The course was right there, shining green through the early-morning haze like a scene from ESPN Films. But the first tee and my buddies, John and Lang, were nowhere in sight. I hadn’t played 18 holes since I was a teenager. Lang plays nearly every week. John plays a little less than that. But none of us are scratch golfers. We’re improving. When I finally wheeled in the parking lot, it all made sense.
This was the first day of play at the Links at Audubon, a highly anticipated day more than a year in the making. But this was early days still and it wasn’t all figured out yet. There was no clubhouse. No pro shop. There was, however, a construction trailer and another trailer for bathrooms. A handful of golfers changed shoes and futzed with golf bags near cars on a shiny new slab of night-sky blacktop. I found John and Lang there.
Beyond that parking lot, an unfinished chainlink corral, and past construction workers hurrying here and there, the brand new Links at Audubon Park shimmered again through the haze and ESPN Films music swelled in my head.
The course closed in November 2022 for a complete overhaul that cost between $8 million and $9 million, depending on what you read. I was not a golfer when the project began. But I was a reporter.
Near hole 12 of the Links at Audubon (Photo: Toby Sells)
At the time, I thought, “$8 million for another public golf course here?” It sounded absurd. I scoffed when Memphis City Council members Chase Carlisle and Ford Canale, who helped to rework the original plan, said they did it to give more green space for the “non-golfing public.” The golfing public is likely 5 percent (or less) of the total Memphis population, I thought. Why spend so much on them?
Then, the bug bit. I started playing Overton Park 9 in November and haven’t been able to stop. Maybe I still don’t understand why the city spends so much on golf but I can say Memphis courses offer an astonishing array of experiences here. But I turned my mind off to all of that on the first tee and drank it in.
The low green rises, the gentle swales, the steeply sloped greens were manicured to a Mario World precision; squint and you could wonder if it wasn’t all rendered in perfect pixels. A mowed line cut along the fringe of the fairway made it look inset, premium. Long, silver grasses swayed and the bough of old hardwoods hushed in the morning breeze.
We swayed, to yacht rock. We always do when John’s in the group. The music is at a tastefully volume — just loud enough to be heard in the cart — and it’s the perfect soundtrack to the activity. It straddles some line between irony and entertainment, much like my take on golf itself. I’m no country club guy, but here I am, having fun.
That’s something I’ve learned on Memphis golf courses. Nobody’s going to run you down because you’re not an ace shooter. They’ll support the heck out of you. Our day at Audubon was punctuated with a murmured “g’shot,” or a loud “hell yeah,” or “nice” when were weren’t verbally coaxing balls to keep running or stop running.
Photo: Toby Sells
That’s what golf is all about. That’s what friendship and support is all about. You don’t have to be great to have fun. And I learned that on those Memphis golf courses. I certainly hope (and do think) there’s a Memphis Parks experience out there for everyone in town, to hopefully have that thing I found on our golf courses.
For decades to come, Audubon will remain a place we can all laugh at our own mistakes and continue to believe our next shot will be great, to believe in the future.
Elon Musk. Photo by Trevor Cokley / Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Memphis environmental groups urged officials to deny an electricity deal for xAI, demanded a public review of the project, and said Memphis Light, Gas & Water (MLGW) ratepayers could subsidize some large portions of the infrastructure deal.
Details on the deal that brought the Elon-Musk-founded company to locate its artificial intelligence hub — called the Gigafactory of Compute — to Memphis remain few, even almost two months after its announcement.
A Tuesday letter from the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) outlined those knowledge gaps, showed confusion and ignorance on the deal by local leaders, said the facility would cause environmental harm to those in South Memphis, and that MLGW CEO Doug McGowen may have overstepped the boundaries of his position in approving the deal.
The letter was written and sent by the SELC on behalf of the Memphis Community Against Pollution (MCAP), Young, Gifted & Green, Sierra Club Tennessee Chapter, and the Sierra Club Chickasaw Group. SELC said, “many of these members will be directly affected by xAI’s operation and its harmful local consequences.”
The letter was sent to the board of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). SELC said MLGW is requesting TVA to provide xAI 150 megawatts of power. In the letter, SELC argues TVA’s Memphis system is not reliable enough to handle that much new consumption. Also, it said, a deal for the much energy needs more local approvals.
The 150 megawatt demand is enough to power 100,000 homes.
Southern Environmental Law Center
“The xAI facility is demanding a jaw-dropping 150 MW of firm power by the end of 2024,” reads the letter. “To put that demand in perspective, 150 MW is enough electricity to power 100,000 homes. The xAI facility would become MLGW’s largest electricity customer, siphoning five percent of MLGW’s total daily load to power its operations.”
On reliability, the group said that TVA admitted in October that it did not have enough generating and transmission power in the area even before xAI cam knocking. Back then, TVA proposed a new natural-gas-powered generation project here. The project was necessary to “improve the stability of its transmission system in the western portion of Tennessee. In this area, additional resources are needed to ensure that adequate transmission voltages are maintained within the desired limits,” SELC said, citing TVA’s report.
“Overcommitting to industrial load, as MLGW and xAI have requested, could have serious and even life-threatening consequences for residential customers in Memphis.
Southern Environmental Law Center
“In other words, TVA had already identified a reliability concern in the Memphis-area grid, even before factoring in xAI’s load,” SELC said. “Overcommitting to industrial load, as MLGW and xAI have requested, could have serious and even life-threatening consequences for residential customers in Memphis, contrary to the purpose of the TVA Act and the board policy. When TVA cannot meet peak demand, families go without power during increasingly severe hot and cold weather.”
Further, TVA’s gas-powered plants here are cooled with water from the Memphis Sand Aquifer. Higher strains on those plants — like during winter-weather events here in 2022 and 2021 — caused a serious draw on the aquifer and threaten well fields ”that provide drinking water for predominantly Black, low-income South Memphis communities.”
For these reasons and more, the group urged TVA board members to study the impacts of xAI’s supercomputer before agreeing to serve the facility. That study should include impacts to air pollution, climate change, water quality, water quantity and access, environmental justice, and transportation, SELC said.
“It cannot reasonably be disputed that xAI will require TVA to generate additional electricity and add capacity to the system,” the letter said. “TVA must disclose how it proposes to provide power to xAI, analyze alternatives, and study of the same categories of impacts identified in [the proposal for the new gas plant here] before committing to provide power to xAI.”
SELC also argues that the request to serve xAI is premature “because MLGW has not obtained approval from the MLGW Board or [the Memphis City Council] to spend millions of dollars of ratepayer money to subsidize xAI.” MLGW leaders told council members earlier this month that it would pay for $760,000 worth of substation upgrades for the project. Also, the utility will provide xAI a “marginal allowance” to recoup some of the $24 million it will spent o build a new, $24 million substation, meaning a big break on the company’s power bill.
”Thus, according to MLGW’s presentation [to the council], it seems that over the next few years, ordinary MLGW ratepayers will be subsidizing millions of dollars in infrastructure investments required to serve xAI, both directly and through bill credits to xAI,” the letter said.
Despite this “apparent massive commitment of ratepayer funds to subsidize xAI’s infrastructure needs,” neither the council nor the MLGW board was aware of the xAI project until it was announced on June 5,” SELC said.
Further, the group said MLGW board members weren’t even aware of MLGW’s request to serve xAI with more power from the TVA as late as two weeks ago. For proof, SELC cited an MLGW board meeting on July 17 in which MLGW board member Mitch Graves said, “On the xAI stuff…I wasn’t aware…that TVA’s got to approve something… hadn’t heard that anywhere…what is that they need to approve?”
“On the xAI stuff…I wasn’t aware…that TVA’s got to approve something… hadn’t heard that anywhere…what is that they need to approve?”
SELC citing MLGW board member Mitch Graves
SELC said McGowen negotiated this deal with xAI without oversight from his board or the city council. Doing so, the group said, is a violation of the charters of the council and the board.
”Proper review by the MLGW board and city council is essential because MLGW faces significant operational constraints that directly affect the Memphis coalition’s members’ access to electricity,” the letter said. ”MLGW must give the MLGW board and city council their charter-given right to evaluate whether it is in the best interest of MLGW ratepayers to subsidize millions of dollars of infrastructure investment in xAI over the next two years, while at the same time struggling to keep the lights on and provide accurate billing statements to residential customers.
”The TVA board should not consider the pending request until MLGW obtains required local approvals.”
U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Nashville) filed articles of impeachment against Vice President Kamala Harris Wednesday for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Ogles is the controversial congressman who still faces allegations that he misrepresented his education and work background on the campaign trail, a move that earned him comparisons to disgraced former Republican U.S. Rep. George Santos (R-New York).
A congressional watchdog group also filed an ethics complaints against him, alleging campaign finance violations. He admitted to those violations in May.
Ogles also told an activist in February, speaking about children being killed in Gaza, that “I think we should kill them all.”
PRO-PALESTINE ACTIVIST: “I’ve seen 🎥of shredded children’s bodies. That’s my tax money bombing those kids.”@AndyOgles: “I think we should kill em all, if that makes you feel better.”
THIS is last year's Christmas card from Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles, a Republican who represents the district that Covenant School is in in Nashville. #tnlegpic.twitter.com/IpkLzZs5m5
Ogles’ impeachment claims that Harris, now the presumptive front runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, showed “gross incompetence in dealing with the crisis at the southern border and her betrayal of the American people.”
He blames Harris, in part, for drugs on the streets, the rape and murder of “countless” women and children, and for allowing President Joe Biden to remain in office.
Here’s his statement in full:
“Kamala Harris has disgraced the office of the Vice President and willfully disregarded her oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.
“She is not only an embarrassment to the country but has also intentionally ignored her responsibility to enforce the laws of the United States and protect the American people.
“On her watch, every single town has become a border town. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have overdosed on illicit drugs brought across the southern border, and countless women and children have been raped and murdered.
“Kamala Harris has betrayed the trust of the public by failing to exercise her sworn duty to employ the provisions of the 25th Amendment to remove President Biden from office when it became apparent that he was mentally and physically incapable of continuing to serve.
“For these reasons alone, immediate action should be taken to impeach her.”
Levee Trail by the Mississippi River (Credit: Big River Park).
A glug of flood water was predicted to elevate Mississippi River levels here over the next two or three days, though officials said that some of the excess water was good news for the region.
Last week, mayors with the Mississippi River Towns and Cities Initiative (MRCTI) explained how seasonal flooding and rains from Hurricane Beryl affected their areas. La Crosse, Wisconsin, for example “pushed right up to major flooding” before waters receded. However, Hastings, Minnesota saw the river crest at more than 19 feet at the beginning of the month, only about five feet below the city’s record, according to the Hastings Journal. But it wasn’t all bad news.
“In some ways, the rain, the precipitation, is welcome,” said La Crosse Mayor Mitch Reynolds. “We just pulled out of a 60-month drought that cost our nation $26 billion. And for the first time since 2022, there is no drought along the Mississippi River corridor.
“June brought record heat and well-below-normal precipitation. July reversed that trend and gave us a recharge and then some. The third thing is this new water has — in some ways — secured our Louisiana cities from additional saltwater intrusion for at least several months.”
Grafton, Illinois, Mayor Michael Morrow. Credit: MRCTI
Grafton, Illinois, Mayor Michael Morrow appeared live at the MRCTI news conference last week with the Mississippi River behind him, encroaching on a city street. At 23.5 feet, the flood level was below the record 31 feet set in 1931, he said. So, “Grafton is open,” Morrow said.
“We like to say that because we don’t have levees, we are right on the river,” Morrow said. “Our tourists, they can some and put their toes in the river. We just had a group of people getting out of a car over here a minute ago. … The little kids came up and touched the river, and off they went.”
The coming high water expected for Memphis began as a wet pattern over Minnesota and Wisconsin in April and May, according to Anna Wolverton, a National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologist who also works for the Army Corps of Engineers Mississippi Valley Division. In June, an “extreme rainfall event” poured over southern Minnesota and South Dakota, she said, and “that’s what officially kicked this flood wave off and it’s still traveling down the Big River and that was three to four weeks ago now.”
As the mayors spoke during a press event, Thursday, the crest was moving though southern Iowa and into central Illinois and northern Missouri. The “really elongated crest“ lasted a few days at each river gauge, Wolverton said.
Predicted Mississippi River levels. Credit: National Weather ServiceCredit: National Weather Service
River levels at Memphis began to rise early this month, according to NWS data. On June 6th, the observed river stage was at nine feet. It continued to rise, reaching 16 feet on Thursday. Data from the United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) WaterWatch app said the river stage was at nearly 17 feet (well below the flood stage of 34 feet). The river is expected to crest at 18 feet Tuesday before falling again.
The Mississippi was 10.75 feet below normal in October 2022. (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)
Anyone who remembers the bone-dry moonscapes of October 2022’s record-low river levels might wonder what else we can expect this year. Wolverton said it was nearly impossible to predict. But water levels had already begun to fall in early June last year, putting the river at least one month ahead of 2023.
“I expect at least another month or so before we’re talking about low water again,” Wolverton said.
“I expect at least another month or so before we’re talking about low water again.
Anna Wolverton, a National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologist who also works for the Army Corps of Engineers Mississippi Valley Division
But record-warm sea surface temperatures throughout The Atlantic Basin could draw more tropical storms. Federal agencies have already predicted a higher-than-normal hurricane season. Those could bring even more water to the Mississippi River.
So far, the Mississippi River system is prepared for excess water, according to Carl Winters, the USGS National Flood Coordinator. He said two big contributors for Mississippi River flows are waters from the Missouri River and the Ohio River.
While flows on the Missouri River are elevated (at about 90th percentile for historic flows), they are receding. However, flows from the Ohio are low, at about the 30th percentile for known flows. The flow for the Mississippi at Memphis was at 80 percent and rising last week, Winters said.
Smokeable THCA and CBD products are wildly popular in Tennessee, according to industry advocates, but they remain at risk of disappearing from store shelves under new state rules.
State lawmakers passed new laws last year to regulate the growing cannabis industry in Tennessee. For example, cannabis products were moved behind shelves of stores that aren’t 21 and up. A new 6-percent tax on cannabis products was levied, too. A single serving of a cannabis product cannot exceed a dosage of 25 milligrams in the state.
The new law also made the Tennessee Department of Agriculture (TDA) responsible for regulating the cannabis industry here. Late last year, the department issued new rules for cannabis producers and products.
The department updated those rules at the beginning of this month after a public comment period. Tennessee Growers Coalition (TGC) executive director Kelley Mathis Hess said nearly 19,000 comments were submitted to the agency. But officials must not have listened, she said.
The new rules still include new THC standards for THCA and CBD flower. New limits could see those products removed completely. The new rules would also allow police to arrest manufacturers, retailers, and consumers for selling or possessing these smokable products, according to Cultivate Tennessee, another hemp advocacy group.
The new state rules redefine THC to include a product’s total THC. This includes a lot of THCA — the cannabinoid that produces a “high” — smokeable products.
“They’re trying to redefine it by combining two different cannabinoids,” Hess said, “two different things when it should just be Delta 9, and Delta 9 only. They’re trying to put a limit on [THCA] but the limit would, basically, ban a lot of it.”
Hess said these products are probably the most popular products on the market right now. Many small businesses have built their business around sales of these products, she said. Removing them could prove fatal to them.
TGC and Cultivate Tennessee have promised to fight.
“We will fight to keep smokable hemp products, such as THCA flower, concentrates, and vapes legal in Tennessee,” Cultivate Tennessee says on its website. “We will defend against the TDA attempting to rewrite laws through the rules. We assert that the TDA rules are potentially illegal and unconstitutional.”
The new rules, though, are considered “emergency rules,” meaning they are not the final rules. So, they’re not set in stone. Hess said she hopes agency officials will reconsider the new rules for cannabis flower. If they don’t, TGC will file a lawsuit for legal clarification, she said.
These particular products were likely targeted by the agency, Hess said, for one big open secret.
“These products get you high,” she said. “That’s not a secret anymore. That’s the whole reason [Rep. William Lamberth (R-Portland)] and [Sen. Richard Briggs (R-Knoxville)] brought a bill, because it gets you high and they wanted it regulated.”
The new rules won’t affect edible products, like gummies, Hess said. Those products are made with cannabis oils that can be measured, fine-tuned all along the production process, and remain stable on the shelf. Cannabinoid profiles in flower products, however, can change.
No state official has made any public comment on the new rules. However, when the Biden administration announced new rules not approved by Congress in a different matter, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti led a multi-state revolt against them (and temporarily won). The U.S. Department of Education added “gender identity” to Title IX. Skrmetti said only Congress could change rules and that the government agency “has no authority to let boys into girls’ locker rooms.”
From chemtrails to immigration, several new state laws took effect at the beginning of the month. Let’s have a look at a few examples of how state lawmakers changed the rules here this year.
Death for child rapists — Adults over the age of 18 now face the death penalty if they rape a child under the age of 12. The legislation was sponsored by two powerful lawmakers: House Majority Leader Rep. William Lamberth (R-Cottontown) and Senate Majority Leader Sen. Jack Johnson (R-Franklin).
However, in 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court said a similar idea from Louisiana was “not proportional punishment for the crime of child rape.” Johnson said he sponsored the legislation “in an effort to challenge the 2008 Supreme Court ruling.”
The Bible — The Bible — specifically the Aitken Bible — is a new state book. That version was the first published in the U.S.
State lawmakers have long flirted with the notion to make the Bible a state book but the bills to do it never passed. Conservatives bypassed much of the controversy to get it done this year by adding the Bible to a list of 10 other new, state books. That list included Alex Haley’s “Roots,” and Robert Penn Warren’s “All the President’s Men.”
Immigration — All law enforcement agencies and officials must now report “the immigration status of any individual” to the federal government. This includes the “knowledge that a particular alien is not lawfully present in the United States.”
“Chemtrails” — “It is documented that the federal government or other entities acting on the federal government’s behalf or at the federal government’s request may conduct geoengineering experiments by intentionally dispersing chemicals into the atmosphere, and those activities may occur within the State of Tennessee,” reads Senate Bill 2691.
It says geoengineering is is not “well understood.” So as of last week in Tennessee, “the intentional injection, release, or dispersion, by any means, of chemicals, chemical compounds, substances, or apparatus within the borders of this state into the atmosphere with the express purpose of affecting temperature, weather, or the intensity of the sunlight is prohibited.”
“Abortion trafficking” — A new law makes it illegal for an adult to recruit, harbor, or transport a pregnant “unemancipated minor” to conceal an abortion from their parents, helping them get an abortion no matter where it is performed, or getting an abortion-inducing drug for them. Those caught now face a Class A misdemeanor and “must be punished by imprisonment for 11 months and 29 days.”
The ELVIS Act — Gov. Bill Lee described the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act (ELVIS Act) as “a bill updating Tennessee’s Protection of Personal Rights Act to include protections for songwriters, performers, and music industry professionals’ voice[s] from the misuse of artificial intelligence.”
“From Beale Street to Broadway, to Bristol and beyond, Tennessee is known for our rich artistic heritage that tells the story of our great state,” said Lee. “As the technology landscape evolves with artificial intelligence, I thank the General Assembly for its partnership in creating legal protection for our best-in-class artists and songwriters.”
Parent protections — The “Families’ Rights and Responsibilities Act” says no government agency or official can substantially burden “the fundamental rights of a parent as provided under this bill,” unless the government can prove it needs to step in.
These rights include “the upbringing of the child,” the “moral or religious training of the child,” all healthcare decisions, school choice (public, private, religious, or home school), excused absences from school attendance for religious purposes, consent before the collection of “any individual biometric data” like analysis of facial expressions, brain wave patterns, heart-rate, pulse, blood volume, blood, DNA, and more.
Construction on the new Memphis Brooks Museum of Art Downtown can continue “full steam ahead” after a court ruling Friday.
Shelby County Chancellor Melanie Taylor Jefferson denied a request from Friends of Our Riverfront (FOR) to stop the build. The group has long contended that land at the top of the bluff, where the new museum is being built, is public.
“Neither the city nor Brooks owns this property,” the group has said. “Memphians have an easement to use the property as a public promenade and the city is the trustee. This means that the city can use this land only for the specific purpose of a riverfront greenway.”
With this, the group sued the city and the Brooks in September to halt construction. The court ordered the group to post a bond of $1 million to offset damages to the project should it be temporarily halted. FOR urged the court to waive the bond. The Brooks and city officials asked the bond to be set at $5 million.
The group never posted the bond. So, the judge dismissed its request to stop construction.
“This victory paves the way for us to bring Memphis one of the greatest cultural institutions in the country,” Brooks Chief development Officer Melissa Whitby said in an email to museum members. “This achievement would not have been possible without the unwavering support of our community, patrons, and partners. We are deeply grateful for your trust and commitment throughout this journey.”
Credit: Memphis Art Museum
FOR made no immediate public comment on the decision. In a Facebook post Thursday, the group said, “hard to believe a huge Soviet-style building that blocks the riverfront is actually good for anybody, Brooks included.”
The group has long fought projects along the bluff. It wants to conserve the riverfront from Big River Crossing to the Wolf River Greenway “as green space for public enjoyment, preserving its historic, natural, and authentic character.”
Credit: Friends for Our Riverfront
The Brooks broke ground last year on the new museum at the corner of Front and Union, the site of the former Memphis Fire Services Division headquarters. The museum will have a new name, the Memphis Art Museum, and is slated to open next year.
In her email, Whitby said the facility is expected to attract 150,000 new visitors to Memphis, generate about $100 million in economic impact, and “provide transformative experiences to more than 30,000 school-age children annually.”
“For years, our goal has been to establish for the people of Memphis one of the greatest cultural institutions in the country,” said Carl Person, chair of the museum board. “Today, thanks to the unwavering dedication of many, many supporters, we are closer than ever to making that dream a reality. This portion of our riverfront will soon be home not only to a world-class art museum, but acres of new, open, art-filled, and accessible public space for everyone to enjoy.”
The number of hate and anti-government groups operating in the Memphis area last year held at four, according to a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), amid a record wave of white nationalist and anti-LGBTQ groups.
Each year, the Montgomery, Alabama-based SPLC issues its Year In Hate and Extremism report, which details hate groups and anti-government extremist groups operating across the U.S. This year’s report found a total of 1,430 active groups (in both categories combined) operated in the U.S. last year, up from the 1,225 groups active in 2022.
The number of active groups in the county marked a record in SPLC’s data tracking. The previous record surge in groups was in 2018 when the number totaled 1,020. After that surge, the number of hate groups fell for four years year in a row up to 2022. Last year’s rise broke the streak and the record.
The new report documents 595 hate groups and 835 antigovernment extremist groups, including a growing wave of white nationalism increasingly motivated by theocratic beliefs and conspiracy theories. These groups intensified their efforts over the past year to recruit new members, increase their online presence and in-person demonstrations, exploit international and domestic conflicts, lobby the government and, in some cases, directly participate in elections, especially at the local level.
The report says communities of color, immigrant communities, minority faith communities, and LGBTQ+ communities are all targeted by and experience the negative effects of “hate-filled rhetoric and antigovernment conspiracies through actions such as banning books, protesting drag story hours, and using school boards as political battlegrounds.”
Credit: Southern Poverty Law Center
In Tennessee, 37 hate groups operated here last year, according to the report. They include “racist skinheads,” white nationalists, militia movements, neo-Volkish groups, neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, anti-Muslim groups, a hate-filled gift shop, and more.
“With a historic election just months away, this year, more than any other, we must act to preserve our democracy,” said Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the SPLC. “That will require us to directly address the danger of hate and extremism from our schools to our statehouses.
“Our report exposes these far-right extremists and serves as a tool for advocates and communities working to counter disinformation, false conspiracies and threats to voters and election workers. Together, we can dismantle white supremacy and ensure all communities see themselves represented in our democracy.”
In Memphis, four groups made the SPLC’s annual report. Moms for Liberty and Proud Boys remain active here, it says.
The local Moms for Liberty group says it is “dedicated to the survival of America by unifying, educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.” Jennifer Martin is listed as the county chapter chair on the national group’s website.
The West Tennessee Proud Boys website shows a photo of the group marching on Beale Street and tells its members to “walk your streets with your head held high.” An obviously fake Memphis address is listed as “Freedom Street, Memphis, TN 38503.” The ZIP Code is for Cookeville, Tennessee.
In its website’s “Beliefs” section, the local Proud Boys say they are “are proud Western Chauvinists who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world.” They say they want small government, freedom of speech, closed borders, the right to bear arms, to “venerate the housewife,” and more.
On racism, the Proud Boys site says it “may be alive, but it is not well” as “progress has been made in overcoming racial prejudice.” With that, they don’t want “anti-racial guilt.” … “Let no man be burdened with shame for the deeds of his ancestors,” reads the site. “Let no people be held accountable for things they never did.”
The site also offers a portal to join the group. Another button, for complaints, takes a visitor to a YouTube video featuring a tune called “The You Are A Cunt Song.”
Two Bartlett radio stations also made the SPLC’s list this year, as they have for years. The “about” section of Blood River Radio says “genocide is being pursued against white gentile people of the world.” The Political Cesspool hosts have said “we represent a philosophy that is pro-white and are against political centralization.”
Read more about those stations in a previous story here. Read an in-depth look at them, their hosts, and their guests from the SPLC blog here. Read about the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s latest hate crime report here.
A federal judge will temporarily allow some transgender discrimination in Tennessee and other states, skirting new changes to Title IX.
Those changes came in President Joe Biden’s first day in office with an executive order that added gender identity and sexual orientation to the anti-discrimination law. Biden later extended those protections to educational environments. The rules are set to go into effect on August 1. All of these changes came after the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that prohibited companies from firing a person on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.
In April, Tennessee led a coalition in a lawsuit to block Biden’s new additions to Title IX. The group included Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, Virginia, Christian Educators Association International (CEAI), and “A.C.”, a 15-year-old high school girl who lives in West Virginia.
The states argued that the new law would chill free speech and religious freedom because teachers would, under the new rules, have to use a student’s “preferred pronouns,” according to the suit. The law would also mandate schools to open up bathrooms and locker rooms to all genders. The states also argued that the new rules subverted Congressional review and overreached into states’ powers to make such laws.
CEAI opposed the rules on grounds of free speech and shared private facilities. Its members — particularly educators in K-12 public schools — wish to “live and work consistent with their shared belief that God created human beings as male and female and that sex is an immutable trait.”
A.C., the 15-year-old student, said a transgender female was allowed to compete on her middle-school track team. The other student’s biology is an unfair advantage, A.C. said, and she did not feel comfortable dressing in front of the other student.
A federal judge agreed with the plaintiffs in a Tuesday ruling.
“There are two sexes: male and female,” wrote Chief Judge Danny Reeves, United States District Court of Eastern Kentucky. But Reeves said in a footnote that the statement was conceded by U.S. Department of Education officials in oral arguments. “The parties have agreed to little else.”
Reeves ordered a preliminary injunction against the new rules but only in those states who joined in the lawsuit. The stay extends to the Christian educators group and A.C. in those six states.
Tennessee schools and universities would have to let boys into girls’ locker rooms and other private spaces.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti
“If the rule we stopped had been allowed to go into effect on August 1 as scheduled, Tennessee schools and universities would have to let boys into girls’ locker rooms and other private spaces,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said in a statement. “If the rule went into effect, our schools would have to punish teachers and students who declined to use someone’s preferred pronouns.
“These are profound changes to the law that the American people never agreed to. This rule was a huge overreach by federal bureaucrats, and the court was right to stop it.”
Chris Sanders, executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project, said, “We have a state government going into battle against trans and non-binary students via their pronouns,” in an opinion piece in The Tennessean Monday.
Government employees should not have more of a right to define a student’s identity than the student does.
Chris Sanders, executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project
“Students are better served by policies that respect their identities,” Sanders said. “They are at school to get an education without barriers, not to serve as an opportunity for adults to exercise virtue by choice.
“Experiencing an agent of the state using the wrong pronoun in front of one’s peers day after day is something students should not endure. Government employees should not have more of a right to define a student’s identity than the student does.”
Elon Musk. Photo by Trevor Cokley / Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Memphians still don’t have many details on xAI’s massive supercomputer project planned for Memphis, though a recent $700 million data center deal for X in Atlanta may offer some clues.
What we don’t know is:
• How much will the company actually invest here? (It’s been touted as “multibillion” and the “largest single capital investment in Memphis history.”)
• What exactly will the so-called Gigafactory of Compute do? (It’s proposed to power X’s Grok artificial intelligence. But how that will happen in Memphis remains hazy.)
• How many employees and new jobs will the project bring to Memphis? (Speculation says about 200 hundred jobs. But no one in the public is yet certain.)
• What will the real economic impact of the project be for Memphis?
• What will local leaders offer to the company in incentives to bring them here?
Many of the questions were slated to be answered next week. The project was supposed to go before the Memphis-Shelby County Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE) on Wednesday, June 19. Officials cancelled that meeting in observance of the Juneteenth holiday. So, locals could be left waiting for a month for answers on xAI, unless EDGE calls a special meeting.
In the meantime, I took a suggestion from someone on the Memphis subreddit. (I couldn’t find the comment or I would’ve given you a shoutout). For what could happen in Memphis, they suggested looking to Atlanta.
Atlanta case study
X Corp. (not xAI) proposed to build a $700 million data center there in December. It already had a data center in the city and another in Portland, according to WSB-TV Atlanta. Incentive packages would decide whether the company brought its big, new project to Portland, Oregon or Atlanta.
“Either location, in addition to similar alternative locations, could serve as the near-term location for this infrastructure investment,” reads the company’s application to Develop Fulton, Atlanta’s EDGE equivalent. “The incentive is a critical part of the analysis and decision process of whether to locate the equipment in Atlanta, Portland, or other locations.”
For the new Atlanta project, the company asked Develop Fulton to approve a $700 million inducement and final bond resolution “to acquire, install and create the next generation of high-performance computing and Artificial Intelligence (AI) products for the X platform.” The company also asked for a tax break of more than $10.1 million over 10 years.
Taxes for the project in its first year were promised to be more than $4 million. Taxes over the project’s first 10 years would be more than $16.5 million.
The project would retain 24 jobs in Atlanta, not create new jobs. X Corp. predicted an overall economic impact of the project to be more than $241.7 million in 10 years.
The economic impact figure changed, though, from when X first brought the project to Develop Fulton, according to WSB-TV. The company’s original pitch to the board said the economic impact for the project would be more than $1 billion, way higher than the updated $241.7 million figure:
Credit: Develop Fulton/ X application from DecemberCredit: Develop Fulton/ X application from January
X Corp.’s proposal ended in a deadlock from the Develop Fulton board in December. The vote came after the board “got an earful from opposed residents,” according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
One board member, Laura Kurlander-Nagel, said the X platform’s value dropped by more than half after xAI founder Elon Musk bought it. For her it was a concern and she voted against the project, according to London-based Data Centre Dynamics blog.
The Atlanta site, northwest of Downtown on Jefferson Street, was once proposed for another data center. Kansas-based Quality Technology Services (QTS) wanted to build a center there but asked Develop Fulton for a $45 million tax break over 10 years. The board voted against it, and, apparently, QTS moved on.
However, when the X project came back before Develop Fulton in January, it passed with that $10.1 million tax break included. Two board member voted against it.
Data boom
Data centers are booming in Georgia’s capital city. Atlanta City Council member Jason Dozier said the market is growing faster there than in any other U.S. city. Construction for data centers in Atlanta grew by 211 percent, Dozier said, from 2022 to 2023.
This is partly why he and council member Matt Westmoreland proposed a ban on building them close to transit stations and the Atlanta BeltLine. It was unclear whether the ban had yet passed.
1/ Excited to introduce legislation alongside @WestmorelandATL to address the rapid growth of data centers in Atlanta. Atlanta's data center market is booming faster than any other in the US. From 2022 to 2023, data center projects under construction increased by a whopping 211%. pic.twitter.com/m49mTo44Pv
“Despite their growth, data centers don’t create many local jobs compared to other sectors,” Dozier tweeted in mid-May. “This limits economic benefits for our communities. Their existence presents a trade-off, diverting resources and focus away from alternative, people-oriented development priorities.
Their existence presents a trade-off, diverting resources and focus away from alternative, people-oriented development priorities.
Atlanta City Council member Jason Dozier
“Additionally, the energy demand of these centers is substantial, oftentimes equivalent to an entire natural gas plant’s output, further stressing our fragile electric grid.
“By prohibiting new data centers near transit and the Atlanta BeltLine, we aim to preserve these vital corridors for people-oriented priorities like housing, retail, transportation, and green spaces.
“It’s time to ensure that our city’s growth is sustainable and equitable for all residents. Let’s work together to shape Atlanta’s future in a way that prioritizes the needs of our communities and that benefits all Atlantans.”
But urban Atlantans aren’t the only ones with qualms over data centers in the Peach State. Georgia state lawmakers voted to temporarily suspend a tax break on equipment for data centers, according to the Associated Press. The legislation followed a monthslong review of all of the state’s many tax breaks and incentive programs.
The bill gained traction as Georgia Power reported a massive spike in electricity demand, and the data center industry accounted for 80 percent of that growth, it said. Also, one lawmaker also cited a 2022 state audit report that found that the tax exemption for data centers returned 24 cents on the dollar.
However, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp vetoed the legislation in May. He said the bill’s July 1 deadline would have interrupted “projects that are already in development — undermining the investments made by high-technology data center operators, customers, and other stakeholders in reliance on the recent extension, and inhibiting important infrastructure and job development.”
Sierra Club Georgia Chapter Director G Webber called the move “beyond disappointing.”
“The surge in the demand for power from data centers is propping up old coal plants and causing a rush to build new gas infrastructure,” Webber said in a statement. “As a result, Georgia communities will see higher levels of air and water pollution, and our fight to curb the worst effects of climate change is hampered. Kemp is burying his head in the sand by refusing to address an issue already having such a significant impact on our state.”
