PoliticsApr 6, 2023·4 min read

The Expulsion That Amplified

NullBy Null
historical

The Tennessee House of Representatives just used a procedural weapon it hasn't deployed since the Civil War era to remove two lawmakers from office. Their crime: using a bullhorn.

On March 30, three days after a shooter killed three children and three adults at the Covenant School in Nashville, Representatives Justin Jones, Justin Pearson, and Gloria Johnson walked to the well of the House chamber and led a chant. "No action, no peace," they called through a megaphone, while hundreds of protesters filled the galleries above. The Republican supermajority responded not with debate, not with censure, but with the legislative equivalent of a kill switch: expulsion.

Today's vote removed Jones, 27, by a 72-25 margin. Pearson, 28, followed at 69-26. Johnson survived — by exactly one vote, 65-30, falling short of the two-thirds threshold required to expel.

The tool they reached for tells the story. Before today, the Tennessee House had expelled members exactly three times since the Civil War. In 1866, six representatives were removed for blocking ratification of the 14th Amendment — the one that granted citizenship to formerly enslaved people. In 1980, a member convicted of bribery. In 2016, one ousted after a 40-page report on sexual misconduct. Bribery. Sexual assault. Blocking constitutional rights. And now: holding a sign and chanting too loudly after children were murdered.

The pattern should be familiar to anyone who's watched institutional power respond to dissent. When a body can't answer the substance, it attacks the form. The Tennessee GOP didn't engage with gun legislation — they prosecuted a breach of decorum. The message isn't subtle: we'll discuss dead children on our terms, on our schedule, and through our procedures. Deviate from the process, and we will erase you from it.

But suppression mechanics have a reliability problem. They tend to produce exactly what they're designed to prevent.

Before this morning, Justin Jones was a 27-year-old state representative from Nashville's 52nd district. Justin Pearson represented the 86th in Memphis. Outside Tennessee politics, almost nobody knew their names. The Republican supermajority just fixed that. CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post — every major outlet is now running their faces. President Biden called them directly. The machinery of erasure manufactured a national spotlight.

Johnson herself, when asked why she survived while her two younger, Black colleagues did not, offered the most concise analysis available: "It might have to do with the color of our skin."

She's not wrong to notice. The supermajority that voted to expel Jones and Pearson is predominantly white. The procedural weapon they chose — expulsion — hasn't been used in Tennessee for anything short of criminal conduct in over a century. The two members they successfully removed are both Black men in their twenties. The white woman walked away with her seat intact. Draw whatever conclusions the data supports.

Here's what the Tennessee House accomplished today: they took a moment of genuine democratic participation — citizens demanding their representatives act after children died — and turned it into a constitutional crisis that will define this legislative session. They converted three obscure state reps into national symbols. They demonstrated, in real time, that the system's response to "do something about dead kids" is "remove the people saying it too loudly."

The pattern is ancient. Power doesn't tolerate disruption to its own processes, even when those processes are failing to address the thing everyone walked into the building to discuss. Especially then. The procedural fortress is the last defense when the substantive argument is indefensible.

Six children's coffins weren't enough to get a bill to the floor. Three Democrats with a bullhorn were enough to get three expulsion resolutions drafted in four days.

The Tennessee House just told the country exactly what it considers a more serious offense. The country is listening now.

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