Latest news with #Nashville-area
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
SCOOP: Top congressional committees launch probe into Nashville mayor accused of blocking ICE
FIRST ON FOX: Two powerful committees in the House of Representatives are opening an investigation into another Democratic official accused of blocking federal immigration authorities. House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green, R-Tenn., is leading a probe into Nashville Mayor Freddie O'Connell alongside Nashville-area Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn, Fox News Digital learned Friday. Ogles had been petitioning leaders for weeks to look into O'Connell after the Democratic leader publicly denounced Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in his city and signed an executive order aimed at tracking ICE movements in the area. He sent a letter earlier this month accusing O'Connell of "obstructing federal law enforcement." The probe is being supported by the House Judiciary Committee, which is led by Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., chair of the subcommittee for immigration enforcement. Scoop: House Gop Memo Highlights Republican Wins In Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill' "The Committee on the Judiciary and the Committee on Homeland Security of the U.S. House of Representatives are conducting oversight of state and local jurisdictions that endanger American communities through efforts aimed at thwarting the work of federal immigration officials," the four leaders wrote in a letter to O'Connell. Read On The Fox News App "While the state of Tennessee has outlawed sanctuary policies, recent actions from your office threaten to chill immigration enforcement in the City of Nashville and Davidson County. Accordingly, we write to request information about how your recent actions, including a directive to Nashville and Davidson County employees to disclose their communications with federal immigration officials, affects the robust enforcement of immigration law." The lawmakers said O'Connell's executive order, which mandated that government employees report interactions with federal immigration authorities, "could have a chilling effect on the ability of local law enforcement to communicate freely and candidly with federal immigration employees." "In fact, your chief lawyer recently admitted that it was an 'open question' whether an individual could legally 'announce in advance that there's an impending enforcement activity,'" they wrote. Mike Johnson, Donald Trump Get 'Big, Beautiful' Win As Budget Passes House "This statement, when viewed in context of your order requiring all Metro law-enforcement officers to report about communications with ICE personnel, raises the prospect that Metro employees may use nonpublic information to warn criminal aliens of planned ICE enforcement operations. In other words, there is the real potential that your Executive Order could have the effect of diminishing ICE enforcement operations." It comes after ICE agents working with the Tennessee Highway Patrol arrested nearly 200 people the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said were illegal immigrants – many of them criminals with gang affiliations or other sordid pasts. The DHS news release targeted O'Connell by name over comments he made in early May. "What's clear today is that people who do not share our values of safety and community have the authority to cause deep community harm." Mccaul Touts Money In Trump Tax Bill To Pay Texas Back For Fighting Biden Border Policies After the arrests, O'Connell signed an executive order aimed at tracking peoples' interactions with federal immigration authorities, according to WSMV4. He said of ICE's work in his city, "It's important for us to get this right, and it's very frustrating to see a failure in the process." O'Connell also helped launch the Nashville government's nonprofit, "The Belonging Fund," to help illegal immigrants pay for urgent care needs. The fund's website states that "donations to the fund are made possible solely by individual donors and private organizations - no government dollars are included. That means no taxpayer dollars are being used in the administration or distribution of this fund." Republicans, however, have questioned whether that is true. "The recipients of these funds are untraceable, and the purpose seems crystal clear: help illegal foreigners evade the law," Ogles told Fox News Digital. "I refuse to sit back while our communities are overrun — while our neighborhoods are destroyed and our daughters are assaulted. And I doubly refuse to stay silent while blue city mayors aid and abet this invasion." O'Connell is now one of several Democratic leaders locked in an immigration fight with the Trump administration. House Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., was charged by the Justice Department with assaulting an officer after she and two other House Democrats forced their way into a Newark ICE detention center, charges McIver has dismissed as political. Fox News Digital reached out to the Nashville mayor's office for comment on the article source: SCOOP: Top congressional committees launch probe into Nashville mayor accused of blocking ICE
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Federal Court Scraps Rule That Gagged Tennessee Civil Rights Attorney From Criticizing a Private Prison
After a nearly three-year legal battle, a Tennessee civil rights attorney will no longer be gagged from criticizing a private prison. The local federal court has scrapped a rule that restricted lawyers from publicly commenting on their cases. The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee amended the court's local rules last week to remove a provision that assumed out-of-court statements by attorneys were prejudicial. The court proposed amending the rule last month following a federal lawsuit filed by the Nashville-area attorney Daniel Horwitz. In 2022 a federal magistrate judge issued a gag order against Horwitz barring him from making public comments in a wrongful death lawsuit he was pursuing against CoreCivic, a private company that operates the state's Trousdale Turner Correctional Center (TTCC). The judge also ordered Horwitz to delete dozens of past tweets about the company and threatened him with contempt. Horwitz, represented by the Institute for Justice and the Southeastern Legal Foundation, sued the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee and four district court judges last year, arguing that the gag order and rule violated his First Amendment rights and chilled his speech. "I'm thrilled that my First Amendment rights have been vindicated, but more importantly, I'm thrilled that I can resume informing the public about civil rights abuses across Middle Tennessee," Horwitz said in an Institute for Justice press release. Horwitz is a prolific civil rights litigator in Tennessee. He has represented, among others, a software company illogically targeted by the state cosmetology board, a woman challenging the rejection of her personalized license plate on First Amendment grounds, and a family who was terrorized by a drunk, off-duty NYPD officer who called them racial slurs and threatened to shoot them. CoreCivic is one of Horwitz's most frequent courtroom opponents: He had represented plaintiffs in nine separate lawsuits against the company since 2020 when he filed his suit. Horwitz often tweeted about chronic understaffing and wrongful deaths at TTCC. In one tweet he wrote that "the degree of profit-motivated deliberate indifference—which is regularly killing people—is obscene at a level that even I find surprising." CoreCivic argued, and a federal magistrate judge agreed, that the comments were prejudicial under a local court rule that attorneys "must not make any extrajudicial statements (other than a quotation from or reference to public records) that the lawyer knows or reasonably should know will be disseminated by public communication and will have substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative matter, including especially that will interfere with a fair trial." That rule also put the burden of proof on the lawyer to show that the extrajudicial comments were not prejudicial. After more than two years of unsuccessfully trying to challenge the gag order in his various lawsuits against CoreCivic, Horwitz sued the district court and four federal judges, arguing that the rule violated his First Amendment rights. Horwitz's suit argued that his speech was substantially restricted over two years for fear of sanctions and of having his clients' cases dismissed. For example, when the Department of Justice announced an investigation into conditions at TTCC last year, citing many of the same reports of understaffing and violence that Horwitz relied on in his now-deleted tweets, Horwitz had to turn down news outlets' interview requests. A U.S. District Court judge dismissed Horwitz's suit last year, finding that he lacked standing to challenge the rule. Horwitz appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. But last month, while that appeal was pending, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee proposed amending the rule at issue. After public comment, the court ultimately scrapped the restriction altogether; the rule now simply states that attorneys are bound by the Tennessee Rules of Professional Conduct. The Institute for Justice points out that being able to use social media and press interviews to publicize clients' stories is vital to the work of public interest law firms like itself. "Discussing cases with the media and public is a huge part of public interest litigation, including the work that we do here," said the institute's president and chief counsel, Scott Bullock, in a press release. "This case showed the importance of being able to talk with the public, because the judges ultimately changed the rule due to public comment." In a statement to Reason, Ryan Gustin, CoreCivic's senior director of public affairs, said: "We respect the judicial process in which amendments to local rules are reviewed and modified. We also stand by our belief that matters involving litigation, and legal rules, policies and procedures should be decided within the court system and not in the press or social media." After the gag order was repealed, Horwitz celebrated by making up for lost time. "CoreCivic's Tennessee prisons are chronically understaffed death factories," he posted on the social media network BlueSky, "and it is outrageous that the [Tennessee Department of Correction] not only has done nothing meaningful to ensure CoreCivic's compliance with minimum contract requirements, but has lobbied to ensure that CoreCivic does not incur meaningful consequences." The post Federal Court Scraps Rule That Gagged Tennessee Civil Rights Attorney From Criticizing a Private Prison appeared first on
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Gary Sinise Opens Up About Leaving Hollywood and Losing His Son to Cancer: 'I Just Want to Be Around Family' (Exclusive)
Forrest Gump and CSI: NY actor Gary Sinise paused his acting career in 2019 after his wife and son were diagnosed with cancer His wife Moira survived breast cancer, but their son Mac died in January 2024 from a rare bone cancer Sinise, who moved to Tennessee in 2023, opens up to PEOPLE about grieving, and how he's remembering Mac by releasing music his son composed Gary Sinise is standing in a bright green grove outside his rural Nashville-area home, grinning as he talks about the starring role that's become his favorite: 'Papa' to his five grandchildren, ages 1 to 8. 'It's just the most wonderful thing,' the actor says. Earlier in the day, Sinise, 70, handled the school run, but it's not uncommon to spot the Oscar-nominated actor hanging out with the grandkids at Chuck E. Cheese or a local trampoline park. 'He spoils them rotten,' says Sinise's daughter Sophie, 36, of her and her sister Ella's children, who always find two things at Papa's house: ice cream ('They know they'll get fed a lot of it when they come,' he admits) and hugs. 'Being able to love on them and love on our daughters, that's helped me a lot.' That love kept him afloat after he walked away from his Hollywood career in 2019 to care for his son Mac when he was diagnosed with bone cancer. In the year since losing Mac, who died in January 2024 at 33, the actor has found comfort in his close-knit family and his Tennessee home, and a new purpose in keeping Mac's memory alive. 'Mac left us things that are beautiful,' says Sinise. 'I want people to know who he was.' An actor in demand since starring in Forrest Gump and Apollo 13 in the early '90s (he's appeared in more than 50 feature films and TV shows, including all nine seasons of CSI: NY), Sinise saw his world turn upside down in the summer of 2018. That's when his wife of nearly 44 years, Moira, 71, whom he met when he co-founded Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company and the two were aspiring actors, was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. And just as the couple were navigating her care, they learned that Mac, then 27, the second of their three kids, had a tumor on his lower backbone. 'It looked like a monster grabbing my son's spine,' Sinise recalls of the MRI scan showing Mac had a bone cancer known as chordoma, which affects only 300 people in the U.S. per year. Suddenly, the actor was grappling with how to help them both: 'It was a one-two punch.' After eight chemo treatments and 35 radiation treatments, Moira was declared cancer-free, but Mac's condition worsened. Doctors removed his tumor, but he was among the minority of chordoma patients whose cancer returns. During breaks on-set while shooting films and the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why, Sinise called doctors and researched the disease. 'Dad dove into the storm,' says his daughter Ella, 32. 'Whatever's going on in his life, he goes full on. He did amazing, but it was hard to watch because it was traumatizing. It's really a testimony to his character — he doesn't let adversity slow him down." In 2020, Mac was in the hospital for six of the first eight months of the year. 'That's when I stopped acting,' Sinise says. 'I started putting everything I had into trying to find a miracle for Mac.' He became his son's 'air traffic controller': 'I didn't want Mac to be thinking of the next treatment or to worry. So I thought about cancer all the time. You're trying to take the pain away. A few times I felt like I couldn't do enough, or I didn't know what to do. Then you say a little prayer, get back up and go back into the fight.' Sinise has seen other families go through similar battles through his work supporting veterans and first responders and their families through the Gary Sinise Foundation, which he established in 2011: 'I've wrapped my arms around lots of kids who have lost a mom or a dad. I've been around people that have persevered through difficult things. It's given me strength. There's no question God prepared me well for dealing with our loss.' Even after tumors paralyzed Mac from the chest down and restricted the full use of his arms, the family leaned on their deep Catholic faith and didn't lose hope. 'Hope keeps you in the fight,' Sinise says. 'You could see tumors on his body. You knew the drugs weren't working. But I wasn't thinking we were going to lose him.' Moira, whose mobility is also limited due to chronic back issues, encouraged Mac, a musician and composer who'd graduated from the University of Southern California music school, to teach himself harmonica, one of the few instruments he could still play. Mac, who worked at the foundation writing music for promotional videos, had been a drummer since Sinise bought him a starter drum set when he was nine, sometimes sitting in with Sinise's Lt. Dan Band (named for Sinise's Forrest Gump role as a wounded Vietman vet). With the harmonica, Mac learned to play the folk tune "Oh Shenandoah." And, says his sister Sophie: 'As his body grew weaker and weaker, his faith grew stronger. He carried on in his body and his soul and his spirit with so much bravery and strength." In 2023, Mac reconnected with a USC friend, composer Oliver Schnee, who helped him revive and arrange some of his long-dormant compositions. By Mac's 33rd birthday in November, Gary's foundation and family had moved from L.A. to Tennessee—attractive because of its proximity to military bases and lower cost of living (with no acting income, 'I wanted to spend less,' Sinise says). Mac spent his birthday recording his music in Nashville for an album, which became Resurrection & Revival. But the next month, on Dec. 30, he was back in the hospital, a St. Augustine prayer book at his side. Mac died Jan. 5, 2024, surrounded by family. 'He kept wanting to stay. He didn't want to go. But I know Mac was at peace at the end. He dealt with it with grace and courage,' Sinise says. A tragedy like that 'can destroy you or it can make you come together. We pulled together quite a lot," Sinise says. Sophie says her parents grew even closer. "She's my dad's number one supporter,' Sophie says of their mom, Moira. 'And she was Mac's prayer warrior.' In the months after Mac's death, Sinise found more music on his laptop and recruited friends to record a second album. Sinise released both, with proceeds from Resurrection & Revival: Parts 1 and 2 going toward the Gary Sinise Foundation, which was Mac's request. Sinise hopes to one day see the albums performed by a live orchestra. And he's got his sights on animating another of Mac's compositions. 'I want people to hear his music. I want people to share it. I'm on a mission.' He knows it's his way of coping with grief: 'I thought the other day, 'What happens when all these projects are done?' Well, I'm going to drag them on as long as I can.' As for acting, Sinise isn't sure when — or if — he'll make a return. 'Something may come along and it'll be right, but it's harder to leave home now,' he says. 'I just want to be around family. Since losing Mac, I hold my daughters a lot tighter. You think about the things that are really important.' Read the original article on People
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Defense attorneys in Casada, Cothren trial give hints to strategies
Cade Cothren, who served as chief of staff to former Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada, walks to the Fred D. Thompson Federal Courthouse in Nashville on April 22, 2025. (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout) Day two of former Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada's federal corruption trial ended with a jury chosen and indications of how defense lawyers could try to keep their client out of prison. Casada and his former chief of staff Cade Cothren are on trial for allegations of conspiracy, fraud, money laundering, bribery and kickbacks after funneling contracts for political consulting services for state House members to a company founded by Cothren called Phoenix Solutions. Casada's attorney Ed Yarbrough questioned prospective alternate jurors Tuesday about whether they have worked in sales, received commissions in exchange for work — raising the question of whether commissions and kickbacks could be seen as mutually exchangeable terms — or outsourced work to subcontractors. 'Did your customers always know who was doing the work?' Yarbrough asked. Federal prosecutors' case rests partially on the premise that Casada and former Chattanooga Rep. Robin Smith secured contracts for political consulting services from House Republican Caucus members, receiving a cut of the proceeds from Cothren in return. Cothren resigned from his post in May 2019 amid a scandal over racist and sexist text messages that was heavily reported by Nashville-area media. He formed Phoenix Solutions in 2020 and prosecutors allege Casada and Smith purposely concealed Cothren's identity on the assumption House members would not contract with Phoenix if they knew Cothren was behind it. Opening arguments will begin Thursday morning. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Nashville's Army Corp of Engineers address flooding concerns ahead of heavy rain threat
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Officials with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Nashville District are monitoring the risk of severe flooding as Middle Tennessee prepares for several days of heavy rain. As currently forecasted, the organization does not have huge concerns for the upper-parts of the Cumberland River, near Nashville. Flooding concerns across Middle Tennessee ahead of more storms in the forecast Instead, areas of higher concern are downstream and mainly to the west of Nashville like Montgomery and Cheatham counties, according to the Army Corp. 'This volume of rain has certainly got our attention and can absolutely cause a lot of problems,' said Robert Dillingham, civil engineer for Nashville's Army Corps Water Management Center. 'There's a lot of unregulated streams… the Harpeth River, the Red River. If you get 5 to 7 inches of rain, you're going to see some flooding.' Nashville's Army Corp of Engineers regulates four dam projects across the region. Dillingham said they don't plan to stop water flow at any of them, as of now. 'We have a very large ability to store water in those projects, ahead of this rainfall event,' explained Dillingham. 'When the rainfall does start occurring, we'll be rapidly responding to the inflow, making releases [if needed] from our mainstream reservoir projects and making adjustments, as mother nature provides.' 'It's kind of scary': Middle Tennessee hydrologist talks about likely flooding later this week 'You look and say, well, 'This is the April average in two days,' Dillingham continued. 'But is that abnormal? I don't necessarily think so. Now, 7 to 10 inches-plus, that's certainly a whole other scale there; that is a little bit extreme. But that's not really what's forecasted for Nashville at this time.' News 2 asked the agency how much of what they do nowadays is based on what they learned in 2010's flooding disaster. 'If the rainfall that occurred on 1 May and 2 May of 2010 [17 inches] happened tomorrow, you'd see very similar flooding. There's nothing we can do,' Dillingham answered. 'But internally, our processes, our communication, our backups, our modeling system has all improved (since then).' As the storms move in Wednesday, Dillingham encouraged Nashville-area residents to stay updated on the agency's social media pages and website for information on possible water releases along the Cumberland River basin. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
