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A Maryville police officer who was working a protection detail escort for Vice President JD Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance on Friday was critically injured when his police motorcycle was involved in a collision with a Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) SUV unit.
The first batch of declassified government records on aviator Amelia Earhart's ill-fated 1937 round-the-world flight was released on Friday, fulfilling a directive from President Donald J. Trump issued in September. National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard announced the online trove of documents, posted on the National Archives website, includes 4,624 pages across 53 PDF files that detail Earhart's final leg from New Guinea to Howland Island, her last radio transmissions, and the U.S. military's exhaustive search efforts in the South Pacific.
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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has launched an initiative with state and local law enforcement 287(g) partners to locate roughly 450,000 “unaccompanied alien children” (UACs) who were illegally smuggled into the U.S. during the Biden administration and placed with unvetted sponsors. The new UAC Safety Verification Initiative is focused on protecting UACs from sexual abuse and exploitation through a broader collaboration among 287(g) partners.
COP30, the UN climate conference, is underway in Belem, Brazil. Thousands of representatives from all over the world have journeyed to discuss how to cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to try to fight human-caused climate change. But ten years after the Paris Climate Agreement, the global consensus on climate change is crumbling. COP30 is the thirtieth “conference of the parties.” The first took place in Berlin in 1995. At COP21 in Paris in 2015, more than 190 countries signed the Paris Climate Agreement, pledging to cut emissions and to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
For six months the Tennessee Valley Authority Board has not had enough board members for a quorum. Thankfully, President Trump is working with Tennessee’s two U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty to help provide much needed sweeping reform to the TVA to help restore accountability and get the TVA back on track to its core mandate: energy production.  While the process has been slow like any government process, hope is now on the horizon that Trump’s TVA board nominees will be confirmed soon, as the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works held a hearing recently for four of the five nominees. At least there is clear progress towards getting the nominees out of committee and to the full Senate for hopeful approval.
Three more names were added to Music City's iconic Walk of Fame Park this week: prolific songwriter Liz Rose, the legendary Charley Pride (posthumously), and country music's sensational band and songwriting gurus, Old Dominion. The ceremony recognized the 110th, 111th, and 112th stars on the Music City Walk of Fame, which are honored for their significant work of preserving Nashville's musical heritage and for their contributions to the world through song.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on Thursday submitted notice to U.S. District Court Judge Waverly Crenshaw, the appointee of former President Barack Obama who is overseeing the federal human smuggling case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, that it intends to present evidence that the alleged human trafficker's purported affiliation with Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) helped facilitate a smuggling ring's business with the Central American gang.  Acting U.S. Attorney Robert McGuire informed the court that the prosecution will seek to prove Abrego Garcia's alleged years-long association with MS-13 made helped his co-conspirators collect money.
The IRS whistleblowers who alleged the Justice Department’s slow-walking of its inquiry into Hunter Biden have reached a settlement with the lawyer for President Joe Biden’s son, with his attorney admitting the whistle-blowers had the right to go to Congress with their concerns about the handling of the tax investigation. IRS supervisory special agent Gary Shapley and IRS special agent Joseph Ziegler had publicly raised concerns about what they considered the federal government’s mishandling and squashing of the investigation into now-former President Biden’s son, and the legal team for the whistle-blowers at Empower Oversight announced on Thursday that the ongoing defamation case was being settled with Hunter Biden’s lead lawyer Abbe Lowell.
A Georgia prosecutor on Friday assigned himself to take over the 2020 alternate presidential electors case that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had been disqualified from. Georgia’s Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council Executive Director Peter Skandalakis, whose group was tasked with identifying a replacement for Willis, appointed himself after reporting an “inability” to find someone else, The Hill news outlet reported.
Missouri Republican Rep. Mark Alford asked for a classified briefing from the federal government on Thursday regarding a Chinese government-tied trailer park that shares a fence with Whiteman Air Force Base, according to a letter exclusively obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. Alford’s letter requests information on whether or not the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) had reviewed the 2017 purchase of the Knob Noster Trailer Park, which is located directly north of the base in rural Missouri. The trailer park is owned by a web of shell companies ultimately controlled by Esther Mei and Cheng Hu, a Canadian couple who belong to organizations led by disgraced Chinese tycoon and self-described former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intelligence “affiliate,” Miles Guo, the DCNF reported on Nov. 10, 2025.
Johns Hopkins University (JHU) announced on Thursday it is making tuition free for families earning less than $200,000 and will waive both tuition and living expenses for those making less than $100,000. The university stated that “a majority of American families” will qualify for the fee exemption, allowing most students to attend without contributing a single dollar. The decision is meant to help recruit “the best and brightest students to Johns Hopkins irrespective of their financial wherewithal.”
Justice Department officials tied to special counsel Jack Smith’s team have been linked to the blocking of an FBI inquiry into the Clinton campaign’s 2016 funding of the Steele Dossier, with this being just the latest revelation about Smith as the Trump Justice Department builds a grand conspiracy case alleging years of anti-Trump lawfare. Emails released Thursday appear to show the officials shut down a potential FBI investigation tied to possible campaign finance violations carried out by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign when it used cutouts to fund the opposition research firm Fusion GPS and British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s anti-Trump dossier. Two officials tied to Smith’s anti-Trump investigation were linked to the decision by the FBI not to pursue the alleged campaign finance wrongdoing by Clinton’s campaign.
Just 15% of Democrats think too few babies are being born in the United States, according to the annual American Family Survey released Friday. The newly released report also found that 41% of Republicans said the number of births in the U.S. is too low. Meanwhile, just 23% of independent voters said the same, according to the survey.
Almost 400 new jobs will be available for Tennesseans as companies have announced expansion plans in the state. This week, South Korean manufacturing company Hyosung HICO announced it was expanding operations at its Memphis facility. The company said it would create 240 new jobs while investing almost $160 million.
On the heels of campaign events with Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Ken Martin and U.S. Representative Jasmine Crockett (D-TX-30,) State Representative Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville) said her campaign could provide the "Democratic playbook" for the party to regain lost ground in southern states, if she should even come close to beating Matt Van Epps in the December 2 special election in Tennessee's 7th Congressional District.  While Republicans nominated Van Epps by comfortable margins after he was endorsed by President Donald Trump and Governor Bill Lee, Democrats turned out to vote in significant numbers, casting only about 5,000 fewer primary ballots than Republican voters in a district won by former U.S. Representative Mark Green in a 20-point landslide just last year.
Tennessee officials are mourning the loss of State Representative Jeff Burkhart (R-Clarksville) after the incumbent Republican passed away overnight at his home in Montgomery County. Burkhart, 63, has represented state House District 75 since 2023. He most recently won re-election to the seat in November 2024.
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