Nashville and Tennessee leaders are at odds. Again.

Cynthia Abrams reports that when Tennessee’s General Assembly concluded the legislative session in April, the work for local leaders was only beginning. Metro’s legal team began their annual legislative review, identifying new laws that, they feel, are adversarial to Nashville and assessing the potential for legal challenges.

And while the number of new laws that concern city leaders is high, the possibility for legal action may be lower than in recent years. In 2023, Metro filed four lawsuits over laws that the city claimed unfairly targeted Nashville, and, thus, violated Tennessee’s Constitution.

The preemption laws passed in the 2026 legislative session don’t target Nashville in the same way. Rather, they impact local control on a broader level statewide.

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Photos: George Walker IV / AP, Cynthia Abrams / WPLN

What a week in Tennessee news. The biggest story was Tennessee Republicans’ decision to break up the state’s only majority-Black Congressional district. They said the move was critical to carry out President Donald Trump’s agenda. The final vote came 24 hours after the proposed maps were published, and eight days after a U.S. Supreme Court decision walked back protections against racial gerrymandering.

We also covered an inclusive baseball league for children and adults with disabilities, a Dolly Parton Vegas residency cancellation, and Amy Grant’s new album.

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Amy Grant`s career has been defined by her success in the face of controversy.

She became a figure in pop culture right next to Madonna and Prince. But she was held to a different standard. “To serve the CCM market, it’s very important for any artists to conform to conservative white evangelical ideals,” says Leah Payne, author of “God Gave Rock and Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music.” From the "three button controversy" of the 80`s, to the backlash over her admission that she enjoys having sex with her husband and sunbathing nude, to the recent controversy over hosting a same sex marriage ceremony on her Nashville property — all of this generated market consequences.

Now Grant is facing new market challenges. One her new album, "The Me That Remains" she steers clear of controversy, or at least it tries to. The first song on the record is "The 6th of January" a song that Grant chose to sing because it asks for political empathy and speaks of "times of hope in unrest." Grant sees it as her responsibility to bring people together in this politically charged time. Her label says the challenge of marketing the record will be that it works against a music discovery algorithm that rewards the praise and worship music like Grant`s first hits in the 80`s.

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Photos: courtesy of the artist

Heeding a call from President Trump to give Republicans more seats in Congress, Tennessee’s GOP-led statehouse voted to carve Memphis into three reliably red districts.

Democrats and protesters have criticized the redistricting plan, which struck down state law against mid-decade redistricting and did in three days what usually takes months.

Republicans say the new maps will represent the state’s GOP majority by sending all Republicans to the U.S. House.

Democrats in both chambers staged walkouts as the measure passed. Three protesters from Memphis were arrested for refusing to clear the House gallery, including the brother of Rep. Justin J. Pearson, D-Memphis, who had been running for congress in Memphis’s former 9th Congressional District.

Follow for more from reporter Marianna Bacallao and tap link in the bio for the full story.

Photos: Marianna Bacallao / WPLN, George Walker IV / AP

What would it take to bury electrical lines in Nashville?

When Winter Storm Fern devastated Nashville this year, it left hundreds of thousands of Nashvillians without power in frigid temperatures. And many people turned to Curious Nashville with some form of the question about burying our lines.

Curious Nashville reached out to a utility expert who could help answer this question. Wade Sexton, a Knoxville-based member of the National Utility Contractor’s Association told WPLN that retrofitting an entire city with underground lines would require two main things: total buy-in from customers and a LOT of money. Like double digit billions of dollars kind of money.

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Photos: John Amis / AP Photo, George Walker IV AP Photo

With outdoor concert season here, bikers and pedestrians passing by Ascend Amphitheater may notice an improvement to solve an annoying issue that had persisted for years.

The problem? There was no way through the park during shows.

Since part of the downtown greenway is technically on the grounds of Ascend, you’d need a ticket to be there. LiveNation, which ran the amphitheater for the past ten years, simply closed that section of the park during events, so pedestrians and bikers had to go all the way around.

Opry Entertainment Group promised to do something about that when they won the bid to run the Amphitheater for the next decade. The organization spent $1 million building a new wooden bridge over the land, and it will be open during concerts. If you’re thinking that sounds like a great spot to see a show for free, you’re not wrong, but you will be stopped. Metro owns the land and leases it to Opry, so officers will be patrolling during shows.

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Photos/video: Justin Barney WPLN, press release photos from Opry Entertainment group

In a newly proposed map, Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District, which has historically represented Memphis in the U.S. House, would now stretch from the bottom of the city to the edge of Nashville — a distance spanning nearly 300 miles.

Since a recent U.S. Supreme Court weakened a section of the Voting Rights Act, President Donald Trump has called on states to redistrict areas they previously couldn’t touch.

The Tennessee Black Caucus of State Legislators decried the court’s decision. “There`s no way to sugarcoat eliminating a district that is 61% Black,” said Sen. Raumesh Akbari, D-Memphis. “You are deliberately trying to silence the voices of a community.”

In unveiling the new maps, Republican leadership said the move will “modernize” Tennessee’s redistricting process by taking racial data out of consideration. The GOP has rejected calls to involve public feedback in the process.

Follow for more from reporter Marianna Bacallao and tap link in the bio for ongoing coverage of this special session.

Map: Tennessee General Assembly