TENNESSEE BULLET POINTS 8-3-26
Showing mention at 4:10 — highlighted below
Transcript
20 segmentsStart your day with the morning jolt of Drake Toll. Anywhere in the country. Your home for talking sports. The United States hockey team has four teeth left. What is LeBron James Legacy? Leonel Mess. 906 career goals is stupid. All of it. The Knicks. The Los Angeles Lakers. Aaron Rogers. Georgia football players. The Dolphins. The Mets. As it happened, when it happened. We'll talk all of it. Westwood One Sports Talk. Your home for Drake Toll. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. Welcome back to Yafi Live. This is Talk Radio 102.3. I am Tennessee's voice of reason. Chattanooga's conservative conscience. And don't forget, if you ever miss the show live, you can always check out the podcast on the website, WGOW.com. Or if you can't listen on the radio live, we can check out us, the live stream on WGOW.com or anywhere you get that and get on iHeartRadio or any of your smart devices. All right, let's get to the headlines. Once again, we have those Tennessee bullet points. The Tennessee bullet points, the top headlines from around the volunteer state. Sponsored by the Tennessee Conservative. They're the volunteer state's largest conservative news source. My latest interview with Brandon Lewis right there on the website, Tennessee conservative news.com, the video and the podcast. Number four today, Marsha Blackburn supports effort requiring party registration to vote in Tennessee primaries. So U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn, who is running for governor, as you know, has pledged to support legislation requiring Tennessee voters to register with the political party to participate in that party's primary elections. Now, this is aiming to create a closed primary system that prevents cross-party voting and interference. Now, last week on a post on X, she stated that Tennessee should close its primaries to stop diluting votes and exploiting rules, promising to work with the legislature if elected. Now, this follows the failure of similar bills this year, which would have required party affiliation for primary voting and barred unaffiliated voters from partisan primaries while still allowing general election participation. Now, the measures stalled in committees because basically some Republicans like it the way it is. Under current law, voters must be bona fide party members or declare allegiance at the polls, and supporters like State Representative Jason Zachary expressed optimism that Blackburn's backing could help pass such reforms next year. Number three today, and we might need to talk more about this, it's been kind of a crazy local issue, but a local Chattanooga church is backing Monty Fritz for Tennessee governor. So Calvary Chapel over there off Broad Street is backing Republican State Representative Monty Fritz and his campaign for Tennessee Governor by promoting him during services and distributing pre-filed sample ballots. Actions that some tax law experts, they say likely violates the Federal Johnson Amendment prohibiting such organizations from endorsing political candidates. But as I've said before, they're never going to go after this church. over that because then there are a lot of other churches they would have to do the same thing for. And a lot of those other churches, they're minority churches. And these officials do not want to start doing that. So I don't think that's going to go anywhere. It's also a First Amendment issue. Now, Monty Fritz said he appreciates it. He said, I think our churches need to get engaged. I think that we so mischaracterized that separation of church and state. Many people have it backwards today, is what Fritz said.
I think the church in our founding was encouraged to have input into the people who are in our politics. So many people disagree with that, though. I'm pretty torn on it, honestly. I think there's a line there. Number two, we were talking about Marsha Blackburn earlier. Well, there's a new poll out that shows that, yes, once again, Senator Marsha Blackburn leads the Republican Tennessee gubernatorial primary by 17 points. Now, it's not as much as she had been leading in some other polls, but a new internal poll released to the Tennessee star shows U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn leading the 2026 Republican primary for Tennessee governor with 42% support. Now, she is still ahead of U.S. Representative John Rose at 25%. And State Representative Monty Fritz at 22%. So Monty Fritz within three points of John Rose in this poll, which is interesting. Although some people believe that if he wasn't in the race, then John Rose could possibly win or have a better chance of winning. Not sure about that. Now, 11% are still undecided. This was a survey of 800 likely Republican primary voters. Also found 69% approve of Blackburn Senate performance. Though her lead has narrowed by about nine points in mid-July poll that had her about 51%. I wonder how much of that has to do with some of the ads that she put out there. But also just, you know, there's an anti-establishment push and people think Marsha Blackburn is part of the establishment. On number one, big tech and state lawmakers are pushing back against unexpected information war against, yes, data centers. So big tech firms, state lawmakers, and advocates are countering what they call an information war of misinformation and fear-driven opposition of data centers, which are increasingly resisted over concerns about water and electricity used despite what could be economic benefits and the role in the U.S.-China AI race. Now, speakers at an ALEC meeting, including economist Stephen Moore and net choices, Steve Del Chad Bianco, argue that data centers are essential nerve centers for technological leadership, often consume less water than agriculture or golf courses, which is kind of interesting. It can help stabilize or lower electricity rates by covering infrastructure costs and generate substantial tax revenue and construction jobs. Now, the Trump administration has accelerated permitting, converted federal sites for AI facilities, and promoted what he called a ratepayer protection pledge, which was joined by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee. Now, under that pledge, it would require tech companies to fund their own power needs. Now, local pushback, though, has persisted. We've talked about it on the show, even in Hamilton County, where they put on a temporary moratorium on them. including Tennessee moratoriums and bans in counties like Davidson, Knox, and others. Fueled partly by noise concerns, they're worried about it taking too much water. They're saying it's not enough transparency and when they're built secrecy issues. Critics claim foreign actors amplify AI anxiety online, though, and proponents stress transparency and urgency to expand capacity for America's leadership.
I do think a lot of it is AI anxiety, and frankly, yes, a lot of it is propaganda coming from overseas because, of course, China and Russia do not want us a leading on the AI front. I mean, it's pretty obvious. The common sense thing, though, is not to do a national ban or a state ban, but you can have local communities to make these decisions. Pretty much what's going to happen here. This brought to you by the Tennessee Conservative. They have a lot on the new data center stuff. On their website, TennesseeconservativeNews.com. And if you subscribe for free, free to subscribe, you can get it in her email inbox every day. So go to Tennesseeconservativenews.com. Tell me, AFE, sent you. The U.S. Soccer Podcast. I'm your host, Megan Klingeberg. And after interviewing so many dudes during this Men's World Cup, I'm so happy to be back with my U.S. women's national team players. I know the U.S. men's national team has changed how I think about myself, how I think about being an American, how I think about being on a team. It's one year out from that World Cup, and we're going to talk about the brightest prospects in U.S. soccer. You ready? I'm ready. Let's do it. The U.S. Soccer podcast, presented by Henko. Follow and listen on your favorite. platform.