Politics
Tennessee Gov. Lee signs bill allowing concealed carry for public schoolteachers
Tennessee teachers and staff will be allowed to carry concealed handguns on public school grounds under legislation signed into law by Gov. Bill Lee on Friday.
Lee, a Republican, had announced his support for the proposal just the day before while flanked by top Republican legislative leaders who had helped shepherd the bill through the GOP-dominant General Assembly.
“What’s important is that we give districts tools and the option to use a tool that will keep their children safe,” Lee told reporters.
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As the idea of arming teachers began to gain support inside the General Assembly, gun control advocates and families began swarming to the Capitol to show their opposition. During the final vote, protesters chanted “Blood on your hands” and many members of the public who oppose the bill harangued Republican lawmakers after the vote, leading House Speaker Cameron Sexton to order the galleries cleared.
FILE – Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee responds to questions during a news conference Tuesday, April 11, 2023, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV, File)
According to the statute, which becomes effective immediately, parents and other teachers will be barred from knowing who is armed at their schools.
A principal, school district and law enforcement agency would have to agree to let staff carry guns, and then workers who want to carry a handgun would need to have a handgun carry permit and written authorization from the school’s principal and local law enforcement. They would also need to clear a background check and undergo 40 hours of handgun training. They couldn’t carry guns at school events at stadiums, gymnasiums or auditoriums.
The legislation is the biggest expansion of gun access in the state since last year’s deadly shooting at a private elementary school in Nashville where shooter indiscriminately opened fire and killed three children and three adults before being killed by police.
Lee initially asked lawmakers to keep guns away from people deemed a danger to themselves or others in response to the shooting, the Republican supermajority ignored that request.
Many of the Covenant families had met with Lee and lawmakers hoping to persuade them to drop the idea of arming teachers. In the final days of the legislative session, Covenant families said they had collected nearly 4,300 signatures from Tennesseans against having public school staffers carry weapons on school grounds.
“There are folks across the state who disagree on the way forward, but we all agree that we should keep our kids safe,” Lee said Thursday.
It’s unclear if any school districts would take advantage if the bill becomes law. For example, a Metro Nashville Public Schools spokesperson, Sean Braisted, said the district believes “it is best and safest for only approved active-duty law enforcement to carry weapons on campus.”
Politics
Stacey Abrams hit with subpoena in alleged campaign finance violations saga: ‘No one is above the law’
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FIRST ON FOX: The Georgia Senate is ramping up its investigation into alleged campaign finance violations tied to Stacey Abrams’ voter outreach group, with a top lawmaker vowing to “follow the facts wherever they lead” as subpoenas have been issued to Abrams and other key figures.
The Senate Special Committee on Investigations announced Monday that Abrams, along with New Georgia Project leaders Lauren Groh-Wargo and Nsé Ufot, must appear before lawmakers at the State Capitol at 10 a.m. on Friday.
“This committee has a responsibility to follow the facts wherever they lead,” said Republican state Sen. Greg Dolezal, the committee’s vice chairman. “Georgia law requires transparency and accountability in our elections.”
The subpoenas stem from findings by the Georgia State Ethics Commission that the New Georgia Project and its affiliated Action Fund violated campaign finance laws during the 2018 election cycle.
STACEY ABRAMS-FOUNDED VOTER ACTIVIST GROUP HIT WITH MASS LAYOFFS AFTER RECORD-BREAKING ETHICS FINE
Stacey Abrams, Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia, speaks to reporters at Georgia State University in Atlanta on Nov. 7, 2022. (Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)
The groups admitted to 16 violations earlier this year and agreed to pay a $300,000 fine, the largest campaign finance penalty in Georgia history.
New Georgia Project shut down and dissolved in 2025 following mounting financial and legal troubles.
The Republican lawmakers explain in the press release that the goal of the probe is to figure out who was involved in the decision-making behind the violations, along with specifics on how the funds were managed and who was aware of the activity.
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“The people of Georgia deserve to know who was involved, what decisions were made and how millions of dollars flowed through organizations that admitted to violating our campaign finance laws,” Dolezal said.
Georgia’s Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones said in the release, “No one is above the law in Georgia.”
He added: “When organizations secretly spend millions to influence elections while evading disclosure requirements, it undermines confidence in our democratic process. The Senate will continue pursuing the truth and ensuring accountability, regardless of political party or influence.”
Former Georgia House Rep. Stacey Abrams attends the Fort Valley GOTV Community Fish Fry at the Agricultural Technology Conference Center in Fort Valley, Georgia, on Oct. 13, 2024. (Julia Beverly/Getty Images)
The lawmakers say that additional hearings and witness testimony are expected in the coming weeks.
“Today, the Georgia State Senate delivered a subpoena for me to testify in a partisan, performative hearing designed to intimidate and disarm voting rights advocates across Georgia and the nation,” Abrams wrote in a response to the subpoena posted on X. “Despite the hollow, cynical intent, I will indeed do so on a mutually agreeable date.”
“It is not lost on me that I am being summoned days after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted protections for minority voting power and after I testified against the unconscionable voter suppression process unfolding across several Southern states.”
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Abrams, the two-time Democratic gubernatorial nominee in battleground Georgia, ruled out another run for governor earlier this year, saying that instead she’ll focus on her work fighting what she warns is the nation’s move toward authoritarianism under President Trump.
Abrams, a former Democratic Party leader in the Georgia state legislature and a nationally known voting-rights advocate, narrowly lost to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in the 2018 gubernatorial election. She lost her 2022 rematch with Kemp by nearly eight points.
Fox News Digital’s Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report
Politics
Oversight chair seeks information from OpenAI’s Sam Altman about potential financial conflicts
WASHINGTON — The chair of the House Oversight Committee has sent a letter to OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman requesting information about potential conflicts of interest between Altman’s personal investments and his operation of the company.
The letter, sent Friday, comes amid a high-stakes legal battle currently playing out in an Oakland federal courtroom between onetime partners Altman and Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who in 2015 co-founded the AI company best known for creating ChatGPT.
The company was first established solely as a nonprofit corporation and the letter sent to Altman by Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the chair of the Oversight committee, indicates that the committee is “investigating potential conflicts of interest involving capital from nonprofit corporations invested in startups and other for-profit companies.”
Comer has requested by May 22 a briefing from the company official responsible for oversight of potential conflicts involving company officers and directors, including Altman, as well as all documents related to conflict of interest policies and guidance for those executives.
While OpenAI was created as a nonprofit designed to responsibly harness the power of the emerging artificial intelligence technology, the company created a for-profit subsidiary in 2019 and three years later released ChatGPT, which jumpstarted widespread adoption of the technology.
Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, left OpenAI’s board in 2018, one year before the creation of the for-profit arm. He is arguing that Altman and another co-founder, Greg Brockman, betrayed the original mission of the nonprofit organization, driven by their desire to “cash in” on the technology.
Musk added Microsoft, a significant investor in OpenAI, to the lawsuit in 2024. OpenAI is rumored to be gearing up to go public later this year or early next, and was recently valued at $852 billion.
Musk has said that he invested $38 million in the OpenAI nonprofit, but he does not stand to benefit from a potential OpenAI public offering.
He created a rival company, xAI, in 2023 that was later folded into his company SpaceX.
In the lawsuit, Musk is seeking $150 billion in damages, for Altman to be removed from the company and for the company to be fully returned to its nonprofit status.
Musk’s complaint also alleges that Altman engaged in self-dealing by directing OpenAI to pursue deals with companies in which he also held a personal stake, including nuclear fusion power company Helion.
Comer’s letter cites reporting that Altman’s pursuit of a Helion deal, which is still ongoing, would come at a lofty valuation of the power-company, boosting the company’s worth and the value of Altman’s investment.
Altman was briefly forced to step down from leadership of OpenAI in 2023 in part due to concerns about potential conflicts between his personal investments and his operation of the company, but was soon reinstated.
While the company’s board created an audit committee to investigate the potential conflicts of Altman and other officers, the findings were never disclosed.
Comer has requested that Altman turn over all documents and communication related to that audit committee.
Representatives for OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
President Trump revealed a new plan on Monday to bring down gas prices that have soared since he chose to start a war with Iran: He wants to suspend federal gas taxes.
“I think it’s a great idea,” Mr. Trump said in a phone call with a reporter from CBS News on Monday morning. “Yup, we’re going to take off the gas tax for a period of time, and when gas goes down, we’ll let it phase back in.” A short while later, he mused more about the plan while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office.
He did not mention that such a move would require congressional approval. Asked when or even if the administration planned to approach lawmakers on Capitol Hill about suspending the tax, a representative for the White House said simply: “We refer you to the president’s comments from earlier today.”
Even if Mr. Trump succeeded in pausing federal gas taxes, prices might come down only a smidgen: federal taxes are a little over 18 cents a gallon for gasoline and about 24 cents a gallon for diesel. Prices are up about 50 percent since the war began.
The president acknowledged in the Oval Office on Monday that the drop would be slight.
“It’s a small percentage,” he said, “but it’s, you know, it’s still money.”
Some of Mr. Trump’s foes mocked the idea as too little, too late. “Yes please do throw the peasants some more bread crumbs,” Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former representative, posted on X.
Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, said he approved of Mr. Trump’s proposal. “Families need help now,” Mr. Kelly wrote. “Let’s get it done.” (Mr. Kelly had first proposed this idea back in March.)
The administration floated a halt to the gas tax — which funds road construction and repairs across the country — on Sunday, when the energy secretary, Chris Wright, proposed it on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He said that “all measures that can be taken to lower the price of at the pump and lower the prices for Americans, this administration is in support of.”
Last month, Mr. Wright admitted that gas prices may remain elevated for months, even as the president promises they’ll plummet any day now. So far, studies have shown that the higher gas prices have hit lower-income Americans the hardest.
“As soon as this is over with Iran,” Mr. Trump said on Monday, “you’re going to see gasoline and oil drop like a rock.”
And yet, how soon is soon? He used that same meeting to shred the Iranians’ latest counterproposal as a “piece of garbage,” and said that the cease-fire was on “life support.” He insisted that Iran was in the grips of a powerful faction of “lunatics” who wanted to fight on for as long as possible.
In 2022, President Biden proposed this same idea to bring gas prices down. It never happened. Congress balked. Republicans slammed the idea as gimmicky and bad policy.
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