Tennessee Senator Declares War On ‘Woke’ Nashville Power Company After Week-Long Outage
Senator Marsha Blackburn is demanding answers and accountability from Nashville Electric Service (NES) after thousands of Tennessee residents were left without power for more than a week following Winter Storm Fern. Blackburn slammed the utility for focusing on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives instead of investing in infrastructure and storm preparedness.
“The Nashville Electric Service held 102 DEI-related training sessions by the end of 2024. They should’ve been using those resources to trim trees and bury utilities,” Blackburn posted. “This is what happens when companies put woke politics over the needs of the people they serve.”
Blackburn sent a letter to NES laying out six critical questions, challenging why the utility turned down help from experienced linemen, failed to adequately prepare despite warnings, and provided faulty outage updates. She also pressed NES on why some residents have been told they may be without power for two weeks, and asked whether customers would be reimbursed for emergency lodging and related expenses.
By Saturday, NES had responded, stating that 230,000 customers initially lost power and about 44,000 were still without it. The company projected that all remaining customers would have service restored within the next week. But Blackburn dismissed their reply as “entirely insufficient” and accused the company of deflecting blame. “Whoever is responsible for this breakdown should be fired,” she wrote.
Frustration among Nashville residents has continued to grow. One viewer told a local reporter that NES’s new outage tracking system is failing to register single-residence outages, leaving some homes in the cold with no way to report the problem. “It’s 38-40 degrees in the house,” the resident wrote. “We run a generator intermittently, and we are doing better than most. But to not be able to reliably report an outage is absurd.”
Blackburn emphasized that her criticism was aimed at NES leadership, not the workers on the ground. “The linemen who are on the ground making repairs and working in the frigid temperatures to restore power are the unsung heroes of the response to this horrible winter storm. So grateful for these men and women,” she said.
With outages still affecting tens of thousands, Blackburn’s push for accountability underscores broader Republican concerns over the politicization of public utilities. The senator has given NES a deadline of February 2 to provide comprehensive answers.