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U.S. Fire that destroyed historic Clayborn Temple in Memphis was intentionally set, investigators say By Updated on: May 21, 2025 / 6:11 PM EDT / CBS/AP The fire that destroyed the Clayborn Temple, a historic Black church in downtown Memphis that was the organizing point for Martin Luther King Jr.'s final campaign in 1968, was intentionally set, investigators said Wednesday. The Memphis Fire Department said the fire on April 28 was started on the interior of the church, and authorities are searching for a person of interest. Memphis Fire Chief Gina Sweat last month described the inside of the church...

A newly enacted Tennessee law prohibits schools from punishing employees and teachers for referring to trans-identified students by their given name and pronouns, as public school staff in other states have faced professional repercussions for declining to use trans-identified students' preferred names and pronouns. Tennessee's Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed House Bill 1270 into law Friday. Lee's approval of the legislation follows its passage by the Republican-controlled Tennessee House of Representatives in a 77-18 vote and the Republican-controlled Tennessee Senate in a 27-6 vote. The vote in the Senate fell along party lines, with all support for the measure coming...

Sheriff's Office in Press Release 5/11/2025, Two teenagers from Tehama County were arrested after allegedly plotting an attack on Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, authorities said. The investigation began on May 9, 2025, when a Tennessee resident contacted the Tehama County Sheriff's Office. The individual reported concerns after engaging in online gaming with one of the teens, who discussed school violence and shared a manifesto and plans targeting the school.... The suspect also sent photographs of himself and an accomplice posing in attire similar to the Columbine school shooters, according to the sheriff's office. Allegedly, the attack was initially planned...

Does the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms apply to fully automatic machine guns? The US District Court for the Western District of Tennessee is poised to rule on the matter. Jaquan Bridges pleaded guilty to possessing a machine gun after engaging in a 2023 shootout with police officers on a Tennessee highway. Courthouse News reported that Bridges “was arrested with a Glock .40 caliber pistol with an attachment that converted the handgun into a machine gun, but fought to dismiss the charge on constitutional grounds.” He claimed the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in New York State...

A Mag 4.1 earthquake just a few miles south of Knoxville TN at 9:00 EDT 10 May 2025 shook the geological region around between Knoxville and Atlanta GA this morning. No nationally reported reports of damage or injuries, but a low magnitude earthquake less than 5.0 seldom causes much damage. Hillside rock falls and tree falls in the already wet soil after several days of rain are likely the closer to the epicenter one goes. Unlike California's very broken earth and rocks, where small magnitude earthquakes are not felt very distance from the epicenter, the very large, very rigid Eastern...

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted operations in Nashville this week, resulting in the arrests of a convicted child sex predator and an alleged gang member, but the mayor of the city said the arrests were not focused on making the city safer. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shared Democratic Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s letter to the city about the ICE arrests. “Our top priority is keeping people safe, and we’re deeply concerned that what appear to be federal actions are making that harder,” O’Connell wrote. “Overnight, we understand that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents detained people...

President Donald Trump announced late on Thursday his first judicial nomination since returning to the White House as he moved to appoint a lawyer serving under Tennessee's Republican attorney general to a seat on a federal appeals court. Trump .. is nominating Whitney Hermandorfer, who has clerked for three members of the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative majority, to fill a vacancy on the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. ... Whitney is a Fighter who will inspire confidence in our Legal System," Trump wrote .. The nomination was the first of what is expected to be more than 100...

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — President Donald Trump offered some encouraging words and advice for graduating students at the University of Alabama on Thursday in a speech interspersed with impressions of transgender weightlifters, accusations that judges were interfering with his agenda and attacks on his predecessor, Joe Biden. The Republican’s jolting speech was standard fare for Trump and well received by the crowd in deep-red Alabama, which backed him in all three of his presidential runs. “You’re the first graduating class of the golden age of America,” the president told the graduates.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A court affidavit identifies the two Booker T. Washington High School students who were killed in a broad-daylight shooting in South Memphis — Christian Brown, 17, and Darrius Wadley, 18. One of four suspected gunmen was arrested after he was shot and dropped off at a hospital, according to new information from the court system. Valdemar Patterson, aka Valdemar Richards, 18, is so far the only suspect in custody. He is charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Police say last Thursday, an Infiniti pulled into the South City apartment complex at Mississippi Boulevard and Lauderdale. Surveillance...

Thursday, April 17, the Crockett County Sheriff’s Department responded to a shooting on Chestnut Bluff and Maury City Road. According to the sheriff’s department, John King III was shot and killed in the 6000 block of Chestnut Bluff-Maury City Road. We learned on April 18 that it appeared to be domestic violence-related, and no charges were filed at the time. Wednesday, we spoke with District Attorney General Frederick Agee. He told us this was self defense and that his office would not be pursuing any charges. “She is six months pregnant and there were two other children in the household,”...

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has signed a pro-life bill protecting the conscience rights of medical professionals like doctors and nurse who don’t want to be forced to participate in abortions. The bill creates conscience protections for doctors who are morally opposed to certain medical practices, including abortion. While Tennessee is one of a couple dozen states with abortion bans that protect the lives of unborn children, abortions can still be done in very limited situations. Also, if the law is ever overturned, pro-life doctors and nurses want to be sure their conscience rights are protected to excuse themselves from abortions...

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an illegal migrant whose deportation to El Salvador has garnered nationwide controversy, was once pulled over in a vehicle owned by a convicted human smuggler, federal authorities have confirmed. Abrego Garcia was pulled over on a Tennessee highway in 2022 and suspected of human smuggling after local authorities discovered he was transporting eight passengers with no apparent luggage. The vehicle Abrego Garcia was driving belonged to Jose Ramon Hernandez-Reyes, an illegal migrant who was sentenced to prison for human smuggling in 2020, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed Wednesday ... When a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer...

The unnamed Tennessee-based company that the Justice Department alleges was being funded by Russian operatives working as part of a Kremlin-orchestrated influence operation targeting the 2024 US election is Tenet Media, which is linked to right-wing commentators with millions of subscribers on YouTube and other social media platforms, according to a US official briefed on the matter. The indictment unsealed in New York’s Southern District accused two employees of RT, the Kremlin’s media arm, of funneling nearly $10 million to an unidentified company, described only as “Company 1” in court documents. CNN has independently confirmed that “Company 1” is Tenet...

Tennessee swindlers forged the signatures of unsuspecting homeowners on deeds to transfer the property ownership for a measly $10 in a quit-claim scheme. Stuart Breakstone and his accomplice, Rebecca Tuttle, allegedly played out their ruse on at least two separate residences in Memphis, Tenn., between 2010 and 2025, property records viewed by The Post show. The duo is accused of faking signatures of the homeowners, buyers and at least one notary on quit-claim forms to transfer the ownership of the properties for $10 ... The sleazy scheme was only discovered after a homeowner reported to police that she was no...

Rep. Mike Collins mocked Sen. Chris Van Hollen over his visit to El Salvador ... Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., claimed in a post on X that he altered the name plaque outside the office of Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. The Republican lawmaker’s post included a photo in which the plaque outside Van Hollen’s office says that he represents El Salvador. ... Sen. Chris Van Hollen meets with Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador ... "margarita-gate." ... Collins has repeatedly criticized Van Hollen for traveling to El Salvador to meet with MS-13 member and illegal immigrant Kilmar Abrego-Garcia .... when...

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed to the Daily Caller that Kilmar Abrego García, a recently deported alleged member of MS-13, was stopped in December 2022 on suspicion of human trafficking. During a Dec. 1, 2022 traffic stop by a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer, Abrego García was found to be transporting eight passengers across the country, sources told the Tennessee Star. He allegedly did not have a valid driver’s license and was suspected of trafficking the passengers but was let go at the request of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Documents from Homeland Investigations provided to the Daily Caller...

The Tennessee Star learned on Wednesday that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an alleged member of the Central American gang Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) who was deported to El Salvador under President Donald Trump amid legal action claiming the removal was by mistake, was suspected of being engaged in human trafficking by a Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) officer who detained him in December 2022, leading to the discovery of his name on a terrorist watch list. The Star learned from sources familiar with the incident that Abrego Garcia was stopped for an unknown reason on December 6, 2022, and that the THP officer...

Legislation Reversing $600 Threshold for Reporting Payments to IRS Filed by U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty April 11, 2025 Tom Pappert Bill Hagerty U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) filed legislation on Thursday to reverse the decision to require third-party payment processors to report transfers more than $600 to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Hagerty called the three-year-old policy an “egregious and unwarranted overreach” into citizens’ privacy. Hagerty introduced the Stop the Nosy Obsession with Online Payments (SNOOP) Act, which his office said would remove the provisions of the Internal Revenue Code created by former President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan (ARP),...

Audrey Hale, the 28-year-old transgender shooter in Nashville, reportedly wanted to kill children so that she would not be forgotten. According to police, the only concern that she had throughout her “rage storms” was not that she would be called a mass murderer or child killer but a racist. Her primary grievance appeared to be with Creswell Middle School, where she was bullied as a transgender student. However, she dropped that target at the last minute because it had a large black population and she did not want to be thought of as a racist. Hale shot and killed six...

After two years of "meticulous" detective work, the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) is closing its investigation into the Covenant School mass shooting on March 27, 2023, the agency's Chief John Drake announced Wednesday. Upon closure of the case, the MNPD's Homicide Unit has released a 48-page final report detailing the probe's findings. Among them, on a page titled "What She Didn't Leave Behind," the police agency disputes that the "transgender"-identified shooter, Audrey "Aiden" Hale, had ever left a manifesto divulging her motive. This manifesto in question was the subject of several public records requests and ensuing litigation on multiple...