Tennessee Republicans redraw maps to erase last Democratic, Black-majority district

Tennessee’s Republican-dominated legislature passed redistricting maps on Thursday, eliminating the state’s one Democratic, Black-majority congressional district a week after the US supreme court effectively gutted a major section of the Voting Rights Act. The move cracks Tennessee’s ninth congressional district, which covers Memphis, into three pieces, each of which contains almost exactly a third of the city’s Black voters. The new maps mean that all nine of Tennessee’s congressional districts are Republican-leaning. The district had closely occupied the south-west corner of the state. Now three districts snake out from Memphis’ dense center, with two crossing the Tennessee River to reach Nashville’s suburbs 200 miles away. “If Republican policies are so great, why are we changing the lines to rig elections?” asked Vincent Dixie, a state representative from Nashville, during debate on Thursday, pleading for Republicans to refrain. “Where is your humanity in this?” As Democratic lawmakers spoke, the house speaker directed state troopers to remove a section of the audience in the gallery, which had begun shouting. Justin Jones, a state Democratic representative, described Cameron Sexton, the Tennessee house speaker, as the “grand wizard in chief”, 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 “Jim Crow process”. …