(9.18.26) President Donald Trump announced today that every state Medicaid program will participate in his most-favored-nation drug-pricing model. Participating manufacturers must provide rebates so Medicaid’s final price for hundreds of expensive brand-name medicines—including diabetes, heart disease, cancer and mental health drugs—does not exceed the lowest price paid in comparable developed countries.
Trump’s drug-pricing initiative has two parts: the GENEROUS model gives Tennessee’s TennCare program lower prices on selected medications, while TrumpRx separately lists discounted cash prices that generally can be used by anyone with a valid prescription. TrumpRx does not require Medicaid enrollment, but its discounts usually cannot be combined with insurance and may be unavailable to participants in Medicare, Medicaid and other government health programs. Here are some cost breakdowns of some drugs for diabetes, heart disease, cancer and mental health: Read more.
(9.18.26) Tennessee Lookout reported Wednesday, citing the TBI, that 15 agents, supervisors and analysts have been embedded with the Memphis Safe Task Force. They are part of a new 32-position statewide unit receiving $9 million in first-year funding—$3.8 million for salaries and $5.2 million for equipment and supplies.
The TBI did not identify a request from Mayor Paul Young, MPD Chief C.J. Davis, Sheriff Floyd Bonner or District Attorney Steve Mulroy. The new state law permits the unit to investigate in Memphis without a local request because the Memphis Safe Task Force already operates here.
With Memphis crime down nearly 36% this year, the state should explain why 15 of the unit’s first 32 positions were assigned here. The agents could strengthen murder, gang, gun and drug investigations, but taxpayers deserve to know who was consulted, what unmet need they will address and how the state will measure the results.
(9.17.26) Memphis-Shelby County Schools opened the 2026-27 school year with more than 2,000 fewer students than last August, continuing a decade-long decline that has already cost the district more than 10,000 students. The most obvious leading explanation is that many parents are choosing something else—private schools, homeschooling, charter schools and the state’s expanding voucher program. Chalkbeat reported that MSCS board member Natalie McKinney acknowledged some families simply do not like the system or do not believe it will meet their children’s needs.
There are demographic pressures too. Fewer children are being born in Shelby County, producing smaller kindergarten classes, while the county’s population has also declined. MSCS Executive Director of Accountability Bill White told Chalkbeat that district leaders expected enrollment losses from both declining birth rates and increased school-choice options, including private-school vouchers.
But demographics do not answer the central question: Why are so many parents who have another option taking it? MSCS may not have data proving parental dissatisfaction is the single No. 1 cause, but the continuing movement toward private schools and other alternatives makes dissatisfaction with the system one of the clearest reasons the district must confront.
(9.16.26) Memphis City Council members heard emotional testimony Tuesday from families affected by the El Corralón immigration raid that arrested 121 people ICE identified as "unlawfully present"--legalese for illegal alien--during the Aug. 30 multiagency operation. The department said some had criminal histories involving child endangerment, prostitution, larceny, drug possession, domestic violence, drunken driving and assault.
However, there was no presentation from the Department of Homeland Security, ICE or other participating agencies before two councilwomen announced plans to seek the removal of the Memphis Safe Task Force. Councilwomen Yolanda Cooper-Sutton and Michalyn Easter-Thomas said they intend to sponsor a resolution asking the federal forces to leave Memphis.
The White House reported Tuesday that the task force has produced 12,747 arrests, seized 2,160 illegal firearms and recovered 189 missing children since its deployment, while Memphis crime fell nearly 36 percent compared with the preceding year. The administration’s full report is here.
(9.15.26) The MLGW Board of Commissioners meets at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 16, at 220 S. Main St. The largest item on its 18-item consent agenda would transfer approximately $36 million already held for retiree benefits from one international investment fund to another; other proposals include nearly $8.4 million in equipment, auditing, technology and infrastructure expenses. Watch through MLGW’s live meeting link.
The meeting also provides a public forum for questions about MLGW’s planned 2027 water-rate increase and whether residents are being treated fairly. MLGW currently charges city households $2.393 per 100 cubic feet, while its rate for the largest users declines to $1.279 at the highest consumption tier—about 47% less. Protect Our Aquifer is urging MLGW to eliminate that volume discount and adopt rates that distribute costs more equitably and encourage conservation, although no water-rate vote appears on Wednesday’s preliminary agenda.
(9.15.26 3:15 PM) The Memphis City Council meets at 4 p.m. today, with major decisions ahead on competing data-center proposals and questions surrounding plans to convert the Pipkin Building into pickleball courts—potentially displacing Memphis Roller Derby. Watch the Council meeting on the official live video.
(9.14.26) The Memphis City Council will hold committee meetings beginning at 10 a.m. Tuesday before its regular voting session at 4 p.m. Data-center regulation, blight enforcement, short-term rentals, pension changes and millions of dollars in MLGW expenditures are among the leading items on the official Sept. 15 agenda. Read more.
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Orange Mound Land Trust Breaks Ground on First New Homes: On Wednesday, Sept. 9, the Orange Mound land trust broke ground on the first of a dozen new homes, on Marechalneil Street near Deadrick Avenue, supporting Mayor Paul Young’s goal of 10,000 new or renovated affordable housing units by 2030, according to the Daily Memphian.
Volunteers Packed 185,000 Meals for Mid-South Food Bank on 9/11: On Friday, Sept. 11, about 350 volunteers packed more than 185,000 meals at FedExForum in a 9/11 Day of Service event sponsored by the Memphis Grizzlies. The meals go to the Mid-South Food Bank, as reported by Action News 5.
Shelby County Clerk Uncovers 34 Crates of Unprocessed Vehicle Titles, Commission Considers $6.1M Fix: Tri-State Defender reports newly elected Shelby County Clerk La Sonya Hall told the Shelby County Commission her office found 34 crates of unprocessed dealership packets, and commissioners voted 13-0 to back a $6.1 million overhaul of the long-troubled office.
New Shelby County Commissioners Go Through Orientation: The Shelby County Board of Commissioners scheduled its new-commissioner orientation for 10 a.m. today at the Code Enforcement Building training center on Mullins Station Road — happening at this time of publication.
Freshman Commissioner Will Richardson Breaks Silence After Felony Tax Fraud Arrest: Tri-State Defender reports newly elected Shelby County Commissioner Will Richardson says he is "innocent" of felony tax fraud charges tied to his Harbor Town bar, Fat Charlie's Speakeasy, following his arrest just days into his first term.
Major Downtown Sewer Work Starts Monday: Memphis will close South Front Street between Mina and Butler avenues beginning Sept. 14 while crews install sanitary-sewer infrastructure. The city expects traffic controls and the closure to remain through Sept. 30.
Riverside Drive Closes Again Tonight: Drivers Downtown should expect Riverside Drive between Beale Street and Georgia Avenue to close from 11 p.m. tonight until 6 a.m. Sunday. The city has made the overnight closure a Friday-through-Sunday safety measure
(9.11.26) More Than 200 Volunteers Deliver Meals to Nearly 780 First Responders on 9/11 Anniversary:Tri-State Defender reports Volunteer Memphis marked the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks by delivering meals to first responders at more than 36 Memphis-area fire stations as part of its annual Day of Service and Remembrance.
(9.11.26) Memphis Marks 25 Years Since 9/11: The Fire Museum of Memphis held a 25th-anniversary remembrance ceremony this morning and offered free museum admission for the day. Fire Museum of Memphis
(9.11.26) One Party Official Picked House District 84 Replacement: A single Shelby County Democratic Party executive committee member selected Matthew Szalaj to replace retiring Rep. Joe Towns on the November ballot, according to Tennessee Lookout.
(9.11.26) Memphis Credit Rating Downgraded: The Tennessee State Comptroller confirmed a City of Memphis credit-rating downgrade, with revenue and MLGW water-meter billing problems among the financial concerns, according to the Tennessee Tribune.
(9.11.26) Indie Musician Keer Releases Debut Work: Memphis musician Keerthana “Keer” Manoj, who left a nine-to-five job to pursue music full time, has released her debut EP, according to the Daily Memphian.
(9.11.26) Children’s Film Festival Opens at Pink Palace: The Like You Children’s Film Festival begins tonight, with Space Cadet among the opening-night programming, according to Memphis magazine.
(9.11.26) Memphis Launches NextUp901 Workforce Program: The city and The Collective Blueprint launched NextUp901, a career-training and placement initiative aimed at getting young Memphians into health care, IT and skilled trades, according to the Memphis Business Journal.
(9.11.26) Special Judge Named in Erika Sugarmon Case: A special judge has been appointed to hear Shelby County Commissioner Erika Sugarmon’s campaign-sign vandalism case, which returns to court in October, according to the Daily Memphian.
(9.11.26) Mayo Clinic Labs Bringing 234 Jobs to Southaven: Mayo Clinic Laboratories plans to invest more than $30 million and add 234 jobs in Southaven, according to the Daily Memphian.
(9.11.26) Mid-South Fair Announces Music Lineup: The Mid-South Fair released its 2026 entertainment lineup, including Memphis and national country performers, according to the Daily Memphian.
(9.11.26) Metal Museum Opens Its New Overton Park Home: The Metal Museum officially reopened to the public today in its new Overton Park campus, the former Memphis College of Art property. Metal Museum
(9.11.26) Memphis Pauses Paul R. Lowry Road Extension: Mayor Paul Young has halted, for now, the road-extension plan near the Frank C. Pidgeon Industrial Park following community concerns, WKNO reported today. WKNO
(9.11.26) Commissioner Will Richardson’s Arrest Shadows New Term: Newly elected Shelby County Commissioner Will Richardson was arrested and jailed Wednesday, his first day in office, WKNO reported in its Friday newscast. WKNO
(9.11.26) Wanda Halbert Left a Vehicle-Title Backlog: New Shelby County Clerk LaSonya Hall says her office found dozens of crates of unprocessed vehicle titles and registrations, some dating to June, according to the Daily Memphian.
(9.11.26) Memphis Wrestling Legend Bill Dundee Dies at 82: Memphis wrestling Hall of Famer “Superstar” Bill Dundee has died at age 82, WKNO reported today. WKNO
(9.11.26) Local Company Buys Sycamore View Plaza: A Memphis-area private investment company bought the Summer Avenue retail center for more than $3 million, according to the Daily Memphian.
(9.11.26) Federal prosecutors are putting federal racketeering law at the center of their fight against Memphis street gangs, outlining the strategy...Read full story.
(9.10.26) On September 8, the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Tennessee, Selendy Gay PLLC and BraunHagey Borden LLP filed new materials in federal court alleging that Memphis Safe Task Force agents retaliated against Memphis resident Hunter Demster for recording law-enforcement activity. The filing says Demster was tackled and arrested while filming agents on August 26 and later encountered agents outside his home. The allegations are part of the pending federal case Demster v. Blanche.
The ACLU argues that observing and recording law-enforcement officers performing their public duties is protected First Amendment activity. Its September filing says Demster was filming from a public sidewalk and was not interfering with officers when agents repeatedly ordered him to remain 25 feet away. ACLU of Tennessee legal director Lucas Cameron-Vaughn alleges agents used Tennessee's Halo Law as a moving barrier to force Demster progressively farther from the scene.
Tennessee law creates a 25-foot protection zone in certain situations, but it is not a blanket ban on filming police. According to the Tennessee General Assembly, a person must first be ordered to stop or back away. Refusing that order can bring consequences; simply filming from a safe distance does not.
The dispute in Demster v. Blanche therefore reaches beyond one filmer: the ACLU is asking the federal court to determine whether Task Force agents crossed the constitutional line between maintaining a safe working distance and retaliating against people for documenting government activity. A hearing on the requested preliminary injunction is scheduled for September 23 in Memphis.
(9.10.26) New Shelby County Clerk LaSonya Hall says she inherited 34 crates of unprocessed dealer paperwork involving about 2,600 titles and registrations, with some motorists waiting months for tags. Hall is also seeking up to $6.1 million to address technology, staffing, controls and other operational problems, according to Action News 5. The obvious question is how a major county office was allowed to deteriorate this far before a new clerk exposed what was left behind.
Former Clerk Wanda Halbert was elected by Shelby County voters in 2018 and reelected in 2022. Her tenure was marked by long lines, backlogs, office closures, financial-control problems and repeated criticism from county officials. During the 2022 backlog crisis, Halbert also took a previously scheduled five-day vacation to Jamaica while offices were closed to catch up on work. Because the clerk is independently elected, no county mayor or commissioner could simply fire her — but independence should not mean immunity from effective oversight.
Auditors later cited weak controls and inadequate oversight, while county officials eventually pursued an ouster effort that never removed Halbert before her term ended. Now taxpayers are being asked to fund a multimillion-dollar cleanup. Before approving the full amount, the County Commission should demand a clear accounting: What happened to the delayed titles and registrations, how many citizens and dealers were affected, where did the paperwork system break down, and exactly what will the $6.1 million fix? Faith in the office will not be restored by simply opening the boxes.
Lee Harris is now out of office, and whatever praise follows his tenure, the Halbert debacle belongs in the accounting. He could not directly control an independently elected clerk, but he had the bully pulpit, legal options and years of warning signs. Leadership is judged by what happens when government is plainly failing, and Shelby County can fairly ask why stronger intervention came so late that Halbert was essentially allowed to run out the clock.
(9.9.26) 0The Commercial Appeal published its article yesterday on new autopsy details in the deaths of Jonah Neal and Alfonzo Ivy, both shot during separate encounters with federal agents assigned to the Memphis Safe Task Force. Both shootings remain under investigation.
Yet the newspaper put Donald Trump into its very first sentence, describing the agents as members of “President Donald Trump’s Memphis Safe Task Force.” Trump created the task force, but he did not fire either weapon. Leading with his name turns an unresolved use-of-force story into political framing before readers even reach the facts of the shootings.
Trump’s role belongs in the background, not artificially attached to the trigger pulls. The real questions are what the HSI and DEA agents confronted, whether their use of force was justified and what the investigations ultimately find. The autopsies provide plenty to scrutinize without using two shootings as another vehicle for anti-Trump politics.
(9.8.26) The latest TCAP results show a severe academic problem inside Memphis-Shelby County Schools. Only 23.7% of MSCS students in grades 3-8 met or exceeded expectations in English language arts and 22.6% did so in math — leaving roughly three out of every four students below the state proficiency standard. Tennessee Firefly’s district data also show high-school proficiency of just 16.3% in Algebra I, 18.4% in Algebra II and 18.5% in English I.
The contrast with other Tennessee districts is stark. The Tennessee Department of Education reports that Collierville Schools reached 71.9% proficiency in ELA, the second-highest district rate in Tennessee. MSCS did improve somewhat from 2024-25 — ELA rose 1.3 percentage points and math 2.6 points — but the latest scores still show most Memphis students failing to meet state expectations.
By Ben "BenQQ" Harrison
(9.5.26) Art museums often use free admission to draw attention when they open a new building, expand or make a major move. Some offer free opening days or special community weekends to get people through the doors. The Bronx Museum of the Arts is one example of a museum that has made free admission part of its broader effort to stay accessible during major changes.
The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art is doing something similar as it prepares to leave Overton Park. Shelby County residents can visit free throughout September during the museum’s final month there. The Brooks then plans to reopen Downtown on Dec. 6 as the Memphis Art Museum, with more gallery space and more room for public use.
But Memphis is going a step further. The museum says Shelby County residents will continue to receive free admission permanently, not just during opening week or for a short promotional period. Museum director Zoe Kahr has said other museums have seen attendance jump sharply after dropping admission fees, and the hope is that local residents will visit more often instead of treating the museum as a once-in-a-while trip.
So the free September admission is partly a farewell to the old Brooks, but the bigger story is what comes next. Memphis is using the move Downtown to try to make the museum a more regular part of local life. The question now is whether free admission will keep Shelby County residents coming back after the excitement over the new building wears off.
Federal agents entered El Corralón in Berclair around 1 a.m. Aug. 30 under a search warrant tied to illegal gambling machines and alleged drug activity. Homeland Security says 121 people were arrested in “Operation Corral Light,” with criminal histories among those detained ranging from larceny and drug possession to domestic violence, DUI, assault and child endangerment.
Court filings reported by the Daily Memphian indicate the club had been targeted before the raid, undercutting claims that agents simply swept through a Latino neighborhood indiscriminately. The Daily Memphian and Nashville Banner also reported that the Tennessee Highway Patrol and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation assisted federal immigration authorities in the operation.
Former Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris received an honorary stretch of Union Avenue in the Medical District shortly after leaving office, but the Memphis City Council was deeply divided over the resolution. According to Action News 5 and Hoodline, only four of the council’s 13 members voted in favor, with Jeff Warren voting no and Ford Canale abstaining.
The opposition comes against Harris’ controversial fiscal record. Local Memphis reported that Tennessee’s comptroller repeatedly declined to approve Shelby County budgets during Harris’ tenure, culminating in restrictions on the county’s ability to issue new debt. Supporters credit Harris with helping secure the nearly $900 million Regional One replacement project, but an honorary street approved with only four affirmative council votes hardly represents a ringing citywide endorsement.
Mickell Lowery was sworn in Aug. 31 as Shelby County’s seventh mayor, succeeding Lee Harris after defeating Republican John DeBerry in the Aug. 6 election. Action News 5 covered the swearing-in, while WREG reported that Lowery has assembled a transition team with nine working groups focused on issues including K-12 education, criminal justice and economic growth.
Lowery’s most immediate challenge may be less glamorous: getting Shelby County’s finances back onto stable ground after years of disputes with the Tennessee comptroller over county budgets and borrowing. Transition committees can identify priorities, but Lowery’s first major test will be producing a budget state financial officials will approve and restoring confidence that Shelby County can finance its obligations without extraordinary borrowing measures.
(9.4.26 BenQQ) Two puppies valued at $9,000 were stolen from a Frayser-area home Aug. 28. A resident of the 4000 block of Overton Crossing told police burglars entered the home and took two micro pit bull puppies valued at $4,500 each, as reported by KWAM. The owner, Kelly Radford, has identified the dogs as Beetlejuice and Diesel. CrimeStoppers is seeking information at 901-528-CASH.
Police have not said the stolen Frayser puppies were intended for dog fighting, and their high value could make resale or breeding more likely.
However, Memphis has a much more disturbing recent case. In June, Memphis Animal Services officer Isaiah Bethany was charged with felony aggravated cruelty to animals after police found 17 dogs and puppies at his South Memphis home, along with an ear-cutting kit, tethers and equipment investigators said was commonly used to train dogs to fight.
The Class E felony carries a possible one-to-six-year prison term and a fine of up to $3,000. Bethany was arraigned, but no trial, conviction or sentence could be confirmed as of Friday.
The larger problem is that Memphis does not publish clear annual statistics showing how many dogs are stolen, how many cruelty complaints involve suspected fighting, or how many cases result in arrests and convictions. That makes it difficult to measure whether dog theft and fighting are isolated crimes or part of a broader underground market involving breeding, resale and gambling.
Other cities have taken a more coordinated approach. Houston and Harris County operate an Animal Cruelty Taskforce linking police, prosecutors, animal control and veterinary authorities, while Los Angeles has used a joint animal-cruelty unit to investigate serious abuse and organized fighting.
Memphis could follow that model by combining MPD, Memphis Animal Services, the Shelby County Sheriff and prosecutors into a small joint animal-cruelty and dog-fighting team, creating one public reporting line and publishing annual statistics on stolen dogs, fighting investigations, seizures and prosecutions. The stolen Frayser puppies may turn out to be a straightforward burglary, but Memphis should know where stolen dogs are going — and whether some are feeding a larger barbaric local activity.
(9.3.26) The Daily Memphian has now put a troubling new light on the May 5 shooting outside OUTMemphis, reporting that Memphis police arrested a second suspect after another person had already spent nearly three months in jail for the same crime. MPD says 38-year-old Lorenzo Matthews was indicted Aug. 20 and arrested Aug. 28. But 29-year-old Aljon Tyler had been arrested May 6 after being identified as the shooter and remained jailed until late July, when prosecutors told the court she was not responsible.
The case raises obvious questions about how Tyler was charged so quickly and why it took nearly three months to correct the mistake. Eyewitness identification can be powerful evidence, but when it is wrong the consequences are enormous: Tyler lost months of freedom while the actual investigation continued.
MPD’s later arrest does not erase that failure. The department should explain what evidence led investigators to Tyler, what evidence later cleared her, and whether its identification and charging procedures have changed. The Daily Memphian’s reporting makes this more than a routine arrest update — it is an accountability story about how an innocent person ended up behind bars while police were still looking for someone else.
The Memphis City Council's Memphis Light, Gas and Water committee gave the utility the green light yesterday to keep sending $2.5 million a year in ratepayer-backed payments to the city toward the cost of FedExForum, home of the Memphis Grizzlies. The arrangement, structured as a payment in lieu of taxes, has been running since 2001. The newly confirmed commitment extends it through 2048, according to The Daily Memphian.
Do the math: 22 more years at $2.5 million annually is another $55 million in ratepayer money flowing into a privately owned professional sports venue, on top of whatever MLGW has already funneled toward the arena since George W. Bush's first term. That's money collected from every Memphian's power and water bill, committed by a public utility board to a line item that has nothing to do with keeping the lights on or the water running.
This isn't a new subsidy — it's an old one that nobody in city government has bothered to revisit in 25 years, quietly rubber-stamped again while Memphis families watch their utility bills climb. If FedExForum and the Grizzlies franchise can't cover their own arena costs without a permanent utility subsidy locked in through the middle of the century, that's a conversation the city council owes ratepayers, not a formality to wave through in committee.
Federal agents conducted an early-morning operation Sunday, August 30, at El Corralón on Macon Road, where the Memphis immigrant-rights group Vecindarios 901 says more than 100 people were detained. The group alleged that the searches and detentions were unconstitutional and denied people due process, as reported by ABC24. Activists at the scene also said agents carried a warrant involving suspected illegal gambling machines and drug activity, according to Action News 5. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed a targeted, multi-agency operation but had not provided a detention count or detailed legal grounds in the cited reporting; the activists’ allegations of unlawful conduct were not established findings.
Memphis Police said it had no advance notice of the operation and responded only to assist with traffic and crowd control. The Memphis Safe Task Force said it was not involved.
Immigrant-rights activists, including Vecindarios 901 and the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, alleged that only people who immediately produced proof of citizenship were released at the scene. ICE had not provided a detailed account of who was detained or where they were taken in the cited reporting.
We did some legal research:
ICE may temporarily detain occupants—including citizens—during a lawful search and ask immigration questions without prolonging that detention, under Supreme Court precedent. Agents may make immigration arrests when supported by an appropriate warrant or when statutory warrantless-arrest requirements are met, and pursue criminal arrests on separate lawful grounds. But a search warrant does not automatically authorize transporting everyone into immigration custody. Citizens are not generally required to carry citizenship papers, and the federal registration-document requirement applies to noncitizens, not Americans. Whether particular detentions were lawful therefore depends on the warrants, the facts and the justification for continuing to hold each person.
Memphis and Nashville held “Day of Lament and Action” gatherings Sunday in honor of Dr. Autura Eason-Williams, the United Methodist pastor shot and killed in a 2022 driveway carjacking, an event organized by Black Methodists for Church Renewal to confront gun violence in Tennessee, according to Action News 5. The most newsworthy moment, though, came from Shelby County's incoming top cop, who used the platform to push back on the narrative that juveniles are driving the county's crime problem.
Sheriff-elect Anthony Buckner told the gathering that roughly 3,500 people are currently in custody at the Shelby County Sheriff's Office, and by his own estimate, fewer than 60 of them are in the juvenile system. “I don't believe that young people are the problem,” Buckner said, arguing instead that investment in youth is the solution rather than the threat. Those numbers, straight from the man about to run the jail, are worth sitting with. Political rhetoric on crime — from all sides — tends to reach for the most alarming frame available. Buckner just handed Memphis a data point that complicates the easy story, and a serious news outlet owes readers that complication rather than the comfortable version.
None of that excuses Memphis's underlying violence problem, which remains severe by any honest measure, or lets the county off the hook for the shooting deaths that keep piling up on local police blotters, including the Hickory Hill restaurant shooting the same weekend. But if the adult population, not juveniles, makes up the overwhelming majority of people cycling through 201 Poplar, then policy built around cracking down on teenagers is aimed at the wrong target. Accountability starts with getting the diagnosis right before writing the prescription. Buckner deserves credit for saying so publicly, even if it complicates a simpler talking point.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti announced that Meta will pay Tennessee $751,922,691.13 from a $17.1 billion settlement over allegations that Instagram was engineered to addict children while the company concealed the resulting mental-health damage. Tennessee was not merely standing in line for a check. Its investigators helped lead the multistate investigation, courtroom fight and negotiations that produced it. Credit where it is due–the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office
The settlement imposes daily time limits, overnight lockouts, age checks and a ban on push notifications during school hours, with an independent auditor watching Meta. That will probably prove to be a futile gesture created by politicians who mostly are no digital match to kids who can lie about their ages, create new accounts and borrow devices. Regardless, Tennessee helped win the settlement. Now it must prove these protections are more than digital theater.
Meta wrote the check. Nashville decided where it must go. Before the settlement, the General Assembly created the Children’s Digital Protection Fund, requiring recoveries involving technology’s effects on children to flow through government-approved programs. The money can finance mental-health treatment, suicide prevention, research, education, enforcement and the K–12 Mental Health Endowment Fund.
That raises questions. Why lock up all $751.9 million before Tennesseans can debate its best use? How much will reach injured children? How much will disappear into consultants, studies, nonprofits, conferences and new government positions? Tennessee would do more for many children by teaching them math, civics and honest American history than by buying digital gadgets meant to protect them from oth››er digital gadgets. Fund direct treatment where children were genuinely harmed. Put everything else as close to the classroom—and as far from Nashville’s bureaucracy—as the law allows.
And remember, Meta is the same company that deliberately reduced the reach of reporting about Hunter Biden’s laptop just weeks before the 2020 election—a decision that restricted what voters saw and plainly benefited Joe Biden.
A post-election survey commissioned by the conservative Media Research Center and conducted by The Polling Company found that 9.4% of surveyed Biden voters in seven battleground states said they would not have supported him had they known about the Hunter Biden financial scandal.
Biden’s margins were much smaller than 9.4%. If even a fraction of those voters had acted as they later claimed, the country might have been spared the Biden years. That does not prove Meta elected Biden. It proves Meta had no business deciding what voters were allowed to see.
Now this same information-controlling giant is pushing its Meta AI assistant into Instagram, Facebook, Messenger and WhatsApp while developing increasingly powerful AI models and products. Meta says parents can review the topics their teenagers discuss with its AI—but only through supervised Teen Accounts, and even then they see topics rather than complete conversations.
If Meta is already talking privately with your children and helping shape what they know, believe and want, what exactly are parents supposed to do about it?
The Memphis Flyer reports that Tennessee Democrats are outraged because the state’s $7,530 voucher is $258 higher than its reported average state contribution of $7,272 per public-school student. That comparison conveniently leaves out the local and federal money public schools also receive. It tells us nothing about total spending per student.
Memphis parents have watched the public system burn through money while delivering miserable results. They deserve an exit. Voucher schools should face financial scrutiny and produce measurable results, but Democrats are not defending children here. They are defending a government monopoly and the political machine attached to it. Wave the “funding gap” banner, ignore total spending and hope nobody asks why parents are desperate to leave.
The Tri-State Defender reports that developers of the architecturally unfortunate Obama Presidential Center came to Memphis to teach local firms how to win larger contracts. Perhaps the next seminar can explain how to get paid. Several subcontractors say they are still owed millions for work already completed, although the Obama Foundation says it paid its general contractor and bears no direct responsibility for those disputes. Nothing says “opportunity” quite like recruiting fresh contractors while the old ones are still looking for their checks.
(8.30.26 BenQQ commentary) Outgoing Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris has landed a tenured professorship at the University of Mississippi School of Law. He will teach contracts, business associations, and mergers and acquisitions. Good for him. Seriously.
Harris has the credentials. He went to Yale. That used to settle the argument. It no longer does for me. Elite universities keep recycling connected people and calling it excellence. I have trouble thinking of Ole Miss as elite, but apparently it has learned the routine.
To be fair, Ole Miss did not pull an unqualified man off the street. Harris taught law at the University of Memphis for 13 years, wrote two business-law textbooks and practiced at Baker Donelson. He may be a fine professor. But working people are allowed to notice how this system operates. A working man does a mediocre job and gets shown the door. A politician does one and gets a portrait, a ceremony and tenure.
Harris had a difficult job. Shelby County has deep poverty, persistent violent crime and a government chopped into competing pieces. The county mayor does not command Memphis police, the independently elected sheriff or district attorney, the courts, or the school system. He helps fund several of them, but he cannot simply order them around.
Harris still controlled more than 5,000 employees and a nearly $2 billion budget. He had eight years to build coalitions, enforce fiscal discipline and make public safety the county’s central mission. Yet the state comptroller refused to approve Shelby County’s fiscal 2026 budget. That is not a footnote. It is the sort of thing that gets an ordinary manager fired.
When the Trump-made Memphis Safe Task Force brought additional officers and resources into a city drowning in violence, Harris became better known for challenging the National Guard deployment than for helping make the operation work. The task force played a real role in Memphis’ dramatic crime decline. Harris could have defended civil liberties while supporting serious enforcement against violent criminals. Instead, he seemed more offended by the outsiders trying something different than by the years of failure that brought them here.
That is what Ole Miss should consider. Harris is intelligent, qualified and probably capable of teaching law. But his appointment should not be sold as a reward for distinguished public leadership. His record as county mayor was mixed at best. Great universities damage themselves when prestige, connections and moral grandstanding replace scrutiny. Cambridge is learning that lesson through the very different and far more serious Jason Arday scandal. Harris is accused of no academic misconduct. The comparison is about institutional judgment, not personal wrongdoing.
Lee Harris may deserve the job. Ole Miss may even have hired an excellent professor. But spare us the victory parade over his years in county government. Harris did not leave Shelby County transformed. He left with a portrait and a safe landing. At a certain level, that is apparently close enough to success.
(8.28.26 BenQQ Commentary) State Rep. Justin Pearson and veteran journalist Otis Sanford approached Memphis’ massive power outage from opposite directions—and both missed the point. Pearson suggested that race explained why a “majority Black, majority working-class city” remained in the dark after winds exceeding 80 mph knocked out power to more than 140,000 customers. Sanford rejected that allegation and awarded Memphis Light, Gas and Water an “A to A-minus” for its response. One politicized the storm; the other practically absolved the utility.
Pearson offered no evidence that MLGW restored electricity according to the racial makeup of neighborhoods. A violent storm damaged communities across Memphis and its suburbs, and turning every institutional failure into an accusation of racism only makes legitimate discrimination harder to identify. His charge was especially awkward against MLGW, an organization operating squarely within Memphis’ progressive political establishment. KWAM reported that Republican congressional nominee Brent Taylor accused Pearson of race-baiting and exploiting a crisis.
But Sanford’s response was hardly better. Praising line crews for working around the clock is entirely appropriate; giving the utility an A is not. Memphis residents have endured repeated widespread outages, fallen trees, aging infrastructure and extended restoration periods. The serious questions concern preparation, tree maintenance, grid resilience, capital investment, communications and whether MLGW is doing enough between storms—not merely whether crews worked hard after the lights went out.
Sanford’s desultory approval is one reason Memphis cannot have nice things. When respected civic voices award high marks simply because an institution responded energetically to its latest failure, that institution learns that effort will be accepted in place of performance. The workers on the poles deserve gratitude. The executives and public officials responsible for building a more dependable system deserve scrutiny.
Sanford is not currently the head of The Commercial Appeal, but he formerly served as its managing editor and editorial-page editor. That makes his instinct to protect MLGW especially disappointing. The fundamental duty of journalism is to make powerful institutions uncomfortable—not to leap to their defense merely because an opponent has made an exaggerated or unsupported accusation. A journalist can reject Pearson’s racial claim without converting MLGW into the innocent party.
There is also a rich political irony here. The Commercial Appeal spent years promoting progressive racial interpretations of public policy to a heavily Black readership. When that same political framework was turned against MLGW, however, Sanford’s impulse was to protect the institution from the allegation instead of asking what its record deserved. Progressive politics taught people to interpret unequal hardship through race; it cannot act astonished when one of its favored public institutions becomes the next target.
Memphis needs neither Pearson’s reflexive racial politics nor Sanford’s reflexive institutional protection. It needs evidence, competent infrastructure and journalists willing to ask why a major American city continues to suffer recurring, large-scale power failures. The proper conclusion is not that the storm was racist, nor that MLGW earned an A. It is that Memphis residents deserve a utility—and a press corps—that demands better.
(8.28.26) A newly released autopsy shows that 20-year-old Tyrin Johnson was shot in the back by Tennessee National Guard members during a July 5 pursuit in Downtown Memphis, conflicting with the initial police account that Johnson turned toward the soldiers with a handgun.
The report says a single bullet entered the right side of Johnson’s back and exited through his upper-right chest. A forensic pathologist who reviewed the findings for the Associated Press said the bullet’s slightly upward path would be consistent with Johnson running away from the shooter. The absence of soot or gunpowder around the wound also indicates that the shot was fired from more than three feet away.
Memphis police previously said Johnson fled from officers responding to reports of gunfire near Union Avenue and Ida B. Wells Street. According to that account, Johnson turned toward two National Guard members with a handgun, prompting both soldiers to fire. Johnson died at the scene despite medical assistance.
The Shelby County medical examiner classified Johnson’s death as a homicide, a medical finding that means he was killed by another person but does not by itself establish criminal wrongdoing. No charges have been filed, and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation says its inquiry remains open.
Johnson’s family is demanding the release of surveillance or other video showing the moments before the shooting. Family attorney Andre Wharton said the physical evidence is difficult to reconcile with the official account, while Johnson’s grandfather called for transparency and accountability.
(8.27.26 BenQQ) The divide between Democrat Jerri Green and Republican Marsha Blackburn is whether the county should continue protecting its failing school system or allow families to escape it. Green would eliminate vouchers and send still more money into public schools. Blackburn would expand school choice and let parents take their children elsewhere. In Memphis, families plainly need that escape. No child should be sacrificed to preserve MSCS enrollment, jobs or political control.
That divide was partly illustrated in a Commercial Appeal article comparing the two political approaches, but its implications extend far beyond what the article covered.
But vouchers alone will not save Memphis. MSCS must be forced to change course radically—and immediately—because the district is producing the city’s future workforce and taxpayers. When only 25.7% of its students are proficient in English and 22.3% in math, Memphis is not merely recording disappointing test scores. It is sending thousands of young people into adulthood without the skills required to hold a good job, manage a household or participate productively in civic life. MSCS reported those proficiency figures itself.
That failure eventually appears everywhere outside the classroom: in chronic unemployment, welfare dependency, street crime, broken families and a shrinking tax base. Memphis risks developing a large population that employers cannot hire and law enforcement cannot contain. Companies will not relocate their operations to a city that cannot supply a literate, disciplined workforce or offer employees safe neighborhoods and credible schools for their children. Low taxes, available land and economic-development incentives cannot overcome a workforce shortage, persistent violence and a deteriorating quality of life.
Yet the Memphis Democratic establishment’s answer has remained remarkably unchanged: demand more taxpayer money, defend local political control and condemn outside intervention. MSCS now operates on roughly $1.7 billion, while a state forensic audit identified $54.2 million in transactions showing evidence of possible fraud, waste or abuse and another $65.1 million involving possible violations of district policies. Green’s proposal to end vouchers, increase public-school spending and dismantle state oversight would return power to essentially the same structure that presided over this collapse. That is not reform. It is another taxpayer-funded reprieve. The Tennessee Comptroller’s findings demonstrate that money without control is part of the problem.
Blackburn should offer the harder Republican alternative: give families immediate escape routes while imposing a complete reckoning inside MSCS. Replace failed leadership, prosecute provable corruption, shut down persistently failing schools, remove disruptive and violent students from regular classrooms, reward effective teachers and require measurable annual gains in literacy, mathematics, attendance and discipline. Officials who miss those targets should lose their authority—not receive another appropriation. School choice can rescue individual children, but only radical accountability can prevent MSCS from dragging down Memphis’ economy, safety and way of life. The city cannot become prosperous while its largest school system continues manufacturing failure.
(8.26.26 BenQQ) Today’s Commercial Appeal counted Memphis-Shelby County Schools’ empty teaching positions and changing enrollment, but stopped short of asking the question behind those numbers: Why are experienced teachers walking away? Salaries and workloads matter, but many educators also describe classrooms where persistent disruption, profanity and outright disrespect make teaching nearly impossible.
Teachers cannot educate a class when much of the day is spent confronting students who refuse instructions and expect few meaningful consequences. Memphis education columnist Curtis Weathers previously identified persistent behavioral problems, lack of order and inadequate administrative support among the forces driving educators out. Teachers want decent pay—but they also need principals and parents willing to defend their authority in the classroom, as reported by the Tri-State Defender.
Former Memphis teacher Jessica Green offers a face behind the vacancy statistics. After 13 years teaching children from kindergarten through eighth grade, Green said the unending workload and stress followed her home, harmed her family life and contributed to high blood pressure and cholesterol. She ultimately left the classroom for a new career, explaining her decision in this ABC24 Memphis YouTube report.
Teacher vacancies are therefore not merely a recruiting problem to be solved with job fairs, bonuses or lowered certification requirements. MSCS should publish anonymous exit-survey results showing how many teachers leave because of student behavior, weak discipline, parental indifference or lack of backing from administrators. Until school leaders acknowledge that teachers deserve safety, authority and basic respect, Memphis will keep counting vacant classrooms without honestly explaining why they are empty.
Saturday night's bow-echo storm, with winds topping 70 mph, knocked out power to more than 140,000 customers of Memphis Light, Gas and Water — the government-owned monopoly that is the only option Memphis residents have for electricity. Four days later, roughly 20,000 customers were still in the dark Wednesday morning, according to The Daily Memphian. MLGW President and CEO Doug McGowen has called it the seventh-largest storm in the utility's history and says he remains "optimistic" full restoration will come by Thursday night — a promise residents have now heard for four straight days.
The consequences go beyond dead refrigerators. Traffic signals across Shelby County are still dark, creating what The Daily Memphian's traffic coverage called hazardous driving conditions at major intersections. Ten Memphis-Shelby County Schools campuses will stay closed Wednesday because of persistent outages, even as the majority of the district reopened Tuesday, according to FOX13 Memphis. Local restaurant owners tell The Daily Memphian they have each lost roughly $20,000 in spoiled inventory and canceled reservations.
The City of Memphis is now partnering with local nonprofits on a $100,000 assistance fund for storm victims, per FOX13 — a rounding error against the losses residents and businesses have already absorbed. This is the tradeoff of a government-run electric monopoly with no competitor to answer to: no market pressure, no urgency beyond a press conference, and ratepayers left to eat the cost while the utility takes its time.
With six days left in her term, the second attempt to remove Shelby County Clerk Wanda Halbert from office is being dismissed — and Shelby County government will pay her legal fees for the trouble, under an order signed Monday, Aug. 24, by Circuit Court Judge Felicia Corbin-Johnson, according to The Daily Memphian.
This saga has run nearly two years and cost taxpayers twice over. The first ouster attempt collapsed after Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy, citing a conflict of interest, appointed an out-of-town prosecutor to file the petition — only for a judge to rule that prosecutor lacked standing. The second attempt fared no better: county attorney Marlinee Iverson's office hired private attorney Robert Meyers to pursue it, and Judge Corbin-Johnson ruled that a deputy county attorney cannot outsource that authority to outside counsel in the first place. An appeals court briefly revived the case, but Meyers himself moved to drop it in July without explanation.
Halbert leaves office Monday, Aug. 31, at the end of her second term. Voters — not two failed legal maneuvers funded by the county's own taxpayers — will install her successor, Clerk-elect LaSonya Hall, on Sept. 1. That is precisely how accountability in a self-governing county is supposed to work. The two-year, taxpayer-funded detour to get there was not.
Andrew Hayes got his fifth attempt at an exoneration hearing Tuesday in Shelby County court, after four prior postponements — including one caused by flooding at the courthouse itself, according to FOX13 Memphis. Prosecutors told the court they do not oppose vacating his conviction and expect to formally join the defense's motion.
Hayes, a Memphis man with an intellectual disability and an IQ below 70, was convicted in 2010 in the 2007 killing of Danny Harris at the Woodchase Apartments in Cordova — after being interrogated for 27 hours until he produced a confession that the physical evidence contradicts. Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy publicly announced on Jan. 15, 2026, that his office had concluded Hayes was wrongfully convicted, identifying a new suspect, Sarah Lucas Rydell, who was charged with facilitating the murder, extradited from Oklahoma in February, and died before her arraignment. Background on the case is documented by the Tennessee Innocence Project.
Seven months. That is how long it has taken the machinery of Shelby County's court system to act on its own district attorney's public admission that an innocent man is in prison. Hayes has now spent nearly 20 years behind bars for a crime the state itself says he did not commit. When bureaucratic process moves slower than the government's own confession of error, it stops being due process and starts being an assault on the individual liberty our courts exist to protect.
A verbal argument in Downtown Memphis turned fatal Monday night, according to the Memphis Police Department. Police say 49-year-old Aaron Collins stabbed a man to death around 11 p.m. in front of the Federal Reserve Bank building at Front Street and Exchange Avenue, after the confrontation escalated. Collins was arrested and charged with second-degree murder and tampering with evidence, FOX13 Memphis reports.
City officials have spent 2026 touting historic crime reductions and the gains of the federal Memphis Safe Task Force. A fatal stabbing steps from a federal building downtown is a reminder that "historic reductions" is not the same as "solved." Charges are the right first step. Memphians should expect the district attorney's office to follow through with a conviction, not a plea deal that turns a knife killing into a footnote.
(8.25.26) A man was killed and a woman injured after two masked gunmen opened fire in the 2600 block of North Hollywood Street in Frayser at about 1:55 a.m. Monday. Memphis Police pronounced the man dead at the scene, while the woman was hospitalized in non-critical condition, according to FOX13 Memphis.
Both suspects fled, and no arrests have been announced. Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 901-528-CASH.
(8.24.26) The Tennessee Valley Authority has approved a 20-year power roadmap calling for major additions of natural gas, nuclear power, solar and battery storage as electricity demand rises—particularly from data centers. TVA expects its coal plants to reach the end of their useful lives by 2040 but selected no new coal generation.
TVA says dependable gas power is needed when renewable sources are unavailable, while critics argue the plan favors AI companies at the public’s expense. The board separately approved higher rates and upfront capacity charges for data centers to prevent residential customers from subsidizing their enormous power needs. More Commercial Appeal
(8.24.26) Collierville’s fire chief has left Town Hall in a blaze of accusation and denial. John Selberg retired and resigned effective immediately after being placed on administrative leave—but not before flatly rejecting Mayor Maureen Fraser’s claim that a profanity-laced outburst was the “final straw.”
Town Administrator Molly Mehner accused Selberg of repeatedly undermining her authority, allegedly declaring, “You are not my supervisor,” and “I don’t f—— report to Molly Mehner.” Fraser publicly backed Mehner, calling the alleged vulgar remark about Selberg’s boss an act of insubordination. Action News 5
Selberg says it never happened. He “categorically” denied making any vulgar statement and said anyone claiming otherwise was simply untruthful. He reportedly retired under pressure from Mehner on Aug. 20 after serving as Collierville’s chief since 2022. Daily Memphian
The dispute had already boiled into public view. Residents crowded a Board of Mayor and Aldermen meeting to defend Selberg and demand transparency, while a special meeting concerning the chief was scheduled and then abruptly canceled before the town released the statement Mehner had planned to read.
The Town of Collierville praised Selberg’s “honorable” service while refusing to discuss what it called a personnel matter. Acting Chief Mark Carter now controls the department—but the larger question remains smoldering: Was Selberg removed for insubordination, or pushed out on the strength of an explosive allegation he says is false?
(*.24.26) Darren Mullis abruptly left his position as principal of Holy Rosary Catholic School after 23 years at the helm. School officials announced that he would be “departing” and wished him well, but parents said the carefully worded announcement concealed what they considered a dismissal.
Why Mullis was removed remains undisclosed. The Catholic Diocese of Memphis called it a confidential personnel matter and reportedly offered him another position within Catholic Schools of Memphis, but provided families no explanation for ending his long tenure as principal.
Parents, students and alumni responded with a petition, protests and demands that Mullis be reinstated—or that diocesan officials at least explain their decision. Rhiannon Thomas, a Holy Rosary teacher and former Incarnation Catholic School principal, was named interim principal for the remainder of the school year. More Commercial Appeal
(8.24.26) Joe B. Kent, a fixture at Memphis City Council and Shelby County Commission meetings for years, died Saturday after a battle with cancer, The Daily Memphian reported Sunday. He was 63.
Kent built a reputation, and plenty of enemies, by showing up to public meetings and asking the questions elected officials didn't want to answer — on tax abatements, workforce development spending, and public-private deals that too often socialized the risk and privatized the reward. He was not always polite about it. He was also not often wrong.
Memphis government does not have an oversupply of citizens willing to sit through a three-hour council meeting to hold power accountable for free, on their own time, with no paycheck and no thanks. Kent's death leaves that job to fewer hands at a moment when the city has an indicted former court clerk, a state-appointed school board answering to Nashville instead of Memphis parents, and a county budget the state comptroller won't sign off on. Every city needs more Joe Kents. Memphis just lost one.
(8.23.26 BenQQ with commentary) Right before dinner time a Saturday storm knocked out electricity to roughly 120,000 MLGW customers—more than one-fourth of the utility’s system—as Memphis endured another period of dangerous summer heat, as reported by ABC24. By 11:15 a.m. Sunday, the MLGW outage map still showed 94,299 customers, or 22%, without power.
Severe weather cannot be prevented, but Memphis has endured too many mass outages for City Hall and MLGW to keep treating darkness as an unavoidable fact of Memphis life. Politicians can blame the weather and the organizational mobilization it takes to keep energy moving through the city, but the frequency of blackouts should be considered politically unacceptable. Yet it was seldom, if ever(?), mentioned even in the recent mayoral race. Will there ever be a mayor to make consistent energy availability a major campaign issue?
In a sense, that question is irrelevant because once a voter endures even one–or any number of–sweltering or freezing nights, by the time power comes back on residents are so grateful they forget the whole personal nightmare could have been avoided in the first place. I have no insight into the city municipal power industry but I bet somewhere someone has written about the power stockholm phenomenon where the anger at the utility company is abated by the delivery of power back to the customer who should never have been without it.
So because there’s really no political groundswell against a power company, there is no public accounting of how often this grid fails, which neighborhoods wait longest and whether years of promised tree trimming and infrastructure improvements have produced anything Memphians can depend upon? I’ve asked these kind of questions before. No good answers were forthcoming but energy blackouts were.
One more thing. I spent decades working in Los Angeles.I never once saw an energy failure except one time during an earthquake. I know there can really be no comparison for a bunch of geo and weather reasons, but this is getting ridiculous.
(8.23.26) Five-year-old Tamir Washington died after authorities say he found an unsecured gun at his southeast Shelby County home and shot himself Aug. 17. The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office charged his father, Marquavious Washington, 24, with criminally negligent homicide, reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon and aggravated child neglect.
(8.23.26) The lawyer representing the family of Jonah Neal alleges that body-camera footage does not justify Neal’s fatal shooting by a federal agent during a May 20 mental-health call. Attorney Andre Wharton says Neal was some distance from the agents and that they knew he held a knife—not a gun. That remains the family lawyer’s interpretation, however, and the family could seek a substantial civil settlement or judgment against the government if liability is established.
Neal’s mother reportedly called 911 because her 25-year-old son was threatening suicide and needed mental-health intervention. But Neal was armed with a knife and reportedly charged toward the agents—a person with a knife can close even a seemingly safe distance within seconds. That raises two competing questions: Could the agents reasonably have contained and de-escalated the crisis, or did Neal’s advance create an imminent threat requiring immediate force?
The Shelby County District Attorney’s Office showed the footage privately to the family, but the public has not been permitted to see it while the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation continues its inquiry. Neither the family lawyer’s allegations nor the government’s account should be accepted without scrutiny. Releasing the footage when legally possible would allow the public to judge the distance, timing and danger for itself.
(8.22.26 BenQQ) Adrian Blakes, a former Memphis Police Department officer, was fired after investigators determined that he watched two officers kick Tyre Nichols, failed to intervene or report it, and then denied what he had witnessed to Internal Affairs. Nichols died three days after officers with MPD’s now-disbanded SCORPION Unit—created to target violent crime in high-crime areas—beat him during a January 7, 2023, traffic stop.
Blakes was never criminally charged. POST—the Tennessee Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission—suspended rather than revoked his law-enforcement certification. Today Action News 5 reported that the suspension had been lifted, potentially allowing Blakes to work as an officer in Tennessee again.
POST’s May 2024 records described Blakes’ alleged conduct as potential grounds for decertification, yet the commission accepted a temporary suspension. That distinction matters: suspensions expire; revocations do not. The bitter footnote is not that the system forgot to act—it is that the system acted and still left a path back to a badge.
(BenQQ 8.19.26 12:15 PM report with commentary) Yesterday, the Memphis City Council advanced a proposed 12-month moratorium on new data centers serving rapidly growing artificial-intelligence demand. The measure passed only its first of three required readings and is not yet law; meeting minutes and a roll-call vote have not been published at the time of this writing, leaving it unclear which council members supported or opposed it.
This local AI saga raises questions.
One is can Memphis Democrats think about Memphis and America at the same time? Another question is whether Democrats can think beyond local politics of the next council meeting.
Regardless, Memphis possesses what many competing cities lack: abundant land, water, energy access and a central logistical location.
Reportedly city negotiators held all that gives Memphis leverage to negotiate enforceable limits on water consumption, emissions and utility costs while demanding infrastructure investment, local contracting and substantial tax revenue. You would think that’s a position of strength. However, a blanket moratorium does not negotiate from strength; it advertises indecision and encourages the next billion-dollar project to cross the city or state line.
As disclosed by the Greater Memphis Chamber, the original xAI recruitment, that is, the effort to persuade xAI to choose Memphis, was assembled in less than three weeks by a Chamber team led by Gwyn Fisher and Troy Parkes.
Chamber CEO Ted Townsend and Memphis Light, Gas and Water CEO Doug McGowen participated in private discussions under nondisclosure agreements, helping xAI select the former Electrolux property and develop a plan for obtaining 150 megawatts of power, as reported by Politico.
That Politico story portrayed xAI's turbine deployment as an air-pollution crisis, citing estimates by environmental groups that the turbines could produce 1,200 to 2,000 tons of nitrogen oxides annually. But those figures were modeled estimates rather than measurements of xAI's actual emissions, while South Memphis' asthma and air-quality problems long predated xAI and involve numerous existing industrial sources. The permitting controversy itself was real: Shelby County initially treated the temporary turbines as exempt, an interpretation environmental groups challenged and that EPA effectively rejected when it clarified the federal rule in 2026. Reportedly, the Shelby County Health Department took the position that the temporary turbines fell within the federal “nonroad engine” treatment and therefore weren't pertinent to the permit application for the permanent turbines.
Through it all Memphis helped xAI move quickly by locating a ready industrial site and supporting its request for extraordinary amounts of electricity. What remains unclear is what enforceable benefits Memphis obtained in return: no public agreement specified local hiring, emissions limits, neighborhood investment or penalties if xAI failed to deliver.
Mayor Paul Young publicly promoted the project, while members of the Memphis City Council and Shelby County Commission said they learned about it only after the principal arrangements had been made, as reported by The Washington Post; residents of surrounding neighborhoods likewise said they were excluded from the process.
As a Memphian who knows Memphis has lost more than it has won under old town insular politics, I might ask: Where is a Trump when we need one?
Trump would *probably* recognize what AI companies need most—speed, power, water, land, fiber and regulatory certainty—and put a price on every one of them. Here’s a package of expedited permits in exchange for company-funded infrastructure, recycled-water systems, firm emissions limits, protected residential utility rates, local contracts, neighborhood investment and major tax revenue, all written into an enforceable agreement with deadlines and penalties. A blanket moratorium throws away that leverage; a hard bargain would make Memphis the fastest place to build responsibly—and force AI companies to pay handsomely for the privilege.
Meanwhile, China is preparing an estimated $295 billion national AI-infrastructure buildout without American-style local permitting delays or political resistance. If China “wins” the AI race, it would mean more than producing a better chatbot. Beijing could dominate advanced manufacturing, robotics, medicine, intelligence analysis, autonomous weapons and the technical standards governing the world economy. America—and Memphis—could become customers of technology developed elsewhere instead of owners of the companies, jobs, patents and military advantages created here.
China sees AI infrastructure as national power. Memphis Democrats appear to see it principally as another political grievance to manage. Protecting residents is a legitimate responsibility, but the intelligent answer is tough negotiation and enforceable regulation—not freezing the industry of the future while the existing turbines continue to run.
All is not lost. The first-round vote is not law; it is an opening bid. Memphis can still bring SpaceXAI, the Chamber, MLGW and the mayor’s administration back to the table and offer regulatory certainty in exchange for enforceable community benefits. The city cannot retroactively erase valid permits or contracts, but future expansions, utility requests and unapproved projects give it considerable bargaining power—if council members negotiate instead of merely freezing development.
(8.17.26 BenQQ written from media reports) Memphis Police Chief C.J. Davis told the Rotary Club of Memphis on Aug. 11 that falling homicides, assaults, robberies and burglaries have put the city on pace for its lowest overall crime level in 25 years. The Daily Memphian reports Davis credited new MPD strategies, while her presentation also emphasized Flock license-plate cameras, drones and other police technology.
Conspicuously absent from center stage was the Memphis Safe Task Force, whose agents, analysts and investigators Davis previously called a “resource multiplier”. Crime had begun declining before the federal deployment, but the historic turnaround became unmistakable afterward. Whatever the political discomfort over an operation created by President Donald Trump, MPD and MSTF both deserve credit—and Memphians deserve an honest accounting of their respective roles.
Davis called Flock cameras “huge” in solving crimes, while Deputy Chief Andrew Brown said MPD’s use is regularly audited. Neither confronted criticism that Flock’s nationwide database enables warrantless, Chinese-style mass surveillance. Two days later, Flock announced new safeguards following reports of unauthorized searches. Its CEO conceded the company “got this one wrong” and promised mandatory case numbers, abnormal-use audits and shorter data retention. Davis could not have addressed that later announcement, but the underlying controversy was already well known.
The Rotary Club of Memphis, chartered in 1914, is an invitation-only civic organization for business, professional and community leaders. President Lea Carr and Executive Director Taylor Hughes lead a club supporting food distributions, school reading, clothing collections, overseas clean-water projects and Café du Memphis. Prospective members may attend meetings and seek consideration, but the club decides whom to invite. Its membership page describes traditional and reduced-attendance plans but does not disclose the dues, directing applicants to Hughes for the price.
(8.16.26 BenQQ) Memphis City Council member and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerri Green says she sees a path to defeating Republican U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn in November. Yet Green is campaigning to abolish ICE and, as governor, end Tennessee’s 287(g) agreements, which allow local authorities to identify illegal immigrants already jailed for other alleged crimes and hold them for federal immigration enforcement.
Green appears to be pandering to a diminishing Democratic base that increasingly rejects its own party’s radicalism. Abolishing ICE may win applause from Democratic socialist activists in failing Northern cities, but it is political poison in Tennessee—and Green is serving it up like a rancid restaurant dish voters elsewhere have already sent back. We ask: why not serve something fresh for Tennessee?
The contradiction is unmistakable: Green claims to support border enforcement while opposing the system that catches what the border missed. Why would a candidate seeking responsibility for an entire state imitate policies that have made Democratic-run cities less orderly, less safe and less livable? Green is not offering Tennessee a path forward; she is reheating the ideological failures of her party’s farthest-left wing and calling them leadership.
Chief U.S. District Judge Sheryl H. Lipman on Thursday, Aug. 13, denied a motion by Shelby County General Sessions Court Clerk Tami Sawyer to dismiss a federal theft count, keeping her full six-count indictment intact, according to WREG.
Sawyer, the elected head of the General Sessions Court Clerk's office, is accused of embezzling $44,607.35 in Shelby County funds for personal expenses between Aug. 29, 2024, and June 22, 2025 — her first year in office. Her attorneys argued federal courts had no jurisdiction over what they characterized as a purely local theft. Lipman rejected that argument outright.
Sawyer will stand trial Jan. 11, 2027, according to Local Memphis.
A jurisdiction argument that gets rejected in a single order was never a defense on the merits — it was a stalling tactic, and it just failed. An elected clerk entrusted with public money and the machinery of the local courts stands accused of quietly diverting nearly $45,000 for herself. Shelby County voters put her in that office to run it honestly. They're owed a trial on the merits, not procedural delay, and January will finally deliver one.
(8.15.26 BenQQ) Daily Memphian reports Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerri Green said today her call to abolish ICE doesn't mean abandoning enforcement of immigration law. That opens the door to questions local corporate media do not seem to weant to ask, namely:
If Green would abolish ICE while shielding unauthorized immigrants from federal enforcement, what is her actual plan for resolving the status of the millions already living here illegally—1. deportation, 2. legalization, or 3. indefinite nonenforcement?
Then a followup question: is it a reality or fiction that illegal immigrants increase the cost of government to homes, cause higher taxes, have a negative impact on jobs for American citizens and create an unspecified amount of additional serious crime as well as death and civil damages from unlicensed illiterate bigrig truck drivers?
Green seems confident she can rely on Shelby County Democrats and their local media not to question or care about the answers.
For at least some Republicans in Shelby County, the real slap in the face to Americans is that Green says she wants to use the same government structure to solve the immigration that was in place under Biden.
(8.14.26 BenQQ) Former Shelby County Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr. is scheduled to be sentenced Monday after pleading guilty to five federal tax-evasion counts arising from money paid to his computer business by nonprofits that received taxpayer-funded grants through resolutions he sponsored or supported. Prosecutors said more than $250,000 flowed into Ford’s business accounts. He resigned under his plea agreement and is permanently barred from holding elected office in Tennessee. His sentencing has already been postponed three times. (ABC24, WKNO)
This was not merely a politician forgetting to report income. It was government power feeding private profit: public money went to selected nonprofits, and money from those organizations came back to a company controlled by the official helping direct the grants. Memphis’ political culture too often resembles the gang culture its leaders condemn. The clothes are better and the transactions travel through resolutions and nonprofit accounts, but the governing principle is disturbingly familiar: once you get inside, you get yours.
Ford’s Democratic voters cannot wash their hands of the result. He won the 2022 Democratic primary with 84.1% and then received 99.5% in a virtually uncontested general election. In 2018, he defeated Republican Sharon Webb 90.4% to 9.4%. Those numbers describe more than Ford’s political strength; they expose an electorate willing to return familiar names to power with little measurable demand for integrity, oversight or results. Memphis Democrats now face a judgment larger than one guilty plea: how many scandals, failed institutions and self-serving officeholders must accumulate before party loyalty stops functioning as immunity? (Ballotpedia election results)
On the Memphis Safe Task Force, the record is especially revealing: Ford did not oppose it. At the Nov. 12, 2025 commission committee meeting, he moved the resolution accepting $268,973 in U.S. Marshals Service funding for Shelby County’s participation in the MSTF and voted for it; it passed 4-0. The full commission later approved it with eight votes. Ford also attacked Mayor Lee Harris’ declaration opposing the task-force presence, calling it a distraction from the administration’s financial problems. Ford therefore supported the MSTF when local Democrats were fighting it—a hard irony for those who treated him as a trusted political ally before his guilty plea. (official committee record, commission results, Ford’s response to Harris)
Memphis Democrats will keep governing inside a clouded political bubble until their own voters accept responsibility for putting them there. The unanswered question is how many worthwhile projects never got started while Ford and his politically connected cronies feasted on taxpayer money.
(8.13.26) The Memphis Police Department announced today the arrest of a third suspect — a 16-year-old boy — in the Aug. 8 mass shooting that killed Shandrika Hayslett and wounded four others at a “trunk party” in the Douglass neighborhood. Hayslett, 34, had earned her doctorate in May and was attending a gathering celebrating a relative’s college acceptance, according to Action News 5. The teenager is charged as an adult with first-degree murder, six counts of attempted first-degree murder and several weapons offenses. Naskial Wilson, 25, and Damion Thomas, 25, face similar charges.
Memphis police deserve credit for securing three arrests within days, but the speed of their work cannot answer the deeper question of what has gone wrong in a community where a college-acceptance celebration can become a killing ground and a 16-year-old can stand accused of murder.
(8.13.26) A Frayser man may be alive because he was armed when four men allegedly opened fire on him during an attempted robbery at Greenbriar Apartments late Aug. 8. According to an arrest affidavit cited by Action News 5, the victim returned fire in self-defense and wounded one of his attackers.
The victim suffered multiple gunshot wounds and was driven to a fire station by his brother. The alleged robbers dropped their wounded accomplice at a hospital, where police said he offered an account that conflicted with the evidence.
Investigators used surveillance footage to trace the suspects’ blue Ford Focus to its owner, 18-year-old Amari Muhammad. Police said Muhammad admitted serving as the getaway driver; he is charged with acting as an accessory after an attempted especially aggravated robbery and tampering with or fabricating evidence.
Crime in Frayser was down more than 30% as of June 25, but the neighborhood had still recorded eight murders in 2026—proof that its threat of deadly violence remains real. In this case, an armed citizen’s ability to defend himself may be what kept an attempted robbery from becoming another homicide.
In an era when elected local government is associated with various degrees of corruption, that hardly seems worth noticing.
Shelby County Commissioner Erika Sugarmon pleaded not guilty Tuesday to two counts of vandalism, arraigned on charges that she tore down and destroyed political campaign signs belonging to her opponents during this spring's county primary. She is due back in General Sessions Court on September 10.
The case against her is not circumstantial. Memphis investigators opened the inquiry May 1 after a social media video surfaced showing a woman — later identified as Sugarmon — pulling political signs off their stakes at polling locations across Memphis and Shelby County, according to Action News 5. Traffic camera footage near B.B. King Boulevard and Poplar Avenue reportedly caught her yanking a sign from the ground on April 30. A separate complaint, filed by four victims, accused her of cutting the zip ties holding their signs in place and tossing them aside — an act captured on cellphone video as well, WREG reported.
When investigators confronted her, Sugarmon admitted to removing the signs but claimed the election was already over. It was not. The primary was held May 5 — four days after police had already opened their investigation into the April 30 vandalism. That is not a defense; it is a second inconsistency layered on top of video evidence.
Sugarmon's attorney, Handel Durham, dismissed the accusers as "sore losers" striking back at a successful commissioner, and said he expects Shelby County judges to recuse themselves to avoid a conflict of interest — the Shelby County District Attorney's Office has already stepped aside from the case, according to FOX13 Memphis. A commissioner facing recused prosecutors and recused judges in her own backyard is precisely the kind of insider arrangement that erodes public trust in elected office.
Sugarmon won reelection to her District 12 seat the week before her arraignment, the Daily Memphian noted. Voters went to the polls without knowing their commissioner stood accused of destroying the political speech of the candidates running against her allies. A citizen who behaves this way loses in the court of public opinion long before September 10. An elected official who does it should not get a pass because the charges are misdemeanors.
Seven arrests and a haul of illegal firearms, narcotics and cash came out of Saturday night's raid on Legends Lounge in Hickory Hill, but the bigger fallout may be a constitutional fight over how Memphis Police treated the roughly 300 people who never got charged with anything.
MPD says Legends Lounge earned the raid: a nuisance letter went out in May, and officers had logged 191 calls for service and 47 police reports at the club over two years, including gun crimes, auto thefts and break-ins. Investigators walked out with illegal drugs, firearms, paraphernalia and a large amount of cash. Co-owner Nickolas Armstrong-Green, 26, was booked on marijuana possession and selling alcohol without a license.
The club's capacity was 99. Police found roughly three times that many people packed inside. Every one of them, according to a defense attorney reviewing the operation, was held, checked for ID and warrants, and not released until officers were satisfied — a dragnet the attorney says swept up 293 people who did nothing wrong.
That's the crux of the Fourth Amendment complaint: the Constitution protects against generalized searches of the public, not just searches tied to individualized suspicion. Holding hundreds of patrons hostage to a warrant check because seven people inside broke the law is the kind of government overreach the Bill of Rights was written to stop, regardless of how loud the neighborhood complaints against the club were.
No civil suit has been filed as of Monday, but the attorney's public statement puts MPD on notice. Memphis residents should watch whether the department treats this as a one-off enforcement action or a template — because a city that lets police detain hundreds of innocent people to catch a handful of suspects has traded due process for convenience.
Dr. Shandrika Hayslett earned her doctorate in May. On Saturday night she was shot dead on Brookins Street, gunned down at a party her own family threw to celebrate a relative getting into college, according to Action News 5, which confirmed her identity Sunday.
Hundreds of people had gathered for the send-off celebration around 11 p.m. when gunfire erupted. Hayslett was pronounced dead at the scene. A man and woman were rushed to the hospital in critical condition; two more victims arrived by private vehicle with non-critical injuries, bringing the total wounded to four.
Two suspects are now in custody, and Memphis Police say more arrest warrants are pending. Investigators have said the shooting stemmed from a fight that broke out during the party — meaning a woman with a doctorate, a husband and a family celebrating good news is dead because someone in a crowd of strangers decided a personal beef was worth a gun.
This is the same Brookins Street shooting first reported Saturday night, when police initially described three victims transported to area hospitals. Two days later, the death toll, the identity of the victim and the number of suspects in custody have all come into focus, and the picture is worse than the first reports suggested.
Friends describe Hayslett as a source of pride for the Douglass community, a woman who represented what education and determination could produce. Memphis lost her to a fight she wasn't part of, at a party meant to celebrate someone else's future — the kind of senseless violence that keeps landing on the same blocks while City Hall debates task forces and talking points.
A Shelby County jury is now deciding whether two former jailers murdered an inmate who died gasping for breath while officers pinned him down — and the video shown in court Saturday makes the state's case hard to look away from, according to Action News 5.
Stevon Jones and Cortney Parham, two of nine jailers originally charged in the 2022 death of inmate Gershun Freeman inside the 201 Poplar jail, are on trial for second-degree murder and aggravated assault. Prosecutors, led by Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk, allege the officers pinned Freeman face down for more than five minutes, restricting his breathing until his heart stopped.
The video played for jurors Saturday showed Freeman naked and escaping his cell before several officers surrounded him, punching, kicking and pepper-spraying him within seconds. Prosecutors argued the response was grossly excessive — that a group of trained officers had no justification for failing to restrain one unarmed man without killing him.
Chief Inspector Michael Green, the jail's highest-ranking officer on duty the day Freeman died, testified for hours and confirmed the jail had a written use-of-force policy in place at the time. His testimony set up prosecutors' next witness, Shelby County Medical Examiner Marco Ross, who is expected to detail the autopsy findings tying Freeman's cardiac arrest directly to the restraint.
Seven other jailers originally charged in the case still await their own proceedings. Whatever the jury decides for Jones and Parham, the trial is already a reckoning for a jail system that let nine employees walk away from a man's death with paychecks intact for the better part of four years before anyone answered for it in a courtroom.
(8.10.26 BenQQ) A Memphis woman who earned her doctorate just three months ago is dead and four others are wounded after gunfire tore through a Saturday night celebration in the Douglass neighborhood, the kind of everyday violence that keeps landing on Memphis families no matter how many task forces patrol the streets.
Memphis Police say a fight broke out just after 11:15 p.m. in the 1700 block of Brookins Street before multiple people opened fire on a crowd gathered to send a relative off to college. Dr. Shandrika Hayslett, 34, was pronounced dead at the scene. Two more victims were rushed to the hospital in critical condition, with a third and fourth listed non-critical; by Monday morning three had been released, while one remained in critical condition.
Family and friends identified Hayslett as a Douglass native who completed her doctorate in May, according to FOX13 Memphis. Lifelong friend Telisa Franklin, a state representative-elect, called Hayslett a source of pride for a community that had claimed her as proof hard work pays off, and joined other elected officials in publicly demanding accountability in the shooting's aftermath, Action News 5 reported. Investigators have identified three suspects but made no arrests as of Sunday. Memphis Police are asking anyone with information to come forward, a familiar refrain in a city where gunfire at cookouts, block parties and family celebrations has become a grim summer pattern regardless of how many federal agents patrol downtown.
(8.10.26 BenQQ) Two people are nursing injuries and a suspect remains on the run after a Saturday night argument outside a Downtown Memphis taco stand ended with a pickup truck jumping the curb and running down two pedestrians on the sidewalk, a reminder that Memphis's public spaces stay dangerous even blocks from City Hall.
Memphis Police say officers responded just before 11:30 p.m. Saturday to find two victims lying on a Danny Thomas Boulevard sidewalk with abrasions and bruising, according to Action News 5. Witnesses told police the pair had been walking south on the sidewalk when an unidentified gray pickup truck sped onto the sidewalk and struck both of them.
A bystander told police the attack followed a verbal argument between the victims and the truck's occupants in the parking lot of TACO-N-GANAS, a restaurant on Danny Thomas Boulevard. Both victims were taken to the hospital in non-critical condition.
No suspect has been named, and police are asking anyone with information to call Crime Stoppers at 901-528-CASH. The truck's make and model remain unknown, leaving the case open in a city where parking-lot disputes are increasingly ending in vehicular violence.
(8.9.26) Shelby County's incoming sheriff and mayor are promising to actually speak to each other about the county jail — a low bar that outgoing officials Floyd Bonner and Lee Harris failed to clear for nearly eight years while 68 people died in custody.
Sheriff-Elect Anthony Buckner and Mayor-Elect Mickell Lowery pledged to collaborate on fixing the aging, understaffed Shelby County jail, a facility now at the center of the murder trial over inmate Gershun Freeman's 2022 death, WMC Action News 5 reported. Outgoing Sheriff Bonner admitted he and outgoing Mayor Harris had, by his own count, roughly two conversations in nearly eight years of sharing office. "That's not any way to operate a relationship between the sheriff's office and the mayor's office," Bonner said.
Former Sheriff Mark Luttrell, who worked alongside former Mayor A C Wharton to fix the jail under a federal consent decree, said the incoming pair should follow that model of cooperation instead of the dysfunction that defined the Bonner-Harris years. Buckner has toured the Franklin County jail in Columbus, Ohio, as a possible template, while Lowery called Shelby County's jail crisis a "generational project" the county can no longer afford to ignore.
Lowery also inherits a Shelby County government that took out two loans to cover expenses and had five straight annual budgets rejected by the state Comptroller's Office under Harris — a fiscal record Luttrell noted his own administration never matched, having never borrowed to pay bills. Whether the new administration's talk of teamwork translates into a safer jail remains to be seen, but the bar their predecessors set could not be lower.
(8.9.26) Newly released courtroom video shows Shelby County jail officers punching, kicking and pepper-spraying an unarmed, naked inmate in the moments before he stopped breathing — testimony so damning that the jail's own chief inspector rated his team's performance a one out of ten.
Day two of the murder trial for former Shelby County jailers Stevon Jones and Cortney Parham unfolded Saturday at the 201 Poplar jail, where prosecutors called Chief Inspector Michael Green, the highest-ranking officer on duty the day inmate Gershun Freeman died in 2022, according to WMC Action News 5. Video played in court showed Freeman escaping his cell naked before several officers surrounded him, striking and spraying him within seconds.
Freeman went into cardiac arrest while being restrained face down for more than five minutes, Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk told jurors, arguing that Jones and Parham knowingly killed Freeman by cutting off his ability to breathe. Green testified he was not sure how long Freeman went without CPR because he was still recovering from the pepper spray himself — an admission that drew visible reaction in the courtroom.
Medical Examiner Marco Ross testified that Freeman's body, straining for oxygen during the struggle, demanded more blood flow than his restrained heart could deliver. Jones and Parham face second-degree murder and aggravated assault charges; seven other jailers were also charged in connection with Freeman's death. Testimony resumes Monday at 9:30 a.m., with Action News 5 continuing live coverage from the courtroom.
(8.9.26) A woman is dead and four other people are wounded after gunfire tore through a crowded block party in North Memphis overnight, the latest bloodshed in a city where large, unpermitted gatherings keep turning deadly.
Officers arriving on scene found a woman who was rushed to the hospital, where she later died. Four more victims followed: a woman and a man in critical condition, and another man and woman who arrived by private vehicle with non-critical injuries. No arrests have been announced, and the shooter or shooters fled the scene before police arrived.
Memphis Police told WMC Action News 5 that a shooting call came in just after 11 p.m. Saturday from the 1700 block of Brookins Street, where a large party had drawn a crowd. A fight broke out during the gathering, and within moments multiple shots rang out, striking several homes and vehicles along with the victims.
The shooting adds to a summer pattern of block-party violence in Memphis that keeps overwhelming patrol officers and emergency rooms alike, even as city and federal officials tout falling homicide numbers elsewhere in the city this year. CrimeStoppers 901-528-CASH.
(8.9.26) Two men are in critical condition after a rifle-wielding attacker opened fire inside an East Memphis home, leaving one victim face-down in a pool of blood and the other unable to identify who shot him.
Both victims were rushed to Regional One Health in critical condition. Police have released no suspect description and no motive, leaving the Philsdale Avenue neighborhood to wonder who opened fire and why.
The shooting is at least the second violent gun crime to hit Memphis neighborhoods within 24 hours, underscoring the gap between task-force messaging on falling crime and the reality still playing out on residential streets. CrimeStoppers 901-528-CASH.
(8.8.26 BenQQ) One alleged killer is off the street, but her accomplice is still out there after the pair fled Tennessee entirely in a stolen car — a case that shows both the reach and the limits of Memphis' crime-fighting apparatus.
The Memphis Safe Task Force tracked Ashundra Lee, 39, to Oklahoma City and passed the lead to the U.S. Marshals' Western Oklahoma Fugitive Task Force, which took her into custody Thursday. Lee had been wanted on a Shelby County homicide warrant since July 21 for allegedly shooting and running over a motorcyclist near Wilson Street and Gill Avenue alongside Joseph Harris, 37.
After the killing, Lee and Harris allegedly stole a vehicle and ran, turning up as far away as Fayetteville, Arkansas, where investigators say they stole a second vehicle, a white Honda SUV, before Lee's trail went cold until this week. Harris, wanted on first-degree murder and evidence-tampering charges, remains at large.
(8.8.26 BenQQ) Put mutually opposed humans in a closed jail environment and this is what is bound to happen at some point–a death and a trial.
Defense attorneys contend that a naked, combative prisoner charged out of his cell, bit a jailer and fought through pepper spray in a chaotic emergency.
Two Shelby County corrections deputies now face the prospect of prison as a Memphis courtroom hears how 201 Poplar handled the October 2022 in-custody death of inmate Gershun Freeman, a case that has already produced nine indictments and a fresh round of doubt about who runs the county's jail.
Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk, brought in after the Shelby County DA's office recused itself over its ties to the sheriff's department, told jurors that deputies Stevon Jones and Cortney Parham pinned the 33-year-old Freeman face down for more than five minutes despite use-of-force training that explicitly warns against prone restraint because of asphyxiation risk.
Shelby County's own medical examiner ruled Freeman's death a homicide from cardiac arrest during the restraint; a second examiner brought in as a state consultant went further, calling it mechanical asphyxiation.
Testimony resumed Saturday with jurors sequestered away from home and cellphones for a trial expected to run more than a week — a taxpayer-funded spectacle that will not end the reckoning, since seven more deputies indicted in Freeman's death still await their own proceedings.
(8.8.16 BenQQ) A Vollintine-area man is fighting for his life tonight, and two shooters are still free after Memphis Police could only release vague clothing descriptions nearly a full day after the attack — the kind of gap that leaves North Memphis residents wondering how many gunmen simply drive away clean.
Officers responded to North Watkins Street near Vollintine Avenue at 4:42 p.m. Friday and found a man with life-threatening injuries. Two suspects fled east on Vollintine in a brown or burgundy sedan, according to the Memphis Police Department.
MPD describes one suspect as roughly six feet tall and 200 pounds, last seen in a black hat, black T-shirt, burgundy joggers and black-and-white shoes; the second was described only as a man with short hair wearing a white T-shirt — descriptions thin enough that little currently stands between the shooters and their next target.
The Vollintine shooting was one of at least three reported in Memphis within 24 hours, following an early-morning killing in Southeast Memphis and an overnight shooting in South Memphis — a pace that undercuts City Hall's talking points about falling crime. Anyone with information is asked to call CrimeStoppers at 901-528-CASH.
(8.7.26 BenQQ) Shelby County voters have guaranteed at least four more years of unchecked Democratic control at the courthouse, handing the mayor's office and the Sheriff's Office to the same party currently defending a courthouse employee against federal corruption charges. Mickell Lowery declared victory Thursday night, cruising past Republican John DeBerry with roughly 65 percent of the vote, according to Action News 5.
Anthony Buckner, the outgoing chief deputy under term-limited Sheriff Floyd Bonner, defeated Republican Brad Less for the top job at the Sheriff's Office, Action News 5 reported.
The results landed seven weeks after federal prosecutors indicted General Sessions Court Clerk Tami Sawyer, a fellow Shelby County constitutional officer, on charges she siphoned more than $44,000 in taxpayer money for personal expenses, including alcohol and Uber Eats. Sawyer pleaded not guilty and is set for trial in January, but her indictment did nothing to slow her party's momentum at the ballot box.
Buckner's first test is now. Jail healthcare contractor Wellpath notified the state this week it is permanently shutting down medical operations at every Shelby County correctional facility, leaving the incoming sheriff to manage a healthcare vacuum inside an already-strained jail system.
Voters had two candidates in each race warning about the same jail crisis and the same courthouse dysfunction. They chose the party that has run the courthouse through both.
Wellpath's Exit Leaves Shelby County Jail Without a Doctor
Roughly 119 people will lose their jobs and thousands of Shelby County inmates will lose consistent medical care by September 30, after jail healthcare contractor Wellpath told the state it is permanently closing its operations inside every Shelby County correctional facility, Action News 5 reported.
The company filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification with the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development on August 4, listing closures at the Shelby County Correctional Facility on Mullins Station Road, the East Women's Facility on Haley Road, the downtown jail at 201 Poplar Avenue, and the Shelby County Youth Justice Education Center, according to the Daily Memphian.
Wellpath is no stranger to collapse. The company filed for bankruptcy earlier this year and has been shedding contracts nationwide, including a similar pullout from the jail health system in Placer County, California, according to Hoodline.
Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris' office insists Wellpath will stay on the job until a new vendor is signed, but no replacement has been named. Incoming Sheriff Anthony Buckner has said reducing the jail population and expanding mental health services will be his first priorities — promises that just got harder to keep with the jail's medical provider walking out the door.
Shelby County taxpayers, not Wellpath executives, will absorb the cost of finding a replacement under emergency conditions — the predictable result of county leadership treating jail healthcare as an afterthought rather than a core public safety obligation.
(8.6.26 BenQQ) Shelby County residents to vote on a new county mayor today. The outcome will decide who controls a multi-hundred-million-dollar budget, the county jail, health department and school funding for the next four years.
Republican John DeBerry, a former Democratic state representative turned GOP standard-bearer, faces Democrat Mickell Lowery, a sitting county commissioner and son of former Memphis City Councilman Myron Lowery, in the general election to replace term-limited Lee Harris.
Lowery cleared a crowded seven-candidate Democratic primary in May with just 32 percent of the vote, edging out councilman JB Smiley and former MSCS superintendent Marie Feagins, a result that speaks less to a mandate than to a fractured Democratic base still running the county's affairs.
DeBerry, a longtime Memphis Democrat who broke with his party over school choice and other issues before switching sides, gives Shelby County Republicans their most credible countywide shot in years against a local Democratic machine that has held the mayor's office since 2018.
The Shelby County Election Commission spent Wednesday rechecking voting machines ahead of Thursday's vote, and results are expected to be tallied Thursday night.
(8.5.26 BenQQ sourced from local media) Activists gathered Tuesday outside Wilson Air Center to demand the private aviation facility stop hosting flights that move detained immigrants out of West Tennessee, timing their protest to a bus of detainees arriving from the West Tennessee Detention Facility in Mason, roughly 45 miles away, according to Action News 5.
The group, Vecindarios 901, says it has tracked 51 such flights leaving Wilson Air Center since March, most bound for a federal facility in Alexandria, Louisiana. Co-founder Maria Oceja called on the facility's owners to "reconsider your role" in what she characterized as the current administration's deportation operation, and organizers held signs at the fence line for detainees to see as buses pulled in.
Regarding the societal impact of illegal aliens, a 2026 Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas working paper estimated that unauthorized immigration raised home prices by about 6.6%. Because prices rose about 22% overall, that 6.6% accounted for roughly 30% of the total increase. Further, illegal immigration also cost $9.2 billion in 2023 for schools, health care and other public services. Money sent abroad as remittances further reduces how much of those earnings is spent within the U.S. economy.
Regarding crime, no national database that reliably measures ordinary crime committed by illegal immigrants. Most crime is prosecuted by state and local authorities, whose records do not consistently identify or verify immigration status. However one stat that can be verified is regarding illegal truck drivers. According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, non-domiciled commercial drivers who would be ineligible for licenses under newly tightened federal rules caused at least 17 fatal crashes and 30 deaths in 2025.
Activists argue the flights hinder detainees' ability to challenge their custody in court, since habeas corpus petitions generally must be filed in the jurisdiction where a detainee is physically held, and that moving people frequently makes it harder for families and lawyers to track them. The group's claim that such flights have increased 123% under the current administration comes from its own tracking, not an independently audited federal count.
What the protest cannot erase is that these detainees are being held under federal immigration laws enacted by Congress—not under policies invented by local officials or ICE agents. The government is carrying out detention, transfer and removal actions under those laws, although individual detainees may use whatever reviews, hearings or appeals the law makes available in their particular cases.
Requiring a new, full court proceeding for every detainee—including those who have already received removal orders—would place an additional burden on an immigration-court system already carrying more than 3 million pending cases and would further delay cases awaiting decisions. Wilson Air Center has not issued a public response to the group's demand that it drop what activists describe as a flight-services relationship with ICE.
including those who have already received removal orders—would place an additional burden on an immigration-court system already carrying more than 3 million pending cases and would further delay cases awaiting decisions. Wilson Air Center has not issued a public response to the group's demand that it drop what activists describe as a flight-services relationship with ICE.
(8.4.26 BenQQ) More than 100,000 Memphis-Shelby County Schools students walked into classrooms Monday with roughly 300 teaching positions still unfilled, meaning thousands of Memphis kids opened the year without a permanent teacher assigned to their room.
Superintendent Roderick Richmond said offers are out for 70 of those jobs, leaving about 230 vacancies with no candidate in the pipeline at all, missing his own goal of fewer than 100 openings by the start of the year, though running close to last August's 226 unfilled slots.
The gaps will again be plugged by remote instructors supplied through a $4.7 million contract with Proximity Learning, which staffed close to 100 virtual teachers in Memphis classrooms last year.
It isn't a pay problem. MSCS's own 2026-27 salary schedule now starts new teachers at $51,827.51 a year, up from last year's $50,000 floor and the district still can't fill the room. What's driving the exodus, both nationally and in the data MSCS itself publishes, is who controls the classroom once the bell rings.
Roughly 20% of teachers nationwide say they plan to leave the profession before this school year, according to the RAND Corporation's 2026 State of the American Teacher survey, and a March 2026 Education Week survey found 35% of teachers rating student behavior "a lot worse" than the year before.
MSCS reports its own office disciplinary referrals fell from nearly 62,000 to about 37,500 over the past school year, and the districtwide suspension rate dropped from 13% to just over 11% — a shift officials attribute to a district-wide move toward "restorative practices" that keep disruptive students in the classroom instead of removing them.
That's precisely the complaint driving teachers out nationally: the Thomas B. Fordham Institute has flatly called it "no-consequence discipline," describing classrooms where students curse at, threaten and in some cases physically confront staff with administrators — and parents — declining to back the teacher up.
The first day also brought reassignment for more than 1,200 students after the district shuttered five schools this year, the opening wave of Richmond's plan to close up to 15 buildings by 2028 over chronic underenrollment and repair costs.
MSCS opened the year still operating under a federal court order keeping the elected school board in charge while Tennessee Republicans' push for a state takeover plays out in court, a fight that, if it goes the state's way, would hand budget and closure decisions to a nine-member board appointed in Nashville.
Memphis property owners renting out rooms and houses on Airbnb and similar platforms are one vote away from a new city permit mandate, as the City Council takes its first vote today on rules requiring every short-term rental operator to obtain a permit within 45 business days or face enforcement.
The ordinance follows a March resolution from Councilman Philip Spinosa Jr. and Council Chairwoman Jana Swearengen-Washington ordering Mayor Paul Young's administration to crack down on short-term rental nuisances after months of neighborhood complaints about noise, parking and party houses.
The same Tuesday agenda moves city money toward redeveloping the shuttered Southwest Twin Drive-In into a new Memphis Police precinct, alongside a progress report on the city bus system and a round of bond restructuring, according to the Daily Memphian.
(8.3.26 sourced from: Action News 5, The Daily Memphian, LocalMemphis, and Congress.gov | The editorialization is ours.) A second ballot-coding failure in a month is giving fresh ammunition to voters who don't trust electronic voting machines with their ballot. Shelby County Election Commission Administrator Linda Phillips confirmed today at a media availability at the Shelby County Election Operations Center that the missing judicial races were caused by "human error" — specifically, a database coding mistake in which Judicial District 30 was mistakenly entered as Senate District 30. The Election Commission says the error was confined to a single machine at the Christian Life Church early voting site, affecting roughly 300 voters; the machine has been pulled from service, and FedEx-tracked supplemental ballots are going out to the absentee voters affected by the earlier, separate July error.
That a single mistyped line of code could quietly strip four judicial races from hundreds of ballots — twice — is precisely the vulnerability critics of touchscreen and machine-tabulated voting have warned about for years: a backend error invisible to the voter at the moment they cast their ballot. The briefing doubled as a turnout update, with the commission reporting nearly 70,000 early votes cast ahead of the August 6 general election, a pace that could set a record — though officials acknowledged the milestone has been "tempered" by the back-to-back ballot mistakes. The errors have already drawn a rare joint statement from Shelby County's Democratic and Republican parties, demanding full transparency on how the error occurred and what safeguards failed — a sign the concern over machine reliability crosses party lines.
Though mistakes are rare for this election commission, machine ballots have been a source of controversy since the 2020 election, and episodes like this one are exactly what's fueling the push in Washington for hand-marked paper ballots. The Make Elections Great Again (MEGA) Act, working its way through Congress alongside the SAVE America Act, would require voter-verifiable paper ballots for every federal race and mandate that every in-person polling location offer voters the option to hand-mark theirs rather than rely solely on a machine. A coding glitch on a piece of paper a voter can read and verify before it leaves their hands is a mistake the voter catches on the spot; a coding glitch buried in a machine's database is one a county doesn't catch until 300 ballots are already cast.
Shelby County voters won't have that option this cycle. They'll decide August 6 between Democrat Mickell Lowery and Republican John DeBerry to succeed term-limited Mayor Lee Harris — on the same machines that have now misfired twice in one election cycle.
(8.3.26) Memphis-Shelby County Schools opened the 2026–27 school year today as students across the district returned from summer break. District officials are also beginning the year with administrative and operational changes taking effect behind the scenes.
(8.3.26) Court proceedings are scheduled to begin Monday for two former Shelby County corrections deputies charged in connection with the 2022 death of jail inmate Gershun Freeman. Stevon Jones and Courtney Parham face second-degree murder and aggravated-assault charges after Freeman died following a confrontation with corrections officers.
FedEx is putting real money into the Memphis World Hub. The company filed an $18.1 million permit for a new freight facility expansion at the airport, part of a broader modernization push that also includes a sorting-center upgrade filed earlier this year. It's a concrete vote of confidence in Memphis as FedEx's home base, even if the company hasn't confirmed new hiring yet. (Action News 5 | Fox13 Memphis)
Kids head back to school today with a boost from local businesses. MSCS classes resume August 3, and salons across the city — Jolie Hair Studio and Essentials Beauty Salon among them — are offering free haircuts and styles for Shelby County kids, alongside the broader wave of school-supply giveaways your event digest already flagged. A hometown, community-funded story rather than a government program. (Fox13 Memphis | MSCS)
300 Memphis kids got free skateboards and safety gear. Shelby County government hosted "Youth on Deck" in Frayser on July 25, handing out boards and helmets to ages 10-17 with basic-skills instruction included — good local color, though it's a week old now so best used as a wrap-up/photo piece rather than breaking news. (Shelby County, TN)
(8.2.26 BenQQ) Roughly 300 Shelby County voters may have cast an incomplete ballot this week — the second time in a month that election officials have managed to leave the same four judicial races off a ballot, raising fresh questions about whether the county can be trusted to run a clean election.
The Shelby County Election Commission confirmed Saturday that a voting machine at the Christian Life Church early voting location was missing the same four judicial races that had already been omitted from a batch of 700 absentee ballots sent out in July.
Election Commission Administrator Linda Phillips blamed "human error," saying her office has been "stretched beyond capacity by the addition of a last-minute judicial race." That explanation will offer little comfort to voters who trusted the county to get their ballot right on the second try.
The commission says the error is believed to be confined to a single machine, and final confirmation of the scope is expected Monday, when the Shelby County Election Commission holds a press conference at 10 a.m. at the Shelby County Election Operations Center.
Some say these types of voting problems would be eliminated with the Save America Act, but the SAVE Act only addresses voter eligibility. Another act supporters want to put beside the SAVE Act is the Make Elections Great Again Act (MEGA) which requires voter-verifiable paper ballots for every federal race, either hand-marked by the voter or produced by a ballot-marking device.
(8.2.26 BenQQ) According to the Memphis Police Department, officers responded to a shots-fired call near Innsbrook Drive and Birch Run Lane just before 5 p.m. Saturday. They found a juvenile male in critical condition and rushed him to the hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.
Police say they have one man detained and have opened an active death investigation, but as of Sunday morning they had released neither the victim's name nor his age. The circumstances that put a child in the path of gunfire remain unexplained.
Anyone with information is urged to contact CrimeStoppers at 901-528-CASH.
(8.1.26 BenQQ) A Cordova family's early morning ended with bullet holes in their property after a domestic dispute turned into a shots-fired call before sunrise Friday, and it took the Memphis Police Department only hours to run down the shooter.
Officers responded to Country Squire Place just after 4:30 a.m. on July 31 after neighbors reported gunfire. No one was hit, but the rounds tore into property at the scene, according to Action News 5.
Investigators say the suspect sped off in a red sedan, but MPD tracked him down and made an arrest later the same day. Police believe the gunfire stemmed from a domestic disturbance, not a random act.
Dozens of violent offenders are off Memphis streets this week after a man wanted in a road rage shooting and three men identified as known gang members were among a fresh round of arrests announced Thursday by the Memphis Police Department and the federal Memphis Safe Task Force, according to the Daily Memphian.
The task force, a multi-agency operation combining the U.S. Marshals Service, Homeland Security Investigations, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Tennessee National Guard, was launched by presidential order last September to hammer down Memphis violent crime. Thursday's announcement was the latest in a string of weekly crime updates the task force has issued since.
Corporate community relations lesson 1: Perhaps if you are going to build a disruptive facility in a multi-trillion dollar industry in a poor community, you should at least make sure you do the right thing by that community.
For a company that markets itself on speed and delivery, the gap between the announcement and the follow-through is the story: big headline, quiet retreat, and two schools left holding an expired agreement.
Two Memphis high schools with some of the worst building conditions in the district are still waiting on repairs Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company promised a year ago, even as the company quietly builds a fourth data center in the same stretch of southwest Memphis, according to Daily Memphian reporting.
A year ago, Elon Musk's company, then known as xAI and now rebranded SpaceXAI, pledged sweeping upgrades to four campuses near its Whitehaven and Westwood data centers: John P. Freeman Optional, Fairley High, Mitchell High and Westwood High. Memphis-Shelby County Schools estimates those four buildings alone need roughly $61 million in repairs over the next decade.
A year later, only two of the four have seen any work: campus beautification at John P. Freeman and a locker room and gym renovation at Fairley High, funded by an estimated $3.6 million SpaceXAI donation. Mitchell High and Westwood High have received nothing. The company also imposed a $5 million donation cap that was never part of the original pitch and cannot cover the full list of promised projects. The agreement expired June 30 and has not been renewed.
Meanwhile, Musk appeared to acknowledge this week that SpaceXAI has built yet another data center in Memphis, a facility known internally as "Minihard," expanding the company's footprint even as its commitment to the schoolchildren next door lapses unfulfilled. Daily Memphian columnist Geoff Calkins put it plainly this week: it is time for SpaceXAI to live up to its promise to Memphis kids.
Twelve-year-old rape victims in Memphis got a measure of justice this week, and two men wanted for killings are no longer walking free, after the Memphis Safe Task Force logged 30 arrests and recovered two illegal firearms in a single day of operations.
Among Tuesday's catches, according to the U.S. Marshals Service, was Jose Navarro, 37, wanted on a warrant for rape of a child and aggravated sexual battery involving a 12-year-old victim. Also taken into custody: Albert Boyce, 25, on a second-degree murder warrant tied to a December 2020 killing, and Decoreion McDowell, 25, on a separate second-degree murder warrant. McDowell's own mother called him downstairs to surrender.
The arrests land as the task force fights to keep its footing after a rough stretch of controversy. WREG has reported growing calls from faith and business leaders for the task force to leave the city following two fatal officer-involved shootings earlier this month, and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is now reviewing eight separate use-of-force incidents involving task force officers.
Whatever one thinks of the task force's methods, the ledger from Tuesday is hard to argue with: a child predator and two accused killers are behind bars instead of on the block. Memphis residents weighing the task force's record should hold both facts at once, not just the ones that fit a preferred narrative.
Memphis-Shelby County Schools families are sending their kids back into classrooms this week inside a district the state's own auditors say bled tens of millions of dollars through mismanagement, with no guarantee the rot has been cut out.
The final forensic audit, released by the Tennessee Comptroller's office and prepared by CliftonLarsonAllen, tagged more than $54 million in Memphis-Shelby County Schools spending as potential fraud, waste, or abuse across the 667-page review. The single largest chunk, over $48 million, traces to a custodial contract handed to ServiceMaster Clean in 2022 over the advice of staff who recommended splitting the work among multiple vendors. The district canceled that contract a year later after parents and employees complained the schools were not being cleaned.
Chalkbeat flags the audit fallout as one of the top storylines to watch as the new school year begins, alongside staffing and enrollment questions the district has yet to resolve. Parents deserve a straight answer on who signed off on a $48 million contract nobody vetted properly, and MSCS leadership has offered little beyond promises to do better.
Until someone is held accountable by name, Memphis taxpayers are stuck footing the bill twice: once for the wasted money, and again for whatever it costs to fix what the contract failed to clean.
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