Protesters gathered on President’s Day to condemn President Donald Trump and his administration. (Photo: Chris Davis)
The Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility had good news last week for Shelby County DA Steve Mulroy regarding four distinct matters charged against him by his persistent adversary, state Senator Brent Taylor, who had included them in his proposed resolution to seek legislative removal of Mulroy.
The board found Mulroy legally blameless in:
1) His decision to take the death penalty off the table in the murder case of Michael Sample, when two different experts concluded that the defendant was intellectually disabled and thus ineligible, under the law, for the death penalty.
2) His decision not to oppose a reduction of a 162-year sentence for a string of nonviolent forgeries in the case of Courtney Anderson.
3) and 4) Two separate allegations that he had engaged in improper “ex parte” communication with a presiding judge outside the presence of opposing counsel.
OUTMemphis placed third at the 12th Annual TEP Gumbo Contest. (Photo: Courtesy Jonathan Cole)
• The OUTMemphis organization, whose booth is pictured here, was one of several winners in the annual fundraising gumbo contest sponsored by the Tennessee Equality Project.
The 12th annual TEP event was held Sunday at the Memphis Sports and Events Center at Liberty Park, drawing a large crowd of entrants, attendees, and public figures who braved the frigid weather.
Proceeds from the event support a variety of projects which, in the words of TEP, “advance the well-being of LGBTQ people and their families here at home in Tennessee.”
Among the elected politicians on hand were state Senator Raumesh Akbari and state Representative Gabby Salinas. Senator Akbari served as one of five primary judges for the event.
This year’s event was held amid several pending developments in both state and national government of direct interest to the LGBTQ community and on the eve of hearings in the state General Assembly on HB 315/SB 0737, the “Tennessee Covenant Marriage Act.”
That legislation, as described by its chief sponsor, state Representative Gino Bulso (R-Williamson), would allow marital unions “between a man and a woman,” requiring compulsory counseling and excluding “irreconcilable differences” as reasons for divorce.
Bulso said the bill would also challenge the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling that enabled same-sex marriages.
• President’s Day weekend was notable in other ways as well. On Monday, a sizeable crowd of protesters gathered Downtown to convey their sentiments regarding ongoing actions by the Trump administration.
Former Flyer staffer Chris Davis was there and took the photo below.
(left) Marsha Blackburn;
(right) Bill Hagerty (Photos: United States Senate, Public domain | Wikimedia Commons)
To remind the faithful readers of this space: In our year-end issue, we offered forecasts about the shape of things to come in the political arena.
One circumstance noted for the record was the fact that both of Tennessee’s incumbent U.S. senators — Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty — would strongly consider running for governor in 2026.
That is what our pipeline said, and that is what we reported, even though it seemed passing strange, even to us. Why? Because the customary rites of passage flow in the opposite direction — with the gubernatorial office more often serving as a springboard for Senate, than vice versa.
That is definitely the pattern in our neighboring state of Arkansas, where such eminent recent members of the Senate as Dale Bumpers and David Pryor (both now deceased) served what amounted to apprenticeships as governor before going on to become senators.
To be sure, ambitions may figure differently in the Land of Opportunity than in the Volunteer State, but Lamar Alexander ran first for governor and then for senator. And one recalls the unhappy, arguably tragic fate of Democrat Frank Clement, who served several terms as the state’s governor before meeting his Waterloo in two successive failed runs for the Senate.
(Interestingly, Clement’s second and final failed try, in 1966, resulted in the election to the Senate of Republican Howard Baker — the forerunner of what, in the course of time, would become the wall-to-wall ubiquity of GOP state officials.)
In any case, both of Tennessee’s current Republican senators have floated unmistakable trial balloons regarding gubernatorial races in 2026, and both seem dead serious. It may be far-fetched to imagine a competitive race between the two, but, my, wouldn’t that be an attention-grabber!
More likely, forces in the Republican Establishment — most notably Donald Trump — would probably dictate the choice of one over the other. (Either could make a plausible claim of loyalty to the president and to the MAGA agenda.)
And, given the high probability of success for the ultimate GOP nominee, one can imagine a domino-like chain reaction of opportunities opening up for other upwardly mobile Tennessee Republicans.
If Hagerty makes a governor’s race, he could either run for both governor and re-election as senator simultaneously, or go ahead and shed his Senate seat (his term would expire in 2026, anyhow) while campaigning for governor. In that latter eventuality, a race for his departed seat would occur in 2026, with a high probability that 8th District Congressman David Kustoff would be a candidate.
Kustoff’s seat, in turn, might then well be targeted by, say, the preternaturally ambitious state Senator Brent Taylor, in which case his seat would open as well, with possible aspirants for it including former city councilmen Kemp Conrad and Frank Colvett, and maybe even state Rep. Mark White. (A White race would create yet another vacancy and another domino.)
If Blackburn runs and wins, she would keep her Senate seat until being sworn in, in which case either she or a lame-duck Bill Lee would appoint a temporary Senate successor, with a special election for a permanent senator to be held in 2028.
The same sort of sequence as mentioned above for a Hagerty win might then occur, involving the same or a similar cast of characters, though everything would happen at a later remove in time.
Got all that straight, gentle reader? Probably not, though it could be worse. There are other permutations and possible complications we’re sparing you from.
The bottom line is that some shock and awe seems certain for the state’s political calendar in 2026, along with a potentially dizzy round of dominoes.
And who knows? Maybe some as yet unknown Democrat comes out of nowhere to spoil the party at some point along the succession line.
Okay, we are at that stage of political and public developments in which rumors, which have been flying fast and furious, are yielding to reality and tying disparate events together.
To start with what would be newsworthy on its own, the ambitions of various would-be candidates for the office of Shelby County mayor in 2026 are crystallizing into direct action.
As noted here several weeks ago, the list of likely aspirants includes city council member and recent chair JB Smiley Jr., entrepreneur/philanthropist J.W. Gibson, Shelby County commissioner and former chair Mickell Lowery, Assessor Melvin Burgess Jr., Criminal Court Clerk Heidi Kuhn, and county CAO Harold Collins.
Smiley, Gibson, and, reportedly, Lowery are basically declared and actively nibbling at potential donors. Smiley in particular has been soliciting funding and support in a barrage of text requests.
For better or worse, meanwhile, the erstwhile council chair finds himself also at the apex of events stemming from the ongoing showdown between now-deposed schools Superintendent Marie Feagins and the Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) board.
A suit against the board by Feagins quotes Smiley as having angrily responded to Feagins’ petition last summer for a legal order of protection against influential commodities trader and political donor Dow McVean, with whom Feagins had feuded.
The suit alleges that, in a phone call, Smiley “shouted at Dr. Feagins, ‘Don’t you ever file a f***ing police report in this city again without telling me first. … You don’t know these people. … My funders are on me now telling me she has to go because they know I supported you. … They are telling me to get rid of you.’”
Smiley was also quoted in the suit as telling a third party, “We are coming after [Feagins].”
It was that Feagins was the daughter of one of her predecessors and a well-known one at that — none other than Willie Herenton, who served a lengthy tenure as schools superintendent before serving an even longer time as the city’s mayor.
A tall tale, indeed. As it turned out, the rumor was based on someone’s hasty reading of a line in TheCommercial Appeal’s account of the heated school board meeting at which a MSCS board majority voted Feagins out.
The line read as follows: “Prior to reading off her prepared statements, Feagins acknowledged her father and former Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton, who were in the audience.”
The tell-tale word “were” is the key to the misreading. It indicates clearly that Feagins’ citation of the individuals was plural and not at all of the same person. But, coming late in the sentence, the verb seems to have been overpowered by the previous yoking of “her father and former Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton.”
“Were” got read as “was.” And all of a sudden, a short-lived cause célèbre got birthed.
• For that matter, the conflict between schools superintendent and board in Memphis seems to have caused an equally over-excited reaction in the state capital of Nashville, where state House Speaker Cameron Sexton, well-known already for his frequent designs upon what remains of home rule in Shelby County, let loose with brand-new threats against the autonomy of the elected MSCS board.
As noted by various local media, Sexton announced his intention for a state-government takeover of the local schools system. Radio station KWAM, an ultra-conservative outlet, had Sexton on their air as saying, in a guest appearance, that “plans are being drawn up to declare the local school board ‘null and void’” and that “the state will take over the school board.” [Sexton’s emphasis.]
The presidential inauguration in the Capitol rotunda on Monday marked the return to power of the most controversial and scandal-plagued president in American history. It felt a little like when the second plane hit the tower on 9/11 — the moment when we knew it wasn’t an accident.
Monday was also Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and here in Memphis — the city where Dr. King was assassinated in 1968 — the celebration of his life takes on a special significance. The NBA’s annual MLK Day celebration featured the Memphis Grizzlies hosting the Minnesota Timberwolves, and the National Civil Rights Museum held a day of events called “Community Over Chaos,” which seemed a most fitting theme.
But before it fades into history, buried by the noisy deluge of Trump drama, I want to take note of former President Biden’s farewell address of last week. As might be expected, he cited the achievements of his administration — the record job-creation numbers, the long-desired ceasefire in the Middle East, the strengthening of NATO, and the ongoing resistance to the Russian invasion of Ukraine — but his real purpose in his speech seemed to be to deliver a warning, to address, as he said, “some things that give me great concern.”
Citing President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation, in which he warned the country about the dangers posed by the “military industrial complex,” Biden decried the rise of a new threat, one he called the “tech industrial complex.”
“Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power,” Biden warned. “The free press is crumbling. Errors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit.” No errors detected.
The tech industrial complex was on full display in the Rotunda on Monday, including Sundar Pichai (Google), Tim Cook (Apple), Jeff Bezos (Amazon, TheWashington Post), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta, Facebook, Instagram, Threads), and Elon Musk (X, Tesla, Starlink, xAI).
Never have so few had so much unbridled power to influence public opinion and so much money to invest in doing so. And it doesn’t help that they’re supplicating themselves (and giving millions of dollars) to the new president to curry his favor. It’s called obeying in advance, and it’s worrisome stuff. Journalism is in danger of being put out of business by “content providers” that have no ethical qualms about ignoring the truth in favor of whatever makes a profit — or makes the president happy.
CNN, ABC, and even MSNBC have also made at least token moves to ameliorate relations with the new administration. CNN buried Trump critic Jim Acosta in a late-night slot. ABC settled a libel lawsuit with Trump that it easily would have won in court. Facebook eliminated fact-checkers. Companies are getting rid of diversity hiring programs. Macho (“masculine energy”) is all the rage among the tech bros. Women’s healthcare rights continue to be eroded in red states.
Biden called it “a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people,” and cited the consequences “if their abuse of power is left unchecked.” What Biden was describing is an oligarchy. Merriam-Webster (remember dictionaries?) defines it as “a government in which a small group exercises control, especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.”
Can there be any doubt that an oligarchy of extreme wealth, power, and influence is moving into power in the United States, one that threatens our democracy and our basic rights and freedoms?
Democracy depends upon the will of the people, and if the people are misinformed, disinformed, or uninformed, they can be manipulated. As we well know, public opinion — and elections — can turn on well-funded, broadly circulated lies and propaganda.
Our social media platforms are already permeated by disinformation, mostly via bots that skillfully imitate real people and overwhelm legitimate content by their sheer numbers. Artificial intelligence is now upping that deception to previously unknown heights. Biden called AI “the most consequential technology of our time, perhaps of all time.”
The former president concluded by saying to his fellow Americans, “It’s your turn to stand guard. May you all be the keepers of the flame.” That doesn’t feel like malarkey, folks.
Naser Fazlullah with South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Trump’s secretary of Homeland Security nominee and last year’s Lincoln Day keynoter. (Photo: Naser Fazlullah | Facebook)
The race for chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party, due to be resolved at the local party convention on Saturday at the Venue at Bartlett Station, has turned into a real donnybrook, with potentially divisive consequences.
As noted previously in this space, the two candidates are former Memphis City Councilman Worth Morgan, the beneficiary of an intra-party “Revive” campaign supported by numerous prominent party members, and longtime activist Naser Fazlullah, whose nose-to-the-grindstone party activities have won him a sizable grassroots constituency.
Underlying the surface aspects of the race are conflicts and rivalries involving other party figures and a myriad of issues.
Morgan’s most significant supporter is undoubtedly state Senator Brent Taylor, who claims credit for having recruited Morgan, an unsuccessful candidate for Shelby County mayor in 2022, to seek the chairmanship. Taylor won election to the state Senate that same year, claiming the seat vacated by former incumbent Brian Kelsey, who was forced out by legal problems. Since then, he has gone on to generate an amount of attention for himself unusual for a first-term legislator.
That’s partly due to the fact that Taylor, wealthy from the sale of his extensive funeral home network, has personally endowed numerous GOP candidacies and party events, both statewide and locally. And he continues to attract publicity for his aggressive efforts, in and out of the legislature, to impose stronger state control over law enforcement in Shelby County.
The most recent manifestation of what Taylor calls a “Make Memphis Matter” campaign is his ongoing attempt to force the removal of Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy, whom he accuses of lax crime control. The senator has initiated a legislative procedure that would ultimately require a two-thirds vote in both chambers of the legislature to oust Mulroy.
As it happens, Fazlullah opposes that effort, on the grounds that using legislation to remove a legally elected local official is unjustified overkill.
That’s one reason for Taylor’s animus toward Fazlullah and his recruitment of Morgan as a rival candidate. Another is his assertion that, at last fall’s Germantown Festival, Fazlullah strenuously urged GOP state Representative Mark White to oppose Taylor’s reelection in 2026. White acknowledges that Fazlullah made such an approach, which he politely turned aside.
Says Taylor: “Naser should never be party chairman after trying to recruit a candidate to run against a sitting state senator in a primary who happens to have been the largest contributor to the Republican Party while he was vice chairman. Two can play at this game!”
Meanwhile, Fazlullah has allies who hold grudges against Worth Morgan. One is Terry Roland of Millington, a notable GOP conservative who regards Morgan as a lukewarm Republican, a “Never-Trumper,” and a potential advocate of city-county consolidation.
Roland sees Morgan as a tool of party “elitists” and reproaches the chairmanship candidate for allegedly “boycotting” the local GOP’s 2022 Lincoln Day banquet, which was keynoted that year by Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows.
The showdown over the chairmanship reflects a complicated pattern of conflicting loyalties, with GOP moderates and conservatives to be found on both sides.
• You saw it here first, in our year-end forecast of future political events: U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn is seriously considering a race for governor in 2026 and has so informed an increasing number of her fellow Republicans statewide.
Glenn Jacobs, the Knox County mayor who was previously regarded as perhaps the leading Republican gubernatorial hopeful, has energized Blackburn’s likely candidacy with a formal endorsement.
The Republican nomination, though, will apparently still be contested by U.S. Representative John Rose of Cookeville, a multi-millionaire with the capacity to self-fund.
Brent Taylor (Photo: Senator Brent Taylor
| Facebook)
It surely hasn’t gone unnoticed that state government is continuing to flex its muscles vis-à-vis local government in Memphis and Shelby County.
Officials aligned with the administration in Nashville are threatening outright takeover of the Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) system at the same time that state Senator Brent Taylor and helpers continue to implement their would-be coup d’état against the county judiciary and the office of District Attorney Steve Mulroy.
In the case of MSCS, the sudden out-of-nowhere power struggle between an apparent school board majority and first-year superintendent Marie Feagins has prompted what amounts to an ultimatum from Governor Bill Lee and the presiding officers of the state legislative chambers: Keep Feagins or else!
And Taylor has enlisted the same officials in his campaign to oust Mulroy, involving them in his bill of particulars against the DA at a press conference last Thursday that followed by a day a quickly improvised “summit” called by the senator to consider the case for a new crime lab in Memphis, something Mulroy has put forth as a major need for facilitating effective local law enforcement.
The list of invitees to the crime lab conference, styled as a “roundtable discussion,” included Tennessee Bureau of Investigation director David Rausch and a virtually complete roster of public figures, state and local, who could be considered stakeholders in the matter of law enforcement.
There was one glaring omission, however: DA Mulroy, who was not only not invited; he was not even informed of the meeting, which was held at the City Hall of Germantown and concluded with Taylor suggesting an ultimate consensus that processing of local crime data in sensitive cases could be easily expedited via an existing crime lab in Jackson, obviating the need for a new Memphis lab.
A cynic could be pardoned for assuming that the entire thrust of the meeting in Germantown was to undermine the absent DA’s call for such a lab.
There was no doubt about the senator’s minimizing motive in his press conference the next day at the Memphis Police Association headquarters. It was overtly to “reveal the causes to be considered for the removal of District Attorney Steve Mulroy.”
Taylor’s bill of particulars against Mulroy was a duke’s mixture of complaints, ranging from prerogatives asserted by the DA that could be, and in several cases were, countered by ad hoc state legislation to innovative procedures pursued by Mulroy, some of them reflecting purposes that Taylor acknowledged sharing himself.
A case of the latter was an agreement reached by the DA with Juvenile Court Judge Tarik Sugarmon to allow trial court judges access to Juvenile Court records. Taylor had sponsored a bill to do just that in last year’s session of the General Assembly.
A similar instance was Taylor’s inclusion in his list of Mulroy’s declared support of gun safety referenda placed by the Memphis City Council on the 2024 general election ballot and overwhelmingly passed.
“Many of us” could sympathize with the referenda points, Taylor said, but his point was that the referenda — calling for local ordinances on behalf of gun permits, an assault rifle ban, and judicial confiscation of firearms in at-risk instances — ran counter to state law.
Sponsors of the referenda had made it clear that they called for “trigger” laws that could be enforced only if and when state law might be amended to allow them.
And there’s a further anomaly here, given Taylor’s stated goal to “Make Memphis Mattter” and safeguard the city from crime.
One has to wonder why he isn’t pursuing an altogether different strategy, one calling for a legislative “carve-out” of Shelby County from current state law prohibiting the immediate implementation of the ordinances called for by the referenda.
Such a course would be consistent with the principle of home rule; it would also be supportive of a position taken by Mulroy’s Republican opponent in the 2022 DA’s race, then-incumbent Amy Weirich, who inveighed against the iniquitous consequences of the state’s increasingly permissive stripping away of gun safety regulations.
So, like, apparently, 2025 is around the corner. Around the corner of what? From what? That’s just semantics. And at the Flyer, we’re basically already in 2025. That’s just how our deadlines are — always working a week ahead, or maybe two days ahead. Because of that, we can see into the future. Not really, but here are some of our predictions/expectations/hopes for the new year in Memphis.
In the Headlines
Police Reforms
It’s easy to predict that reforms for the Memphis Police Department (MPD) will dominate headlines at least in the early part of 2025.
The U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) blistering review of the agency said police here used excessive force (which included tons of Tasers and pepper spray), discriminated against Black residents, and used harsh tactics against children. The review came after the beating death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of MPD officers in 2023.
The DOJ wants to enter into a consent decree with the city. This would install federal monitors to watch and make sure reforms are moving ahead. But, so far, local leaders, including Memphis Mayor Paul Young, have said they don’t want the monitors for various reasons, including the fact that consent decrees cost too much money.
Young has promised to reform MPD in-house. Criminal justice reform advocates say they want the DOJ oversight because the police should not police themselves.
The need for reform comes, too, as the city prepares to pay what could be a $500-million verdict in the civil suit to the family of Nichols’ for his death.
Photo: Frank Gaertner | Dreamstime.com
Cannabis Fight
Cannabis will certainly be in Tennessee news in 2025.
Rules that would ban smokeable products containing THCA were issued from the Tennessee Department of Agriculture (TDA) in January 2024. Industry leaders fought the rules all last year. A lawsuit on the matter was pending as of press time.
TDA says THCA goes over the legal THC limit when it’s burned or smoked. This gets consumers high, which is why a lot of conservatives don’t want “intoxicating” cannabis products. Their ability to get consumers high is why the industry says these products — allowed by laws passed by the legislature — are so popular and are a major portion of their business.
Those industry leaders complained that bureaucrats, not elected officials, made the new rules. So expect legislation from the Tennessee General Assembly when they reconvene in January 2025.
Pissed About Reappraisals
Also, expect your property taxes to go up — maybe way up.
January will bring a new property tax appraisal in Shelby County. And Shelby County Property Assessor Melvin Burgess began warning locals about this in 2024, maybe to try to get folks used to the idea.
In an August news release, Burgess said data showed property values increasing. That will likely mean a “significant increase in tax assessments” for homeowners. And that means higher taxes.
Add higher assessments to the Memphis City Council’s new 49-cent property tax rate hike approved in 2024, and it could mean outrage when those tax bills hit mailboxes.
Photo: Ford Co.
BlueOval City
More concern and hand-wringing is likely on deck for Ford’s BlueOval City project next year.
Expectations were high when Ford unveiled the project in 2021. The $5.6 billion manufacturing facility in Tennessee was the largest investment in the state’s history. Since then crews have been hard at work raising the massive plant on six square miles of West Tennessee about an hour from Memphis.
However, global electric vehicle (EV) demand softened. While the automaker planned to begin production of its all-electric Ford Lightning truck here next year, it pushed production back to 2027. In that time, the company awaits lower-cost battery technology and a higher demand for EVs in general. In that time, too, worries will persist about the future of Ford in West Tennessee. Still, the company did pull Santa behind a Lightning in the recent Brownsville Christmas parade. — Toby Sells
MATA
2024 will be remembered as the year in which conversation regarding transit consistently found its way to the forefront. And Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) has faced a tumultuous year — from the revelation of the $60 million deficit that the agency had been operating under, to the route and staff cuts, to the entire board’s dismissal.
The new board decided to pause proposed changes until February 2025. While this temporarily stalled one problem, questions over MATA’s future and leadership prevail.
On Tuesday, December 17th, the MATA board voted to continue negotiating a contract that could lead to temporary leadership changes. If approved, TransPro employees would take over as interim CEO, CFO, and COO for eight months. The proposal prompted several questions from board members, but they voted to form a committee to gain more clarity.
Looking ahead, the board will need to address the February 2025 changes which could lead to service cuts and layoffs. The agency will also need to identify more funding sources, while potentially welcoming a new team of leadership. — Kailynn Johnson
Political Forecast
The coming year happens to be the one year out of every four-year cycle in which there are no major elections scheduled in Memphis/Shelby County. But that is not to suggest that there will not be intense political activity. In fact, potential candidates for the county, state, and federal offices in the elections of 2026 will be working feverishly during the year to organize and declare their campaigns. At stake will be contests for Shelby County mayor, to succeed the term-limited Mayor Lee Harris, and for the 13 members of the county commission, as well as races for governor, the state legislature, Congress, and the U.S. Senate seat now held by incumbent Republican Bill Hagerty.
Announcements of candidacies for these offices should be forthcoming early in 2025.
There will be one more major attempt by Governor Bill Lee and his allies in the Republican legislative supermajority to pass comprehensive school voucher legislation when the Tennessee General Assembly reconvenes in January. Preliminary estimates are that this time the measure to extend taxpayer-funded private school stipends statewide has good chances for passage. Also to be expected are further efforts by GOP members to impose stricter controls (or more severe usurpations) on the law enforcement infrastructure of Shelby County. It remains to be seen if GOP state Senator Brent Taylor gains any traction in his effort to seek legislative removal of Shelby County DA Steve Mulroy.
Both major political parties in Shelby County will be selecting new chairs, the Republicans in January, the Democrats in April. State GOP chair Scott Golden of Jackson was reelected in December, but Democrats will be choosing a new leader in January to succeed Hendrell Remus. One of the major candidates is state Representative Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in November.
The Shelby County Commission will face the new year not only with some last-minute updates in its funding priorities, but with a stepped-up formula for establishing a budget and meting out allocations. In an effort to adhere to previous commitments to build two new schools for Memphis-Shelby County Schools, Mayor Harris and the commission will be seeking means to compensate for lower than anticipated revenue aid from the state government.
Both local governments may come in for support and new modes for inter-governmental cooperation through the aegis of a newly formed and privately endowed ad hoc organization called More for Memphis. But the mechanics and prospects for such an arrangement remain obscure, for the moment. — Jackson Baker
Memphis Grizzlies guard Ja Morant (12) dunks the ball. (Photo: Wes Hale)
On the Roster
One year without playoff basketball for our Memphis Grizzlies is quite enough, thank you. A trio of healthy star guards (Ja Morant, Desmond Bane, Marcus Smart) and the addition of a towering rookie center (Zach Edey) have the Grizzlies near the top of the NBA’s Western Conference standings. Better yet, the Grizz are among the top scoring teams in the Association, averaging more than 120 points per game. Where might this take a franchise that’s reached the conference finals only once in three decades? Go back to that word: healthy.
Morant only played in nine games a season ago (he served a lengthy suspension before his shoulder injury). Smart only played in 20. Bane barely played half the season (42 games). The end result was a 27-55 campaign. Morant is an All-NBA talent, Smart a former Defensive Player of the Year, and Bane an All-Star-to-be. If they stay on the floor through April, Memphis could well reverse that 2023-24 record and earn a top-four seed for the postseason. Can the West be won? Five different teams have gone to the Finals out of the Western Conference the last five seasons. There’s no current behemoth that would be considered unbeatable in May. The NBA Finals at FedExForum? Let’s believe.
At the college level, coach Penny Hardaway’s Memphis Tigers captured attention in November with an upset of Connecticut — the two-time defending national champions — at the Maui Invitational, bringing enough attention to climb into the Top 25 (16th) before an upset at home to Arkansas State. Is this another fall tease like the 2023-24 season, the Tigers setting up an immense fan base for a middling conference schedule? The answer is in the hands of two more star guards: transfers PJ Haggerty and Tyrese Hunter. A pair of glass-cleaning rim protectors — Dain Dainja and Moussa Cissé — give Memphis something it didn’t have a year ago, suggesting a repeat of the winter blues may be unlikely. A December upset of Clemson on the road and a less-than-intimidating American Athletic Conference are positive signs for a return to the NCAA tournament.
There will be life after basketball season for Memphis sports. Baseball America’s Minor League Pitcher of the Year, Quinn Mathews, will likely start the 2025 season with the Memphis Redbirds. Another pair of rising stars — pitcher Tink Hence and infielder JJ Wetherholt — have AutoZone Park in their sights. The Redbirds hope to end a postseason drought that dates back to 2018. The club will open the season with an exhibition against the parent St. Louis Cardinals on March 24th.
On the gridiron, the Memphis Tigers will enter their 2025 season on a pair of impressive streaks. The program has reached bowl eligibility 11 consecutive seasons and has scored at least 20 points in 40 consecutive games, tops in the country. Antwann Hill, the highest-ranked quarterback ever signed by Memphis, will don blue and gray for the first time and hope to replicate the success enjoyed by the departed record-setting Seth Henigan. One nugget Hill could grab that Henigan didn’t: a conference championship. — Frank Murtaugh
Mickey 17
Coming Soon
It’s not so much that 2025 is getting off to a slow start as 2024 finished strong. Christmas week brought a torrent of new releases beyond the usual awards season crush. So you can spend your first week of dry January catching up with titles like Disney’s Mufasa: The Lion King, directed by Moonlight’s Barry Jenkins; the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, starring Timothée Chalamet and directed by Walk The Line’s James Mangold; and Babygirl, an erotic thriller starring Nicole Kidman. I will never understand the decision to release Robert Egger’s vampire creepfest Nosferatu on Christmas instead of two weeks before Halloween, but you should probably see it if you’re into that kind of thing.
It’s not until January 10th that we get our first new releases of the new year, and that’s Den of Thieves 2: Pantera starring Gerard Butler and O’Shea Jackson Jr. The next week things start to pick up again with Wolf Man, a Blumhouse horror reboot of the lupine Universal monster. One of Them Days is a buddy comedy with Keke Palmer and SZA, which sounds promising. The month closes out with comedy: You’re Cordially Invited starring Will Ferrell, Reese Witherspoon, and an alligator.
In February, somebody learned the lesson about seasonal programming and scheduled Love Hurts for the week before Valentine’s Day. It’s an action comedy starring Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose. On the holiday proper, we’ve got Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy and Captain America: Brave New World, a combo which is sure to provoke many lovers’ quarrels over Valentine date night viewing. Then there’s The Monkey from Osgood Perkins, so that’ll be weird/scary. The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie is a sci-fi Bugs Bunny feature aimed directly at me. Paul W. S. Anderson adapts George R.R. Martin’s In the Lost Lands.
March comes in with Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan’s dip into horror, Sinners, and the Zambian black comedy On Becoming a Guinea Fowl. March 14th is a showdown between Steven Soderbergh’s techno thriller Black Bag and Avengers maestros Russo brothers’ The Electric State. Disney’s live action Snow White boasts a screenplay by Greta Gerwig and stars Rachel Zegler as the drowsy protagonist.
In April, many of you will be dragged to A Minecraft Movie. I am eagerly awaiting Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17, starring Robert Pattinson as a disposable space hero. Blockbuster season starts in May with Marvel’s first swing of the year, Thunderbolts. The ever-creative Michel Gondry’s first musical, Golden, bows on May 9th, and the millennials’ favorite ambient horror franchise Final Destination: Bloodlines follows on the 16th. The 23rd looks to be a showdown between Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning and Disney’s Lilo & Stitch reboot. June’s looking stacked with a John Wick spin-off Ballerina, Pixar’s Elio, the How to Train Your Dragon reboot, and the long awaited zombie capper 28 Years Later. July’s got James Gunn’s Superman, a new Jurassic World film for some reason, and The Smurfs Movie. August closes out the summer with Freakier Friday and the Paul Thomas Anderson crimer One Battle After Another, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
October brings Tron: Ares, but besides The Black Phone 2, looks pretty slim on horror. In November, we come back after the intermission with Wicked: For Good, and Edgar Wright’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Running Man. December will be dominated by Avatar: Fire and Ash. Never bet against James Cameron. — Chris McCoy
Yo-Yo Ma (Photo: Courtesy MSO)
Live Music, Ho!
A multitude of ways to ring in the new with live bands await you on New Year’s Eve. Growlers will host Blacklist Union, Line So Thin, and Josey Scott, erstwhile lead singer for Saliva who won acclaim as a solo artist with “Hero” from the Tobey Maguire-led Spider-Man. For something completely different, crooner Gary Johns will serenade Beauty Shop patrons that night, while Bar DKDC sports another incredible singer, Jesse James Davis, from big beats to ballads, not to mention the dance-inducing bounce of Bodywerk. For some Beale bounce and soul, aside from the street party, Eric Gales tops the Rum Boogie bill and the B.B. King All Stars shine at their namesake club. Or tribute bands can bring yesteryear alive, with Louder Than Bombs’ Smiths sounds at B-Side, or Play Some Skynyrd and Aquanet at Lafayette’s Music Room. Prefer freshly spun wax? That’s it’s own kind of live. Try DJ Funktual at Eight & Sand.
Once January is underway, our musical arts institutions resume their 2024-25 seasons. The Iris Collective will present the New York-based Overlook Quartet in The Green Room at Crosstown Arts on January 16th, showcasing music’s healing powers through meditative practice. On the edgier tip, Iris’ March 8th concert at Germantown United Methodist Church, with guest violinist Elena Urioste spotlights works by Max Richter, Astor Piazzolla, and Dmitri Shostakovich. Meanwhile, Germantown Performing Arts Center will present the groovier side of innovation with bassist-composer Meshell Ndegeocello’s show, No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin, on January 11th. And Opera Memphis brings Carmen in late January.
The Memphis Symphony Orchestra comes out swinging with its tribute to the “American Maestro,” Leonard Bernstein, on January 18th and 19th, in a program culminating with his Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. Another maestro will be celebrated a month later, when the MSO welcomes guest soloist Yo-Yo Ma February 25th at the Cannon Center of Performing Arts.
On the more rocking side of things, early January marks the 90th anniversary of the birth of Elvis Presley, and Graceland Live will honor it in style with shows spanning January 8th to 10th. Yet the venue has lately embraced some distinctly non-Presley-esque music as well, like the February 6th appearance by 21st-century rockers Theory of a Deadman (an Elvis reference?), experimenting with an unplugged approach to their heavy sound. The unplugged aesthetic will also be celebrated at the Halloran Centre’s Memphis Songwriters Series, with Mark Edgar Stuart welcoming Hannah Blaylock, Rice Drewry, and Raneem Imam on January 6th. Soon after, Sweet Honey in the Rock will bring the raw power of the human voice to the Halloran on January 24th. And speaking of powerful voices, Mary J. Blige will appear “For My Fans” — like some of us who saw her in 1995— at the FedExForum on February 2nd.
But what’s a mere human voice compared to The Man-Machine? Many are laser-focused on Kraftwerk taking over the Overton Park Shell on March 25th. For the Wo-Man-Machine, see the twin-goddess cyber-hybrid multimedia of Marcella Simien and Talibah Safiya at Crosstown Theater January 25th. For everything in between, scan our weekly After Dark listings to see the artists making it happen in our thriving smaller clubs every day. — Alex Greene
The year that just passed promised at various points to be one of dramatic change in this or that public sphere, but such changes as did occur fell way short of transformative.
A new order was unveiled in the city government of Memphis with the inauguration of Mayor Paul Young, for example, but the dominant issue of Young’s first days in office — that of police authority vis-à-vis the citizenry in a climate of anxiety about crime — remains mired in uncertainty a year later.
Young’s reappointment of MPD Police Chief C.J. Davis was rejected by the city council, for example, and she still lacks that validation, serving in an interim capacity. Her second-in-command, Shawn Jones, turned out to be ineligible as a Georgia resident, and the mayor’s announcement of a new public safety director continues unfulfilled, although a “consultant” on the subject got added to the patroll..
The shadow of the Tyre Nichols tragedy lingers on at year’s end, reinforced by harsh judgements levied against the MPD by the U.S. Department of Justice, and state government continues to impose its iron will on local law enforcement, countering the brave stands taken by the city’s voters in referenda intending to assert the city’s own efforts at self-protection.
Those referenda, all essentially meant as rebukes to state policies favoring gun proliferation, were a highlight of the election season, which otherwise saw the status quo reassert itself. Though Democrats held on to their legislative seats in the inner city and fielded plausible candidates in races for the United States Senate and a key legislative district on the city’s suburban edge, the ongoing metamorphosis of Tennessee into red-state Republicanism continued more or less unabated.
In the presidential election, Shelby County reasserted its identity as a Democratic enclave, one of two statewide, the other being Nashville. Unlike the capital city, whose electoral districts had been systematically gerrymandered by the General Assembly’s Republican supermajority, Memphis could still boast a Democratic congressman, Steve Cohen, a fixture in the 9th Congressional District since 2006. The adjoining, largely rural, 8th District, which takes in much of the Memphis metropolitan area, continued to be represented by Republican David Kustoff.
As always, the Memphis area serves as an incubator of individuals with clear potential for further advancement. Among them are Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, a prolific deviser of developmental projects; state Senator Raumesh Akbari, a shining light both in Nashville and in national Democratic councils; and Justin J. Pearson, a member of the “Tennessee Three” who famously galvanized the case for gun safety legislation in the Tennessee House in 2023 and who added to his laurels with rousing appearances at the 2024 Democratic Convention in Chicago.
Meanwhile, amid rampant speculation as to the identity of contenders for the Tennessee governorship in 2026, two surprising new names were added to the list — those of the state’s two Republican senators, Bill Hagerty and Marsha Blackburn.
An unexpected situation began to simmer late in the year with a virtual mutiny of members of the Memphis-Shelby County Schools system against first-year superintendent Marie Feagins, who was threatened with a rescission of her contract with the board. Action on the matter was postponed until January, but, coming on the heels of the ouster of her predecessor Joris Ray due to a personal scandal, it was clear evidence that major things were amiss on the schools front, which had been a highly politicized landscape a decade earlier and could well become once again.
All in all, 2024 seemed destined to go into the history books as a time of preamble, with weighty circumstances likely to follow in its wake.
The 2024 presidential election results by precinct (Photo: Courtesy Don Johnson)
The Shelby County Republican Party is scheduled to hold its biennial convention in January, and the party has a bona fide chairmanship race on its hands.
One candidate is Bangladesh-born Naser Fazlullah, manager of a food-and-beverages firm and the local party’s vice chair, who has been highly active in Republican outreach efforts over the years. Most unusually, he professes a desire to “bring both parties together” for the benefit of Shelby County and has numerous friends both inside and outside GOP ranks.
The other candidate is insurance executive Worth Morgan, the former city council member who in 2022 ran unsuccessfully for county mayor and had been rumored as a possible candidate for Memphis mayor the next year before deciding not to make the race.
Both candidates are running as the heads of slates for a variety of other party offices.
Morgan’s campaign in particular, run under the slogan “Revive,” is in the kind of high gear normally associated with expensive major public races and has employed a barrage of elaborate online endorsements from such well-known party figures as state Representative Mark White, state Senator Brent Taylor, and conservative media commentator Todd Starnes.
The GOP convention is scheduled for January 25th at The Venue at Bartlett Station.
• Morgan’s choice of the campaign motif “Revival” is interesting. Not too long ago, Republicans dominated county government, but demographics now heavily favor Democrats in countywide voting. As one indication of that, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris outdistanced the GOP’s Donald Trump in November by a margin of 201,759 to Trump’s 118,917.
In a series of post-election analyses, however, veteran Republican analyst Don Johnson, formerly of Memphis and now with the Stone River Group of Nashville, has demonstrated the GOP’s supremacy virtually everywhere else in Tennessee. He has published precinct-specific maps of statewide election results showing areas won by Trump in red. Patches of Democratic blue show up only sporadically in these graphics and are largely confined to Memphis, Nashville, and the inner urban cores of Knoxville and Chattanooga. Even Haywood County in the southwest corner of the state, virtually the last Democratic stronghold in rural Tennessee, shows high purple on Johnson’s cartography.
Post-election analysis shows something else — a shift of the Republican center of gravity eastward, toward the GOP’s ancestral homeland of East Tennessee. For the first time in recent presidential elections, Republican voting in Knox County outdid the party’s totals in Shelby County.
Looking ahead to the 2026 governor’s race, it is meaningful that a recent poll of likely Republican voters by the Tennessee Conservative News shows two Knoxvillians — Congressman Tim Burchett and Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs — leading all other potential candidates.
• The Shelby County Commission ended its year with a full agenda of 89 items, several of which were matters involving schools and school funding. The commissioners navigated that agenda with admirable focus and aplomb, considering that the bombshell news of Tuesday’s scheduled Memphis Shelby-County Schools board meeting regarding the potential voiding of superintendent Marie Feagins’ contract exploded midway through their discussions.
• One of the more inclusive political crowds in recent history showed up weekend before last at Otherlands on Cooper to honor David Upton on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Upton is the proverbial man-behind-the-scenes in Shelby County politics and has had a hand — sometimes openly, sometimes not — in more local elections and civic initiatives than almost anybody else you could name.
With pressure building for potential tax increases in Memphis city government, the outlook for additional aid from state government took a hit Monday, as the State Funding Board acknowledged weaker-than-expected revenues and set a deliberately slow growth rate.
The board, composed of the state’s three constitutional officers and the state finance commissioner, set a growth rate in general fund revenue of 1 percent to 2 percent and total tax growth at 1.25 percent to 2.15 percent for fiscal 2025-26. That is on the heels of an estimated total growth rate projection for fiscal 2024-25 of -1.68 percent to -1.34 percent.
Economic growth has ground down considerably in Tennessee after a double-digit revenue windfall of two years ago. Among other factors, the state is facing a $1.9 billion business tax reduction stemming from legislative approval of Governor Bill Lee’s proposal to eliminate the property portion of the state’s franchise and excise taxes. That move followed additional tax breaks for businesses the previous year. The Department of Revenue has processed nearly $900 million in rebates this year, and more are expected.
On the eve of the oncoming 2025 legislative session, the weak budget outlook could affect lawmakers’ decisions, leaving in the lurch not only localities’ requests for aid but funding requests from state agencies totaling over $4.2 billion. The revenue forecast isn’t expected to come close to matching that figure, even with anticipated federal funds covering some of the costs.
• Two Memphians are finalists to succeed soon-to-be-retiring state Court of Appeals Judge Arnold Goldin of Memphis: Shelby County Circuit Judge Valerie Smith and interim Memphis Chancellor Jim Newsom. A third candidate is Jackson Chancellor Steve Maroney, a former chair of the Madison County Republican Party.
Smith was a member of a three-judge chancery court panel that dismissed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the state’s school voucher program. The decision was later reversed by the Court of Appeals.
Newsom was named in 2015 to a Chancery Court position by former Governor Bill Haslam but was defeated for re-election in 2016 by current Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins. He was reappointed interim chancellor this past summer by Governor Lee to assume the duties of Chancellor Jim Kyle, who has been disabled by illness.
• The three gun-safety measures approved resoundingly by Memphis voters earlier this month via ballot referenda have predictably come under legal challenge. The Tennessee Firearms Association has filed a lawsuit in Shelby County Circuit Court seeking to block city government from activating the measures.
In a sense, the gun-lobby group’s suit is pointless, in that backers of the referenda conceded that voter approval of the measures was conditional on the will and pleasure of state government, which had made clear that state policy at this point would disallow the implementation of the three measures.
State House Speaker Cameron Sexton had angrily opposed the referenda as antithetical to state law and threatened to retaliate by cutting Memphis off from various state-shared revenues if the measures were enacted.
The measures, certified for the ballot by the city council, would re-institute a requirement locally for gun-carry permits, ban the sale of assault weapons, and enable the local judiciary to impose red-flag laws allowing confiscation of weapons from individuals certified as risks to public safety.
Mindful of Sexton’s attitude, backed by Governor Lee, the Shelby County Election Commission originally acted to remove the referendum measures from the November ballot, but they were approved for the ballot by Chancellor Melanie Taylor Jefferson.
• It begins to look as though the beleaguered Shelby County Clerk Wanda Halbert will survive various ouster attempts and will survive in office until the election of 2026, when she will be term-limited.
Her latest reprieve came from Circuit Court Judge Felicia Corbin-Johnson, who disallowed an ouster petition from attorney Robert Meyers, ruling that such an action had to be pursued by Shelby County Attorney Marlinee Iverson, who had recused herself.
Judge Corbin-Johnson had previously disallowed an ouster attempt from Hamilton County District Attorney Coty Wamp, who was acting as a special prosecutor.
