House

Tennessee Democrat Steve Cohen to retire after GOP targets him with redistricting

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by Mike Lillis - 05/15/26 11:54 AM ET

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by Mike Lillis - 05/15/26 11:54 AM ET

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Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), a liberal Democrat in his 20th year on Capitol Hill, announced Friday that he will retire at the end of the term, becoming the earliest casualty of the Republicans’ redistricting campaign ahead of November’s midterms.

Cohen, who will turn 77 later this month, hammered the Republicans for orchestrating a powergrab to disenfranchise Black voters in districts like his. But with the new map in place — and the cards stacked heavily against him — Cohen said he’d rather step down than go through the motions of an election contest he was sure to lose.

“I don’t want to quit, I’m not a quitter,” Cohen told reporters in his office in the Rayburn Building on Capitol Hill. “But these districts were drawn to defeat me.”

Cohen has long been the only Democrat in Tennessee’s nine-member House delegation, representing the Democratic stronghold in Memphis, which has a majority Black population. But last week, GOP leaders in the Tennessee statehouse adopted a new House map to carve up Cohen’s district, splitting it into three sprawling districts — each stretching into the middle of the state — that will dilute the Democratic vote in each one. Gov. Bill Lee (R) quickly signed it into law.

The move was a direct response to the Supreme Court’s recent decision to nullify a key part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA), which was adopted at the height of the Civil Rights movement to prevent discrimination against Black voters at the polls. And it all but guarantees that Republicans will control all nine of Tennessee’s districts in the next Congress.

The redistricting came at the request of President Trump, who is racing to keep control of Congress in the midterms in the face of low approval numbers and rising costs, which have created a tough environment for GOP leaders fighting to keep their majorities in both the House and Senate.

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