Republican lawmakers in Tennessee expelled two Democratic colleagues in retaliation for their participation in a gun-reform protest from the House floor last week, sparking a furious response from the White House.
(Bloomberg) — Republican lawmakers in Tennessee expelled two Democratic colleagues in retaliation for their participation in a gun-reform protest from the House floor last week, sparking a furious response from the White House.
Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin Pearson of Memphis were stripped of their seats on Thursday in the first partisan expulsion in the body’s history.
The ouster required a two-thirds majority to pass in the chamber where Republicans hold a 75-to-24 majority. A third Democrat, Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, kept her seat by just one vote.
The Tennessee House had previously expelled only three other members since the Civil War, all for far more serious infractions, including the criminal conviction of one lawmaker and multiple sexual harassment allegations against another.
The extraordinary vote came after the Democratic lawmakers used a bullhorn from the House speaking well on March 30 to address hundreds of protesters, many of them schoolchildren. They were demonstrating in response to the March 27 killings of three 9-year-olds and three adults at a Nashville Christian school by a former student using a semi-automatic weapon.
Republicans said the lawmakers breached House protocol when they spoke from the well without first getting permission from House leadership.
House Speaker Cameron Sexton even compared their actions to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol in Washington.
“What they did today was equivalent — at least equivalent, maybe worse depending on how you look at it — of doing an insurrection in the Capitol,” Sexton said in a radio interview.
Two of Tennessee’s largest cities are now without representation in the legislative session’s final few weeks of this year.
Replacements will be chosen in a special election later this year. It’s unclear whether the ousted lawmakers can run in those elections.
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