BILL LEE

Bill Lee, a well-regarded jazz musician who accompanied such artists as Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel and Harry Belafonte and scored four of his son Spike’s early films, has died.

Families in Uvalde, Texas, are digging in for a new test of legal protections for the gun industry as they mark one year since the Robb Elementary School shooting.

There have been a few cracks in the predictable pattern of Republican-controlled states loosening gun laws while Democratic states tighten them in recent weeks.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee says a special lawmaking session dedicated to possible changes to the state’s gun laws in the wake of a deadly school shooting last month would likely have to take place after July 4.

Lizzo filled her stage with drag queens in a concert Friday night in Knoxville, Tennessee, in a glittery protest against the state’s legislation against public drag performances.

Chances are shrinking fast for a key gun-control proposal to make it out of the Tennessee Legislature.

In the wake of a deadly school shooting last month, Republican lawmakers in Tennessee are sending to Republican Gov. Bill Lee a proposal that further protects gun and ammunition dealers, manufacturers and sellers against lawsuits.

Tennessee Rep. Justin Pearson never guessed he’d be expelled for leading a gun control protest on the House floor after a school shooting left three children and three adults dead.

In the days after a bank employee used an assault-style rifle to kill five coworkers, Republicans running for governor this year in Kentucky have been deflecting questions about gun legislation.

Two weeks after one of his wife’s closest friends was killed in a Nashville school shooting, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee on Tuesday called for legislation that would keep firearms away from people who could harm themselves or others.

As students across Nashville were walking out of class to protest gun violence following a school shooting last week, police released new information into the investigation.

Residents across a wide swath of the U.S. are racing to assess the destruction from fierce storms that spawned possibly dozens of tornadoes from the South and the Midwest into the Northeast.

Storms that dropped possibly dozens of tornadoes killed at least 26 people in small towns and big cities across the South and Midwest.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has signed a law allowing private schools to contract with law enforcement so they can hire school resource officers.

Hundreds of people have gathered at a candlelight vigil to mourn the three children and three adults slain in a school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee.

A federal judge quietly cleared the way to drop the minimum age to 18 for Tennesseans to carry handguns in public without a permit the same day Nashville residents were reeling from a fatal grade school shooting that left six dead, including three children.

Two years after Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee led the charge to allow residents 21 and older to carry handguns in public without a permit, younger adults could soon have the same privilege.

Southern states are more frequently turning to pay-to-use express lanes as a way to address highway congestion without raising taxes.

Tennessee’s Republican governor has signed legislation that bans drag shows from taking place in public or in front of children.

Republican Gov. Bill Lee says it would be “ridiculous” to conflate a recently surfaced yearbook photo of him wearing women’s clothing in high school to drag show performances currently under attack in Tennessee and other GOP-led states.

Transgender youth in Tennessee would be banned from receiving gender-affirming care under legislation currently headed to Republican Gov. Bill Lee’s desk.

The Tennessee National Guard says one of their Black Hawk helicopters crashed in Alabama, killing two crew members.

A top Tennessee Republican lawmaker says the state should stop accepting the nearly $1.8 billion of federal K-12 education dollars that help provide support for low-income students, English learners and students with disabilities.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has kicked off his second term, promising to focus over the next four years on improving aging transportation systems, advocating for better conservation efforts and protecting the state’s most vulnerable children.

Documents show that top Tennessee health officials attempted to oust Planned Parenthood from a program designed to prevent and treat HIV before deciding to forgo federal funding for it.

The Tennessee Department of Correction has fired its top attorney and another employee following a scathing independent report on failures within the state’s lethal injection system.

In-N-Out Burger plans to open a corporate office in Tennessee and restaurants in the Nashville area by 2026.

A blistering independent report on Tennessee’s lethal injection system has turned up years of communications showing a state determined to push forward with executing death row inmates despite major issues.

A newly released report has found that Tennessee has not complied with its own lethal injection protocol ever since it was revised in 2018.

An annual report on capital punishment says public support and use of the death penalty continued a more than two-decade decline in the U.S. in 2022.

New Vanderbilt University polling has found that most registered voters in Tennessee want exceptions for rape or incest in the state’s sweeping abortion ban.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee is considering introducing express toll lanes on highways and tripling a fee for electric car owners as he looks for ways to pay for tens of billions of dollars in roadway projects.

Jason Martin has spent more than two years trying to get Gov. Bill Lee’s attention in Tennessee.

Officials at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have announced that they are pausing gender affirming surgeries for minors in order to review their practices.

Tennessee state staffers watched intently this summer while local school officials voted down a contentious Hillsdale College-linked charter school.

The Savannah Bananas, who became a national sensation with their irreverent style of baseball, are leaving the Coastal Plain League to focus full attention on their professional barnstorming team.

Former major leaguer Bill Lee had stopped breathing after collapsing in the bullpen during an exhibition game this weekend, but paramedics and two shocks with a defibrillator helped resuscitate the 75-year-old pitcher.

A Nashville doctor critical of Republican Gov. Bill Lee's hands-off approach to the COVID-19 pandemic has won the Democratic nomination for governor.

Far-right candidate Andy Ogles has won Tennessee’s crowded Republican primary for an open congressional seat in Nashville.

After riding high on a promise to bring 50 charter schools to Tennessee, the relationship between the president of Michigan's Hillsdale College and Gov. Bill Lee has cooled over the past several months.

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris says Indiana’s proposed abortion ban reflects a health care crisis in the United States.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has ordered an independent investigation of the state's lethal injections and paused all executions through the end of the year.

New Yorkers under age 21 will be prohibited from buying semiautomatic rifles under a new law signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Newly released records show at two least two people connected to a planned Tennessee execution that was abruptly put on hold April 21 knew the night before that the lethal injection drugs the state planned to use hadn’t undergone certain required testing.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee is pausing executions for the rest of the year after the state failed to ensure that its lethal injection drugs were properly tested.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee is declining to provide any new information surrounding why they had to call off the state’s first execution since the pandemic began.

Tennessee is set to execute its first inmate since the start of the pandemic.

Tennessee’s governor has called off what was to have been the state’s first execution since the start of the pandemic.

Election security experts for years have urged states to replace outdated voting machines.

Tennessee Republicans are advancing yet another strict anti-abortion measure strategically written to sidestep federal court challenges.

A lease agreement says Ford Motor Co. and a South Korean company would have to create more than 5,000 full-time jobs at a planned electric pickup truck factory and battery manufacturing plant in Tennessee or pay back at least part of a $500 million state grant for the project.

Gov. Bill Lee says he supports placing more scrutiny over school libraries so that students consume “age appropriate” content.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee is defending a new law assigning sprawling limits on COVID-19 restrictions, despite his office’s warning that it would violate federal disability law.

Emails obtained by The Associated Press show that Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s office warned top legislative staffers that a bill limiting public health measures during the COVID pandemic would violate federal law.

“Spike” is a new photograph book to be published November 17.

When Ford revealed plans to ramp up its commitment to the electric vehicle sector, the automaker chose two states where Republican leaders have vilified the push for green energy and defended fossil fuels.

A sheriff in Tennessee says at least 22 people are dead any many are missing after record-setting rain caused devastating flooding that swept away homes.

Some Republican governors are using federal pandemic assistance to promote school choice programs, including charter schools and vouchers for private schools.

Tennessee is being sued over a law that puts public schools and their districts at risk of legal consequences if they let transgender students or employees use multi-person bathrooms or locker rooms that do not reflect their gender at birth.

Despite having some of the lowest COVID-19 vaccination rates in the country, Tennessee isn’t planning to offer any incentives for people to get the shot.

Emails show that Tennessee’s health officials will not acknowledge that August is National Immunization Awareness Month per an order from the state’s health commissioner.

Conservative lawmakers nationwide have introduced a flurry of anti-LGBTQ bills this year.

Authorities say a student at a Tennessee high school fired at officers and was killed by police.

Bill Lee delivers his State of the State Address in War Memorial Auditorium, Monday, Feb. 8, 2021, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said Wednesday that transgender girls should be banned from playing on middle and high school sports teams or they will “destroy women's sports.”“I do believe that transgenders participating in women’s sports will destroy women’s sports,” Lee, who is up for reelection next year, told reporters. It's unclear how many transgender students are participating in public school sports in Tennessee. “I will say, that particular executive order is a tremendous overreach of the federal government into the states,” Lee said Wednesday. Currently, a similar 2020 Idaho law has been blocked by a federal judge as a lawsuit makes it way in court.

The Republican governor said Saturday, Dec. 19, 2020, that he has tested negative for the virus but will be quarantined at the Governors Residence out of an abundance of caution. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)NASHVILLE, Tenn. – As their state faced one of its toughest months of the pandemic, Tennesseans watched Gov. It was late December, and the state’s hospitals were bursting at the seams with virus patients. The governor is quick to point out the state’s swift COVID-19 vaccine rollout, praising Tennessee for being among the country’s leaders in distributing the immunizations. If that isn’t important to you, Governor Lee, then what is?”___Associated Press writers Jonathan Mattise and Travis Loller contributed to this report.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Federal agents converged Saturday on the home of a possible person of interest in the explosion that rocked downtown Nashville as investigators scoured hundreds of tips and leads in the blast that damaged dozens of buildings on Christmas morning. Asked whether the AT&T building could have been a possible target, Korneski said, “We’re looking at every possible motive that could be involved." Mayor John Cooper has enforced a curfew in the downtown area until Sunday via executive order to limit public access to the area. “We have two portable cell sites operating in downtown Nashville with numerous additional portable sites being deployed in the Nashville area and in the region.”Ray Neville, president of technology at T-Mobile, said on Twitter that service disruptions affected Louisville, Nashville, Knoxville, Birmingham and Atlanta. The outages had even briefly grounded flights at the Nashville International Airport, but service was continuing normally as of Saturday.

All Australian states have imposed restrictions on travelers from Sydney and parts of New South Wales because the coronavirus risk. The state on Sunday reported 1,536 new COVID-19 cases and 46 more deaths. ___TOPEKA, Kan. — A FedEx executive says a higher-than-normal volume of Christmas-season package deliveries won’t interfere with the company’s effort to ship coronavirus vaccine doses. The first wave of coronavirus infections in New York “came from Europe and we did nothing,” the Democratic governor said. ___WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s surgeon general is defending Trump’s not getting a coronavirus vaccine, saying there are medical reasons for it.

And we must act as though anyone we are around may be infected.”The cases reported Saturday trailed only the record 10,322 cases reported Tuesday. ___ROME — Italy had more than 21,000 daily coronavirus cases and added 662 deaths in the last 24 hours. There were 14 more deaths reported Saturday, bringing the total to 1,874 confirmed deaths. Russia’s 2.4 million confirmed cases is the fourth-largest caseload in the world behind the United States, India and Brazil. ___NEW DELHI — India has registered 36,652 confirmed coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours.

Posters on precautions against the coronavirus are displayed at a subway station in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2020. The signs on posters read "Precautions against the coronavirus and please wear a mask." (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)In a story Nov. 25, 2020, about a new U.S. estimate of missed coronavirus infections, The Associated Press erroneously reported an earlier calculation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Previously, the CDC estimated nine of every 10 cases were being missed, not one of every 10.

(AP Photo/Oded Balilty)NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee’s governor says that once coronavirus vaccines become available, they will be optional in the state’s K-12 public schools. It’s just going nowhere,” Dr. Thomas Dobbs, Mississippi’s state health officer, said Monday during a meeting with members of the Mississippi Senate. State health officials said fatality updates on Tuesday are typically higher because of lag in reporting from the weekends. That includes more than 1,000 on intensive care units and more than 570 on ventilators, according to state Health Department data. —-MADRID — Spain is reporting a new daily record of 537 coronavirus deaths since the resurgence of the pandemic.

Bill Lee enacted the so-called “reason bans” earlier this year as part of a sweeping anti-abortion measure. However, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals' decision will allow the state to enforce the reason bans while abortion rights groups continue their court battle against that law. The plaintiffs, which include Tennessee abortion providers being represented by reproductive rights groups, had argued the ban was improperly vague, but the court disagreed. Currently, more than a dozen states have similar reason bans in place. The rarity of the condition has prompted abortion rights groups to paint the Down syndrome bans as part of yet another thinly veiled effort by lawmakers to continue chipping away at a patient's right to an abortion.

(AP Photo/Andy Wong)BEIJING — Officials in the northwestern China region of Xinjiang say they believe they have contained the country’s latest coronavirus outbreak. It was the second consecutive day in which newly confirmed cases emerged entirely among such people. — Belgium and Czech Republic top Europe’s highest number of coronavirus cases per 100,000 citizens, ahead of hotbeds France and Spain. ___MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota health officials are warning against traditional Halloween festivities amid the recent rise in coronavirus cases statewide. Italy has nearly 590,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and nearly 38,000 deaths, the second highest in Europe after Britain.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The White House quietly told Tennessee early this week that “a statewide mask mandate must be implemented" to curb its growing spread of COVID-19, strong instructions that the White House and governor did not discuss publicly before the report emerged in a records request. In a statement late Friday, the governor's office said the White House report had not altered his thinking. Previous White House reports dating back to the summer have included similar recommendations, so the inclusion here is not novel." Earlier in the week, the governor and his health commissioner downplayed the importance of releasing those White House “red zone” reports. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

We can’t take another hit.”___MIAMI - Florida has reported a slight uptick in daily confirmed COVID-19 cases, adding 3,449 to its total caseload on Friday. There were 3,861 new coronavirus cases reported in Wisconsin on Friday, breaking the previous record set just a day earlier of 3,747. The report, released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, looks at coronavirus-associated deaths reported between May 1 and August 31. The deaths reported Friday include 10 women and eight men, all in their 60s or older. With 222 deaths reported in the last 24 hours, Spain’s total has reached 33,775.

(AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)ATLANTA New guidance from the President Donald Trump's administration that declares teachers to be critical infrastructure workers could give the green light to exempting teachers from quarantine requirements after being exposed to COVID-19 and instead send them back into the classroom. South Carolina health officials also describe teachers as critical infrastructure workers, although it's unclear if any district there is asking teachers to return before 14 days. Among the first districts to name teachers as critical infrastructure workers was eastern Tennessees Greene County, where the school board gave the designation to teachers July 13. At least five other school districts in Tennessee have given the designation to their teachers, seeking to exempt them from quarantine orders. Floyd County said Thursday it would reverse its designation of teachers as critical infrastructure workers.

When we have people dying in this state as a result of this virus, we should be taking personal responsibility for this, the Republican governor said. Elevating a message of personal responsibility over statewide crackdowns on businesses and requirements for people in public spaces has been a consistent approach among certain governors during the coronavirus crisis. She has consistently invoked personal responsibility as a key strategy in combating the virus. The personal responsibility ethos has been GOP orthodoxy for decades, often used to justify smaller government and promote individualism. In the current climate, personal responsibility is being used to encourage wearing masks, social distancing and avoiding large crowds without making those steps mandatory.

Ken Ishii/Getty ImagesFRANKLIN, Tenn. - Mitsubishi Motors along with Tennessee Governor Bill Lee and the state's Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner Bob Rolfe announced that Mitsubishi is planning to move its U.S. headquarters to Franklin, Tennessee from Cypress, CA. Mitsubishi Motors will invest $18.25 million to move U.S. headquarters to Williamson County. Since 1988, Mitsubishi Motors North America has been rooted in California. Mitsubishi says the move is part of an ongoing plan to reinvent every aspect of Mitsubishi Motors in the U.S., from corporate leadership to dealer partners to every touchpoint in a customer's relationship. The choice of Franklin brings Mitsubishi Motors closer to its sister company, Nissan, which has its North American headquarters in Williamson County.