Notable quotables for the week in news from WPLN that cover the redistricting aftermath, the renovations at historic Ft. Negley, tree trimming worries and “Chud the Builder.”
There are now four lawsuits challenging the redrawn Tennessee map, and House Speaker Cameron Sexton removed all Democrats from the committee assignments as a punishment for protesting.
Nashville Electric Service is ramping up its tree cutting — a move that has drawn blowback. And city leaders are working to improve Fort Negley, a Civil War historic site, and one of the foundational pieces of Nashville’s Black history.
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Despite efforts from the current administration in the White House, Fort Negley in Nashville is getting a historical reckoning and a renovation.
It’s a project that some have been seeking for years. Metro is working to update the fort with a more accurate presentation of its story — which is complicated. It’s a Civil War fort built by the Union using forced Black labor.
WPLN’s Cynthia Abrams reports the renovation comes at a time when such efforts are being discouraged by the White House.
Dr. Learotha Williams from TSU said: “People were talking about putting a Kroger here, then tennis courts. All kind of bad ideas. ... But we are here and it's a testament to council people and the mayors and the community who decided to say, “OK, this is a place that we are going to protect.’ ”
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Photos: Cynthia Abrams / WPLN
Nashville and Tennessee leaders are at odds. Again.
Cynthia Abrams reports that when Tennessee’s General Assembly concluded the legislative session in April, the work for local leaders was only beginning. Metro’s legal team began their annual legislative review, identifying new laws that, they feel, are adversarial to Nashville and assessing the potential for legal challenges.
And while the number of new laws that concern city leaders is high, the possibility for legal action may be lower than in recent years. In 2023, Metro filed four lawsuits over laws that the city claimed unfairly targeted Nashville, and, thus, violated Tennessee’s Constitution.
The preemption laws passed in the 2026 legislative session don’t target Nashville in the same way. Rather, they impact local control on a broader level statewide.
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Photos: George Walker IV / AP, Cynthia Abrams / WPLN
This week Tennessee Republicans voted to divide Memphis's majority-Black voting bloc amid widespread protests.
The move splits Memphis into three different congressional districts. That means all nine of the state’s U.S. House seats are more likely to go to Republicans, in line with a push from President Donald Trump to give the GOP a redistricting advantage in the miderms.
Protesters argue that this will take away the voice of voters who support Democrats, roughly 33% of Tennessee's population. Some Republicans agreed in their own way. There were a few no votes and a few who abstained.
Memphis’s 9th Congressional District was pretty compact, but will now stretch nearly 300 miles — from the border with Mississippi in the Western corner of the state, to the edge of Nashville in the middle.
Republicans say they didn't consider racial demographics when drawing the maps, only political data.
Follow along for more from Marianna Bacallao and tap link in bio for the full story.
What a week in Tennessee news. The biggest story was Tennessee Republicans’ decision to break up the state’s only majority-Black Congressional district. They said the move was critical to carry out President Donald Trump’s agenda. The final vote came 24 hours after the proposed maps were published, and eight days after a U.S. Supreme Court decision walked back protections against racial gerrymandering.
We also covered an inclusive baseball league for children and adults with disabilities, a Dolly Parton Vegas residency cancellation, and Amy Grant’s new album.
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Amy Grant's career has been defined by her success in the face of controversy.
She became a figure in pop culture right next to Madonna and Prince. But she was held to a different standard. “To serve the CCM market, it’s very important for any artists to conform to conservative white evangelical ideals,” says Leah Payne, author of “God Gave Rock and Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music.” From the "three button controversy" of the 80's, to the backlash over her admission that she enjoys having sex with her husband and sunbathing nude, to the recent controversy over hosting a same sex marriage ceremony on her Nashville property — all of this generated market consequences.
Now Grant is facing new market challenges. One her new album, "The Me That Remains" she steers clear of controversy, or at least it tries to. The first song on the record is "The 6th of January" a song that Grant chose to sing because it asks for political empathy and speaks of "times of hope in unrest." Grant sees it as her responsibility to bring people together in this politically charged time. Her label says the challenge of marketing the record will be that it works against a music discovery algorithm that rewards the praise and worship music like Grant's first hits in the 80's.
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Photos: courtesy of the artist
Heeding a call from President Trump to give Republicans more seats in Congress, Tennessee’s GOP-led statehouse voted to carve Memphis into three reliably red districts.
Democrats and protesters have criticized the redistricting plan, which struck down state law against mid-decade redistricting and did in three days what usually takes months.
Republicans say the new maps will represent the state’s GOP majority by sending all Republicans to the U.S. House.
Democrats in both chambers staged walkouts as the measure passed. Three protesters from Memphis were arrested for refusing to clear the House gallery, including the brother of Rep. Justin J. Pearson, D-Memphis, who had been running for congress in Memphis’s former 9th Congressional District.
Follow for more from reporter Marianna Bacallao and tap link in the bio for the full story.
Photos: Marianna Bacallao / WPLN, George Walker IV / AP
What would it take to bury electrical lines in Nashville?
When Winter Storm Fern devastated Nashville this year, it left hundreds of thousands of Nashvillians without power in frigid temperatures. And many people turned to Curious Nashville with some form of the question about burying our lines.
Curious Nashville reached out to a utility expert who could help answer this question. Wade Sexton, a Knoxville-based member of the National Utility Contractor’s Association told WPLN that retrofitting an entire city with underground lines would require two main things: total buy-in from customers and a LOT of money. Like double digit billions of dollars kind of money.
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Photos: John Amis / AP Photo, George Walker IV AP Photo
With outdoor concert season here, bikers and pedestrians passing by Ascend Amphitheater may notice an improvement to solve an annoying issue that had persisted for years.
The problem? There was no way through the park during shows.
Since part of the downtown greenway is technically on the grounds of Ascend, you’d need a ticket to be there. LiveNation, which ran the amphitheater for the past ten years, simply closed that section of the park during events, so pedestrians and bikers had to go all the way around.
Opry Entertainment Group promised to do something about that when they won the bid to run the Amphitheater for the next decade. The organization spent $1 million building a new wooden bridge over the land, and it will be open during concerts. If you’re thinking that sounds like a great spot to see a show for free, you’re not wrong, but you will be stopped. Metro owns the land and leases it to Opry, so officers will be patrolling during shows.
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Photos/video: Justin Barney WPLN, press release photos from Opry Entertainment group
In a newly proposed map, Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District, which has historically represented Memphis in the U.S. House, would now stretch from the bottom of the city to the edge of Nashville — a distance spanning nearly 300 miles.
Since a recent U.S. Supreme Court weakened a section of the Voting Rights Act, President Donald Trump has called on states to redistrict areas they previously couldn’t touch.
The Tennessee Black Caucus of State Legislators decried the court’s decision. “There's no way to sugarcoat eliminating a district that is 61% Black,” said Sen. Raumesh Akbari, D-Memphis. “You are deliberately trying to silence the voices of a community.”
In unveiling the new maps, Republican leadership said the move will “modernize” Tennessee’s redistricting process by taking racial data out of consideration. The GOP has rejected calls to involve public feedback in the process.
Follow for more from reporter Marianna Bacallao and tap link in the bio for ongoing coverage of this special session.
Map: Tennessee General Assembly
Hundreds of protesters gathered at Tennessee’s capitol Tuesday as lawmakers began a special session to consider splitting Memphis’s Democratic stronghold into reliably red districts.
Tennessee’s Republican supermajority is heeding a call from President Donald Trump to give the GOP more seats in Congress. Republican Gov. Bill Lee, initially hesitant about the timeline of new maps, called the special session after a phone call with Trump.
Lawmakers will likely only have three days to redistrict, a process that usually takes months.
So far, Republicans have struck down Democratic proposals to give the public more feedback in the redistricting process. In a House committee Tuesday morning, GOP leadership quashed efforts to hold public feedback meetings or to release the proposed maps publicly 72 hours before a final vote. The House Ad Hoc Committee also voted to ban disruptive observers from the entirety of the special session.
Follow for more from reporter Marianna Bacallao. Tap link in the bio for ongoing coverage of this special session.
Photos: Marianna Bacallao / WPLN
“Haters are gonna say that that bull is AI, but it is definitely not.”
Kacey Musgraves is a true auteur who not only co-writes and co-produces all of her music, but also shapes an entire visual world around it.
Kacey goes to great lengths to pursue her vision, including a guerilla-style photo shoot which included releasing a bull in the streets of Dallas with her photographer sister. This clip is from an interview by Senior Music Writer Jewly Hight.
Kacey Musgraves is a WNXP May Artist of the Month and an NPR New Music Friday release last week.
Follow along for more from Jewly Hight and tap link in the bio for more stories.
