Tennessee Republicans spare white Democrat from expulsion: report

06 April 2023

The GOP-led Tennessee congress voted to expel two Democratic, Black state representatives Thursday — Rep. Justin Jones and Rep. Justin Pearson, but voted to keep Rep. Gloria Johnson, who is white, in her position, The New York Times reports.

The Republican members voted to oust the three lawmakers, known as "The Tennessee Three," from their committee assignments following a protest they led for gun legislation after the deadly mass shooting at a Nashville Christian school earlier this month.

According to NPR, each of the Democratic lawmakers were "facing a disciplinary measure that's only been used twice since the 1800s," and the GOPers "have said the trio's actions amount to an insurrection."

The New York Times reports:

The votes against Mr. Jones and Mr. Pearson passed largely along on party lines after hours of deeply personal, angry and at times condescending debate. The Republican supermajority voted overwhelmingly to provide the two-thirds majority necessary to push the votes against the two men through, despite Democratic opposition.

Furthermore, according to The Times, "seven Republicans joined Democrats in voting against the expulsion of Ms. Johnson," who, when "asked why she thought she had survived the expulsion vote, Ms. Johnson, who is white, said, 'It might have to do with the color of my skin.'"

@Acyn shared a clip of Pearson's interview with MSNBC following the vote to oust him, writing, "Pearson: You cannot ignore the racial dynamic of what happened today, two young black lawmakers getting expelled and the one white woman does not. That is a statement in and of itself."

Ahead of the first vote, Jones shared an encounter he shared with colleague, GOP House member, Gino Bulso, saying, "he tried to incite violence against me and got in my face and said, 'you are a damn disgrace,' and I said, 'Representative Bulso, hold on, let me pull out my phone, can you say that again?' And he cowered and chose not to repeat it because he did not want the world to see what a disgrace he is for Williamson County voters."

Following the vote for Jones' expulsion, Pearson said on the state House floor, "We came here to fight for our constituents. We came here to lift up the issues of people who are suffering. Six people died in Nashville at the Covenant School, three were nine years old. But instead of focusing on that, Representative Jones, Representative Johnson, and myself are being expelled from the state house because we said, we cannot do business as usual."

He continued, "There has been no House members who have ever been expelled for exercising their First Amendment rights and peaceful protest. This is the first in American history, and we are losing our democracy to white supremacy.

Additionally, after he, himself was ousted by the GOP members, Pearson said, "We'll be back. We're gonna keep fighting for our communities, because the status quo is not working. It's hurting people. It's killing people. We can never normalize the ending of democracy. We can never normalize the tyranny of the way that these people in positions of power are operating due to white supremacy and due to the maintenance of patriarchy. But we're going to fight it because we believe that there is a future we can live into that is better than the present that we currently have."

Watch the video below below or at this link.

The New York Time's report is available at this link (subscription required). NPR's full report is here.

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