Tennessee Republicans expelled a Democrat from the state legislature for disrupting a legislative session by protesting Republicans’ failure to address gun violence in the wake of last month’s mass shooting in Nashville. realaxelfoley reports
that day, taking to the House floor during a recess and giving remarks through a bullhorn in which they chided Republicans for a lack of action on gun reform as protesters in the gallery joined them in chants.
Thousands of demonstrators, many of them young people, had streamed into Nashville’s state capital to demonstrate against Republicans who refuse to change the state’s lax firearm laws in the wake of the shooting at the Covenant School, which left three children and three adults dead along with the shooter.
The expulsion of lawmakers is exceedingly rare in Tennessee, and expulsion over such a mild offense is unprecedented. As theHouse leadership has never overridden a member’s election for simply violating House rules. Only two House members have been expelled from the chamber since the 1800s, both after either criminal charges or sexual misconduct allegations. Both of those times, in 1980 and 2016, followed special committee inquiries and were bipartisan votes.
Democrats have pointed out that, in recent years, state Republicans have been accused of misdeeds that would seem athan breaching decorum, including sexual assault and urinating in another lawmaker’s chair. They have also accused the GOP of going out of its way to punish three lawmakers — two Black men and a woman — who do not look like most of the House.
Ultimately, the wisdom of Republicans taking such drastic action is debatable from a political perspective. The expulsion has elevated Johnson, Pearson, and Jones locally and nationally and attracted often unflattering national media attention to the Tennessee GOP. But, beyond that, the three Democrats are eligible to run in the special elections that will be held to replace them. So they may be back in a matter of months, newly minted as semi-household names.
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