Free Republic

The Trump administration’s FBI has released more than 100 additional pages of writings from Audrey Hale, the transgender shooter... These newly unclassified documents, part of a massive collection of notebooks and journals, offer a chilling look into the planning and financing of the assault that claimed the lives of three children and three adults. Hale, a biological woman who identified as a transgender man, used federal student financial aid, specifically Pell Grants, to fund the purchase of firearms used in the heinous 2023 attack. The FBI-released documents reportedly include Hale’s handwritten “Account Savings Record” page, tracking federal Pell Grant funds...

A man who is accused of raping a woman outside a Nashville church, who later died, has a long list of offenses that have been largely dismissed. FOX 17 News has found he has a long list of offenses, and spoke with victim advocates who said enough is enough. They are demanding change in the criminal justice system. According to the Davidson County Sheriff's Office, Mohamed is still behind bars on a $300,000 bond. But victim advocates like Verna Wyatt said the suspect should have stayed behind bars for his previous offenses to prevent the accused rape. "It's infuriating," she...

State Rep. Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville) says "the recent discovery of a podcast from 2020 where I said 'I hate the city, I hate the bachelorettes, I hate the pedal taverns, I hate country music, I hate all of the things that make Nashville. I hate it.' Won't stop me from winning this election." "This election" is a special election to fill the congressional seat vacated by former Rep. Mark Green (R) earlier this year. Her opponent for the seat Matt Van Epps suggested that "this district cannot be well-represented by a person who hates everything about it." Behn disagreed, saying...

Nashville’s family-owned businesses are sounding the alarm over rising property taxes, warning Mayor Freddie O’Connell that the city risks losing the very businesses that give Nashville its character. What Makes Nashville...Nashville? Local business owners say iconic Nashville spots, its restaurants, shops, and other small businesses, are struggling under record property valuations combined with tax hikes. Many fear they may not survive. The Arnold family has been serving their signature “meat and threes” for more than 40 years. Owner Kahlil Arnold greets every customer personally, creating a restaurant that feels like family. But the Arnolds are now facing a $138,000 property...

A disturbing video from Antioch High School in Nashville shows 18-year-old student Kayla Smith pepper-spraying her teacher, Caleb Bates, after he took her phone during class. She was arrested right after the incident for assault. What makes it even worse is that this wasn’t the first time Bates had been attacked over a phone. Just two months earlier, another student punched him in the face after he caught them cheating. It’s part of a growing problem teachers are dealing with when they try to enforce basic classroom rules.

The chancellor of Syracuse University revealed his belief that pro-Hamas, anti-Israel protests were encouraged and potentially orchestrated by Iran while speaking on a panel this week in Washington, D.C. Chancellor Kent Syverud spoke on a panel Tuesday alongside the chancellors from Vanderbilt and Washington University in St. Louis and described the protest activity that took place on his college campus as well as other universities across the country. "When things happened that I really believe were encouraged from Iran," Syverud explained to the audience. "[The protests] did not have the involvement of very many, if any, of our own students."...

Six-time Grammy winner Amy Grant, who gained much of her notoriety through her Christian songs, has agreed to a legal settlement about a church founded by her great-grandfather in downtown Nashville, Tenn., according to the Wall Street Journal. The boarded-up red brick building, now worth at least $11 million, served for decades as the Central Church of Christ, founded in 1925 by A.M. Burton. During its heyday, the church was involved in providing housing, daycare, food, and a free library in addition to its worship services. Burton’s sermons were broadcast through a radio station that he founded. He died when...

Conservative podcaster Steven Crowder has obtained leaked internal documents from the Utah County Sheriff’s Office regarding suspected Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson. The latest leak comes one day after Crowder announced that his company has been subpoenaed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) over another leak about the case. The document, a probable cause statement, details the arrest of 22-year-old Robinson, as well as the evidence against him, including engraved anti-fascist messages on bullet casings, a family member’s confession tip, and Discord messages about hiding the weapon. According to the Probable Cause Statement signed by Detective...

First responders and public employees in several cities have become the subject of investigations or have been placed on leave over social media posts reacting to the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Kirk, a close ally of President Donald Trump, was shot and killed on Sept. 10 at a Utah Valley University event. Authorities say a single shot was fired from a rooftop before the gunman escaped. The suspect in Kirk’s death was taken into custody on Sept. 12. Nashville Fire Department In Nashville, Tenn., WSMV reported the fire department put an employee on paid administrative leave after...

Taking their cues from modern warfare, the far-right American terrorist movement sees off-the-shelf or home-built first-person viewer (FPV) drones as a critical weapon in their own future war against the US government, which has American authorities on edge. And there’s ample reasons for those fears: in the open and closed online spaces where far-right extremists congregate, talk is commonplace of how these cheap drones are revolutionizing current wars and will be the critical tools of a so-called second civil war. “The use of FPV drones in the war between Russia and Ukraine, the use of drones by terrorist groups such...

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (WSMV) - The U.S Attorney’s Office in Middle Tennessee announced the arrest of a woman who allegedly threatened to kill Senator Marsha Blackburn. The release states that 22-year-old Penelope Convertino left a voice message at Sen. Blackburn’s office in Nashville on May 30, 2025. In the message, Convertino stated: “My name is mother**ker and I’m gonna kill Marsha Blackburn. I’m gonna shoot her with a gun. I’m gonna blow up her head on national TV. She will literally have brains splattered behind her because she will not be a person. She will be a dead f**king body.”...

Those who are part of these networks target young teens, trans people, and those who already feel victimized by society. Minneapolis Catholic child killer Robert "Robin" Westman was reportedly linked to online dark extremist groups fixated on nihilism. The dark network of groups are reported to "prey on and exploit young people." Westman killed two children and injured 17 others at the Annunciation Catholic School. Some of the groups are called 764, COM, No Lives Matter, the Order of Nine Angels, and others, and operate in secret on the web where kids can access them and parents are primarily unaware....

A mysterious headless corpse was found rotting in a wooded strip flanked by two fast-food joints in Tennessee — and cops have no idea how long it had been there, according to reports. Authorities responded to the grim scene after a women stumbled upon a cluster of heavily decomposed bones in the woods behind a McDonald’s and Waffle House in Nashville Friday morning, WSMV reported. A severely crumbling skull was then found roughly 100 feet from the gruesome decapitated remains, according to the Metro Nashville Police Department. “It is unclear at this point who this person is, how this person...

Folks who attended Friday night’s Vikings-Titans game in Nashville saw something unexpected, but not quite as uncommon as it used to be. A green dildo was thrown onto the field. It’s become a trend at WNBA games in recent weeks. The phenomenon has NFL roots, however. Late in Tom Brady’s tenure with the Patriots, Bills fans threw pink dildos onto the field whenever he played in Buffalo. It happened most recently in 2022, in a Pats-Bills game not involving Brady. Whether Friday night’s gesture was an aberration or a trend remains to be seen. However, Brady likely will be back...

He wrote the classic that’s been covered hundreds of times, and made other fine records of his own.He wrote and recorded a classic soul song that has been covered by hundreds of artists, from Georgie Fame to Del Shannon, and from Wilson Pickett to the Four Tops. He was the versatile Bobby Hebb, the R&B man from Nashville born on July 26, 1936, who gave us “Sunny.” Hebb performed on stage even before he was in kindergarten, and when he wrote “Sunny,” inspiration came at perhaps the darkest time in his life. It was in November 1963, when President Kennedy...

Nashville Police said a noose was found at the construction site of the Tennessee Titans' new stadium, according to ESPN. The stadium is scheduled to open for the 2027 season, but work has reportedly been halted for an investigation. "This week, a racist and hateful symbol was discovered on our site. There is no place for hate or racism in our workplace," the Tennessee Builders Alliance, which is leading the construction, said in a statement. "We reported the incident to law enforcement, suspended work and launched an investigation."

Sixteen years ago today, a quiet Fourth of July afternoon was interrupted with the stunning news that former NFL quarterback Steve McNair had been shot and killed. McNair was 36 at the time. The official explanation never made complete sense. Quickly solved as a murder-suicide, with McNair shot by his 20-year-old girlfriend, Sahel Kazemi, who then supposedly shot herself. The rush to close the case seemed odd. Police concluded that Kazemi shot McNair execution style, twice in the chest and twice in the head. A subsequent effort to re-open the case ultimately failed. The issue was pressed by Vincent Hill,...

Suspected MS-13 gangbanger Kilmar Abrego Garcia was paid up to $1,500 per smuggling trip and may have raked in more than $100,000 annually trafficking humans, including minors, according to witnesses. The new details about Abrego Garcia’s alleged “full-time job” come from co-conspirators and witnesses cooperating with the federal government’s human smuggling case against the Salvadoran national who was wrongly deported in March. The allegations were shared by a federal agent during a Friday detention hearing in a Nashville court, where Abrego Garcia entered a plea of not guilty. As part of the illegal operation, smugglers charged migrants from Central and...

Washington — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man who was deported back to his home country and then returned to the U.S. for federal prosecution, is set to remain in jail for several more days as lawyers debate whether the Justice Department can stop him from being deported if he is released from federal custody pending his trial on human smuggling charges, according to The Associated Press. Lawyers for Abrego Garcia and federal prosecutors met in court in Nashville on Wednesday for a hearing to discuss the conditions of his release after U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes on Sunday denied...

The Democratic mayor of Tennessee’s largest city, who has been accused of obstructing federal immigration efforts, defended his office’s decision to publicly dox the names of immigration officers. Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s defense came even after the names of federal immigration officials were removed from a public immigration report detailing a month’s worth of immigration-related interactions between local police and federal immigration authorities. Initially, the public report detailed immigration officers’ names, but following backlash over the move the names were taken down. “I wouldn’t say it was an endangerment process, I would say they may have some concerns – I’m...