessee, a state that the Kochs have no personal interest in? Well, it’s just a good environment for their agenda:
“With supermajorities in both houses,” [Ogles] said, “Tennessee is a great state to pass model legislation that can be leveraged in other states.”
So, this is not “the Kochs” doing this, in the cartoonish sense of David or Charles calling up a henchman and saying “kill that new bus line in Nashville,” and then cackling and dipping an orphan in fracking runoff and using it to light a cigar. But this is the story of how billionaires dedicated to advancing an agenda at every level of government can do so with practically no one noticing until they’ve already won. Because a couple of energy moguls are constitutionally opposed to mass transit spending based on a very self-serving definition of “liberty,” Nashville, a city neither of them spends any significant amount of time in, may not get a new bus line. “All politics is local” means something a bit different in this age of unregulated free-for-all political spending.
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2010
Rep. Phil Roe (R-TN-01): Many believe greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to the gradual warming of our planet and changing of our climate. While there are many questions surrounding the science of the issue, it seems to me like we could develop a solution that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions without inflicting catastrophic damage on our economy. [source]
Rep. John Duncan (R-TN-02): John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel, called global warming “the greatest scam in history.” Richard Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at MIT, said global warming alarmists “are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn’t happen even if the models were right.” [source]
Rep.-elect Diane Black (R-TN-06): The far left-wing elements of this administration foresee a near future with carbon regulated as a pollutant and heavily taxed to discourage consumption and generate revenue. We must resist all of these radical approaches all geared to raise energy prices on American families and businesses. [source]
Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN-07): Also absent from the discussion in Copenhagen is the climate-gate scandal. Recently leaked e-mails reveal climate scientists have a long track record of manipulating data to hide scientific evidence that contradicts the global warming establishment. And why? To bully citizens and lawmakers into supporting job-killing energy tax schemes. This scandal raises serious questions about the Democrat’s climate control plans, questions that deserve a transparent investigation, not a rush to judgement by the bureaucrats in Copenhagen. [source]
Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN): He was not overly alarmed, recalling that in any earlier climate cycle potatoes were grown in Greenland and that it had gotten its name for a reason. [source]
==
2009
Scores of the Tennessee delegation
Senator Lamar Alexander(R) 27%
Senator Bob Corker (R) 9%
Congressman Phil Roe (R)-1 7%
Congressman Jimmy Duncan (R)-2 7%
Congressman Zach Wamp (R)-3 14%
Congressman Lincoln Davis (D)-4 64%
Congressman Jim Cooper (D)-5 93%
Congressman Bart Gordon (D)-6 100%
Congressman Marsha Blackburn (R)-7 0%
Congressman John Tanner (D)-8 57%
Congressman Steve Cohen (D)-9 100%
The full 2009National Environmental Scorecardcan be found at http://www.lcv.org/scorecard
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2010
Tennessee
Incumbent Reps. Phil Roe (Tenn.-01) and John Duncan (Tenn.-02)both try a variation on “teaching the controversy (that we just manufactured)” used by creationists: their websites don’t state their own views, but do cite the views of the few scientists, usually industry shills, who doubt global warming. Don’t fall for the appearance of neutrality — these representatives are Climate Zombies.
Incumbent Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (Tenn.-03) (he favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge), Scott DesJarlais (Tenn.-04), or David Hall (Tenn.-05); the latter two signed the Koch/AFP pledge, so are presumed to be Climate Zombies. Diane Black (Tenn.-06)complains about regulating “carbon as a pollutant.” Stephen Fincher (Tenn.-08) likewise wants to drill here, drill now, is a Tea Party type, and has taken the Koch/AFP pledge. I think Charlotte Bergmann (Tenn.-09) (“America should become energy independent. We have the resources! Tax laws should be used to encourage more use of our own resources in a clean, effective way.”) is more loopy than an actual denier. I also don’t have information on the attitude toward science of gubernatorial candidate Bill Haslam.
Semi-final score: three clear Climate Zombies, five presumed to be infected, and two (Tenn.-09 and gov.) about whom I don’t have enough information to make a call.
===
education:
Tennessee
Tennessee's House bill, H.B. 368, essentially a replica of the ALEC model bill, overwhelmly passed the House in April 2011, but its Senate-version cousin, S.B. 893, failed to pass. As the Los Angeles Times article makes clear, efforts to push the bill through are far from over.
Key clauses of that bill read,
"[T]eachers shall be permitted to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught."
"[P]ublic elementary and secondary schools…[should]…respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues."
These excerpts match, almost to a "T," bullet points one, three and four of the ALEC model bill.
Nine of the 24 co-sponsors of the H.B. 368 are ALEC members, according to CMD's ALEC Members database.
In addition, these nineALECmember co-sponsors received $8,695 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry combined in the 2008 and 2010 campaign cycles, according to FollowTheMoney.org. The other 15 sponsors of the bill, while not members of ALEC, received $10,400 in their campaign cofffers in the 2008 and 2010 campaign cycles combined.
S.B. 893, on the other hand, was sponsored by Sen. Bo Watson (R-11), a recipient of $1,800 in oil and gas industry money in the 2008 and 2010 election cycles combined.
Translation: between the 25 of them, on top of a model bill handed to them by corporate oil and gas industry lobbyists, they were also furnished with $20,895 in campaign cash by these industries with the expectation to do their legislative bidding.
==
A Tennessee state official reportedly told residents who were concerned about dirty drinking water that complaining about water quality could be considered :{"an act of terrorism.:(style="background-color:#fff200ff"):}:"
The controversial comment was made by Sherwin Smith, the deputy director of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation's (TDEC) Division Of Water Resources, during a May 29 meeting organized by Tennessee state Rep. Sheila Butt (R-Columbia).
"You need to make sure that when you make water quality complaints you have basis," Smith said, according to audio obtained by Statewide Organizing For Community eMpowerment (SOCM), a Knoxville-based civic action group. "Because federally, if there's no water quality issues, that can be considered, under Homeland Security, an act of terrorism."
The comments came during a discussion over poor water quality in Tennessee's Maury County, where residents have said people have gotten sick from drinking the water.
...
===
Recently an ag-gag bill died in California, while bills in Arkansas and :{Tennessee :(style="background-color:#fff200ff"):}:inched closer to approval. No matter, according to Potter and Stepanian — activists still won. In mobilizing to address a common enemy, activists have forged unlikely but powerful alliances.
update 5/13 http://grist.org/news/ag-gag-bill-chokes-in-tennessee/
t appears ag-gag bills can’t even hoof it in farm country: Tennessee joins a roster of states who are strangling ag-gag bills before they can reach the killing floor.
Tennessee lawmakers had narrowly approved a bill that would have required anybody who filmed animal abuses to turn over the footage to law enforcement within 48 hours or risk being fined. That would have prevented undercover animal activists from documenting systematic animal abuse by agricultural workers, helping factory farms get away with cruelty.
But Gov. Bill Haslam (R) called BS on the bill and said that he plans to veto it. From a statement issued by the governor on Monday:
First, the Attorney General says the law is constitutionally suspect. Second, it appears to repeal parts of Tennessee’s Shield Law [which protects journalism] without saying so. If that is the case, it should say so. Third, there are concerns from some district attorneys that the act actually makes it more difficult to prosecute animal cruelty cases, which would be an unintended consequence.
For these reasons, I am vetoing HB1191/SB1248, and I respectfully encourage the General Assembly to reconsider this issue.
Ag-gag bills have been spreading through the U.S. faster than mystery disease at a Chinese swine farm. Some have become law, but others are being withdrawn, defeated, or vetoed. Grist’s Susie Cagle produced this interactive map last month to provide an overview.
---
Monday evening, a new bill (SB 893) was approved by the Tennessee Senate that will protect teachers who wish to promote "alternate" scientific theories, essentially allowing anti-evolutionists and climate change deniers a voice in the science classroom. A similar version of the bill (HB 368) passed in the House about a year ago. Advocates of the bill claim that it improves academic freedom, while its critics see it as an open door to the promotion of pseudoscience and religious doctrine within the public school system.
4/12
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/21/tennessee-bill-teachers-evolution-climate-change
The state legislature of Tennessee has given legal cover to public school teachers to challenge the science of evolution and climate change, in a move that looks set to deepen a debate about politicisation of the classroom.
The bill passed in the Tennessee Senate this week provides legal protection to teachers who personally do not believe in evolution or the human causes of climate change, and instead want to teach the "scientific strengths and weaknesses of existing scientific theories".
It comes at a time when science associations are increasingly concerned by moves to inject religious or ideological beliefs into science teaching ahead of the release next month of a new set of education standards which give a central place to climate change.
The new standards, based on recommendations from the National Research Council, are not mandatory for all states. But they have already provoked a backlash from states, such as Utah, which have officially ruled climate change is not settled science. An unauthorised release of documents from the rightwing Heartland Institute last month revealed an ambitious plan in 2012 to discredit existing teaching on climate change.
The Tennessee measure, which passed by 24-8 votes, was strongly criticised by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Centre for Science Education, who called it a step backward. The house approved a similar version of the measure last year.
Bloggers called the move a throwback to the Scopes monkey trial of the 1920s, when a Tennessee public school teacher was convicted and fined for teaching evolution.
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Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn.
“Yes, it’s happening. A lot of scientists say that it is.… I’m not a scientist, and I generally accept what the great body of scientists say.… But I don’t think there’s anything [in Congress] that’s going to be dealing with climate change in the near future.”
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.
“Is climate change happening? Yes. I don’t know how much [man-made emissions contribute], but the national academies of science of all the industrial countries say it’s a significant amount. So let me put it this way: If it were a house, I’d buy fire insurance.”