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tennessee
'Flashing Warning Sign' for GOP as Republican Squeaks Out Win in Deep-Red Tennessee District
"The fact that Republicans spent millions to protect this Trump +22 district and still lost so much ground should have the GOP shaking in their boots," said the chair of the Democratic National Committee.
Dec 03, 2025
Republican Matt Van Epps narrowly prevailed Tuesday in a special election for a Tennessee district that President Donald Trump carried by 22 points last year, a result that has the GOP increasingly worried about the party's prospects in the 2026 midterms as voters take out their anger over high living costs.
Van Epps defeated Democratic candidate Aftyn Behn in the US House race by roughly nine points, a strikingly narrow margin for a district that Republican Mark Green—who resigned from Congress over the summer—won by 21 points last year.
Behn placed affordability, which Trump has called a Democratic "scam," at the center of her bid to represent Tennessee's 7th Congressional District, replicating the playbooks of recently successful Democratic campaigns across the country.
"I don’t care what political party you belong to, but if you are upset about the cost of living and the chaos of Washington, then I’m your candidate, and I welcome you with open arms," Behn said during the race, which drew national attention and millions of dollars in spending.
The Planned Parenthood Action Fund (PPAF), which backed Behn—a supporter of abortion rights—said late Tuesday that "the lesson from Aftyn’s campaign is clear: Voters are looking for leaders who will put healthcare affordability over billionaire special interests."
"Every day that President Trump and his backers are in power, people suffer," said Alexis McGill Johnson, PPAF's president and CEO. "They’re seeing healthcare costs rise, abortion bans in 20 states, and health center closures leading to longer wait times and distances to get care—all worsening the healthcare crisis the Trump administration created."
Notably, while Van Epps embraced Trump, much of the Republican messaging in the race focused on attacking Behn as a "radical" rather than championing the president's economic agenda, which voters across the country blame for driving up costs. Behn, who received over 115% of the 2022 Democrat nominee's vote total, said that Republicans were attacking her because "they don't have a plan to make healthcare more affordable."
The GOP scramble to defend a deep-red seat was seen by both Republicans and Democrats as a possible signal of what's to come in next year's midterms. One House Republican, speaking anonymously, told Politico that "tonight is a sign that 2026 is going to be a bitch of an election cycle."
Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement that "what happened tonight in Tennessee makes it clear: Democrats are on offense and Republicans are on the ropes."
"Aftyn Behn’s overperformance in this Trump +22 district is historic and a flashing warning sign for Republicans heading into the midterms. Aftyn centered her campaign on lowering grocery, housing, and healthcare costs for Tennessee families," said Martin. "The fact that Republicans spent millions to protect this Trump +22 district and still lost so much ground should have the GOP shaking in their boots."
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AOC Rallies for Progressive Aftyn Behn in Surprisingly Close Race in Tennessee's Trump Country
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the tight race shows that "people are increasingly recognizing that our fights are not left and right, but they are top and bottom. They are about all of us as working Americans."
Dec 02, 2025
Just over a year after President Donald Trump carried Tennessee's 7th District by more than 20 points, US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Monday night that the final polls in the district's special election race between a Trump ally and a progressive state lawmaker are "a testament to how the American people are feeling in this moment."
Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was speaking at a virtual get-out-the-vote rally for state Rep. Aftyn Behn (D-51), who is facing GOP candidate Matt Van Epps in the district in Tuesday's special election. GOP Rep. Mark Green stepped down earlier this year for a private sector job after winning by 21 percentage points last year.
The electoral history of the district would suggest that Republicans could expect to easily win Tuesday's election, but with Van Epps ahead by just one or two percentage points in recent polling, Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), and other Republicans are signaling fears that Behn could pull off an upset.
The president attacked Behn in a social media post Monday, warning that only Van Epps "cherishes Christianity and Country Music."
Like other progressive candidates in this year's elections, Behn has focused heavily on the need to make life more affordable for residents in the district, which was gerrymandered by state Republicans in 2022. The GOP eliminated a Democratic district in Nashville and its voters were added to three Republican districts, but Behn has worked to mobilize voters in predominantly Black areas that were added to the 7th District and told canvassers Monday evening that the redistricting scheme "backfired" on the Republicans.
AFTYN: “Clearly I’m living rent-free in President Trump’s mind.”
JUST NOW IN FRANKLIN — Rep. @aftynfortn Behn gave a pep talk to a group of fired up canvassers on the eve of an unexpectedly tight #TN7 special election.
(And a group hug) pic.twitter.com/1e0sNmNHEd
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) December 1, 2025
Behn has focused on high prices during the campaign, attacking Trump's tariff policies and decrying the One Big Beautiful Bill Act's cuts to Medicaid and nutrition assistance—calling the law the "Big Bullshit Bill."
"This is a wake-up call," she said after the law passed in July. "If we don't bring change to Congress, the billionaires and bought-out politicians will continue to rig the system against us."
As a state lawmaker, Behn proposed the Homes, Not Hedge Funds bill to stop private equity firms from buying up neighborhoods and advocated "for fair funding for rural communities" with her Rural Prosperity Act.
She's also spoken out and organized on the ground against Trump's mass deportation operation, which she's called a "flagrant abuse of power and state-sanctioned violence."
At the virtual rally on Monday night, Ocasio-Cortez said Behn's decision to take on a Trump-backed opponent in a heavily Republican district "takes a special kind of guts."
"That kind of guts is what we need more of in this country," she said. "A kind of person that says, 'We're not gonna do something because it's easy, we're gonna do it because it's the right thing to do.' And she is leading by putting herself on the line and raising her hand up first to say, 'I am going to fight for my neighbors no matter the odds.'"
🔥 WATCH — @AOC: “Tennessee is ready to elect @aftynfortn Behn. Miracles can happen… to run in an R+22 seat takes a very special kind of person with a very special kind of guts. That the race is so tight is a testament to how the 🇺🇸 people are feeling in this moment.” #TN7 pic.twitter.com/2QKr6EQUMI
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) December 2, 2025
Ocasio-Cortez added that the close race shows "people are increasingly recognizing that our fights are not left and right, but they are top and bottom. They are about all of us as working Americans and working-class people that are standing up against the injustices and the greed of our healthcare system, of our low wages."
Van Epps has sought to attack Behn for speaking out for the rights of immigrants, telling voters at a rally with the president, "The only way to stop crazy is to vote against crazy."
John Geer, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University, told the Washington Post that the fact that a Democratic candidate is being targeted so heavily by her Republican opponent in the 7th District and attracting the attention of the president shows the GOP is "worried."
“It’s interesting that Van Epps isn’t in a strong enough position just to ignore her,” said Geer.
Behn suggested that even if Van Epps ekes out a win in the close race, the competitive election has offered the latest proof of deep dissatisfaction with Trump's agenda.
“If we get close,” she told the Post, it will be due to the “affordability crisis that we are experiencing in Tennessee and the fact that the federal administration has not delivered an economic agenda to address the needs of working people in the state.”
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Librarians and Publishers Alarmed as Tennessee Libraries Shut Down for GOP 'Book Purge'
"It is illegal to remove books from public libraries because some people do not like them," said a coalition of 33 library groups, publishing companies, and civil rights organizations.
Nov 27, 2025
Public libraries in Tennessee have begun to shut down as they carry out an order from state officials to remove children's books containing LGBTQ+ themes or characters.
For Popular Information, Rebecca Crosby and Noel Sims reported Tuesday that the "book purge" is required to be carried out at all 181 libraries in the Tennessee Regional Library System, which encompasses most of the state, aside from cities like Nashville and Memphis.
It comes after Tennessee's Republican Secretary of State, Tre Hargett, sent a pair of letters earlier this fall. The first, sent on September 8, said that in order to receive state and federal grants, which run through his office, libraries needed to comply with a Tennessee law banning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices from agencies, as well as President Donald Trump's executive order on "gender ideology," which effectively ended the federal recognition of transgender and nonbinary individuals.
As the report notes, neither of these orders says anything about library books. However, Hargett argued that compliance with the executive order mandated book bans because it states that "federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology.”
Not only do executive orders typically not apply to state and local governments, but the federal funds Tennessee's libraries receive are not used to purchase books at all. Instead, according to the secretary of state's website, they “provide all state residents with online access to essential library and information resources, including licensed databases, a statewide library catalog and interlibrary loan system, bibliographic services, and materials for the disadvantaged.”
The Every Library Institute, an advocacy group that supports federal funding for libraries, said that Hargett's instructions "contain significant errors, likely exceeding the secretary’s authority and reflecting a political agenda rather than a neutral or accurate interpretation of federal or state law."
"Hargett is setting a dangerous precedent by placing Tennessee’s state and municipal government under the authority of any executive order by any president," the group continued. "Executive orders are not laws."
But Crosby and Sims argued: "Even if the executive order did apply to Tennessee local libraries, simply having books with LGBTQ stories and characters does not constitute 'promoting gender ideology.' The classic fairytale Little Red Riding Hood involves a wolf eating a little girl, but does not promote violence. Children’s books are stories, not instruction manuals."
On October 27, Hargett sent another letter, giving libraries 60 days to undertake an "age appropriateness review" of all books in their children's section to find any books that may be inconsistent either with Tennessee's age appropriateness law or with Trump's executive order.
As Ken Paulson, the director of Middle Tennessee University's Free Speech Center, noted, the age appropriateness law, which was last updated in 2024, "is modeled after obscenity laws and prohibits nudity, excessive violence, and explicit sexuality, hardly the stuff of children’s sections. Further, the law applies to school libraries, not public libraries."
Though Hargett provided no criteria for how to assess what books would need to be purged, he did provide an example of one he felt violated both orders: Fred Gets Dressed, a 2021 picture book by the New York Times bestselling author Peter Brown. As Popular Information noted:
The book, which was written by a straight, cisgender man, does not feature any LGBTQ characters. Instead it is based on a childhood experience of the author in which he tried on his mother’s clothing and makeup. If a book about a boy trying on his mother’s clothes is the strongest example of “promoting gender ideology” that Hargett could identify, it raises questions about the necessity of the review.
Earlier this month, the state's Rutherford County Library System, which serves the cities of Smyrna and Murfreesboro, shut down several of its library branches for up to a week to “meet new reporting requirements" from Hargett's office.
It's unclear why the Rutherford County system determined it needed to shut down in order to carry out the review, nor has it been made clear whether other library systems will be expected to do the same.
As former librarian Kelly Jensen noted for the blog Book Riot, the Rutherford County system has made its own efforts to ban transgender-friendly books, but backed off from the policy earlier this summer for fear of litigation after a Murfreesboro law branding "homosexuality" as a form of "public indecency" resulted in the city being forced to settle a lawsuit for $500,000.
Kelly wrote that for Rutherford library system's board, Hargett's order is "a convenient means of subverting their fears of litigation, which drove them to change their anti-trans book policy earlier this summer. If the directive is from the state, then they 'have to' comply. The Tennessee secretary of state is granting permission slips to public library boards to ban away."
This week, a group of 33 major publishers, library advocacy groups, and free speech and civil rights organizations signed onto a letter to Hargett expressing "profound concern" over its review mandate.
The coalition included PEN America, the American Library Association, the National Coalition Against Censorship, and the transgender rights advocacy organization GLAAD. Major publishing houses also signed on, including Penguin Random House, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster.
"These types of reviews create immense administrative burdens for library systems and often lead to illegal censorship, which raises liability risks for local communities and the state," the groups said. "Many libraries, uncertain about the legal and procedural basis for the mandate, have had to redirect limited resources, with some temporarily closing branches to complete these reviews, which are implied to be necessary for future funding."
"The demands in your letter need immediate clarification, as it is not reasonable to expect libraries to follow directives that would risk violating applicable law, including the US Constitution," they added. "It is illegal to remove books from public libraries because some people do not like them. This is a well-settled legal principle."
The Rutherford County Library Alliance, which has challenged municipal anti-LGBTQ+ laws as well as the censorship policies of the library's own board, said that “we have seen firsthand the concrete harm of the Secretary’s directives—library closures during story time, intimidation of professional librarians, and the breakdown of democratic representation in our public library system."
"We hope Secretary Hargett will fulfill their duty to promote library development by supporting our constitutionally-guaranteed rights and our highly trained librarians," the alliance added, "rather than enabling censorship from 0.001% of our community for 100% of our community.”
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