Tennessee Republicans Aren't Trump Loyalists. They're Just Winning.
Phillips' theory: the special session proves the TN GOP is in Trump's pocket. The simpler theory: partisan opportunity, not religious devotion. The same playbook ran in Texas and Illinois without a peep.
Phillips reads Tennessee Republicans as Trump cultists doing his bidding. Occam's Razor reads them as a state party that holds 75 of 99 House seats and is doing exactly what any majority party does: drawing maps that maximize their advantage.
One theory requires invoking devotion. The other requires noticing the math.
The receipts
- Texas 2003. Tom DeLay drove a mid-decade redistricting that flipped six House seats from Democratic to Republican. Twenty-two years before Trump returned to office. Same playbook.
- Illinois 2021. Illinois Democrats redrew their congressional map specifically to eliminate a Republican seat. No presidential intervention required.
- New York 2022. Democrats attempted aggressive mid-decade redistricting so partisan it was thrown out by the state's high court.
- Tennessee 2026. Republicans hold a 75-seat House supermajority. Drawing a favorable map is opportunity, not loyalty.
The Bergmann problem
The likely winner of the redrawn TN-9 is Charlotte Bergmann, a Black Republican from Memphis. If Tennessee Republicans were drawing this map to eliminate Black representation, putting a Black woman on the GOP ballot is poor execution.
Bergmann isn't quoted in Phillips' column. Memphis voters who don't fit the loyalty-cult framing rarely are.
Where Phillips is right
Tennessee Republicans called a special session specifically to redraw maps after pressure from national party priorities. That's coordination. The pressure to redraw mid-decade is unusual. And the Memphis split is the most aggressive Republican redistricting move in recent Tennessee history.
Reasonable people can oppose this map. Mid-decade partisan redistricting is bad for democracy regardless of party.
The honest framing
Independent redistricting commissions are the answer. Michigan and California have them. Tennessee should too.
That argument works against Tennessee Republicans drawing the Memphis map. It also works against Illinois Democrats drawing theirs. The "Trump loyalism" frame works against only one.
Why it matters
Treating partisan behavior as theology gets the diagnosis wrong. Tennessee Republicans aren't a religious cult. They're a state party with a 75-seat House supermajority drawing the maps that math allows them to draw. The Scene's framing makes the story more dramatic but less true.
What you can do
Compare Tennessee's 2026 map with Illinois 2021. Same logic. Same playbook. The Brennan Center tracks it all.
The math is the same. The framing isn't.