2023 Heroes of the Year: Tennessee Senator Frank Niceley and Tennessee Representative Bud Hulsey
By Catherine Austin Fitts
2023 was an inspiring year, with many heroes to celebrate. However, when it came time to select the Solari Report’s 2023 Hero of the Year, it was a “no-brainer” to name two Tennessee state legislators as our year’s heroes: Senator Frank Niceley and Representative Bud Hulsey. During their years of legislative service, both have consistently demonstrated that protecting liberty and sovereignty is their top priority—a moral position reaffirmed with the uptick in federal tyranny since 2020.
As Senator, Niceley, from Strawberry Plains, has represented Tennessee’s District 8 since 2012, after previously serving in the Tennessee House (1988–1992 and 2004–2012). Hulsey has represented District 2 in the House since 2014. A retired Kingsport police lieutenant, Hulsey currently chairs the Criminal Justice Committee, and both are active on other important committees, including Agriculture. The two leaders have a highly productive working relationship. Hulsey remarks that legislators (even when they are from the same political party) “can look at the same thing and not see the same thing,” but he adds, “Frank and I see the same thing most of the time.”
Many subscribers will already be familiar with these two Republican powerhouses. Over the past several years, the Solari Report has featured each of them as Hero of the Week. On the Solari Food Series, Pete Kennedy’s popular interviews with Niceley, who is also a farmer (in college, he majored in soil science), have celebrated Niceley’s sponsorship of many successful food and agriculture bills benefiting small farmers and consumers.
From lowering taxes to addressing central bank digital currencies and vaccine mandates—and from guns, gold, and property ownership to hyperinflation—Niceley and Hulsey recognize the need to push back against tyranny in all its guises. Both have staked out a bold position in the battle to preserve financial transaction freedom in Tennessee, playing an active role in the passage of 2022 and 2023 bills that exempt gold and silver coins from sales tax and authorize the State Treasurer to purchase bullion; they also joined other level-headed and fearless colleagues in stopping the push for Red Flag gun laws during a special legislative session.
And their remarkable legislative achievements in the aftermath of the pandemic “op” do not stop there. Niceley has sponsored bills that passed legalizing the over-the-counter sale of ivermectin; creating a Tennessee Food Freedom Act; establishing a state meat inspection program; decriminalizing shotguns and short-barreled rifles; and prohibiting Tennessee and its political subdivisions from adopting or implementing policy recommendations that deliberately or inadvertently infringe or restrict private property rights without due process. Bills sponsored by Hulsey that passed into law ensure that state and local governments cannot force someone to take a Covid shot; require nursing homes to let at least one family member visit Covid patients; and allow property owners to pay their property taxes forward. Hulsey also sponsored other excellent bills that unfortunately died in committee. Both legislators continue to sponsor bills focused on financial freedom and health freedom.
In response to tired old smear tactics, Niceley and Hulsey both like to say, “The good thing about being a conspiracy theorist is that you don’t get myocarditis.”
Both legislators recognize that decentralized powers are the way forward to create the conditions of sovereignty and freedom for Tennesseans. As Hulsey articulated in late 2023:
“State legislatures have to stand up, and they have to say to the federal government, ‘You’ve got your little garden with 18 things that the Constitution says you can hoe in; everything else out here, this big huge garden, belongs to the states. We hoe in our garden and you hoe in yours—and stay out of ours.’”
Niceley firmly reminds citizens that they have an important role to play as well:
“You’ve got to get after your politicians and make them pay attention. If you get enough people calling all their legislators, then they’ll listen. I’ve seen one or two phone calls change a politician. Don’t underestimate the power of a phone call.”
As we often tell our subscribers and other audiences, if just 10% of the voting population would ignore presidential politics and instead actively support their best state legislators, anything is possible.
If you live in Tennessee, please get to know your state senator and state representative and make sure they are supporting Senator Niceley and Representative Hulsey.
If you live in surrounding states, encourage your representatives to reach out to Senator Niceley and Representative Hulsey, as they are collaborating on their efforts with a growing network of state legislators.
Wherever you live, communicate to your leaders that they are responsible to protect your rights to financial transaction freedom.
Related:
Tennessee General Assembly: Senator Frank Niceley
Senator Niceley: Bills sponsored in the 113th General Assembly
Tennessee General Assembly: Representative Bud Hulsey
Representative Hulsey: Bills sponsored in the 113th General Assembly
Related Solari Reports:
Hero of the Week: September 11, 2023: Senator Frank Niceley
Hero of the Week: July 31, 2023: Rep. Bud Hulsey
Hero of the Week: May 2, 2022: Senator Frank Niceley, Tennessee
Special Solari Report: Free in Tennessee: Kicking Tyranny to the Curb
Food Series: Champion of the Small Farmer with Senator Frank Niceley
Blast from the Past: Week of October 31, 2022: Interviews with Senator Frank Niceley
From The Moneychanger: Senator Frank Niceley – Restoring Freedom in Tennessee
Videos:
Selected List of Bills Sponsored:
Senator Niceley (Bills enacted into law):
- 2009: Sponsored bill legalizing the distribution of raw milk through herdshare agreements. (In 2012, followed up on that bill by getting an Attorney General’s opinion that it was legal to distribute other raw dairy products through a herdshare agreement as well.)
- 2012: Got an Attorney General’s opinion that farmers didn’t need a permit to sell eggs from their own farm.
- 2014: Sponsored a bill adopting the federal poultry exemption enabling farmers to process up to 20,000 birds a year. The Tennessee Department of Agriculture has since expanded the exemption by policy to include processing rabbit meat on the farm.
- 2017: Sponsored a bill adopting the federal exemption on custom slaughter and the exemption on custom slaughter and the exemption on non-amenable species. The latter exemption allows the sale of meat from animals such as bison and domestically raised deer that are slaughtered and processed at a custom facility.
- 2017: Received Attorney General’s opinion stating that there can be an unlimited number of owners for an animal slaughtered and processed at a custom facility and that entities such as a food buyers club can be an owner of such a custom animal.
- 2019: Sponsored bill legalizing sales of raw butter by licensed dairies.
- 2020: Sponsored a bill requiring that any meat labeled as a product of Tennessee must be from an animal that was born and raised in the state.
- 2020: Sponsored a resolution commending the Weston A. Price Foundation for its 50-50 Campaign urging people to buy at least 50% of their food budget direct from the farm.
- 2022: Sponsored the Tennessee Food Freedom Act legalizing the unlicensed unregulated sale from homemade food producers of food that does not require time and temperature control for safety; these sales, including fermented foods, can be direct to consumers and also by some third parties such as food buyers clubs and grocery stores.
- 2022: Sponsored bill making over-the-counter sales of ivermectin legal.
- 2022: Sponsored bill exempting gold and silver coins from the sales tax.
- 2022: Sponsored a bill that decriminalized shotguns and short-barreled rifles. The latter is important due to the ATF’s efforts to criminalize pistol braces.
- 2023: Sponsored bill authorizing State Treasurer to purchase gold and silver.
- 2023: Sponsored a bill that created a state meat inspection program so that Tennessee is no longer under federal USDA oversight.
- 2023: Sponsored a bill, as enacted, that prohibits this state and its political subdivisions from adopting or implementing policy recommendations that deliberately or inadvertently infringe or restrict private property rights without due process, as may be required by policy recommendations originating in, or traceable to, “Agenda 21,” adopted by the United Nations in 1992 at its Conference on Environment and Development, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the UN’s proposal to reach net zero emissions by 2050, or any other international law or ancillary plan of action that contravenes the constitution of the United States or the constitution of this state.
Representative Hulsey (Bills enacted into law):
- Bill removing sales tax on the purchase of precious metals, coins, and currency.
- Bill giving a property owner the ability to pay their property taxes forward.
- Bill requiring nursing homes to allow at least one family member in to visit a Covid patient.
- Bill ensuring that state and local governments cannot force someone to take a Covid shot.
- Bill for the State Treasurer to buy gold bullion.
Representative Hulsey (Bills sponsored – not enacted into law):
- Bill that would have made private employers who mandate the Covid shot as a condition of employment no longer immune from civil liability if the employee was harmed.
- Bill that would have required those involved in in-person transactions to take cash if offered.
- Bill that would have not allowed the executive branch of government to use police power to enforce executive orders.
- Bill that would have prevented medical boards from bringing adverse action against a doctor for recommending alternative treatment for Covid, and pharmacies from blocking access to ivermectin.
- Bill that would have forbidden ESG (environmental, social, and governance) scoring for lending institutions and insurance companies.
- Act that declared that acquired immunity is as good or better than the Covid shot.
- In 2024, will again sponsor the Restoring State Sovereignty Through Nullification Act.