News - Friday, August 1, 2025

For nearly 140 years, the Car Barn stood as a steadfast fixture through generations of change in Chattanooga. Built in 1886, it served as a storage and repair facility for Chattanooga’s public transportation system for nearly a century, including both horse-drawn and electric streetcars. In the early 1980s, it was reborn as the Sportsbarn Athletic Club.

Educator Arthur Williams stood beneath a spotlight of statewide recognition May 9 as he accepted the 2025 Excellence in STEM Leadership Award from the Tennessee STEM Innovation Network. The applause that filled the Music City Center during the annual STEM Innovation Summit in Nashville was more than ceremonial – it was a heartfelt ovation from colleagues who were celebrating one of their own.

As National Farmers Market Week begins this Sunday, the Chattanooga Market is doing more than just celebrating locally grown produce – it’s shining a light on the people and relationships that have helped it become a cornerstone of community life in the Scenic City.

Chattanooga has taken a step forward in addressing its housing affordability crisis with the launch of a new incentive program designed to encourage the development of attainable housing.

On July 22, the City Council voted to amend the zoning ordinance to implement the Voluntary Incentives Program (VIP) – a no-cost initiative that offers developers greater design freedom in exchange for including affordable units in their projects.

The League of Women Voters of Chattanooga is teaming with The Chattery to offer a monthly series designed to deepen public understanding of important civic issues. Free and open to the public, the sessions will take place the first Sunday of each month from August through November, 4-5:30 p.m. at The Chattery’s downtown location – 231 Broad Street. Each class will spotlight a current topic and feature a guest speaker. Kicking off the series in August, immigration attorney Blake Gilbert will examine how U.S. immigration laws are affecting communities at the local, state and national levels. Upcoming sessions will address subjects such as changes in public education, shifts in public media funding, and the growing impact of cryptocurrency. Registration opens a month before each class and can be completed at thechattery.org by selecting “Professional Development.” The League and The Chattery aim to foster civic engagement and informed dialogue through these educational events.

Getting an offer on your home is a big moment and possibly one of the most exciting steps in the selling process. But before celebrating, it’s important to look beyond the offer price. As any experienced Realtor will tell you, there are often several important things other than price to consider when evaluating an offer.

Think estate planning is only for the wealthy or elderly? Think again. If you own anything – a home, a car, a savings account, even a pet – you already have an estate plan. The only question is: Did you create it or will your state do it for you?

Preserve Chattanooga is inviting local artists to take a pen for a walk – literally.

In celebration of its 50th anniversary, the preservation nonprofit has announced a summer architectural drawing contest inspired by “Taking a Pen for a Walk: Discovering Towns and Cities Through Drawing” by urban designer Ray Gindroz. The contest encourages participants to explore Chattanooga’s architectural landscape by creating hand-drawn sketches of streetscapes, iconic building facades, or mapped walks that highlight significant design elements.

When I saw the news, two thoughts leaped readily to mind. First: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Second: You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

The news: The Cracker Barrel restaurant chain is under attack from America First Legal, a group closely aligned with the Orange Cult. The group claims that Cracker Barrel company policies discriminate against an oppressed, put-upon category of people: white folks. More specifically, white men. Straight white men.

After bottoming out last year with a 3-14 record, the Tennessee Titans are busy trying to figure out how to end a three-year slide of failure as they enter the 2025 season.

The Titans have been in a prolonged funk ever since beating Green Bay on a Monday night game on the road midway through the 2022 season to go to 7-3.

From the players whose names were called to the television broadcast crew, the University of Tennessee got plenty of publicity during this year’s Major League Baseball Draft.

The Vols had nine players selected, including a record-setting four first-round picks and eight in the first three rounds. The nine selections were tied for the fourth most among Division I schools this year and are the second highest total in a single draft in program history, falling just one short of the 2022’s team’s record 10 picks.

The idea of a cross-country road trip in an electric vehicle might seem daunting. After all, it’s not hard to envision getting stranded on the side of the road with a depleted battery or being stuck in a parking lot, charging for hours.

But there are ways to easily avoid these worst-case scenarios. The experts at Edmunds have plenty of experience driving electric vehicles, and here they share their five best tips on how to make cross-country driving in an EV easy.

The head of the Southern Baptist Convention's policy arm has resigned after nearly four years leading the staunchly conservative agency, which in recent years has fended off critics within the nation's largest Protestant denomination seeking to push it even further to the right.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House on Thursday announced that construction on a $200 million ballroom will begin in September and be ready for entertaining before President Donald Trump 's term ends in early 2029.

It will be the latest change introduced to what's known as the "people's house" since the Republican president returned to office in January. It also will be the first structural change to the Executive Mansion since the addition of the Truman balcony several decades ago.

STANFORD, Calif. (AP) — Former Nike CEO John Donahoe has been hired as athletic director at Stanford.

Donahoe will become the school's eighth athletic director and replace Bernard Muir, who stepped down this year. He will officially begin in the role Sept. 8.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal appeals court has upheld a jury verdict condemning Google's Android app store as an illegal monopoly, clearing the way for a federal judge to enforce a potentially disruptive shakeup that's designed to give consumers more choices.

NEW YORK (AP) — Prosecutors said they now expect music mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs could face a prison sentence "substantially higher" than the four to five years they once thought he was likely to face after his conviction on two prostitution-related charges.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official who aided President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, should be stripped of his law license, a Washington disciplinary panel ruled on Thursday.

Delayed treatments, canceled doctor visits, skipped prescriptions. Losing insurance is bad for your health.

The Congressional Budget Office forecasts that the U.S. uninsured population will grow by 10 million in 2034, due to the tax and spending bill signed into law by President Donald Trump.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The agency responsible for carrying out President Donald Trump's mass deportations agenda says it has already made tentative job offers to more than 1,000 people as it ramps up hiring following the passage of legislation earlier this month giving the agency a massive infusion of cash.

FLORENCE, Italy (AP) — James Atkinson and Samantha Fortino toured a Tuscan vineyard and learned to make pasta and a Bolognese sauce alongside their family and friends in Florence. Atkinson discovered a penchant for chianti, while Fortino fell for Italy's hugo spritz — a cocktail that posed no risk of staining her wedding dress on July 24.

American businesses and consumers woke up Friday to find the contours of President Donald Trump's foreign trade agenda taking shape but without much more clarity on how import taxes on goods from dozens of countries would affect them.

Late Thursday, Trump ordered new tariff rates for 66 countries, the European Union, Taiwan and the Falkland Islands. Among them: a 40% tariff on imports from Laos, a 39% tariff on goods from Switzerland and a 30% tariff on South African products.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. hiring is slowing sharply as President Donald Trump's erratic and radical trade policies paralyze businesses and raise doubts about the outlook for the world's largest economy.

U.S. employers added just 73,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported Friday, well short of the 115,000 expected.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday called for the Federal Reserve's board of governors to usurp the power of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, criticizing the head of the U.S. central bank for not cutting short-term interest rates.

Posting on his Truth Social platform, Trump called Powell "stubborn." The Fed chair has been subjected to vicious verbal attacks by the Republican president over several months.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order that set new tariffs on a wide swath of U.S. trading partners to go into effect on Aug. 7 — the next step in his trade agenda that will test the global economy and sturdiness of American alliances built up over decades.

WASHINGTON (AP) — For weeks, President Donald Trump was promising the world economy would change on Friday with his new tariffs in place. It was an ironclad deadline, administration officials assured the public.

But when Trump signed the order Thursday night imposing new tariffs, the start date of the punishing import taxes was pushed back seven days so the tariff schedule could be updated. The change in tariffs on 66 countries, the European Union, Taiwan and the Falkland Islands was potentially welcome news to countries that had not yet reached a deal with the U.S. It also injected a new dose of uncertainty for consumers and businesses still wondering what's going to happen and when.

BANGKOK (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump's new tariff rates of up to 41% on U.S. imports from dozens of countries drew expressions of relief Friday from some countries that negotiated a deal or managed to whittle them down from rates announced in April. Others expressed disappointment or frustration over running out of time after hitting Trump's Aug. 1 deadline for striking deals with America's trading partners.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has raised the tariff rate on U.S. imports from Canada to 35% from 25%, effective Friday.

The announcement from the White House late Thursday said Canada had failed to "do more to arrest, seize, detain or otherwise intercept ... traffickers, criminals at large, and illicit drugs."

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union is working on the presumption that the United States will impose a 15% tariff on most EU exports from Friday, even though the two sides have yet to complete a key document clarifying how the agreement will operate.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Numerous countries around the world are facing the prospect of new tariffs on their exports to the United States on Aug. 7, a potential blow to the global economy, because they haven't yet reached a trade deal with the Trump administration.

NEW YORK (AP) — Exxon Mobil's second-quarter profit dropped to the lowest level in four years and sales fell as oil prices slumped as OPEC+ ramped up production.

The Texas oil driller still topped Wall Street profit expectations Friday and shares rose slightly before the opening bell, even with global markets falling on the erratic trade polices of the U.S.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Apple shook off a thicket of tariffs and a botched entry into artificial intelligence to accelerate its revenue growth during its springtime quarter, but the trendsetting tech company still faces a bumpy road ahead that could lead to higher iPhone prices.

TOKYO (AP) — Nintendo, the Japanese video game maker behind the Super Mario and Pokemon franchises, reported an 18.6% surge in net profit for the first fiscal quarter Friday on the back of strong demand for its new Switch 2 console.

Kyoto-based Nintendo Co.'s April-June profit totaled 96.03 billion yen ($640 million), up from nearly 81 billion yen. Quarterly sales more than doubled to 572.36 billion yen ($3.8 billion).

WASHINGTON (AP) — Appellate court judges expressed broad skepticism Thursday over President Donald Trump's legal rationale for his most expansive round of tariffs.

Members of the 11-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington appeared unconvinced by the Trump administration's insistence that the president could impose tariffs without congressional approval, and it hammered its invocation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to do so.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Jeffrey Epstein's former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, has been moved from a federal prison in Florida to a prison camp in Texas as her criminal case generates renewed public attention.

Seventeen Democratic officials accused President Donald Trump's administration of unlawfully intimidating health care providers into stopping gender-affirming care for transgender youth in a lawsuit filed Friday.

The complaint comes after a month in which at least eight major hospitals and hospital systems — all in states where the care is allowed under state law — announced they were stopping or restricting the care. The latest announcement came Thursday from UI Health in Chicago.

MANZINI, Eswatini (AP) — Five immigrants deported by the United States to Eswatini in a secret deal last month had served their criminal sentences before they were sent to be held in a prison in the African country, a lawyer working on their cases said Friday.

The NFL and ESPN are expected to announce an agreement next week under which most of the league's significant media holdings will go to the sports network.

People familiar with the transaction said the multibillion-dollar deal would give the NFL an equity stake in ESPN.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a cornerstone of American culture for three generations, announced Friday it would take steps toward its own closure after being defunded by Congress — marking the end of a nearly six-decade era in which it fueled the production of renowned educational programming, cultural content and even emergency alerts.

Delayed treatments, canceled doctor visits, skipped prescriptions. Losing insurance is bad for your health.

The Congressional Budget Office forecasts that the U.S. uninsured population will grow by 10 million in 2034, due to the tax and spending bill signed into law by President Donald Trump.

NEW YORK (AP) — Online creators from dozens of countries, led by MrBeast and popular science YouTuber Mark Rober, are launching a $40 million fundraiser to build water quality projects around the world.

The monthlong crowdfunding campaign, touted as the biggest YouTube collaboration and called #TeamWater, promises to rally their combined 2 billion subscribers around combating unsafe water sources. Funds will primarily benefit WaterAid, an international nonprofit that builds community-tailored infrastructure ranging from solar-powered wells to rainwater harvesting systems.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve governor Adriana Kugler announced that she will step down next Friday, opening up a spot on the central bank's powerful board that President Donald Trump will be able to fill.

Kugler, who did not participate in the Fed's policy meeting earlier this week, would have completed her term in January. Instead, she will retire Aug. 8. She did not provide a reason for stepping down in her resignation letter.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday removed the head of the agency that produces the monthly jobs figures after a report showed hiring slowed in July and was much weaker in May and June than previously reported.

Trump, in a post on his social media platform, alleged that the figures were manipulated for political reasons and said that Erika McEntarfer, the director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, should be fired. He provided no evidence for the charge.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Democratic lawmakers tried to build a case Friday that Republicans in Texas have engineered a rushed and unfair process for redrawing the state's congressional districts in response to a push by President Donald Trump to win more GOP seats that Democrats fear will spread to other states.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A stalemate over the pace of confirmations has delayed the Senate's yearly August recess, for now, as President Donald Trump declares that his nominees "should NOT BE FORCED TO WAIT" and as Democrats slow the process by forcing procedural votes on almost all of Trump's picks.

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a warning to Russia, President Donald Trump said Friday he's ordering the repositioning of two U.S. nuclear submarines "based on the highly provocative statements" of the country's former president Dmitry Medvedev.

Trump posted on his social media site that based on the "highly provocative statements" from Medvedev he had "ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that."