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Tennessee redraws Memphis
Tennessee Republicans approved a new U.S. House map on Thursday that carves up a majority-Black district in Memphis, reshaping it to the GOP’s advantage as part of President Donald Trump’s strategy for the November midterm elections.
“Tennessee Republicans on Thursday passed a new congressional map that would crack Shelby County”
The map targets the state’s lone Democratic-held seat held by Democrat Steve Cohen, and it is designed to crack Shelby County, which includes majority-Black Memphis, into three different districts.
The legislative push followed a U.S. Supreme Court decision last week that weakened the Voting Rights Act’s protections against racial discrimination in redistricting, and Tennessee Republicans used that change to move quickly through a special session.
Democratic state Sen. Charlane Oliver denounced the redistricting as a “Jim Crow” effort while holding a banner in the Senate chamber, and Republican leadership adjourned the special session to send the map to Gov. Bill Lee.
Tennessee’s primary is scheduled for Aug. 6, and the new map is expected to go into effect for that election once Lee signs it into law.
Protests and rival claims
At the Tennessee State Capitol, Democrats protested the new map as demonstrators chanted loudly in the galleries and hallways, and Democratic state Sen. Charlane Oliver clapped and danced while Republican leadership moved the legislation forward.
State Rep. Justin Pearson, a Memphis Democrat challenging Cohen in a primary, called the new district maps “racist tools of white supremacy,” while Republican lawmakers defended the plan as partisan and aimed at sending an all-Republican delegation to Washington, D.C.
Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton said the proposed districts were drawn based on population and politics, not racial data, but Democrats dismissed those assertions.
State Sen. London Lamar, a Democrat from Memphis, said, “You cannot take a majority Black city, fracture its voting power and then tell us race has nothing to do with it,” linking the map to the Voting Rights Act weakening.
NPR also reported that Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee called a special legislative session targeting the 9th Congressional District held by Steve Cohen after the Supreme Court ruling.
What’s at stake next
The new map is part of a broader mid-decade redistricting push after Trump urged Republican-led states to redraw their lines, and CNN said more Southern states could follow Tennessee’s example.
“But more Southern states could follow.”
CNN reported that Republicans in Louisiana, Alabama and South Carolina also have taken steps toward redistricting, and it noted that Louisiana postponed its congressional primary to give time for state lawmakers to craft a new House map.
In Tennessee, the legislation quickly signed into law by Lee is tied to the Aug. 6 primary, and CNN described the proposed map as breaking up the majority-Black city of Memphis to create a ripple effect of alterations across western and central parts of the state.
The dispute is also framed as a legal and political fight over timing and race, with WSMV reporting that the map would go into effect for the 2026 August primary once Lee signs the measures passed on Thursday.
As protests continued around the special session, WSMV quoted Sen. Raumesh Akbari saying, “Memphis is not Williamson County; Memphis is not a puzzle piece to be stretched across this state,” underscoring the stakes for Memphis residents under the new lines.
