"The Tennessean obtained through a public records request 9,850 submissions to the feedback portal and sorted entries as generally supportive of additional legislation around firearms or generally opposing new measures. More than 7,100 people expressed support for additional gun reform, with more than 2,000 opposing any additional laws regulating firearms in Tennessee. Several hundred entries did not fall into either category due to their content or lack of specificity.
"The overwhelming majority of supportive responses came from Tennessee residents. Notably, more than 30% of opposing responses were submitted by people who said they were not Tennesseans, compared to the out-of-state responses that comprised less than 2% of total supportive responses."
Unfortunately, the 9,850 submissions obtained by The Tennessan contain the name and email address of each person making the submission. This has the potential of producing an annoying and possibly risky situation, especially in the political atmosphere that was seen at the end of the regular legislative session and the anticipation of the atmosphere expected for the Special Session. So if you participated in this opportunity, just be aware of this unfortunate situation. I have been in touch with the Governor's office. They are aware of this and we talked about what could be done during the 2024 session to protect the personal information of those participating in a survey like this. I WILL follow through on this in January!!
Federal judges in Kentucky and Tennessee block portions of transgender youth care bans
BY BRUCE SCHREINER, DYLAN LOVAN AND KIMBERLEE KRUESI Published 4:43 PM CDT, June 28, 2023
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Federal judges in Kentucky and Tennessee temporarily blocked portions of bans on gender-affirming care for transgender youth Wednesday, handing down the rulings shortly before the statutes were set to go into effect.
The ruling is similar to roadblocks that federal courts have thrown up against Republican-dominant states in their pursuit to prevent young people from receiving transgender health care.
In both Kentucky and Tennessee, the judges blocked portions of the law that would have banned transgender youth from accessing puberty blockers and hormone therapy. In the Tennessee case, the judge stopped short of also blocking the ban on gender-affirming surgeries for youth.
Meanwhile, the Kentucky case didn’t address surgeries, but U.S. District Judge David Hale, an Obama administration appointee, did side with seven transgender minors and their parents, who sued the state officials responsible for enforcing the provisions banning the use of puberty blockers and hormones. The plaintiffs contend the ban would violate their constitutional rights and interfere with parental rights to seek established medical treatment for their children.
The ruling blocked the “most egregious parts of Kentucky’s anti-trans law,” said Chris Hartman, executive director of the Fairness Campaign, a Kentucky-based LGBTQ+ advocacy group.
Hartman added that transgender children and their families were “living in fear” of the approaching date for the restrictions.
Kentucky’s Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron called Hale’s decision “misguided,” saying it “tramples the right” of state lawmakers to make public policy. The state’s legal chief promised that his office will continue doing “everything in our power” to defend the measure. The provisions dealing with puberty blockers and hormone therapy were supposed to go into effect Thursday.
In Tennessee, U.S. District Judge Eli Richardson, a Trump administration appointee, stressed that his ruling lined up with federal decisions blocking similar bans across the country but added that courts must “tread carefully” when preventing a law from being enforced.
“If Tennessee wishes to regulate access to certain medical procedures, it must do so in a manner that does not infringe on the rights conferred by the United States Constitution, which is of course supreme to all other laws of the land,” Richardson wrote.
The law, scheduled to go effect on July 1, would have banned Tennessee health care providers from providing hormone treatments or surgeries for transgender youth where the purpose is to allow the child to express a gender identity “inconsistent with the immutable characteristics of the reproductive system that define the minor as male or female.”
The law included a nine-month phase out period by March 31, 2024, for medical treatments and said no new treatments could be started. Health care providers who violated the law risked facing a $25,000 penalty and other disciplinary actions.
Tennessee’s Republican-dominant General Assembly, as well as some Democratic lawmakers, quickly advanced the ban after Nashville’s Vanderbilt University Medical Center was accused of opening its transgender health clinic because it was profitable. Videos surfaced of a doctor at the private hospital touting that gender-affirming procedures are “huge money makers.” Another video showed a staffer saying anyone with a religious objection should quit.
Tennessee Rep. Green introduces States Choose Life Act to stop Biden admin's 'retribution' on pro-life states
Green said the Supreme Court's ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health marks the 'beginning' of the fight to protect unborn life
Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., will introduce the States Choose Life Act of 2023 on Tuesday to protect Tennessee and other pro-life states from the Biden administration and "retribution" from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Fox News has learned.
In a statement to Fox News Digital, Green said his legislation would prevent the HHS from stripping Title X funding from states that do not allow abortions and do not refer residents to abortion-allowing states, as it is doing to Tennessee.
"HHS cannot be allowed to continue forcing states to participate in abortions or risk losing Title X healthcare funding," Rep. Green said in an exclusive statement. "Tennesseans and Americans from coast to coast rely on Title X for access to care."
Green, who is also an ER physician, added: "If states are unable to backfill the void of revoked Title X funding, many Americans could be left without access to cancer screenings and pregnancy services. We must protect the rights of states to pass pro-life laws, without the federal government seeking retribution."
Title X is a family planning program that was established under the Public Health Service Act in 1970. It offers access to contraceptive care and other services, particularly to low-income Americans, and serves approximately 4 million people annually, according to the HHS.
The Trump administration initially passed a rule that widely prohibited funding from being used for abortion services, but the Biden administration reversed this rule.
Rep. Green is taking action to prevent the HHS from weaponizing Title X to remove funding against states that choose to protect the right to life, saying his bill "will protect Tennessee from being bullied by the federal government into propping up the abortion industry."
"Specifically, my legislation amends Title X of the Public Health Service Act to prohibit HHS from revoking funding for states that don’t make referrals for abortion," he said.
The bill also comes after the HHS wrote a letter to the State of Tennessee saying it would no longer be providing Title X funding, which the state has utilized to support low-income families for decades.
Green wrote a letter earlier this month to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra expressing "great concern" over the revocation.
"This funding has supported Tennessee families for decades, and your decision to revoke this funding to score political points is unacceptable," the Tennessee Republican said. "While your department may struggle to comprehend statutory law and your solemn oaths to uphold said laws, the State of Tennessee is operating well within its constitutional and legal bounds."
He added in the letter: "This administration has made it clear that it will exploit every opportunity to skirt the laws and push its radical agenda on American citizens. I am extremely disappointed that you [have] chosen this divisive path."
BREAKING: Supreme Court Rejects Race-Based College Admissions
The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.
In a major 6-3 decision, the United States Supreme Court has struck down race-based admissions at two universities, declaring it a violation of the equal protection clause.
The conservative justices, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, made up the majority. Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote the dissent in the Harvard case and was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Jackson wrote the dissent in the University of North Carolina case, joined by Sotomayor and Kagan.
In the majority opinion, Roberts writes that the court has “permitted race-based admissions only within the confines of narrow restrictions. University programs must comply with strict scrutiny, they may never use race as a stereotype or negative, and — at some point — they must end.”
He also wrote that “however well-intentioned and implemented in good faith,” the admissions programs at Harvard and UNC “fail each of these criteria.”
More from the majority opinion:
Immediately after Brown, we began routinely affirming lower court decisions that invalidated all manner of race-based state action.
[…]
In the decades that followed, this Court continued to vindicate the Constitution’s pledge of racial equality. Laws dividing parks and golf courses; neighborhoods and businesses; buses and trains; schools and juries were undone, all by a transformative promise “stemming from our American ideal of fairness”: “‘the Constitution . . . forbids . . . discrimination by the General Government, or by the States, against any citizen because of his race.’”
EXCLUSIVE: 13K Chinese Migrants Apprehended on U.S.-Mexico Border Since October
Since the beginning of Fiscal Year 23 on October 1, 2022, Border Patrol agents along the U.S.-Mexico border apprehended nearly 13,000 Chinese migrants. The number represents a more than 1,000 percent increase in migrants from the communist regime when compared to the previous year’s totals.
Nearly 13,000 migrants from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have been apprehended along the U.S. Southwest border with Mexico this fiscal year, according to a CBP source not authorized to speak to the media. Approximately 84 percent of the migrants from the PRC are single adults. After processing by the Border Patrol, most are released to pursue asylum claims in the United States.
The source says the agency is baffled by the increase as intelligence debriefings yield little information about the migrants and their purpose for entering. The language barrier is proving to be a challenge according to the source.
“Having to use third-party translation services, Border Patrol agents and intelligence officers who are already struggling to cope with thousands of migrant apprehensions daily, are getting limited intelligence information from the migrants,” the source told Breitbart Texas.
Breitbart Texas also spoke with Dr. Kenneth Allard, a retired Army Colonel and former Dean of Students at the National War College. As an author of several works including Warheads: Cable News and the Fog of War, a former intelligence officer, and special assistant to the Army Chief of Staff, Allard is also concerned with the lack of intelligence regarding the spike in migrant apprehension of citizens from the People’s Republic of China.
Allard says the fact may be that most of the migrants from the PRC are in fact dissidents fleeing poor conditions in China. But as an expert on totalitarian regimes, he believes the current administration lacks the willpower to properly investigate the phenomenon.
“Totalitarian governments like China are great exploiters of opportunity,” Dr. Allard told Breitbart. “They recognize weakness and capitalize on it immediately. What we are seeing reflects a deliberate policy choice by the regime.”
When asked about the potential for China to take advantage of the current crisis along the southern border, Allard says the regime most certainly recognizes the weakness President Biden has exhibited on the international stage, adding “its obvious he is not entirely in control at present, China realizes that as well.”
I just want to say THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU for your faithful prayers for this precious young man. Andrew McCullough, who was my intern for the 2023 Legislative Session (he just graduated from high school). He had a brain tumor removed (around a nine hour surgery) on June 2nd. He was doing so well, he went home on the 5th. He IS a walking MIRACLE. In God's mercy and grace He answered our prayers and, while he still has some healing to do, Andrew, who loves the Lord, now has his whole life in front of him. PRAISE GOD FROM WHOM ALL BLESSINGS FLOW.
MESSAGE FROM JEFF, ANDREW'S DAD:
Big Andrew update: Andrew has graduated from physical therapy. His therapist said she has never given anyone a perfect score on their assessment. Until now!!!
Eagle Council 51 - September 27-30, 2023 - Washington, DC
Our theme this year is "Faith, Not Fear!" and our stellar program is designed to educate, enrich, and empower YOU to be a more informed, engaged, and effective U.S. citizen!
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