{"id":416864,"date":"2026-05-07T21:05:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T21:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/416864\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T21:05:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T21:05:09","slug":"tennessee-republicans-redraw-maps-to-erase-last-democratic-black-majority-district-tennessee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/416864\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennessee Republicans redraw maps to erase last Democratic, Black-majority district | Tennessee"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tennessee\u2019s<\/a> Republican-dominated legislature passed redistricting maps on Thursday, eliminating the state\u2019s one Democratic, Black-majority congressional district a week after the US supreme court<\/a> effectively gutted a major section of the Voting Rights Act.<\/a><\/p>\n

The move cracks Tennessee\u2019s ninth congressional district, which covers Memphis, into three pieces, each of which contains almost exactly a third of the city\u2019s Black voters. The new maps mean that all nine of Tennessee\u2019s congressional districts are Republican-leaning.<\/p>\n

The district had closely occupied the south-west corner of the state. Now three districts snake out from Memphis\u2019 dense center, with two crossing the Tennessee River to reach Nashville\u2019s suburbs 200 miles away.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Republican policies are so great, why are we changing the lines to rig elections?\u201d asked Vincent Dixie, a state representative from Nashville, during debate on Thursday, pleading for Republicans to refrain. \u201cWhere is your humanity in this?\u201d<\/p>\n

As Democratic lawmakers spoke, the house speaker directed state troopers to remove a section of the audience in the gallery, which had begun shouting.<\/p>\n

Justin Jones, a state Democratic representative, described Cameron Sexton, the Tennessee house speaker, as the \u201cgrand wizard in chief\u201d, and handed a Republican lawmaker a Confederate flag. Jones offered amendments to the bill, which the speaker ruled had been submitted in an untimely manner. Jones described that as a \u201cJim Crow process\u201d.<\/p>\n

The redistricting comes eight days after the supreme court\u2019s landmark Callais v Landry<\/a> decision, which invalidated swaths of the Voting Rights Act which had restrained state governments from drawing congressional districts that left Black voters at a political disadvantage.<\/p>\n

Despite demands from Donald Trump<\/a> for conservative states to conduct mid-decade redistricting, Tennessee had refrained from taking action before the court\u2019s ruling. But Sexton said the redraw will \u201censure the state\u2019s representation in Washington reflects its conservative values\u201d.<\/p>\n

Trump defeated Kamala Harris<\/a> in Tennessee by 64-34 in the 2024 US presidential election. One-third of Tennessee voters cast a ballot for a Democratic congressional representative in 2024. Republicans hold eight of the state\u2019s nine congressional seats.<\/p>\n

Testifying before a committee hearing in Tennessee on Wednesday, the voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams said that the state\u2019s general assembly had been asked \u201cto dismantle the protections that helped bury the abomination of Jim Crow\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cDemocracy is an action \u2013 one that says I will share my power with those I disagree with because it is the only way to guarantee our common future,\u201d said Abrams. \u201cBacksliding into authoritarianism, where one party and one race holds dominion is unworthy of the Volunteer state. Whether by consequence or intention, it is wrong. It is unworthy of a nation that revolted when power was held by the few \u2013 a truth we celebrate 250 years hence.\u201d<\/p>\n

As is characteristic of Tennessee lawmakers, little regard was given to Democratic opposition, said Justin Pearson, a state representative and Memphis<\/a> Democrat running to replace the long-serving congressman Steve Cohen. Pearson was one of three Democratic lawmakers expelled from the state legislature for conducting a floor protest over gun legislation in 2023.<\/p>\n

Pearson described the legislation as the most significant thing Tennessee lawmakers will do in a generation, and that it was being done with perfunctory debate. After half an hour or so, the committee cleared out from the hearing room on Wednesday, to reconvene without the public present to vote on the measure.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpeakers who came to speak were given three minutes to talk. There was question and answer, and then they were told, even though there were four more bills that they could speak on, that that would be it,\u201d said Pearson. \u201cWe had to force them to agree to time limit on the legislation, so that we would at least have some opportunity to speak on it, or members of the Republican party would have called the question immediately.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s mobcratic rule that we have here in our state, and that\u2019s what happened with our expulsion.\u201d<\/p>\n

London Lamar, a state senator from Memphis, described the vote as an insult to her city.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis past legislative session, you didn\u2019t like our school board and took that over,\u201d she said. \u201cYou didn\u2019t like our airport authority and took that over. And now you don\u2019t like the way Memphis votes. You\u2019re going to take that away from us too. You cannot believe in local control while stripping Memphis voters from meaningful representation.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou cannot claim to respect democracy while changing the rules after candidates have already qualified to run,\u201d he added. \u201cYou are creating chaos on purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lamar, Jeff Yarbro, a state senator from Nashville, and other Democrats questioned Tennessee senate Republicans about the underlying intent of lawmakers with regard to race and partisanship.<\/p>\n

Lamar noted that while Black voters have been split nearly evenly between three districts, 72% of white Democrats ended up in the newly drawn eighth district.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not how you do a partisan gerrymandering,\u201d Lamar said. \u201cWhy does this map that we are considering here today treat the Black Democrats of Memphis so differently than the white Democrats of Memphis?<\/p>\n

\u201cThis proposed map maximizes the ability of Republicans to win nine seats in the upcoming midterm elections,\u201d Johnson replied.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tennessee\u2019s Republican-dominated legislature passed redistricting maps on Thursday, eliminating the state\u2019s one Democratic, Black-majority congressional district a week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-416864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}