There is a talking point circulating in Republican circles right now — amplified by Tennessee’s own GOP members — that goes something like this: Democrats control every congressional seat in the Northeast, so what Republicans are doing in the South is no different. Both sides gerrymander. Stop complaining.

It sounds reasonable until you look at the actual numbers. Then it falls apart completely.

Let’s do that.

The Northeast Argument

Maine has 2 congressional districts. New Hampshire has 2. Vermont has 1. Massachusetts has 9.

That is 14 total congressional seats across four Northeastern states — and yes, all of them are currently held by Democrats.

Here is why that is not gerrymandering.

Maine and New Hampshire each have only 2 districts. You cannot draw 2 districts in a way that meaningfully advantages one party over another when the state’s geography and population distribution determine the basic shape of the map. Vermont has 1 district. The entire state is one district. There is nothing to gerrymander.

Massachusetts has 9 districts, all Democratic. Republicans point to this as evidence of Democratic gerrymandering. The actual data tells a different story. In the 2024 presidential election, Massachusetts voted 61% for Kamala Harris. Approximately 1.3 million Massachusetts voters cast ballots for the Democratic presidential candidate. Fewer than 425,000 voted Republican. The Republican voter base in Massachusetts is not clustered into any geographic concentration — it is spread across the state, diluted by Democratic neighbors in every direction. You cannot draw a congressional district that produces a Republican majority when Republican voters are that dispersed across that political landscape.

That is not a gerrymandered map. That is mathematics applied to geography.

The Southern Comparison

Now look at the South.

Tennessee has 9 seats. Georgia has 14. Mississippi has 4. Alabama has 7. Florida has 28. Louisiana has 6. Texas has 38. Arkansas has 4. South Carolina has 7. North Carolina has 14.

Ten Southern states. 131 congressional seats.

To compare 4 Northeastern states with 14 seats to 10 Southern states with 131 seats as though they represent equivalent political situations is not a serious argument. It is a distraction designed to muddy the water around what is actually happening.

What Is Actually Happening in Tennessee

Eight days after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee called a special legislative session. In three days — so quickly that the final map was not published until the day before its passage — the Republican-controlled legislature redrew the state’s nine congressional districts.

The new map does two things with surgical precision.

It splits Memphis — Tennessee’s only majority-Black congressional district, the 9th District held by Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen, the state’s only remaining Democratic congressman — into three separate districts. Memphis is the second largest majority-Black city in the United States by population. Its Black voters, who vote overwhelmingly Democratic, have been carved up and distributed into three long, snaking districts that stretch hundreds of miles east into rural Republican territory, drowning the urban Democratic vote in a sea of rural Republican voters.

It further divides the Nashville metropolitan area — the state’s other major Democratic stronghold — into five separate districts, each carefully engineered to dilute Nashville’s Democratic voters with surrounding rural Republican communities.

Republican-leaning urban areas like Knoxville and Chattanooga were left entirely untouched. The map was not about balancing urban and rural representation. Analysis by the Nashville Banner found that the new districts are no more density-balanced than the previous map — except in Memphis, where the urban center was so clearly and deliberately divided. The districts’ compactness scores, measured by the Polsby-Popper method used by redistricting experts, decreased across the state — meaning the districts became less geographically rational and more artificially shaped to achieve a partisan result.

State Sen. John Stevens, the Republican who sponsored the map, said on the Senate floor that it was designed to "maximize Republicans’ ability to win nine seats in the upcoming midterm elections." He said this out loud. During the vote. While protesters chanted outside the chamber and Democratic lawmakers dressed in white gathered at the front of the dais.

State Sen. Charlane Oliver, a Nashville Democrat, stood on her desk and unfurled a sign reading: "No Jim Crow 2.0. Stop the TN Steal."

Democrats chanted "Hands off Memphis." The chamber cut off the audio feed.

The House passed the map 64-25, with three Republicans abstaining. The Senate passed it 25-5. Governor Lee signed it immediately.

Three federal lawsuits have already been filed and consolidated. The NAACP and the League of Women Voters allege intentional racial discrimination. The cases are working their way through the courts. Whether they move fast enough to affect November’s elections is the critical question.

The Difference Between the Northeast and the South

The difference between what is happening in Massachusetts and what is happening in Tennessee is not complicated.

In Massachusetts, Democrats hold all 9 congressional seats because 61% of the state’s voters consistently choose Democratic candidates. The Republican minority is geographically dispersed and cannot be concentrated into a majority district regardless of how the map is drawn. The map reflects the voters. That is how representative democracy is supposed to work.

In Tennessee, Republicans have deliberately carved the state’s only majority-Black congressional district into three pieces and distributed Nashville’s Democratic voters across five Republican-dominated districts — not because the geography or demographics require it, but because the Republican majority in the state legislature decided to do it. The map does not reflect Tennessee’s voters. It overrides them. That is the definition of gerrymandering.

Democratic state Rep. Gloria Johnson, who represents Knoxville, said during the floor debate: "This is not a special session. This is a white-power rally and a white-power grab."

Democratic Rep. Justin Jones walked off the House floor and burned a photograph of the Confederate flag.

These are not the reactions of a party that lost a fair political fight. They are the reactions of a community watching its representation be legally dismantled in a three-day session with a map that wasn’t published until the day before the final vote.

What Comes Next

Tennessee is the ninth state to enact a new congressional map ahead of the midterms. This redistricting wave began last year when Trump urged Republican-led states to redraw their maps specifically to insulate the Republican House majority against an unfavorable midterm environment. Trump’s approval rating of around 40% matches his numbers going into 2018, when Republicans lost 41 seats and control of the House. The redistricting is not about representation. It is about survival.

The stakes extend beyond congressional seats. The same logic applied to congressional maps will be applied to state legislative maps. The same tools used to eliminate Black representation in Congress will be turned on state houses. Every level of government where representation can be engineered away from communities of color is a potential target.

Democratic state Rep. Aftyn Behn put it directly during the floor debate: "Your vote today will forever be carved in the history of this state — that you will potentially vote to take the vote away from an African American community because you couldn’t earn their vote on your own. So today, hands off Memphis. Earn Memphis. Don’t cheat and take it away."

The Republican majority voted yes anyway.

Lawsuits have been filed. Courts will rule. The maps will be tested.

But if the courts don’t move fast enough, November’s elections will be conducted on maps drawn in three days, with a final version published 24 hours before the vote, specifically designed to ensure that the people of Memphis and Nashville have less say in who represents them than the rural Republican voters their ballots have been submerged into.

That is not representative democracy.

That is what happens when the people who write the rules decide the rules no longer need to apply to them.

Your vote matters. They are working this hard to dilute it precisely because it does.