Three things for September 10
1. Tennessee spends $80 million on COVID-19 supplies
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee’s administration has spent $80 million over the past six months in what has been called a “no-bid spending spree” by Nashville-based NewsChannel 5. The state is able to get around the competitive bid process typically required by law due to special purchasing rules in place during a state of emergency.
The $80 million was spent on personal protective equipment (PPE) and related supplies to help combat the current COVID-19 crisis, which has infected over 160,000 Tennesseans this year, killing nearly 2,000.
The money primarily went towards companies via “no-bid” deals — an arrangement where only one company is given consideration when a specific product is desired.
According to NewsChannel 5, some of these no-bid deals were struck due to political connections, citing the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency’s (TEMA) no-bid order of 5 million face masks from Renfro Corp, a company with a plant in Cleveland, Tennessee.
Renfro, based in North Carolina, delivered face masks that would eventually be known as “sock masks,” and have “been so unpopular that the owner of Rocket Shirts in Murfreesboro decided to let teachers exchange them for a $5 discount on a cloth face-covering more to their liking,” according to NewsChannel 5.
2. Trump nominated for Nobel Peace Prize
A member of Norway’s Parliament representing the right-wing Progress Party, Christian Tybring-Gjedde, nominated U.S. President Donald Trump for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize on Wednesday.
Tybring-Gjedde nominated Trump in part due to the president’s role in brokering the Abraham Accord. This peace deal promises to establish normal relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.).
Senior delegations from both Israel and the U.A.E. plan to meet at the White House next Tuesday for the peace agreement’s signing ceremony.
This marks the second time Trump has been nominated for the award — the first time being in 2018 when he was also selected by Tybring-Gjedde.
Nobel Peace Prize nominations are accepted by heads of state or any politician serving their country at a national level, and nominations do not guarantee a nominee success — 2016 saw the largest pool of possible Peace Prize recipients, with a record 376 nominees.
3. The Academy announces new Best Picture guidelines
On Tuesday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced new guidelines for the Best Picture category of the Academy Awards, also known as the Oscars.
The Best Picture award goes to the film deemed by the Academy to be the best film released in the year prior to the ceremony and is considered to be one of the Academy Awards’ most prestigious awards.
The requirements encourage production teams to commit to racial, gender and sexual identity diversity by committing to at least two of four new standards, all of which involve the employment or on-screen representation of people that are women, of an “underrepresented race or ethnicity,” who identify as LGBTQ+ or who possess cognitive or physical disabilities.
A full list of the requirements can be found on the Oscars website.
