Stacey Abrams speaks at an event in December, 2025. Photo: David Dee Delgado/Getty Images for The New York Times
Tennessee Senate Democrats invited voting rights activist and Georgia politician Stacey Abrams to address the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday as it considered the proposed U.S. House map.
Abrams bashed the map as a "backslide into authoritarianism in the United States where one party and one race hold dominion."
She argued the legislative push to carve up Black-majority districts defied the South's Civil Rights history.
What she's saying: "Rigged maps that decided elections before a single vote is cast, and politicians who rig elections so it is impossible for them to lose, that is not democracy," Abrams told the committee. "That is cowardice. In the South, we believe in fair contests. We believe in government of, by and for the people."
"Tennessee can be led by Republicans, led by conservatives, without returning to a vicious past that silences Black and brown voters in pursuit of complete and total power."
