Two abrupt firings by President Donald Trump have left the Tennessee Valley Authority with just four board members ahead of its May 8 meeting. The federal agency, which provides electricity to more than 10 million people across seven states, must have five board members to make a quorum. Without a quorum, the board’s power is severely constrained by its own bylaws. The scheduled May 8 convening will be the board’s first quarterly meeting under new CEO Don Moul, who succeeded Jeff Lyash in late March.
The TVA was created under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to electrify areas of the South and Appalachia. The agency used federal authority and eminent domain powers to build a network of hydroelectric dams, transmission lines and power plants throughout Tennessee, which it has maintained for almost a century. Local power companies like the Nashville Electric Service buy electricity from the TVA, which enjoys monopoly-like control of power generation throughout Tennessee and parts of Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, Mississippi and Kentucky.
Trump’s fixation on fossil fuels and hostility toward clean energy initially prompted speculation about how he might reshape the TVA from the top after Senate Democrats abandoned several TVA nominees in the final months of 2024. Former President Joe Biden left three vacancies to Trump, who has instead chosen to take from, rather than add to, the TVA’s powerful governing body.
Senate abandons Biden nominees as Dems’ clock ticks down
The White House dismissed board member Michelle Moore via an SEC filing on March 27. Biden installed Moore, a solar energy proponent and advocate for affordable rural utilities, in 2022, with her term set to end in March 2026. Within days, Trump again cut the board, axing Joe Ritch, a Huntsville attorney and University of Alabama system trustee emeritus. Ritch served one board term under Barack Obama and earned another under Biden, which was set to end in May. The body briefly had a full nine-person roster in 2023.
“Trump is playing dangerous political games by firing another TVA board member and risking the lives of millions of families and workers,” Gaby Sarri-Tobar of the Center for Biological Diversity tells the Scene in a statement. “This leaves our country’s largest federal utility adrift, without key leaders and without the authority to keep the lights on, utility bills low and families safe during the next disaster.”
The Moore and Ritch firings follow an op-ed in Power Magazine by Tennessee’s U.S. Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty criticizing the current board and demanding that the TVA double down on nuclear energy. Just before Ritch’s firing, the board selected Moul as interim CEO in one of its last actions with a quorum.
Advocates again slammed the GOP for playing politics. Stephen Smith, director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, called the Hagerty-Blackburn move a “reckless attempt at micromanaging TVA” that will further destabilize the agency at a critical juncture.
Uncharted territory awaits when the board convenes on May 8. The body has not met without a quorum since before it expanded to nine members in 2005. Absent a quorum, bylaws deprive the board of “the authority to direct the Corporation into new areas of activity, to embark on new programs, or to change the Corporation’s existing direction.”
The agency has not yet released an agenda for the meeting, but plans to continue with its regularly scheduled May 7 public input session and May 8 board meeting in Cookeville with remaining TVA directors Beth Geer, Bill Renick, Bobby Klein and Wade White.TVA spokesperson Scott Brooks tells the Scene that the agency’s legal counsel has not furnished any legal analysis or interpretation of the situation.
Turbulence plagued the agency during former CEO Lyash’s six-year stint. Environmentalists and elected officials harangued the TVA for its slow pivot away from coal-powered energy, punctuated by the 2008 Kingston Fossil Plant spill and its disastrous cleanup. Lavish executive salaries and a lack of compensation transparency provoked bipartisan criticism; Lyash’s $10.5 million all-in pay package earned him the distinction of the highest-paid federal employee. TVA’s recent embrace of carbon-heavy gas — and related lucrative pipeline projects — has been dogged by protests and legal action, with environmental attorneys alleging that the agency did not genuinely consider solar and wind alternatives. Winter Storm Elliott in 2022 exposed a grid vulnerable to extreme weather. Extreme cold and overstressed transmission infrastructure forced rolling blackouts and cost TVA $170 million.
