Trump ally Marsha Blackburn launches bid for governor of Tennessee
A staunch ally of Donald Trump who represents a state he carried by nearly 30 percentage points, Blackburn would become the first female governor in Tennessee's history if she wins next year. The vocal abortion foe supported Trump's baseless claims of fraud during the 2020 election, and was considered one of the most conservative members of the House of Representatives during 16 years representing a district in middle Tennessee.
'Trump is back, America is blessed, and Tennessee: better than ever,' Blackburn said in her campaign launch video, which opens with a shot of a clapping Trump and features several images of them together. 'I love Tennessee. I believe in Tennesseans, and I'm ready to deliver the kind of conservative leadership that will ensure our state is America's conservative leader for this generation and the next.'
Echoing Trump's rhetoric, she promised to 'define our boys and girls the way God made them', deport undocumented immigrants 'whether it takes planes, trains or starships,' and 'deliver a world-class education for our children by empowering parents, not the deep state'.
A former state senator, she was elected to the House in 2002, then became Tennessee's first female US senator in 2018. She championed legislation to strip all abortion providers of federal funding, and was among the Republican senators who announced they would vote to oppose the certification of Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election, but changed her mind after the January 6 attack.
Blackburn was last year challenged for re-election by Democratic state representative Gloria Johnson, who was one of the 'Tennessee Three' protesters in the state house. The senator was elected to a second term with 64% of the vote.
If she wins the race for governor, Blackburn may be able to appoint a successor to her Senate seat. She faces congressman John Rose in the Republican primary, though other candidates could emerge. Last week, NBC News reported defense secretary Pete Hegseth was considering running for the office.
Axios reports that Trump's pollster Tony Fabrizio believes Blackburn will be the 'clear frontrunner' in the race, with 82% of GOP primary voters viewing her favorably.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
8 minutes ago
- The Independent
Faith leaders rally to support immigrants facing deportation in Southern California
Outside a Southern California immigration court, the Rev. Oona Casanova Vazquez sat beside a nervous Peruvian national as he waited for a judge to call his name — talking, smiling, even handing him a mint. Vazquez, lead pastor of the South Bay Church of the Nazarene in Torrance, has been spending her Thursdays this summer with other faith leaders and church volunteers observing court proceedings and handing out leaflets about the Trump administration's immigration enforcement. 'I come here to stand and bear witness to these people who have more courage than I have,' she said. 'They walk through these doors knowing they could be detained. I'm here to offer them strength and to let them know they are valued and prayed over.' Since early June, the Trump administration has significantly ramped up immigration arrests and raids, especially in Southern California, taking people into custody at businesses, farms and public spaces like parking lots. Fear has spread in the region's immigrant communities, especially among those without legal status. Many faith leaders and groups — including the Catholic Church, which has millions of adherents in the region — have come out in support. While clergy in collars have registered a moral presence and show of support in the courts, numerous churches and nonprofits have mobilized to deliver food and medicine to those afraid to leave their homes. Some churches are offering rent assistance to members who have lost or quit their jobs out of fear. Congregations are streaming worship services so people won't need to take a risk by coming to services, which are no longer immune from immigration raids. Department of Homeland Security officials have maintained there will be no safe spaces for those who are in the country illegally, have committed crimes, or tried to undermine immigration enforcement. They have consistently said their efforts are intended to safeguard public safety and national security. People in the country illegally can avoid arrest taking the government's offer of $1,000 and a free flight to their home country, said department spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin. 'We encourage every person here illegally to use the CBP Home app and take advantage of this offer and preserve the opportunity to come back to the U.S. the right legal way to live the American dream,' she said. Offering support in immigration court Clergy say the immigrants they are seeing in immigration court are not criminals, but working people trying to follow the process and protect their families. The Rev. Terry LePage, a member of Irvine United Congregational Church in Orange County, said she has seen people whose cases have been dismissed get immediately picked up by immigration officials in courthouse hallways and taken away in vans. 'You see a family broken up, a life go down the drain in front of your eyes,' she said. 'I cry a lot these days. But I know I am where God needs me to be. I'm able to bear this pain, which is very small compared to theirs.' Laura Siriani, archdeacon with the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, led a midday prayer vigil outside the courthouse July 31. About 25 people participated. 'When we can pray together and learn about what's happening to our neighbors, it energizes us,' she said. 'We have to speak out and be the voice of those who have none.' Jennifer Coria, an immigration organizer with Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, a group that holds prayer vigils across Southern California, trains pastors and lay leaders in 'what to do and what not to do' in court and how to relay information from detainees to loved ones, she said. Coria said the volunteers don't ask people how they came into the country; their goal is simply to support individuals trying navigate the system. The Rev. Scott Santarosa, pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church, helped start an interfaith program in the Diocese of San Diego called Faithful Accompaniment In Trust and Hope to support migrants seeking asylum. He said volunteers, including himself, feel 'gutted' and helpless as they see people being arrested in the hallways and taken away. In his 2,300-strong parish, where six of seven Masses are in Spanish, the priest estimates that up to 40% of worshippers may be in the country illegally. Santarosa takes inspiration from the story of Christ rescuing the Apostle Peter when his faith wavers, he said. 'We're being asked to do the impossible,' he said. 'No one likes to be powerless. But we are being asked by the Spirit to come and stand with people in this difficult moment and be powerless with them.' At Our Lady of Soledad Catholic Church in the Coachella Valley, about 7,000 gather for Mass every weekend. The Rev. Francisco Gomez says about 20% of his parish members are in the U.S. without legal status; some have been for decades, and have children and grandchildren. He worries about parishioners becoming isolated because of fear. They're within the Diocese of San Bernardino, where Bishop Albert Rojas gave parishioners a dispensation from attending Mass after immigration detentions on two properties. Gomez wants to let the community know 'the church is not going away.' 'We're here. What happens to any one of us is going to happen to all of us.' Helping with food and other essentials Last month, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles launched its Family Assistance Program to deliver groceries, meals, medicine and other essentials. Monsignor Timothy Dyer, pastor of the largely-Latino St. Patrick Catholic Church in South Los Angeles, helped start the program, which is helping about 150 families with essentials such as rent, food, diapers and toilet paper. 'The community is rallying around these people,' he said. 'This is what a church ought to be.' Pastor Ara Torosian, who ministers to Farsi speakers at Cornerstone Church of West Los Angeles, a multiethnic Protestant congregation, came to the U.S. in 2005 as a refugee after being arrested for smuggling Bibles into Iran. He said he came through Catholic Charities and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society programs, which have been gutted under the Trump administration, leaving no legal pathways for religious minorities fleeing persecution in Iran. Torosian's congregants were among those detained in a wave of immigration arrests after the Iran-Israel war in June. The pastor said his congregants came as asylum-seekers under the Biden administration and had work permits. While a couple he had baptized and married in his church were arrested at their home, another family — a couple and their young daughter — were arrested during an immigration court appearance. The couple remains in detention awaiting Farsi translators, but the family of three was released with ankle monitors, Torosian said. 'We were all in tears when they came back to the Sunday service," he said. The pastor is raising money to help these families with rent while their cases proceed. He worries about keeping up the rent assistance, given his church's limited resources, and is asking members living in the U.S. without legal status not to come to church. 'This is heartbreaking in a country like America,' he said. 'We are praying that the situation will change.' ___ Associated Press video journalist Krysta Fauria in Los Angeles contributed reporting. ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
New Statesman
10 minutes ago
- New Statesman
Kemi Badenoch's failure to relaunch
Photo byKemi Badenoch is relaunching. The Conservative leader has made a number of brand-aware media interventions recently. First, she said she intended to be Britain's Javier Milei, the chainsaw-wielding (literally) 'anarcho-capitalist' Argentinian president whose political mission is to slash public spending. This was followed by the revelation that she no longer identifies as Nigerian. (As a reminder, Badenoch was born in the UK to Nigerian parents and spent most of her childhood in Lagos, before coming to London to study for her A-levels.) Then she went to war with Liz Truss (as discussed earlier this week), finally putting a bit of distance between herself and the least popular Conservative prime minister. Now, the notoriously media-adverse Tory leader has done a wide-ranging interview with the BBC's Amol Rajan, in which she discusses how she once got another pupil expelled for cheating while at school around aged 15 and lost her Christian faith after reading how the Austrian Josef Fritzl man raped his captive daughter for 24 years. These anecdotes are, to be honest, a bit odd. On the cheating one, Badenoch said that when people (it's unclear whether she means her classmates or her teachers) asked why she had got the other boy into trouble, 'I said 'because he was doing the wrong thing'.' She clearly thinks this makes her sound moral and just, as somebody who cannot abide rule-breakers. That Badenoch also said she 'didn't get praised for it' implies she expected praise; again, suggesting she believes the anecdote puts her in a positive light. Whether most Brits, thinking back to their teenage selves, will be able to imagine doing as she did or consider it worthy of praise is more dubious. As for her faith, Badenoch's position that she is a 'cultural Christian', even if she no longer believes in God, is hardly unusual for a Conservative leader. Liz Truss said similar when she was appointed PM. David Cameron, meanwhile, borrowed Boris Johnson's line that his 'religious faith is a bit like the reception for Magic FM in the Chilterns: it sort of comes and goes'. Nor is the reasoning she gives for atheism all that startling. Lots of people find their belief in a higher power waning when confronted with tragedies, whether natural disasters, personal grief or horrific news stories. But just read Badenoch's description of her thought process: 'I was praying for all sorts of stupid things and I was getting my prayers answered. I was praying to have good grades, my hair should grow longer, and I would pray for the bus to come on time so I wouldn't miss something… Why were those prayers answered, and not [Elisabeth Fritzl's] prayers?' Leaving aside the simplistic theology, the Fritzl case hit the news in 2008, when Badenoch was 28. Praying for longer hair or for a bus to come on time does not exactly chime with the average adult experience (most of whom no longer have to worry about getting good grades, either). This isn't the first time Badenoch has given details of her life or thinking that make her seem eccentric. Her insistence that she never makes gaffes springs to mind, as does her tirade against sandwiches (in particular, moist bread). She still clings to the origin story of the 'poverty of low expectations' she encountered at school in London, when teachers discouraged her from applying to Oxbridge or medical school. Her lacklustre A-level results (B, B, D) suggest there may be more to this discouragement than unthinking racial prejudice. So do the comments from her former head teacher – whom Rajan quotes in the BBC interview when she retold that story – which refute her assessment. But that doesn't fit into the Badenoch world-view. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Seeming normal is both a crucial skill in politics and one that many politicians struggle with. Those who reach the upper echelons of politics are rarely 'normal' in any real sense – the key is how well they are able to hide their various oddities. Once the public (or the media) decides you are a bit weird (Ed Miliband eating a bacon sandwich), it's hard to recover. Unless you lean in and make weirdness your brand (Boris Johnson painting cardboard boxes to look like buses). Voters are on the lookout for 'gotcha' moments when they detect a whiff of inauthenticity (David Cameron forgetting who his favourite football team was), while the reality of being a front-line politician can make even genuine sentiment appear manufactured (Keir Starmer's love of Arsenal). The challenge Badenoch has is that she has not yet properly introduced herself to the British public. While she might be a Big Name In Westminster, according to YouGov one sixth of voters don't actually know who she is – putting her below Nick Clegg, Diane Abbott and Suella Braverman. It takes time to introduce an opposition leader to the British public, but there does need to be a strategy. As one former Tory adviser told me in March: 'When David Cameron was four months in… he was hugging huskies. All anyone knows about Kemi is she wants to cut maternity leave and hates bread.' Now they know she hates bread and loves snitching. Badenoch is in catch-up mode. One way to address that is to make big, attention-grabbing statements: like no longer identifying as Nigerian, or starting some blue-on-blue infighting by provoking Truss. Another is to try to win people over by opening up about issues of faith and ethical stances (the cheating example). But the latter only works if those stories are relatable. And their relatability isn't exactly helped by a simultaneous comparison with a far-right Argentinian with a chainsaw. All of this should be seen in the context of the Tories languishing on 18 per cent in the polls, during a summer recess in which Reform's crime campaign has sucked up all the political oxygen – and with just three months until Badenoch's immunity runs out, when Conservative MPs can trigger a leadership challenge. The need for some kind of relaunch is clear. But it's hard to see how her recent interventions are meant to help, and she risks affirming her reputation for weirdness before the public knows much else about her. After all, it's not like Miliband chose to get the bacon sandwich expelled. This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here [See also: Keir Starmer would be a much happier politician in Japan] Related
BreakingNews.ie
10 minutes ago
- BreakingNews.ie
Ukrainian troops have little hope for peace as Trump deadline for Russia arrives
Ukrainian soldiers have expressed little hope for a diplomatic solution to the war with Russia, as Donald Trump's deadline for the Kremlin to stop the killing arrived and he eyed a possible meeting with Vladimir Putin to discuss the conflict. The US president's efforts to pressure Mr Putin have so far delivered no progress. Russia's bigger army is slowly advancing deeper into Ukraine at great cost in troops and armour while it relentlessly bombards Ukrainian cities. Russia and Ukraine are far apart on their terms for peace. Advertisement Ukrainian forces are locked in intense battles along the 620-mile front line from north-east to south-east Ukraine. The Pokrovsk city area of the eastern Donetsk region is taking the brunt of punishment as Russia looks to break out into the neighbouring Dnipropetrovsk region. Ukraine has significant manpower shortages. Intense fighting is also taking place in Ukraine's northern Sumy border region, where Ukrainian forces are engaging Russian soldiers to prevent reinforcements being sent from there to Donetsk. In the Pokrovsk area, one commander said Moscow is not interested in peace. Advertisement 'It is impossible to negotiate with them. The only option is to defeat them,' Buda, the Spartan Brigade commander, told the Associated Press. He used only his call sign, in keeping with the rules of the Ukrainian military. 'I would like them to agree and for all this to stop, but Russia will not agree to that, it does not want to negotiate. So the only option is to defeat them,' he said. In the southern Zaporizhzhia region, a howitzer commander using the call sign Warsaw, said troops are determined to thwart Russia's invasion. 'We are on our land, we have no way out,' he said. 'So we stand our ground, we have no choice.' Advertisement Donald Trump is hoping for a meeting with Vladimir Putin (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP) Mr Trump said on Thursday that he would meet Mr Putin even if the Russian president will not meet his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky. That has stoked fears in Europe that Ukraine could be sidelined in efforts to stop the continent's biggest conflict since the Second World War. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said: 'Putin remains uninterested in ending his war and is attempting to extract bilateral concessions from the United States without meaningfully engaging in a peace process. 'Putin continues to believe that time is on Russia's side and that Russia can outlast Ukraine and the West.' Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday that Europe should take the lead in efforts to end the conflict. Advertisement He said the leaders of Germany and France should go to Moscow 'to negotiate on behalf of Europe', or 'we will be sidelined in managing the security issues of our own continent'. Mr Orban, who is a harsh critic of the European Union to which his country belongs, said Europe's concerns that a Trump-Putin summit might not address the continent's interests meant it should seize the diplomatic initiative. 'This war cannot be ended on the front line, no solution can be concluded on the battlefield,' he said. 'This war must be ended by diplomats, politicians, leaders at the negotiating table.'
