Tag: tennessee

Report: Pete Hegseth Not a Contender for Tennessee Senate

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is reportedly not being considered as a contender for the Tennessee Senate amid rumors that he could potentially be rotated out of the Trump administration.

According to reporter Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News, a source close to incoming Republican Tennessee Gov. Marsha Blackburn said that Hegseth is not being considered for her soon-to-be open senate seat.

“[Pete Hegseth] is not being considered [for Senate]. This is nothing more than Washington, D.C., spin from a bunch of consultants with nothing better to do. The Blackburn team is focused on the transition, not entertaining baseless speculation,” the source reportedly told Sherman.

“D.C. won’t pick the next senator,” the source added.

As Breitbart News reported on Wednesday, sources close to the White House have said President Donald Trump is speaking with advisers about firing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in the wake of crushing Democrat victories during the midterms. The president did, however, publicly deny this report.

Several sources also confirmed to CBS News on Wednesday that Trump has been calling advisers, with certain White House aides predicting some of the blame for Tuesday’s catastrophic losses will be placed on “Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, who both played big roles in guidance on the Iran war.”

Other sources, however, said the president has not completely set his heart on replacing Hegseth.

“Before the election, Democrats were already trying to impeach Hegseth, and the likelihood of an impeachment effort could increase with Democrats holding strong majorities in both chambers,” added CBS News.

Speaking with reporters on Wednesday, Trump said Hegseth is “doing a very good job.” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly also said in a statement on Wednesday the president “has full confidence in Secretary Hegseth.”

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Unhinged Knoxville Social Worker Demands City Remove Halloween Decoration Ghosts Because They Look Like ‘White Supremacist Lynching’

A Knoxville social worker named Elisabeth Spencer Pitts has publicly called on the city to take down white-sheet ghost decorations hanging from trees in downtown Market Square, arguing that the standard Halloween decor resembles a “white supremacist lynching.”

The ghosts form part of Knoxville’s official “Wicked Cool Halloween” decorations in the popular downtown square.

Independent journalist Andy Ngo highlighted her Facebook posts and images of the displays, noting that the last documented lynching in the United States occurred 45 years ago.

In a Facebook post complaining about the decorations, Pitts wrote:

Maybe I’m sensitive and possessed of a very flighty and prolific imagination, but this sh-t just ain’t copacetic in my humble opinion. The governance and daily operations of and by the Knoxville City Government are, by the most charitable estimations (I guess), simply tone deaf and incompetent- and in many cases just absolutely brutal in purpose and mechanism- but I feel like this Halloween aesthetic is exceptionally off the mark even for them. JFC can we just NOT hang anthropomorphic figures in trees in a downtown southern city right now?

While some commenters agreed with her, many also pointed out the absurdity of her complaint.

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Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee Weighs in on Christa Pike’s Fate After She Survived Botched Lethal Injections

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee said on Thursday that Christa Pike’s death sentence is likely to remain in place after she survived a completed lethal injection attempt.

The decision will ultimately be made by the courts, not the governor, unless he chooses to commute her sentence.

“As it related to a particular individual like Christa Pike and her crime, she’s still incarcerated under the laws of the state of Tennessee,” Lee said, according to a report from the New York Post. “I suspect her sentence will be the same as before unless determined otherwise by the courts.”

The comment strongly implies that a commutation is out of the question.

Pike, 50, was scheduled for execution on September 30 at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution for the 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville.

If the attempt had been successful, Pike would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

Execution team members spent nearly an hour and used roughly 10 needles trying to establish IV lines after earlier warnings that Pike had difficult vein access.

Ultimately, Pike received two doses of pentobarbital, remained conscious enough to complain of arm pain, snored audibly, and was later transported to a hospital unconscious and on a ventilator.

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HORROR: Multiple Patients Paralyzed at Nashville Hospital After ‘Pharmacy Error’ Leads to Drug Mix-Up

Multiple patients went into cardiac arrest after a ‘pharmacy error’ led to a dangerous drug mix-up.

Two patients are paralyzed, and one is on a ventilator at Ascension Saint Thomas Midtown Hospital after they were given the wrong medication prior to surgery.

The four patients were reportedly given potassium instead of an anesthetic. The dangerous mix-up happened at the hospital’s in-house pharmacy.

Too much potassium administered too quickly can stop a person’s heart, CBS reported.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigations is now involved in the case.

The hospital said they were “sorry” for injecting the patients with too much potassium.

“Our hearts remain entirely with the four patients and families impacted by the recent event at Ascension Saint Thomas Hospital Midtown,” the hospital said. “On behalf of our leadership and care teams, we extend our deepest apologies for the harm caused.”

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Two Nashville Teachers Say Bureaucrats Pressured Them to FABRICATE Grades for Failing Students — One Suspended After She Refused to Cook the Books

Two former Metro Nashville Public Schools teachers say administrators directed them to change failing grades so the district’s performance would look better on paper.

Samira Hardcastle, an eight-year art teacher at John F. Kennedy Middle School who was named the school’s 2025–2026 Teacher of the Year and recognized as a district Blue Ribbon Teacher of the Year, resigned in May.

Hardcastle said a student failed to complete an art project and received a failing grade. After the student’s parent challenged the grade, three administrators met with the parent and concluded that Hardcastle had not supplied an adequate rubric. Hardcastle refused to change the grade herself. According to her account, administrators then changed it.

Hardcastle described the episode in her resignation letter as grade fabrication and told WSMV that she believes such changes make district performance appear better than it really is.

At Tuesday’s Metro Nashville Board of Education meeting, Hardcastle also alleged that teachers were being discouraged from formally reporting some student misconduct. She warned that the numbers were being skewed to protect the district instead of children, according to FOX 17’s report on her appearance.

Samira Hardcastle: I was Teacher of the Year at John F. Kennedy Middle School in Antioch this past year and Blue Ribbon Teacher of the Year for the district. What you have in front of you right now is my resignation letter. I resigned in May. You can read those three pages at your leisure, but I’ve heard a lot of positive data in this meeting, and I just wanted to give you some facts from my firsthand experience.

So, first, district leaders asked me to fabricate grades for a parent who sat in the office for hours until her daughter’s failing grades were changed.

It creates false entitlement. What happens when these kids lie, cheat, and cry their way through school and end up as future doctors, police, or politicians? When will you protect the future of our society?

Second, that same parent has harassed over 30 teachers. Teachers have filed police reports, and entire schools have had restraining orders against her, yet she’s still allowed on school property, showing up to field trips her child didn’t earn and filming other students.

When will you stop prioritizing parents’ feelings over the safety of our teachers and our students?

I heard you also mentioned that we’re closing gaps in teacher vacancies. I want the public to know that many of those are filled with uncertified teachers.

My third point: HR withheld money from my employee paycheck, as well as many others. They took $500 from me specifically, and it put me behind on my mortgage. And then they sent out an email saying that they had to do it to pay other employees. When will you pay teachers what they are owed?

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Knoxville Mayor Shares Chilling 2020 Talk When Deborah Birx Admitted the Truth Didn’t Matter When It Came to the Science

Public officials faced pressure from “experts” to upend the lives of everyday Americans in the name of combating COVID. But were these measures really justifiable?

Republican Mayor of Knox County, Tennessee, Glenn Jacobs — popularly known for his work with World Wrestling Entertainment as Kane — recalled an exchange with a certain doctor who gave no indication that lockdown measures were proven to be effective.

Wednesday’s Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing, which featured former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, proved that lockdown measures enacted during COVID are still an open wound.

Fauci, a power-hungry braggart who loved the spotlight, was reduced to a sheepish old man, opting to invoke the Fifth Amendment rather than answer questions.

He ruined lives in the name of “science,” but now has nothing to say.

Another “expert” in the spotlight is Dr. Deborah Birx, who served as the coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force during President Donald Trump’s final year of his first term.

On Saturday, Jacobs remembered an exchange he had with Birx that proved anti-COVID policies were more of a stunt than a safety measure.

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Tennessee Teen Drenched in Glyphosate Spent Next 7 Years Fighting ‘Massive Alien’ Tumor

Within months of being soaked with a glyphosate herbicide while working on a cell tower maintenance crew, Tennessee teenager Arden Allison developed a tumor that grew into what he described as “this massive alien sucking the life off of me.”

Arden was 17 when he landed a job maintaining cell towers across the Midwest. According to his mother, Serene Allison, writing in RealClear Health, his duties included spraying weeds around tower sites with Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide first made by Monsanto, now owned by Bayer.

“I didn’t realize the danger,” Arden said in a recent interview on CHD.TV. During the two months he spent “mowing, weedeating and spraying around all the cell towers and access roads,” he said he experienced “several different big exposures of glyphosate.”

The worst came when a backpack sprayer malfunctioned. After Arden climbed over a fence, “the lid popped off” the sprayer. He was “completely doused … with glyphosate,” he said. The chemical soaked his neck, shoulders and upper body.

Wearing a tank top and without access to a shower, Arden rinsed off with a water bottle and finished his workday. He said the company didn’t provide protective gear.

“I was told it was … absolutely fine,” he said. But the exposure happened on a hot day when his “pores were open” and his body soaked up “all those chemicals.”

His mother said co-workers assured her son that glyphosate “wasn’t dangerous” because it was “just a regular pesticide.”

The exposure occurred in the fall of 2015. Just months later — five weeks after marrying his high school sweetheart in February 2016 — Arden was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma.

‘What’s happened out there?’ mom asked as healthy son deteriorated

Before taking the cell tower maintenance job, Arden was a healthy teenager who had been homeschooled, graduated at 16 and quickly entered the workforce.

He said he grew up in the rural “boondocks of Tennessee country,” where “there was nobody spraying any chemicals.”

When Arden returned from working out of state, his mother quickly noticed something was wrong.

“He’s always been a positive Pete kind of guy,” Serene said. “But immediately when he came home, I’m like, ‘What’s happened out there on the road?’”

Her tall, athletic son had grown pale and was losing weight rapidly. “He was getting thinner by the day,” she said.

He also developed persistent itching, night sweats and a scratchy throat. Eventually, one side of his face, neck and chest swelled dramatically.

Arden said the swelling corresponded with where the glyphosate had soaked into his body.

“I only … had an exposure, like an extreme exposure, in this area,” he said, pointing to his neck and shoulder. “I never had any cancerous lymph nodes in my whole lymphatic system besides … right here.”

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IRS Threatens to Seize Tennessee Man’s Farm Over Interest Charged on Accidental Refund That He IMMEDIATELY Tried to Return

The IRS is threatening to seize a Tennessee man’s farm after charging him interest on a refund it accidentally sent him in 2022.

Wilson Perry Kirby, 76, received an accidental $20,000 refund from the IRS on May 10, 2022, and he immediately tried to return the unspent money through his accountant.

More than four years later and Kirby is still fighting the IRS!

The IRS is withholding Kirby’s $1,800 refund from 2025 and is now threatening to seize his Coopertown farm over interest charges up to $4,300.

“I’ve tried the president, governor, mayor. They don’t mind asking you to vote for them, but when you need help you can’t get a hold of nobody,” Kirby told WTVF.

Kirby said he thought the matter was resolved earlier this year when he heard from Senator Marsha Blackburn.

“Well, they called me right before I went on television this last time and said it was settled, from Marsha Blackburn’s office,” Kirby said.

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WTH? AOC Does Fake Black Accent During Tennessee Rally – “Sista Pressley and I Were in Montgomery, Alabama”

Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) sent people scratching their heads when she spoke in Ebonics at a rally for black Tennessee Congressional Candidate Justin Pearson. 

Many were quick to point out AOC’s strange accent.

AOC is Hispanic and Puerto Rican, but instead of staying in her own lane and leaning into her actual cultural roots, she embraced trans ideology and turned herself into a black woman for the rally in the South.

Isn’t that called cultural appropriation?

During the speech, she referenced a rally she attended in Montgomery, Alabama, earlier this year with Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), whom she called “Sista Presley,” telling New Yorkers to “pull up” to the South to help fight Republicans.

Notably, during her May speech in Montgomery, AOC did not appear to have this same accent. Perhaps she’s been working on it.

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National Guard troops fatally shoot a man in downtown Memphis

Memphis police say National Guard troops fired their weapons in the early morning hours Sunday, killing a man who was armed with a handgun.

Police say officers were responding to calls of shots fired in downtown Memphis just before 4 am local time when they saw “an armed male carrying a handgun.” The man — identified by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation as 20-year-old Tyrin Johnson — fled on foot, pursued by Memphis police officers along with Tennessee National Guard soldiers who are assigned to the area.

What happened next was not immediately clear.

“For reasons under investigation, the situation escalated, resulting in two National Guard soldiers firing upon Johnson, striking and killing him,” according to a statement from the TBI. Memphis police said the man had “turned toward NG members with his weapon” before the National Guard soldiers fired their weapons and struck him.

Johnson was pronounced dead at the scene. No law enforcement officers were hurt in the incident, according to the TBI.

The TBI says it is investigating the incident at the request of Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy. TBI agents are “working to independently determine the series of events leading to the shooting, including collecting evidence and conducting interviews,” the agency said.

The National Guard has been patrolling in Memphis since October of last year as part of a federal task force, established by President Trump, to combat crime in Memphis.

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