Have Yourself a DEI Christmas

Justin Kanew may have intentionally misled readers of The Tennessee Holler in October when he claimed that the City of Cookeville was requiring participants in its annual Christmas parade to sign a statement of faith. But, the state’s most unscrupulous carpetbagger has achieved his endgame now that Cookeville Mayor Laurin Wheaton and the city council have officially taken over the parade and allowed a tiny fraction of local activists to refashion the community event on their own terms. 

For years, the Putnam County city’s mid-December parade has been a major draw for families across the Cumberland Plateau. But, as The Pamphleteer reported last month, trouble began in 2023 when the Cookeville-Putnam County Chamber of Commerce rejected the participation of Upper Cumberland Pride because the activist group’s overt political messaging ran afoul of the parade’s family-friendly policy. As a result, the Chamber handed the event off to a group of business leaders and members of Life Church and The River Community Church, who agreed on 2024’s theme: “Celebrating the Light of CHRISTmas.” 

Those wokel locals who fell for Kanew’s clickbait initially sought funds and a permit of their own under the moniker Inclusive Cookeville to host a DEI version of the parade, which likely wouldn’t set any attendance records in a county that broke nearly 75% for Trump and Blackburn. 

In the wake of Kanew’s willfully inaccurate insinuations that Cookeville was violating the separation of church and state, city council members unanimously voted to take over the parade the week before Halloween. As the Cookeville Herald-Citizen reported, Vice Mayor Luke Eldridge said, “I want you to know that I strongly disagree with any political parties and any other entity using this Christmas Parade to grandstand or push their agendas and ideologies.” Regardless of such sentiments, the council members have created fissures that threaten to undermine the unity they claim to be defending. 

🚨 Do You Know Why I Pulled You Over? During the Metro Council’s last meeting in November, Councilmember Jeff Eslick withdrew a resolution urging the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department to increase routine traffic stops in Nashville. As promised, Eslick, alongside five other sponsors, reintroduced a revised version of the much-discussed proposal during this Tuesday’s meeting. Both the Transportation and Infrastructure and the Public Health and Safety committees recommended a two-meeting deferral on the legislation. Sponsor Jacob Kupin explained that the delay allows time for the council to facilitate community discussions—a request made by both the NAACP and Gideon’s Army, a local nonprofit that has been under scrutiny for its violence interruption program and members’ connections to criminal behavior since 2021.

The new version of the resolution comes with a few changes. Notably, the language now incorporates Vision Zero’s “international strategy,” implemented by the Nashville Department of Transportation and Multimodal Infrastructure, citing that “speeding and dangerous driving are serious concerns for Nashvillians with fatalities related to traffic accidents increasing nearly 75% over a five-year period, from 80 in 2018 to 139 in 2023.”  The legislation encourages MNPD’s efforts in routine traffic enforcement in hopes it will deter speeding and dangerous driving.

You can read our exhaustive council meeting rundown here.

🏛️ SCOTUS Hears Skrmetti’s Case Scathing reviews of the oral arguments made during yesterday’s Supreme Court hearing of United States v. Skrmetti are already dominating the media. The case addressed the constitutionality of a Tennessee law that seeks to ban hormone replacement therapy, gender reassignment surgery, and puberty blockers for minors. “Brett Kavanaugh Is Using the Logic of Dobbs to Pursue a Dangerous New Agenda” reads the headline of a Slate article where the writer warns that SCOTUS might rule this a state issue. Vox printed a piece titled, “The horrifying implications of today’s Supreme Court argument on trans rights,” outlining that the court “may gut the rules barring all forms of sex discrimination” if they “uphold bans on gender-affirming care.” 

“This is not a question of statutory interpretation, it's a question of the application of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment,” said Justice Samuel Alito during his line of questioning involving US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar. “And the court has addressed the question how an equal protection claim should be analyzed when the law in question treats a medical condition or procedure differently based on a characteristic that is associated with just one sex, and that was Geduldig in 1974, reaffirmed in Dobbs in 2022.”

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti is feeling optimistic after yesterday’s hearing. "We felt great about putting on a strong case for Tennessee's law,” he said during The Ingraham Angle on FoxNews. “It is an evidence-based law. It is a bipartisan supermajority of the Tennessee legislature that adopted this.”

🚌 Transit AI In November, a group of universities and regional transit agencies, organized by Vanderbilt Associate Professor Abhishek Dubey, helped Tennessee land $8 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation. The money is set to be used in the Volunteer State’s Partnership for AI-driven Multimodal Transportation Services Integration in Tennessee Cities (PATH-TN) program. According to Vanderbilt, the money will be used to integrate AI technology in Tennessee’s four largest cities to help the efficiency of “fixed-route buses, microtransit, and park-and-ride facilities.” 

“The PATH-TN proposal presents a comprehensive plan to leverage AI and data-driven approaches to improve the efficiency, accessibility, and sustainability of public transportation in Tennessee,” Dubey said. “By focusing on integration, standardization, and user-centric design, the project aims to make public transit a more attractive and competitive mode of transportation, ultimately benefiting communities across the state.”

DEVELOPMENT

• Mixed-Use Development Planned Near Fisk University In Nashville (Now Next)
• Raleigh-based restaurant group buys Party Fowl (Post)
• Streetcar Taps and Garden plans second Nashville location (NBJ)
• Avelo Airlines adds nonstop flights at BNA to Wilmington, North Carolina; Charlotte, North Carolina; Rochester, New York; and Philadelphia. (NBJ)

✹ BOOK REVIEW: THE WAR ON WARRIORS BY PETE HEGSETH

A month ago, Americans who aren’t dedicated Fox Nation subscribers had likely never heard of Middle Tennessee resident Pete Hegseth. But, once Donald Trump announced him as his pick for Secretary of Defense, a smear campaign not seen since the pinnacle of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation days set in. For those not paying attention, the Harvard and Princeton grad with longtime stints as a bestselling author and weekend Fox & Friends host is an utterly unqualified, twice-divorced serial cheater with a penchant for sexual assault; a tattooed white supremacist; and a functioning alcoholic whose extremism led the Army and Guard to relieve him of duty after more than two decades of service. 

Though such allegations are, at best, thinly sourced and, at worst, spurious, they would be enough to make most of us fold. But as Hegseth’s June 2024 book, The War on Warriors, indicates he’s not most people. Like his potential boss, he’s a guy who will “fight like hell” no matter how many times The Drudge Report says his career is on the brink.

THINGS TO DO

View our calendar for the week here and our weekly film rundown here.

📅 Visit our On The Radar list to find upcoming events around Nashville.

🎧 On Spotify: Pamphleteer's Picks, a playlist of our favorite bands in town this week.

👨🏻‍🌾 Check out our Nashville farmer's market guide and yearly festival guide.

TONIGHT

🎸 William Tyler, Jack Silverman Quartet + Kannon Benefit Show for Victims of Helene @ The Basement, 9p, $12.85, Info

🪕 RiverBend @ Station Inn, 9p, $20, Info

🎸 Brent Cobb @ Ryman Auditorium, 7:30p, $25+, Info

🎄 Christmas Swing ft. Sweet Megg @ The Blue Room, 7p, $12.95, Info

🎸 Dick Jr. & The Volunteers @ Exit/ In, 7p, $22.50+, Info

🎄 Pentatonix: Hallelujah! It's A Christmas Tour @ Bridgestone Arena, 7p, $48+, Info

🎸 Cosmic Rodeo with Boowah @ Dee's Lounge, 9p, $5, Info

🍀 Live Irish Music @ McNamara’s Irish Pub, 6p, Free, Info

🎸 Kelly’s Heroes @ Robert’s Western World, 6:30p, Free, Info

🎸 Open Mic @ Fox & Locke, 6:30p, Free, Info
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📰 Check out the full newsletter archive here.

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