I confess I was unaware of Steve Cohen before a couple of days ago, despite the fact that he’s been representing Tennesse’s 9th district in the US House for 19 years. The 9th has been a majority-minority district, but now that the state is being redistricted, he’s announced he’s not seeking re-election.

Cohen’s a few days short of his 77th birthday. Not a bad time to retire – but until the redistricting was announced, he wasn’t retiring; he was running for re-election. He’s also a white man who has represented a gerrymandered black district for all those years, with no serious challenges.

But even before dropping out, this year Cohen faced a Democrat challenger who might have threatened him: Justin Pearson, who is young, black, and to the left of Cohen (see this).

Now Cohen’s seat is also threatened for the first time by someone from the right – a black Republican woman named Charlotte Bergmann.

Black Republican woman? Isn’t that an oxymoron, according to Democrats? After all, black Republicans are just white supremacists.

In addition, as was virtually inevitable, SCOTUS has refused to hear the Democrats’ appeal of the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling that its recent referendum on redistricting was held in violation of the Virginia state constitution. That’s because SCOTUS ordinarily doesn’t have jurisdiction over cases that involve state courts interpreting state law – which explains the fact that the SCOTUS decision was unanimous. The Virginia lawyers and AG who were in charge of the appeal knew that (it’s really quite elementary), so they probably filed the appeal in order to use the SCOTUS ruling to rail against SCOTUS as an “undemocratic” institution and to support the Democrats’ fight to pack the Court if they gain power. To wit:

In a statement following the Supreme Court’s denial, Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones went on offense. He framed the decision as part of a broader national effort by Republicans and conservative courts to consolidate political power ahead of the 2026 midterms. Jones accused President Donald Trump, Republican-led legislatures, and the judiciary of systematically undermining voting rights, particularly for black voters and communities of color, arguing that recent redistricting battles across multiple states reflected a coordinated strategy to entrench Republican control in Congress. He characterized both the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling and the nation’s highest court’s refusal to intervene as direct assaults on democratic representation and the will of Virginia voters.

The decision in the Virginia court rested on the Virginia constitution, in particular an amendment passed in 2020 to ensure that the state didn’t gerrymander. The 6-5 map that controls at present – the one the Democrats tried to overturn – was constructed in order to not be partisan, as the 2020 amendment dictated (the article is from 2020):

As votes for the 2020 General Election continue to get counted, it is clear that Virginia’s amendment to reform gerrymandering has passed. Campaign Legal Center (CLC) has been a leading national advocate for the passage of this amendment, supporting local partner OneVirginia 2021 throughout the process.

“Voters have said loud and clear that they are ready to move past Virginia’s long history of gerrymandering,” said Paul Smith, vice president of Campaign Legal Center (CLC). “After a sustained effort by a diverse coalition of national and in-state groups, legislators and the electorate have both proven that bipartisan solutions are possible when democratic principles are placed over partisanship. Paired with strong enabling legislation, the amendment will help Virginia adopt fair maps and a more inclusive process.”

Virginia will have a new 16-member commission, made up of eight legislators and eight citizens, divided evenly between the two parties. There will be measures in place to ensure public feedback and transparency.

It turned out, however, that the commission members ended up unable to agree on the new maps in a timely fashion, so the Virginia Supreme Court took over and appointed two masters to draw the maps. Those are the ones in operation now, the ones the Democrats tried to gerrymander again. They would have been successful, too, had they had enough time to comply with the constitutional requirements for holding the referendum.