U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles’ campaign has less $100k heading into potential competitive election tennesseelookout.com/2026/04/17/u... @friedmanadam5.bsky.social @tennesseelookout.com

OK folks, I’m writing about the Waymos in Nashville for @nashvillebanner.bsky.social and I’d love to hear what questions you have about them or what experiences you’ve had with them. Reply here or DM me or email me or text me!

"The goal is not always sexual gratification. Increasingly, the intent is humiliation, denigration, and social control."

The Tennessee Senate passed a controversial transgender healthcare tracking bill on Monday, adding amendments to allow the attorney general to investigate and reduce the information reported in the public database, sending it back to the House to approve. ✒️: @sarahgracetaylor.bsky.social

DJT really stands for Dr. Jesus Trump and people just don’t recognize that

You have to read this one

A Tennessee House Committee scrapped plans to track student immigration status in a school voucher bill Tuesday, advancing a simpler version of voucher expansion. ✍️ @sarahgracetaylor.bsky.social and Lillian Avedian

Tennessee lawmakers passed a bill Monday that will criminalize immigrants who stay in or re-enter Tennessee after deportation orders, though the state may not have the authority to do so. ✒️: @sarahgracetaylor.bsky.social

At John Overton High School, Muslim students balanced schoolwork and responsibilities with fasting, prayer and reflection throughout the month of Ramadan, with support from a diverse staff. ✍️: Lillian Avedian

The DOJ quietly closed 23,000+ criminal cases in the first six months of Trump’s second administration, abandoning hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime, drugs and other offenses as it shifted resources to pursue immigration cases. 🔗 Full story: https://propub.li/4e5vZLL

NEW: TN Republicans have filed amendments to tie per-pupil public school funding to immigration status in the voucher expansion bill as the more overt tracking bills struggle to pass on their own. The bill is in committee tomorrow morning and these amendments were still being tweaked at COB today:

If Metro Nashville wants to build dedicated transit lanes on state-controlled corridors, it needs the sign-off of the TN General Assembly. This week, the legislature is nearing approval of the city’s plans for dedicated lanes downtown and along Gallatin and Nolensville pikes. @stelliott.bsky.social

The kids are alright

Voucher expansion will likely pass, but it’s going to be real close (like 52 votes kind of close) in the House. We talked to a few lawmakers and others involved to get the prognosis:

The White House deployed ICE officers to help unpaid TSA workers, but they aren’t trained to actually help with security screening.

Oh my God. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/u...

Tomorrow on the Banner and Company podcast feed, me and Mikeie talk through all of his reporting on this case.

She's out! @mikeiereiland.bsky.social with the details and where her case stands.

The Banner’s enterprise reporter Eden Turner has been selected as a Freedomways Reporting Fellow for Press On. Over the next eight months, her longform reporting will focus on the factors affecting high Black maternal death rates in Tennessee. 📝: @ejturner02.bsky.social

Rep. Johnny Garrett isn't running for reelection to his state house seat, but continues to spend his state campaign funds on direct mail pieces--while he is running for Congress. Federal law prohibits use of state money in federal races and vice versa, but there's a loophole.

Horrific details of how ICE is treating a Nashville journalist via @mikeiereiland.bsky.social

Tennessee’s anti-abortion movement split on a recent bill to criminalize women who get abortions, with sentences up to the death penalty. Still, the sponsor thinks he can shift the “radioactive” narrative around his plan, even if his peers think he’s “a jack wagon.” ✍️ @sarahgracetaylor.bsky.social

Guerilla bench-builders were alarmed Thursday to learn that Metro had removed more than a dozen of the benches they placed at bus stops around town. The group says they’re planning to build many more. ✍️ @iamstevenhale.bsky.social

TN House Dems are fighting and it probably cost them an affordable housing bill this week. Read about it from the @nashvillebanner.bsky.social: nashvillebanner.com/2026/03/12/t...

We are calling on ICE to immediately release journalist Estefany Rodriguez, who has covered immigration, including ICE actions, for the Spanish-language news site Nashville Noticias. Read the letter we signed with 40 other press freedom and civil society groups: www.freepress.net/news/coaliti...

The husband of detained Nashville reporter Estefany Rodriguez talks about their lives and how ICE stalked them to arrest her. ✍️ @mikeiereiland.bsky.social

No, @iamstevenhale.bsky.social did not ask me about chem trails this time, but he did ask and continues to cyber bully me about prediction markets on this podcast episode that is MAINLY about Tennessee immigration tracking bills. nashvillebanner.com/2026/03/06/l...

Literally as I’m arguing with someone about whether AI companies are misleading people into believing their technology possesses God-like super-intelligence I see this monstrosity

Crashing out over Polymarket showing up as “news” when I googled something.

We don’t know why this happened to Estefany and it may be unrelated to her job, but it’s still another example of one of our neighbors — and this time colleagues — being ripped from her family in Nashville and it’s hard to wrap my head around it.

We don’t yet know if Estefany Rodríguez’s detention was in retaliation for her reporting but we certainly wouldn’t be surprised. ICE abductions of noncitizen journalists take the reporters best equipped to cover immigration enforcement off the beat.

A Nashville reporter who has reported on ICE was detained at a stop in South Nashville yesterday. Estefany Rodríguez fled Colombia after getting death threats and is awaitng an asylum hearing. nashvillebanner.com/2026/03/05/j...

Tennessee lawmakers moved forward with a bill tracking the immigration statuses of students on Wednesday, despite hundreds of protesters opposing the legislation. A second, harsher tracking bill written in tandem with the White House remains in limbo. ✍️ @sarahgracetaylor.bsky.social

Remember when Mark Green abruptly quit Congress to start a mystery business with a lobbyist? Now they're being sued for apparently poaching the idea and threatening to use political influence to compete for a fuel deal with Guyana while Green was in office: nashvillebanner.com/2026/03/05/m...

Nashville Public Library main downtown branch finally has a tentative reopening date (March 30) after nine months closed. From the @nashvillebanner.bsky.social:

With @ejturner02.bsky.social on the people still living in and through the wreckage of last month's winter storm for @nashvillebanner.bsky.social: nashvillebanner.com/2026/03/02/n...

In an evidentiary hearing on Thursday, the government called two witnesses to prove that their prosecution of Kilmar Abrego García was not vindictive. The judge previously found some evidence of vindictiveness, and the defense is asking him to dismiss the case. ✍️ @mikeiereiland.bsky.social

Gov. Bill Lee said yesterday he didn’t know that people were called slurs and physically marked them with Sharpie during a THP/ICE operation. THP leadership acknowledged inappropriate conduct and promised unspecified accountability: nashvillebanner.com/2026/02/27/t...

Lt. Gov. Randy McNally announced on the Senate floor Thursday that he will not seek reelection, ending a nearly five-decade legislative career and kicking off a leadership race in the state Senate. ✍️ @stelliott.bsky.social

NEW: In an agreed order, the Attorney General’s Office said it will not enforce a law that would impose felony criminal liability on elected officials who vote for sanctuary policies. CM Clay Capp: "This is a huge victory for free speech and self-government” nashvillebanner.com/2026/02/25/t...

Founded in 2020, 95 Counties has been uplifting the descendants of enslaved people by uncovering their ancestry and allowing them to name themselves in the context of American history. ✒️: @ejturner02.bsky.social

Sen. Marsha Blackburn has just posted on Twitter that ICE will not be establishing an immigrant detention "mega center" in Lebanon, Tenn. that was billed as housing up to 16,000. It's the fourth reversal of these on-again/off-again detention center plans for the city of about 50,000 people

NEW: The Tennessee bill that threatens the death penalty for abortions appears to be dead in the water as Sponsor Mark Pody says it won’t pass the Senate. nashvillebanner.com/2026/02/24/t...

Brentwood, Tenn.-based AMI Metals, a global aerospace materials manufacturer, has inked a $1.5 billion deal with the federal government to provide steel for a border wall. It's one of dozens of Tennessee companies profiting from the Trump administration's immigrant detention and deportation agenda.

Yesterday, our investigation exposed misreported statistics and disparaging conduct in an immigration raid conducted in Nashville last May by ICE and the THP. Now, state lawmakers and city leaders are calling for accountability from the governor and law enforcement. ✍️ @sarahgracetaylor.bsky.social

Detailed (and appalling) account by @sarahgracetaylor.bsky.social at @nashvillebanner.bsky.social of officer conduct during immigrant dragnet in Nashville last May ‘Huntin’ Time’ — How ICE and Tennessee State Troopers Targeted Immigrants, Inflated Safety Claims nashvillebanner.com/2026/02/19/i...

And here’s our story on the aftermath of the ICE/THP — following up with those deported and the families they left behind in Nashville — in Spanish.

P.S. Our stories are also available in Spanish. Here’s our investigation into the operation, analyzing more than 50 hours of footage from THP.

I promise we wouldn’t ask you to read 8,000 words if it wasn’t important. Every article we write and conversation we have about detention facilities or immigration policies in Nashville need to be informed by what already happened here:

Today we're sharing an investigation into the Nashville ICE/THP traffic operation. (Thread) I viewed over 50 hours of footage from the raid, which showed law enforcement calling targets "wet," "bodies," "illegals," physically writing on arrestees and competing to make the most arrests: