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But there is one exception. Transparency. We are allowed to be vocal advocates for open government, for public engagement in the legislative process, and for easy-to-access information.
Tenessee’s special session was called after 4 o’clock on a Friday afternoon. Less than a week later, Tennessee’s Congressional maps have fundamentally changed.
It’s not like there isn’t aren’t examples of how to be a more forthcoming with citizens.
The General Assembly broke up a different Democratic strongholdjust a few years ago — Nashville. It happened during a regular legislative session. It went through a typical committee process. The maps came out weeks before lawmakers adopted them.
This session, maps were published 24 hours before the vote.
My home state, Oklahoma, has plenty of problems and in many ways, is even under stronger single-party rule than Tennessee. But for comparison, Oklahoma lawmakers announced their post-2020-census plans to redistrict with a year of notice, held 20 town halls across the state, and allowed voters to submit their own map proposals.
On top of all this, the Tennessee redistricting bills included a provision saying the state doesn’t have to mail voters notices when their polling places change. They can just post it on a website. What if someone doesn’t have access to a computer? Or isn’t plugged in to esoteric county-level election infrastructure well enough to know which website to use?
Redistricting Memphis happened in less than a week. Here’s what went down yesterday.
WHAT TO KNOW
Tennessee House Democratic members staged a walkout during the hearing on a measure to re-draw the state’s Congressional districts.
(Photo: Marianna Bacallao, WPLN News) Heeding a call from President Donald Trump to give Republicans more seats in Congress, Tennessee’s GOP-led statehouse voted to carve the reliably blue district encompassing Memphis into three districts nearly guaranteed to go red.
This all started because the U.S. Supreme Court reinterpreted the Voting Rights Act, and ruled that it actually doesn’tprotect majority-Black districts from being broken up. That policy had been protecting Memphis, which after 2022, was the state’s sole Democratic district.
Democrats in both chambers staged walkouts as the measure passed. Three protesters from Memphis were arrested for refusing to clear the balcony at the House Speaker’s discretion, including the brother of Rep. Justin J. Pearson, D-Memphis, who had been running for congress in Memphis’s former 9th Congressional District.
“These maps are racist tools of white supremacy at the behest of the most powerful white supremacists in the United States of America, Donald J. Trump,” Rep. Pearson said. “What you are doing today is eviscerating the only Black-majority congressional district in our state because we are majority Black.”
Pearson, along with other Black lawmakers in the House, pointed to the historical obstacles Black voters have faced.
“This map was drafted based on politics, based on population and the opportunity for the first time in history for us to send an entire Republican delegation from Tennessee to represent the state in Washington, D.C.,” said Rep. Jason Zachary, R-Knox.
Republican state Sen. John Stevens defended the new districts he sponsored by noting that Democrats in Illinois, Massachusetts and other states also had drawn congressional districts to their advantage.
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MORE TO KNOW
- People in Appalachia die from “diseases of despair” at a rate 37% higher than the rest of the country. That’s according to a joint report from East Tennessee State University and the University of Chicago. The category includes drug overdoses, alcoholic liver disease and suicide. The report finds the mortality rate overall and from these diseases of despair declined between a pandemic era peak in 2021 and 2023. And researchers say the death rate is falling faster in Appalachia, indicating a stronger rebound than the rest of the country.
- The identities of people applying for top government jobs in cities and counties across Tennessee could soon become private, the Tennessean reports.Right now, job searches for city managers, department heads and school superintendents are public, providing transparency and the opportunity for public feedback. But a new law passed by the legislature allows candidates to request confidentiality. The Knoxville News Sentinel reports proponents say the idea will allow more top-quality candidates to apply without fearing retribution from their current employers. But critics, like Deborah Fisher of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, says the hiring process for influential public employees should be fair and open, not “shrouded in secrecy.”
- There are new monkeys at the Nashville Zoo!Schmidt’s red-tailed monkeys, to be exact. The zoo says the small, colorful species is from Central Africa and is known for their expressive faces. Three of them will join other monkeys in the Leopard Forest section of the zoo.
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