Hey everybody, Brandon Lewis here with the TennCon Big 7. Those are the seven big stories from the Tennessee Conservative news over the last week that conservatives should really care about and that the mainstream media nor the establishment wants you to hear or know about.
So if you will, tune in, we're gonna get started right now at a break neck clip because I have got to get this done in 30 minutes or less.
Now if you're listening to this on a podcast app, iTunes, Spotify, etcetera, do your friend Brandon a favor, hit the pause button and give us a five star review right now. I will wait. Alright, back to the program. Thank you for leaving that five star review. It really does help other conservatives find our content. And if we had more informed GOP primary voters in our state, I can promise you it would be a lot more conservative and you would not have to be fighting your own governor just to keep your Second Amendment rights.
Let's move on to the story. Oh, before I do, do go to the big tech platforms where we are not censored, such as Twitter, Gab, Getter, Truth, Rumble and MeWe. OK, do go there, especially Twitter and forward our stuff. Now one other quick announcement as I get out of camera view and I completely forgot about this, but it is letting me over there. For this express purpose. One moment. Drum Roll please. Mail bag. Here we go.
I've got a letter here from Dean. Thank you, Dean. And it said what an interesting presentation at the CRW meeting on Tuesday. Thank you and Kristen so much for taking time away from your busy schedules to spend time with us. I put your contact information in the transmittal e-mail for the newsletter and sent to all members and associate members. Here's the contribution. Keep up the much needed news. Thank you so much for your kindness to treat me for lunch. I love Dean. How thoughtful. Excited to hear that Kristen’s joined CRW, she will be an asset for our club. We welcome you back anytime your busy schedule permits. Brandon, thanks again. Kind regards. Dean. Dean's a sweetie. Dean is a sweetie.
One more letter here. Another note. It says dear Brandon, the Chattanooga Republican Women enjoyed listening to you last Thursday. This is from the same group, and appreciate you taking the time to be with us. Thank you for reiterating our purpose as Republicans. Looking forward to more interactions as we work together for good government. Sincerely, Fay. Another dear lady.
And I've got one more. And I'm sure some others are waiting at the office. We're about to be changing our mailing address, actually maybe as early as tomorrow. We appreciate you. Pray for you and your girls. Thank you very much. I don't even know who that came from. Came from John. Thank you, John.
Alright guys, that's the mail bag. Buddy, I've gotta move on. We're going to get through all this in 30 minutes or less. I got 27 minutes now. Here we go.
DOE that stands for Tennessee Department of Education approves almost all third grade retention appeals. After nearly 2/3 of third graders across the state failed to score proficient on this year's TCAP reading test, new data released by the Tennessee Department of Education shows that nearly 82% of families who appealed the state's third grade retention law received approval. The higher approval rate has led some legislators to question why the law was put into effect in the first place. It must be the ones that actually have a brain. According to the DOE, a successful appeal could be granted if a student scored at or above the 40th percentile on a universal reading Screener, or if they had an extenuating or catastrophic circumstance leading up to the state testing date.
So here's what we did in Tennessee. We passed the 3rd grade retention law. Why? Because third graders in government education in Tennessee were not reading anywhere near grade level. And we know from study after study that if you don't get reading taken care of, if you don't get proficient at that by third grade, it leads to terrible academic consequences on down the road. And so doing the thing that schools used to do, they were trying to hold our teachers and students accountable for academic achievement. But instead, what we have done is completely watered down anything that's acceptable. And that's why we continually and constantly graduate functionally illiterate students after 13 years of government education in Tennessee. And I had the, the privilege and the, the sad responsibility in junior college. Not a junior college. I guess it was more of a technical school of teaching for two years and I've looked at and worked with the products of Tennessee's public education system as they came into my classroom and I was teaching things like marketing and business law, things of that nature. But these students could not write one single grammatically correct sentence. They did not understand what they had read. They could not put together 3 supporting paragraphs and concluding paragraph, and I was stuck in this situation where I had a room full of students that really didn't need to be in my class, they needed to be in a remedial reading or mathematics class. And this is apparently what passes for public education’s achievement. It is amazing that we will not use a little bit of tough love because repeating a grade is not gonna kill you. Our daughter, we repeated first grade for these exact reasons. We wanted her to focus and get stronger in reading. And she did. And we put a lot of time, money and effort into tutoring and it paid off. And she is doing quite well. She is in 4th grade reading at an eighth grade level and we can do that all across the state of Tennessee if we will give parents and students the resources they need to seek out educational alternatives that fit them and if they are in a failing school, which so many Tennessee students are, we need no strings attached tax rebates so these kids can get out of these failure factories and put them someplace they can actually learn.
Next story Tennessee lawmakers give even more money to testing company that champions woke ideology. Tennessee lawmakers voted to give approximately 40 million more to a testing company whose ideology directly contradicts the state's legislative efforts to ban Critical Race Theory and Diversity Equity Inclusion programs. Based in Britain, Pearson, who administers Tennessee’s standard testing of K-12 students, is the largest educational publisher in the world. According to Heritage Foundation scholar Jonathan Butcher, the company's editorial guidelines make it clear that Pearson wants to make radical ideas such as anti-racism, colorism, colonial discourse, genderism, and intersectionality part of everything it does. Tennessee lawmakers have been actively fighting against this kind of woke ideology being taught in K through 12 public schools. But last month, the legislators Joint Fiscal Review Committee voted to extend Pearson's contract to administer TN Ready for an additional year increasing the total to be paid from 93 million to 132 million. Pearson's influence extends beyond students. They oversee a company that operates USA Hire, a website operated by the US Office of Personnel Management, which applicants use to submit materials for positions in the federal government. The company also operates a teacher assessment program called Ed TPA and Ed TPA assesses if teachers qualify for teaching licenses, something required by 600 plus universities in more than 40 states. Pearson's DEI programs are in training materials for K through 12 and university teachers to help them incorporate CRT into the classroom, something currently outlawed in Tennessee.
Why? And well, I’ll tell you why. Why do we continue as conservative taxpayers to fund liberal organizations? Whether it's the Universities, K through 12 education, you know the, the, the Tennessee Titans, woke Ford Motor Company. It's because we have elected people to positions of power in the Republican Party. And they really are not conservatives.There's nothing in the world - and if you have not seen it yet, now go back and look at our last episode where I interviewed Joe Stotts of the Warren County Republican Party. And I'm looking forward to being at the Reagan Day dinner. About the pushback he has gotten about closing the primary even though Republicans are overwhelmingly for it. It’s just what you see. We have no interest in this state of doing the will of the people, once it's known. But we do have our leftist left-leaning agendas inside the GOP that we are happy, happy, happy, happy to throw lots of conservative tax dollars at.
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Next story, that’s 20 minutes. Gotta move it up. Probe of Humble campaign continued despite information provided that resolved issues.This past week, Tennessee Registry of Election Finance voted to continue the probe into whether or not there was inappropriate coordination between Gary Humble, candidate for State Senate in 2022 and Tennessee stands a 501 (c)4, which is helmed by Humble. Back in August of last year, Humble narrowly lost the election for Tennessee Senate in District 23, which encompasses most of Tennessee's Williamson County to 16 year incumbent Jack Johnson by a matter of just 787 votes, with a total of 24,153 votes cast. When the registry voted to move forward with the audit, it was done based upon information provided by one of its members, Mr. Tom Wallace, who pointed to a QR code on a single Sailer sent out by the campaign that was tied to a podcast on Tennessee Stands, which in the state of Tennessee is not illegal because it is not what would be considered an endorsement. Also mentioned during the first meeting when they called for the audit was Lawless considered suspicious timing of events hosted by Humble’s campaign and Tennessee Stands. Based on that alone, Mr. Wallace was able to convince the rest of the registry that there needed to be a full scale audit and ordered a broad swath of campaign related documents and materials turned over to the registries auditor to examine.
That's one complaint. Just, let's go hunt for stuff. It's good old Banana Republic. Innocent until proven guilty. And you should have seen the hearing as Gary's supporters filled the room and waited. That room has probably never been filled before, and everyone there for the first time ever understood that they were being watched by conservative media outlets, by people in Tennessee, and how bad it looked and how bad it smells. It just smells to high heavens. It looks like a witch hunt that is initiated by the powerful who have put these people in place instead of looking at the connections between all the paths that swarmed in from other members such as Randy Mcnally's PAC and everybody working in concert to support Jack Johnson and in fact sending out things that were untrue and misleading. If you wanna look at something, I don't think they'd be looking there. Because the majority of the investigation is predicted, or predicated rather on one single mailer sent out by the campaign.
Humble, through his attorney, rejected the request for such an extensive examination of all campaign documents. In this past week, the hearing of the the group agreed to provide everything related to the mailer in question. Mr. Humble has already provided all of the financial statements to prove the mailer was provided by his campaign alone and not Tennessee Stands. The registry narrowed the scope to the documents from January through September 2022. Mr. Humble’s attorney agreed to submit these documents and the matter was tabled until October.
It's funny, in this state we will not investigate actual plain corruption by those in power, but when it’s those who seek to tell the truth about those in power, we got all the time in the world to investigate.
Next story. Opposition to Tennessee Red Flag Laws Special Session grows. Opposition to a Tennessee special session where Red Flag gun legislation is set to be considered has continued.The Tennessee Faith and Freedom Coalition and country music artist John Rich both checked the legislation on the 21st, Rich wrote, “The Tennessee governor is trying to strong arm Republicans to vote for a rebranded Red Flag law in our state. Can you believe it? Just another Rhino in sheep's clothing. This attempt at disarming Tennesseans will fail, I promise you.” Um meanwhile, Democrat Senator Heidi Campbell and Democrat Representative Antonio Parkinson met with Lee recently over gun legislation. I'm sure those are all three peas in the pod. Campbell has said that she will propose bills to expand background checks, limit magazine capacity to 10 rounds or less, ban assault weapons, bump stocks, enforced guns-in-trunks laws, repeal permitless carry law add a 72 hour firearm purchase waiting period and create a reckless endangerment felony for failing to secure a firearm with a child younger than 13 age gains possession among other proposals.
Governor Lee’s a Rhino. If you didn't figure that out during COVID, hopefully you are starting to see the picture of a bloated government that he promised to shrink that has grown. Not combating illegal immigration in our state in any way, shape or form. Spending half of our state's money on a broken education system while not lobbying for improvements. And finally also saying that he would support term limits and then failing to do so. All of his campaign promises have really turned into a pack of lies.
If you want us to continue to send to you this type of information, especially during the summer doldrums when people aren't really paying attention, I need your contributions. Listen, we got to get off the bench if you're one of the 95, 93% of people who listen to our podcast, consume our material but you have not given, shame on you. We need you to get off of the couch, if for no other reason than to assuage your guilty conscience. And when you give any donation for the Tennessee Conservative News and you go hit that support button, we will send you this Don't California My Tennessee bumper sticker. We'll also send you this Stop Feeding the Rhinos bumper sticker. You give $50 or more or a recurring donation of $10 or more we will send you this Stop feeding the Rhinos Tumbler. Stop feeding the rhinos. Do not give this to a zookeeper and confuse them, but do take it up to Cordell Hull perhaps, and hand it out. And we’ll also send you this proud Tennessee Conservative koozie. If they would only uh blanket the icebergs in this Tennessee conservative koozie, we would not have lost the zero icebergs that we have left. Lost rather before Al Gore was born. Uh. But he did invent the Internet, and he will tell you that the catastrophe of climate change is coming. Good old pantheism, worshiping Gaia, fake god of the Earth. It's been around for a long time, yet people are still amazed that the cult draws participants. The reason they like it so much is you can just paint it onto anything to control things. Amazing. And we give lip service to it here in Tennessee as Rhinos from the Green New Deal pushed by Ford Motor Company as we funnel billions of dollars into their presently failing electronic car division, sounds like a great idea.
Williamson County school board votes to keep inappropriate books on school library shelves. Of course they do. Guys I hope that y'all in Williamson County closed circuit transmission drive all these lunatics in your county out of town. On Election Day board members voted eight to two to keep five books that had been challenged. The two No votes came from Conservative board members Dan Cash and Donna Clements who were endorsed by Williamson Families PAC. Earlier this year, a district committee recommended keeping the books in school libraries, members of the community and some board members feel the decision to keep them available to students violates the Age Appropriate Act. During Monday night's meeting, Clement said, “We took an oath of office to follow state law and we have a state law that we have not really paid attention to and I'm concerned we need to follow the state.”
Concerned parent Trisha Lucente said, “Our taxpayer funded public school libraries should not contain explicit violent pornographic materials that offer no educational value. Removing a book from the school library restricting access via a mature reading list is not banning books.”
At a prior work session, Donna Clements, Dan Cash, Jay Gilbreath and Josh Brown all looked likely to vote against keeping the books. While Galbreath ended up voting to keep them, Brown abstained from the vote altogether, which is a coward's way out.
It is always a coward’s way out when you see somebody who abstains from voting. That is the, that is the, a clear indication that they have more, they have far more political ambition than they have principles. You don't abstain from a vote like this, or, or a lot of them have an up in the capital. You know, vote the will of your constituents. If you don't know what the will of your constituents are here, something real simple you can do. Ask. Very easy, very easy. We have all the tools in the world we need to do that.
Prior to Monday's meeting, the school board members were bombarded with emails from Williamson County residents who threatened possible legal action if the board voted to remove any of the books from the district.
And again, this just points back time and time again to how corrupt the government institutions are and how epically they fail those they purport to serve. When we have to pass laws that are number one, to get evil out of these institutions, it just goes to show you how evil they are and then it's not enforced, it's not followed up on. There's no will to do it. It's really like they wanna grab a headline by passing a law within. The tough work of rooting it out comes down the line. We don't have anybody that's really interested in doing that work.
Scholastic children's book publisher endorses Pride and pushes employees to celebrate. Despite the major role they play in children's literature and education, the Scholastic Publishing and Media Company is not exempt from pushing woke ideologies onto their employees and consumers.
I can remember when Scholastic was just about scholarly learning. Not so. Everything woke turns to crap.
In addition to their #ReadWithPride Twitter announcements, Scholastic has published a series of posts on their website this month, including one titled “inspiring gay books for kids” with the byline: These touching reads are relatable and eye opening for all readers. The company has also provided their employees with an information packet on how to celebrate Pride Month from Scholastic in a push for gay acceptance and affirmation. They encourage their employees to go to gay pride events. And they intend to provide employees that identify as transgender with access to gender affirming treatments and surgeries. Wow. In Tennessee specifically, the Governor's early literature, or rather literacy Foundation announced the launch of a new K-3 book delivery program just three years ago. During his first year of the program set out to deliver 580 thousand books to 58,000 K through 3rd grade students and teachers statewide. This program continues to run in collaboration with Scholastic.
Why do our Rhino leaders continue to support these woke companies that want to indoctrinate our kids? You have to ask the question. And it's not like it's just this is some kind of isolated incident. We've already had one article on this. But basically it’s the people that we've elected.
This year, the program is expected to deliver $1.2 million in books that 200,000 students, as well as librarians, teachers and media specialists across the state will receive. With Republicans like this, who needs Democrats?
Chattanooga considers official partnership with Ukrainian city. All the woke things in Chattanooga. Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelley has announced the formation of a resident led work group meant to rally support for a Ukrainian city, which reportedly survived a month of Russian occupation and is now attempting to rebuild.
I tell you what, Mayor Kelly needs to focus on. There is trash. There are bums. There are, there is crime. They're shooting and there are murders and there are car break ins and there are house break ins all over the city of Chattanooga, which is quickly climbing in the ranks as one of the most unsafe cities in the United States of America. Instead of focusing on the Green New Deal. In, in surveillance, and aiding Ukraine, we might want to just clean up what's in our backyard. With commonly held beliefs about quality of life in a city, safety, cleanliness, things of that nature. No, no, no. Democrats never want to focus on the major stuff. They like to focus on all this ancillary agenda pushing crap and let the standard stuff just fall by the wayside.
The City of Chattanooga currently maintains several sister city relationships with cities in China, Germany, Israel, Korea, and Russia and Japan. The drafted document covers the responsibility of both parties to establish mutual cooperation regarding Urban Development, Environmental Protection, technology, healthcare, job creation, tourism, sports and establishing close contacts between young people and youth organizations among other things. Councilman Darren Ledford said, “I think we need to be extremely cautious entering into relationship with a volatile region of the world. This tip toes, in my mind, into foreign policy.”
And I agree, Mr. Ledford. That's what you get. That's the government. It's like reporting on a slow motion train wreck and it just happens every day. Every day.
Alright guys. I got 7 minutes. We're going to wrap this up. I had a great time this weekend and it feels like forever ago visiting the Sumner County Constitutional Republicans and those guys have elected 31 out of 41 candidates that they put up and they are changing the face of Sumner County. So much so that. Um. They got negative articles written about them by the AP, which you know is about what you'd expect. What if this microphone is on? We shall see. It appears to be off here. Hopefully the sound quality is good. And so it was a great visit. I took Sylvia down there, picked up a lot of subscribers, got some support, met some interesting people. It was a good time. I actually have an interview with Kurt that is going to be coming out of the leader of that organization and that should be next week. So stay tuned for that. Maybe your club or organization can pick up some tips.
So, this weekend, what's gonna go on? Oh my gosh, we’ve got so much going on. Tomorrow's Friday. I'm gonna go eat with some of my K friends. I'm also gonna have a staff breakfast. My administrative assistant slash enrollment advisor Jennifer Berger, is in town. So we're gonna go hang out, me and her and John. And then this weekend we're going to celebrate Father's Day. Or, well, kind of Belated Father's Day and a birthday celebration with my father-in-law. I don't know what else I've got going on. We'll try to hit the gym. I've gotta get a hold of these weeds. I got weeds, man. I live out in the woods, weeds everywhere. You gotta spray the trail. I gotta load up the Round Up and I've gotta get out there and pull them up out of the ground while the ground’s still wet. We've been getting a lot of rain. So that's what we're doing.
Do check out the Let's Go Brandon tour that is coming up. I will be in, very shortly, McMinn County. I will be in Warren County and I will be in, think about it Brandon, Jefferson County. And so I've pretty much gotten all over the state and I'm also, I've still got to get to West Tennessee. I'm gonna be in Jackson. So if it, go look on our website, type in let's go Brandon, let's go Brandon tour, and I will be out there hopefully in a city near you.
Guys, love you. Mean it. Hope everything's going great with you and your family. Please do hit the pause button if you're listening on the podcast app and give us a five star review. It will help other conservatives in our state find us and do go hit the support button. If you're not on our E newsletter for some reason, which is crazy crazy crazy, go to tennesseeconservativenews.com and hit the subscribe button. Guys, 25 minutes, 15 seconds into this puppy and it is in the can, delivered quickly with minimum commentary. I hope you like it. Now I will blather on endlessly perhaps next week for those of y'all who once the podcast is over, you feel sad because I didn't. I, I’m leaving you now presently wanting more, which maybe will make you come back next week. Because I'll be right here. Brandon Lewis here with the TennCon Big 7 Weekend Update, signing off.