(The Center Square) — A Senate Ways, Means, and Finance subcommittee will get the first shot at legislation that would end Tennessee’s grocery taxes,

The bill by Democrats and Republicans have one key difference — funding.

Democrats were the first to introduce a bill that would eliminate the state portion of the food and food ingredient tax on July 1.

House Bill 2/Senate Bill 2, sponsored by Nashville Democrats Rep. Aftyn Behn and Sen. Charlene Oliver, proposes closing “corporate tax loopholes” to make up for the $700 million to $1 billion that could be returned from the state to taxpayers if the tax is removed. They cite a report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy that said Tennessee could realize $891 million in annual revenue by requiring companies to report its worldwide revenue, not just what it earns in the states. Some states are already doing it, according to the report.

HB2/SB2 would also require the state to mitigate the loss to local governments.

Neither bill removes the 7% sales tax on prepared food, alcoholic beverages, candy, dietary supplements and tobacco.

The Republican bills from Rep. Elaine Davis of Knoxville and Sen. Bo Watson of Hixson would give local governments the authority to levy a grocery tax of up to 2.75% to make up for the loss from the state. The legislation has no mechanism for overcoming the millions lost in sales tax revenues.

The proposals come at a time when Tennessee has $77 billion in infrastructure needs over the next five years, according to a report from the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations.

“Right now they are pulling up couch cushions to figure out how to pay for things and unfortunately it just feels like the grocery tax hasn’t been a priority of the governor or the Republican supermajority,” Behn told The Center Square in a phone interview.

Behn is no stranger to fighting for a food tax cut. She and Oliver filed the bills during the last legislative session, but they didn’t pass. Lawmakers did agree to a $1.6 billion franchise tax refund.

“It’s just a matter of where your priorities are,” Behn said. “For them it’s not about reforming our tax code to benefit working Tennessee families.”

House Majority Leader William Lamberth indicated in a December 2024 interview with WSMV that he would support the effort.

“The least we can do is try to take off the state portion of the grocery tax to try to make it a little easier on my friends and neighbors,” Lamberth told the television station.

The bills are on the subcommittee calendar but could get moved, a process called “rolling the bill,” in the Tennessee General Assembly.

But even if the General Assembly agrees to remove the sales tax on food, there is a question of whether or not Gov. Bill Lee would sign it. He did not mention it in his State of the State of Address.

“Thousands of bills have been filed in this session, and there’s still a long way to go in the legislative process,” a spokeswoman for Lee said in response to a question from The Center Square in February. “As with any legislation, the governor will review final bill language when it reaches his desk.”

Another bill on Tuesday’s calendar could give Tennesseans a partial break on groceries.

Sen. Raumesh Akbari, D-Nashville, is proposing removing the state sales tax only on frozen, canned or fresh fruits and vegetables. The bill would return $122 million to Tennessee taxpayers, according to the bill’s fiscal note. It was on the subcommittee’s calendar on March 11 but was moved to Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Tennessee’s neighbors are looking at ways to reduce food taxes.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican, announced in early March she was advocating for eliminating the tax, calling it “regressive” in a news release.

A bill that would have eliminated Mississippi’s 7% tax on food died. A bill that would lower the state’s income tax and also reduce the tax on food to 5% is still alive, according to the Mississippi Legislature’s website.

Alabama Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth, a Republican, is advocating the reduction of Alabama’s 3% food tax.

“With bird flu raising the cost of large eggs to $5.00 a dozen – an all-time high – it’s time to continue removing the sales tax on groceries and provide needed relief to Alabama families,” Ainsworth said in a March 11 post on X.

(The Center Square) – Half of all American adults are using large language models, two-thirds speak with them, and 1 in 4 say moral judgments about right and wrong are made by these artificial intelligence tools.

The findings are in a report released Wednesday by the Imagining the Digital Future research center at Elon University. ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Copilot are popular brands, and human-like encounters are trending greater in volume.

The findings “show the degree to which LLMs are now being used in the way that people have used search engines for decades, including a quick access to information, queries about products and services and getting news and information,” the report says. “This has enormous implications for media, marketing and the basic sale of goods and services. It also suggests the profound impact LLMs might have on political and civic processes.”

Lee Rainie directs the research center. The analysis shows many believe the large language model they use “most acts like it understands them at least some of the time. A third say the model they primarily use seems to have a sense of humor,” a release says.

In other findings, the survey documents large proportions of users saying they have had negative experiences. The experiences include laziness, cheating, confusion and dependency on the tools rather than using critical thinking.

“One truly surprising finding,” a release says, is “contrary to the picture many have about how LLMs are used, our survey shows that the share of those who use the models for personal purposes significantly outnumber those who use them for work-related activities, even among workers.”

The sampling was conducted for Elon by the SSRS Opinion Panel platform. The survey reached 500 adults ages 18 and older, has a +/- 5.1% margin of error and 95% confidence level.

(The Center Square) – President Donald Trump touted a list of border security measures he’s implemented in his first month in office before a joint session of Congress Tuesday night.

“Since taking office, my administration has launched the most sweeping border and immigration crackdown in American history – and we quickly achieved the lowest numbers of illegal border crossers ever recorded,” he said.

In February, illegal border crossings were the lowest in recorded U.S. history, The Center Square reported.

This was after Trump issued multiple executive orders to secure U.S. borders, including declaring an invasion, a national emergency at both the southwest and northern borders, and directed the U.S. military to assist with apprehensions and deportations, The Center Square reported.

“Twenty-one million people poured into the United States” under the Biden administration, Trump said. “Many of them were murderers, human traffickers, gang members and other criminals from the streets of dangerous cities all throughout the world.” They illegally entered the U.S. “because of Joe Biden’s insane and very dangerous open border policies. They are now totally embedded in our country, but we are getting them out and getting them out fast.”

In Trump’s first month in office, more than 20,000 illegal foreign nationals were arrested, a 627% increase in monthly arrests compared to 33,000 at large arrests in all of last year, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said. Overall, total removals of illegal foreign nationals exceeds 50,000, including some of the most violent offenders, according to DHS.

Trump cited examples of violent criminal illegal border crossers killing Americans, including University of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, and 12-year-old Houstonian, Jocelyn Nungaray, whose angel mothers were in attendance.

Trump also countered a narrative of the previous administration that “we needed new legislation to secure the border. It turned out that all we really needed was a new president,” he said. The bill Democrats touted would have codified existing Biden administration policies, worsening the border crisis, The Center Square reported.

Trump also criticized the Biden administration for opening the U.S. borders by flying illegal foreign nationals into the country “to overwhelm our schools, hospitals and communities … like Aurora, Colorado, and Springfield, Ohio, which buckled under the weight of the migrant occupation and corruption like nobody’s ever seen before. Beautiful towns destroyed.”

By implementing a mass deportation effort, he said his administration was undergoing “the great liberation of America.”

Trump also highlighted his decision to designate drug cartels and violent transnational criminal gangs as foreign terrorist organizations, saying, “They are now officially in the same category as ISIS. Countless thousands of these terrorists were welcomed into the U.S. by the Biden administration but now every last one will be rounded up and forcibly removed from our country, or if they’re too dangerous, put in jails standing trial in this country. Because we don’t want them to come back, ever.”

He also praised former Border Patrol agent Roberto Ortiz, who was fired upon by cartel members in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, saying, “he leapt into action, returning fire and providing crucial seconds for his fellow agent to seek safe safety.”

The U.S.-Mexico border, which was dominated by Mexican cartels under the Biden administration, “pose a grave threat to our national security … and are waging war in America,” he said. “It’s time for America to wage war on the cartels, which we are doing.”

Trump also highlighted Mexican authorities transferring 29 cartel leaders to the U.S. “That has never happened before,” he said. However, Mexican and Canadian officials can “do much more,” he said, to stop fentanyl and drugs from pouring into the U.S., which is why he was holding steadfast on imposing tariffs.

Trump said he submitted a detailed border security funding request to Congress. It lays out “exactly how we will eliminate these threats to protect our homeland and complete the largest deportation operation in American history,” he said, calling on Congress to pass it so he can sign it into law.