Trump's Ultimatum for America's Largest Public-Energy Provider

The Atlantic

16-07-2025

For weeks now, the country-music star John Rich has waged a very public battle against a proposed gas-fired power plant near his home in Nashville. The Tennessee Valley Authority, the largest public energy provider in the United States, says the new plant will keep blackouts at bay and prices low; Rich, along with environmental groups who have vocally opposed the project, is worried about 'water contamination, destroyed farms, noise and air pollution.' Recently, the singer's crusade caught President Donald Trump's attention: On Saturday, in a post on X, Rich said that the commander in chief had called him with what he described as 'a MASSIVE announcement coming soon concerning this Anti-American, debacle of a project.' And today, the TVA shared the news: It was backing away from the proposed site.
But before that, on Monday morning, the White House delivered an ultimatum on a call with the TVA's board of directors, two sources with direct knowledge of the situation told me. The command was stark: Fire the utility's CEO, Don Moul, or prepare to be fired.
The board balked. Instead of following the order, which has not been reported on, the board argued in a letter to the White House on Monday that it had no cause to fire Moul: His 97-day tenure had followed 'President Trump's vision of unleashing American energy and achieving American energy dominance.' In fact, the board had selected Moul—a veteran executive who has led nuclear-energy programs at many of the nation's biggest utility companies—'to ensure that TVA embarks on an aggressive policy of energy dominance that involves all fuel types,' according to a copy of the letter I obtained. (When I reached out for comment, the TVA directed me to the White House. The White House did not respond to questions.)
The order to fire Moul was not explicitly linked to the proposed plant near Nashville. But the board believes that the project prompted this latest upheaval, the two sources said. The letter to the White House hammers home the point that building new power plants is what Trump has said he wants. At the same time, the two sources told me, they suspect that the Nashville music star's protest is an excuse for the president to pursue another goal: setting the stage for selling off the nation's largest government-owned utility by installing a handpicked CEO more closely allied to him.
Trump hasn't spoken recently about privatizing the TVA. But in his first term, he proposed selling off the TVA's power lines to a private buyer in 2018 and again in 2020. Now, he is positioned to stack the TVA's board with new members. That, combined with his administration's relentless push to shrink the federal government, has revived speculation about privatization—which many in Trump's MAGA orbit have long argued should be the utility's fate.
Established under Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal to bring electricity to parts of the South too poor to attract investor-owned utilities, the TVA has for decades been one of the largest corporations whose shares are all owned by the federal government; it serves 10 million Americans. Its board is appointed by the White House, but the TVA otherwise functions like a normal monopoly power company. Ratepayers fund its operations; it hasn't relied on direct federal appropriations for its power-generation system since 1959.
Periodically, presidents from both parties have proposed privatizing its operations. Barack Obama floated the idea in 2013. Selling off the clunky old TVA for parts might have sounded good in theory. But when experts have done the math, breaking up a behemoth that produces power, maintains transmission lines, supplies electricity to rural cooperatives, and manages a complex system of rivers and dams would result in worse outcomes. In 2021, the investment bank Lazard released a study of the TVA finances on behalf of the federal government and found that the utility had 'met or outperformed' its key financial and operating goals since 2014. Joel Yudken, an economist at the consultancy High Road Strategies, told me that the conclusion of his own analysis was, essentially, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.'
Since taking office again this January, Trump has been setting up the pieces to control the TVA's future. The White House needs the board to appoint a new CEO, but Trump can appoint—and remove—its members. The current board of directors has just three members—short of the five-person quorum it needs to make major decisions, and well short of its full nine-member panel. At the beginning of Trump's new term, the board had three vacancies; the Senate had failed to confirm new appointees before President Joe Biden's term ended. Then, starting in March, Trump fired three of Biden's other appointees. That left six open seats. Last month, Trump sent four of his nominees to the Senate for approval, including a controversial former car-dealership magnate from Nashville who appears to have no experience in utilities but who in 2020 called Trump the real winner of the presidential election. The Senate has yet to vote on the picks.
If Trump uses Congress's August recess to make emergency appointments to the committee, the White House could legally bypass the Senate confirmation process for nearly two years. Even if he retains the three sitting board members, he could unilaterally seat a majority of the TVA's board without Senate approval. If he fires the existing members, the board could consist of only his handpicked members, giving him that much more leverage to select a CEO. One top candidate, the sources suggested, would be Trump's former energy secretary, Dan Brouillette, who until last fall headed a trade association for investor-owned utilities. Brouillette did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
Privatization would still be a political battle. A U.S. president, board, and CEO all in favor of privatization would still likely need Congress's cooperation to sell off the TVA, and neither of Tenneessee's senators, Republicans Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, have publicly endorsed privatizing the TVA. Instead, in an op-ed published in late March, the pair urged Trump to 'rescue TVA from itself' and cement his legacy as 'America's Nuclear President' by embarking on a major reactor build-out. (Spokespeople for both senators did not reply to questions about whether they would support privatization or Brouillette's candidacy.) But the utility's top management could press Congress to support privatization legislation, and it could silo parts of the business to set the stage for a sale.
The two sources close to the TVA fear that the latest disruption is not about going after a single plant but going after the TVA itself, in part because the proposed gas plant otherwise fits neatly into Trump's vision for energy expansion. (The TVA has been criticized by environmental groups for its build out of gas-fired plants.) In the past six months, his administration has pushed to build new gas pipelines, relaxed enforcement of safety regulations, and directed more funding toward expanding fossil-fuel production. Trump has also pushed for new nuclear reactors—which Moul has pursued at the TVA—and in the past fought against NIMBY opponents of fossil-fuel infrastructure.
The TVA has been expanding its generation capacity, in part with an eye to increased electricity demands; Elon Musk's xAI has data centers in Tennessee, for instance. The TVA's monopoly has long guaranteed that locals and their businesses pay some of the lowest electricity rates in the nation—one reason the utility has been the region's pride for almost a century now. In other parts of the U.S., electricity prices have been on the rise; privatizing the utility would almost certainly mean the Tennessee Valley would pay more for electricity, too.
Privatization would also risk the very legacy that some Republicans envision for Trump. Given the high cost of building new nuclear reactors, state-owned utilities are—all over the world—the primary vehicles for working out the kinks in novel models. That's how China, Russia, France, and the United Arab Emirates all managed to construct atomic superstations. This strategy is catching on again in the United States too: New York just tapped its New York Power Authority, the largest state utility after the TVA, to build its first nuclear-power plant since the 1980s. In Canada, the government-owned Ontario Power Generation is moving forward with what could be the first commercial small modular reactors in North America. The TVA is currently on track to follow up on the Ontario utility's work by building its own small reactor.
With Wall Street investors constantly demanding short-term quarterly returns, few other utilities can take on that kind of megaproject. But if the TVA goes private, the U.S. will have even fewer other power options. Only a government can really pursue a project the scale of the TVA; if the utility is sold off, the scale of its potential will shrink too.