News & Views - Commentary | FACT In our blog, read about the political and cultural issues affecting Tennesseans written from a conservative perspective. Commentaries are typically written by David Fowler, an attorney who served in the Tennessee state Senate for 12 years before joining FACT as President. David Fowler https://fluxconsole.com/files/image/96845.png https://fluxconsole.com/files/item/441/56004/apple-touch-icon.png 2026-04-10T04:01:14-05:00 https://www.factennessee.org/feed FeedWriter 2026-03-17T04:01:14-05:00 2026-03-17T04:01:14-05:00 Americans Don’t Want Unlimited Abortion… Even if the Abortion Lobby Tries to Hide It skewed to favor liberal ideology – from clinical trials, to scientific studies, to public opinion polls. The pro-life movement has been pushing back against this undeniable bias for years, proving “pro-abortion” research wrong time and time again. This week, the Pew Research Center released its 2026 American Trends Panel and attempted to hide how Americans truly feel about abortion.
 
The study of more than 8,500 US adults highlighted that 60% of Americans “continue to say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.” The study included a graphic illustrating how easy or difficult most Americans believe it would be to obtain an abortion in their area, and asked if they thought it should be easier or harder than it currently is.
 
Pew used those numbers to argue that the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade caused the public to turn against the pro-life movement, stating that “In recent years, the public has become more likely to say obtaining an abortion in their area would be difficult. [...] Restrictiveness of state law on abortion is associated with perceptions of how easy or difficult the procedure is to obtain.”
 
Pew chose to highlight those figures and bury a later finding that “approximately four in 10 U.S. adults, 39 percent, agree that ‘human life begins at conception, so an embryo is a person with rights.” This cherry-picking of data is just another example of Big Abortion propaganda.
 
The Federalist took a deeper look at the numbers:
 
Absent from Pew’s analysis is the fact that 76 percent of Americans believe there should be some limits on abortion.
 
In fact, Pew’s latest research recorded the lowest support, 23 percent, for the radical unlimited abortion-for-all touted by Democrats since 2019. That’s down six percentage points from the 29 percent recorded shortly after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision.
 
While Pew’s questions didn’t bother to delve into the specifics of the limits favored by respondents, previous polling suggests most Americans support banning abortion beyond 14 weeks gestation.
 
Another underemphasized aspect of the data was the fact that Americans’ desire for chemical abortion to be outlawed is up six percentage points, from 20 to 26 percent, since 2024 — a jump in opposition that Pew suggested had only “grown modestly.”
 
As Pew notes, the increase in the share of Republican respondents who want to make pill-induced abortion illegal is up to 43 percent compared to the 32 percent recorded in 2024. The percentage of Democrat respondents who think chemical abortion should be prohibited is also up, climbing to 10 percent from the eight percent reported in 2024.
 
Overall, 18 percent of Americans are unsure of where they stand on mifepristone abortions. Previous polling suggests that six in 10 Americans say the abortion drug regimen responsible for the majority of the nation’s abortions is “unsafe” or were unsure of its safety. Majorities surveyed by McLaughlin and Associates in 2025 also agreed that “chemical abortions are far more dangerous than advertised” and that abortion drugs can be maliciously used “by sexual abusers to cover up rape, exploitation and sex-trafficking.”
 
This Pew study is another classic example of  “don’t believe everything you read in the news.”
 
Americans are far more hesitant about abortion than Planned Parenthood and other abortion giants would like us to believe. The goal of these studies is to normalize radical views and convince Americans on the fence about abortion that they should adopt the “majority opinion.” That’s why we call studies like this propaganda – which is defined simply as“information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a particular cause, doctrine, or point of view.”
 
We are living in an age of disinformation. It is more and more difficult to tell what is real and what is fake – especially with the rapid evolution of AI. We encourage you to do your own research, find reliable sources of information, and cultivate a spirit of discernment when interpreting information online.
 
“But test everything; hold fast what is good.” – 1 Thessalonians 5:21
 
 
 
 ]]> https://www.factennessee.org/news-views/commentary/2026/americans-dont-want-unlimited-abortion-even-if-the-abortion-lobby-tries-to-hide-it FACT info@factn.org 2026-03-12T04:01:14-05:00 2026-03-12T04:01:14-05:00 Congress Advances Package to Protect Children Online described as “the most serious, comprehensive piece of legislation to address online safety to date,” and incorporates provisions from the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), the SCREEN Act, the Safe Messaging for Kids Act, the SPY Kids Act, the Safer GAMING Act, and the SAFE BOTs Act.
 
Collectively, the omnibus bill “addresses a range of online dangers facing children, including shielding minors from obscene content, strengthening parental controls, barring minors from using self-deleting messaging features, prohibiting targeted market research on children, and establishing safeguards for online gaming platforms.”
 
This effort is both necessary and long overdue.
 
In February, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti joined a bipartisan coalition of 40 attorneys general urging Congress to pass KOSA, which would require social media platforms to take stronger steps to protect minors online by reducing harmful and addictive features and giving parents more oversight.
 
“We recognize the serious and growing threats that social media platforms pose to minors. Many social media platforms deliberately target minors, fueling a nationwide youth mental health crisis,” the letter stated. “These platforms are intentionally designed to be addictive, particularly for underaged users, and generate substantial profits by monetizing minors’ personal data through targeted advertising. These companies fail to adequately disclose the addictive nature of their products or the well-documented harms associated with excessive social media use. Increasing evidence demonstrates that these companies are aware of the adverse mental health consequences imposed on underage users, yet they have chosen to persist in these practices. Accordingly, many of our Offices have initiated investigations and filed lawsuits against Meta and TikTok for their role in harming minors.”
 
When 40 attorneys general, including some from the nation’s most left-leaning states such as Hawaii and California, can agree on a single piece of legislation, it signals that a real problem exists and that an effective solution is within reach.
 
“States are often the first to see the real-world consequences when powerful technology platforms fail to put kids’ safety first,” Attorney General Skrmetti stated. “Congress should not tie the hands of state lawmakers and law enforcement who are actively working to protect children from addictive and harmful online design features. The Senate’s approach gets this balance right by setting strong national standards while respecting states’ ability to act when new threats emerge.”
 
The committee also advanced two AI-regulation bills championed by Indiana Rep. Erin Houchin as part of the broader KIDS package:
 
The AI Warnings and Resources for Education (AWARE) Act directs the Federal Trade Commission to develop publicly available educational resources for parents, educators, and minors on the risks and benefits of AI chatbot use, privacy and data collection practices, and best practices for keeping children safe when interacting with AI.
 
Her Safeguarding Adolescents From Exploitative BOTs Act, known as the SAFE BOTs Act, H.R. 6489, builds on that framework by requiring chatbot providers to clearly disclose to minors when they are interacting with an AI system rather than a real person. The bill prohibits AI chatbots from falsely claiming to be licensed professionals such as doctors or therapists, mandates that crisis hotline information be provided when a minor raises the topic of suicide or self-harm, and requires break prompts after extended chatbot sessions. It also requires reasonable policies to prevent minors from accessing sexual content, gambling, and illegal substances through AI chatbot platforms.
 
Parents will always bear the primary responsibility for overseeing their children’s online activity. These legislative efforts are meant to simultaneously hold Big Tech accountable while giving parents the tools and resources they need to better understand and navigate the digital spaces their children have access to.
 
“Protecting kids online is one of the most urgent challenges we face in today’s digital age. Without these reforms, parents are outmatched by new technology powered by Big Tech,” Rep. Houchin shared. “Parents and kids deserve an internet ecosystem that puts their safety and well-being first with parents clearly in the driver’s seat.”
 ]]> https://www.factennessee.org/news-views/commentary/2026/congress-advances-package-to-protect-children-online FACT info@factn.org 2026-03-04T04:01:14-06:00 2026-03-04T04:01:14-06:00 Tennessee Joins Multi-State Push to Hold Major Medical Organization Accountable letter penned by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, expressing concern and requesting clarification from the American Medical Association (AMA) over its position on “gender transition” hormones and puberty blockers for minors.
 
In early February, AMA announced its opposition to “sex change” procedures for children, citing a lack of scientific evidence to support such operations. The letter urges the organization to similarly denounce the use of “gender transition” hormone treatments for minors, as a growing body of evidence indicates these interventions are not only unhelpful for gender-confused children, but they also carry serious and often lifelong consequences. The letter also “warns of a potential investigation of the AMA for possible violations of consumer protection laws for misleading providers, patients, and families about the safety and efficacy of hormonal sex-change procedures for minors.”
 
The letter explains:
 
“The American public has long viewed the American Medical Association as a trusted leader in the medical community. When the AMA makes a recommendation, it matters. Patients and doctors listen.
 
We thus read with appreciation the AMA’s recent statement concerning surgical procedures on minors to treat gender confusion: “In the absence of clear evidence, the A.M.A. agrees with [the American Society of Plastic Surgeons] that surgical interventions in minors should be generally deferred to adulthood.” According to the New York Times, the AMA’s position reflects the “sparse research on the risks and benefits of surgical procedures” to treat gender dysphoria in minors.
 
On that, we concur.
 
Our concern is that the evidence base is similarly lacking when it comes to the provision of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to treat gender dysphoria in minors. As for puberty blockers, [an] HHS review found that “the certainty of evidence is very low regarding the effect of PBs on [gender dysphoria], improvement in mental health, and safety,” while “[t]here is high certainty evidence that PBs exert physiological effects (such as sex hormone suppression) and often cause infertility when followed by [cross-sex hormones], depending on the patient’s pubertal stage and sex.”
 
“Overall,” the review concluded, “the absence of long-term, high-certainty evidence on these critical outcomes (including suicides, fractures, fertility, growth, and neurocognitive development) leaves substantial uncertainty about the effects of PBs.”
 
This summation from HHS comes as no surprise to those who have closely followed the steady release of scientific studies illustrating the deeply damaging results of all “gender affirming care” practices – not just for minors, but for adults as well. Countless organizations worldwide have critically examined these bodies of research and adjusted their standards of care accordingly, often outlawing “gender transition” procedures for minors entirely. Why are American medical organizations failing to keep up? The answer is simple: politics.
 
The letter continued:
 
As a result of these findings, healthcare authorities across the world have restricted access to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to treat gender dysphoria in adolescents or cautioned against their use. Scotland’s National Health Service “stopped all new prescriptions of puberty-blocking drugs and other hormone treatments for minors.” England’s National Health Service provides that “[p]uberty suppressing hormones are not available to children and young people for the treatment of gender dysphoria or gender incongruence” because “there is not enough evidence on their clinical safety and effectiveness.” Sweden’s “National Board of Health and Welfare currently assesses that the risks of puberty blockers and gender-affirming treatment are likely to outweigh the expected benefits of these treatments.” Finland’s healthcare authority concluded that, “[i]n light of available evidence, gender reassignment of minors is an experimental practice.” The Norwegian Healthcare Investigation Board found that “[t]he evidence base, especially research-based knowledge for gender-affirming treatment (hormonal and surgical), is insufficient and the long-term effects are not well known.” And New Zealand’s health ministry just recently prohibited new prescriptions of puberty blockers to treat gender dysphoria in minors because of the lack of “high-quality evidence that demonstrates the benefits or risks” of the treatments.
 
We thus find it concerning that the AMA continues to support the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to treat gender dysphoria in minors. The quality of evidence is the same as it is for surgeries: low and very-low quality. So if you agree that there is insufficient evidence to support using surgical interventions to treat gender dysphoria in minors—as your recent statement indicates—we do not understand how you can find that there is sufficient evidence to support using hormonal interventions to treat gender dysphoria in minors. These interventions have not been shown to be any safer for children than surgeries are, and in fact may be all the more dangerous precisely because they are viewed as not as serious.
 
But hormones can leave a child sterilized just as surely as surgery can—and indeed, that is the near-guaranteed pathway for a boy who begins puberty blockers at Tanner stage 2 and progresses to cross-sex hormones.
 
Tennessee banned all forms of “gender affirming care” for minors in 2023 precisely because of the harms enumerated in Alabama’s letter. SCOTUS upheld that ban because states have the right and obligation to protect their most vulnerable residents from harm. Our state, along with 19 others, is calling on one of the largest medical organizations in the nation, the AMA, to publicly disavow hormone treatments for minors because they, too, have an obligation to protect vulnerable patients, and, moreover, “do no harm.”
 
“Gender-affirming care” – whether surgeries, hormone treatments, puberty blockers, or other methods – presents serious medical risks and often irreversible consequences that outweigh the short-lived “therapeutic benefits” the interventions promise to deliver. These vulnerable children need real solutions – not a band-aid.
 
It’s time for the AMA to come clean. All medical associations should recognize “gender-affirming care” for what it is – a scam.
 ]]> https://www.factennessee.org/news-views/commentary/2026/tennessee-joins-multi-state-push-to-hold-major-medical-organization-accountable FACT info@factn.org 2026-02-26T04:01:14-06:00 2026-02-26T04:01:14-06:00 Will “Pride Month” be Banned in Tennessee? Updates from the 114th General Assembly nearly 1,200 bills have already been introduced. We want to highlight just three of those bills that uphold FACT’s core values of faith, family, and freedom.
 
Christian Heritage Month
 
In 2024, November was designated as “Christian Heritage Month” by Tennessee lawmakers, prompting communities to "learn more about Christian heritage in this state." This year, lawmakers have proposed a resolution to adopt the “Christian Heritage Flag” as the official flag for Christian Heritage Month in Tennessee.
 

 
The proposed resolution explains the meaning behind the imagery on the flag:
  • The left vertical white stripe represents the Old Testament of the Bible, and the twelve gold stars vertically aligned within are for the twelve tribes of Israel through whom God kept His promise to Abraham that through him He would establish many nations and an everlasting covenant.
  • The seven blue and white alternating horizontal stripes represent the six days of creation and the seventh day when God rested from His work.
  • The circular center medallion represents the New Testament of the Bible and eternal life in Christ, and the twelve white stars aligned in the inside perimeter are for the twelve disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ through whom Christ initiated the spreading of the gospel across the world.
  • The color gold represents God's glory, holiness, and the testing of our faith; blue symbolizes God's power, authority, and presence; and white represents righteousness, purity, and dedication to God.
  • The cross in the center of the medallion represents the ultimate sacrifice that the Lord Jesus Christ made, wherein all mankind can be saved.
During the first celebration of Christian Heritage Month in 2025, the flag was recognized on local radio and television stations, distributed at events, and flown all around the state during the month of November. The people of Tennessee have already adopted the Christian Heritage Flag as a symbol of the month; this resolution simply makes it official.
 
“When flying this flag, individuals should remember to submit their lives to the Lord Jesus Christ for His work and service, the work and sacrifice that God wrought to bring joy and life everlasting to all of mankind, and the eternal reward that God has placed on all those whom He calls His children,” the resolution reads.
 
The resolution will now be considered by the State and Local Government Committee after the House Naming and Designating Committee voted 7–3 to approve the measure.
 
Same-Sex Marriage
 
On February 11, the Tennessee House approved HB 1473, a bill that would define limits to Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 US Supreme Court case that legalized “same-sex” marriage. The bill would clarify that the ruling applies only to public entities, and private citizens, groups, and businesses are not required to recognize “same-sex” marriage.
 
“Private citizens and organizations are not bound by the 14th Amendment, and that’s true not only in the decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, but of any other Supreme Court decision interpreting either the due process clause or the equal protection clause,” Rep. Gino Bulso, the sponsor of the bill, explained. “It’s clear it applies to the state and to political subdivisions. It has never applied to private citizens."
 
In 2006, Tennessee voters amended the state constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman. Obergefell did not change that, and we applaud Rep. Bulso for attempting to align our state’s laws with the established will of the people, within the bounds of the US Supreme Court’s ruling on this issue – however wrong that ruling may be.
 
Pride Flag Ban
 
Through House Bill 1474, Rep. Bulso is attempting to ban the display of pride flags in “any public building, whether school buildings, city and county government buildings, colleges and universities, or state government agencies — including the Capitol and legislative office building complex.” The bill would also ban official recognition of June as “Pride Month.”
 
“Schools are places where kids go to be educated, not indoctrinated,” Bulso explained. “It’s simply not appropriate for a pride flag or any other partisan political flag to be displayed in a schoolhouse or on a school building. … We’ve got the American flag, we’ve got the Tennessee flag, we have flags that unite us. Those are the flags that we should display in our public buildings.”
 
Rep. Bulso is known for his ambitious bills to push the conservative cause forward in Tennessee, and this legislative session is no exception. While not all of his initiatives may make it to the finish line in 2026, we are confident Tennessee will become a state more focused on the values that matter to its residents – faith, family, and freedom – as a result of this session.]]> https://www.factennessee.org/news-views/commentary/2026/will-pride-month-be-banned-in-tennessee-updates-from-the-114th-general-assembly FACT info@factn.org 2026-02-20T04:01:14-06:00 2026-02-20T04:01:14-06:00 Tennessee House Passes Ten Commandments Bill passed a bill allowing public schools to prominently display the Ten Commandments and other historically significant documents in school buildings. The bill was modeled after a similar Louisiana law, passed mid-2024, which now faces legal hurdles that will likely land the case in the US Supreme Court’s docket.

Tennessee’s law, unlike Louisiana’s, does not require public schools to display the Ten Commandments. Rather, it gives school boards the opportunity to consider displaying historically significant religious texts (and non-religious texts) in school buildings. The bill lists the following documents as options for the school boards to consider:
  • The Ten Commandments
  • The Declaration of Independence
  • The United States Constitution
  • The Constitution of Tennessee
  • The Bill of Rights
  • Or other historically significant documents
State Rep. Michael Hale, who sponsored the bill, noted that the bill is not “forcing anybody to do anything.”

Local school boards and governing bodies of public charter schools can vote on displaying the documents using wall posters “in a prominent location” in each school building, such as entryways, cafeterias, or common areas, “in order to educate students on the historical significance and common cultural heritage the documents have.”

“Local school leaders know their communities and classrooms best, and this bill gives them the autonomy to decide whether to acknowledge and display these documents for educational purposes, while ensuring they have legal protection if they do,” Hale stated.
 
The bill, SB 303, passed out of the House with a vote of 75-17. It now heads to the Senate with  Sen. Mark Pody as its sponsor.
 
“The fact is, if we lived by those Ten Commandments, we could pretty much shut down our jails and we’d all be in a lot better place as a country and as a state,” Hale added.
 
A legal brief submitted by First Liberty Institute and backed by 46 members of Congress in Louisiana’s case highlights how the Ten Commandments and Christian principles are inextricably linked to our nation’s founding and the operations of our government. It reads:
 
“As elected representatives of ‘a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being,’ Amici participate in the governance of this Nation under the watchful eyes of Moses—the central and only full-frontal frieze among the lawgivers adorning the House Chamber—and pass under the words ‘In God We Trust’ and ‘Annuit Coeptis’ (God Favors Our Undertakings) when entering the Senate Chamber. We seek divine wisdom as we perform our duty of representing the American people in the Capitol Prayer Room, which contains…. ‘Preserve me, O God: for in thee do I put my trust,’ Psalm 16:1. And, when the United States Supreme Court hears a case, it does so under the eyes of Moses, holding the tablets bearing the Ten Commandments, both inside the courtroom and on the building’s exterior… Plainly, [O]ur Nation’s history and tradition acknowledge Moses as a lawgiver and the Ten Commandments as a historical foundation of our system of laws.”
 
The Ten Commandments and Christian principles are integral to our nation’s history and continue to be relevant today. America is a Christian nation. It is unfathomable that schools are currently prohibited from simply displaying the historical document that our founders based our government and legal system on.
 
We will continue to update you as this bill progresses through the legislative process.
 ]]> https://www.factennessee.org/news-views/commentary/2026/tennessee-house-passes-ten-commandments-bill FACT info@factn.org