The Daily Signal - Nashville Shooter’s Journal Released, Four Killed in Georgia Shooting, Brazil Bans X | Sept 4

Episode Date: September 4, 2024

TOP NEWS | On today’s Daily Signal Top News, we break down: The Tennessee Star releases the Nashville shooter’s journal. Four people were killed and nine were taken to the hospital after a school shooting in Georgia this morning.  Brazil bans social media platform X in the South American country on Saturday.  Beer brand Molson Coors is rolling back its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.  Relevant Links  Listen to other podcasts from The Daily Signal: https://www.dailysignal.com/podcasts/ Get daily conservative news you can trust from our Morning Bell newsletter: DailySignal.com/morningbellsubscription   Listen to more Heritage podcasts: https://www.heritage.org/podcasts Sign up for The Agenda newsletter — the lowdown on top issues conservatives need to know about each week: https://www.heritage.org/agenda Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Nashville School Shooters Journal is now in the public domain. I'm Elizabeth Mitchell, and this is the Daily Signal Top News for Wednesday, September 4th. The Tennessee Star recently released the Nashville Shooters Journal. Audrey Hale, the 28-year-old female who identified as male, opened fire at the Covenant School in Nashville on March 27, 2023. Before police shot and killed her, Hale killed three children and three adults. The Metro Nashville Police Department recovered 90 pages of Hale's Writings, which a source familiar with the investigation provided to the Tennessee Star in

June 2024. The Star published the journal on Tuesday. The Daily Signals, Tyler O'Neill, covered this story. Thanks so much for joining the show. Hey, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Authorities originally said that the shooter's political and religious ideology was unclear, but that is a large focus of the journal. Can you please elaborate on the themes of the journal? Yeah, so the themes are really strongly gender-related. You know, it's, uh, it really shows that this person is driven by a rejection of her physical body and a desire to be male. And she, one of the most revealing aspects of it to me was a page where she wrote this. She wrote, the cocoon of my old self will die when I leave my body behind and the

boy in me will be free in my butterfly transformation, the real me. And so what I think, this is a very religious text. It shows that Audrey Hale really identified as male and thought that, you know, when she died, she would be entered into heaven as a boy, because her real self, this, you know, this spiritual concept of herself. is male, even though her body was female. And I think that really encapsulates the threat that gender ideology poses, that we have this gnostic approach to reality that says the world around us, the physical world that we know is less reliable, less important, less real than our inner identification of gender.

And therefore, you know, if there is a just God, he's going to, uh, accept my personal identity as transgender. And she had this really shocking statement, you know, like, if God won't give me a boy body in heaven, then Jesus is a, you know, slur for a gay person. And I was just like, man, all right. Well, talk about a rejection of God. Of course, throughout, she also says, you know, she writes, God forgive me. She writes, my faith is weak.

and she's kind of struggling within herself. She's decided she's going to do this horrible thing, almost in order to die so that she can become male in another realm. And, you know, it just, it kind of breaks your heart to read this because she's been so taken over by this ideology, which is associated with one side of our politics, not to say that Democrats endorse or support, what she did, they don't.

But it is interesting to say, like, there's no political ideology here. And then you look at this and this is like, well, this is a religious ideology that's very much taken over one side of our politics. So, you know, make of that what you will. Really interesting to see the religiosity in this journal, as you said. The FBI tried to prevent the Tennessee Star from releasing the journal. What happened there and what do you think were the FBI's concerns? about this information getting out? Yeah, we've seen authorities repeatedly say

that this is an ongoing investigation that these documents are sensitive, that they shouldn't be released, and yet, you know, we see the release of if the shooter, if there's a mass shooter who's a white supremacist, the writings are released like the next day, if not the day of. And I think what we see here is the authorities acting to suppress information

that people should be able to know. And I think they made this story bigger than it might otherwise have been by trying to prevent these documents from seeing the light of day. In this particular case, it was really shocking. The Tennessee Star released some of the pages they reported on it,

and Michael Patrick Leahy was called in to a judge who said that he had violated a court order. And when he asked, oh, which court order did I violate? The judge refused to provide a court order, and the judge changed the pretext of the hearing. And so, like, I went to the judge. I went to the county because I'm like, I feel like the judge, I want the judge's side of this. And they say they don't comment on judges.

Judges are ethically prohibited from commenting on ongoing cases. But I thought, you know, I'd love to hear what Judge Miles says. of this because that was a really shocking aspect of this story to me. And I'd heard that, you know, the FBI, that the Nashville police didn't want the documents published. But to threaten a journalist to say that you're in contempt of court when there hasn't been a court order, I'm just, I'm flabbergasted. That's truly shocking. Thanks so much for reporting on this. Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks again for having me. Four people were killed and nine were taken to the hospital after.

a school shooting in Georgia this morning. A law enforcement source told CNN the gunman is believed to be a 14-year-old boy. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said he is alive and in custody for the shooting at Appalachie High School. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp said he directed all available state resources to respond to the incident. In a statement on X, the Republican governor said

he urges all Georgians to join his family and praying for the safety of those in Georgia classrooms, both in Barrow County where the shooting occurs. heard and across the state. The governor's office is continuing to work with local state and federal partners to gather information and respond to the tragic incident. Brazil banned social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter in the South American country on Saturday. And anyone caught using a VPN or a virtual private network to access the website will we find the equivalent of $9,000. The Daily Signals, Jared Stetman, is following this. Jared, what was Brazil's rationale here?

They're saying essentially that X won't stop what they call misinformation from being peddled on their platform. And what it amounts to is essentially certain kinds of political speech that the left wing administration in Brazil doesn't want on their platform at all. They insist on censorship controls being added. X said no, and that led to this judge and then ultimately their high court banning the social media platform in the entire country. Wow. What does this decision mean for free speech rights? I think this is a very serious blow to free speech rights. I mean, we've seen in other cases, especially in Europe. We saw recently the CEO of Telegram and other social media platform be arrested in France. I think we're seeing the growth of censorship regimes around the world, even in countries that are so-called democracies. That's what makes this so disturbing to see this jump across into the new world. To see political speech in particular be censored, I think, is a real concern. And the United States, of course, we're thankful to have the First Amendment,

but it's disturbing to see free speech rights be curtailed around the globe in so-called free countries. Absolutely. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you very much. Beer brand, Molson Coors, is rolling back its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. The maker of Coors Light and Miller Light sent a letter to conservative activist Robbie Starbuck, sharing its plans to cut several DEI initiatives from company operations after Starbucks threatened to expose their quote-unquote woke policies. Coors follows in the footsteps of several other large corporations, including tractor supply, Lowe's, John Deere, Harley Davidson, Polaris,

Indian motorcycle, and Ford. Starbucks reported that changes to Coors operations include ending participation in the Human Rights Council's Corporate Equality Index social credit system, ending DEI-based training programs, ceasing donations to divisive events, ending employee resource groups divided by race and sexual orientation, and ending supplier diversity goals, as well as ceasing to tie compensation to DEI hiring goals. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Signal.

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