Tennessee lawmakers are compiling data on the state’s transgender population. A new law will require clinics to report the number of patients seeking gender-affirming care.

Republicans who pushed for the reporting requirements say that it won’t include identifying information. But transgender advocates still worry. Over the past few years, Marianna Bacallao (@ba.marianna) reports that the legislature has passed a host of laws limiting the care that transgender patients can receive. In 2023, the state’s Attorney General was able to obtain detailed medical records of transgender patients at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Other laws passed in 2026 named June “Nuclear Family Month” and required schools, prisons and shelters to only recognize a person’s sex at birth in gendered spaces — meaning transgender women could be placed in male prisons or trans boys could only use the girl’s locker room. Tennessee already has several laws requiring gendered spaces in K-12 schools to adhere to a child’s sex assigned at birth.

Follow along for more from reporter Marianna Bacallao and tap link in bio for more stories.

How will Metro spend your tax dollars? The answer will materialize soon as councilmembers work through Nashville’s annual budget process.

Residents can comment on June 2. And there are already interesting proposals on the table, as the leaders of city agencies have made presentations and answered questions with members of Metro Council.

See highlights in this post to learn more about the mayor’s $3.8 billion spending plan.

“When the FMLA was passed in 1993, it was groundbreaking,” said Jocelyn Frye, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families.

“But a lot of folks can`t take unpaid leave.”

The Family and Medical Leave Act, or FMLA, guarantees employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave per year for their own serious health condition or to care for a parent, spouse or child with a serious medical condition.

Roughly 60% of workers in the U.S. qualify to take FMLA, but two-thirds of eligible employees said they wouldn’t take FMLA because they could not afford to go without pay, according to the Department of Labor.

FMLA guarantees unpaid leave, but some people can still get a paycheck on this leave. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia require employers to provide paid family leave programs. Or you can apply another form of paid time off, like PTO or paid sick leave, to the time you take away from work under the protection of FMLA.

Tap link in bio for the full story, and follow for more from HealthQ, in partnership with @kffhealthnews.

Illustration: Candice Evers

In its 230 years, Tennessee has witnessed a lot of history.

In a project celebrating the state’s birthday (and America’s 250th) WPLN is rolling out a new series: The Backstory.

We’ll be curating from episodes of our NashVillager Podcast to help explain and expand our state’s story, exploring how we became who we are.

Find more at wpln.org/backstory

This project is funded under an agreement with the State of Tennessee administered by the Tennessee Commission for the United States Semiquincentennial.

Tap link in the bio for more and to subscribe to the NashVillager podcast and newsletter.

Nashville lost tens of thousands of trees during the January ice storm.

The loss contributed to a record number of power outages. In response, the Nashville Electric Service created a more aggressive tree trimming policy with a wider clearance between trees and power lines.

Pushback was intense. One resident climbed a tree in protest.

Residents and advocates fear further tree loss and risky trimming patterns under the new policy. Critics also say there has been a lack of transparency and communication about the decision.

NES has continued trimming and said it would, “periodically review the reliability data around trimmed corridors, and work directly with any customers who have questions or concerns.”

NES says pausing now would increase risks of outages.

Photos: Seth Thorpe/WPLN and Caroline Eggers/WPLN

Former U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander talked with our daily show This Is Nashville this week. The fallout from Tennessee’s failed execution of Tony Carruthers continued, as calls for another lethal injection moratorium ramp up. The latest installment of Healthcare Hollow dropped, and it looks at the latest rural hospital closure in Tennessee.

Tap link in bio for our in-depth stories and to sign up for the NashVillager newsletter, a human-powered 5-day-a-week email direct to your inbox with local stories, info, and ticket giveaways.

You may have already noticed it. More bugs than last year? Bears encroaching on urban areas? Seeing armadillos in the road? Kudzu as far as the eye can see? What about bats?

We’ve got a story series on signal species — plants, animals, insects — and what they are telling us with their adaptive behaviors. Some of it is due to the changing climate. Some of it is due to human development. Some of it is due to disease. But all of these signals are revealing ways that nature is changing around us and how we are interacting with those changes.

Over the course of June, our team at WPLN, This is Nashville and our collaborative newsroom hub, the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, will bring you a new story each week.

Turn on notifications and be sure to follow along for this 4-part series about bears, bats, armadillos and kudzu. You won’t want to miss it. Stay with us until the end to see how you can participate in documenting what you see around you with @iNaturalist.

Photos: Jacqui Sieber, Michael Snead/iNaturalist/Creative Commons, niff82/iNaturalist/Creative Commons, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service