Original air date: September 21st 2025

“The Grapes of Wrath” was a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about Americans displaced from their farmland, in part due to government policies. Today, a true life version is playing out in the rural South. A secretive multi-billion dollar federal agency is at the heart of an American battle between government and landowners. It’s the Tennessee Valley Authority, led by a CEO who was making 26 times more than the president of the United States. In our story, the landowners are joined by a country music star turned activist who’s fighting with a mission and a song.

The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.

In the rolling hills of Cheatham County, Tennessee, outside Nashville, family farms stretch back generations and a war over the land has broken out.

On one side, hundreds of families like George Wade and his wife.

George Wade: If it can happen to us, it can happen to you. Any federal bureaucracy such as TVA that answers to no one, but the president is going to abuse you sooner or later. In this case, they absolutely invaded this county.

On the other side, the Tennessee Valley Authority or TVA, a mammoth-sized power company and federal agency. Nanette Malher’s property was in the crosshairs.

Sharyl: Can you tell me how you first heard and what you heard they wanted to do?

Nanette Malher: Well, in 2019, they sent a, a historical surveyor out to find out who lived here, how many people lived in the houses, if it they had any historical value. That was 2019.

Sharyl: But that was TVA?

Malher: Well, he wouldn’t tell me where he was from.

Eventually, Malher says, a stream of mysterious visitors fessed up to why they were there: to explore building a giant methane gas and lithium-ion battery plant nearby.

Malher: I made those, the TVA guys walk down the road with me and I said“Where will the plant be?” And I said, “Right there”? And, they shook their heads. And I said, “Now just tell me, will I be able to live here? Will my neighbors be able to live here?” “No,” this was the answer, “No.” So at that point I thought, “Okay, I’ve got nothing to lose. I’ve gotta fight this tooth and nail.” I think they thought we were just Podunk country people out here. But we’ve got very intelligent people.

One of them, it turns out, is country music star John Rich.

John Rich: So as I began to interview neighbors, I came here to Nanette’s house. I went to George Wade’s house. I started just really showing up with a selfie stick and an iPhone. I became an investigative journalist, kind of like what you do.

John Rich has a personal connection to Cheatham County including family who still live here.

He says he was moved by this video taken last year. It shows a TVA troop of unmarked trucks, surveyors, and armed security— rolling in.

Property owners didn’t mince words.

Resident: For the record, I don’t want you here. Just sayin that. Want everybody to know I don’t want you here. This project hasn’t been approved, there’s no need for all this. You guys are going around the due process.

TVA Surveyor: Well anything you have to say needs to be directed thru your attorney. Anything outside a cordial, us telling you what we are doing needs to be directed thru your attorney thru our office of general counsel.

That day, the TVA parked their trucks on the farm of Sue Nicholson. She owns about 200 acres off Sweet Home Road. Neighbors recorded the encounter, and explained to Nicholson why the TVA was there.

Resident: And they’re here today to take some measurements of your property to put up some high voltage transmission lines.

Sue Nicholson: You think you own something? You don’t own nothing.

When you saw that video, what did you think the first time you saw it?

Rich: When I saw Ms. Nicholson on that video realizing what TVA was trying to do to her property, my blood ran absolutely cold like ice water. And when I saw that old lady’s face, the only thing I could think of was my Granny Rich. And I thought she, that lady’s not my Granny Rich, but she’s somebody’s Granny Rich. She’d been on that land her entire life. And who are these thugs coming out here? I mean, it looked like an ATF raid showing up on her property, loaded weapons vest, standing there like this, like big tough guys. And I said, that is the most egregious un-American communistic tactic I’ve ever seen in my life. Okay. That’s it. Gloves off. I don’t know how what we’re gonna do, but fists up. Here we come. And that’s when the fight started.

To understand this fight, you need to know more about the TVA. Created in 1933 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, it was tasked with building dams and electrifying the rural South, and powering the Manhattan Project during World War II— the secret effort to build the first atomic bombs.

Nearly a century later, the TVA remains virtually unchanged, controlling the power grid across seven states and wielding immense power, answering only to the President, often seizing land through eminent domain when residents refuse to sell it.

In fairness, Nashville’s explosive growth has strained the region’s power grid, prompting the TVA to act. And TVA has historically kept electric prices lower than the U.S. average.

But what baffles Rich is why the agency seemed to be ignoring an alternative site it already owns— one that wouldn’t displace anybody. On a boat ride with local mayors, they verified that the site of an old coal plant, dismantled under President Obama, could house the methane gas plant.

Rich: So basically what you’re looking at is a wide-open spot that could be used for electric generation.

Mayor: It’s all there.

Rich: It’s all right there. So that begs the question why are you coming to Cheatham County to tear it in half when you’ve got it sitting right here and you’ve got a county that would love to see TVA come right back here and turn it on, is that all accurate?

Mayor: That’s it.

Rich: So that’s over a square mile of property that already has transmission lines, already has gas lines running to Nashville. All this infrastructure is there. Why on earth would TVA not do that? Why are they coming to Cheatham County and trying to tear this place to smithereens? And they said they won’t answer that question.

To residents, suspicion is fueled by what they see as the TVA’s secrecy, industry connections, and jaw-dropping executive salaries, topped off by its recent past CEO, Jeffrey Lyash. He raked in $10.5 million a year—making him likely the highest-paid government employee in the U.S.

In July, Rich’s relentless advocacy on social media— and a text message to President Trump— got the Trump administration to intervene.

The TVA announced a sudden, huge change: “Based upon feedback received in response to TVA’s public scoping process and at Board listening sessionsWith input from the TVA Board of Directors, the site off Lockertsville Road is no longer TVA’s preferred alternative.”

Sharyl: What are your thoughts about the notion that the community may have been successful in beating back plans that some people didn’t like?

Malher: Well, I’ll tell you this. If were not for John Rich, they wouldn’t have listened to us at all. We, the little people out here do not have a voice. TVA has become a government sanctioned mafia. And I’m not kidding. if this agency can come and do this, and they’ve done it for a hundred years, if they can continue to do this in 2025, we don’t live in America. It’s a lie.

Rich: This is the TVA’s gate that enters the property to where

Rich says this site may be off the table for now but his job isn’t done.

Rich: The unfortunate thing is Cheatham County is not unique in this situation. TVA not only has been doing this since the 1930s, they’re doing it to other people too. Right now, this very second, there are other communities that are in the cross hairs as well.

Rich: And this Cheatham County story, this David and Goliath story, it’s, it’s a song. And so I wrote a song called “The Devil and the TVA” because that’s how they operate and that’s how they’re thought of. The lyrics of the chorus start off with the words that Mrs. Nicholson said into the camera when she snapped out of her dementia for about 10 seconds. The chorus goes: “You think you own something, but you don’t own nothing”

Music video: but you don’t own nothing. When the government man comes around, puts his dirty ass boots on your ground, laughs at your protest with a gun and a bulletproof vest, he don’t care what you have to say. He’s just gonna do it anyway. He’ll smile and grin and then take your farm away. He’ll tear it all to hell right in your face. Now, the devil ain’t got nothing on the TVA.

Sharyl (on-camera): TVA declined our repeated interview requests. For more on this story, check out my podcast Full Measure After Hours.

Watch video here.