{"id":11138,"date":"2025-07-09T22:21:28","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T22:21:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trump-nominates-4-to-tennessee-valley-authority-board-after-firing-biden-picks\/"},"modified":"2025-07-09T22:21:28","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T22:21:28","slug":"trump-nominates-4-to-tennessee-valley-authority-board-after-firing-biden-picks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trump-nominates-4-to-tennessee-valley-authority-board-after-firing-biden-picks\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump nominates 4 to Tennessee Valley Authority board after firing Biden picks"},"content":{"rendered":"<div xmlns:xlink=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/1999\/xlink\">\n<div>\n<p>                                <bsp-timestamp data-timestamp=\"1751407121000\" data-recent-thresholdinhours=\"1\">                    <template data-date-tpl>Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year]<\/template>                    <span data-date><\/span>                <\/bsp-timestamp>            <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>                                        <bsp-page-actions>                            <\/bsp-page-actions>                                                                                            <\/div>\n<div>\n<p>NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) &mdash; President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced four nominees for the Tennessee Valley Authority&rsquo;s board, which for months has not had enough members to take many actions because Trump fired some of former President Joe Biden&rsquo;s picks.<\/p>\n<p>TVA is the nation&rsquo;s largest public utility and provides power to more than 10 million people across seven southern states.<\/p>\n<p>The White House said Trump&rsquo;s nominees for the federal utility are Tennesseans Lee Beaman, Mitch Graves and Jeff Hagood; and Randall Jones of Alabama. <\/p>\n<p>The selections follow Trump&rsquo;s firing of three Biden-nominated board members since late March. The board normally has nine members and requires five to make a quorum. It currently has three. Trump&rsquo;s picks would not be seated until the U.S. Senate confirms them.<\/p>\n<p>Without a quorum, TVA&rsquo;s board can take actions needed for ongoing operations but cannot jump into new areas of activity, start new programs or change the utility&rsquo;s existing direction.<\/p>\n<p>Beaman is a businessman who sold his Nashville-area fleet of car dealerships. He is also a prominent Republican political fundraiser.<\/p>\n<p>Graves is the CEO of West Cancer Center &amp; Research Institute in Germantown, Tennessee, and he sits on the board of Memphis Light, Gas and Water. <\/p>\n<p>Hagood is a Knoxville attorney and sits on the Knoxville Sports Authority Board. He was helping fundraising efforts for Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs, the former WWE wrestler who had been flirting with a run for governor.<\/p>\n<p>Jones is an insurance agent and sits on the Jacksonville State University board, the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame board and the city of Guntersville Electric Board.<\/p>\n<p>In a March 20 guest column, Tennessee&rsquo;s two Republican U.S. senators urged TVA officials to opt for &ldquo;an interim CEO trusted by the president&rdquo; before hiring someone long-term. They wrote that studies and hurdles under the TVA board were bogging down a project that seeks to build a small modular nuclear reactor.<\/p>\n<p>Then, Trump fired board member Michelle Moore on March 27.<\/p>\n<p>On March 31, the five remaining board members picked TVA&rsquo;s executive vice president and chief operating officer Don Moul to become the new CEO. Moul has since called for reevaluating the lifespan of TVA&rsquo;s fleet of coal plants. The utility has been planning to retire the last of them by 2035. But Trump has signed <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/trump-coal-ai-data-centers-energy-dominance-693e2604785c07ff790d9afd2e06d543\">executive orders aimed at boosting the coal industry<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>On April 1, Trump fired board member Joe Ritch, leaving the board without a quorum. Months later, he fired Beth Geer from the board on June 10.<\/p>\n<p>This weekend, a guest column by Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee called for a &ldquo;a new board and a clear, aggressive mission&rdquo; to further Trump&rsquo;s goal of quadrupling domestic production of nuclear power within the next 25 years. Trump <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/new-nuclear-reactors-trump-e7394fe688d2132a73f67f59bdbe792a\">signed executive orders in May<\/a><\/span>  to speed up the development.<\/p>\n<p>Blackburn and Hagerty called for the new nominees&rsquo; quick confirmation in the Senate.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/tennessee-valley-authority-tva-board-trump-nominees-e41de7e928884dc4dac8ab4f51027a3b?mc_cid=4dfb2fa052&amp;mc_eid=12485be0da\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year] NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) &mdash; President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced four nominees for the Tennessee Valley Authority&rsquo;s board, which for months has not had enough members to take many actions because Trump fired some of former President Joe Biden&rsquo;s picks. TVA is the nation&rsquo;s largest public utility and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}