GOP Redrawing Splits Tennessee’s Only Majority-Black District

After the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act, Tennessee’s GOP-led legislature redrew the map, breaking Memphis’s Ninth District—long a Democratic base with a Black majority—into three Republican-leaning districts and eliminating the state’s sole majority-Black district. Republicans say the changes are about population shifts and politics, not race, while critics argue they dilute Black voting power; Nashville’s district was similarly reconfigured in recent years. The move fits a broader wave of partisan redistricting in the South, with primaries set for Aug. 6.