Conservative politicians in states such as Oklahoma, Texas and Tennessee have been questioning whether immigrants without legal residency should have the right to a public education.

Hurricane Helene has left millions without electricity, water and phone service across the Southeast in the six days since making landfall.

Rescuers are scouring the mountains of western North Carolina for anyone still unaccounted for since Hurricane Helene’s remnants caused catastrophic damage across the Southeast.

For weeks, neo-Nazis have made repeat appearances in Nashville, livestreaming antisemitic antics for shock value.

HIV-positive people who were convicted in Tennessee of sex work under a decades-old aggravated prostitution law will no longer be required to face a lifetime registration as a “violent sex offender” under a lawsuit settlement finalized this week.

Tennessee's governor has approved legislation designed to block adults from helping minors get an abortion or receive gender-affirming care without parental consent.

Tennessee will soon become the first state in the country to offer free diapers to families enrolled in the state’s Medicaid program after receiving federal approval, state officials have confirmed.

A 10-year-old boy is in grave condition in Tennessee after being swept into a storm drain in a community southeast of Nashville.

Tennessee’s GOP-controlled Statehouse has given their final approval on legislation criminalizing adults who help minors receive gender-affirming care without parental consent.

Acting U.S. Labor Secretary Julie Su says workers at southern auto plants should be free to unionize without employer or political interference, even as some southern states pass new laws meant to inhibit organized labor.

Tennessee’s Republican-dominant House has spiked legislation that would have banned local governments from paying to study or dispense money for reparations for slavery.

Some public school teachers could gain new powers to bring concealed guns into Tennessee schools.

Tennessee Republican lawmakers have passed a bill that would let some teachers and staff carry concealed handguns on public school grounds.

Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee says he thinks workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga made a mistake by voting to unionize under the United Auto Workers in a landslide election.

On the eve of a vote on union representation at Volkswagen’s Tennessee factory, Gov. Bill Lee and five other southern governors are telling workers that voting for a union will put jobs in jeopardy.

The Republican-led Tennessee Legislature has overwhelmingly voted to send Gov. Bill Lee a proposal that would ban marriage between first cousins.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has signed off on the repeal of Memphis police traffic stop reforms set in place after the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols by officers just over a year ago.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has signed off on legislation designed to protect songwriters, performers and other music industry professionals against the potential dangers of artificial intelligence.

Most Republican governors turned down federal money to provide grocery help for low-income families with school-age kids over the summer.

A proposal advancing in the Tennessee legislature would stop requiring lifetime registration as a violent sex offender for anyone convicted of engaging in sex work while living with HIV.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has unveiled new legislation designed to protect songwriters, performers and other music industry professionals against the potential dangers of artificial intelligence.

Nashville Police Chief John Drake says he’s “disturbed” over the unauthorized release of writings from the shooter who killed six people, including three children, at The Covenant School in March.

Newly released investigative files in the police shooting death of a Grammy-winning sound engineer revealed there was an armed Tennessee Bureau of Investigation officer in the home when Mark Capps began threatening his family with guns on Jan. 5.

Former Tennessee governor Don Sundquist has died after a short illness.

Gun violence prevention research has experienced a small boom in the wake of mounting shooting deaths, expanded funding and burgeoning advocacy.

Signs have returned to the Tennessee Capitol complex after a judge agreed to temporarily block a new rule advanced by House Republicans that had largely banned them.

Tennessee lawmakers are convening a special session this week that highlights the divergent response states are taking to a spate of mass shootings.

Tennessee’s GOP-dominant Legislature will soon return to the state Capitol months after a deadly school shooting.

Families connected to a Nashville school that experienced a fatal shooting earlier this year have created nonprofits to not only promote school safety and mental health resources, but also to form an action fund to push legislative policy changes.

Unrelenting bloodshed across the U.S. this year has led to the grimmest of milestones: The deadliest six months of mass killings recorded since at least 2006.

Tennessee’s top legal chief says that Vanderbilt University Medical Center turning over medical records for transgender patients is part of a “run-of-the-mill fraud investigation.”.

Questions remain over how a law designed to limit drag shows in Tennessee will be enforced after a federal judge declared it unconstitutional while saying the decision only applied to the state’s most populated county.

A federal judge says Tennessee’s first-in-the-nation law designed to place strict limits on drag shows is unconstitutional.

Documents obtained by The Associated Press show Tennessee Gov_ Bill Lee’s administration accused the National Rifle Association of wanting to use involuntary commitment laws “to round up mentally ill people and deprive them of other liberties."

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.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has signed off on additional protections for gun and ammunition dealers, manufacturers and sellers against lawsuits within a bill that lawmakers passed after a deadly school shooting.

Democratic Minnesota senators held firm despite only a one-vote majority to pass gun control legislation strongly supported by the governor.

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.

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 from 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.

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 Tennessee has not complied with its own lethal injection process ever since that protocol 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.

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.

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.

Kentucky's governor says tornadoes may have killed 70 people in the state and the death toll may exceed 100.

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.

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.

FBI and ATF agents investigate a home Saturday, Dec. 26, 2020, in Nashville, Tenn. An explosion that shook the largely deserted streets of downtown Nashville early Christmas morning shattered windows, damaged buildings, and wounded three people. 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.