Tennessee Gov. Lee calls special session to redistrict Memphis-based Black majority congressional seat

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee calls the state legislature into a special session starting Tuesday, May 5, to redraw the state's 9th Congressional District — a majority-Black Memphis-based seat held by Democrat Steve Cohen, the only Democrat in Tennessee's congressional delegation. Lee acts after Trump publicly posts on Truth Social that Lee told him he \"would work hard\" to put a new congressional map in place. The state's August primary deadline creates an extremely compressed timeline for drawing, passing, and defending new maps in court. Democrats note that in 2022 the Tennessee Supreme Court blocked redistricting as too close to an election. Tennessee's candidate qualifying period closed in March. If redistricting proceeds, the likely strategy would be to break up Memphis into multiple pieces, each absorbed by heavily Republican rural and suburban counties — a \"cracking\" approach designed to dilute the 9th District's concentrated Democratic vote and potentially produce an all-Republican congressional delegation.