Tennessee
Bernie Sanders Backs Justin Pearson, House Candidate at the Heart of Tennessee Voting Rights Fight
An outspoken progressive running for Congress in the Tennessee district at the center of Republicans’ efforts to sabotage voting rights and maintain control of the House earned the endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday.
Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson found himself the unexpected front-runner in the Democratic primary when two-decade incumbent Rep. Steve Cohen dropped out last month, after new gerrymandered maps throttled his chances of winning reelection. The redrawn 9th Congressional District and sudden shakeup mean that rather than running against the last Democrat representing Tennessee in the House, Pearson is facing a Republican machine bent on delivering an all-GOP delegation for President Donald Trump.
The new map hurts the chances for Pearson — or any Democrat — to win in November, but the candidate said he’s running on a platform focused on wealth, income inequality, and corporate overreach that aims to appeal across party lines. “You’ve got a number of disaffected Republican voters, you’ve got a number of distraught MAGA voters, and you’ve got fired-up Democrats, which is a perfect recipe for success for us,” Pearson told The Intercept. “Because our tent is big enough for everybody who is feeling that this status quo was rigged and broken against working-class folk, and want to see a future that is more just.”
It’s a message similar to the one that buoyed Sanders’s 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns.
“As billionaires and Big Tech take more and more control over our lives and our government, we need leaders like Justin J. Pearson who have the experience and track record of standing up to the rich and power-hungry elites,” Sanders said in a statement.
Tennessee is one of several Republican-led states where officials rushed to protect Trump and the GOP’s chances of keeping power in what is expected to be a particularly difficult midterm cycle for Republicans mired in an unpopular war on Iran and an ever-increasing cost of living. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April to gut a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, Trump said he spoke with Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who called the next day for a special session to redraw the maps.
Using a practice known as “cracking,” the new map breaks the majority-Black district concentrated in and around Memphis across three red districts, diluting the power of Black voters in the area. Pearson said he believed the antidemocratic move, while detrimental to his chances, was unpopular with voters.
“A lot of people were really upset about the gerrymandered maps,” Pearson said. “I had about half a dozen Republicans who said they’re going to be voting in our campaign and I’d be the first Democrat they’d be voting for in their lifetimes.”
Pearson, who launched his campaign against Cohen in October with the backing of the progressive outfit Justice Democrats, received Sanders’s endorsement the day after getting one from the Working Families Party, and four days after he returned from a listening tour in rural and Republican counties in the newly drawn district. His campaign said more than 750 people attended the gatherings.
Attendees expressed frustration with being unable to afford housing, healthcare, and the things they need to live their daily lives, Pearson said. He said voters couldn’t afford “more of the same” when running against Cohen, and has now directed that message at his likely Republican opponent, state Sen. Brent Taylor.
“Both of them were millionaires, both of them benefited from a status quo that’s broken,” Pearson told The Intercept. “Both of them don’t like me.”
Also running in the August 6 Democratic primary are state Sen. London Lamar, who launched her campaign with Cohen’s endorsement after he dropped out, and Jim Torino, a former executive at a healthcare company focusing on people with disabilities and founder of a social welfare nonprofit. Perennial candidate M. LaTroy Alexandria-Williams filed to run but has not filed any reports with the Federal Election Commission.
Pearson is the top fundraiser in the Democratic primary race so far, with just under $2 million, according to the campaign. Most of that has come from contributions under $200, according to the FEC data; the campaign said its average donation is $31. Torino has raised $117,000, and Lamar has not yet had to file any reports with the FEC.
In addition to Sanders, Justice Democrats, and the Working Families Party, Pearson has backing from groups including MoveOn; Sunrise Movement; Indivisible; IMEU Policy Project and its Peace, Accountability, and Leadership PAC; as well as Reps. Summer Lee, D-Pa.; Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass.; Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.; Delia Ramirez, D-Ill.; and Ro Khanna, D-Calif.
Pearson said he believes federal legislation is needed to force states to support working people and improve public safety.
“We need to put this ban on AI data centers, we need to increase the minimum wage nationally, because the states won’t do it,” Pearson said. “I’m in a state House, they refuse to do it. We need to have national gun safety laws passed, because states refuse to do it.”
In May, Pearson drew the ire of his Republican colleagues when he marched with protesters before the special session to redraw the state’s maps. Three years earlier, Republicans voted to expel him and another Black Democratic lawmaker after they and one other Democratic colleague led a protest against the legislature’s inaction on gun control after a deadly elementary school shooting in Nashville. Local officials reappointed Pearson and his colleague, state Rep. Justin Johnson, to the state House shortly after the vote.
Pearson, Cohen, two other Democratic congressional candidates, four registered voters, and the Tennessee Democratic Party filed a federal lawsuit challenging Tennessee’s maps last month, but they dropped it last week, citing a political environment hostile to their cause. Pearson said other cases before the federal courts had “a higher probability of success,” pointing to voting rights suits from the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Still, he expressed hope for his long-shot campaign in Tennessee. He pointed to a stop on his listening tour in the city where the Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1865, and where Pearson, who is Black, welcomed 150 people at a rally — his largest crowd throughout the tour.
There is a “renewed vigor and enthusiasm because of what the Republicans have done — to show up in spite of them, in spite of what they’ve tried to do,” Pearson said. “I think that’s not something they probably calculated for when they did this racist redistricting.”
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The protocol that took effect in 2025 sheds new light on Tony Carruthers’ botched execution, when Dr. Mark Fowler spent nearly an hour trying, and failing, to place a secondary IV line.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) – Oppressive heat is done, but high humidity remains.
The jaw-dropping heat wave that closed the month of June and kicked off July is now officially complete. A heat wave is defined as a period of three or more consecutive days with temperatures in the 90s. Today, Sunday, July 5, Nashville’s high temperature was only 88 degrees, marking the end of the blistering seven-day stretch.
During our record-setting round of summer sizzle, Nashville achieved many notable milestones.
First, the low temperature last Sunday, June 28, was only 79°. That’s remarkably warm for a minimum temperature. Since 2013, there were only three other times the low in Nashville was that high.
Then, on Thursday, July 2, Nashville soared to 100 degrees for the first time in nearly a year. That day’s high missed the record by one.
Friday, July 3, turned even hotter. The airport thermometer peaked at 101° that afternoon setting a new record high for the date.
Finally, today, July 5, the high temperature was only 88 degrees. For the first time in a week, the temperature was held below 90. However, what’s stunning is that the high was set at 9:41 a.m., well before the typical high temperature time of day — mid-to-late afternoon.
In the coming days, we’ll get a break from what we endured last week. Expect spotty showers and storms. Clouds and rain in the area will hold temperatures to more seasonable levels, in the upper 80s and low 90s.
For life-saving weather alerts, customized messages on conditions and forecasts, and videos detailing upcoming weather events, download the WSMV 4 First Alert Weather app for iPhone or Android. Have weather pictures or videos? Share them here.
Tennessee
Tennessee Man Reaches For Item At Lowe’s. Then He Runs Into A Surprising New Touchscreen: ‘No Need To Wait’
Anyone who’s ever needed something locked behind a glass door (or some other security measure that makes it hard to just grab an item off the shelf) knows the drill. You try to click the button to call an employee, wait for an employee to show up, hope the employee isn’t busy with someone else first, and maybe even leave without your item because you’re tired of waiting or just frustrated at the friction of the shopping experience.
One Tennessee electrician went to grab wire for a job and expected the usual wait. Instead, he found Lowe’s had quietly changed the system to seemingly give customers more autonomy in the store.
Lowe’s Gets a Security Upgrade
In a trending video with more than 55,000 views, content creator and contractor Tim, of Tri Cities Electric (@tricities.electric), stopped at a Lowe’s in Tennessee to pick up some wiring for a job.
“One of my least favorite things about coming to Lowe’s was that I’ve obviously got to buy wire, and they keep it behind these cages,” he says, showing what look like wire doors on the retailer’s shelves.
This time, though, there was a touchscreen mounted right on the metal doors, so Tim tried it out.
“We simply click ‘use your cell phone,’ agree to whatever that is, put your phone number in,” he said.
A code landed on his phone seconds later, and he typed it back into the screen.
The screen accepted it, and two electromagnets holding the cage shut released on their own. No waiting for an associate required.
“Case is now unlocked. Got two electromagnets up here; they release. Now, I have all the access in the world to this. How neat. Good job, Lowe’s,” he said.
“No need to wait for wire at @Lowe’s anymore!” he wrote in the caption.
Why Stores Are Locking Everything
The National Retail Federation says that retail theft costs the industry about $95 billion across sectors, and stores have responded by locking down anything with resale value, Business Insider reported.
Visits by an Insider reporter to Walmart, Target, and Home Depot found the same pattern everywhere: power tools sealed in cages, spider-wrap alarms clipped onto smaller items, and security cameras trained on entire aisles.
Lowe’s specifically has cages on power tools, alarms on display units, and—as of last year—some tools that won’t even power on until they’re activated at checkout.
Retail Theft: Is It That Bad?
The “retail theft crisis” narrative is a lot messier than it sounds. Retail executives spent a solid year sounding alarms about “shrink”—inventory loss from theft, employee error, and accounting mistakes combined—but by 2024, several major chains were quietly walking those claims back, according to NPR.
Walgreens’ own finance chief admitted the company might have “cried too much” about theft the year before. And the industry’s go-to shrink figure, sourced from a National Retail Federation survey, has barely moved over the past decade—hovering around 1.4% to 1.6% of sales for years.
That hasn’t stopped the security theater, though: Nearly a third of shoppers say locked-up products make them think worse of a store, and more than a quarter say it’s enough to make them walk out without buying anything.
‘Better Than Home Depot’
The comments filled up with a mix of impressions about the tech.
“So then what’s the point of the cage….” a top comment read.
“Bout time because finding one of them associates isn’t easy,” a person said.
“Until someone leaves it open….” another wrote.
“And now you will be all kinds of marketing text or in that permissions agreement you gave them access to your contacts and to install software,” a commenter added.
Motor1 reached out to Tim via email and Instagram direct message for comment. We’ll be sure to update this if he responds.
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