Free Republic

A federal jury has awarded $687,000 to a research scientist who was fired from BlueCross BlueShield in Tennessee for refusing to comply with the company’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.Tanja Benton, who had worked 16 years at the firm when she was fired, was awarded $177,240 in back pay, $10,000 in compensation, and $500,000 in punitive damages, according to a document made public by the federal court in eastern Tennessee on June 30.Company officials told Ms. Benton in August of 2021 that she would need to be “fully vaccinated” to keep her position, according to her lawsuit. Ms. Benton refused, saying aborted...

A Tennessee jury has awarded a former research scientist at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee $687,000 in back pay and damages after she was fired in 2021 for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine.Following a three-day jury trial in Chattanooga last week, a federal jury decided BlueCross failed to provide reasonable accommodation for Tanja Benton, who did most of her work from home and claimed a religious exemption to the company's vaccine mandate. Chattanooga Attorney Doug S. Hamill, who represents Benton, said the biostatistical research scientist was fired in November 2021 in violation of her religious beliefs after working for the...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) – A man was shot in the arm Saturday night while trying to steal two cases of beer from a gas station convenience store. Metro police said officers with the Hermitage Precinct responded to reports of a shooting at a Shell gas station located in the 1500 block of Lebanon Pike at around 10:30 p.m. Saturday, June 22. When officers arrived, they found a 26-year-old man – who had been shot in the forearm – walking down the street. The officers tried to talk to him, but he tried to get away. He was eventually stopped and...

CV NEWS FEED // A Tennessee senator and a Nashville attorney are suing Tennessee over the recent abortion trafficking law, which criminalizes adults who help obtain abortions for minors without their parents’ permission. According to the Associated Press, the law would punish any adult who “intentionally recruits, harbors, or transports” a minor to get an abortion without their parents’ consent. The law would go into effect on July 1, and Tennessee would be the second state after Idaho to enact such a law. Idaho’s similar statute has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge since November 2023. Tennessee Rep. Aftyn...

Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade, states have been allowed to pass their own abortion laws. As certain states began to pass stronger protections for preborn human beings, other states began to eliminate protections — and ‘abortion travel’ became a hot-button issue. Some companies began funding abortion travel as a “benefit” to employees, and abortion funds began to pay for airfare, hotels, and the like in order to assist women living in pro-life states to obtain abortions in states where abortion was more available. Since that time, the Guttmacher Institute...

In the Covenant School Shooting of 2023, a transvestite woman, Audrey Hale, murdered 6 people at a Christian private school before being put down by law enforcement. In recent weeks many details have emerged about Audrey Hale’s motivations, including swaths of her manifesto being leaked by various media outlets. The Southern Baptist Convention, helmed by the liberal Brent Leatherwood, has fought tooth and nail to prevent the manifesto’s public release. So far the manifesto has confirmed the strong connection between pornography and transgenderism while also expressing anti-Christian motivations. The investigation is still ongoing, and the Tennessee Star reported a bombshell...

Tennessee Star editor-in-chief Michael Patrick Leahy unveiled the Nashville Covenant School mass shooter's personal writings earlier this month, but no mainstream news outlets appear to have reported about the revelations, and only one has reported on the subsequent legal battle that Leahy faces for uncovering the documents. Additionally, while journalists' rights organizations traditionally would have provided counsel to a reporter like Leahy in court, few are willing to comment on the case, and Leahy is being represented by America First Legal and Daniel Horwitz, a Nashville-based attorney who focuses on the First Amendment. Outlets such as Fox News, CNN, The...

Journalist Michael Patrick Leahy is facing jail at a hearing tomorrow because he published information from long-hidden journal of Covenant Killer Audrey Hale.. The lawfully obtained information comes from records that should already be public. Information that we have a right to know. Nashville Police confirm authenticity of Covenant Killer Audrey Hale journal pages obtained by The Tennessee Star.

For three weeks, 85,000 Yotta customers with a combined $112 million in savings have been locked out of their accounts, CEO and co-founder Adam Moelis ... The disruption, caused by a dispute between fintech middleman Synapse and Tennessee-based Evolve Bank & Trust, has upended lives... “We never imagined a scenario like this could play out and that no regulator would step in and help,” . ... his company has been a source of deep pain for thousands of customers who relied on Yotta accounts to receive paychecks, pay bills and save for emergencies. The crisis began May 11, when a...

Originally, Ford had said in 2021 that it would start production in 2025. Full production at a Ford EV factory in west Tennessee that was to deliver the company’s F150 Lightning electric pickup truck is being delayed. State Sen. Page Walley, a Republican, told the "Tennessee Outlook" full production of the vehicle line was being pushed back by nine months as a result of a “read on the economy.” Ford said in 2021 that it would start production in 2025. Now the electric pickup trucks aren’t expected to be delivered to dealerships until 2026, according to the "Outlook." Ford lost...

Covenant School shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale reportedly used funds from a federal Pell Grant to buy the guns she used to perpetrate a mass shooting in March 2023. 99.7 WTN afternoon radio host Brian Wilson reported Wednesday that Hale “took money from an education grant she received to purchase her weapons and to pay for training at a local gun range.” Hale purchased seven guns, three of which were recovered from the Covenant School after she died during an encounter with Metro Nashville Police Department officers, police said at the time in a post to X. She killed six people,...

A new letter obtained from transgender killer Audrey Hale revealed that prior to killing three adults and three nine-year-olds at the Covenant Christian School in Nashville, Tennessee, she wrote about her “imaginary penis” and how she would “kill” to get puberty blockers. Back in March of 2023, Audrey Hale shot and killed three individuals before being shot down by law enforcement. Now, just over a year later, four dozen pages of Hale’s writings have been obtained. Those writings include notes of her delusional sense of identity and mental confusion, which led to her attack on the school. The Tennessee Star...

Transgender killer Audrey Hale wrote about her 'imaginary penis' and how she would 'kill' to get puberty blockers in the weeks before her horrific attack on the Covenant School in Nashville last year. The Tennessee Star obtained some four dozen pages of Hale's writings that shed light on her female-to-male transition and why she shot and killed six people at the elementary school in March 2023. Hale wrote about anger toward her parents, how she hated her conservative Christian upbringing, and how she had suffered because hormone blockers were not available when she was as a child.

XAI has its sights set on creating the world’s largest supercomputer and, according to a recent announcement, the Elon Musk-founded artificial intelligence company has selected Memphis for its site. The Greater Memphis Chamber revealed the southwestern Tennessee city had landed the planned project on Wednesday, saying it will be the "largest capital investment by a new-to-market company in Memphis history." The supercomputer will be called the "Gigafactory of Compute," the group said. Musk said it's "true" in a reply to an X post that contained footage of the Greater Memphis Chamber’s press conference announcing plans for Memphis to get the...

Tennessee governor Bill Lee signed a bill Tuesday making it illegal for non-parental adults to transport minors to another state for abortion without the knowledge or permission of the minor’s parents. HB 1895 specifies that anyone who “intentionally recruits, harbors, or transports” a minor to another state for an abortion without parental consent will be subject to a Class A misdemeanor, which comes with mandatory jail time of nearly a year. Currently, nearly all preborn children in the state are protected from abortion. Abortion proponents have spoken out with claims that the bill — which is in place to protect...

A retired Nashville-area police officer alleges that a psychologist who treated [the] shoot[er] in the 2023 Covenant School massacre referred her to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center psychiatric department before the killings. The claim was made by Tuesday by retired Metro Nashville Police Department Lt. Garet Davidson. He said that shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale, 28, who took her own life on the day of the killings, was referred to the medical center for treatment after she had fantasies about violence, according to a report from the Tennessee Star.

“Federal contractors in Tennessee have been resettling refugees from countries including Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sudan, listed in the PRB report as among the ‘Top 10 Countries of Origin’ where FGM is practiced.” Did those federal contractors think that after bringing all those refugees into Tennessee that they would not see a rise in the incidence of FGM in Tennessee? No doubt they never gave it a moment’s thought at all. “U.S. based pediatrician and fellow at the American Academy of Pediatrics, Dr. Hatem Elhagaly (AKA ‘Hatem Al Haj’), listed as an Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America...

Covenant School shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale reportedly told her therapist that she was fantasizing about killing her family and committing a school shooting, according to a report by 99.7 WTN radio host Brian Wilson. The therapist reportedly did not report these findings to authorities. 99.7 WTN host Brian Wilson: The ongoing investigation apparently focuses on the shooter’s therapist. Metro Nashville Police Department is remaining silent on this, but sources familiar with the investigation confirm that search warrants were run on the home and office of the therapist in an effort to obtain notes of the therapy sessions with the Covenant...

U.S. District Court Judge Aleta A. Trauger sided with the Tennessee Star last month, in seeking all the written documents from shooter Audrey Hale, which resulted in the deaths of three students and three faculty members. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The FBI has turned over writings from the Covenant school shooter to a federal judge, including the killer’s manifesto, which will be read privately by the judge. Star News Digital Media Inc., the parent company of The Tennessee Star, sued the FBI in May claiming the bureau had violated the First Amendment by rejecting multiple Freedom of Information Act requests for the Covenant...

Distressing footage captured at least 10 adults and children fighting during a Tennessee kindergarten graduation ceremony earlier this month, according to a report. The chaos unfolded at Buckley Carpenter Elementary in Somerville, Tenn., on May 15, 2024, when tensions between two women in the crowd boiled over into violence, police told Fox 13 Memphis. The adults, identified as Tyeisha Humphreys and Kierra Smith, were seen brawling down the gymnasium bleachers as witnesses tried to escape the madness. Beyond the bleacher brawl, at least two other people on the basketball court exchanged several punches. According to the outlet, Tyeisha Humphreys told...