Responding to a Dire Threat to Tennessee's 9th Congressional District

May 1, 2026 Enewsletters Dear Friend, This week, I want to bring just one dire and dangerous issue to your attention. It’s the worst development affecting our 9 th Congressional District in decades. The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down the remaining protections for Black voters in the historic 1965 Voting Rights Act, potentially diluting the Black vote in Tennessee to the point of irrelevance. This has been the goal of President Trump and extremist Republicans for decades: silencing Black voices and stifling Black influence where it matters most. After Senator Marsha Blackburn asked Governor Bill Lee to call a special session of the General Assembly within minutes of the high Court’s decision, Trump himself weighed in Thursday with an insulting post on social media vowing to turn the 9 th Congressional District into another Republican rubber stamp vote for his dangerous agenda. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to Memphis, and died in Memphis, standing up for powerless Black sanitation workers. He did that after he saw President Lyndon Johnson sign the Voting Rights Act into law in 1965, a crowning achievement of the Civil Rights Movement, one born out of literal blood, sweat, and tears. Trump’s targeting of a majority-minority district, and Republicans’ proven lack of interest in helping the less fortunate, is an affront to Dr. King’s memory and to the legacy of hard work that generations of civil rights advocates have championed. It’s no secret Republicans do not care about alleviating poverty or providing health care for the vulnerable, or supporting nutritional benefits or any federal program that advances the interests of poor people. Dr. King frequently spoke of economic justice as a major element of true freedom, yet Republicans tend to omit that crucial detail when speaking of him. The Civil Rights Act had been a bulwark against their kind of policymaking, and now it’s gone. It’s like Black voters are being told to go to the back of the bus. For decades, housing segregation was law in the United States, where housing projects sponsored by the government had to specifically include segregated developments. As a result, Black and white Americans grew physically more distant. That is, the law required physical separation between Black and white Americans. And now the Supreme Court has gutted one of the very tools to rectify this injustice which ensured greater Black representation in Congress. It’s returning us the Plessy v. Furguson days of “separate but equal” legal segregation without real recourse to the federal courts. This is a dire situation. I plan to work with voting rights lawyers and other defenders of fair voting to do all I can, legally and politically, to prevent the harms this Jim Crow Supreme Court has unleashed on Tennessee and the country. This must be recognized and should be scorned by people of good will. Let your state legislator know this is the death knell for Black voting rights in Tennessee unless they stop it. With high hopes… Tennessee's nine Congressional Districts now: Possible map of Tennessee's nine Congressional Districts after redistricting: Like my dear friend and former colleague John Lewis recited in the quest for civil rights, “Just like a tree that’s planted by the waters, I shall not be moved.” As always, I remain Sincerely, Steve Cohen Member of Congress