Chaos at the Tennessee Valley Authority, Cuts to Public Input 

The past year has brought turmoil and uncertainty to the Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation’s largest public power provider, and its more than 10 million customers across the Tennessee Valley.

In 2025, President Donald Trump fired three members of TVA’s board of directors, leaving the governing body without the minimum number required to vote and make key decisions — only three of nine positions were filled. 

In December 2025, the Senate confirmed four new members — nominated by the president — who were sworn into office in early 2026, bringing the board to quorum. The new board used its first meeting to scrap longstanding plans to retire TVA’s Kingston and Cumberland coal plants. The same month, the board’s chair, Bill Renick, resigned.

Meanwhile, the renomination of controversial political megadonor Lee Beaman to the board hangs in the balance. The president proposed privatizing TVA in his first term, and some advocates are concerned that Beaman would go along with any push to sell TVA’s publicly owned assets to private corporations.

“Communities in the Tennessee Valley have been paying for these assets over generations through our electric bills,” wrote Bri Knisley, director of public power campaigns at Appalachian Voices, in The Tennessean. “TVA belongs to and should be guided by us — not private shareholders or the politicians they fund.”

The president also pressured the TVA board to fire the utility’s relatively new CEO, Don Moul. Trump even declared during a White House event that he would “make [Moul’s] life miserable.” In March, a presidential memorandum demanded that the utility cap employees’ salaries at $500,000. Moul earned $5.7 million in 2025. Soon after, Moul announced his retirement. In April, the TVA board selected Mike Skaggs as interim president and CEO. Skaggs spent more than 20 years in leadership roles at the utility before his 2022 retirement. 

TVA also revised its National Environmental Policy Act procedures to reduce and sometimes eliminate public involvement on its proposed projects.

All of this chaos has left TVA’s Integrated Resource Plan up in the air. In 2025, the reduced board could not vote on the draft IRP, a long-term plan for the utility’s power generation that will shape the region’s energy future for the next 25 years. The board is set to vote on a new 2026 draft energy plan without a formal public comment period.