The Tennessee Senate on Monday delayed final action on a House-passed bill sponsored by Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, that allows students and staffers to sue public universities and colleges if they think they're being punished for refusing to accept "divisive concepts" that "inflame divisions" over race, sex, ethnicity and religion.
Legislators also want to ensure 'natural' immunity is on equal footing with vaccines, even though research indicates it's not as effective
Tennessee and Georgia Republican lawmakers in Congress split this week on approval of a $1.5 trillion government-funding package that included $13.6 billion in defense and other assistance for Ukraine and other Eastern European countries dealing with Russian aggression.
Former Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada won't say whether he is or isn't cooperating with the FBI's probe into a political consulting kickback scheme that earlier this week netted a guilty plea from former Rep. Robin Smith, R-Hixson, a Casada political ally who resigned from the legislature Monday and formally pleaded guilty the next day to a wire fraud charge.
'I don't know if he deserves to be fired, but he does deserve competition,' Morgan says of incumbent congressman
Former state Rep. Robin Smith, R-Hixson, a political consultant, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court on Tuesday to a single charge of honest services wire fraud in what federal prosecutors described as a kickback scheme involving the use of taxpayer-funded constituent mail.
Tennessee state Rep. Robin Smith, R-Hixson, resigned Monday and has reached a plea agreement in a federal wire fraud investigation of a political consulting firm tied to former state House Speaker Glen Casada, who remains a House member, and Casada's former chief of staff, Cade Cothren.
A full-fledged battle over what books and other materials should be available to students in Tennessee public school libraries is underway in the General Assembly as some Republican lawmakers push for new oversight and easier ways for parents and others to challenge materials that conservative critics charge are age-inappropriate and sometimes obscene or pornographic.
The state's campaign watchdog agency has asked Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery to enforce two subpoenas the agency issued to a former top state House aide accused of operating a dark-money group in 2020.
An attorney for Cade Cothren, the former chief of staff to then-Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada, says her client is invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and won't appear before a state campaign finance watchdog Wednesday regarding his alleged involvement in 2020 as the head of a political action committee that attacked a Casada critic.
