Get a job. Or, graduate college or a technical school. (Then, get a job.)
Get married.
Have babies.
This is a poverty-fighting equation Tennessee GOP lawmakers want to be taught to every single Tennessee student.
The equation is called the “Success Sequence” and it’s nothing new. A version of this sequence has probably been taught to kids for decades. But the idea took formal form in a 2009 book by Brookings Institution researchers called “Creating An Opportunity Society.” Those researchers aimed to ”improve the prospects for our less-advantaged families and fellow citizens” and help bridge gaps in income and wealth.
Two Tennessee Republicans — Rep. Gino Bulso (R-Brentwood) and Sen. Janice Bowling (R-Tullahoma) — sponsor legislation before state lawmakers now that would require ”family life curriculum [to] include age-appropriate instruction and evidence regarding the positive personal and societal outcomes associated with the method.”
“ Data shows that students who follow the sequence are more likely to excel in school and generally earn higher grade point averages than students who do not,” Bowling said when she introduced her legislation in a committee last week. “This program prepares students for a healthy, productive life.”
In very practical terms, if this bill is passed, it might mean that public school kids in Tennessee would hear this theory that following these steps will either lead you out of poverty or help keep you out of it. Also, in practical terms, a version of this bill died in committee in February before the Mississippi Legislature.
So, how big of a deal is this idea of teaching the “Success Sequence,” really? Well, a strata of academics, think tanks, and policy advocacy groups think it’s a big one.
Some will argue data say if you follow the sequence your chances of ending up in poverty are around 3 percent. Others have taken that further (answering critics) to say the equation works almost equally well for African Americans and Hispanics, even with the uphill climbs they may face in racist systems.
”With the completion of each step of the success sequence, the racial gap narrows rapidly,” Melissa Byers Melissa, the Chief Marketing Officer at National Fatherhood Initiative, wrote in 2022. “For Millennials who followed all three steps, only 4 percent of [B]lacks and 3 percent of Hispanics are poor by their mid-30s. Stunningly, the racial gaps in poverty are almost closed.”
Bruenig argues, broadly, that full-time work alone will keep people out of poverty. The rest of the sequence, he said, is about pushing cultural agendas. Marriage, for example, won’t keep anyone out of poverty unless they marry another full-time worker, he said. Marriage could lead to poverty if someone marries someone with a disability or work limitation, he said.
”Success Sequence writers, realizing that full-time workers are rarely in poverty, end up advocating that ‘full-time work plus their cultural preferences’ will get you out of poverty,” he wrote. “This is technically true, but only because full-time work plus anything will get you out of poverty.”
Shelby County Jail (Photo: Shelby County Sheriff's Department)
The criminal justice system in Shelby County is murky, a new report says.
How many days does it take for a case to be taken care of? How many days are people incarcerated (if they can’t make bail) before their cases are taken care of? How often do people stay clean while they’re out on bail? How often are they re-arrested while out on bail? How often are people booked? How often do they ask for a trial?
Some answers came to these questions in a report issued Wednesday by a division of the Tennessee State Comptroller’s Office. That report was requested in February 2024 by Lt. Gov. Randy McNally (R-Oak Ridge) who wanted those answers (and more) about “issues in Shelby County,” specifically.
For the request, the comptroller’s Office of Research and Education Accountability (OREA) sent agents to Memphis. Over the past year, those agents interviewed about 70 people and spent about 100 hours at the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center. They conducted research, watched court proceedings, and analyzed datasets from at least 22 state and local entities.
From August to September, the agents gathered data on about 1,033 cases as they made their ways through the criminal justice process here. They watched 417 cases in General Sessions Court and 616 cases in Criminal Court. For the sake of equal comparison, they included 145 sample cases for the report that had similar data.
“The more than 1,030 cases observed represent a fraction of the cases heard in these courtrooms on any given day,” reads the report. “Across all eight General Sessions courtrooms that hear felony cases, more than 480 cases are heard daily. In the nine Criminal Court courtrooms, this number rises to over 500 cases heard daily.”
Here’s some of what they found in Criminal Court:
• Half of cases were completely through court (or disposed) in two months.
• A quarter of cases were disposed in 37 days or fewer.
• Nearly all the cases were disposed within 266 days, or nine months.
• Shelby County had the highest number of open felony charges (2,335) at the time, double the Nashville count of 1,024.
• Of the 95 defendants OREA watched, only seven re-offended while on pretrial release (bail or free release).
• A majority (60 percent) of felony charges did not change at the end of a case from 2018 to 2023. The remaining charges either decreased (about 20 percent) or increased (about 21 percent).
Here’s some of what they found in General Sessions Court:
• Over half of the cases were dismissed.
• A quarter of cases were disposed with a guilty plea.
• About 10 percent of cases were bound over to a grand jury.
However, no one in Shelby County is collecting this information. These observations are from a small sample size from a small group of OREA agents.
Without aggregate data, it’s impossible to judge the efficiency, throughput capacity, or overall health of the Shelby County Justice system. The OREA group thinks someone here should be responsible for gathering that data and sharing it with the public.
“The result is that the public cannot assess overall, aggregate trends and patterns; the public cannot see the big picture,” reads the report.
The group offered a list of detailed recommendations to improve the situation here, but it is unknown what next step may come in the situation.
Death row prisoners in Tennessee challenged the state’s new execution protocols in a legal complaint that claims the use of pentobarbital is unconstitutional as it can lead to a “tortuous death.”
Nine prisoners signed on to the complaint filed late last week by Amy Harwell in Davidson County Chancery Court. Harwell is the Assistant Chief of the Capital Habeus Unit at the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Middle District of Tennessee.
The complaint argues those executed here “will experience extreme pain and suffering if they are poisoned to death with pentobarbital.” The plaintiffs also cite “Tennessee’s shameful history of mishandling its execution processes” as a reason to challenge the new lethal injection protocol.
Executions here have been halted since May 2022. Gov. Bill Lee ordered a full review of the state’s lethal injection protocols. In a scathing report issued in December 2022, Ed Stanton, former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, found that state officials didn’t follow their own rules in carrying out executions. That review also criticized the three-drug injection protocols used for executions at the time.
Lee hired a new Commissioner for the Tennessee Department of Corrections (TDOC), Frank Strada, with a major goal to get executions back on line in Tennessee. That work began in January 2023.
In late December 2024, TDOC issued a brief news release announcing that the new review had been completed and the agency had selected pentobarbital for its lethal injection executions.
“I am confident the lethal injection process can proceed in compliance with departmental policy and state laws,” Strada said at the time.
Earlier this month, the Tennessee Supreme Court scheduled executions for four prisoners to be carried out this year.
• Oscar Smith on May 22nd
• Byron Black on August 5th
• Donald Middlebrooks on September 24th
• Harold Nichols on December 11th
Smith was set for execution in May 2022. It has been reported he was taking his final communion on death watch before walking to the execution chamber when Lee called off the execution and called for the review.
Smith and Black, both scheduled to be executed this year, signed on to the new complaint that challenges the method of which they are to be killed by the state.
“The evidence keeps piling up to show that pentobarbital poisoning is excruciatingly painful,” said Harwell, an attorney for the plaintiffs. “Tennessee appears to have picked this method only because they were able to get their hands on pentobarbital, not because its use for executions complies with the Constitution or state law.”
States like Tennessee had a hard time getting drugs for the proviso three-drug cocktail. Many said that was the because drug companies that made them refused to sell them for execution purposes.
The complaint argues that killing by pentobarbital “can create a sensation of suffocating or drowning that has been likened by experts to the sensation intentionally induced by the practice of waterboarding — an unambiguous form of outright torture.” The drug can also leave prisoners aware as their bodies begin to experience physical damage “resulting in extreme suffering.”
In January, the U.S. Department of Justice quit using pentobarbital in executions on “significant uncertainty” on whether or not the drug causes pain and suffering.
“In the face of such uncertainty, the department should err on the side of humane treatment and avoidance of unnecessary pain and suffering, and therefore halt the use of pentobarbital unless and until that uncertainty is resolved,” then-Attorney General Merrick Garland said at the time.
Even if the drug was not a concern, the complaint doubts TDOC’s ability to carry out executions, given its track record. It says that over the past 25 years, the agency “has consistently struggled, and often failed, to fulfill [its] responsibility [to administer executions] in a consistent, reliable, and lawful way.”
“TDOC has burned through at least five now-discarded ‘protocols’ for performing executions by lethal injection … each of which collapsed under the weight of its own flaws and mismanagement after no more than, at most, a few executions,” the report says.
A bill that seeks to keep Tennessee’s highways clear of encampments, tents, and personal items has been recommended for passage to the Senate Calendar Committee.
Senate Bill 0217 would require the Tennessee Department of Transportation and other agencies to regulate “the collection, storage, claiming, and disposal of personal property used for camping from the shoulder, berm, or right-of-way of a state or interstate highway, or under a bridge or overpass, or within an underpass of a state or interstate highway.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Brent Taylor (R-Memphis), was recommended for passage today through the Senate Transportation and Safety Committee. Taylor said he had experience in trying to clear areas of personal property and called it the “most complicated thing [he] had done as an adult.”
“What this bill does is simply allow TDOT to go into communities like Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga, Knoxville, or any other community and to go ahead and pre-plan how they’re going to deal with homeless encampments and go ahead and work with social services networks in that community,” Taylor said.
Taylor said this network will include law enforcement, so that all the duties will already be spelled out when an encampment needs to be removed. He also said this bill does not criminalize homeless people.
“This serves not only the state and the local community, but this serves the homeless folks as well.” Taylor said. “When they identify a homeless encampment that needs to be cleared, there’ll be nonprofits and social services available to the people in homeless encampments. We all have empathy, but whatever has driven somebody to have to live under a bridge, their lot in life is not getting better by living under a bridge.”
Taylor said the bill will help communities develop a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to tackle this issue in a way that’s beneficial to both the city and the homeless. Sen. Heidi Campbell (D-Nashville) asked if the bill outlines how their belongings will be stored, to which Taylor responded that the decision would be left to the board.
“I understand the intent. I have a similar thing happen in my district. I just am concerned without the direction from the legislation, the homeless peoples’ items and things need to be considered; that we’re putting the discretion to be able to take stuff away from homeless people in somebody’s hands where it might not have been before,” Campbell said.
Lindsey Krinks, co-founder of Housing for All Tennessee and Open Table Nashville, noted citizens’ concerns for the bill — specifically, the disposal of homeless people’s belongings.
“What this bill doesn’t tell you is that the campsite removal costs will be passed down to local governments; we’re really concerned about that,” Krinks said. “We all want to see the number of people living in encampments decrease, but the way we do that is not to play a game of Whack-A-Mole. It’s to break the cycle of homelessness through providing housing and support to people.”
Krinks said the bill does not address homelessness nor the deficit of housing or shelter. She noted that the bill’s “aggressive” deadline of removal three days after receiving a complaint does not allow people to secure permanent housing.
Taylor said this bill will address these concerns as the agencies and TDOT will help people get connected to the services they need. He said continuing to let people live in encampments without services does not provide them with extra support.
“If you support homeless people and want to get them the services they need and help them live in dignity, then you would support this bill, because we’re able to make that connection when we clear a homeless encampment between a person in need and social services they need to connect them,” Taylor said.
The bill passed the committee with seven ayes and one nay.
Lawmakers in Nashville are kicking their law-making machines into high gear with committee schedules filled to the brim with everything from far-right fueled covenant marriages to hunters finding wounded deer with drones.
Here’s a few bills we’re watching:
Gender transition (SB 0676): Sen. Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) says this law ensures that if a gender clinic takes state funds to perform gender transition procedures, they’ll have to also perform “detransition procedures.”
The bill also requires a report to the state on a ton of of information about any transition procedures: the age and sex of the patient, what drugs were given, when the referral was made, what state and county the patient is from, and a complete list of ”neurological, behavioral, or mental health conditions” the patient might have had. Almost everything but the patient’s name and WhatsApp handle.
Forever chemicals (SB0880): The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is pushing this bill, and maybe not just in Tennessee.
When a rep for the organization (Mark Behrens, a representative of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform), explained it to a Senate committee last week, he specifically mentioned PFAS (also called forever chemicals by some), which are found in non-stick cookware, firefighting foam, and more. He also broadly mentioned “microplastics” and “solvents.”
Behrens claimed these may have a PR problem but they may also be in a situation where “the science (on them) is evolving and they may not have an impact on human health, or that impact may be unclear.”
So, rather than the state banning them for just having a bad rap, any ban would have to be based on “the best available science.” For a deep dive on this, read Tennessee Lookout’s story below.
Sen. Janice Bowling (R-Tullahoma) asked if this could be used to keep fluoride out of drinking water. No, she was told.
“Medical Ethics Defense Act“ (SB0995): ”This bill prohibits a healthcare provider from being required to participate in or pay for a healthcare procedure, treatment, or service that violates the conscience of the healthcare provider.” The bill itself is scanty on details. On its face, it sure sounds aimed at the LGBTQ community.
But bill sponsor Sen. Ferrell Haile (R-Gallatin) said it was a “straightforward bill,” covering things such as assisted suicide or whether or not a pharmacist felt comfortable prescribing birth control.
Deer and drones (SB0130): This one is straightforward. It would allow hunters to use drones to find deer they shot.
WHO now? (SB0669): With this bill, Taylor, the Memphis Republican, says pandemics can only be declared by the American baseball-and-apple-pie Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), not the soccer-and-scone World Health Organization (WHO).
Cash for STI tests (SB0189): Sen. London Lamar (D-Memphis) wants to give higher-education students in Tennessee $250 for taking a voluntary test for sexually transmitted diseases.
Felonies for protestors (0672): You know how Memphis protestors like to shut down the Hernando DeSoto Bridge? Well, Taylor, that Memphis Republican, would make that a felony.
But it’s not just big roads and protestors. The bill applies to anyone obstructing “a highway, street, sidewalk, railway, waterway, elevator, aisle, hallway, or other place used for the passage of persons or vehicles.” Those would be Class E felonies.
But if the “offense was committed by intentionally obstructing a highway, street, or other place used for the passage of vehicles,” it would be a Class D felony.
What’s in a name? (SB0214): This bill would prohibit any public facility to be named for a local public official who is currently in office — and for two years after they leave office. The same prohition would also apply to anyone who has “been convicted of a felony or a crime of moral turpitude.”
Covenant marriage (SB 0737): This bill creates “covenant marriage” in Tennessee. And the most important thing the bill caption wants you to know about the law is that this kind of marriage “is entered into by one male and one female.”
Covenant marriage is, like, a mega, pinky-swear marriage. To get it, couples have to go to pre-marital counseling and their preacher or counselor or whatever has to get notarized some kind of pamphlet to be printed by the Secretary of State.
Getting out of a covenant marriage is, like, way hard. A partner would have to cheat, or die, be sentenced to death or lifelong imprisonment, leave the house for a year, or physically or sexually abuse the other partner or the couple’s children.
These types of marriages are only available now in Arizona, Arkansas, and Louisiana.
Here’s a couple of opinionpieces from The Tennessean if you want to find out more about the two sides of this issue.
Oh, and if you wonder where this is coming from, check out this video that shows Sen. Mark Pody (R-Lebanon), one of the bill’s sponsors, at church talking about “wicked” gay marriage.
The Cotton Museum could soon be purchased and managed by the state of Tennessee.
A bill filed in the Tennessee General Assembly by state Rep. Torrey Harris (D-Memphis) and state Sen. London Lamar (D-Memphis) would put the Memphis museum in state hands on July 1.
The bill’s caption reads the proposed law “requires the state to enter into good faith negotiations for the purchase of the Cotton Museum in Memphis, subject to approval by the State Building Commission.”
The full bill text says that the state would enter into negotiations to manage the museum. If approved, management would given to the Tennessee State Museum and managed by the Douglas Henry State Museum Commission in collaboration with the Tennessee Historical Commission.
The museum was founded in 2006 to “preserve the history of this worldwide marketplace and to tell the epic story of the famed cash crop and its profound influence on the city of Memphis,” according to its website.
“Our mission is to share the story of the cotton and the influences of the people that were gathered here around the industry not only with a growing international audience, but with Memphis area residents, especially our city’s youth,” the site reads.
The bill was filed earlier this month. Its first formal review is planned for Wednesday during the Senate Education Committee.
Sen. Bo Watson, a Republican from Hixson, chairs the powerful Senate Finance Committee of the Tennessee General Assembly. (Larry McCormack for Chalkbeat)
A state Republican leader has introduced a resolution encouraging Tennessee teachers, especially geography teachers, to use the names Gulf of America and Mount McKinley when speaking with their students about map locations recently rebranded by President Donald Trump.
As a proposed resolution and not a law, the measure would not place any mandates or requirements on teachers if it’s approved.
State Senator Bo Watson (R-Hixson), who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, filed his resolution Thursday and had amassed 19 co-sponsors, including Lt. Governor Randy McNally, by the end of the day, ensuring its passage in the 33-member Senate.
Watson’s resolution follows Trump’s executive order renaming as the Gulf of America the body of water that for 400 years has been known internationally as the Gulf of Mexico. The order — titled “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness” — also reversed President Barack Obama’s 2015 executive order renaming Alaska’s Mount McKinley, the nation’s highest peak, as Denali, the site’s Native Alaskan name.
Republican lawmakers in Iowa already have advanced a bill that would require schools to change educational materials to map names that align with Trump’s “America First” worldview.
The Tennessee proposal reads: “We most heartily agree with President Trump that ‘the naming of our national treasures … should honor the contribution of visionary and patriotic Americans in our nation’s rich past.’”
On Friday, Senate Democrats called the resolution a “distraction” to important education matters aimed at preparing students for the jobs of tomorrow.
“Everybody has a right to file resolutions if they think it’s important, but it’s not going to be one that I’ll support,” said Senate Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari, of Memphis.
Trump’s order has already sparked reflection, discussion, and debate among teachers, as well as mapmakers, journalists, and textbook publishers who seek to stay apolitical about map lines that are inherently political.
Mark Finchum, executive director of the Tennessee Council for the Social Studies, said his organization’s board has not taken a position so far or offered guidance to social studies teachers who are its members.
“Personally, I believe what teachers will do is what’s in the best interest of students,” said Finchum, a retired social studies teacher from Jefferson County.
“I don’t think they’re going to ignore the topic, but I also don’t think they’ll simply call it the Gulf of America and continue with the lesson,” he said. “In Tennessee, geography is primarily taught in middle and high school, so these students are old enough to have heard the words Gulf of Mexico. If you just call it the Gulf of America, some student is going to raise their hand.”
Tennessee, which overwhelmingly voted for Trump last fall and where Republicans have a firm grip on state government, has been an early adopter of laws stoking culture war battles around education in recent years.
In 2021, it became one of the first states to enact a law intended to restrict K-12 classroom discussions about race, gender, and bias. That law is being challenged in court by a group of teachers and the state’s largest teacher organization.
Under Republican Governor Bill Lee, the legislature also has passed several laws leading to the purging of hundreds of library books from public schools, with titles involving race, sex, and the Holocaust among the most frequent targets.
And earlier this month, Watson introduced a bill that could allow school districts and charter schools to bar undocumented students from enrolling, potentially challenging a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision entitling all children to a public education regardless of their immigration status.
His latest resolution says the body of water between Florida and Mexico warrants renaming because of the gulf’s pivotal role in shaping America’s future and the global economy.
Regarding the name of the nation’s highest peak in Alaska, the resolution cites President William McKinley’s leadership behind the U.S. victory in the Spanish-American War and the nation’s rapid expansion, including the annexations of Puerto Rico, Guam, and Hawaii, during McKinley’s administration from 1897 until his assassination in 1901.
Informally, Alaskans have called the snow-covered mountain Denali, its Native name, for decades. President McKinley, who was from Ohio, never set foot in the state.
You can track the resolution on the General Assembly’s website.
Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
“The state cannot tell me how to operate my church,” said Rev. Kevin Riggs, pastor of Franklin Community Church. (Photo: John Partipilo)
A pair of bills by Republicans lawmakers that would penalize charitable organizations that serve immigrants — and potentially lead to their employees’ arrests — are drawing pushback from Tennessee faith leaders as an infringement on their religious freedom.
One bill (HB322/SB392) would create a new “human smuggling” crime for those who transport, encourage or induce 10 or more adults to illegally enter or remain in the state by “concealing, harboring or shielding” them.
Organizations, including churches and other nonprofits, that commit or are “about to commit” the offense could be dissolved by the Tennessee Attorney General. And individuals who participate in inducing or encouraging activities — such as church staff, nonprofit employees or private company workers — could be subject to a Class E felony, punishable by up to six years in prison and a fine of up to $3,000.
A second bill (HB811/SB227) would open up charitable organizations to lawsuits if they have provided housing services to an individual without permanent legal immigration status and then that individual goes on to commit a crime.
Both measures could directly impact the routine charitable programs Tennessee churches and other nonprofits provide to individuals regardless of their immigration status, faith leaders said.
“I’m deeply concerned about how broad these bills are, and my fear is that any church that is seeking to help any immigrant could be penalized in some way,” said The Rev. Eric Mayle, pastor of Edgehill United Methodist Church in Nashville.
“And that prevents us from exercising our religious freedom to care for the vulnerable or stranger in our midst who we are commanded by Christ to care for,” he said.
State Senator Brent Taylor (R) Memphis district 31 Shelby County, during the 113th general Assembly
Photograph by John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout
Sen. Brent Taylor (R-Memphis), who is the chief sponsor of the bill aimed at housing services and a cosponsor of the human smuggling legislation, said both bills are designed to hold non-governmental agencies, or NGOs, accountable for their roles in providing services that keep immigrants without legal status in Tennessee communities.
The bills are not intended to interfere with the charitable work of faith based groups, such as those that provide temporary shelters or English as a Second Language programs, as his own church offers, he said.
Even heaven has an immigration policy.
Sen. Brent Taylor (R-Memphis)
“I would remind the churches that even heaven has an immigration policy,” Taylor said. “You can’t climb over the wall in heaven. You can’t slick talk St. Peter into the gates of heaven. There’s a very specific way you come into heaven to become a resident of heaven. They’ve got a very strict immigration policy, and I don’t think its unreasonable for Americans to have an immigration policy that people follow.”
The bills are among an unprecedented slate of immigration-related legislation filed in the Tennessee Legislature this year. More than three dozen bills have been filed to restrict immigrants’ access to public services, including K-12 schools, or penalize those who aid them.
A sweeping measure signed into law by Gov. Bill Lee on Thursday offers to significantly ramp up state involvement in immigration enforcement in collaboration with the Trump Administration.
The measure creates a new state enforcement office, provides grants as incentives for local law enforcement to take on immigrant enforcement duties, creates distinct drivers licenses for noncitizens and makes it a felony for public officials to back sanctuary policies. The American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee pledged to bring a legal challenge to the law.
New ‘human smuggling’ offense
The proposal to create a new “human smuggling” offense would create a felony for knowingly transporting at least 10 adults or 5 children who lack permanent legal immigration status “for the purpose of commercial advantage or private financial gain.” The felony also applies to individuals who encourage or induce 10 or more adults or five or more children to “enter or remain” in Tennessee by “concealing, harboring, or shielding those persons from detection.”
The bill, Taylor and Rep. Jody Barrett (R-Dickson) also creates a second misdemeanor offense for those who “harbor or hide, or assist another in harboring or hiding” individuals they know or should have known have illegally entered the United States. The misdemeanor comes with a $1,000 penalty attached to each individual who was concealed, harbored or shielded.
Taylor referred questions about the granular details of the bill to Barrett, its chief sponsor, who did not respond to messages seeking comment about the bill on Friday.
Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, noted the felony offense could broadly apply to construction site employees driven by van to worksites or nonprofits providing adults and children bus passes as part of their services.
The use of the word “encourage” to define the proposed new crime creates an added layer of vagueness to the bill, Luna said.
“By providing people food maybe you’re encouraging people to stay?” Luna said. “The point is they don’t define ‘encourages.’
The broad nature of the language could apply to nonprofit legal services providers that provide legal advice, food banks that distribute goods, churches that offer community services, immigrant-serving nonprofits that educate individuals about their rights, Luna noted.
‘The state cannot tell me how to operate my church’
Pastor Kevin Riggs of Franklin Community Church said he is concerned the bill to penalize organizations that provide housing assistance would have a direct impact on his church.
Riggs’ church helps low-income individuals access housing programs, funded through a federal Housing and Urban Development program whose rules are at odds with the bill being proposed.
If there’s a person in front of us who has got need, we’re going to meet the need.
– Rev. Kevin Riggs, Franklin Community Church
“It would affect the work, Riggs said. “It’s put us in a bind, because you got the state telling you, you have to do one thing, and you have the federal government telling you, you can’t do that.” Regardless of whether the bill ultimately becomes law, Riggs said his church would not veer from its Christian mission to help those in need. “The state cannot tell me how to operate my church,” Riggs said.
“If there’s a person in front of us who has got need, we’re going to meet the need,” he said. “That’s part of our church’s mission, and for the state to tell us we cannot is a violation of our First Amendment rights to practice our religions in the way I believe we have been called.”
Taylor, in an interview with the Lookout, said his intent was for the bill to apply only to long-term housing services provided by charitable organizations in Tennessee communities. While the language of the bill filed does not specify long term housing, Taylor said he would review the bill to possibly amend it.
“I’m not envisioning a homeless shelter,” he said. “What I envision is an NGO assisting them finding a longterm rental in a house or apartment, not an overnight stay in a homeless shelter. No one is trying to prevent illegal immigrants from seeking shelter on a cold winter night or from rain storm.”
Nonprofits a new front in immigration enforcement
Churches, faith-based and other nonprofit organizations that work with individuals regardless of their immigration status are increasingly becoming targets of Republican-led efforts to clamp down on illegal immigration, according to Kristen Etter, director of policy and services at the Texas Immigration Law Council.
On Wednesday, Congressional republicans sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanding an investigation into non-governmental agencies receiving public funding to work with immigrant populations. The letter, without evidence, accused nonprofit agencies of “knowingly assisting criminal aliens violating our immigration laws” and “operating a human smuggling campaign on the backs of U.S. taxpayers.”
Last month, influential conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation listed as its No. 1 immigration-related policy goal to repurpose public funding from immigrant-serving nonprofits – whom they accused of “facilitating the border crisis” – to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
As one of his first executive orders after taking office, President Donald Trump called on the U.S. Attorney General and the Department of Homeland Security to investigate the funding of immigrant-serving nonprofits.
And in Texas, ongoing lawsuits are challenging Attorney General Ken Paxton’s efforts to issue investigative demands to immigrant-serving organizations he has accused of facilitating illegal immigration, among them: Catholic Charities Rio Grande Valley and Annunciation House, a Catholic organization. The organizations have argued in court that Paxton’s efforts violate their First Amendment right to free speech, association and religion.
“They want to criminalize all organizations that work with immigrants,” Etter said.
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com.
Republican lawmakers are coming for your cannabis products, again.
Two new bills filed for the upcoming session of the Tennessee General Assembly outright ban the sale of THCA products. One of those would remove all cannabis products from gas stations (or any store that allows those under 21) and more. However, another bill, also filed by Republicans, would outright legalize all “smoking hemp.”
The Tennessee Growers Coalition, an industry advocacy group, raised the alarm on the bills. They say the bill put “a direct target on the industry.”
“There are several bills that have been introduced this week that will directly affect the industry, and not in a good way,” reads a newsletter the group sent Friday.
A bill sponsored by state Sen. Ferrell Haile (R-Gallatin) and state Rep. Ed Butler (R-Rickman), says hemp is legal only as long as it contains the state-limited .3 percent total THC. However, it further specifies that legal hemp here would still need to meet that amount after it is heated (y’know, smoked). Further, the bill outlaws all THCP and THCA products.
Another bill, filed my House Majority Leader Rep. William Lamberth (R-Portland) and Sen. Richard Briggs (R-Knoxville) includes the THCA ban but also completely reorganizes how hemp products are sold in Tennessee. Lamberth has worked on cannabis issues for years now and is largely responsible for the market as it is now.
That market is overseen by the Tennessee Department of Agriculture. However, the new bill would move that oversight to the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission.
The new bill would remove all hemp-derived cannabis products from any store that allows customers under age 21. In those stores, hemp products must be kept behind counters or some other place “that requires assistance from a retail clerk in order to access and purchase” the products. Liquor stores, however, could keep hemp beverages (12 ounces or greater) in coolers for customers to access themselves.
Hemp products could be sold in vending machines, self-checkout systems, or online. Giving samples would be illegal.
Products can only contain a maximum of 250 milligrams of hemp in 10 equal servings. Those products would come with a list of possible allergens, ingredients, and total hemp volume. They’d also come with a “conspicuous warning statement having a minimum font size of 11-point font concerning the risk of impairment from consumption of the product, keeping the product out of the reach of children, and other warning information.”
Advertising for hemp products cannot feature “superheroes, comic book characters, video game characters, television show characters, movie characters, or unicorns or other mythical creatures.” Sorry, Bigfoot.
Hemp products could not be mixed with alcoholic beverages or used as an ingredient in beer. Retailers cannot make claims “pertaining to diagnoses, cures, or mitigation or treatment of any human disease or other condition.”
Another bill, filed by Rep. Chris Hurt (R-Halls) and Sen. Page Walley (R-Savannah) simply (but officially) adds “smoking hemp,” meaning dried cannabis flower, to state law.
Cannabis would be legal for recreational and medical uses in Tennessee next year if the Tennessee General Assembly passes either of two similar bills filed by Democrats this week.
The first is from state Rep. Larry Miller (D-Memphis) and state Sen. Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville). The second is from state Rep. Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville) and state Sen. Heidi Campbell (D-Nashville).
Both bills allow all Tennessee adults over 21 to possess, use, and transport small amounts of cannabis for personal use. Both would allow cannabis retailers to sell all THC products. They would also allow Tennesseans to grow up to 12 cannabis plants for personal use.
Both bills would tax cannabis sales at 15 percent on the state level and allow local governments to add a 5 percent tax to local sales of cannabis. State budget experts have not yet estimated how much revenue those tax figures might bring.
A bill filed last year would have established a medical marijuana program in the state. Tennesseans would have been only eligible to buy cannabis products if they had a diagnosis from a specific list of medical conditions. That law would have made the total state marijuana tax 10 percent and a local tax up to 3 percent. State budget experts predicted that plan would have yielded tax revenues of more than $48 million annually.
The new cannabis plans differ in how revenues are spent. The broader Tennessee Cannabis Act specifies only that about 15 percent of the money go to state agencies to run the cannabis program. The rest would go into he state’s general fund and spent at the discretion of lawmakers.
The Pot for Potholes fund earmarks 75 percent of all cannabis tax revenues for the state highway fund. Most of the rest of the money would go to Tennessee’s 95 counties. A remaining 5 percent of the funds would go to state agencies to manage the program.
The bills seem the same in almost every other way. Both would:
• Regulate cannabis packaging. Products for sale would have to be sold in child-resistant packaging, carry a new, universal cannabis symbol, and show the total amount of THC in the product.
• Cap personal possession at 60 grams of marijuana, but not more than 15 grams of concentrate
• Allow private cultivation of 12 plants in a private area that is locked and not visible from a public place.
• Allow a parent or guardian to give cannabis products to their children for a medical condition, excluding smokeable products.
• Allow for the commercial grow and sale of the product.
• Allow for the possession of marijuana-related paraphernalia such as water pipes, etc. (with exceptions)
• Allow employers to prohibit the use of cannabis products in the workplace.
• Allow employers to discipline workers for cannabis use.
• Allow employers to consider cannabis use in its hiring process (with certain restrictions).
• Allow personal cannabis users and growers to buy firearms.
• Cannabis possession or use would not be grounds to deny a lease to a potential residential tenant.
• Cannabis use would not be allowed in a motor vehicle, a watercraft on public waters, or in a public place.
