Free Republic

The Colorado web designer who wanted to refuse LGBTQ customers and just won her case at the Supreme Court had claimed in court filings that a man inquired about her services for his same-sex wedding. But the man says he never reached out to Lorie Smith, the web designer who argued at the Supreme Court that she shouldn’t be forced to create same-sex wedding websites because of her religious objections. In fact, the man says he’s straight and married to a woman.

Every day, memories of World War II—its sights and sounds, its terrors and triumphs—disappear. Yielding to the inalterable process of aging, the men and women who fought and won the great conflict are now in their 90s or older. They are dying quickly—according to US Department of Veterans Affairs statistics, 167,284 of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II are alive in 2022.

A federal judge in Tennessee has ruled that a state law limiting public drag show performances represented an “unconstitutional restriction on the freedom of speech.”

Governor Henry McMaster wants aviation authorities across South Carolina to “immediately report any efforts to deplane or transport illegal immigrants” from commercial airports. It comes as the United State’s COVID-19 public health emergency, known as Title 42, expired at midnight. Gov. McMaster and other lawmakers across the country say large numbers of immigrants from around the world have gathered in preparation to illegally cross the border into the United States as that order ends. McMaster sent a letter Thursday evening to South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) Chief Mark Keel asking that he contact the chief law enforcement official for...

Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems is switching one of its recruitment focuses to international nursing in a bid to further reduce reliance on contract labor. Speaking on the system's webcast to discuss first-quarter results, CHS President and CFO Kevin Hammons said such a move would help with the situation because there is a "longer lag time to embed" such international staff. CHS salaries and benefits in the first quarter totaled $1.37 billion compared with $1.33 billion in the same period in 2022. The 2023 figure represented 43.9 percent of net operating revenues compared with 42.6 percent in the same period...

The State Public Service Commission is deciding what should be done with the Pleasants Power Station. Energy Harbor, which owns the coal-fired power plant in Pleasants County along the Ohio River, is going carbon-free so it has targeted the plant for closure at the end of May. First Energy subsidiaries Mon Power and Potomac Edison are potentially interested in buying the plant. However, the companies say it will take a year to analyze the deal and, during that time, they want their rate payers to subsidize the power plant’s operation. At minimum, that will mean a $36 million surcharge. That...

Michigan lawmakers gave the final approval Thursday, April 20 to award a controversial electric vehicle battery project millions in state funding. The state gave Gotion Inc. $175 million for a $2.4 billion battery parts plant in Mecosta County. The Senate Appropriations Committee voted 10-9 to transfer grants to the Gotion project.(snip) Gotion announced plans last year to invest $2.4 billion and create 2,350 jobs at two sprawling battery plants in Mecosta County. Jerrilynn Strong, chair of the Mecosta County Commission, said during Thursday’s Senate hearing the project is a great opportunity for people across the county. She also expressed disappointment...

COLUMBIA, SC (WSPA) – Members of the South Carolina House of Representatives voted to reduce the salary of a constitutional officer. Monday night, the House passed an amendment to their budget proposal that would cut Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom’s salary to $1. “This is in regards to what I’m calling the $3.5 billion whoopsie,” said Representative Heather Bauer (D-Richland). Rep. Bauer was referring to an accounting error lawmakers learned about in February. Comptroller General Eckstrom informed senators about a $3.5 billion overstatement of the state’s cash balances. The number was reported in his office’s annual financial report. According to Eckstrom,...

GREENVILLE, S.C. (WSPA) – A woman is facing charges in Greenville, accused of breaking a controversial law. The police report said her crime was taking an abortion pill. The alleged crime happened in October 2021. Greenville Police said after taking a pill to end her pregnancy, the woman went to the hospital and gave birth to a stillborn baby girl. According to the police report, the woman is now facing charges for abortion/performing or soliciting abortion. They said she gave birth to a stillborn baby at 25 weeks, 4 days gestation. “I don’t think this has ever happened before to...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia’s Senate passed a bill Monday that would give $25,000 in tax credits to former residents who move back to the state to work. The Senate passed the bill unanimously and sent it to the House of Delegates. Those eligible for the tax credit had to live and work in West Virginia for at least 10 years or were born in the state. They had to live outside of the state for at least 10 consecutive years prior to 2023. Unused portions of the credit could be applied to future tax years. The credit would...

Senators are trailing the Justice administration’s transfer of the remaining $28 million in federal covid relief dollars to a fund controlled by the Governor’s Office, which then put millions of dollars from that transfer toward construction of Marshall University’s new baseball field. “Isn’t that money laundering?” asked Senator Randy Smith, R-Tucker No, responded Berkeley Bentley, general counsel for the Governor’s Office. Bentley was testifying before the Senate Finance Committee, which wanted to know more about the transfer’s reasoning and validity. He told senators that the state faced a deadline to spend the remaining $28 million from federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief,...

SPARTANBURG COUNTY, S.C. (WSPA) — A flagpole flying a Confederate flag along Interstate 85 in Spartanburg County will stay up. On Tuesday, the county’s Board of Zoning Appeals ruled in favor of the property owners and said that county staff made an error when they issued a violation notice to the property owners last year. “We listened and listened,” said zoning appeals board member Tom Davies. “And we asked questions, which we do.” The board heard from attorneys Tuesday representing the property owners. In the fall, county planning staff told the landowners that the flagpole was too tall and violated...

Researchers at Palo Alto, Calif.-based Stanford Medicine have developed a Theranos-like test that screens for health measures using a single drop of blood. The approach, relayed in a Jan. 19 study in Nature Biomedical Engineering, combines a finger-prick device with multiomics technologies that assess a variety of proteins, fats, metabolism byproducts, and inflammatory markers. "Even more importantly, we've shown you can collect the blood drop at home and mail it into the lab," said Michael Snyder, PhD, director of the Stanford Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine and senior author of the study, in a Jan. 19 university news release....

A group of emergency physicians and consumer advocates in multiple states are pushing for stiffer enforcement of decades-old statutes that prohibit the ownership of medical practices by corporations not owned by licensed doctors. Thirty-three states plus the District of Columbia have rules on their books against the so-called corporate practice of medicine. But over the years, critics say, companies have successfully sidestepped bans on owning medical practices by buying or establishing local staffing groups that are nominally owned by doctors and restricting the physicians’ authority so they have no direct control. These laws and regulations, which started appearing nearly a...

Over the holiday break, White House economic officials are expected to brief President Joe Biden on their priorities for the coming year. They are considering a push for more employee benefits to bring people back to the workforce, The Wall Street Journal reported Dec. 21. "Where are places where we can lower price pressures in the economy, lower costs for consumers and increase the productive potential of the economy? The things that we will prioritize and focus on will be in that area," Brian Deese, the director of the White House's National Economic Council, told the Journal. Mr. Deese did...

GREER, S.C. (WSPA) – BMW announced Wednesday morning it will invest $1.7 billion to build a new facility in the Upstate and electric vehicles in the United States. $1 billion of the new investment will prepare the Spartanburg plant for the production of battery vehicles in the United States. The additional $700 million will be invested in building a new high-voltage battery assembly in Woodruff. Along with the investment, BMW signed an agreement with Envision AESC for the supply of battery cells for the Spartanburg plant.

The president of a North Carolina historically black university on Monday publicly called out Upstate South Carolina law enforcement officers after a traffic stop involving students and staff on a bus. In a statement, Paulette Dillard, president of Shaw University, a private Baptist historically black university in Raleigh, described the traffic stop that she said happened in Spartanburg County on Oct. 5. Dillard said 18 Shaw University students and two staff advisers were traveling on school business by contract bus to Atlanta when they were pulled over "under the pretext of a minor traffic violation." The statement said officers boarded...

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WSPA) – A South Carolina court has ruled that the electric chair and firing squad are unconstitutional and the state cannot execute inmates by those methods. In Tuesday’s ruling, Circuit Court Judge Jocelyn Newman ruled that both methods of execution are cruel and unusual punishment, in violation of the South Carolina Constitution. “In 2021, South Carolina turned back the clock and became the only state in the country in which a person may be forced into the electric chair if he refuses to elect how he will die,” Newman wrote in her ruling. “In doing so, the General...

WESTON, W.Va. — The chief deputy of the Upshur County Sheriff’s Department is recovering from a gunshot wound and a suspect who shot him is dead after a chaotic scene on Interstate 79 at the Weston exit Thursday morning. The incident started after 10:30 a.m. when a man in a silver Ford Explorer stopped his vehicle in the middle of the northbound lanes, exited the car and pulled out a scoped rifle and a handgun. Passing motorists indicated he was attempting to flag them down, but none would stop. He started randomly shooting. The assistant director of Upshur County’s Office...

The Southern Baptist Convention's Executive Committee publicly released a list of alleged sexual abusers, urging churches to use the list "proactively" to protect the vulnerable, in the wake of an exhaustive report into sexual abuse and decades of cover-ups in the denomination. The list, which the committee submitted to Guidepost Solutions as it compiled its 288-page investigative report, runs to 205 pages of names, with some names and claims redacted.