Republicans in Tennessee may have lit the fires of resistance on gun control

[lees1975]

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2023/04/are-republicans-in-tennessee.html

Frankly, I don't think this is going to play well in Tennessee, either. Joining in what was a popular protest to send a message to the state legislature after a high profile shooting in a private, Christian school where Evangelical Republicans are the obvious constituency, three Democrats in the Tennessee legislature faced expulsion for their participation. As of this writing, Representative Justin Jones, of Nashville, and Representative Justin Pearson, of Memphis have been expelled while Representative Gloria Johnson, of Knoxville, was not expelled. All three were involved in a protest on the floor of the legislature in the wake of the murders of six people in a Nashville public school.

Not only is this not a good response to a shooting just a week and a half ago in a Christian school in the heart of the Bible belt, where the school community is likely overwhelmingly Republican and where two of the victims were known personally by the governor and Senator Blackburn, the fact that the two black men were expelled, but the white woman was not, has racist overtones that also aren't going to play well.

Tennessee is a majority Republican state with an intensely gerrymandered legislature. It will take a lot of dissatisfaction and dissent to get some of the more ignorant and obstinate legislators out, but the sentiment that this incident will create might just be enough to do it.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Fingers crossed! n/t

[cbabe]

2. Also it's a warning to anyone else who 'steps out of line'.

[lees1975]

3. And I want to make this point.

Two of three Democrats who participated in a protest on the floor of the legislature were expelled for doing so within a week. Yet our fat, orange headed buffoon of an ex-president threatens judges, district attorneys and violence on the places where he is being called to account for his criminal behavior, and flies back home to dinner in his Florida hotel resort home after being indicted on 34 criminal felony charges.

What is wrong with this picture?

[Beachnutt]

4. Tennessee college Ball players are majority black

players along with an nfl football team ,many black singers and actors will all boycott this state and refuse to play there.
There are many many repercussions to come.
This is only beginning.

[ALBliberal]

5. Absolutely correct.

[ProudMNDemocrat]

6. There is a NFL team as well.

Country Music Hall of Fame, Grand Ole Opry, etc.

I wanted to visit Nashville for that, but not now.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

7. Knoxville, Memphis, Nashville -- East, West, and Center of TN

Might be widespread opposition to what these legislators have done.

[lees1975]

8. And now I'm hearing that the councils in charge of filling vacant legislative seats

are planning to return both of those expelled back to the seats they were kicked out of. Let's see if that holds up. Apparently there is no restriction against doing so, and not anything the legislature can do about it once they're back, at least, so I have been told, except find some other bogus charge to use to expel them again.