Gov. Bill Lee wanted $100M for Duck River projects. Lawmakers approved $65M
The Tennessee General Assembly's 2026 budget trimmed $35 million from a funding bucket intended to support ongoing efforts to preserve North America's most ecologically diverse freshwater river while serving the growing Middle Tennessee population's water needs.
The Duck River, a 'scenic treasure' according to Gov. Bill Lee, provides water to an estimated 250,000 Middle Tennessee residents. Its water levels reached concerning lows in 2025, and an increase in dead mussels signaled the river's health is in peril, scientists say.
Lee's budget proposal originally earmarked $100 million 'to create a regional water supply strategy that will solve this problem once and for all,' he said in his 2025 State of the State Address.
The $59.8 billion budget approved by the Tennessee General Assembly on Wednesday allocated $65 million to projects involving the river. House Majority Leader William Lamberth, a Sumner County Republican, said in a Thursday news conference that when viewed 'as a whole, 98% plus of the budget was almost exactly what the governor proposed.'
TDEC: $100M Duck River budget ask could be used toward regional Tennessee River pipeline
Rep. Jody Barrett, a Dickson Republican, represents Hickman County, which is bisected by the Duck River. While his constituents' concerns about the river are mostly environmental for now, residents of neighboring Maury County are looking toward the Duck as a 'saving grace' for water shortages, he said.
'Certainly $35 million is going to have some practical impact. As far as how that money was going to be used, I'm not exactly sure, so I don't know that it will be a considerable immediate impact,' Barrett said. 'But obviously it's an emergency situation, depending upon where you are along the river.'
Barrett said he understands part of the reasoning behind the funding redirect was a lack of specificity on how the funding will be used.
Lee's November executive order to conserve the Duck River tasks the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) to 'evaluate large-scale engineering projects' for cost and feasibility.
TDEC Commissioner David Salyers in March referred to the proposed $100 million as 'incentive money' to encourage partnerships among regional utilities.
Salyers chairs the 19-member advisory group created by Lee to make recommendations to the governor and state lawmakers. He told lawmakers last month that the funding could be put toward a potential pipeline from the Cumberland or Tennessee rivers to 'really solve the problem' of drinking water access.
But Salyers also acknowledged that a full solution will likely require hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of several years.
'While we are disappointed by the reduction in funding by $35 million for the Duck River projects, we recognize that conservation requires sustained commitment over time, not just in moments of opportunity,' Harpeth Conservancy CEO Grace Stranch, also a member of the governor's advisory group, wrote in an email to Tennessee Lookout. 'I am honored to serve on the Duck River Planning Partnership and look forward to working with partners across the region to identify sustainable, collaborative solutions for protecting one of Tennessee's most vital natural resources.'
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Yahoo
13 minutes ago
- Yahoo
In draft congressional map, Texas Republicans bet big that gains with Latino voters will persist
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If the districts were in place during the 2024 election, Trump would have carried each by at least 10 percentage points, according to a Texas Tribune analysis. Such margins depended, in large part, on Hispanic-majority counties whose voters have been moving rightward since 2016. And in 2024, when the vast majority of U.S. counties shifted right, predominantly Hispanic counties saw even more pronounced movement. Trump carried all four counties in the Rio Grande Valley after failing to crack 30% in the region during his first presidential bid, and he won 14 of the 18 Texas counties within 20 miles of the border. But Trump's coattails extended only so far down the ballot, with Democrats winning numerous local races in the same counties that recorded eye-popping shifts at the top of the ticket. Cuellar and Gonzalez secured reelection even as Trump carried their districts, and even with Cuellar also facing down an indictment for alleged money laundering and bribery. GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, appearing just below Trump on November ballots, ran well behind his party's nominee in a number of South Texas locales, especially those with larger Latino populations. If the new lines proposed for Cuellar's district had been in place, the 28th District would have gone for Trump by 10 points, while Cruz would have eked out a narrow 0.1% win. Without Trump at the top of the ticket in 2026 and three of the five target districts increasing their share of Hispanic voters, the GOP map-drawers are making what could amount to a risky bet that enough Latino voters will turn out again to support GOP candidates across the ballot. Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist who has worked in Texas politics for decades and hosts a podcast about Latino voters, believes Trump has a unique appeal to Hispanic voters that doesn't necessarily trickle down to other Republican candidates. 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During the campaign, those operatives told the Tribune, President Joe Biden and Democrats struggled to convince voters they were doing enough to secure the southern border, while inflation hit the electorate's pocketbooks and proved an especially damaging issue for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris among Hispanic voters. 'Four years of open borders and 12 million illegal immigrants coming into this country did real damage across Texas, but in the Hispanic community in particular,' Cruz told The Texas Tribune last week. 'I think that was a big part of the reason why both President Trump and I won Hispanics statewide, and why the two of us flipped the Rio Grande Valley.' But Rocha doesn't think this means Trump and other Republicans are sure to hold onto those gains with Latino voters, who he labeled 'the newest swingy electorate in Texas.' Trump's approval rating is underwater among Hispanic voters. 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The Hill
37 minutes ago
- The Hill
Democrats contemplate walkout in Texas
Democratic legislators in Texas could flee the state to prevent the GOP from approving new maps that could expand Republicans' congressional majority. Texas and national Democrats have vowed to fight back while blasting the GOP plans, which could give Republicans five more seats, as discriminatory. Visiting with Democratic state lawmakers in Austin, U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) vowed Thursday that 'all options' should be on the table to stop the GOP plan. But because Democrats are a minority in the state Legislature, they have few options to stop the GOP and face an uphill battle legally and politically. One very real option would be to seek to deny the quorum necessary to keep the Texas state House and Senate functioning, something Democrats might have the numbers to accomplish. 'Democrats don't have many arrows left in their quiver. 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It is hoping to raise millions for 2026 challengers if the lines are redrawn. 'If the GOP and the Trump administration think that Texas is the first state that they should look at doing this in, the place that he's most concerned with losing ground in, then we are in play, and my hope is that national investment will come this way,' Hansen said. 'There's still an opportunity for Democrats in Texas. We just might not be able to help flip to the congressional majority that we would like.' And Democrats may have avenues for offsetting GOP gains in Texas with redistricting efforts in other states. 'There's a phrase in Texas: 'what happens here sometimes changes the world.' Well, this is the case where what's happening here is setting off a cascade effect across the country,' said Jon Taylor, the University of Texas at San Antonio's department chair of political science. 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'So you could end up with a situation where you've drawn districts that are supposedly for, you know, friendly for Republicans, and all of a sudden, in a year where the economy is going south, Trump's opinion poll numbers continue to decline, you end up with Democrats winning in districts that were designed for Republicans.'
Los Angeles Times
37 minutes ago
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It's Trump's economy now. The latest financial numbers offer some warning signs
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The economic numbers over the last week show the difficulties that Trump might face if the numbers continue on their current path: — Friday's jobs report showed that U.S. employers have shed 37,000 manufacturing jobs since Trump's tariff launch in April, undermining prior White House claims of a factory revival. — Net hiring has plummeted over the last three months with job gains of just 73,000 in July, 14,000 in June and 19,000 in May — a combined 258,000 jobs lower than previously indicated. On average last year, the economy added 168,000 jobs a month. — A Thursday inflation report showed that prices have risen 2.6% over the year that ended in June, an increase in the personal consumption expenditures price index from 2.2% in April. Prices of heavily imported items, such as appliances, furniture and toys and games, jumped from May to June. — On Wednesday, a report on gross domestic product — the broadest measure of the U.S. economy — showed that it grew at an annual rate of less than 1.3% during the first half of the year, down sharply from 2.8% growth last year. 'The economy's just kind of slogging forward,' said Guy Berger, senior fellow at the Burning Glass Institute, which studies employment trends. 'Yes, the unemployment rate's not going up, but we're adding very few jobs. The economy's been growing very slowly. It just looks like a 'meh' economy is continuing.' Trump has sought to pin the blame for any economic troubles on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, saying the Fed should cut its benchmark interest rates — even though doing so could generate more inflation. Trump has publicly backed two Fed governors, Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman, for voting for rate cuts at Wednesday's meeting. But their logic is not what the president wants to hear: They were worried, in part, about a slowing job market. But this is a major economic gamble being undertaken by Trump and those pushing for lower rates under the belief that mortgages will also become more affordable as a result and boost homebuying activity. His tariff policy has changed repeatedly over the last six months, with the latest import tax numbers serving as a substitute for what the president announced in April, which provoked a stock market sell-off. It might not be a simple one-time adjustment as some Fed board members and Trump administration officials argue. Of course, Trump can't say no one warned him about the possible consequences of his economic policies. Biden, then the outgoing president, did just that in a speech in December at the Brookings Institution, saying the cost of the tariffs would eventually hit American workers and businesses. 'He seems determined to impose steep, universal tariffs on all imported goods brought into this country on the mistaken belief that foreign countries will bear the cost of those tariffs rather than the American consumer,' Biden said. 'I believe this approach is a major mistake.' Boak and Rugber write for the Associated Press.
