Who Will Play the Fall Guy?

The mayor initiates phase one of the blame game.

From Davis Hunt

⚡️ Power Levels As of this writing, the NES power outage map shows 72,539 customers without power. That’s 18,114 fewer customers than yesterday. About 19 percent of NES customers remain. Everything state and city government-related remains on pause or remote, including public schools.

According to NES’s most recent update, there are now 1,000+ lineworkers in the field in addition to 257 vegetation workers.

🧊 ICE vs. Ice In the early morning hours of May 4, ICE conducted an immigration enforcement operation wherein they made 84 arrests of illegals in the city.

In the aftermath, Mayor Freddie O’Connell immediately got to work crafting a response. By the following day, he had issued a strong rebuke and put together a fund, with a phalanx of local non-profits, to “support immigrants in Nashville during moments of crisis.”

By comparison, the city took five whole days to launch the Winter Storm Recovery Fund in partnership with United Way to support those put out by the recent ice storm.

👞 Whodunnit? Day six and the blame game is beginning. Mayor O’Connell has begun to distance himself from NES as power outages move into the sixth day. At a solo press conference yesterday, O’Connell addressed the utility directly:

Show the work, tell the story. Help people understand. Even if it’s bad news, share the bad news, because it’s better to have that than just no understanding of what is going on.

When asked if he thought NES was prepared for the storm, O’Connell said, “No one is prepared for historic events.” A historically bad answer.

✹ THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPEN BUT SHOULD

​Welcome to America in 2026. You're sitting at the End of History. Nothing will ever happen again.

​The steady march toward the impossible vision of a borderless world governed by rooms full of perfectly rational leaders incapable of committing evil in thought word or deed continues apace.

​Will anything–can anything happen–that shakes us from our stupor? Is "Nothing Ever Happens" the law of the land? What should happen that hasn't happened?

​Join us Thursday, February 19th as we sit down with Sean Davis, CEO and co-founder of The Federalist, to discuss whether anything will ever happen again and more. (Buy Ticket)

This event is for the benefit of The Pamphleteer and free for paying, Bard-level subscribers.

🪧 Agitations to Activation A number of groups have planned protests outside of NES today. To mark the beginning of the activation, NES employees were greeted by smashed vehicle windows this morning as reported by the Nashville Scene. The local Antifa chapter will be there at 2, followed by the progressive Nashville People Power Committee at 5.

🙈 DEI Downers An obvious question that emerges in the aftermath of widespread and systemic incompetence is whether or not the body in question did some woke sh*t. And sure enough, NES has done some woke sh*t, even during Wednesday’s board meeting.

As reported by the Tennessee Star, the board approved a six-month extension of a contract for “Consulting for DEI Projects and Initiatives” in the middle of the ice storm. The Star also reported that NES held over 100 Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Accessibility, & Belonging trainings between 2023 and 2024.

So, yeah. They did some woke sh*t.

DEVELOPMENT

• 🛫 Porter Airlines to launch nonstop flights from Nashville (NBJ)
• Audrey team opens East Nashville bar with $5 menu (NBJ)
• West End Park site targeted for residential building (Post)

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Today's newsletter is brought to you by Davis Hunt, Megan Podsiedlik, and Camelia Brennan.