President Donald Trump has nominated four people to serve on the Tennessee Valley Authority’s board of directors.
The nine-member board is down to three members due to the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate’s failure to act on President Joe Biden’s three nominations in 2024 and Trump’s firing of three sitting members in the spring of 2025.
It has lacked a quorum for the past three months.
The July 1 announcement by the White House offered no details about the background of the four men, whose terms would extend to mid-2028, 2029 and 2030. News reports and official websites indicate:
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- Lee Beaman, of Tennessee, is a longtime Nashville businessman and Republican campaign donor.
- Mitch Graves, of Tennessee, is CEO of the West Cancer Center & Research Institute and a Memphis Light, Gas and Water Board commissioner.
- Jeff Hagood, of Tennessee, is a founding partner in the law firm that bears his name and a member of the Knoxville Sports Authority Board.
- Randall Jones, of Alabama, is an insurance agent who chairs the boards of Jackson State University and the Electric Board of Guntersville.
- The TVA board last had nine members earlier in Biden’s term.
Six Biden nominees were confirmed by the Senate in December 2022 and took their seats on the board in January 2023: Beth Geer, Bobby Klein, Michelle Moore, Bill Renick, Joe Ritch and Wade White.
Renick now is the board chair. His term expires in May 2027. Klein and White remain on the board, with terms expiring in May of 2026 and 2027, respectively.
Trump fired Moore on March 27, Ritch on April 1 and Geer on June 10.
The other vacancies were created by the expiring terms of three appointees from Trump’s first term: William Kilbride, Beth Harwell and Brian Noland. Biden nominated Harwell, Noland and Memphis City Council member Patrice Robinson to fill the vacancies, but the Senate did not bring the nominations to a vote.
Shortly before Trump began sacking board members, Tennessee’s U.S. senators — Marsha Blackburn (R) and Bill Hagerty (R) — authored an op-ed piece in POWER magazine saying the TVA board lacked the talent, experience and gravitas needed to carry the weight of the task before it: helping drive a nuclear renaissance led by the United States.
They said the members appeared more like political operatives than visionary industrial leaders, called the TVA bureaucracy hidebound and suggested that retiring TVA CEO Jeff Lyash should be succeeded by an outsider.
Shortly after the op-ed was published, the TVA board announced March 31 it had chosen TVA Executive Vice President Don Moul as the new CEO. The next day, Trump sacked Ritchie, eliminating any potential quorum for the board.
Blackburn and Hagerty jointly praised the nominees July 1 after Trump announced them: “These nominees are a strong departure from the Biden-era TVA board which failed to meet the moment. We urge colleagues to swiftly confirm President Trump’s TVA board nominees to make certain the United States leads the world in next-generation nuclear and wins the global race for energy dominance.”
Hagerty separately added: “President Trump’s nominees must be confirmed quickly so they can get to work correcting the many errors and failed policies the Biden-era TVA board put into place.”
The nation’s largest public provider has no shortage of critics, including some who want it to move away from fossil and nuclear generation, not build more.
TVA recently added nearly 1,400 MW of gas-fired capacity in Kentucky and Alabama; is building or considering 5,500 MW of new dispatchable generation; and in May became the first U.S. utility to request a construction permit for a small modular reactor.
