The Stage is Set
🗺️ TN gears up for immigration challenges · Council meeting · Oscars · Week in streaming · Much more!
Good afternoon, everyone.
The weather could get dicey tonight. Hard to believe, given the sky’s about as blue as it can get right now, but a storm with high winds is anticipated to move through tonight.
Onward.
President Donald Trump ran on the promise of initiating the “largest deportation” effort in US history. Since taking office, however, the number of deportations have decreased, even lagging the pace of deportations during Biden’s final year as President. But despite the lull, senior administrators within the Trump administration say they expect them to ramp back up as states and other federal agencies jump in the mix. At the same time, opponents of Trump’s immigration agenda have dug in their heels.
This January, the Tennessee legislature aligned itself with President Trump’s platform of border security, immigration enforcement, and upholding a pathway to legal citizenship—but not everyone is on the same page. While the majority supported the state’s establishment of a Centralized Immigration Enforcement Division and the appointment of a Chief Immigration Enforcement Officer, some called the effort to coordinate with the federal government “unconstitutional” and “un-Christian.”
“I just want to say that I think this bill is an abomination and a disgrace to our Tennessee values,” said Nashville Representative Aftyn Behn on the House Floor. Nonetheless, the General Assembly overwhelmingly voted in favor of the bill and with that, the opposition activated their ground game.
At last month’s Metro Council meeting, Councilmember Ginny Welsch handed out ‘Know Your Rights’ cards to her colleagues. Welsch explained that the cards, penned in seven different languages, provide details about what someone should do when confronted by ICE.
They also include a message in English that card holders can hand to authorities “telling them why you are not going to do what they are asking you to do based on the specific constitutional right that aligns with that,” said Welsch.
In her own not-so-subtle protest, Councilmember Sandra Sepulveda followed up Welsch’s announcement by carrying out portions of the proceedings in Spanish, directing members to additional resources provided by the Immigrant Caucus.
We’ve seen similar behavior at the federal level. In February, New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hosted a webinar explaining how illegal immigrants can evade ICE authorities. Acting ICE Director Tom Homan turned to the Department of Justice for clarification as to whether Ocasio-Cortez’s educational exploits could be considered an impediment to federal operations. “You can claim you [are] educating [them about] constitutional rights,” he said during a Fox News interview, “But what she is, in fact, doing is telling people ‘don’t open the door, hide in your home, don’t talk to ICE.'”
Meanwhile, some state legislators hope to establish safe spaces for illegals in Tennessee. Although a similar proposal was rejected during special session, Representative Vincent Dixie and Senator Charlane Oliver are sponsoring a bill requiring schools to immediately notify students, parents, educators, employees, and contractors if an immigration officer is on school grounds.
Though informing illegal immigrants how to avoid deportation may be protected by the First Amendment, other state legislators think actively hiding people from law enforcement should come at a higher price. Two bills are moving through the Tennessee legislature that establish new penalties for those harboring illegals. One creates a human smuggling offense for organizations that knowingly transport illegal aliens for financial gain, and makes hiding, harboring, or shielding illegals from authorities a Class E Felony. The other zeros in on charitable organizations, opening them up to lawsuits if they’ve assisted an illegal alien who goes on to commit a crime.
So far, all three bills are still alive, though only the legislation creating a felony for harboring illegals has made any recent progress. It’s set to be heard in the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee on Wednesday, March 5. MEGAN PODSIEDLIK
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🏛️ Another Metro Council Meeting Tonight’s Metro council meeting will compete with Trump’s Joint Address to Congress. At 8 p.m., the president will deliver a speech titled “Renewal of the American Dream.” Meanwhile, the council will wrestle over a few contentious pieces of legislation in the Nashville Metropolitan Courthouse.
The body’s last meeting was interrupted by inclement weather, so members will kick off tonight’s agenda by picking up where they left off in the Fusus discussion. Sponsor Rollin Horton will try to rally support for his legislation establishing new guardrails on surveillance camera networks like those produced by Fusus. Meanwhile, Sponsor Emily Benedict will present a re-write of her historic zoning legislation. The changes in the substitute would move only Metro’s Historic Zoning Commission under the purview of the Planning Department, not the Historical Commission. You can tune into the meeting live on the Metro Nashville Network.
🥶 Funding Freezes In Nashville Grant cuts that affect the Cumberland River Compact’s work to protect Nashville’s urban canopy and National Institutes of Health funding freezes that could pinch a few Vanderbilt programs have Metro on edge. “I'm definitely worried about the impact for the city of Nashville,” said Mayor O’Connell at Friday’s roundtable. “We have not yet identified specific Metro employee job losses that could be at risk, but that's a daily evaluation right now.”
The mayor said that Metro’s Finance and Legal Departments are keeping an eye on the city’s federal funding flow. He named education, human services (including Metro Social Services and Metro Action Commission), housing, health, and infrastructure as the areas most at risk of being negatively impacted by funding cuts.
🐐 Bills of Interest Two bills of interest passing through the General Assembly right now we wanted to bring attention to. First is a bill banning cellphone use in public schools across the state that’s awaiting a final vote in the Senate. The second is a bill highlighted by the Nashville Banner empowering residents to use lethal force to protect their property. It’s sponsored by Rep. Kip Capley (R-Summertown) and Sen. Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald). Hensley added that a person who employed deadly force to protect their property would still “go to court and have to defend why they did it. This just would give them more leeway to have some law to back them up.”
DEVELOPMENT
- Turkey and the Wolf Icehouse, Germantown Mexican restaurant open (NBJ)
- Next Neuhoff development phase takes step forward (Post)
- Centennial Park-area commercial building listed for $5M (Post)
✸ THE OSCARS RETURN TO FORM
From Jerod Hollyfield
Even without the appearance of Oscar hosting legend Billy Crystal to announce Anora as Best Picture with his When Harry Met Sally co-star Meg Ryan, the show was a glorious throwback to its late-90s heyday. But the ceremony’s most important moment came not from rocksolid emcee Conan O’Brien, but Anora director Sean Baker. Accepting his third statue of the night for the most deserving film to be anointed in nearly twenty years, Baker extolled the importance of the theatrical experience to preserving America’s social fabric at a time when America has seen a decline of 1,000 U.S. movie screens since the pandemic.
“Filmmakers keep making films for the big screen, I know I will,” Baker said. “Distributors, please focus first and foremost on the theatrical releases of your films. Parents, introduce your children to feature films in movie theaters and you will be molding the next generation of movie lovers and filmmakers. And for all of us, when we can please watch movies in a theater and let’s keep the great tradition of the moviegoing experience alive and well.”
It’s a sentiment we expressed last summer in “The Politics of Moviegoing” after seeing so many deserving blockbusters and indies alike dumped into theatres for a few days before drowning in a sea of streaming content.
Hollywood has certainly done itself no favors with its terminal TDS and sacrifice of quality for easy political bromides. But movies like Anora still slip through—more concerned with character than naked agenda. The better they perform at the box office, the greater the chances we will see more like them. Anora will assuredly be back in theaters this weekend. It’s the perfect opportunity to bring back the fine art of the communal cultural experience.
✹ THIS WEEK IN STREAMING (March 4th)
Nosferatu (Peacock) Robert Eggers’s Gothic holiday hit finally comes to streaming. As we wrote in January,the elevated horror all-star reimagines the classic German-Expressionist horror tale for the post-pandemic era complete with Willem Dafoe’s RFKish fearless vampire killer.
House of David (Prime) Franklin’s Kingdom Story gets into the prestige TV business with its take on the life of of King David. Featuring hall-of-fame tough guy Stephen Lang as Samuel!
Pulp Fiction (Hulu) Quentin Tarantino’s appearance at the Oscars was the highlight of Sunday’s show 31-years after his epoch-defining breakout walked away with only a Best Original Screenplay consolation prize. Considering the man has yet to miss a beat, now seems like the perfect time to revisit his pop-culture steeped existential gangster fable.
THINGS TO DO
View our calendar for the week here and our weekly film rundown here.
📅 Visit our On The Radar list to find upcoming events around Nashville.
🎧 On Spotify: Pamphleteer's Picks, a playlist of our favorite bands in town this week.
👨🏻🌾 Check out our Nashville farmer's market guide.
TONIGHT
🎸 Trevor Hall @ The Basement East, 8p, $79.48, Info
🪕 50 Shades of Hay @ Station Inn, 8p, $20, Info
🎸 Honky Tonk Tuesday @ Eastside Bowl, 8p, $10, Info
+ two-step lessons @ 7p, The Cowpokes @ 8p
🎸 Cole Ritter and the Night Owls @ The Underdog, 11:30p, Free, Info
📰 Check out the full newsletter archive here.
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