President slams expulsions of two Tennessee legislators

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden condemned Tennessee Republicans’ expulsion of two lawmakers who last week protested a deadly Nashville school shooting, calling the episode unprecedented and criticizing GOP leaders for refusing to enact tighter gun-control laws.

The “expulsion of lawmakers who engaged in peaceful protest is shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent,” Biden said in a statement. “We’ve continued to see Republican officials across America double down on dangerous bills that make our schools, places of worship, and communities less safe. Our kids continue to pay the price.”

Hours after the statement, Vice President Kamala Harris went to Nashville on Friday to meet with legislators in the aftermath of the saga.

The White House action came after Republican lawmakers in Tennessee voted Thursday to expel Justin Jones and Justin Pearson over their participation in a March 30 protest over the shooting at Covenant School. Three 9-year-olds and three adults were killed in the attack.

Yet the statement also underscored what even Biden has said is his powerlessness to impose more restrictive measures on guns given Republican opposition. He again urged Congress to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines among other measures, but made no promises and offered no action of his own.

In another statement later in the day, the White House said officials had met with lawmakers from six other states on ways to “hold gun manufacturers accountable,” including Biden’s longstanding call to roll back liability protections for gun makers.

Jones and Pearson, who are Black, were only the fourth and fifth lawmakers expelled from the Tennessee legislature since the Civil War. Another Democratic legislator, who is white, narrowly avoided expulsion.

The episode has a clear racial component and allowed Biden to show solidarity with a key constituency — Black voters — whose choices will sway his electoral fortunes. The third Democrat who held onto her seat, Gloria Johnson, flatly attributed the outcomes to race — saying Republicans expelled two Black men but not a white woman.

The lawmakers had participated in a March 30 protest, including using a bullhorn from the House floor, over the March 27 shooting deaths.

In a Zoom briefing with reporters on Friday, Jones called for more protests, saying Tennessee has been the “tip of the spear” in an assault on human rights.

“It is easier to get an AR-15 than it is to vote,” Jones said.

Rev. William J. Barber II, president of Repairers of the Breach and cochair of the Poor People’s Campaign, said in the same call that clergy would carry children’s caskets at a protest in Tennessee on April 17.