Adam Friedman of Tennessee Outlook wrote about the flood of dark money pouring into Tennessee to defeat legislators who oppose school choice, both moderate Republicans and Democrats. The biggest money is coming from Charles Koch (Americans for Prosperity).
Archives for category: Tennessee
Confidential documents were leaked to the media in Tennessee revealing collaboration among out-of-state interests to buy seats in the legislature for anti-public school candidates. As you would expect, the funders included Koch and DeVos. The goal is to privatize school funding.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Confidential documents reveal that a group of school privatization groups, each claiming to be separate entities with separate agendas, actually work together to try to buy seats in the Tennessee legislature for candidates who are willing to vote against traditional public schools.
The documents, leaked to NewsChannel 5 Investigates, show how those groups — working as part of what they call the “Tennessee Coalition for Students” — sometimes try to convince voters that politicians who support traditional public schools are just bad people.
Most of those in the “Tennessee Coalition for Students” do not live in Tennessee. Not Betsy DeVos. Not Charles Koch.
Margaret Renkl is a contributing opinion writer in the South for the New York Times. In this article, she notices that access to civil rights increasingly depends on which state you live in. Red state legislatures exert extreme control over private decisions. Those who live in Tennessee are not free to make their own decisions about medical care.
NASHVILLE — Two weeks ago, while the rest of America was absorbed by the hunt for a doomed submersible, people in Tennessee discovered that their attorney general was conducting a witch hunt.
As part of a “run-of-the-mill” inquiry into possible billing fraud — as officials described their investigation — the attorney general’s office demanded that Vanderbilt University Medical Center hand over a vast array of documents from its clinic for gender-affirming care. According to Tennessee Lookout, a nonprofit journalism site, those documents include, among others:
- complete medical records for an undisclosed number of patients
- Resumes of clinic physicians
- information about the clinic’s Trans Buddy volunteers
- emails sent to and from a public portal for questions about L.G.B.T.Q. health
- the names of people referred to the gender-affirming clinic for care
Tell me this isn’t a witch hunt. Tell me this isn’t an open campaign of terror against already vulnerable citizens who had every reason to believe that their medical records — their medical records! — were confidential and every reason to believe that the medical clinic of a major university hospital was a safe space.
During the Juneteenth holiday weekend, Vanderbilt notified patients whose confidential medical records were now in the possession of the state attorney general. The hospital has not detailed which documents it provided the state. When two Tennessee Lookout reporters, Sam Stockard and Anita Wadhwani, asked whether Vanderbilt had complied with every state request in connection with the investigation, a hospital spokesman said, “The short response to your question is no.”
State officials contend that they are investigating only the hospital and certain providers, not the patients they serve, and that all the data they’ve gathered will be kept private. But given the sweeping nature of the documents and the obsessive and relentless way that the Republican supermajority in this state — and in virtually every state governed by a Republican supermajority — has persecuted trans people, it’s impossible to trust such claims…
Though the courts have generally sided with transgender families when these laws have faced legal challenges, the behavior of red-state lawmakers and officials remains in lock step with intimidation campaigns conducted against transgender people by right-wing media figures like the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, who staged an anti-trans rally in Nashville last fall…
Increasingly, this is exactly what it’s like to live in a red state, and not just for vulnerable minorities. The age at which it is possible to marry, the testing required to drive a car, the conditions under which it is possible to carry a firearm — such matters have always varied a bit from state to state. But this is a whole new reality.
Now that Republican-appointed justices dominate the U.S. Supreme Court, we can’t count on the courts to protect us from the most extreme agendas being enacted in Republican-dominated statehouses. Essential civil liberties that citizens of other states can take for granted are no longer liberties that we in the red states enjoy.
Maybe you can count on being able to make health care decisions yourself, following the advice of your doctor. No such luck here, whether you’re seeking transgender care or the safe end to an unsafe or unwanted pregnancy.
Maybe you’re a physician, trained and board-certified in an area of expertise that exactly zero legislators in your state share. You may be under the impression that your education and experience give you the right to recommend medical treatment for your patients. Not in many places here. Even in the case of life-threatening situations, your hands are tied.
Maybe you feel relatively confident that your children are safe in their schools because you live in a state that has enacted measures to keep firearms out of the hands of dangerous people. My state has done nothing of the kind.
Maybe you are represented in Congress by an elected official whose political positions align with the political positions of a vast majority of people who live in the city they represent. In Nashville, as in other blue cities whose voting districts were determined by a Republican legislature, we don’t.
Maybe classrooms and school libraries in your community offer books and other materials that experienced teachers and librarians have chosen for their excellence and their relevance to children’s lives. In the red states, that’s not something parents can count on, for our school boards are being bullied by a minority of conservative parents, and our Republican legislators believe they know better than education professionals which books students are ready to read.
Maybe the full range of birth control options is now available to you in planning whether, or when, to have a baby. Many anti-abortion activists erroneously define birth control measures like intrauterine devices and the medication known as Plan B as abortifacients. If you live in a state where such groups have the ear of legislators, you’d better start paying attention to what’s happening in your statehouse because these folks are coming for you.
We live in two countries now: one in which basic civil and human rights are recognized and enshrined in law, and another in which ideological extremists can decide how everyone else lives.
Jennifer Rubin is a regular columnist at the Washington Post. She was hired by the Post to be its “right” voice, but the Trump years flipped her politics. (I think she is my doppelgänger.) Before she became a columnist at WAPO, she wrote for The Weekly Standard, National Review, Commentary, and Human Events, among other conservative publications. Trump turned her into a Democrat. She has a BA and law degree from Berkeley.
She wrote here about a decision by a federal judge in Tennessee, overturning the state’s law banning drag shows. Drag is a performance. Drag queens, whether male or female, wear costumes to entertain audiences. If you don’t approve, don’t go to a drag show. If you think children should not see men pretending to be women (like “Mrs. Doubtfire” or “Tootsie,” don’t let them watch).
I have never been to a live drag show, though I enjoy seeing Tyler Perry play “Medea” in the movies and have enjoyed films like “Some Like It Hot” and “The Birdcage.” To me, drag is an age-old theatrical device, a performance intended to be humorous. If you believe in parental rights, trust parents to decide whether their children should go to a drag story hour at the local library. Once a legislature begins declaring what can be alllowed onstage, we are on a very dangerous path.
Rubin wrote:
Republicans, right-wing judges and MAGA activists have set out to trample on free speech and individual rights in the name of battling “wokeism.” If they don’t like what teachers say about history, gag them. If they don’t like certain books, ban them. If they don’t like a corporation defending LGBTQ rights, retaliate against it. Their crusade has become an expression of not only white Christian nationalism but of contempt for the Constitution and the First Amendment.
But last week, U.S. District Judge Thomas L. Parker, appointed by President Donald Trump, stood up to the thought police and the MAGA bullies in striking down the so-called drag queen ban (the Adult Entertainment Act) in Tennessee.
Parker began with an ode to the First Amendment: “Freedom of speech is not just about speech. It is also about the right to debate with fellow citizens on self-government, to discover the truth in the marketplace of ideas, to express one’s identity, and to realize self-fulfillment in a free society.” He continued, “That freedom is of first importance to many Americans such that the United States Supreme Court has relaxed procedural requirements for citizens to vindicate their right to freedom of speech, while making it harder for the government to regulate it.” And the Tennessee statute impermissibly tried to regulate free speech, he found.
Parker ruled that the law was “both unconstitutionally vague and substantially overbroad” because of the prohibition on displays “harmful to minors,” whatever that means. The law “fails to provide fair notice of what is prohibited, and it encourages discriminatory enforcement,” especially because the ban applies wherever a minor could be present.
Parker noted that the Supreme Court does not protect obscenity but certainly does protect speech that is unpopular. “Simply put, no majority of the Supreme Court has held that sexually explicit — but not obscene — speech receives less protection than political, artistic, or scientific speech. … The AEA’s regulation of ‘adult-oriented performances that are harmful to minors under § 39-17-901′ does target protected speech, despite Defendant claims to the contrary.” In a retort to Republicans seeking to rid libraries, classrooms and performance venues of anything they find offensive, Parker wrote, “Whether some of us may like it or not, the Supreme Court has interpreted the First Amenmentas protecting speech that is indecent but not obscene.”
And Parker also found the law “targets the viewpoint of gender identity — particularly those who wish to impersonate a gender that is different from the one with which they are born.” This is prohibited “content-based, viewpoint-based regulation on speech.” Republicans insist there is no such thing as gender identity other than gender determined at birth. That’s not a fact, as the MAGA censors insist; that’s a viewpoint. And it is impermissible to ban other viewpoints. That, Parker underscores, is what a free society is all about.
Simply because MAGA politicians want to write trans Americans out of existence does not make it constitutionally permissible. “The Court finds that the AEA’s text discriminates against a certain viewpoint, imposes criminal sanctions, and spans a virtually unlimited geographical area,” Parker wrote. “The AEA can criminalize — or at a minimum chill — the expressive conduct of those who wish to impersonate a gender that is different from the one with which they were born in Shelby County. Such speech is protected by the First Amendment.” He concluded, “This statute — which is barely two pages long — reeks with constitutional maladies of vagueness and overbreadth fatal to statutes that regulate First Amendment rights. The virulence of the AEA’s overbreadth chills a large amount of speech, and calls for this strong medicine.”
I hope you can open the link and read the rest of this excellent article.
Mercedes Schneider employs her highly honed investigative skills to examine the background of Tennessee State Commissioner of Education Penny Schwinn, who announced her resignation, as well as the “credentials” of her replacement Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds.
Schwinn started in Teach for America, then worked her way up to become chief deputy commissioner of academics for the Texas Education Agency. Such meteoric advances seem to happen only with TFA experience, especially in red states. Schwinn caused a bit of controversy after she handed out a $4.4 million no-bid contract to a newly-formed vendor who also had a TFA background. Strangely the whistle-blower was fired, while Schwinn rose yet again to be state commissioner of education in Tennessee.
In 2021, a Republican legislator introduced legislation calling for her resignation, due to the astronomical turnover rate in her department. But the proposal was withdrawn.
Then Schwinn audaciously awarded a multimillion dollar contract to TNTP (founded by Michelle Rhee) without disclosing that her husband worked for TNTP.
Schwinn’s successor, Reynolds, has no classroom experience. None. She rose through Ed deform organizations, largely connected to George W. Bush and Jeb Bush.
Schneider concludes:
Ed-reform makes for a tight and influential club.
For now, Schwinn is out, but with Reynolds replacing her, market-based ed reform will almost certainly not be taking a back seat in the Volunteer State.
Scandal might. But not corporate-styled ed reform.
If the people of Tennessee want a different approach to education, they will have to elect a new governor.
Parents in Chattanooga, Tennessee, complained to the district school board about its cancellation of a Mothers Day event that was intended to be inclusive. The school board reacted to a complaint by a member of the censorious rightwing Moms for Liberty.
Alternet reported:
Parents in Chattanooga, Tennessee boldly confronted the Hamilton County School Board and its Superintendent Justin Robertson “for caving to Moms (Against) Liberty-led bullying and canceling a librarian’s Mother’s Day lesson inclusive to kids without moms,” The Tennessee Holler tweeted on Sunday.
Moms for Liberty (which the paper dinged as “against”) is a right-wing organization that campaigns against social progress and civil rights. Media Matters for America pointed out in November 2021 that the non-profit has deep connections to the Republican Party and “has county-specific chapters across the country that target local school board meetings, school board members, administrators, and teachers.” Moms for Liberty also promoted “stripping districts of protective COVID-19 measures” and seeks to “modify classroom curriculum to exclude the teaching of ‘critical race theory’ (CRT) and sex education, all in the name of ‘parental rights.'”
Last Tuesday, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press, Alpine Crest Elementary School librarian Caroline Mickey posted a letter on Moms for Liberty’s website stating that “With Mother’s Day approaching, I’d like to highlight this special role, but I am sensitive to the fact that not all students live with a mother. As such, I am planning a lesson that celebrates those who fill the motherly roles in our lives.”
Then, on Wednesday, ABC News Channel 9 explained that Mickey’s event was “designed to include students who didn’t have what is considered a ‘traditional’ mother. But the group Hamilton County Moms for Liberty said the books promoted what they call the ‘homosexual agenda.'”
The Tennessee legislature has passed a law controlling the freedom of teachers and college professors to discuss racism. Quite literally, teachers are required to deliver content without expressing a point of view, for instance, acknowledging that slavery was wrong. The author of the bill says he is promoting freedom of expression by restricting freedom of expression.
NASHVILLE, Tenn.—
“Divisive concept” rules are a set of laws passed last year that include many concepts usually taught in courses like sociology, psychology and political sciences.
The bill passed the House of Representatives on April 13, after passing Senate on April 5.
In 2022, lawmakers passed rules that allow state leaders to withhold funding for schools that teach about social, cultural and legal issues related to race and racism. Most of those concepts focus on how the impact of racism affects people today.
The law also specified that schools can teach about ethnic groups’ histories as described in textbooks and instructional materials. Educators can also only teach about controversial aspects of history, such as racial oppression or slavery, as long those discussions are impartial.
The bill, HB 1376, was introduced by Representative John Ragan (R – Oak Ridge). He previously said that the new bill was meant to strengthen the law passed in 2022 by “promoting freedom of expression,” and keep “colleges about advancing knowledge, not about advancing political or social agendas.”
Originally, the bill required institutions to publish a syllabus for each course offered in the semester on its website, meant to assess whether a “divisive concept” may be included in the curriculum. That requirement was removed in an amendment to the bill.
The bill restricts universities from using state funds for meetings or activities of an organization that “endorses or promotes a divisive concept.” It also requires employees who support diversity initiatives to “increase intellectual diversity” and support students through mentoring, career readiness and workforce development initiatives.
Employees would be exempt from the requirement if the new duties conflict with other laws, such as Title IX officers.
It also allows students and employees who believe that the school violated last year’s law a chance to file a report with the school. The school would then need to annually report violations to the comptroller of the treasury, redacting them as needed to stay in compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
The bill would also specifically require universities to allow any guest speaker on campus regardless of “non-violent political ideology” or “non-violent political party affiliation.”
The concepts that were banned from lessons in 2022’s law are listed below.
- That one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex
- That a person, by virtue of their race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist or oppressive — whether consciously or subconsciously
- That a person should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of their race or sex
- That a person’s moral character is determined by their race or sex
- That a person, by virtue of their race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex
- That a person should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or another form of psychological distress because of their race or sex
- That a meritocracy is inherently racist, sexist or designed by a particular race or sex to oppress members of another race or sex
- That Tennessee or the U.S. is fundamentally or irredeemably racist or sexist
- Promoting or advocating the violent overthrow of the U.S. government
- Promoting division between, or resentment of, a race, sex, religion, creed, nonviolent political affiliation, social class or class of people
- Ascribing character traits, values, moral or ethical codes, privileges or beliefs to a race or sex, or to a person because of their race or sex
- That the rule of law does not exist but instead is a series of power relationships and struggles among racial or other groups
- That “all Americans are not created equal and are not endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”
- That governments should deny to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the law
It also bans lessons that include “race or sex scapegoating” or “race or sex stereotyping,” as those terms are defined in law. In October 2022, a group of UT faculty called the law “chilling,” and questioned the law’s intent.
Rep. Justin Jones (D – Nashville) spoke about the bill when he returned to the House of Representatives after he was expelled and reinstated. He asked a series of questions, such as whether “college students are mature enough to talk about race and systemic racism, some of the concepts you want to prohibit being discussed at the college level?”
“I believe in God. All else is settled by facts and data,” Ragan said.
Jones again asked him to answer the question, but Ragan said he responded to the question.
“So, we’re playing ‘not-answer.’ Okay,” Jones said.
He also asked why the bill was introduced and said it seemed based on “white fragility and fears of the truth of history.”
“This bill was brought to me by a dean of college education, in addition to another university contributed to this bill. That was my motivation, too,” Ragan said.
He also said he did not want to name the person who brought the bill to him.
“How will we be honest about our history if you’re prohibiting any concepts about America’s racist history?” Jones said. “This sounds like fascism. This sounds like authoritarianism. This does not sound like democracy or freedom … This member has consistently invoked God to justify this unjust, immoral and extreme, racist law.”
Speaker Cameron Sexton (R – Crossville) stopped Jones from speaking. Rep. Justin Pearson (D – Memphis) also spoke after being reinstated to the House.
“This is a deeply concerning bill because it is continuing a pattern of practice that is harmful to all people,” he said. “When you try to control what a person thinks, then you are assuming the role of God rather than allowing freedom of thought.”
He said that the list of “divisive concepts” bars discussions on biases, white privilege and racism’s role in slavery.
The bill passed by a vote of 68-26 in the House.
During a meeting on March 13, Ragan said he received complaints from universities in the state about an “overemphasis” of the original law at the expense of “intellectual diversity,” which led to him proposing the new bill.
Representative Harold Love, Jr. (D – Nashville) previously asked if a conference focusing on Black history could still be held and promoted by a university should the bill pass. Ragan said it would be allowed as long as they “are not required to promote or endorse.”
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Fred Klonsky is a retired teacher who blogs regularly about Chicago, Illinois, the nation, politics, and culture. In this post, he draws an interesting comparison between the recent expulsion of two Black legislators in Tennessee and events concurrent with the end of the Reconstruction era and the reign of Jim Crow. There is this difference: The two ousted members are very likely to be restored to their seats in the legislature by their local elected officials. The Tennessee Three are now national figures revealing the fascist hand in the iron glove of the Republican Party when it has the majority.
Robert Smalls, Congressman during Reconstruction.
The expulsion of Rep. Justin Jones and Rep. Justin Pearson from the Tennessee legislature has a direct historical link to the overthrow of real democracy and Reconstruction following the Civil War.
On May 13, 1862 an enslaved man named Robert Smalls, who labored on a Confederate steamer in South Carolina’s Charleston harbor, set into motion a daring plan.
As his great-great-grandson Michael Boulware Moore explained, “He saw that the Confederate crew had left, and he knew that oftentimes they left for the evening, not to come back until the next day.”
For Smalls and six other enslaved people and their families, the stakes couldn’t have been higher. “They knew that if they got caught, that they would be, not just killed, but probably tortured in a particularly egregious and public manner,” said Moore.
Disguising himself in the straw hat and long overcoat of the ship’s white captain, Smalls piloted the ship past Fort Sumter towards the Union blockade, and freedom.
After serving on a Union Naval vessel during the Civil War, Smalls returned home to Beaufort, S.C., and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives – one of more than a dozen African Americans to serve in Congress during the period known as Reconstruction, when the formerly-rebel states were reabsorbed into the Union, and four million newly-freed African Americans were made citizens.
South Carolina, and throughout the former Confederacy, the era of Reconstruction saw the rise of Black political power and representation in both the U.S. Congress and Southern state legislatures.
During the 1870s, more than a dozen African American men, many of whom had been born into slavery, were elected to the U.S. Congress.
It was a great democratic movement that ended all too quickly.
Former Southern insurrectionists, aided by the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, violently organized an anti-democratic counterrevolution.
Born in South Carolina, Aaron A. Bradley was a shoemaker in Augusta Georgia. Sometime around 1834 he ran away to the North, where he became a lawyer.
In 1865 he returned to Georgia. He was the most outspoken member of the Black delegation to the constitutional convention.
In 1868 he was elected state senator from the First District. Bradley rallied plantation workers around Savanah with his insistence that the formerly enslaved people be given land.
But Black political power and Reconstruction was short lived.
One quarter of the Black legislators in Georgia were killed, threatened, beaten, or jailed. In the December 1870 elections the Democrats won an overwhelming victory in overthrowing democracy and Reconstruction.
In 1906 W. H. Rogers from McIntosh County was the last Black legislator to be elected before Black voters were legally disenfranchised in 1908.
The actions by white Republican members of the Tennessee legislature to expel two elected Black members has all the stench of the overthrow of Reconstruction and the establishment of Jim Crow.
Two of three rebellious Democratic legislators were expelled from the Tennessee legislature. The two who were expelled are Black. The third, who survived, is a white woman. This is an unprecedented sanction for defying the majority and speaking without permission, on behalf of gun control. Expulsion in the past was reserved for criminal behavior or sex scandals, not dissidence. The two legislators were expelled for breaking House rules of decorum.
It was an outrageous, undemocratic decision.
The vote to expel the second legislator, Gloria Johnson, a special education teacher, failed by one vote. When asked why Rep. Jones was expelled but she was not, she responded, “It might have something to do with the color of our skin.”
The Republican Party in Tennessee gerrymandered legislative districts to give themselves a supermajority. Democrats are powerless. Governor Bill Lee is a hard right ideologue.
After the murder of three children and three staff members at the Coventry School in Nashville, parents and students surrounded the Statehouse demanding gun control, which will never happen in this state so long as the state is solidly owned by the GOP.
Instead of enacting gun control, the legislators passed a law to arm teachers and “harden” schools.
NASHVILLE, Tennessee — Voting has begun in Nashville, where the Republican-controlled Tennessee state House of Representatives have already agreed to oust one of the three Democratic lawmakers in what marks the first partisan expulsion in the state’s modern history.
State Rep. Justin Jones, the first lawmaker expelled when lawmakers voted to adopt HR65, called the resolution “a spectacle” and “a lynch mob assembled to not lynch me, but our democratic process.”
“We called for you all to ban assault weapons and you respond with an assault on democracy,” Jones said during his 20-minute opening statement.
Earlier in the Thursday session, the legislature passed HB322, a bill that requires schools to implement a number of safety plans and security systems, over the objections of the three members who face expulsion.
“This bill is not about school safety that will not make our students safer,” Jones said, adding the move to “make our schools militarized zones” is borne out of refusal “to address the real issue, which is easy access to military grade weapons, which is easy access to weapons of war on our streets.”
State Rep. Gloria Johnson, a former teacher, decried the possibility of “gun battles at our schoolhouse door,” and state Rep. Justin Pearson, the last of the trio, argued that “the root cause that each of us have to address is this gun violence epidemic do the due to the proliferation of guns.”
“We don’t need a solution that says if you don’t lock a door or get someone with a gun, we need a solution that says people shouldn’t be going to schools and to houses and to neighborhoods with weapons of war,” Pearson added.Protesters gathered both inside — in the gallery, where they were told to remain silent — and in large groups outside, in apparent support of the three Democratic lawmakers.
Jones, Johnson and Pearson are facing expulsion resolutions for allegedly violating the chamber’s rules of decorum by participating in a gun control protest at the state Capitol last week. The demonstration came in the wake of the deadly Covenant School shooting in Nashville on March 27, where a former student fatally shot three children and three adults, police have said.
Republican leaders said that by siding with the large crowd of peaceful parents and students the three legislators had encouraged an “insurrection,” and some (the House Speaker) said it was even worse than the January 6 events when thousands of people broke into the Capitol and sent members of Congress hiding for their lives.
The courageous “Tennessee Three” were subject to expulsion for defending the lives of the innocent while the Republicans cower before the NRA.
Moments after voting to expel Jones, the House took up a resolution to expel Rep. Gloria Johnson.
Johnson brought two attorneys, former state Reps. John Mark Windle and Mike Stewart, to represent her. Windle spoke first on her behalf, pointing out specific accusations in the resolution of actions that Johnson specifically did not commit.
“It is an absolute falsehood that has been perpetuated on this body,” Windle said. “This woman did not shout – and that’s the first particular that they charged.”
Windle noted that Johnson did not bang on the House podium or become disorderly.
“Do you know who Gloria Johnson is? Does anybody know her? Is she a boogie man?” Windle asked. “Gloria Johnson is a school teacher. A special education teacher.”
“Today is Maundy Thursday, the day of betrayal,” he said. “Isn’t it fitting these allegations are made during Holy Week?”
During his remarks, Stewart argued that expulsion of a member for decorum violations is unprecedented in the House body.
“I haven’t heard anybody on this floor cite a single example of somebody being expelled from a legislative body based on these sort of flimsy charges,” Stewart said. “This is not just unprecedented in the state of Tennessee, and has no precedent in the United States of America.”
Rep. Gloria was not expelled, although she acted in concert with the other two legislators, both of whom are Black men, the youngest in the legislature at 27.
Then the legislature took up the case of the 3rd Democrat—Rep. Justin Pearson—who protested inaction on gun control. Like Rep. Jones, Rep. Pearson was expelled.
The two representatives can run for their seats again, but their districts will currently have no representation.
The GOP is a party that opposes democracy. In state after state, it is going full fascist.
The statehouse in Nashville, Tennessee, was surrounded by parents and students demonstrating in favor of gun control and against the GOP-controlled legislature’s protection of guns. The protest follows the murder of three children and three staff members at the Coventry School in Nashville.
Three Democratic members of the legislature joined the protest, chanting with the protestors.
The GOP leadership threatened to expel the Democrats. The speaker of the House absurdly claimed that the three Democrats were encouraging an insurrection.
Parents and children held signs and shouted chants during a large protest at the Tennessee capitol last week following a deadly school shooting. And while no one was arrested or injured, Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton is comparing the demonstration to the Jan. 6 insurrection.
During the House Floor session on Thursday — days after the Covenant School shooting — Reps. Gloria Johnson, D-Knox, Justin Pearson, D-Memphis, and Justin Jones, D-Nashville, stood up and chanted with protestors in the gallery.
Pearson and other Democrats attempted to acknowledge the large group of protesters during session, but were told to stick to the subject of the bill by Speaker Cameron.
“We listened to them and helped to elevate the issue that they are demanding justice for,” said Pearson.
House Speaker Cameron Sexton said their actions were more than a breach of decorum, comparing it to the January 6th insurrection in remarks to outlets.
“Two of the members; Representative Jones and Representative Johnson, have been very vocal about Jan. 6 and Washington, D.C., about what that was,” said Sexton. “What they did today was equivalent, at least equivalent, maybe worse depending on how you look at it, to doing an insurrection in the State Capitol.”
Sexton warned that there will likely be consequences for the trio.
“It could be removal of committees; it could be censorship; it could be expulsion from the General Assembly. Anywhere in between,” said Sexton.
Leaders in the Democratic caucus are defending their colleagues. Nashville Democrat John Ray Clemmons says he believes Speaker Sexton is exaggerating.
“You show me the broken windows, you show me anyone who went into the speaker’s office and put their chair up on his desk and trashed his office, you show me where a noose was hanging anywhere on the legislative plaza,” said Clemmons, citing damage committed during the Capitol riot, which resulted in five deaths before and after the event.
The three rebellious Democrats were stripped of their committee assignments. Their member badges were deactivated. Their telephones were disconnected.
In a press conference Monday, Jones says Sexton is more focused on politics than addressing last week’s mass shooting.
“We are members, who are standing in the well, telling our speakers and our colleagues that kids should not be murdered in school,” Jones said, “and rather than address that issue, the speaker has spent more time on Twitter this weekend talking about a fake insurrection than he did about the deaths of six people including 9-year-old children.”
It is not yet clear if the lawmakers will face expulsion. Sexton has not commented on whether they will face further discipline.
A tweet:
Three Tennessee Democrats have been stripped of their committee and subcommittee assignments by the Republican dominated legislature for speaking out against gun violence in the wake of the Nashville shooting that killed three children.
Democracy is dead in Tennessee.
@Sethaweitz
Rep. Gloria Johnson, one of the three Democrats, tweeted:
Diane Ravitch's blog 