Tennessee Republicans Expel Two Democrats From the Legislature for Protesting Gun Violence

The Republican-led Tennessee House of Representatives voted Thursday to remove two Democratic lawmakers from office for breaking “decorum” by interrupting the chamber’s proceedings to draw attention to gun reform.

Representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, who are both Black, are now the first lawmakers in state history to be expelled by the opposing party, in nearly party-line votes. A third Democrat, Gloria Johnson—who is white—survived an expulsion vote. Asked about the discrepancy by a reporter, Johnson responded that “it might have to do with the color of our skin.”

The votes come amid protests by gun-control advocates against Tennessee lawmakers in the wake of the Covenant School shooting that left three children and three adults dead. Last week, as thousands of protesters outside the Capitol building demanded gun reform, the three Democrats walked up to the well of the House and began chanting “No action, no peace” through a bullhorn.

Republicans charged the trio with breaking “rules of decorum,” but the Democrats said they only walked up to the well after being repeatedly silenced by Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton. They say their mics were cut off throughout the week whenever they tried to speak about gun violence or about the thousands protesting right outside the building. On a Tennessee radio show last week, Sexton called the trio’s actions an “insurrection.” (One of Sexton’s former colleagues, then-Representative Terri Lynn Weaver, attended the actual January 6 insurrection but was not expelled from the legislature.)

On Monday, all three representatives were stripped of their committee assignments and had their membership IDs disabled.

During Thursday’s vote, Jones pointed out that numerous other members of the House have avoided expulsion while committing far more severe violations, including child molestation:

The tolerance for other violations seems to have continued even this week.

On Monday, Republican Representative Justin Lafferty—who once defended the three-fifths compromise—reportedly shoved Jones, who is Black, on the floor of the House. The assault occurred while protesters entered the chamber and chanted from the gallery. Lafferty and Jones were both recording the scene on their phones. Lafferty then turned toward Jones and appeared to shove him. A voice is heard in Jones’s video saying, “Hey, get your hands off me.” Lafferty has not been charged with any breaching of “decorum.”

Before Thursday’s votes, the Tennessee House did advance some “safety” and mental health–related bills; none dealt with gun regulation, and none confronted more systemic issues surrounding violence prevention. Back in 2020, Tennessee Republicans shut down a red flag law that in fact could have stopped the Covenant School shooter. The following year, Governor Bill Lee signed legislation allowing people 21 and older to openly carry handguns without permits. Since then, state Republicans have been looking to expand the right to people as young as 18—and for any firearm, not just handguns.

The Biden administration proposed a rule Thursday to prevent schools from flat-out banning transgender students from playing on the sports team that matches their gender identity.

The move comes as attacks on trans rights are picking up nationwide, with particular emphasis on prohibiting trans girls from playing on girls’ sports teams.

Under the proposal, public schools at all levels would not be allowed to “categorically” ban trans students from playing on the team that aligns with their gender. Instead, schools would have to develop “team eligibility criteria” that factor in the sport, the level of competition, and the grade or education level of the athletes.

But this means that schools could still bar trans athletes from elite sports.

“The proposed rule … recognizes that in some instances, particularly in competitive high school and college athletic environments, some schools may adopt policies that limit transgender students’ participation,” the Department of Education said in a fact sheet. “The proposed rule would provide schools with a framework for developing eligibility criteria that protects students from being denied equal athletic opportunity, while giving schools the flexibility to develop their own participation policies.”

It specified that “these criteria could not be premised on disapproval of transgender students or a desire to harm a particular student.”

Trans rights activists slammed the proposal as a betrayal. Instead of actually addressing the issue, writer Erin Reed said, “it’s actually a roadmap to telling schools how to discriminate.”

Civil rights lawyer Alejandra Caraballo pointed out that this could divert resources away from more consequential fights.

The proposal was announced just hours after the Supreme Court ruled that a 12-year-old trans girl in West Virginia must be allowed to compete on her school’s girls’ cross country and track teams. West Virginia implemented a law banning trans girls from girls’ teams in 2021, but that law is being challenged in court. The Supreme Court said that the law cannot be enforced until the case is decided.

Biden’s proposed regulation is one of his administration’s first forays into the highly contentious arena of trans rights. Republican-led states have ramped up their attacks on LGBTQ rights, particularly for trans and nonbinary people. Twenty states, such as Florida, Texas, and Montana, have banned trans girls from playing on girls’ sports teams. Most recently, on Wednesday, Kansas’s Republican-controlled legislature overrode Democratic Governor Laura Kelly’s veto of a bill banning trans girls from playing girls’ sports.

LGBTQ rights activists have slammed these laws as sexist and misinformed. The ACLU pointed out that by singling out trans girls, the laws reinforce the dangerous myth that trans women are sexual predators.

Pediatrician and geneticist Eric Vilain told NPR in 2021 that most laws about trans athletes are not based on science. Being trans doesn’t automatically give an athlete a physical advantage, he said. Instead, the laws—which primarily target elementary and high school students—create opportunities to degrade and humiliate girls by forcing them to prove their gender.

Late last month, a disastrous fire at an immigration detention center near the U.S. border in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, left 40 people dead. And it turns out, the migrants were stuck there because they couldn’t pay a $200 bribe to guards to be released, according to Vice.

The revelations come after a video from the facility showed guards seeming to walk away from migrants burning to death behind bars.

Three survivors and two guards at the facility told Vice that the detention center was essentially an “extortion center,” where only migrants who could pay were released. Joan, a Venezuelan migrant who was locked up there, said he was released not long before the fire because his family back home sent money in time for the guards’ 7 p.m. deadline to pay a bribe or be deported. “I’m only alive because my family paid,” he told Vice.

Guards told Vice that the extortion payments (up to $500) were split among the guards and that they also sold cigarettes, lighters, and “drugs of all kinds” to the detained migrants. “We weren’t forced or anything like that to be part of the scheme, but if you said anything to the managers or didn’t go along with it, little by little they would push you out of a job,” said one guard. The guards admitted that the sales could have helped lead to the fire in the first place.

Vice reported that at least one migrant allegedly started the fire in protest of not being given food and water for some 10 hours. Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the fire began after migrants reportedly lit their mattress on fire in protest as they feared imminent deportation. Mexico’s chief public security secretary, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, said that the detention center would be closed and that its operator “will no longer provide services in the state of Chihuahua—where Ciudad Juárez sits.”

The tragedy came following a hard-right turn from the White House on immigration. Last month, President Biden announced a proposal to bar certain migrants from attaining U.S. asylum access and to expedite deportations of those migrants more quickly—without even giving them a chance to appear in front of an immigration judge. The Trump-like proposal violates U.S. law that grants the right to anyone physically present in the country to seek asylum, regardless of one’s status.

As Felipe De La Hoz wrote in TNR:

It may be a rehash of a Trump-era policy, but it is now a Biden-era policy. It has been drafted, issued, and will likely be defended in court fully at the direction of Joe Biden and his Cabinet. Not only that, it is a rehash of a policy that was rejected already by the courts, with the earlier transit ban having been struck down by a district court, a ruling reaffirmed by a three-judge appeals court panel, and then ultimately vacated.… In any case, now we know—finally and clearly—where Biden stands on the matter, and how that stance has ensured the lasting impact of Trump’s asylum machinations.

People are so mad about Bud Light’s latest ad campaign with a transgender activist that they are throwing their money—and beer—away.

Trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney shared an Instagram post sponsored by Bud Light on Sunday to promote the beer’s March Madness campaign and to mark her one-year anniversary of transitioning.

Transphobic backlash picked up speed over the course of the week and by Thursday had gained two celebrity boycotters.

Musician Kid Rock posted a video of him shooting several cases of Bud Light with an automatic rifle, a move condemned in the wake of the Nashville school shooting. And country musician Travis Tritt announced he would no longer include any products made by Anheuser-Busch, Bud Light’s parent company (which, in turn, is owned by international conglomerate AB InBev), on his tour refreshment request lists. He also complained about Jack Daniels’s Pride Month campaign—from 2021.

The internet is awash with videos of (primarily white, primarily male, primarily bearded) people expressing outrage over Bud Light’s campaign with Mulvaney by pouring perfectly fine—albeit watery and mass-produced—beer down the drain.

None of these boycotters appear to have ever heard of rainbow capitalism, which is when companies use LGBTQ branding to market products without actually doing anything to support LGBTQ causes. Bud Light hasn’t necessarily gone “woke”; the company just wants to reach a different sales demographic.

In fact, in 2021 it was the Stonewall Inn, the historic LGBTQ bar in New York City, that was pouring Bud Light down the drain—to protest Anheuser-Busch’s political contributions to anti-LGBTQ lawmakers.

Leading anti-vaccine activist Robert Kennedy Jr. has announced he is running for president as a Democrat.

Kennedy filed his statement of candidacy on Wednesday. He is the second person to declare a Democratic presidential run, after self-help author Marianne Williamson. President Joe Biden has yet to formally declare his candidacy, although he has repeatedly said he intends to run for reelection.

Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, is the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy and the son of former U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy. He has worked on several high-profile cases throughout his career, including Dewayne Johnson v. Monsanto, which found that agrochemical giant Monsanto failed to warn people about the cancer risks posed by its herbicide Roundup.

But Kennedy is also a prominent anti-vaxxer. He has promoted the scientifically discredited link between vaccines and autism since 2005, and in 2011 he founded the anti-vax group Children’s Health Defense.

Public health experts and even his own family members have described his anti-vax work as misleading and dangerous.

At the start of the pandemic, Kennedy criticized public health restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of Covid-19, such as face masks and the newly developed vaccines. He repeatedly compared the restrictions to the Nazis and the Holocaust, going so far in 2022 as to imply that Americans had it worse than Anne Frank did.

He also accused Anthony Fauci, who led the White House Covid response, of “fascism.”

CBS News journalist Robert Costa reported that white nationalist and former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon had been pushing Kennedy for months to run. According to CBS, Bannon thought Kennedy would be “a useful chaos agent in the 2024 race and a big name who could help stoke anti-vaccine sentiment around the country.”

Although he is running as a Democrat, Kennedy also has ties to the far right. A photo posted on Instagram (and subsequently removed) showed him backstage at a Reawaken America event in July 2021. NPR has described Reawaken America as “part conservative Christian revival, part QAnon expo, and part political rally.”

In the photo, Kennedy is posing with Trump ally Roger Stone, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, and anti-vax campaigner Charlene Bollinger.