Every Tennessee student would have to get gun safety training at school under new Republican legislation, but some Democrats think the law accepts gun violence at school as a “new normal.”
The Tennessee Schools Against Violence in Education (SAVE) Act already mandates school safety planning strategies. It covers fire emergencies, severe weather events, prohibits weapons, and more. The law also mandates school districts to have procedures in place to respond to the report of a firearm on campus.
A new bill would add gun safety curriculum to the SAVE Act and parents could not opt their child out of the training.
With the new law, three state agencies — the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, the Tennessee Department of Education, and the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency — would determine the most appropriate age to begin gun training for kids in school. But classes could start as early as pre-K and continue all the way through high school. Local school districts would then decide how to implement gun safety instruction into their students’ schedules.
The bill would teach students about the safe storage of guns, school safety relating to guns, how to avoid injury if the student finds a gun, to never touch a found gun, and to immediately notify an adult of the location of a found gun. This instruction should be be “viewpoint neutral on political topics, such as gun rights, gun violence, and the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.” The training should also not include the use or presence of live ammunition, live fire, or live guns.
School districts would decide who teaches the gun safety courses. Those courses “are certainly not about how to handle a firearm or proper techniques or anything like that,” said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Chris Todd (R-Madison County). “This is literally going to be more on the lines of ‘if you see a gun, [tell] an adult.’”
Todd said he sees gun training at school as just an extension of safety training already happening at schools within the SAVE. Act. He said members of gun clubs across the state, including the Alpha Gun Team of Memphis, stand behind the bill, too.
”We see this proposed legislation as a critical step in averting firearm related accidents while fostering greater awareness and responsibility among gun owners,” Todd said in a Tuesday hearing.
Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville), a retired school teacher, said schools have long drilled students to react to acts of nature, like fires and tornadoes. Gun have been around for a ling time, too, she said.
“But we haven’t had our classes shot up,” she said. “This isn’t something we should just accept as the new normal. We can stop this. And this [bill] isn’t going to do it.”
Johnson said mandating students to take the gun safety course could trigger some students who had a history of gun violence in their family and would leave them at school alone without a parent to ensure they are okay.
Todd said students cannot now opt out of fire safety training, even if they’ve been in a fire or lost their home in a fire. Students still need to learn fire safety, he said.
“I just think it’s part of life that we need to learn those skills,” Todd said.
Rep. Vincent Dixie (D-Nashville) argued for an opt-out from the program, saying some parents may not want their children “talking [about], touching, or introduced to guns at all,” especially for some who want to opt out for “religious reasons.”
“We should be able to have someone to opt out of this if they don’t choose this as appropriate for their child,” Dixie said. “I thought we believed in parents’ choice.”
Rep. Mark Cochran (R-Englewood) countered, saying that the “chances of a minor seeing a gun at some point is … that’s a reality of life, as [Todd] mentioned earlier.”
Rep. John Ragan (R-Oak Ridge) told committee members that many teachers are “former veterans who are trained hunters who go through hunter safety training” and could easily teach the courses. He said allowing students to opt out of other safety training courses “is ridiculous” and that a parent’s objection to gun training “is entirely misplaced.”
“It would be the equivalent, for example, of us saying to an Amish parent, because they prefer to ride in a horse and buggy, that their children shouldn’t be trained on how to cross the street with automobile traffic,” Ragan said. “Safety is safety. Opting out of it is ridiculous.”
State Capitol (Credit: Tennessee State Government)
“If you rape a child in the state of Tennessee, you will die. Period.”
This is the hope of state House Majority Leader Rep. William Lamberth (R-Cottontown). If his legislation passes, adults over the age of 18 could face the death penalty if they rape a child under the age of 12, he told the House Criminal Justice Committee last week. He described his legislation before the Tennessee General Assembly as “the gravest type of bill we would possibly consider.”
“If [the legislation] saves even one child from going through that, because the fear of [the death penalty] gets into the head of some monster out there — that’s even thinking about this — then it’s worth saving that child,” Lamberth said. “I will tell you life in prison for these evil people is simply too good. They should not be able to live out their days with the rest of us, including their victim — paying for their food, and housing, and care, and medical as they age and everything else. If you rape a child, you should die.”
The bill moved quickly through the House committee system. It is now placed behind the budget for consideration by the full House. The Senate bill was only introduced in mid-January and awaits a review by the Senate Judiciary Committee, its first hearing by lawmakers in that house. Its sponsor there is Sen. Jack Johnson (R-Franklin), Senate Majority Leader.
So far, the only votes cast against the bill are from Democratic House members Rep. Ronnie Glynn (D-Clarksville), Rep. G.A. Hardaway (D-Memphis), Rep. Joe Towns Jr. (D-Memphis), and Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville).
Johnson said the penalty of child rape in Tennessee is life in prison, a sentence that must be served fully. She argued this already holds the guilty accountable. She worried a death penalty sentence would have a “chilling effect” on victims reporting the crime.
“If a child was raped by an uncle, say,” Johnson said. “The uncle’s going to say, ‘Don’t tell because I’ll be killed, I’ll get the death penalty.’ Then, the mother of the child, who is the sister of the [alleged perpetrator], maybe won’t want to testify against her brother, if it means the death penalty.
“If the victims fear, it will create a chilling effect on reporting.”
Johnson also argued the move could further “re-victimize the victim.”
“Not only is [the child in the scenario] a victim, she will be victimized every day by the state that’s going to require her to carry that pregnancy [to term]. Then, they’re going to require her to show up for appeal after appeal.”
“It’s a heinous crime and I hate to think about it, but life in prison also takes care of the situation.”
Lamberth read an email from a young, female victim, asking committee members to support the legislation. It spoke the high hurdles for criminal charges and soft sentences for defendants accused of child rape. It described their sexual desires like “they were at an all-you-could-eat buffet with the appetite of a bear coming out of hibernation and only having access to a single plate.”
“The ones that actually get convicted should face real consequences,” the letter read. “Perhaps if that happened, there would be less people in our community forever changed.”
If the legislation passes, Lamberth vowed to fight for its implementation in court. A 2008 U.S. Supreme Court ruling said the death penalty is not proportional punishment for the crime of child rape. Lamberth countered this, however, noting that the court’s ruling came because “not enough states had this type of penalty on the books.”
“We’re seen other decisions by the Supreme Court overturned,” Lamberth said. “I believe this particular makeup of the court, it leans more towards state’s rights.”
Death penalty executions remain on hold in Tennessee, after a scathing report in December 2022 found numerous problems with the state’s execution protocols.
Two death penalty bills failed in the legislature last year. One would have added firing squads to the state’s options for executions. Another would have brought more transparency to the execution process.
One death penalty bill passed last year. It gave the Attorney General control over post-conviction proceedings in capital cases, rather than the local District Attorneys. That bill was ruled unconstitutional in July by Shelby County Criminal Court Judge Paula Skahan.
Can Knoxville state Senator Gloria Johnson, she of last spring’s “Tennessee Three” and a heroine of sorts among Democrats, actually unseat the GOP’s Marsha Blackburn in the 2024 U.S. Senate race?
There is an illustrative case — that of James Mackler, a Nashville lawyer and former Iraq war helicopter pilot, who made bold to put himself forth as a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2018 for the seat then held by the retiring moderate Republican Bob Corker.
Meanwhile, out of the Republican MAGA ranks, seeking the same seat, came the aforementioned arch-conservative Marsha Blackburn, then a congresswoman. The then still existent state Democratic establishment, two years into the Trump age, didn’t trust a novice Democrat like Mackler, no matter how promising, to take on Blackburn, so talked Tennessee’s recent Governor Phil Bredesen, an old-fashioned conservative Democrat, out of retirement to become their candidate.
Mackler dutifully withdrew, biding his time.
History records that both Bredesen and Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, the last two name Democrats to carry the party banner into battle, were both routed in 2018, Bredesen by Blackburn (who would end up a cover girl on The New York Times Magazine) and Dean by Bill Lee.
Mackler was still on the scene and considered it his time to take on the next Senate race in 2020, where he would be opposed by the GOP’s Bill Hagerty, a former ambassador and state economic development commissioner. What was left of the Democratic establishment, in something of its last go-round, thought Mackler was right and timely, also, and got behind him.
Alas! Mackler and the party establishment withheld their considerable fundraising receipts from a five-way Democratic primary, hoarding them for the forthcoming race against Hagerty, and never even got to the general election. Mackler was upset in the primary by one Marquita Bradshaw, an environmentalist from Memphis who had no ballyhoo whatsoever and had raised virtually no money.
What she did have was an emergent standing among Memphis Blacks as a progressive candidate (though a nonmember of the now-expiring party establishment).
What she had was enough to win 35.5 percent of the primary vote, outpolling poor Mackler, who had 23.8 percent. Between the primary and the general, Bradshaw upped her campaign kitty from $22,300 to $1.3 million (a major-party nomination is still worth something), but lost to Hagerty, once again polling 35 percent.
Jump to last week, when the Beacon Center, a conservative think tank, released the results of two Emerson College polls — one measuring incumbent Blackburn running for reelection against Gloria Johnson, another matching her against Bradshaw, regarding the Memphian, once again as a prospective Senate candidate.
Beacon had Blackburn running ahead of Johnson by 49 percent to 29 percent, with the balance undecided. Against Bradshaw, Blackburn’s margin was smaller, 48 percent to 36 percent.
What Beacon did not do was match the two Democrats against each other, testing what might happen in a primary encounter.
But, given the example of Mackler, the already actively campaigning Johnson might wonder, as do we. Might she suffer an unexpected defeat to Bradshaw, a la Mackler?
Word from the Democratic establishment (yes, it still exists, though barely) is that Johnson has digested the lesson of Mackler and will pour a generous amount of the substantial funds she has already raised for a primary contest.
That will take pace in August, and we shall see what we shall see.
After last week’s vote by state House Republicans to expel Democrats Justin Pearson, Justin Jones, and Gloria Johnson over their gun-safety demonstration on the House floor, there were recriminations to be had.
In particular, GOP state Rep. Jody Barrett (R-Dickson) had to fend off his Republican colleagues for his ‘no’ vote to expel Gloria Johnson. That vote caused the expel resolution in her case to fail, and for the GOP members to be assailed for racism.
Besides Barrett, the GOP talkers are Jason Zachary, Knoxville, who begins by saying, “The Democrats are not our friends”; Johnny Garrett, Goodlettsville; Majority Leader William Lamberth, Portland; and Scott Cepicky, Culleoka. Cepicky is the one who believes the outcome of things is a threat to the existence of the Republic and who maintains, “You got to be what’s right, even if you think it’s wrong.”
Justin Pearson takes the pledge of allegiance on
Wednesday. Credit: Jackson Baker
The first-floor auditorum of the Vasco Smith County Building has been jam-packed before, but never with so many members of the national media, as it was on Wednesday afternoon when the Shelby County Commission met to consider a vote that would return Justin J. Pearson to the state House, whose Republican supermajority had expelled him a week earlier.
It was the second time this year that Memphis had become the scene of such attention — the other occasion being the tragedy of Tyre Nichols, slain by five errant Memphis cops.
Wednesday’s event, by contrast with that one, was pure celebration.
Representatives of various TV networks were chagrined to find the plug-ins for their mics and cameras not working, but they persevered as best they could in their determination to provide live feeds to the nation. Locals were there in force as well, and other legislators from Nashville, and Congressman Steven Cohen, and — frankly, there was no counting them all.
Soon to be looking for a place to sit or stand were members of what was said to a supportive 500-person march, led by Justin Jones of Nashville and Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, the other members, with Pearson, of the Tennessee Three. Jones had been expelled, along with Pearson, for demonstrating on the House floor in favor of gun-safety legislation. Nashville’s Metro Council had voted on Monday to send hm back to the legislature.
Justin’s father was asked to open the meeting with a prayer and obliged.
Wasting no time, chairman Mickell Lowery, a constituent of Pearson’s District 86, advised Pearson, who sat expectantly on the first row, “we’re all with you.”
Lowery called the roll and promptly asked for a vote on returning Pearson to the legislature.Voting aye, along with himself, were six other Democrats — Shante Avant, Miska Bibbs, Henri Brooks, Edmund Ford, Charlie Caswell, and Erika Sugarmon.
That was a quorum, and that was a Yes.
When the seven votes were properly recorded, the crowd whooped thunderously. So much for chairman Lowery’s dutiful admonition in advance that crowd responses should be either thumbs up or thumbs down.
Responding, Pearson said the GOP’s House majority hadn’t reckoned with the Shelby County Commission. He praised the “moral courage of Memphis, Tennessee.”
He further proclaimed, “We never bow, we never break, we never bend …We’re tired of business as usual. We do not speak alone. We speak together. You can’t expel hope, you can’t expel justice … and you sure as hell can’t expel our fight.”
He concluded, “Let’s get back to work!”
There was another collective whoop, and, with that, the Tennessee state House was reconstituted as had been duly elected.
Posted to Facebook by Blount County
Democratic Party
Memphis on the internet.
The Tennessee Three
Last week’s wild ride ended with the expulsion of two Black Tennessee House members, but one of the Tennessee Three (the white one) remained. It also yielded some quality memes about the rare moment of Memphis/Nashville solidarity like this one.
Posted to Reddit by u/MrAnonyMousetheGreatPosted to Reddit by u/runfreedog
Rumors swirled all over the MEMernet that Memphis could lose its funding for sporting infrastructure improvements and other projects if Justin Pearson was sent back to the Tennessee General Assembly. For guidance, many sought a statement from Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, who they said was publicly silent on the topic.
Justin J. Pearson, Gloria Johnson, and Justin Jones, known as the “Tennessee Three,” faced expulsion from the state legislature. (Photo: John Partipilo | Tennessee Lookout)
Back in January, Justin J. Pearson, a lean, intense young Memphian with a throwback Afro, had easily beaten several opponents in a special primary election for state House District 86, earning thereby an appointment to the legislature from the Shelby County Commission. He would later be sworn in as a formally elected member of the Tennessee legislature after the Shelby County General Election of March 14th made him official.
For the March swearing-in ceremony, he wore a dashiki under a suit coat — surely a clue to the custodians of the Republican supermajority that, as the successor to the late venerable Democratic populist Barbara Cooper in House District 86, here was a sparkling new wine in an unfamiliar bottle.
At the age of 28, Pearson was already the winner of a David-vs.-Goliath struggle, having led a successful yearlong effort — with allies like former Vice President Al Gore, no less — against a proposed oil pipeline in South Memphis.
Now, his arena was the hidebound oligarchy of the state House of Representatives, managed monolithically by Republicans. He would be a member of that body for only a few more days, during which he continued to endure the rookie syndrome of being routinely denied speaking time and of having his mic turned off on the rare occasions when he happened to get the floor.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in Nashville, a troubled young assassin with an assault rifle entered a local school one morning and, before being felled by police, methodically shot to death six people, including three 9-year-olds.
Motivated by a sense of horror that pervaded all of Tennessee, Pearson insisted on addressing this issue and demanded that the House consider genuine, effective gun-safety legislation to quell what had become a national epidemic of firearms crimes.
He was joined by the entire Democratic caucus in this effort and, in particular, by two caucus colleagues — schoolteacher Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, a liberal’s liberal, and 27-year-old Justin Jones of Nashville, a silver-tongued exponent of justice and direct action like Pearson himself.
Jones, flanked by Pearson and Johnson, speaks into a megaphone on the House floor during a March 30th session. (Photo: John Partipilo | Tennessee Lookout)
The Tennessee Three
What happened next became a worldwide cause célèbre. Denied speaking time once again, the three took to the well of the House out of order, rousing the people in the filled-up gallery, who were spillovers from the thousands-strong crowds outside who had come to the Capitol from all over Tennessee to demand action on guns, including among their shouted slogans “Fuck Bill Lee!” — a rebuke to the GOP governor who, the year before, had steered the passage of “open-carry” legislation.
The three legislators in the well chanted their message in solidarity, and, after House Speaker Cameron Sexton turned off their microphones, Pearson and Jones employed megaphones to address the galleries.
That session of the House would dissolve into a recess called by an enraged Sexton, who would shortly let it be known that the two Justins and Johnson would face an expulsion vote.
The three pathfinders, driven by their own inner sense of decorum, had found themselves in a circumstance that the great civil rights icon John Lewis at Selma had called “good trouble” — that of having to face a difficult test in the name of a good cause. In Lewis’ case in 1965, that had meant exposing oneself to police truncheons and being trampled by stallions in the pursuit of the right to vote.
Exalting in the iconic phrase, Justin Jones gave that name, “good trouble,” to the gathering predicament of the Tennessee Three, as the outside world was beginning to call them.
A vote on their survival as members of the legislative body was scheduled to take place last Thursday before a greatly amplified worldwide audience attuned to various electronic media sources.
The outcome, which saw youthful firebrands Pearson and Jones convicted via the lockstep power of the GOP supermajority, became an instant scandal, made more so by the reprieve from expulsion of Johnson by a single vote. Fairly or not, a consensus emerged that quite possibly the jurors’ racism accounted for the narrow escape of Johnson, a self-described “60-year-old white schoolteacher.”
One participant in the expulsion drama, former state Representative John Mark Windle of Livingston, was a bridge of sorts between last week’s events and another era of tumult at the Capitol in 2001. That was the time of an anti-income-tax riot, and the crowds then were fully as numerous — and as furious — as last week’s but motivated more by naked self-interest than by righteous civic indignation.
Then a young House member, Windle had been sitting in the first-floor office of then-Governor Don Sundquist, who had proposed the soon-to-be-doomed state income tax, when a brick Windle described as football-sized came smashing through one of the glass panels of the governor’s window. By contrast, the crowds last week were animated but conspicuously nonviolent.
Windle, a moderate and former Democrat, had been defeated by a conservative Republican in 2022, when he ran for reelection as an Independent. Last week, he returned to the Capitol as one of two permitted legal advisors on the floor for Johnson. The other was former House minority leader Mike Stewart of Nashville.
Perhaps their advice was useful and somewhat exculpatory. While keeping the faith with fellow crusaders Jones and Pearson, Johnson noted that she had not wielded a megaphone nor raised her voice unduly in speaking for gun-safety legislation. “What is my crime?” she demanded.
Raising Their Voices
Who, indeed, were the actual malefactors? The Tennessee Three, whose highly public moment in defiance of the House rules followed days in which they were not allowed to speak their convictions? Or the GOP supermajority, whose legislative response to the shooting tragedy at Nashville’s Covenant School had been to turn a deaf ear to the pleading crowds and call instead for more guns, proposing to arm teachers and harden school security forces? Or, for that matter, Governor Lee, he of the open-carry law, whose concessions to the NRA and the Tennessee Firearms Association over the years had been numerous and notorious?
Speaking on ABC’s This Week program this past Sunday, Justin Pearson took pains to characterize the parties to last week’s events right, starting with the protesters: “It is young people; it’s children and teenagers by the thousands, who continue to protest, who continue to march, who continue to raise their voices to say we need to do something to end gun violence, we need to make sure that we’re banning assault weapons, we need red flag laws, we need gun storage safety laws in our state that are going to help to propel this movement.
“And I pray to God to be able to use my voice as a member of the state legislature to represent Memphis and Shelby County and Millington to continue to fight to pass reasonable, sensible legislation that the majority of people in Tennessee want. The reality is we have a supermajority Republican legislature that doesn’t want to see progress, that prefers to listen to the NRA, rather than the constituents.
“And in fact, the speaker had the audacity to call some of those children and some of those parents and grandparents insurrectionists, likening them to January 6th, because they’re demanding that their voices be heard in a democracy, which is what we have a responsibility to ensure [so that] every person feels that they have a voice in democracy and will not be silenced.”
In the aftermath of it all, the world is about to change. Locally, there are complications. Rumors abound that a promised $350 million state outlay to Memphis for infrastructure improvements could be in jeopardy if the Shelby County Commission votes to reappoint Justin Pearson to the vacated District 86 House seat. A similar amount to benefit the Regional One medical center may also be on the line.
Interviewed on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Pearson acknowledged his willingness to return to the legislature via a Commission vote and warned, “I’ve already heard that people in the state legislature and in Nashville are actually threatening our Shelby County commissioners to not reappoint me or they’re going to take away funding that’s in the governor’s budget for projects that the mayor and others have asked for.”
The 13-member Commission, dominated by nine confident and assertive activist Democrats, will hold a special called meeting this week and is expected to reappoint Pearson anyhow, the torpedoes be damned. Nashville’s Metro Council will have already acted on Monday on Jones’ behalf. By some reckonings, the two could be reinstated as early as this week — though it is possible the GOP supermajority might find a way not to seat them.
“We will continue to resist.”
Meanwhile, the Tennessee House has been effectively disgraced by its action in expelling Pearson and Jones when lesser sanctions, like censure, were available for the infraction of being out of parliamentary order.
It has been ceaselessly and correctly pointed out that previous House expellees had committed actual offenses — like Republican state Representative Jeremy Durham in 2016, who was adjudged by a Speaker-appointed investigating committee to have been guilty of more than 20 separate acts of sexual harassment. (Sam Whitson of Franklin, Durham’s successor in District 65, would coincidentally — and perhaps ironically — be the only Republican who voted against expulsion for every one of the Tennessee Three last week.)
And there was the case of the House member — never quite precisely identified but widely assumed to be a certain flamboyant arch-conservative from rural West Tennessee — who, a few seasons back, urinated on the chair of fellow Republican Rick Tillis, a moderate who had been critical of the House leadership. No investigation, no calls for ouster, or even censure.
Meanwhile, each of the two Justins has become a media star and an incipient leader of a re-galvanized — and expanded — movement for justice and civil rights.
It is even possible that serious efforts to ban assault weapons and provide other remedies like red flag laws can be accelerated — though not likely in Tennessee, once known as a moderate bellwether state and now entombed in Trumpian, Deep South mediocrity.
This is a legislature — “the most mean-spirited and vindictive I can remember,” says state Representative Dwayne Thompson of Shelby’s suburban District 96 — whose idea of progress is to pass bans on drag shows, to humble and block the state’s LGBTQ community at every turn, and to make sure that transgender youths receive no medical support, nor is it any kinder to the state’s straight population — conspiring to keep labor unions out of Tennessee’s new car plants and to reject the federal government’s proffered billion-dollar bounties to expand Medicaid in an age of increased need, with the state’s hospitals desperate and failing.
Numerous liberation movements now abound, like those involving gender identity. Others simply seek the age-old chimera of economic justice.
And it passes strange that common-sense legislative efforts to protect human beings from assault by gun-wielding murderers should be controversial at all and unworthy even of discussion by a state legislature.
Pearson and Jones are at a crossroads. They stand ready to return to the place of their expulsion and use their momentum, their zeal, their eloquence, and, let us face it, their celebrity, to move the entrenched mountains of indifference and privilege there to make room for new ideas, to meet new needs, and, by their example, to summon others to the cause.
Young Pearson’s celebrity, in particular, seems to have no bounds. In addition to his multiple national talk-show appearances on Sunday, he was a cynosure that day at First Unitarian Church of Memphis, where he preached from the pulpit.
The Old Order in the legislature may attempt once more to ostracize its two outcasts upon their return and to ignore their social gospel, a mix of up-to-the-minute secularism and old-fashioned spirituality. It will doubtless try to deny the two their seats on some technicality, and a new battle could commence.
But the Republican supermajority is now on notice. As Justin Jones told NBC’s Chuck Todd on Sunday, “We are in the midst of a third Reconstruction, beginning here in Nashville. And the message is that we will continue to resist.”
The Tennessee Three — Gloria Johnson, Justin Pearson, and Justin Jones (Photo: John Partipilo | Tennessee Lookout)
“We are talking about nothing less than 75 people overruling the wishes of 78,000 people! And you’re gonna cut off debate? Give me a break! Is this a circus? If you can’t sit through a conversation or a debate on something no less than expelling a colleague … you don’t belong here!”
Democratic Representative John Ray Clemons of West Nashville spoke for thousands of Tennesseans last week as he watched his GOP colleagues turn the democratic process into meaningless procedural flimflam. It was a travesty, a mean-spirited exhibition of white men wielding power in the worst possible way.
They did it because they’re used to doing it. They did it because they’ve never paid a price for it, mostly because no one was ever watching before. It was just one of the many tricks the Republicans in the Tennessee House of Representatives used in the process of expelling three duly elected representatives. These included cutting off Wi-Fi in the galleries, postponing action until late in the day after thousands of demonstrators had arrived for the scheduled morning opening, not allowing the three lawmakers to know what would be expected of them in mounting their defense, showing unattributed video of their protests … and, well, I could go on.
It was an astonishing display of autocracy, ruthlessly leveraged by hypocritical ignoramuses — only this time, the entire world was watching — and instead of suppressing the voices of change, as they so clearly intended to do, the Tennessee GOP instead amplified them in ways they could have never imagined in their wildest fever dreams.
Prior to last week, Justin Pearson, Justin Jones, and Gloria Johnson were known only by their constituents, if that. Now they are household names, appearing on major television networks, here and abroad, meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris, and being invited to the White House. Tens of thousands of dollars are flowing into their fundraising coffers.
To those Republicans responsible, I’d just like to take a moment to say: Nice job, you racist, gun-sucking assholes. You’ve embarrassed yourselves and your state, but mostly yourselves. And it couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of clowns.
There. I feel better. Especially knowing these fools have helped spawn a new generation of activists, one that will stand strong against the only two arrows the Republican Party seems to have left in its pathetic quiver: a Taliban-esque, no-exceptions, anti-abortion platform and a no-permit, total open-carry, pro-assault-weapons agenda. Good luck running on those issues in 2024 and beyond.
And speaking of clowns … How about that Justice Clarence Thomas, amirite? Turns out that for the past couple of decades he’s been taking hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of luxury yacht cruises, resort vacations, and private jet rides courtesy of a right-wing Texas billionaire named Harlan Crow. Crow also founded a side-hustle PAC for Thomas’ wife, Ginni, and paid her a sweet $150,000 a year to run it.
But nope, no corruption to see here, said Clarence. He and Harlan were just friends, he said, adding that he would stop now that he knew it was wrong.
Never mind that Crow is embedded in the activist judicial group, the Federalist Society, and never mind that he has one of the world’s great collections of Hitler memorabilia. Because that’s normal. Right?
Listen, when I began my journalism career, one of the first things I was told is “don’t accept anything from a potential source, not even a cup of coffee.” The reason being, of course, that any hint of impropriety could compromise a story by calling into question the journalist’s impartiality.
The Thomas case is the very definition of compromising someone’s impartiality with favors. And, much as was the case in Nashville, it went on only because no one was watching. How is it remotely possible that the ethics code for a member of the United States Supreme Court is flimsier than that of a newspaper reporter?
It isn’t, and Thomas knows it. Otherwise, he would have reported the largesse extended to him. It’s absurd on its face. If, however, Republicans are still intent on expelling a Black man from office, I do have a suggestion.
Reps. Justin Jones, right, Justin Pearson, bottom, and Gloria Johnson, left, bring a megaphone onto the Tennessee House floor on March 30, 2023. (Photo: John Partipilo)
The Tennessee House of Representatives voted along party lines to expel Democratic Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson from its body for leading a floor protest over gun violence one week ago, but Rep. Gloria Johnson survived expulsion by one vote.
The expulsion vote against Jones, D-Nashville, was 72-25, and 69-26 against Pearson, D-Memphis. It needed 66 votes it pass.
The vote against Johnson, D-Knoxville, was 65-30, one short of the number needed to expel as seven Republicans voted to keep her.
The trio is accused of violating the House rules of decorum when they took over the speaking podium to lead chants with a crowd protesting the lack of action by lawmakers on gun violence after six were killed — including three children — in a mass shooting at a religious school in Nashville.
Rep. Charlie Baum, R-Murfressboro, was the only Republican to vote against kicking Jones out. Rep. Sam Whitson, R-Franklin, was present but did not vote on Jones’ expulsion resolution.
The expulsion hearing for Jones went on for nearly two hours.
Reps. Jody Barrett, R-Dickson; Rush Bricken, R-Tullahoma; Bryan Richey, R-Maryville; Lowell Russell, R-Vonore; Mike Sparks, R-Smyrna; Baum and Whitson voted against removing Johnson. Reps. John Gillespie, R-Memphis, and Bryan Terry, R-Murfreesboro, were present but abstained from voting.
The expulsion hearing for Johnson lasted 90 minutes.
Baum, Gillespie and Richey voted against expelling Pearson. Whitson was present but did not vote to remove Pearson.
The expulsion hearing for Pearson lasted 90 minutes.
Twitter thread of the expulsion hearing
OK, so now in the expulsion hearings @JRClemmons, an attorney, is trying to make the point that the video the GOP just showed “was in direct violation” of house rules disallowing members to shoot video on the floor. “Are we going to punish them as well?”
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Democrats in jeopardy: (from left) Justin Pearson, Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones (Photo: John Partipilo | Tennessee Lookout)
Not since the income tax riots of 2001 has the Tennessee state capitol building in Nashville seen such intensity. Monday’s session of the General Assembly, which included the introduction of resolutions in the House threatening the expulsion of three Democratic state representatives, concluded with the crowded galleries shouting epithets — including “fascists” — at members of the Republican supermajority.
Outside the capitol, worse things were being chanted by massive crowds at the expense of GOP Governor Bill Lee, who, like the Republican lawmakers, was faulted for inaction on gun safety following last week’s gun massacre at a Nashville Christian school.
“Eff Bill Lee!” the demonstrators chanted.
The three Democrats in jeopardy — representatives Gloria Johnson of Knoxville and Justin Jones of Nashville, along with Memphis first-termer Justin Pearson — had gone to the well of the House last Thursday, and, with the aid of bullhorns, encouraged protesters in the galleries to keep demanding action on guns.
A vote on expulsion of the three will probably take place Thursday, along with, equally probably, energetic new protests on their behalf and for gun-safety legislation.
• On Thursday this week, Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins will hold a status conference on suits by mayoral candidates Floyd Bonner and Van Turner against an apparent edict by the Shelby County Election Commission (SCEC) requiring five years of prior residence in Memphis for candidates.
Neither candidate could clear a strict interpretation of the SCEC’s edict, which is included on the Commission’s website via a link to an opinion from former Commission chair Robert Meyers.
Jenkins gave a preliminary ruling last Friday against the SCEC’s effort to include the city of Memphis as a co-respondent against the suits.
• There was some unprecedented attention given to the matter of county contracts at Monday’s public meeting of the Shelby County Commission, and it all started while the body was considering the meeting’s “consent agenda,” ordinarily regarded as routine and largely consisting of pre-screened items.
With Democratic member Britney Thornton in the lead and with fellow Democrats Erika Sugarmon and Henri Brooks, among others, taking part, members kept county financial officers and economic opportunity administrator Shep Wilbun in the well for more than an hour answering detailed questions about each and every contract up for a vote, including many that appeared to be essentially maintenance matters.
The two basic questions were: How many bids were there for the contract? And how many bidders were minority? In most cases there was an obvious and even enormous disparity in the two numbers, which was, of course, the point of the questioners.
