Tag: Tennessee

Ouster of Tennessee Dems catapults lawmakers to national political fame

[ad_1]

Already, top party members are engaging. Vice President Kamala Harris plans to make an unexpected visit to Nashville to meet with the ousted lawmakers and push for gun reform, the Tennessean reported Friday.
And it’s unlikely the pair will be gone from the state Capitol building for long – local leaders are already moving to reappoint both of them well before a special election is held. The Nashville Metro Council on Monday will consider naming Jones to his old seat, which encompasses parts of Nashville. In Person’s Memphis district, the head of the Shelby County Commission, which has a Democratic supermajority, said she could consider reappointing Pearson.
“We are ready to go,” said Freddie O’Connell, a Nashville council member. O’Connell, a Democrat who is running for Nashville mayor, said he believes Jones has enough support from the council to return to the statehouse as soon as Monday evening.
Jones said on CNN Friday morning that he intends to get back to the statehouse. He sees his and Pearson’s roles as being a “voice of moral dissent” and a “speed bump to try and stop them from driving this train off the cliff.”
Following the reappointments, special elections will be held to permanently fill both seats. Jones and Pearson have already rebooted their old campaign websites and reopened their fundraising accounts. While it’s up to Republican Gov. Bill Lee to call for a new election and the state party to set deadlines, it’s likely the primary election will take place by late summer and the general election in the fall, ensuring that the pair will remain in the spotlight throughout much of the year.
“I do not expect Justin Jones to be suffering from a lack of resources to soundly defeat anybody else who might enter that contest as a Republican,” O’Connell said. Jones was uncontested in the general after winning the Democratic primary by about 300 votes.
State Sen. Ramumesh Akbari said Republicans’ pursuit of expulsions instead of considering gun legislation has ignited a spark among Tennesseeans, one that could backfire for the GOP.
“A week ago, no one outside this community knew Justin Jones and Justin Pearson,” Akbar said. “Now the world is watching. Their platform and their ability to advocate for the issues they believe in has been magnified.”

Several members of the Tennessee Democratic Party said donations have been pouring in since the Covenant School shooting and Republicans’ evictions of the so-called “Tennessee Three” who collectively represent the three largest cities in the state.
A GoFundMe account created this week to cover the Democrats’ legal expenses, should they choose to sue GOP leadership, has raised more than $38,000. The trio gained tens of thousands of Twitter followers in the hours following the controversial vote.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) tweeted that over $250,000 in donations poured into ActBlue, the fundraising platform used by many Democratic politicians and organizations, the day Jones and Pearson were expelled.
Advocates want to redirect the attention back to the issue they were standing for: changing Tennessee’s gun safety laws. Protestors have surrounded the Capitol building for weeks, calling for lawmakers to pass gun-safety measures like red flag and safe storage laws, as well as roll back recent moves, like enacting permitless carry.
“Since the shooting a lot of people here in Nashville, especially students and moms and educators, were all fed up,” said Zach Maaieh, a Students Demand Action leader at Vanderbilt University who has joined protestors at the Capitol. “We’re hearing about shooting after shooting. It’s heartbreaking every single time, but you don’t see anything happening from our state leaders.”
Gun safety advocates and lawmakers point to deep red states that have enacted red flag laws, measures that allow courts to temporarily confiscate guns from someone deemed dangerous
“Nineteen states – including Indiana and Florida – have already taken this step,” Everytown for Gun Safety President John Feinblatt said at a press conference Thursday. “Now it’s time for Tennessee to join that list.”
The state Democratic party is salivating over the public’s sudden interest in Tennessee politics and channeling that energy toward taking down Republicans. It’s an extremely ambitious goal. Democrats in Tennessee and throughout the South have been stomped by Republicans in recent elections, a phenomenon that Democrats blame on GOP-crafted gerrymandered districts and low voter turnout.
Dakota Galban, head of Davidson County Democrats, an area encompassing Nashville, said most of the emails and calls he’s received in recent days are from people concerned about what Republicans’ decision to oust the Democrats means for democracy.
“We’re really trying to get as many people involved in our organization so we can mobilize and organize volunteers and voters ahead of this special election,” Galban said. “Hopefully we can build on that momentum into 2024.”
Beyond Tennessee, the drama in the Capitol has brought disdain from national leaders like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and ex-RNC Chairman Michael Steele.
Even former President Barack Obama weighed in on Twitter, calling the events “the latest example of a broader erosion of civility and democratic norms.”
“Silencing those who disagree with us is a sign of weakness, not strength, and it won’t lead to progress,” Obama said.

[ad_2]
#Ouster #Tennessee #Dems #catapults #lawmakers #national #political #fame
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 8, 2023
Expelled Tennessee lawmaker vows to return to office

[ad_1]

The expulsion vote came less than two weeks after three 9-year-old children and three adults were fatally shot at an elementary school in Nashville.
Jones said he and Pearson don’t see their role as convincing opposing lawmakers of their views, but instead as being a “voice of moral dissent” and a “speed bump to try and stop them from driving this train off the cliff.”
More than a dozen members of Nashville’s Metro Council said they plan to vote to reappoint Jones and send him back to the Tennessee House of Representatives, The Tennessean reported.
That “hostile environment,” Jones added, has been driven by Republicans, including House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who don’t view young Black men such as Jones and Pearson as equal or deserving of being in the Legislature: “We know what we’re facing.”
In a separate interview on Fox News Friday morning, Sexton defended the expulsion vote and pushed back on accusations that racism was the reason why Jones and Pearson were expelled while Johnson was not — an allegation Johnson herself made to reporters after Thursday’s vote. The speaker said Johnson’s lawyers argued that she acted differently than the pair during the protest — she didn’t shout or use a bullhorn — and other members thought she didn’t play as central a role in the demonstration as Jones and Pearson.
“She is trying to cloak racism in this, which there was nothing on this. They were all given due process,” Sexton told Fox News. “What they did was not right, and it deserved expulsion.”
Sexton also defended the Legislature’s actions against President Joe Biden’s condemnation that the expulsions were “shocking” and “undemocratic,” saying he doesn’t believe the president would tolerate such protests on the congressional floor.
Johnson said she doesn’t believe there was due process for her and the two others: “There were no rules,” she told MSNBC Friday morning, adding that she was questioned by lawmakers in a different way than the two men. “It is scary this is what’s happening to our democratic process.”

[ad_2]
#Expelled #Tennessee #lawmaker #vows #return #office
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 7, 2023
The Tennessee Expulsion Is a Glimpse of the Future

[ad_1]
In the entire history of the U.S. House, only five members have been expelled — the last, Ohio Democratic Rep. James Traficant, was removed after being convicted of bribery, racketeering and tax evasion and didn’t have the decency to step down on his own. The Tennessee House last expelled a member in 2016, when Jeremy Durham was ousted for rampant sexual misconduct. Thirty-six years earlier, Robert Fisher was booted for soliciting a bribe.
But what if a legislature decides to exercise power just because it can? Can it expel or refuse to seat a member for purely political reasons? Once upon a time it seemed so. In the fevered nationalism of World War I, Congress refused to seat Socialist Victor Berger after he won a seat in 1918. He ran again in 1919 and won again, and Congress again refused to seat him. At the same time, the New York State Assembly expelled all five Socialists on general grounds of “disloyalty.”
The mood of the time was captured by the Assembly speaker, who thundered: “We are building by our action today a granite bulwark against all traitors within the boundaries of our republic. Our flag of the republic is whipping the breeze in defiance of enemies from without.”
A few decades later, a similar attempt to ban an elected legislator was rebuffed. Julian Bond, a key civil rights leader, had been elected to the Georgia House; but in 1966, the legislature voted by an overwhelming margin not to seat him on the grounds that he had opposed the war in Vietnam and expressed sympathy for draft resisters. But later that year, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Bond’s First Amendment rights had been violated and ordered him seated. He served for more than 20 years in the Georgia House and then the state Senate.
The case of the three Tennessee Democrats involves neither criminal nor immoral conduct nor the mere statement of opinions. It involves conduct — encouraging demonstrations and bringing a bullhorn and posters to the state House floor — that violates the rules of the House. Still, the legislature has never imposed before so severe a penalty for rules violations, and over the past few years, a number of legislators have kept their posts even after being charged with serious sexual misconduct.
Clearly, expelling these members is an explosive move and temporarily leaves their constituents no representation, at least until a special election is held; in fact, the state party is already raising money for the three members to win back their seats.
Meanwhile, there’s another story playing out 600 miles to the north that highlights another, potentially even more consequential use of hard-ball legislative power.
While liberals were celebrating the election Tuesday of a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who will tip the court to the left, voters in the state’s 8th senatorial district were sending Republican Dan Knodl to Madison. That gives the GOP a Senate supermajority and with it, the power to remove key officials through impeachment — including judges. In late March, Knodl said he would “certainly consider” impeaching Janet Protasiewicz, the new state Supreme Court justice, though he was talking about her role as a county judge.

Would Wisconsin Republicans impeach a justice simply because they don’t like the court’s rulings? Well, there is nothing hypothetical about how the state’s GOP legislature has used its power against other branches of government.
In 2018, after Wisconsin voters elected a Democratic governor and attorney general, the legislature and the lame duck Republican governor, significantly cut back the power of both offices. And while it might be politically risky to remove a justice whom voters overwhelmingly elected, it’s not at all far-fetched to imagine that if the new liberal court majority strikes down the state’s gerrymandered legislative districts, that legislature would respond by trying to remove one or more justices from office. And there’s nothing hypothetical about other states — looking at you, North Carolina — where supermajority GOP legislatures have cut deeply into the power of the executive branch once Democrats won those posts.
In the coming weeks and months, the Nashville battle may well be just a footnote as legislatures exercise their powers over everything from the makeup and reach of the courts to the traditional powers of a governor, to the will of the voters who vote for ballot propositions. It’s another reminder that the most important elections of the 21st century happened in 2010 — when legislatures from one end of the country to the other turned red and began to reshape the politics of the nation.
[ad_2]
#Tennessee #Expulsion #Glimpse #Future
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 7, 2023
Tennessee House expels one Dem over gun protest, targets two more

[ad_1]

State Rep. Justin Jones was removed from office in a largely party-line vote, 72-25, that was led by the Republican supermajority. The votes for the other two targeted Democrats are expected to have similar results.
Republicans dominate both chambers in the state Legislature, and the GOP reinforced its supermajority in the midterms by picking up more seats in the House. Democrats hold just 23 seats to Republicans’ 75.
Dubbed “the Tennessee Three” by fellow Democrats, Jones, Johnson and Pearson represent the three largest cities in Tennessee.
Ahead of the vote, Jones, a freshman lawmaker and community organizer, admonished Republicans for not enacting gun reform laws after multiple tragedies — inaction he said has sparked a movement for change.
“Your flexing of false power has awakened a generation of people who will let you know your time is up,” Jones, 27, warned Republicans.
A number of Republicans questioned Jones over the order of events the day of the protests, trying to pin them down on rule violations. Republican Rep. Gino Bulso, a sponsor of the expulsion resolutions, said that Jones “shows no remorse” when addressing the chamber before the vote.
The move by Republicans is remarkable for its naked partisanship and the speed with which it was executed. The process of removing lawmakers is usually a bipartisan undertaking in most states, often involving internal investigations following criminal charges or ethical lapses. In Tennessee, only two other House members have been removed before today’s proceedings, both after criminal violations or sexual misconduct.
Should all three members be expelled, special elections will be held in the three districts encompassing Nashville, Knoxville and Memphis. Nothing would hold those members back from running again in those races. Johnson suggested in an interview with POLITICO that if she’s voted out, she would try to return to the statehouse if her constituents desired it. The state constitution forbids lawmakers from being removed from office twice for the same offense.

GOP leadership could also face a lawsuit from the members, although it’s unclear at this point what grounds they could sue on.
The drama has skyrocketed the three to the national stage as Democrats have rallied around them and tried to steer that attention toward enacting gun reform laws in Tennessee and beyond. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday that Tennessee Republicans are “shrugging in the face of yet another school shooting.”
The expulsion vote marks “just another anti-democratic effort to silence the American people for speaking out against the devastating consequences of gun violence,” Neha Patel, co-executive director of the State Innovation Exchange, a nonprofit supporting progressive state lawmakers, said in a letter released Thursday that was signed by hundreds of lawmakers from across the country.
Jones, talking with reporters after his expulsion, said the proceedings do “not seem like America.”
“To expel voices of opposition and dissent is a signal of authoritarianism and it is very dangerous,” he said.
[ad_2]
#Tennessee #House #expels #Dem #gun #protest #targets
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 7, 2023
What to know about ‘the Tennessee three’ after the first expulsion vote

[ad_1]

Here’s what to know about each lawmaker:
Rep. Gloria Johnson
Johnson, who currently represents Knoxville, was first elected to the Legislature in 2012. Johnson lost her reelection bid in 2014 and 2016 but won the seat back in the 2018 election. Johnson, 60, is a retired teacher.
Johnson is known to be one the most forthright House Democrats in the Legislature. In 2021, Johnson moved her desk to the hallway after she was assigned a windowless conference room. Her office believes House Speaker Cameron Sexton assigned her the office to punish her because she was the only member who did not vote to reelect the Republican as speaker.
Rep. Justin Jones
Jones, 27, is one of the youngest members of the state House. The first-term lawmaker won the election in November to represent parts of Nashville.
Prior to being elected, Jones was known for his activist work. In 2019, Jones led sit-ins and protests for the removal of a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest from the Tennessee State Capitol. In 2020, Jones organized a 62-day sit-in protest for racial justice outside the state capitol after the murder of George Floyd.
Rep. Justin Pearson
Pearson currently represents parts of Memphis after being elected in a special election in January. At 28, Pearson became the second-youngest lawmaker serving in the Tennessee House. Pearson is the son of an educator and a preacher.
Pearson became known in Memphis when he co-founded the grassroots organization Memphis Community Against the Pipeline to oppose a crude oil pipeline proposed for South Memphis.
[ad_2]
#Tennessee #expulsion #vote
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 6, 2023
Tennessee House to vote on expelling 3 Dems over gun protest

[ad_1]
Ahead of Thursday’s vote, tensions appeared high among lawmakers as they debated separate legislation, including a school safety bill that would require every school to have a resource officer or security guard. Members of the public filled the galleries and hallways to observe the session.

State Troopers watch the rotunda as people protest below after it was announced Republicans began the process of expelling three state representatives, during a House session at the Tennessee state Capitol Building in Nashville, on April 3, 2023.
|
Nicole Hester/The Tennessean via AP
If the vote is successful, it would mark an unprecedented wielding of power by the Republicans who control both chambers of the Legislature. Expelling members typically occurs when individuals are accused of crimes or ethics violations, a rare step that tends to follow an internal investigation that can span months or years and features bipartisan agreement.
In this case, however, Republicans angered by the trio’s actions moved swiftly and unilaterally.
“They have gone to extreme consequences for three members who spoke without permission,” said Johnson in an interview with POLITICO.
Removing Johnson and her colleagues would set a “terrible precedent,” she said. “You could be expelled for literally anything, the smallest infraction possible.”
The drama has skyrocketed the three to the national stage as Democrats have rallied around them and tried to steer that attention toward enacting gun reform laws in Tennessee and beyond. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday that Tennessee Republicans are “shrugging in the face of yet another school shooting.”
[ad_2]
#Tennessee #House #vote #expelling #Dems #gun #protest
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 6, 2023
Why Tennessee GOP’s effort to oust 3 Dem lawmakers is so unusual

[ad_1]

“It will echo across the country. I think it will have a chilling effect on all states where there’s supermajorities or very red states,” Rep. Gloria Johnson, one of the Democrats under threat of expulsion, said in a phone interview Tuesday. “This is chipping away at our democracy, there’s no question, because everybody’s going to wonder, ‘am I next?’”
The ACLU in Tennessee also issued a warning the effort “undermines Democracy.”
“Expulsion is an extreme measure that is used very infrequently in our state and our country because it strips voters of representation by the people they elected,” Kathy Sinback, the executive director of the ACLU in Tennessee, said in a statement.
State legislatures often go decades without taking such an action against members.
The dustup began last week, when hundreds of protestors gathered at the capitol in Nashville to urge lawmakers to pass gun safety measures in the aftermath of a shooting at a local school that left three adults and three children dead.
Amid the protests that leaked into the building, Reps. Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson led chants on the House floor in which they called on their colleagues to pass new gun laws. The lawmakers were aided by a bullhorn.
Their stunt enraged Republicans, who promptly introduced resolutions calling for their removal, sparking further chaos on the House floor.
Now, Republican leaders — who likened those actions to an “insurrection” — will vote Thursday on whether the members should be allowed to continue serving in the House or be removed from office. The Democrats have already been stripped of their committee assignments.

Resolutions filed against the three declared that they had participated in “disorderly behavior” and “did knowingly and intentionally bring disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives.”
Critics of the move to evict the members argued that Republicans have failed in the past to remove their members of their own party who acted egregiously, such as a former representative who was accused of sexually assaulting teenagers when he was a basketball coach.
“It’s morally insane that a week after a mass shooting took six lives in our community, House Republicans only response is to expel us for standing with our constituents to call for gun control,” Jones tweeted Tuesday afternoon. “What’s happening in Tennessee is a clear danger to democracy all across this nation.”
The group of Democrats faces tough odds surviving the vote: Both chambers of the Tennessee legislature are controlled by a Republican supermajority. Special elections will be held if the resolutions pass.
Johnson, a former teacher who survived a school shooting that left one student dead, said she plans to bring an attorney to Thursday’s vote and “defend herself.”
“I’m happy to show up and make my case heard, because I will always lift up the voices of the people in my district who want to see gun sense legislation,” Johnson said.

[ad_2]
#Tennessee #GOPs #effort #oust #Dem #lawmakers #unusual
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 5, 2023
Tennessee GOP members move to oust 3 Dems after gun protest

[ad_1]

Republican Reps. Bud Hulsey, Gino Bulso, and Andrew Farmer filed the resolutions. They successfully requested Monday that the House expedite the process and vote on the resolutions Thursday.
Despite support from the Republican supermajority, their requests sparked outrage among supporters watching in the gallery. Their loud jeers led House Speaker Cameron Sexton to demand that they be removed by state troopers. Also during the turmoil, several lawmakers engaged in a confrontation on the House floor.
Jones later accused another member of stealing his phone and trying to “incite a riot with his fellow members.”
Sexton deemed Jones out of order and cut off Jones’ microphone.
Hundreds of protesters packed the Capitol last week calling for the Republican-led Statehouse to pass gun control measures in response to the Nashville school shooting that resulted in the deaths of six people. As the chants echoed throughout the Capitol, Jones, Johnson and Pearson approached the front of the House chamber with a bullhorn.
As the three shared the bullhorn and cheered on the crowd, Sexton, a Republican, quickly called for a recess. He later vowed the three would face consequences. Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Karen Camper described their actions as “good trouble,” a reference to the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis’ guiding principal.
By Monday, Sexton confirmed that the three lawmakers had been stripped of their committee assignments and said more punishments could be on the way. A few hours later, House Republican Caucus Chairman Jeremy Faison referred to Jones as the “former representative” during the evening session.
Pearson and Jones are both freshman lawmakers. Johnson has served in the House since 2019. All three have been highly critical of the Republican supermajority. Jones was temporarily banned from the Tennessee Capitol in 2019 after throwing a cup of liquid at former House Speaker Glen Casada and other lawmakers while protesting the bust of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest inside the Capitol.

Expelling lawmakers is an extraordinary action inside the Tennessee Capitol. Just two other House members have ever been ousted from the chamber since the Civil War.
[ad_2]
#Tennessee #GOP #members #move #oust #Dems #gun #protest
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 4, 2023
3 kids among 6 killed in Tennessee school, female shooter shot dead

[ad_1]
Washington: Three students and three adults were killed and several others injured in a gun attack at a school in US’ Tennessee state on Monday before the woman perpetrator was shot dead by the police, reports said.
The attack was reported from the Covenant School in Nashville, a private Christian school for students in pre-school to sixth grade, when the students are roughly 11 or 12 years old, the BBC reported.
Local media, citing sources at the local Vanderbilt University Medical Center, reported that three children were taken to the hospital with gunshot wounds and were pronounced dead.
Nashville police said they had “engaged” the shooter, who is now dead.
Later, Nashville police said in a briefing that six people have been killed – three children and three adults – and there are no additional victims. No additional details were provided.
The shooter was a female, the police said, and believed to be in her teens. Her name has not been released. She was armed with two assault-style rifles and a handgun, they said.
The police said that they first received reports of an active shooter at 10.13 a.m. (local time, 8.43 p.m. IST), engaged with the shooter in a “lobby-like area” on the school’s second floor and managed to neutralise her by 10.27 a.m. local time.
According to its website, the school has approximately 200 students.

[ad_2]
#kids #among #killed #Tennessee #school #female #shooter #shot #dead
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

March 28, 2023
Top Tennessee pair fired after damning review of state’s execution protocol

[ad_1]
Two top Tennessee officials have been fired by the corrections department after an independent report revealed striking errors in the state’s lethal injection execution protocol.
According to official documents reviewed by the Tennessean newspaper, the deputy commissioner and general counsel, Debra Inglis, was fired, as well as inspector general Kelly Young, on 27 December.
The firings came a day before Governor Bill Lee publicized the report, which found that multiple executions were carried out in recent years without proper testing of the drugs used in the lethal injection death penalty process.
Specifically, the report revealed that when Tennessee revised its lethal injection protocol in 2018, there was no evidence of the state ever providing the pharmacy in charge of testing the drugs with a copy of its lethal injection protocol.
The report also found that the three drugs used in the state’s protocol – midazolam to sedate the person, vecuronium bromide to paralyze the person and potassium chloride to stop their heart – were not properly tested for endotoxins, a type of contaminant.
Since 2018, seven prisoners have been executed in Tennessee following a nearly decade-long hiatus in executions. Five chose to die in the electric chair while two were administered lethal injections.
Last April the state called off the execution of inmate Oscar Smith an hour before his scheduled execution after Lee acknowledged the state’s failure to properly adhere to its lethal injection protocol.
According to the report released in December, in all seven executions since 2018, none of the lethal injections – some of which were prepared in case the person to be put to death changed their mind and opted to be executed by lethal injection instead of electrocution – were tested for endotoxins.

In the case of one person who was executed by lethal injection, the report also found that the midazolam used during his execution was not tested for potency. The report revealed that in 2017, a pharmacist warned state correction officials that midazolam “‘does not elicit strong analgesic effects’, meaning ‘[t]he subjects may be able to feel pain from the administration of the second and third drugs’”.
According to inmates’ expert witnesses, midazolam has been said to cause sensations of doom, panic, drowning and asphyxiation.
Some US states, especially Alabama, are embroiled in scandal over botched executions by lethal injection.
[ad_2]
#Top #Tennessee #pair #fired #damning #review #states #execution #protocol
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

January 21, 2023