On Thursday, the Tennessee House of Representatives’ Republican supermajority voted to remove Democratic Representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, two young Black legislators, over demonstrations pushing for stricter gun laws. The move to oust a third Democratic member, Gloria Johnson, a white woman who stood with them during the protest on the House floor, failed by one vote.
The partisan battle in Nashville comes after three 9-year-old students and three adults were killed in a March 27 school shooting in the city, the latest high-profile mass shooting in the US. Like much of the country, Tennessee is also grappling with questions of political representation and changing demographics ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Republicans said the three Democrats broke decorum by leading the demonstration in the well of the House floor, and deserved to be punished via expulsion instead of lesser forms of discipline, such as censure. Just two state lawmakers have been expelled since the US Civil War.
On Thursday, President Joe Biden decried the expulsions of the state lawmakers on Twitter, calling them “shocking, undemocratic and without precedent.”
Harris echoed those remarks on Friday, tweeting: “This is undemocratic and dangerous.”
The White House, which announced the trip, did not provide other details about the meeting, scheduled for Friday evening.
Tennessee Representative Yusuf Hakeem, a Democrat, said Harris’s visit “lets us know firsthand that the White House is very interested and concerned in a meaningful way,” adding that he does not expect the protests will fade away.
“What these young people are saying is if you are not listening to us … you are going against democracy, you are going against fair play,” he told MSNBC in an interview.
Nearly 50 organisations, led by the gun safety advocacy group the Newtown Action Alliance, called for nationwide student walkouts in solidarity with those in Tennessee.
Jones on Friday told MSNBC he faced a “toxic work environment” since arriving at the statehouse in January: “Colleagues make snide remarks on elevators, in committee, belittling remarks, patronising remarks.”
Jones said it was unclear whether Republicans would block the two from rejoining the legislature if they were reappointed. Jones’s former Nashville district and Pearson’s former Memphis district are among the most diverse in the state.
Members of the Tennessee General Assembly’s Black Caucus decried the move at a news conference on Friday, saying Republicans had sunk to new lows.
“It looked like a Jim Crow era,” caucus vice-chair and Democratic Representative Jesse Chism said.
Even some Republicans blasted the expulsion.
“You stand for something bigger than what happened today,” former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele told Jones on MSNBC late on Thursday. “You represent a future that America has been leaning towards, for a long time.”