The Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security has awarded 19 grants statewide this year to improve security at religious institutions, including four recent grants for Jewish centers in Knoxville, WBIR reports. The funds are part of a $750,000 budget appropriation for the Houses of Worship Security Grant Program. Applicants are required to demonstrate the threat and vulnerability to their organization as well as how funding would address gaps and deficiencies in current programs and capabilities. The move comes as a number of governors are calling on Congress to increase funding for security at places of worship, the Associated Press reports. The governors say the funding is needed to address growing concerns about the safety of Jewish and Muslim communities amidst the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

The U.S. House of Representatives elected Rep. Mike Johnson, a Republican of Louisiana, as its new speaker today after multiple attempts over the past several weeks, the New York Times reports. Among the representatives vying for the top job earlier this week were Reps. Chuck Fleischmann and Mark Green. Fleischmann, who represents Tennessee’s Third Congressional District, dropped out after the first round of voting while Green, who represents the Seventh District, dropped out after the second. WKRN has that story.

Advocates for an independent immigration court testified before a U.S. Senate Judiciary panel on Wednesday, saying such an addition would help ease the backlog of pending cases. Immigration courts are currently an arm of the Justice Department, as governed by each presidential administration's immigration policy. The Tennessee Lookout reports that as of August, there is a backlog of more than 2.6 million pending immigration cases, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, known as TRAC, a research center at Syracuse University. TRAC also found a 19% increase for the month of August in new immigration court cases, to 180,000 just for that month.

A group of Democratic U.S. senators is asking the Senate Appropriations Committee to approve increased funding for federal public defenders in fiscal year 2024. The group of 23 lawmakers say $1.52 billion is needed to avoid significant job cuts among the ranks of public defenders. Bills that have advanced through congressional committees so far call for providing and $1.38 billion or $1.41 billion. Read the group's letter or more about the issue from Reuters.

President Joe Biden has nominated Memphis City Council member Patrice Robinson for a seat on the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) board, the Commercial Appeal reports. Robinson has served on the council since 2016, but is term limited from running again. Prior to joining the council, she served for 13 years on the Memphis-Shelby County School Board. The nomination requires confirmation by the U.S. Senate.

Eric Munchel, the Nashville man known as "zip-tie guy," has been sentenced to nearly five years in prison for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol — one of the longest sentences imposed for activities that day, the Tennessean reports. Munchel was sentenced to 57 months of incarceration and three years of supervised release. His mother, Lisa Eisenhart, received 30 months of incarceration with three years of supervised release. Both also were ordered to pay $2,000 in restitution. Munchel is one of 26 Tennesseans charged or sentenced. Read about the other cases here.

The American Bar Association (ABA) filed an amicus brief last week with the U.S. Supreme Court, urging the court to uphold protections granted by Congress to administrative law judges (ALJs). In its next term, the court has agreed to hear a case challenging whether Congress violated Article II of the U.S. Constitution by limiting removal of ALJs. In May 2022, a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that for-cause removal protections violate the constitution’s requirement that the president ensure the laws be faithfully executed. The ABA argues that ALJs need “decisional independence … to maintain public confidence in their decisions.” Read more about the case from the ABA.

U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Columbia, has once again drawn the ire of federal election officials, who have sent him two more warning letters, Tennessee Lookout reports. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is now threatening to audit and potentially fine Ogles’ campaign account for possible improper reporting and illegal contributions, including an alleged contribution exceeding allowed limits and alleged illegal corporate donations. Ogles is a first-year congressman who won the newly-drawn Tennessee 5th Congressional District previously held by Jim Cooper.

Secretary of State Tre Hargett has named Bledsoe County native and Chattanooga resident Christina Temple as the department’s new chief of staff. Temple will serve as a senior adviser to Hargett and handle legislative affairs. Additionally, Temple will play a critical role in strengthening the department’s relationships within state government. Temple served as the New Hampshire state director for the Republication National Committee during the 2022 election cycle. Before that, she worked as coordinator on the delegates and party organization team on former President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign. As a political consultant at Hill City Strategies, Temple has worked on various political campaigns.

Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., today asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate YouTube into possible violations of tracking and targeting children on its channels, reports The Hill. The bipartisan bill followed the release of a report from Adalytics, an ad quality and transparency platform, that YouTube set “long-lasting cookies” that allowed ad targeting and tracking on browsers of YouTube videos labeled for children. The report found that brand websites were harvesting and sharing metadata from viewers with data brokers.