Tennessee Schools Can Now Purchase Panic Buttons Similar to Those Credited for Rapid Response at Apalachee High School

Teacher with Centegix badge

The Tennessee General Assembly last year provoked a change within the Tennessee Department of Education that allows school districts in the Volunteer State to purchase identification badges for teachers which contain buttons to request rapid response from school administrators, a nearby School Resource Officer (SRO), or request an immediate law enforcement response.

Such a system, created by the company Centegix, was in place at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia last Wednesday, when police say 14-year-old Colt Gray committed an attack that claimed the lives of four and injured nine more before he was quickly confronted by armed SROs.

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Apalachee High School Shooting Suspect’s Family Claim He Experienced ‘Homicidal and Suicidal Thoughts’ Week Before Attack

Colt Gray, Marcee Gray

Family members of Colt Gray, who police say killed four and injured nine at Apalachee High School last Wednesday, have reportedly claimed they tried to warn school officials after the teen reported “homicidal and suicidal thoughts” in the weeks prior to the attack.

The Washington Post reported on Saturday it obtained text messages between Marcee Gray, the mother of Colt Gray, Annie Polhamus Brown, the biological sister of Marcee Gray and aunt of Colt Gray, as well as other family members, which suggest the school was advised Colt Gray experienced such thoughts in the week prior to the attack.

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Latest Polling: Trump, Harris Statistically Tied

Kamala Harris, Donald Trump

After failing to hold news conferences or give live interviews, and flipping on a range of issues, Vice President Kamala Harris is now slightly trailing former President Donald Trump in several key swing states two months before the election. New polls show they are statistically tied nationally.

“Harris is in fact on the decline in polls over the past couple of weeks in most of the key swing states,” pollster Nate Silver said. Silver was the founder and editor in chief of the New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight and was an ABC News special correspondent until last year. He now publishes election data in the Silver Bulletin.

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‘Persons with Childbearing Potential’: American, European Medical Groups Erase Women in New Guidance

Pregnant Woman

Doctors already struggling to consistently use their patients’ preferred gender pronouns and account for sex-based differences in treatment for those who present as the opposite sex are facing potentially greater confusion courtesy of American and European medical groups.

The American Medical Association’s Manual of Style Committee is accepting feedback through month’s end on draft guidance on “reporting gender, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation and age” in medical and scientific publication, following its similar guidance for “inclusive language” on race and ethnicity three years ago.

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23 States Ask Supreme Court to Reverse Energy-Related Decision

LA AG

Twenty-three states are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court decision that the attorneys general say could be a threat to the energy industry.

A brief filed this week by Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill and 22 other attorneys general wants the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out the decision, saying that it is as much about “federalism and state sovereignty as it is about environmental law.”

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RFK Jr.’s Quest to Remove Name from Ballot Hits Snags, Sees Some Victories as Lawsuits Continue

Robert F. Kennedy Jr

Former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is working to get his name removed from presidential ballots across various states, which has resulted in lawsuits in swing states where his requests were initially denied. While those lawsuits started as losses for him, upon appeal, Kennedy has seen success in removing his name from some of the ballots.

Following his withdrawal from the presidential race and endorsement of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, Kennedy has tried to get his name removed from presidential ballots in swing states. However, in some of those states, Democrats have attempted to prevent him from doing so, even after they had initially tried to keep him from being placed on the ballot.

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University of Virginia Ranks First for Free Speech

UVA Students

The University of Virginia tops the 2025 free speech ranking on college campuses, a first for the school founded by Thomas Jefferson.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression surveyed over 250 colleges and universities in its rankings. The foundation survey, administered by College Pulse, surveyed nearly 60,000 undergraduates enrolled full-time in four-year degree programs.

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Georgia Court: Wholesale Prescription Medication Distributors Not Liable

The Supreme Court of Georgia has upheld a Glynn County jury’s verdict that found wholesale prescription medication distributors are not liable for damages under the state’s Drug Dealer Liability Act.

A group of 21 family members of drug abusers sued wholesale distributors of prescription medications for damages, arguing that “drug abusers who injured” them were addicted to prescription opioids. The family members accused wholesale distributors of not reporting suspicious orders to Glynn County area pharmacies or stopping the orders’ shipments.

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Mine Land Cleanup in Appalachia Faces Federal Delays, Capacity Limits

Abandoned Land Mine

Even though federal money to reclaim mine lands in Appalachia has been slow to arrive, some states have made progress on improvement plans from a generation ago nonetheless.

Efforts have turned watersheds into fisheries when they were dead 30 years ago. And some states have streamlined the reclamation process, supporting local groups limited by a lack of manpower.

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Commentary: The Real Reason Democrats Fear Losing in November

Donald Trump

Democrats understand that once you’re atop a tiger, you can’t get off. They understand that because they’re living it via their prolonged lawfare campaign against Trump. By pulling out all the stops to stop him, they have raised November’s stakes — and the possibility that their misuse of government offices for political purposes will be investigated — beyond those of a normal presidential election.

How worried Democrats are about losing this November’s presidential election is clear from the unprecedented actions they have taken to win. Going back to last year, they unleashed four legal cases against Donald Trump in separate states. When these did not derail him with the public (his support grew), they turned against their candidate and forced their duly elected nominee out of the race against his will.

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Ex-Employee Sues City University of New York for Allegedly Firing Her After She Converted to Christianity

Teona pagan

A former City University of New York (CUNY) staff member is suing the university for wrongfully terminating her employment after she converted to Christianity, according to a religious discrimination lawsuit filed last week.

Teona Pagan, who worked at CUNY’s Research Foundation as the Fellowships and Public Service Program Coordinator, alleges she was denied a religious accommodation for an aspect of her job that required her to recruit students for a fellowship focused on the promotion of LGBT “rights and causes,” according to the complaint filed Aug. 28. When Pagan converted to Christianity in April 2022 — months after beginning her job in November 2021 — she suddenly found her duties related to the fellowship in conflict with her sincerely held religious beliefs.

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Commentary: Reasons Women Don’t Dress Traditionally

Long Dress

I wrote an article this past year detailing my experience of wearing exclusively dresses and skirts, due to symptoms of my third pregnancy. I am now on the other side of this experience—I delivered my third son and am healing very well postpartum. To my own surprise, I find I have not gone back to wearing my old favorite jeans! (Teenage me would gasp in shock.)

I continue to wear traditional clothes most of the time, to the point that I own mostly dresses now. I find myself looking back on the surprising discoveries this time has taught me. I used to have a myriad of reasons why I didn’t want to wear skirts, of course. Most women do. But now, I have experienced firsthand how inconsequential these arguments actually are. There are far fewer practical objections to traditional dressing than many of us think. Let’s go through three common reasons women cite as to why they don’t want to wear dresses, and why in reality, this type of wardrobe is still perfectly accessible.

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Elite Universities Ranked Lowest for Free Speech, Report Finds

NYU Students

Some of the most prominent elite universities in the nation have been ranked lowest for freedom of speech, according to a report released Thursday.

Harvard, Columbia, New York University (NYU), the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) and Barnard College make up the bottom five in a free speech ranking of 251 universities, according to a report by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and College Pulse. The report cited several incidents of “suppression of free expression” at the schools, including disruption of events and sanctions on students and staff for expressing their views as the reasoning behind the schools’ low rankings.

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Commentary: Nazis, Marxists, and the History of Ideas

Mussolini and Hitler

In light of recent events and discussions attempting to rehabilitate the historical reputation of Germany’s Nazis, it might be worthwhile to re-examine the foundations of the ideology that underpinned National Socialism and its close cousin fascism. Those who embrace the revisionism that excuses the Nazis’ crimes appear to believe that by doing so, they are defending themselves and their ideological brethren from unfair and ahistorical attacks by the broader left. They think—or at least seem to think—that because fascism is considered a “right-wing” ideology that was specifically pitted against both Communism and Western liberalism, it can hardly be as awful as has been assumed and that its association with unvarnished evil is mere propaganda.

They are wrong. Indeed, the very foundations of their sentiments are mistaken and result from the radical mischaracterization of history and the evolution of ideas in the two centuries after the Enlightenment.

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Report: Thousands of Christians Targeted and Killed in Nigeria

Africans Praying

A new report says that Nigeria has been systematically persecuting Christians, including executing thousands, in an “unrelenting…time bomb.”

As Fox News reports, the claims come from Open Doors International, a faith-based non-profit which focuses on raising awareness of persecutions across the world. Open Doors says that Christians, as well as “Christian communities, their livelihoods, faith leaders, and places of worship” are being “deliberately targeted” in the African nation. It has gotten to the point where Christians are “an endangered species” in Nigeria, Open Doors stated.

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