Political Glance
Early this month, a single pen stroke effectively ended representative Steve Cohen’s career in Congress. The man who has represented Memphis for 19 years will turn 77 later this month, but he wasn’t planning on retiring. He hadn’t lost any primary. The reason was that his district had been erased around him.
A new electoral map, passed by the Republican-led state legislature and signed by Bill Lee, the governor, divides the ninth district three ways. “Last week Tennessee Republicans silenced the Black vote here in Memphis to make Republican victories likely,” Cohen said in his statement. That’s succinct and accurate.
The new map folds a significant portion of Cohen’s Black constituents into Williamson county, which sits south of Nashville and was, until recently, the subject of a different fight.
To this day, the Williamson county seal depicts a Confederate battle flag draped over a cannon. It was adopted in 1968, at the height of the civil rights movement. A Tennessee court ruled in 2024 that the county could remove it. The state legislature responded the following year by passing a new law specifically designed to keep the flag on the seal. The vote was 70-24 in the House and 27-6 in the Senate, with no Democrats voting in favor. Lee, who is from Williamson county, signed it.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected a bid by Virginia Democrats to revive a voting map designed to help their party wrest control of the U.S. House of Representatives from President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans in November’s midterm elections.
Democrat Chedrick Greene has won a special state Senate election in Michigan, NBC News projects, ensuring his party will keep control of the closely divided chamber.
Since Donald Trump’s first term, they have been viewed comfortingly as the “adults in the room,” a last line of defense against the impulsive whims of a president with access to the nuclear codes.
A federal judge in Massachusetts on Thursday determined that President Trump’s halt on processing immigration applications for citizens of countries listed under his travel ban was unlawful, granting an injunction on a policy she determined was unfairly leaving thousands in limbo.
A group of Senate Republicans led by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) are pushing a bill to fund the construction of a secure 90,000-square-foot ballroom at the White House and say the project is essential to national security after a gunman tried to storm the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Saturday.
New York officials are suing the Trump administration to recover more than $73 million in highway funding, in a fight over noncitizens’ access to commercial drivers licenses.
