Vanderbilt Silent on Possible Transgender Treatment for Covenant Killer Audrey Hale

Vanderbilt Madical Center, North

The Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) is silent about whether Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale sought transgender drugs, surgeries or other gender affirming treatment following the revelation she was a 22-year mental health patient of staff at VUMC.

VUMC has not replied to multiple requests for comment from The Tennessee Star following the revelations, which include confirmation that Hale was prescribed at least four medications from VUMC and was treated by mental health professionals associated with VUMC since April 2001.

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Air Force Slapped with Lawsuit After Stonewalling Release of Transgender Health Unit Records

Air Force

A recently filed lawsuit from a national security think tank is alleging that the U.S. Air Force is wrongfully withholding records related to its transgender care services.

The Center to Advance Security in America (CASA) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in August 2023 seeking materials related to the Air Force’s Transgender Health Medical Evaluation Unit (THEMU), according to a copy of the suit obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The Air Force initially acknowledged the FOIA request but then failed to provide further updates to CASA, prompting the think tank to file a lawsuit in late May against the branch in a Washington, D.C., district court for the records.

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Covenant Killer Audrey Hale Wrote About Desire to Kill Her Father in Recovered Journal

Audrey Elizabeth Hale

The journal recovered from the vehicle driven by Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale includes at least five entries expressing animosity toward her father, including one page where Hale wrote of her desire to kill him.

The Tennessee Star confirmed last Wednesday it obtained dozens of pages written by Audrey Hale from a source close to the Covenant investigation.

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Arizona AG Opens Criminal Probe into Corruption Allegations Tied to Gov. Katie Hobbs

Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs

Arizona’s top law enforcement official has opened a criminal probe into corruption allegations involving Democrat Gov. Katie Hobbs and donations from a group home business.

Attorney General Kris Mayes notified the Legislature that she had received a criminal referral from a GOP lawmaker involving allegations with Sunshine Residential Homes and had agreed to open a probe.

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SPLC Changes Number of ‘Radical Traditional Catholic Hate Groups’ in Latest ‘Hate Map’ After FBI Backlash

You may have heard that, early last year, the FBI issued a memo targeting Catholics—specifically “radical traditional Catholics”—that relied on the work of the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center. The FBI rushed to rescind the memo on Catholics after a whistleblower published it and The Daily Signal demanded answers.

This week, the SPLC released its annual list of “hate groups” and the “radical traditional Catholic” category remains.

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Fanatics Fined $50K and Zen Sports Fined $60K for Tennessee Sports Wagering Violations

Fanatics Sportsbook

Fanatics Sportsbook was fined $50,000 in Tennessee for allowing eight people who were on an in-app self-exclusion list to place bets during that exclusion. Zen Sports received a $60,000 for not maintaining a high enough balance in its reserve account to cover outstanding bets and obligations.

The issue was self-reported by Fanatics and the Tennessee Sports Wagering Council agreed with the fine, which worked out to eight violations with a Level 2 fine of $6,250 apiece.

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Full-Time Jobs Vanish While Americans Race to Take Up Part-Time Work

Door Dash

Americans took up part-time jobs in huge numbers in May as full-time jobs evaporate under President Joe Biden’s economy, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released Friday.

There were around 133.3 million people employed in the U.S. in May with full-time jobs, 625,000 less than the month before, while the number of people employed in part-time jobs surged by 286,000 to just over 28 million, according to the BLS. The total number of American workers collapsed by 408,000 as a result of the loss in part-time jobs to 161 million.

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CEOs’ Pay Increases in 2023 Widen Income Gap with Workers

CEO Pay

The average salary for a company’s chief executive officer (CEO) soared by 13% in 2023, thus producing an even greater income gap between top executives and the workers they employ.

According to ABC News, a data analysis by Equilar for the Associated Press revealed that the median compensation package for a CEO rose in 2023 to $16.3 million, marking a 12.6% increase. At the same time, wages and benefits for the average worker rose by just 4.1%. At half of the companies included in the Equilar survey, it would take one worker at least 200 years to make the same amount of money that their CEO makes.

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Shatter-Resistant Glass Films to Be Installed on Every Wilson County School Campus This Summer

WCS Meeting

The Wilson County School District voted unanimously to approve shatter-resistant glass films to be installed at each of its 24 brick-and-mortar campuses.

On Monday, board members Kimberly McGee, Larry Tomlinson, Carrie Pfeiffer, Jamie Farough, Melissa Lynn, Joseph Padilla, and Beth Meyers all voted to approve Director of Schools Jeff Luttrell’s recommendation that the board hire Osteen Construction to install the security film for a total of $900,105.36.

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Border Experts: Biden Plan will Bring Another 2 Million into Country a Year

Illegal Immigrants

Former Border security leaders serving under multiple presidents and whose careers span decades in law enforcement say President Joe Biden’s “border security” announcement Tuesday won’t secure the border but instead will facilitate more illegal immigration, bringing in another two million people into the country illegally a year.

“The border will never be ‘shut down’ under this executive action but rather serve to legalize an unjustified level of open borders that will further perpetuate the chaos and lawlessness we’ve experienced during the entirety of the Biden Administration,” former U.S. Border Patrol Chief Mark Morgan told The Center Square. “The proposed action will, at a minimum, allow more than one million illegal aliens to be released into the county annually, along with another one million inadmissible aliens being allowed to fly into interior airports within the U.S.,” referring to the CBP One app that allows migrants to apply for entry remotely.

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Congressional Report Finds Half of All New Jobs are Going to Immigrants

Staff Meeting

The House Budget Committee released a report Friday that found more than half of all new jobs are going to immigrants, including those in the country illegally.

The report comes after the Labor Department released its jobs report for May, which saw a small decrease in labor participation, which shrank from 62.7% in April to 62.5% in May, and the unemployment rate ticking up slightly from 3.9% in April to 4% in May. Immigrants have filled 840,000 new jobs since November, according to the Washington Times.

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Investigation Reveals Two Arizona Cities Spent Millions on Homelessness with Little Result

Homeless Encampment

Arizona’s two largest cities allocated tens of millions of dollars to fight homelessness in the past several years, but little has changed, according to a Goldwater Institute investigative report released Thursday.

“We’ve seen Phoenix and Tucson spend, combined, almost half a billion dollars on this issue with very minimal improvements in the area of homelessness,” Austin VanDerHeyden, municipal affairs liaison for the Goldwater Institute, told The Daily Signal.

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Commentary: Despite Liberals’ Hysterical Denials, Aliens are Registering and Voting

People Voting

The truth is out there. Aliens are registering and voting in American elections.

For anyone who cares to see it, the truth is available in public records in election offices across the nation. But unfortunately, those who expose the truth about voting by aliens—illegal immigrants or not—are subjected to ridicule and an onslaught from the Left to preserve the broken status quo.

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Georgia Hearing Spotlights Social Media Companies’ Censorship

A Georgia state lawmaker who says she was silenced when she switched parties last year convened a hearing to showcase how social media companies can de-platform people to manipulate messaging.

Rep. Mesha Mainor, R-Atlanta, said she called the “First Amendment, Free Speech Rally” at the Georgia State Capitol to showcase what she sees as a lack of respect for dissenting opinions.

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Commentary: Christianity, Capitalism, and Colonialism Are Nothing to Be Ashamed Of

Catholic Chapel

We’ve all heard the rhetorical attacks on Western Civilization—often centered on Christianity, capitalism, or colonialism, and often on all three. Among radical leftists, the consensus is that these elements are evil, but given that each is currently or historically integral to civilization as we know it, it’s worth examining the data to determine whether they deserve to be so despised.

First, Christianity. A 2018 study found that religion was “the decisive background factor” determining how much human rights were respected in any given country. And not all religions had the same impact. The percentage of Christians in the population was closely associated with a nation upholding human rights, whereas the percentage of Muslims was the opposite—that is, Muslim countries were less likely to uphold such rights. Another study reached similar conclusions about the effects of Christianity vis-à-vis Islam on nations’ ranking in the Good Country Index. (The index measures countries’ “contributions to global prosperity in domains such as peace, climate and health.”)

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Colorado Discriminated Against Catholic Preschools by Starving Them of Funding, Court Rules

Catholic School

A federal court ruled Wednesday that Colorado discriminated against Catholic preschools by refusing to allow them to participate in the state’s school voucher program over their faith.

St. Mary’s Catholic Parish and St. Bernadette’s Catholic Parish filed a lawsuit against the state in August 2023 after Colorado denied its application to the state’s universal preschool (UPK) program because the schools consider religious beliefs when deciding whether or not a student can attend the school. Judge John Kane Jr., a Jimmy Carter appointee, of the District Court of Colorado determined that the state had erred in allowing “faith-based providers” to receive exemptions in similar cases but not the preschool, according to the 101-page opinion.

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Six States, Three Tribes to Receive $130 Million to Rehab for Abandoned Mine Land

Abandoned Land mine

Kentucky, Pennsylvania and West Virginia will each receive $28.7 million in funding through the Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization plan in fiscal year 2024.

The funding comes through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which put $11.3 billion in funding for the program over 15 years. In total, six states and three tribes will receive a combined $130 million.

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Olympic Committee Warns Media Against Using ‘Biologically Male,’ ‘Female’ When Referring to Trans Athletes

Olympic athletes

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued media guidelines on Thursday that urged reporters not to use specific terms while covering transgender athletes.

The IOC, which governs the Olympic Games, published its Portrayal Guidelines ahead of the 2024 Paris event to “provide practical checklists and advice to help ensure gender-equal and fair representation of all athletes across all forms of media and communication,” the press release reads. The guide includes a section on “Problematic Language” that included the phrases “biologically male” and “biologically female.”

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