VP Harris to meet with expelled Tennessee lawmakers

By Jasmine Wright | CNN

Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Nashville on Friday to advocate for gun control and meet with the a pair of state lawmakers who were expelled from the General Assembly after they protested in favor of gun control on the state House floor.

Harris is set to meet with advocates and lawmakers including two former Tennessee Democratic Reps. Justin Jones and Rep. Justin Pearson, both Black men, who were expelled for protesting for gun control. Harris’ trip is meant to convey the administration’s seriousness about gun reform and democracy at large, and Harris will renew the Biden administration’s call for a ban on assault-style weapons while there, a White House official said.

“Today, @VP will travel to Nashville, TN. There she will meet with state lawmakers as well as young leaders who continue to demand action on common sense gun reform,” Kirsten Allen, Harris’ press secretary, tweeted on Friday.

Harris will meet with the entire Democratic Tennessee state caucus while in Nashville, and the three lawmakers who faced expulsion votes will be in attendance. The third member, a White woman, spared in an ousting by Republican lawmakers that was decried by the trio as oppressive, vindictive and racially motivated.

The last-minute trip shows how much focus the Biden administration is placing on this issue and gun control broadly. Previously, Harris was scheduled to have no public events on Friday.

In a late-night statement, President Joe Biden called the expulsion of two Tennessee Democratic lawmakers from the state’s House of Representatives “shocking, undemocratic and without precedent” and criticized Republicans for not taking greater action on gun reform.

“Rather than debating the merits of the issue, these Republican lawmakers have chosen to punish, silence, and expel duly-elected representatives of the people of Tennessee,” the president said. “A strong majority of Americans want lawmakers to act on commonsense gun safety reforms that we know will save lives. But instead, 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.”