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Big slice of Black residents in Memphis now have their votes folded into a county with a confederate flag on their seal [View all]
Emoluments Clause @Emolclause#BREAKING: Legendary #Maddow: “I should tell you, in Tennessee, a big slice of Black residents in Memphis will now have their votes folded into a White county called Williamson County. Williamson County literally STILL HAS a confederate flag on their county seal, but they’ll have just the right size of a slice of Black voters from Memphis to make sure they can never, with their other Memphis residents, elect a member of Congress of their choosing. There’s a reason why people are calling this Jim Crow 2.0. This REALLY IS plainly an effort to drag us back to the the post reconstruction era after the civil war…”😳
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Tennessee redistricting plan splits Memphis neighbors and reshapes midterms as other states follow
A portion of Shotwell Street in Memphis, Tenn., that is now a dividing line between two newly-redrawn congressional districts, is seen Thursday, May 7, 2026, in Memphis, Tenn.
AP /Sophie Bates
Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature redrew the congressional district of Memphis, which has long enjoyed its own Democratic-leaning U.S. House seat. Now, the city is split into three Republican-leaning districts, its majority-Black population sliced up and bound to mostly white, rural and conservative communities along lines that branch away from Fowler and Wilson’s East Memphis neighborhood.
The Memphis district predates the Voting Rights Act. For at least a century, well before Congress acted to protect minority voting rights, Tennessee has believed it made sense for its metropolis on the Mississippi River to have its own U.S. House district. But since that law was passed in 1965, anyone who tried to split up the district for partisan gain could be sued and have the maps thrown out. Now, legal experts say that is not much of a risk.
The conservative legislature in Nashville has clashed repeatedly with Memphis and accused its leaders of broad mismanagement. The legislature passed a law blocking many police overhaul efforts in Memphis that were put in place after the death of Tyre Nichols, an unarmed Black man, at the hands of city officers in 2023. It passed another measure seizing control of Memphis’ airport board and those of other cities across the state, and gave the state attorney general, also a Republican, the power to remove Memphis’ elected district attorney.
Thomas Goodman, a politics and law professor at Rhodes College in Memphis, notes that the new congressional districts may lead to greater friction over who receives attention — and funding — from lawmakers. Memphis residents will soon share districts with Republican towns with starkly different economies, geographies and demographics. Whoever holds those congressional seats will have an incentive to pay attention to those voters and not to Memphis’ population.
https://mississippitoday.org/2026/05/09/tennessee-redistricting-splits-memphis/
A portion of Shotwell Street in Memphis, Tenn., that is now a dividing line between two newly-redrawn congressional districts, is seen Thursday, May 7, 2026, in Memphis, Tenn.
AP /Sophie Bates
Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature redrew the congressional district of Memphis, which has long enjoyed its own Democratic-leaning U.S. House seat. Now, the city is split into three Republican-leaning districts, its majority-Black population sliced up and bound to mostly white, rural and conservative communities along lines that branch away from Fowler and Wilson’s East Memphis neighborhood.
The Memphis district predates the Voting Rights Act. For at least a century, well before Congress acted to protect minority voting rights, Tennessee has believed it made sense for its metropolis on the Mississippi River to have its own U.S. House district. But since that law was passed in 1965, anyone who tried to split up the district for partisan gain could be sued and have the maps thrown out. Now, legal experts say that is not much of a risk.
The conservative legislature in Nashville has clashed repeatedly with Memphis and accused its leaders of broad mismanagement. The legislature passed a law blocking many police overhaul efforts in Memphis that were put in place after the death of Tyre Nichols, an unarmed Black man, at the hands of city officers in 2023. It passed another measure seizing control of Memphis’ airport board and those of other cities across the state, and gave the state attorney general, also a Republican, the power to remove Memphis’ elected district attorney.
Thomas Goodman, a politics and law professor at Rhodes College in Memphis, notes that the new congressional districts may lead to greater friction over who receives attention — and funding — from lawmakers. Memphis residents will soon share districts with Republican towns with starkly different economies, geographies and demographics. Whoever holds those congressional seats will have an incentive to pay attention to those voters and not to Memphis’ population.
https://mississippitoday.org/2026/05/09/tennessee-redistricting-splits-memphis/
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