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(TENNESSEE) — As protesters accused them of racial gerrymandering, Tennessee state lawmakers passed into law on Thursday a new congressional map that could allow Republicans to flip the state’s lone Democratic-held seat, notching the GOP another win in the mid-decade redistricting scramble.

Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed the bill into law Thursday afternoon.

The session was interrupted by chaotic scenes with lawmakers shouting over protesters’ voices and at one point forcing police clear the balcony above the House floor before it voted on the new map.

The new map breaks up the state’s current 9th Congressional District, which is primarily made up of Memphis, and the state’s only majority-Black district. The district is currently represented by Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen.

The legislature also passed bills on Thursday that will allow the state to legally redistrict outside of the normal once-a-decade cycle, as well as providing funding to help implement the new map in time for the 2026 elections.

Impact on the midterms and representation in Congress

With the map passed, it paves the way for President Donald Trump and Republicans to gain an additional House seat in the next Congress, increasing their chances of maintaining control of the House as they continue their redistricting battle across the country.

Tennessee Democrats will likely not have any representation in Congress next year if Republicans flip the seat and the map will dilute the Black vote by breaking up Memphis.

But legal challenges against the map are expected.

Cohen said Thursday he will file a lawsuit against the new map.

Cohen posted on X after the vote “[President Donald] Trump knows he HAS TO rig the game to keep his majority in November. And the TN GOP was willing to go along with it. It’s shameful. Next stop is the courts.”

Cohen had said earlier this week on CNN that the Republicans’ redistricting effort was a foregone conclusion, adding that he hopes the new congressional map can take effect in 2028 rather than 2026. 

The speed at which the process occurred was remarkable — it was only last week that the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s congressional map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, dealing a blow to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. 

And just one day after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, Trump posted on Truth Social that he spoke with Lee and that the governor said he would work to redraw the state’s congressional maps in order to net another GOP seat for Tennessee in the House. Lee called a special session the next day, April 30, to review the state’s congressional map.

Potential redistricting efforts are also currently underway in Louisiana, Alabama and South Carolina, although each state has different procedural or legal barriers to overcome.

With Tennessee’s new map, Republicans potentially could flip 14 Democratic-held seats in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida. Democrats could pick up 10 from new maps passed in California, Utah and Virginia.

Acrimonious debate and protests in the state capitol

The proposed congressional map underwent much acrimonious debate and protest inside the legislature on Thursday before it was passed.

On the House floor, Democratic representatives condemned the map, saying it would dilute the Black vote in the state. At one point, chants of “our house!” started in the House gallery.

As the vote came up for the new map on the House side, chaos erupted in the room. A trooper was asked to clear out the balcony above the House floor as people protested.

Earlier, Democratic State Rep. Justin Pearson, who is running for Congress in the 9th District that will be broken up on the new map, said that “what is happening here is immoral and wrong.”

“This is about attacking, targeting and cracking District 9 into pieces for more political and racial dominance and white supremacy in the state of Tennessee. And we need to realize that the Callais decision that you all are basing your decisions off of that gutted the Voting Rights Act, that that Voting Rights Act was paid in blood,” Pearson said.

Pearson later confronted law enforcement officers, ABC affiliate WKRN reported, as they worked on clearing the House gallery of protestors. Pearson later said his brother KeShaun Pearson was arrested.

After the House passed the bill and it was taken up in the Senate, Republican state Sen. John Stevens spoke in support of the new map over audible protests and yelling.

“Tennessee is a conservative state, and I submit its congressional delegation should reflect that. The proposed map ensures that,” Stevens said.

He later said, “This bill represents Tennessee’s attempt to maximize our partisan advantage and allow Tennesseans to support a national Congress to be a Republican majority.”

But Democratic state Sen. London Lamar, who is Black, slammed the new map during debate as an attack on Black voters and said it “diminishes Memphis.”

“This map does not reflect Memphis. It diminishes Memphis. It slices our city into pieces and stretches our communities hundreds of miles away to places of different needs, different economies, different histories and different lived realities,” she said. “You cannot take a majority-Black city, fracture its voting power and then tell us race has nothing to do with it. Racism does not become less racist because it’s called partisan.”

Later, chants of “Hands off Memphis!” rang out and another lawmaker soon unfurled a banner that read “NO JIM CROW 2.0 – STOP THE TN STEAL.”

The Senate passed the map soon after.

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(WASHINGTON) — In a case with potentially major ramifications for the 2026 midterm elections and all federal elections going forward, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday is considering a Republican Party bid to prevent states from counting mail-in ballots received after Election Day even if they were postmarked on or before.

Thirty states plus D.C. and several U.S. territories have laws allowing tabulation of some late-arriving ballots provided that they were timely cast and received within a specified post-election timeframe, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The case before the justices centers on Mississippi’s acceptance of absentee ballots up to five days after Election Day so long as they were received by the Postal Service on or before.

The Republican National Committee, which brought the lawsuit, alleges the policy violates federal law establishing the Tuesday after the first Monday in November as the day for election of members of the House, Senate, and presidential electors, in specified years.

Republicans argue that the term “election” means both “ballot submission and receipt” and that Congress intended that it be completed on a single day.

“Allowing states to count large numbers of mail-in ballots that are received after Election Day undermines trust and confidence in our elections,” said RNC chair Joe Gruters in a statement on the case. “Elections must end on Election Day.”

Mississippi and several voter advocacy groups defending the state law insist “election” has historically meant when voters make their “choice” by marking and submitting their ballots — not necessarily when they are received and counted.

“The weight of the law and the weight of the precedent is on our side,” said Marc Elias, a prominent Democratic election law attorney representing some of the parties defending the Mississippi law.

A Supreme Court decision in favor of the RNC could upend voting policies and procedures in dozens of states five months before voters head to the polls for the midterm elections.

Voting rights advocates also warn that an abrupt change in policy could lead to widespread rejection of ballots that were properly cast by well-intended voters but experienced unintended delivery delays by the Postal Service or other circumstances.

Hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots in the 2024 general election arrived after Election Day but were still legally counted that year across 22 states and territories with a post-election grace period, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

Many states that accept late-arriving absentee ballots implemented their policies during the COVID-19 pandemic when vote by mail surged in popularity and Postal Service delays raised concerns about inadvertent disenfranchisement.

Extended ballot receipt deadlines have also been aimed at helping active duty military service members and other Americans living overseas who cast their ballots from afar.

Elias said he believes the RNC suit — against a Republican-led state with minimal absentee voting — was part of a broader effort on the part of President Donald Trump and his allies to make it more difficult to vote by mail under the belief the practice favors Democrats.

“I don’t suspect that spending millions of dollars to affect the handful of ballots in the state of Mississippi that only allows excuse absentee voting anyway to be counted after Election Day is what the RNC is really after,” said Elias. “This is just a partisan effort to undermine mail-in voting.”

In March 2025, Trump signed an executive order that attempted to cut federal election funding to states that have mail ballot receipt grace periods, but it has largely been blocked by federal courts for now.

The president later said on social media that he is leading a “movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS,” claiming, without providing evidence, that they lead to voter fraud.

Trump has also been pushing Republicans in Congress to approve the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act, which would — in part — outlaw voting by mail for anyone without a legitimate excuse, such as military service, illness, or disability, making it impossible to vote in person.

Data on which party would potentially benefit from changes to mail ballot rules is not clear.

Most Americans, 58%, support allowing any voter to cast a ballot by mail, according to a Pew Research Center survey late last year. But there is sharp division among parties, with 83% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters favoring mail-voting with 68% of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters opposed.

The Trump administration, which is not a party to the case, told the court in an amicus brief that it strongly supports a decision striking down Mississippi’s law and others like it.

“Ensuring all ballot boxes close on the same day eliminates incentives and opportunities for fraudulent abuse,” wrote Solicitor General John Sauer. “Leaving them open conflicts not only with the ordinary meaning of ‘election day,’ but also with the very integrity of the election.”

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, a Republican, dismissed that claim in a filing with the court, arguing that neither ballot receipt nor ballot counting is part of the “election” and that both have historically extended beyond Election Day.

“Counting votes is not part of the election,” Fitch told the court. “That is why counting votes lawfully can and does occur after Election Day. So, too, with ballot receipt: it is vital — but it is not part of the election itself. So, states may do what the Mississippi legislature has done: make a ‘policy choice’ to require only that absentee ballots be mailed by election day.”

A decision is expected in the case by the end of June.

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(WASHINGTON) — The historic treaty binding the U.S. and Russia to limit their deployment of the world’s most dangerous nuclear weapons lapsed overnight with no clear indication from Washington or Moscow on whether new talks would take place.

President Donald Trump, who in September appeared to be warming to the idea of renewing the treaty, backtracked last month, saying he would be comfortable allowing it to expire and hoped any new agreement would involve other parties.

“You probably want to get a couple of other players involved, also,” Trump told the New York Times.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that any new arms control pact should include China, even though Beijing’s nuclear stockpile is dramatically smaller than that of the U.S. and Russia and any ceiling a deal might set would not be symmetrical to China’s arsenal.

“The president’s been clear in the past that in order to have true arms control in the 21st century, it’s impossible to do something that doesn’t include China, because of their vast and rapidly growing stockpile,” Rubio said.

Dmitry Peskov, the spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin, confirmed the agreement was expiring Thursday.

“We view this negatively and regret this development,” he said, adding an offer from Putin to extend the deal went unanswered.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said his country would not take part in a trilateral arrangement.

“The nuclear forces of China and the U.S. are not on the same level at all, and it is neither fair nor reasonable to ask China to join the nuclear disarmament negotiations at this stage,” he said.

Last remaining arms control agreement

The New START treaty, which was struck between President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in 2010 and went into effect the following year, was the last remaining arms control pact in force between the two nations, limiting the deployment of nuclear-capable weapons systems like intercontinental ballistic missiles and bombers — and placing a limit on the number of nuclear warheads which could be activated.

The U.S. and Russia have remained under the numeric limits of the treaty, whose “whole value” is “to have predictability between the United States and Russia,” said Rose Gottemoeller, a former State Department official who served as America’s chief negotiator on New START.

The U.S. has accused Russia of violating the treaty after Moscow suspended inspection and verification mechanisms during the COVID-19 pandemic, but Washington never accused the Russians of failing to adhere to the limits.

“The fact of the legally binding treaty limits [itself] has placed the brakes on any Russian attempt to build up the deployed systems,” said Gottemoeller, adding the U.S. has intelligence capabilities to unilaterally understand whether Russia is breaking promises under the treaty.

In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered the U.S. a one-year extension of New START, which Trump initially called a “good idea.”

But the U.S. never officially responded, according to Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy aide.

In a statement to ABC News, The White House said that “the President will decide the path forward on nuclear arms control, which he will clarify on his own timeline.”

Russia and China have demonstrated increasing nuclear capabilities in recent years, a NATO official told ABC News. For its part, Russia has adopted a “posture of strategic intimidation” in its nuclear rhetoric, the official added.

Putin has flexed Russia’s muscles on nuclear arms over the past year, touting emerging technologies like its Poseidon system, a nuclear-armed and nuclear-propelled torpedo that travels underwater. Tactical nuclear arms like the Poseidon system were not covered by New START’s provisions.

“Restraint and responsibility in the nuclear domain is crucial to global security,” the NATO official said.

A “handshake” agreement?

Putin’s offer in the fall amounted to what would be a “handshake between the two presidents to preserve the limits of the treaty” even after the treaty itself formally expired, said Gottemoeller, who was under secretary of state for arms control and international security when the deal was originally struck and later became NATO’s deputy secretary general.

While the administration has pointed to China as a reason to forgo New START in favor of a broader deal, Gottemoeller said a one-year stopgap deal would actually help the U.S. pursue its arms control agenda with Beijing.

A one-year extension “makes sense for one very important reason,” she said. “We need to keep the Russians under control over the coming year, while we try to plan and prepare for what we’re going to do to respond to the … Chinese nuclear buildup.”

Gottemoeller and Lynn Rusten, another former U.S. official who helped negotiate the New START treaty, told ABC News a trilateral deal with the Chinese would not make practical sense, since China’s 600 nuclear-capable weapons are dwarfed by Russian and American stockpiles that are each more than 4,000.

A Pentagon report in December assessed the Chinese stockpile could rise to more than 1,000 in 2030.

The State Department did not respond to an inquiry about diplomatic channels for new arms control agreements with either Beijing or Moscow.

The president, who said he had an “excellent” call Wednesday with Chinese President Xi Jinping, did not say whether nuclear arms were mentioned.

Change won’t be immediate

The early days of a world without the last remaining treaty limiting the world’s largest nuclear powers will not be immediately changed, the former officials said.

“I don’t think we’re going to wake up tomorrow and be in a completely different world,” said Rusten, who led the U.S. government’s interagency process during talks over New START. “But I do think there’s going to be some mirror imaging. So if one country starts to build up its forces beyond New START limits, the other is almost sure to follow.”

The U.S. will have to “plan and prepare” for the reality after New START, given the Russians have more experience and defense capacity — including “hot warhead production lines” in support of its war in Ukraine, said Gottemoeller.

Rusten said the U.S.’s understanding of Russia’s arsenal will “atrophy,” a risk over the long run.

“Over time, we’re going to have a less and less precise picture of exactly how many Russian nuclear forces there are and where they are,” she said.

The U.S. and Russia — and the U.S. and the Soviet Union before that — cooperated on arms control for decades, managing to carve out the issue from other diplomatic issues which frayed the rivals.

In a statement marking the end of New START, the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation said decades of diplomacy between Washington and Moscow “helped reduce the global nuclear arsenal by more than 80% since the height of the Cold War.”

“Now,” the statement said, “both Russia and the United States have no legal obstacle to building their arsenals back up, and we could find ourselves reliving the Cold War.”

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