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In a move that shocked the nation on Thursday, Tennessee lawmakers voted to expel two Black state representatives from the House of Representatives. Despite being Democratically-elected, Justin J. Pearson and Justin Jones can no longer serve in the statehouse, effectively disenfranchising the tens of thousands of people who voted for them. The firestorm in Tennessee began after the lawmakers joined a gun regulation protest at the Capitol in the wake of a horrific school shooting in Nashville. A vote over whether “The Tennessee Three” should be allowed to remain in...

Members of the Tennessee Black Caucus on Friday condemned the expulsion of two Black Democratic lawmakers by the Republican majority this week, likening Thursday's vote to a "Jim Crow-era trial." "This was a kangaroo court," caucus chairman Rep. Sam McKenzie told reporters at a news conference held in front of the state Capitol building in Nashville. "To me, it's a horrific indictment on the Tennessee GOP, and they ought to be ashamed of themselves. And the fact that they continued to keep their foot on the accelerator when they knew...

WASHINGTON — Black Tennessee state lawmakers on Friday rebuked Republican members of the state's House of Representatives who voted to expel two Black legislators over their protests last week following the mass school shooting in Nashville. Members of the Tennessee Black Caucus of State Legislators said the GOP effort to remove two of their own from their seats — Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson — was rooted in racism. "The world saw the optics," the caucus chairman, Rep. Sam McKenzie, D-Knoxville, told reporters at a news conference. "I don't...

Just hours after the Tennessee House of Representatives voted to expel two Democratic lawmakers, their pictures and profiles had already been removed from the state’s General Assembly website, a symbol of the vacant seats that now need to be filled. Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson were kicked out of the legislature by their colleagues in a vote Thursday. A third member also up for expulsion, Rep. Gloria Johnson, survived the vote, which required two-thirds majority support in the Republican-dominated chamber. All three had been accused by Republicans of “knowingly...

In the wake of the deadly mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville last week, Tennessee’s Republican-dominated state legislature had a wide variety of options. The GOP majority could’ve taken steps to protect the public by considering a new red-flag law, for example. Republican lawmakers also had the option of expanding background checks or advancing an assault-weapons ban. The good news is that GOP policymakers in the Volunteer State did, in fact, take dramatic action the week after the massacre. The bad news is, the dramatic action Tennessee Republicans...

Tennessee Republicans voted to -- but not a white Democratic woman -- for a protest on the statehouse floor, and conservative Charlie Sykes denounced the move as "political malpractice." The Democratic state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, while an attempt to expel state Rep. Gloria Johnson failed by one vote, and Sykes condemned the partisan stunt as "vindictive retaliation." "My problem with this whole story is the stupidity, it burns," Sykes said. "What were the Republicans in Tennessee hoping to accomplish here? They look horrible. They have made superstars...

Beverly called the expulsions an abuse of power. “We stand with the Tennessee Three.” State Sen. Jason Esteves, D-Atlanta, said the votes in Tennessee “represents the apex of what’s wrong with politics today, including right here in Georgia. GOP leaders have repeatedly demonstrated cowardice in the face of the gun violence epidemic, yet have no problem with attacking the basic tenets of a representative democracy.” State Sen. Josh McClaurin, D-Sandy Springs, said the GOP supermajority used “their raw power to try to silence two young Black representatives — in stark...

Led by a Republican supermajority, the state House on Thursday expelled two Democratic lawmakers for breaking House rules and leading a gun-reform protest from the chamber's floor. A third lawmaker, Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, narrowly survived after lawmakers failed by one vote to achieve the two-thirds majority needed to expel her from the Tennessee General Assembly. The decision to expel the lawmakers came after hours of heated debate between Republicans and Democrats — all as the eyes of the nation were on Tennessee and its politics. Reappointing:Growing list of Nashville...

Democratic state Rep. Justin Jones of Nashville gestures to supporters during a vote on his expulsion from the legislature at the State Capitol Building on April 6, 2023 in Nashville, Tennessee. Photo: Seth Herald/Getty Images The Tennessee GOP-led state House's expulsion of two Democrats could have a rippling impact in state legislatures across the country, where political parties are entrenched on issues like gun control and abortion.

President Biden blasted the expulsion of two Tennessee lawmakers Thursday as “shocking” and “undemocratic,” saying that GOP lawmakers chose to expel lawmakers instead of participating in a discussion about gun reforms. “Last week, three more students and three school officials were gunned down in yet another tragic mass shooting in Nashville,” Biden said in a statement. “On Monday, 7,000 Tennesseans, many of them students, marched to their state capitol to call on their lawmakers to take action and keep them safe.” “Instead, state Republican lawmakers called votes today to expel...