Tennessee GOP advances aggressive gerrymander demanded by Trump

Heeding President Donald Trump’s call, Republicans in Tennessee moved forward with legislation to clear the way for their aggressive gerrymander just months before the midterm elections.

Through the congressional redistricting effort, the state GOP is preparing to carve up Tennessee’s Memphis-based 9th Congressional District, the state’s only Black-majority district and its lone Democratic seat.

Democratic lawmakers, civil rights leaders and Tennessee voters have strongly denounced the mid-decade redistricting effort as an explicit attempt to silence the political voice of Black voters in Memphis, one of the largest majority-Black cities in the country.

The effort comes after the Supreme Court last week gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) that barred the use of voting practices, including redistricting schemes, to dilute the voting power of racial minorities.

The new legislation, which was adopted by state House and Senate committees during a special legislative session Wednesday, will amend a state law that currently prohibits redistricting between censuses.

It’s expected to be swiftly passed by the GOP-controlled General Assembly, which would then rapidly force through a proposed congressional map.

The map, which was also adopted by Republican-controlled legislative committees Wednesday, targets a huge portion of the state’s Black population by splitting Memphis into three districts and the Nashville area into five.

During a House Congressional Redistricting Committee hearing, Republicans claimed that only population and politics were considered when the new map was created, not race.

The proposed map likely draws out Rep. Steve Cohen (D) of Memphis, the lone Democrat in Tennessee’s congressional delegation. 

“I think the Supreme Court has allowed Jim Crow to rise again in the South,” Cohen, who is white, told CNN Tuesday. “Memphis is not going to have congressional representation. We can fight it, but we can’t beat the Supreme Court. They knew what they were doing.” 

Reacting to the GOP’s proposed map Wednesday, Cohen called it “insane.”

“The GOP’s newly proposed TN Congressional maps would have people in Shelby County all the way to Williamson County—200+ miles apart—being ‘represented’ by the same Congressman,” he said. “It’s a blatant, corrupt power grab that would destroy the Black community’s and our entire city’s voice.”

If the map is formally adopted, it will mark the first time in history that Tennessee is an all-Republican state in Congress.

The first two days of Tennessee’s special legislative session were punctuated by impassioned outcries from Democrats and civil rights activists, who accused Republicans of reversing decades of gains in minority voting rights.

Voting rights activist and Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams spoke out against the proposed map during a Tennessee Senate committee hearing Wednesday.

“It is a deeply disturbing truth that Memphis, the place where Dr. King gave his life, is being told that your voices are so irrelevant that we are denying you even one voice in Congress — that one voice out of nine is too much for you,” she said.

The 9th Congressional District has historically functioned as a majority-Black district protected under the VRA — specifically Section 2 — to ensure Black voters could elect a candidate of their choice. Tennessee has a history of voter suppression targeting Black people that continues to this day.

The newly proposed map could face several legal challenges.

After a conversation with Trump last month, Lee called Tennessee lawmakers into a special session to pursue the redistricting effort after the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s current congressional map as an illegal racial gerrymander.

“We owe it to Tennesseans to ensure our congressional districts accurately reflect the will of Tennessee voters,” Lee said. “I believe the General Assembly has a responsibility to review the map and ensure it remains fair, legal, and defensible.”

Facing disastrous polling ahead of the midterms, Trump and the GOP have turned to gerrymandering electoral maps in their favor. The Supreme Court’s recent ruling likely made that much easier.