A momentous political showdown in Tennessee lays bare a new chapter in US politics | CNN Politics
By: Stephen Collinson (CNN)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Justin Jones, Gloria Johnson and Justin Pearson raise their hands outside the state House chamber after Jones and Pearson were expelled from the legislature on Thursday, April 6, 2023, in Nashville. George Walker IV/AP CNN —
Tennessee Republicans' ruthless use of their state House supermajority to expel two young Black lawmakers for breaching decorum exposed a torrent of political forces that are transforming American politics at the grassroots.
The GOP action, after the lawmakers had led a gun control protest from the House floor in response to last week's Nashville school shooting, created a snapshot of how two halves of a diversifying and increasingly self-estranged nation are being pulled apart.
A day of soaring tensions inside and outside the state House chamber thrust the Volunteer State into the national spotlight in an extraordinary political coda to the mass shooting in which six people, including three 9-year-olds, were gunned down.
The drama laid bare intense frustration among some voters at the failure to pass firearms reform - and the growing clash between Democrats from liberal cities and a Republican Party that is willing to use its rural conservative power base to curtail democracy. Given the national attention, the showdown could backfire on the GOP with voters who balk at its extremist turn. And it turned two lawmakers - whom most Americans had never heard of - into overnight heroes of the progressive movement.
The Democrats - Justin Pearson and Justin Jones - were thrown out of their seats in a move that effectively canceled out the votes of their tens of thousands of constituents, simply for infringing the rules of the chamber - an almost unheard of sanction across the country.
But a third Democrat - Gloria Johnson, a White woman who also joined the gun control protest - escaped expulsion after Republicans failed to muster the required two-thirds majority. The discrepancy raised suggestions of racial discrimination and made an acrimonious day even uglier.
Republicans said that the Democrats had interrupted the people's business with their protest, arguing that democracy couldn't work if lawmakers refused to abide by the rules. But the Democrats have long warned their voices are being silenced by the hardline GOP supermajority and accused Republicans of infringing their rights to free expression and dissent.
"We called for you all to ban assault weapons, and you respond with an assault on democracy," Jones told Republican legislators on Thursday as he spoke before the House in his own defense.
At its most basic level, the clash underscored the utter polarization between Republicans and Democrats about how to respond to mass shootings, which pass with little or no significant action to prevent the endless sequence of such tragedies.
Although it did pass a measure intended to enhance school security, the Tennessee state House essentially decided to use its near unchecked power to protect its behavioral rules rather than take any action to make it harder for mass killers to get deadly weapons. In a deep-red state like Tennessee, this is not a surprise. But the fury and even desperation of lawmakers like Pearson and Jones and the hundreds of protesters at the state capitol on Thursday reflect increasing anger among the majority of Americans who want tougher gun restrictions but find their hopes dashed by Republican legislatures.
In Tennessee, that frustration over the endless deaths of innocents erupted into activism.
One protester, teacher Kevin Foster, said the aftermath of the Nashville school shooting had been "deeply, deeply painful."
And he tearfully called on Tennessee legislators to do something to stop more school shootings. "Just listen to us, there is absolutely no reason you should have assault rifles available to citizens in the public. It serves absolutely no purpose and it brings death and destruction on children," Foster told CNN's Ryan Young.
Harsh penalties
The severe penalties meted out by the legislature for a rules infraction, which did not involve violence or incitement, also underscored another increasing trend - the radicalization of the Donald Trump-era Republican Party. Critics see the way the GOP is using its legislative majorities as an abuse of power that threatens the democratic rights of millions of Americans.
The Tennessee House has only rarely expelled members - and when it has, it's for offenses like bribery or sexual infractions - so the treatment of Pearson and Jones, who had already had their committee assignments taken away, was regarded by Democrats as disproportionately harsh.
The expulsions looked like a party dispensing with opponents and positions it didn't agree with - a perspective Pearson voiced when he accused the GOP of acting to suppress ideas it would prefer not to listen to and questions it wouldn't answer.
"You just expelled a member for exercising their First Amendment rights!" he said.
Tennessee Republican Caucus Chair Jeremy Faison told CNN his members were always firm in wanting the Democratic lawmakers expelled and rejected an alternative route through the House ethics committee. "The overwhelming majority, the heartbeat of this caucus, says 'not on this House floor, not this way,'" he said. Faison added: "It is not possible for us to move forward with the way they were behaving in committee and on the House floor. There's got to be some peace."
Democrats did break the rules last week - they admitted to doing so and their actions, if adopted by every legislator, would make it impossible to maintain order and free debate. Jones, for instance, used a bullhorn to lead chants of protesters in the public gallery. But the question at issue is the appropriateness of the punishments and whether the GOP majority overreached.
One Republican, state Rep. Gino Bulso, said that Jones - with his dramatic self-defense in the well of the chamber on Thursday - had made the case for his ejection because he accused the House of acting dishonorably.
"He and two other representatives effectively conducted a mutiny on March the 30th of 2023 in this very chamber," Bulso said. State House Speaker Cameron Sexton had previously compared the gun control protest to the mob attack by Trump's supporters on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
But this appeared an absurd analogy. While the protest in the Tennessee chamber did disrupt regular order, it wasn't anti-democratic, nor was it designed to interrupt the transfer of power from one president to the next, like the Capitol riot briefly did. And the behavior of the three Democratic lawmakers, while irregular, was not that unusual in a riotous political age. US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and other Republicans, for instance, heckled President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address this year. And Trump this week attacked a New York judge as biased and singled out his family after becoming the first ex-president to be charged with a crime.
Racial undertones
The racial backdrop of Thursday's vote could not be ignored after Johnson was reprieved by a single vote. She told CNN's Alisyn Camerota that she believed race helped explain the differing outcomes.
"I think it is pretty clear. I am a 60-year-old White woman, and they are two young Black men," Johnson said, adding that she thought the Republicans questioned Jones and Pearson in a demeaning way.
US Rep. Steve Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat, didn't rule out the possibility that discrimination was behind the expulsion of Jones and Pearson but not Johnson.
"I am not saying race wasn't (the reason) - but I haven't looked at the numbers to see if gender might not have had a play in it, and also maybe some seniority, and also some folks that were on a committee with her," Cohen told CNN's Bianna Golodryga.
The question is especially acute since Pearson and Jones were arguing that their voices - and those of hundreds of thousands of Black Americans in the state's diverse cities - were being silenced by a largely White Republican majority.
"I represent 78,000 people, and when I came to the well that day, I was not standing for myself," Jones said. "I was standing for those young people … many of whom can't even vote yet, many of whom are disenfranchised. But all of whom are terrified by the continued trend of mass shooting plaguing our state and plaguing this nation."
Jones, from Nashville, and Pearson, from Memphis, are representative of a new generation of politically active Americans. Their background in activism and compelling rhetorical styles speak to a kind of politics that is more confrontational than the outwardly genteel but hardball power plays preferred by some of their older Republican colleagues in the legislature.
At times, the speeches by both lawmakers invoked the atmospherics of the civil rights movement and may augur a new brand of urgent activism by younger citizens - like the multi-racial crowd of protesters who greeted Pearson and Jones as heroes after they left the chamber.
The topic of the showdown - over infringements of the decorum of the state House - also had uncomfortable racial echoes as they implied, deliberately or not, that the two young Black Americans did not understand the proper way to behave in public life.
"It's very scary for the nation to see what's happening here. If I didn't know that it was happening to me, I would think this was 1963 instead of 2023," Jones told CNN's Anderson Cooper.
A growing trend of clashes between cities and rural areas
More broadly, Pearson and Jones also represent a cementing reality of the American political map in which growing liberal and racially diverse cities and suburbs are increasingly clashing with legislatures dominated by Republicans from more rural areas.
This dynamic is playing out on multiple issues - including abortion, crime and voting rights - in states like Georgia and Texas. In Florida, meanwhile, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is using his big reelection win and GOP control of both chambers of the state legislature to drive home a radical America First-style conservative agenda that he's using as a platform for a possible presidential campaign. Some Republicans see similar trends in Democratic-majority California.
In Tennessee, as Democratic state House Rep. Joe Towns put it, the GOP used a nuclear option by deploying their supermajority to suppress the ability of minority Democrats to speak.
"You never use a sledgehammer to kill a gnat," Towns said. "We should not go to the extreme of expelling our members for fighting for what many of the citizens want to happen, whether you agree with it or not."
Pearson was specific in viewing his expulsion as being about far more than a thwarted gun control protest.
"We are losing our democracy to White supremacy, we are losing our democracy to patriarchy, we are losing our democracy to people who want to keep a status quo that is damning to the rest of us and damning to our children and unborn people," he said.
The political crisis in Tennessee quickly got national attention.
Biden described the expulsions as "shocking, undemocratic and without precedent" and lambasted Republicans for not doing more to prevent school shootings.
"Americans want lawmakers to act on commonsense gun safety reforms that we know will save lives. But instead, we've continued to see Republican officials across America double down on dangerous bills that make our schools, places of worship, and communities less safe," he said in a statement.
Republicans in Tennessee had their own political reasons for acting against the trio of Democratic lawmakers. But by making national figures of Pearson and Jones and by handing the White House a new example of GOP extremism, their efforts may have badly backfired.
Tags
Who is online
71 visitors
Good, comprehensive, article on this issue.
wasn't anti-democratic, nor was it designed to interrupt the transfer of power from one president to the next,
lol.
It's a KNOWN fact, not a speculation, that none of these proposed bans on certain guns would have prevented ANY of the mass shootings of the last several years, going all the way back to Columbine.
It appears the left wingers want to put on a big show that they're "DOING SOMETHING" about the violence, for which they share a large portion of the blame, due to their traditional stance of being soft on crime and criminals..
With 2,000,000 people already incarcerated what would not being soft on crime look like?
Being soft on crime.
NY, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Detroit, or any other Bastion of Democrat stupidity.
Why do Democrats love criminals? Or I should say why do Democrats love their criminals. Any conservative that steps even remotely close to outside of the law gets charged to the fullest extent of the law.
The most dangerous cities in the U.S. are mostly in red states. It looks like the bastions of REPUBLICAN STUPIDITY win. Of course, the reactionary propagandists choose to spread disinformation.
Utter nonsense...
You're comment is total nonsense. The facts show otherwise, but, as I stated, reactionary propagandists will continue to spread disinformation.
Isn't that more of a local problem, not a state problem?
Could you cite those facts please?
They are bastions filled with Democrats.
Another insurrection .... giddy up Congress .... get to investigating.
Every last one of the Tennessee insurrectionists needs to be tracked down and charged to fullest extent of the law. The FBI and DOJ had better step the hell up as well.
“…the Tennessee insurrectionists…”
???
A triad of elected representatives giving voice to their constituents in response to yet another needless loss of life vs. an incited crowd attempting to subvert our electoral system.
Try as you might, they are not equivalent.
A mob of protesters illegally obstructing the duly elected representatives of the people of Tennessee in their sworn duties, and in doing so abridging the rights of the people of Tennessee to self-governance.
They are more alike than you want to admit.
utter nonsense
Textbook fascism.
See 4.1.
It is textbook fascism. As you are undoubtedly aware, some who are totally uninformed regarding the topic of fascism, pretend to correct those who are well-informed. They are best ignored.
I'm sure you're positively desperate to think so, as the line of ridiculous attempted rationalizations you've already offered confirms.
I think you need a new textbook.
Insisting that the duly elected representatives of the people are permitted to actually conduct legislative business on their behalf?
Riiiiiiiight.
That's completely fascism. Absolutely.
Or maybe it's democracy.
But mostly it's fascism. Yeah. Definitely fascism. Sure.
Mislabeling protesters as insurrectionists to justify a call for tracking them down and having them arrested. That is fascism. What they were doing in reality is democracy.
The most misused word in the English language expands its lead.
Read 4.1 and tell me that is not a textbook example of tactics used in fascist regimes. Or just keep lying to yourself and displaying your ignorance. Your call.
Equal justice regardless of ideology = fascism to you?
Equal to what?! Are you trying to compare this to J6?! Fucking ridiculous.
So you’re saying that in a fascist regime, like Iran let’s say, the government would not track down protesters and label them as insurrectionists in order to persecute them? This isn’t rocket science, you are just blinded by your knee jerk reactionary stance to anything any liberal has to say about anything at any time.
You have to laugh at the amount of time they spend displaying their total lack of knowledge regarding fascism while pretending to correct those who are knowledgeable. If they were educated in the topic, or even had the slightest clue, it would be a different world.
Was or was this not a protest of their governance?
The knee jerk reactionary stance is prevalent among many right wingers. It exposes their ignorance.
The equal justice provided under the Constitution.
[Deleted]
See 4.1.29.
See 4.1.29.
[removed]
Problem with that logic is the ones trying to "correct" are wrong in their definition
You mean like the vast majority of Jan 6 protesters?
It isn't. Enforcing existing law is not "fascism".
Again, you need a new textbook.
The Tennessee Constitution says:
There are certain places you're not allowed to protest. I was at the Jefferson Memorial in DC last week. You can't protest there. You can't protest in the US Capitol. You can't protest in a polling place. You can't protest on private property without permission.
Other people have rights, too.
Did you get this from the same "textbook" of fascism? It's defective. Maybe you can return it.
Democracy is when the people or their elected representatives VOTE to enact, repeal or modify the laws that govern them. It is not standing around shouting at the sky like a bunch of toddlers because those votes aren't going the way you want.
Other people have rights, too. One of those is the right to be represented by the person their district elected. When your little tantrum disrupts that process and that representative cannot be heard, you are denying those people who elected that person their fundamental right to self-governance. It's serious, which is why they throw your ass in jail for it.
You're right. Leftists do make this site an embarrassment but I still like to have exchanges with them, especially when I am rarely, if ever wrong with any of these exchanges.
BTW....some time ago, you claimed to be a combat veteran, but was unable to come up with where you were in combat vet.
Have you found a site that had combat where you can claim?
He’s probably too busy crying into his not-Bud-Light.
BTW....some time ago, you claimed to be a combat veteran, but was unable to come up with where you were in combat vet.
Uhhh, wrong guy bud. Lol
Sure, don't you have a seriously ignorant comment to post? Wait.. nevermind
Project much?..
The right is not sending their best.
Again.... ironic
The babylon bee wants to know where you are.
You can tell them I'm right here.... thanks
1. If the protest was "illegal" how come no one was arrested for taking part in an illegal protest?
2. They didnt obstruct anything.
3. no one's rights were abridged.
That's basically what I said. There are some ignorant right wingers pretending they are correcting people. They might try to "correct", but they don't know anything and they aren't capable of it.
Good to know you are fine with congressmen breaking rules and using bullhorns to lead protesters to obstruct government proceedings.
So much for defending democracy, huh?
Projection: unconsciously taking unwanted emotions or traits you don't like about yourself and attributing them to someone else.
Please try to use common definitions to avoid speaking past each other.
Let's do the time warp again!
The authorities showed restraint.
They obstructed the business of the Tennessee legislature.
Except for the people who elected all those other legislators.
give up
Resorting to Ad Hominem attacks is a tactic of the weak minded.
Unfortunately there are at least five more here with similarly weak minds since they voted up your comment.
How embarrassing for this fine site ....
Instead of bitching, prove Hal is wrong...
Already did, calling out the Ad Hominem attack.
The only comment I see “bitching about” something, is yours.
So first, practice what you preach.
I see. That's why you aren't taken seriously!
Coming from you that is very encouraging. With that said, i Haiku .....
practice what you preach
or your character you breach
Again and again
mar 31
Republicans mischaracterizing people and events? That NEVER happens, except every day.
All these posts on all these seeds and not one "I see fascism everywhere" poster has so much as criticized these Representatives for stopping a democratic body from doing its duties by using a bullhorn and inciting protesters.
Right back to 2020, when Biden and progressives were fawning over a child molester who attacked a cop with a knife and stirred up riots in Wisconsin.
Speaking of child molesters, the Tennessee legislature had one in their mist, a self-admitted one that wasn't expelled from the ''club''....
I want to thank the Tennessee Republicans for giving everyone an example of exactly what "CANCEL CULTURE" really is.
They have cancelled two Democratic Representatives.
The citizens in those two districts are not represented in Tennessee anymore.