Tennessee House Speaker Faces Growing Calls to Resign

Tennessee’s Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton is facing growing calls to resign amid reports he has lied to his constituents.

The Tennessee state legislature has been under increased national scrutiny since a school shooting in Nashville three weeks ago, when a shooter killed three children and three adults. Republicans, who have a supermajority trifecta in the state House, Senate, and governor’s office, have repeatedly rejected attempts to increase gun control measures.

Things took a turn for the worse when the House voted to expel two Democrats, both Black men, for allegedly violating chamber rules when they joined thousands of pro–gun control protesters in the Capitol building. One white Democrat who also joined the demonstration was not expelled. Both of the two expelled, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, were ultimately reinstated by their district councils.

In the week since their reappointment, Sexton has come under fire after reporter Judd Legum learned the speaker secretly purchased a $600,000 house in Nashville, where he and his family live year-round. Nashville is not in the district Sexton represents.

But Sexton claims to live in a condo in Crossville, a city two hours from the state capital and within the boundaries of his district. And as Legum reported in his newsletter, Popular Information, Sexton has for years claimed daily reimbursements of about $313, which are paid by taxpayers and intended to pay for lodging for state representatives who reside 50 miles or more from Nashville.

Since then, calls for Sexton to step down have mounted rapidly. Thousands of people have signed an online petition for Sexton to resign. The petition, which was started by the Christian social justice group Faithful America, had nearly 19,000 signatures at the time of this writing. “Democracy, racial justice, and gun safety are under joint assault in Tennessee,” the petition said. “We call on Speaker Sexton to resign for his shameful and unlawful power grab.”

Officials from the Cumberland County and Putnam County Democratic Parties, both in the speaker’s district, have also called for him to resign. “Even if it’s determined Sexton merely violated the ‘spirit’ of the residency requirement, his absence from the district means he and his family don’t experience the consequences of his actions,” said Anna Quillen, chair of the Cumberland County Democratic Party, in a statement issued Friday.

She pointed out that schools in her county already receive some of the lowest state funding per student and are likely to receive even less due to a measure that Sexton backed. Sexton’s daughter reportedly goes to private school in Nashville, meaning that his family will never experience the effects of that legislation.

Over the weekend, Jones cited reports on MSNBC when calling out Sexton and other Republican legislators “who are not doing the people’s work, particularly when it comes to poor people and rural people.”

Team Ron DeSantis continues to demonize everyday Americans, this time targeting his own state’s residents. On Saturday, Christina Pushaw, rapid response director for the Florida governor and potential 2024 presidential candidate, celebrated the idea of people fleeing Florida and the measures DeSantis has supported with the explicit goal of making their lives worse.

In response to a headline that a majority of Florida LGBTQ parents are considering leaving the state in response to the repressive “Don’t Say Gay” bill, the DeSantis right hand had one simple reaction: Bye!

The actual study Pushaw was smugly responding to found that nearly one-quarter of LGBTQ Florida parents feared harassment, with parents of school-age children in public schools expressing the greatest concern for their safety. Over half of the parents surveyed have considered moving out of Florida, while 17 percent have already taken steps to do so.

Such a reaction illustrates why some donors have recently started to sour on Ron DeSantis’s political prospects. In tacking further and further right by pursuing repressive policy after repressive policy—and surrounding himself with people of the same persuasions—he displays how shockingly little he cares for millions of Americans. In pretending to be the more “reasonable” Trump, he appeals neither to actual Trump supporters, who would have no reason to vote for the second-rate version, nor to the rest of potential voters who are simply not interested in such radical, out-of-touch politics that treat millions of hardworking Americans like pawns at best and garbage at worst.

The Ivy League elitist and former Guantánamo Bay torture adviser has tried to prove his salt-of-the-earth bona fides by pursuing outrageous policies—like loosening gun safety regulation; leading crusades against students, teachers, and school libraries; banning people from hanging out with undocumented people (of whom there are nearly one million in Florida); and passing an extremist abortion ban. In doing so, DeSantis has in fact smeared millions of Americans and Floridians who disagree with and are even directly impacted by such radical policies.

And in Desantis’s continued employment of and allyship with fellow radicals like Pushaw, he shows no sign of any interest in representing most of America. As NBC News reported at the end of March, Republican kingmakers have started to cool on DeSantis, with some suggesting that he might actually want to sit out the election rather than potentially lose to Trump. According to that report, conservative donors have cited a range of reasons for their emerging belief that the Florida governor isn’t quite ready for prime time, including “bold stands” that haven’t paid off, the fumbling of big moments, and a team that’s been deemed to be “far behind the eight ball.”

On Monday, Jim Jordan brought held a Judiciary Committee hearing in Manhattan, where he and his fellow House Republicans attempted to paint New York City as a crime-ridden disaster.* However, they instead managed to remind Americans that loose gun laws and Republican leadership have led to high crime rates and unlawful schemes that ship guns from red states to blue ones.

Jordan’s New York City field trip was part of a larger effort among House Republicans to try to discredit Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who added a new historical footnote to the twice-impeached former President Donald Trump’s checkered record by making him the first president ever to be criminally indicted. Republicans on the select committee hoped their hearings would undercut Bragg by highlighting what they characterized as a supposed crime crisis happening on his watch. Jordan, the House Judiciary Committee chairman, staged this “field hearing” just steps away from Bragg’s office.

But not everything went off according to plan. During the hearing, Jim Kessler, the executive vice president for policy at the centrist think tank Third Way, testified about how safe New York City actually is, versus the safety of the home bases of some of the House Republicans leading the Bragg and New York smear campaign.

“New York City is safer than most of the states of the members sitting on the dais on the majority side. In 2020, for example, New York City’s murder rate was 18% below the national average for the entire United States,” Kessler began. “Mr. Chairman, Ohio’s murder rate was 59% higher than New York City’s.” He continued, listing other places with high crime rates relative to New York City—including Louisiana, Texas, South Carolina, Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, Indiana, Arizona, and Alabama.

“A hearing about the ravages of crime could be in Alabama with its towering homicide rate and a mass killing that just happened yesterday, or Louisville, where five people were murdered in the blink of an eye at a downtown bank,” Kessler continued, referring to the weekend mass shooting at a sweet 16 birthday party and the Louisville, Kentucky, mass shooting last week. “Or the murder capital of California, which is not Los Angeles or San Francisco or Oakland, but in Speaker McCarthy’s district of Kern County with its county seat of Bakersfield. And it has been the murder capital of California for six years running.”

Kessler went on to mention the so-called “iron pipeline”—the trafficking of guns from states with looser gun regulations like Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina to places like New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, which often have tighter gun laws. “Wouldn’t it be great if this hearing was about how illicit guns are trafficked to places like New York City, New York, Boston, Philly, Chicago and on and on, and how those guns terrorize the innocent people living in those places and elsewhere?” Kessler posed. “That’s the sort of thing Congress would do if it really cared about what was happening with regard to crime in New York City.”

“There are eight and a half million people living in New York City on this tiny plot of land. Bad things happen here, no doubt,” Kessler said. “But the miracle of New York City is how well this enormous chunk of humanity mostly gets along and suffers less crime than much of the nation.”

Kessler was later questioned in the hearing further about New York City’s relative safety versus places across the country, from Mississippi and Wyoming to Missouri and Ohio. Representative David Cicilline decided to be clever.

“In light of the testimony we just heard, what is the mechanism for the committee to transfer this hearing to Ohio, where the crime rate is significantly greater than here in New York?”

He added, “How do we move the venue so we can have a hearing in a city or state that has a serious crime, the state of Ohio?”

Jordan quickly dismissed the quip, saying it was not a proper “parliamentary inquiry.”

Further illustrating how much of a joke the whole charade is, Representative Matt Gaetz chimed in during his time to address these high crime rates in places beyond New York City. “To the extent that there is an impact on crime rates in major cities, I would suggest that that is exactly what you get with the ‘Soros-ization’ of the United States Justice system,” the Florida Republican said, echoing the sort of sweeping antisemitism even Republican leadership has embraced. (Remember folks: It’s only antisemitism if it’s Ilhan Omar talking about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians; it’s not if we’re saying rich Jewish people control society.)

* This post originally misstated the committee organizing the hearing.

The Louisiana state Republican Party thinks that diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, programs on college campuses are too “divisive” and should be banned.

The Republican State Central Committee, or RSCC, the state GOP’s governing body, unanimously passed a resolution Saturday asking the state legislature to ban DEI offices at all Louisiana colleges and universities, both public and private.

The resolution refers to DEI offices as “bureaucracies” that “operate as divisive ideological commissariats” and are “a threat to academic freedom and academic integrity.” It calls for the state legislature to pass bills that will remove DEI departments from all higher education institutions in Louisiana.

The resolution passed the majority-white body by a voice vote “with no discernible dissent,” according to NOLA.com. The RSCC membership, which includes multiple state senators and representatives, voted on the measure during the state party’s quarterly meeting in Baton Rouge.

The move comes amid a growing push by Republicans to ban “woke ideology” (a.k.a. freedom of thought) in schools. The GOP has spent the past few years working to transform critical race theory, or CRT, into a political boogeyman. CRT is a framework for understanding the legal underpinnings of systemic racism in U.S. society and politics; Republicans have framed an advanced academic field of study as something that’s being used in elementary schools to indoctrinate young children. Slowly but surely, the same rhetoric is being applied to education at all levels.

One of the prime offenders of late has been Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has vowed to defund all DEI programs at state universities. He also banned high schools from teaching an A.P. African American studies class, deeming it “woke indoctrination,” and pressured the College Board to gut the course syllabus.

In Texas, the state Senate approved a bill last week that would bar college and university professors from “compelling” students to adopt certain political beliefs. The bill’s sponsor insisted his measure would not censor any topics of discussion, but critics warn the legislation is too vaguely worded and could actually curb difficult, nuanced conversations about issues such as race and gender.

Montana Republicans are working 9 to 5 to prohibit minors from attending drag shows, but a recent amendment to an anti-drag bill could ban more than they perhaps intended.

House Bill 359 has passed both the state House of Representatives and the Senate Judiciary Committee. It still needs to be voted on by the entire Senate. If it passes, it will ban minors from attending drag performances and ban publicly funded organizations from hosting drag shows. The bill specifically targets Drag Story Hour, an event where drag queens read stories to children.

But the bill was amended Friday to change the definition of what constitutes drag. Under the changes, a drag performance is “an obscene performance that features drag queens, topless dancers, exotic dancers, strippers, or similar entertainers who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest,” meaning of a sexual nature.

A drag queen is “a male or female performer who adopts a flamboyant or parodic feminine persona with glamorous or exaggerated costumes and makeup.” The amendment removes the mention of dressing differently from “the performer’s gender assigned at birth.”

As journalist and transgender rights activist Erin Reed pointed out, this means that the bill could affect glam rock, wrestling, and performances by Dolly Parton. Queen Dolly herself has said she has exaggerated her appearance to be “flashy” and “flamboyant.”

If it becomes law, Montana’s drag ban would categorize any business that serves alcohol and hosts a drag show as a “sexually oriented business.” They could face a fine of up to $10,000 and even lose their liquor license if they repeatedly violate the law.

The measure also bans public schools or publicly funded institutions such as museums and libraries from hosting drag performances, specifically Drag Story Hour. The institution would be fined $5,000 for hosting a show, and the staff member who approved it could lose their teaching or librarian certification.

Critics of Montana’s bill have previously pointed out that the measure would affect theater productions of Mrs. Doubtfire, Rent, or several Shakespeare plays. It could even target Halloween costumes.

Montana is the latest state to advance a (vaguely worded, extreme) measure attacking drag performances, which have become a particular target for the right wing in recent years. In March, Tennessee became the first state to pass a law banning drag performances, but the measure was blocked by a judge before it could go into effect on the grounds that it was overly broad and violated free speech rights.

On Friday, scores of Republicans, including every 2024 hopeful, descended upon Indianapolis to chum it up with NRA members in the aftermath of two devastating mass shootings in Kentucky and Tennessee. And the results have been as appallingly wild as one could imagine.

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem insisted that, contrary to the deluded media’s narratives, the NRA is much more diverse than is given credit. That, indeed, the attendees of the convention represent a mass movement of people of all stripes ready to go to battle to defend their right to own killing machines.

As to the validity of her proposition, well, take a look:

Beyond trying to score woke points about how diverse and inclusive the NRA is, Noem also glowingly discussed how her almost-2-year-old granddaughter apparently “already has a shotgun, and she already has a rifle.”

“Soon, [she’ll] need them,” Noem said about the toddler.

Noem also signed an executive order on stage, one that “blocks state agencies from contracting with large banks that discriminate against firearm-related industries.”

The performance of it all was laughable for a moment, but plainly demoralizing in sum. In the immediate wake of two horrific shootings—among over 150 that have swept the nation already this year—Republicans like Noem put on their shiniest holster belts and did their jig. All to impress one of the entities most responsible for a culture that’s so violently obsessed with guns it cannot fathom another reality.

Republicans may earn an A+ from the NRA; but on the matters of protecting children, of maintaining the sanctity of life, of guaranteeing people the assured liberty to live a healthy and safe life, they are not even on the grading scale.

The NRA’s top executive, Wayne LaPierre, kicked off the organization’s annual convention Friday by threatening pro–gun control politicians.

The National Rifle Association convention is taking place this weekend in Indianapolis, on the anniversary of one of the deadliest mass shootings in the city’s history and on the heels of two major mass shootings in the last month.

“Gun-hating politicians should never go to bed unafraid of what this association and all of our millions of members can do to their political careers,” LaPierre told the crowd, to cheers.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1646941951625666577

LaPierre’s chilling threat shows just how much influence the gun lobby has in politics. No Republicans have challenged his remark so far. Meanwhile, every Republican running or rumored to be running for president is speaking at the convention.

Elsewhere in the country, Republicans seem fully in thrall to gun rights (meaning, unfettered access to firearms). One of the most recent mass shootings was in Nashville, when a shooter killed three children and three adults at a private Christian grade school. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee initially hedged on increasing gun control, but he pulled an about-face earlier this week after thousands of protesters marched to the state Capitol to demand new legislation. Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton indicated his party was willing to work toward “bipartisan solutions.”

But on Thursday, House Republicans shot down a “red flag” bill that would prevent future shootings like the one at the Covenant School.

The Supreme Court on Friday temporarily paused lower court rulings that restricted access to the abortion pill mifepristone, which would have dealt a major blow to national abortion access had it gone into effect.

A Texas federal judge ruled last week that mifepristone, one of the medications used to induce an abortion, had been improperly approved by the Food and Drug Administration and should be yanked from the U.S. market. The Department of Justice appealed the decision, but the Fifth Circuit Court only partially stayed the ruling while it considers the full appeal suit. Meanwhile, dueling rulings on the pill made it tricky for the FDA to figure out what exactly it should do next.

The Supreme Court decided to stay the Texas ruling until April 19, meaning mifepristone’s status remains unchanged—for less than a week. Economist reporter Steven Mazie, who covers the Supreme Court, pointed out that this is purely an administrative stay to give the court time to consider the appeal.

Both the Department of Justice and Danco Laboratories, which manufactures mifepristone, had appealed the Fifth Circuit ruling to the Supreme Court. Both received identical responses about the administrative stay. Danco argued that the partial stay would “irreparably injure” its business because it would have to change its drug labels, recertify providers, and get approval for a supplemental new drug application, all processes that could take months.

Danco also pointed out that it could not comply with both the Fifth Circuit ruling and the dueling injunction out of Washington ordering that mifepristone access remain unchanged. The company argued that if the Supreme Court weren’t willing to completely stay the Texas ruling, then the high court should hear the entire case now and make a final decision.

A bigger issue at play, though, is that non-elected judges who do not have medical backgrounds are making decisions about medication. As Rachel Rebouché, the dean of Temple University’s law school, previously told The New Republic, “The question for appellate courts is not just about abortion but about deference to a federal agency’s expertise.”

The Texas ruling “undermined” the FDA’s authority, she said. “To take seriously that it ignored risks, risks unsupported by any credible evidence, suggests questions as to what federal courts might decide about other federal agencies’ decisions.”

Nebraska Republican R. Brad von Gillern says that more kids are becoming violent, performing poorly in school, and committing suicide because social media is pressuring them to become transgender.

During a hearing on Legislative Bill 574, which would ban gender-affirming care for people under 18, von Gillern argued that the bill “does nothing to promote hatred or bigotry,” but rather just protects “children from making childish decisions.”

Von Gillern went on to argue that children make decisions “based upon the worst criteria: peer pressure, lack of information, emotions, popularity, and today more than ever, social media pressure.” But instead of showing any concern for children’s decision-making or autonomy, the Nebraska Republican proceeded to blame acceptance of trans people for many of the problems facing the next generation.

The Republican cited three things he was certain about as a child: that there was a God who loved him; that his parents loved him; and that he was a boy who would someday grow up to be a man. He contrasts his own certainty with what he says is a contemporary time in which “many kids don’t have the security of knowing any of those three things.”

“Nearly all [kids] are being told that the one thing they knew about themselves the most, that they are a boy or a girl, might be a mistake,” von Gillern said. (Nearly all kids are not, in fact, being told that their gender identity is a mistake.)

He continued. “Is it any wonder that the teen suicide rate has skyrocketed? Is there any question about why kids are reacting with violence against one another? Is it shocking that school behavior and performance is declining?”

To von Gillern, the answer was simple. “When you remove all of the securities from a child, you shouldn’t be surprised when they act and react poorly,” he said.

“The opponents of 574 say that the suicide rate in kids is up because gender affirmation is being withheld from them,” von Gillern continued, giving a nod toward research that has repeatedly shown that this is indeed the case. Nevertheless, von Gillern, ever the expert on gender identity and children’s sociology, had his own conclusion. “I postulate that the suicide rate is increased because their lives have been filled with question marks rather than affirmation of who they truly are, and who they were created to be.”

The Nebraska Republican’s style of essentially denying the existence of a wide body of work on these issues (let alone denying the existence of actual trans people) is not new. In an earlier debate on the bill, von Gillern compared gender-affirming care to shock treatments, lobotomies, and forced sterilizations.

Aside from von Gillern’s outright dismissal of rigorous work concerned with children’s well-being, his comments embody a more basic deficiency. To say that practically all children are becoming not just more violent or poorly performing in school, but indeed more suicidal, because of efforts to affirm someone’s gender identity is stunning. It’s either a willful or an unintelligent display of narrow thinking.

Our youth do in fact face a troubling slate of challenges: growing up at a time when school-shooting drills are as routine as assemblies; when their libraries and books and teachers are being attacked; when, indeed, phones and social media are placing so much pressure on them. But to instead focus your energy on making the lives of already marginalized children even more difficult is a level of dishonesty that serves no child, regardless of their gender identity.

Donald Trump’s team has clearly identified Ron DeSantis as the biggest challenger for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and they are going after the governor hard.

The Make America Great Again, Inc., PAC released an ad Friday attacking a few of DeSantis’s policies but mainly highlighting a month-old report that the governor once ate pudding with his fingers.

“Ron DeSantis loves sticking his fingers where they don’t belong, and we’re not just talking about pudding,” the ad narrator said.

The Daily Beast reported in March that DeSantis used his fingers to eat chocolate pudding while on a plane trip in 2019.

“He would sit in meetings and eat in front of people,” a former DeSantis staffer told The Daily Beast, “always like a starving animal who has never eaten before … getting shit everywhere.”

Enshrined in DeSantis lore is an episode from four years ago: During a private plane trip from Tallahassee to Washington, D.C., in March of 2019, DeSantis enjoyed a chocolate pudding dessert—by eating it with three of his fingers, according to two sources familiar with the incident.

DeSantis has denied the story, which has big salad-comb vibes.

But Team Trump seized on the story anyway, and the ad—while deeply weird and unsettling to watch—admittedly does an excellent job of undermining DeSantis’s self-styled persona as a right-wing, “anti-woke” warrior.

The ad comes the day after members of Trump’s inner circle tore into DeSantis for going on a book tour as parts of his state struggle with record rainfall and major flooding. Fort Lauderdale, in southern Florida, got about 26 inches of rain in a 24-hour period. A meteorologist for the National Weather Service described the rainfall as a “1-in-1,000 year event, or greater.” But the mayor of Fort Lauderdale said Thursday that DeSantis had yet to contact him.

“Fort Lauderdale is under water and DeSantis is campaigning in Ohio right now instead of taking care of the people suffering in his state,” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted.

Far-right activist and Islamophobe Laura Loomer, whom the Trump campaign is reportedly considering hiring, tweeted, “Instead of doing his job, today @GovRonDeSantis is flying to Ohio to campaign for President.”

The ad has already aired on Fox News, CNN, and Newsmax.

DeSantis has yet to formally announce that he is running for president, although he is widely expected to. Trump has previously attacked DeSantis, nicknaming him “Ron DeSanctimonious’’ and “Meatball Ron.” Now that the attacks are ramping up, it’s clear that he and his team view DeSantis as Trump’s biggest threat.