Tag: tennessee

Cool TN Lady Gonna Fill The Social Studies Standards With Awesome Stuff Like ‘Barack Obama Did The Tornados’

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The Education Wars just never go away, and in today’s dispatch from the front lines we’ll look at Tennessee, where a rightwing conspiracy theory fan and anti-Muslim bigot has just been appointed to the committee that sets standards for the state’s social studies curricula.

Yr Wonkette already introduced you last year to Laurie Cardoza-Moore, the nutball Tennessee bigot lady, when she was a member of the state textbook commission that was tasked with making sure only “age appropriate” materials were in them. You may recall that Tennessee was considering a measure that would have required state approval of every last item in the collections of school libraries; the bill’s sponsor charmingly said that any materials not approved by the commission should be burned. Ultimately, the Lege settled for a different plan that gave the textbook commission the power to hear appeals of book challenges brought by parents, so the state could ban library books even after a local school board had gone through a challenge process and approved them. Hooray for compromise.

We guess that Ms. Cardoza-Moore must have either done a bang-up job on that commission, or at the very least that she has powerful friends in Tennessee, because clearly it’s the latter thing. She was chosen for the Tennessee Standards Recommendation Committee by Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R), the slimebooger we came to know and loathe during the kangaroo court proceedings that expelled Democratic state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson in April. Sexton also appointed her to the textbook commission in 2021, which is quite the coincidence.

In her new job, Cardoza-Moore will have a say in setting state standards for social studies classes, although we suspect she’ll just photocopy the course offerings at Hillsdale College and say “Done!” As Judd Legum points out in his Popular Information newsletter, Cardoza-Moore doesn’t actually believe in public schools; she’s homeschooled her own five kids, and she’s simply horrified that US history texts teach historical facts that make America look bad, such as the fact that the Constitution provided a framework for oppression of African Americans. In a 2020 Fox News interview, she blamed Common Core, because why not? She claimed, falsely, that schools no longer teach about the founding of the US, but instead skip ahead to the Civil War and Reconstruction so they can harp on all the slavery, those monsters.

“This is an outrage,” Cardoza-Moore exclaimed. “It poses the greatest national security threat to our constitutional republic.”

So yeah, she’s a real peach. She somehow also took issue with a textbook’s factual statement that the Republican Party was originally founded to fight the spread of slavery beyond the states where it was already allowed, complaining that it was “disinformation” because Lincoln was anti-slavery, which, yeah, that’s what the book said. She was mostly upset the book didn’t say that Democrats were pro-slavery and KKK, and also what about that Klansman Robert Byrd, huh?

Cardoza-Moore initially made her name in Tennessee politics by fearmongering about Islam, back when that was the thing the Right was certain would destroy America, because Barack Obama was president. She led some of the most paranoid opposition to a mosque being built in Murfreesboro, claiming that fully 30 percent of Muslims are terrorists and that the mosque would be a base for “radical Islamic extremists” bent on destroying Nashville’s Christian music industry.

During her 2021 confirmation hearing for her seat on the textbook commission, she explained that bad school textbooks are directly responsible for wrecking America and of course the riots that burned all cities in America to the ground in 2020, several of them more than once.

While America slept, the hearts, minds and souls of our students were being influenced by disinformation. Tragically we have seen the result over the past few months; our streets have been filled with rioting destructive American young people who have not been taught the values entrusted to us by our nation’s founders … nor have they been taught our nation’s history — history which many seem intent to destroy

See, if only kids been made to memorize more facts about how George Washington was a Christian and God wrote the Constitution, there might be a few more cities still standing in our great land.

As Legum details, Cardoza-Moore doesn’t seem to have met a conspiracy theory she didn’t glom on to. She’s said that 9/11 was an “inside job,” that Donald Trump was the true winner of the 2020 election, and that January 6 was a false flag attack by “Antifa.” I’m just disappointed that she doesn’t appear to have said anything about chemtrails. But she came kind of close in 2011, as Legum explains, when she

claimed that former President Barack Obama was causing “horrific tornadoes” because he made a speech that discussed the plight of Palestinians. Asked if she still held these views, Cardoza-Moore did not respond.

She also runs her very own “Christian Zionist” nonprofit called “Proclaiming Justice to the Nations,” which recently ran a press release on her appointment to the social studies standards job. In it, we learn that she has previously helped the Florida Department of Education screen textbooks, “a successful review effort that ‘caught and corrected dozens of books to prevent political indoctrination of Florida’s children,’ a spokesperson for Governor Ron DeSantis noted.”

In the press release, Cardoza-Moore reflected on the important task ahead of her, because

“The materials we will be reviewing can only accomplish the mission of educating good American citizens if our Tennessee textbooks are devoid of left-aligned historic revisionism and the toxic material found in the antisemitic Critical Race Theory; Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Social-Emotional Learning and Ethnic Studies.”

Impressive how she got all the rightwing shibboleths in there!

The statement also emphasized that Muslim groups opposed her appointment to the textbook commission, presumably because if she has the right enemies, that just shows what a great job she’ll do for Tennessee students.

We can hardly wait to see what happens to Tennessee social studies standards. Haha, we kid, of course, because we read the history standards that Donald Trump’s “1776 Commission” came up with, so we have a pretty good idea. Good luck, kids!

[Popular Information]

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#Cool #Lady #Gonna #Fill #Social #Studies #Standards #Awesome #Stuff #Barack #Obama #Tornados

Tina Turner: From Tenessee’s Cotton Fields To Teaching Mick Jagger To Dance

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US singer Tina Turner performs on April 1, 1982, at the Hague. (Image Courtesy: AFP)

Tina Turner, the growling songstress whose explosive stage presence electrified fans the world over, left an indelible mark on 20th-century rock with five decades of hits,  first with husband Ike Turner, but most memorably as a wildly successful solo act.

The Black eight-time Grammy winner lit up the stage from the 1960s onwards, and won a new generation of fans in a stunning comeback after escaping her violent marriage, making her popular music’s ultimate survivor.

Abandoned by her parents, Turner emerged from Tennessee’s cotton fields to become the “Queen of Rock and Roll” who, according to music lore, taught Mick Jagger how to dance — and the Rolling Stones frontman led the flood of tributes Wednesday, following the superstar’s death at the age of 83.

The singer of The Best died in Switzerland, where she lived her final years with husband Erwin Bach, a former record label executive who was her romantic partner for three decades before they wed in 2013.

Long before she snowballed into a global phenomenon, Turner’s early career — originally as a soul and R&B siren — was a roller coaster for the singer, who admitted attempting suicide at the height of Ike’s physical and emotional abuse.

Tina fled Ike in 1976, dashing across a highway to escape during a concert tour. Her divorce was finalized in 1978, and she was left with nothing but her stage name.

But the rock star dream still gnawed at her.

“How can I fill stadiums?” Turner wondered, in comments played during her 2021 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction.”I wanted it. I wanted to do what Jagger and all the other guys at the time was doing.”

Those dreams were fulfilled, and then some, when she struck crossover gold with her 1984 album Private Dancer, whose Grammy-winning smash single What’s Love Got to Do With It propelled her to superstardom at age 44.

Four years later, she set the record for largest paying attendance of a performance by a solo artist when her Rio concert crowd topped 180,000.

As a Black woman who embraced rock over 1950s doo-wop and 1960s Motown, Turner was a double outsider. But she wrote — and then rewrote — the rule book for women in the genre.

“A Black woman owning the stage all by herself: that’s the dream right there,” singer and rapper Lizzo said of Turner. Turner sold more than 100 million records worldwide, according to Billboard, and paved the way for performers like Janet Jackson, Madonna and Beyonce.

“I never in my life saw a woman so powerful, so fearless, so fabulous,” Beyonce told Turner from the Kennedy Center stage in a 2005 Tina tribute. “And those legs!”

‘Pain in your heart’

Anna Mae Bullock was born on November 26, 1939, in Brownsville, Tennessee.

She and her sister grew up in a family of modest means but conditions worsened when they were abandoned by their father, and then their mother.

When the grandmother who helped raise them died, Anna Mae moved in with relatives in St. Louis, Missouri at age 16.

There she met Ike Turner, a guitarist and bandleader eight years her senior who had already tasted fame, having written and recorded what was arguably the first rock and roll record, “Rocket 88,” in 1951.

She convinced Ike to let her sing with him. When he scored a 1960 hit with her lead vocals on “A Fool in Love,” he gave her the stage name Tina Turner, and the pair performed as the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. By 1962, they were married.

From early on, Tina was the fiery, dominant presence, stealing the limelight with a blend of thick, textured vocals, haunting howls and mesmerizing dance moves.

The Turner oeuvre reflected their personal tensions: it included “I Idolize You,” “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine,” and their most famous number, a 1970 cover of “Proud Mary,” in which Tina purrs about starting the song “nice and easy,” but finishing it “nice and rough.”

Even as she exuded raw sexual power as a performer, her singing was tinged with a palpable vulnerability.

“You sing with those emotions because you’ve had pain in your heart,” Turner told Rolling Stone magazine in 1986.

After leaving Ike, she toiled in Las Vegas shows, released modestly selling solo records and toured heavily in Europe.

But with the success of 1984’s “Private Dancer,” her metamorphosis from manipulated co-star to resurrected rock goddess was complete.

The next year, she was onstage at Live Aid in Philadelphia for a memorable encounter with Jagger, who ripped off Turner’s black leather miniskirt mid-performance, revealing her in fishnet stockings and a leotard.

Turner grinned and ran fingers through her lion’s mane of hair. “I know, it’s only rock and roll but I like it!” she belted out.

She starred opposite Mel Gibson in a Hollywood blockbuster, “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome;” co-wrote a best-selling autobiography, “I, Tina;” and was the subject of a feature film, “What’s Love Got To Do With It” starring Angela Bassett.

‘A way out’ 

In the revealing 2021 HBO documentary “Tina,” an uncomfortable reality emerges: her past trauma had become a focus for interviewers, with the star repeatedly asked to recount her life’s worst moments.

Turner, who had embraced Buddhism and saw it as “a way out” of her dangerous first marriage, pointed to the faith as a catalyst for rejuvenation and stability. She often swatted away probing questions, once saying reliving the past was like a “curse.”

But personal hardships were impossible to ignore, including the violence from Ike. “He used my nose as a punching bag so many times that I could taste blood running down my throat when I sang,” she wrote in her 2018 memoir, “My Love Story.”

In life after Ike, her concerts became glitzy spectacles — and she kept the high-octane rock flowing for decades. A Wembley Stadium concert in 2000 saw a 60-year-old Turner holding nothing back, grinding across the stage in stiletto heels and her trademark leather miniskirt.

In 2008, she embarked on her Tina! – 50th Anniversary Tour, which grossed some $130 million. The grande dame enjoyed her later years with Bach in their Zurich home and a vacation mansion near the French Riviera, although tragedy struck in 2018 when Turner’s eldest son Craig, from her early union with saxophonist Raymond Hill, committed suicide at 59. Ike Turner died in 2007, and his one child with Tina, Ronnie, died last year at 62 of complications from colon cancer.

In 2013, after marrying Bach and taking Swiss nationality, Turner relinquished her US citizenship — but the former president Barack Obama was among those who paid the most poignant tributes.

“Tina Turner was raw. She was powerful. She was unstoppable,” he wrote. “And she was unapologetically herself — speaking and singing her truth through joy and pain; triumph and tragedy.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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‘Moms For Liberty’ Now Against Mother’s Day

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Someday when the current wave of ridiculous moral panics subsides (and is replaced by some other shiny new ridiculous moral panic), the rightwing astroturf book-banning group “Moms for Liberty” will have an entire wing devoted to it in the Museum Of Why We Can’t Have Nice Things. Since the group’s founding in 2021 — initially for the purpose of hounding one Florida woman who beat co-founder Tina Descovich in a Brevard County school board election — the Mad Moms have become fulltime combatants in the Culture Wars, seeking to ban books about the Civil Rights Movement because they accurately depicted white opponents of integration as bigots, challenging scores of books at a time so they’ll be pulled from shelves under Florida’s ban-first policy, and occasionally fantasizing about gunning down librarians who are luring children into reading books containing Wrongthink.

Previously!

ACHTUNG! TN Moms Have Found The Critical Race Theory, And It Is Ruby Bridges’ Children’s Book!

100 Year Old Lady At Florida School Board Better Patriot Than All Book Banners Put Together

‘Moms For Liberty’ Leader Wistfully Shares Dream Of Gunning Down Librarians

Naturally enough, a Tennessee chapter of the Moms For Purity has now declared victory against a Chattanooga school librarian who attempted to destroy America by proposing a Mother’s Day book presentation aimed at teaching that families come in all shapes, including families with one, two, or zero mommies. The Washington Post’sGreg Sargent (gift linky) explains:

Caroline Mickey, the librarian at Alpine Crest Elementary School outside Chattanooga, just learned this the hard way, when her idea for a Mother’s Day-themed lesson came under sudden and heavy fire from parents in the area. The vitriol of the attack, and the school district superintendent’s rapid decision to cancel her lesson in response, caught her off guard.

“It was overwhelming,” Mickey told me. “I didn’t realize it was going to be quite this intense.”

Ms. Mickey — already a suspicious character since she shares a name with a dangerous groomer mouse in Florida — sent a notice to parents that she had planned a pre-Mother’s lesson that would be “sensitive to the fact that not all students live with a mother” and that would “[celebrate] those who fill the motherly roles in our lives: those who make our lunches, who kiss away our hurts, and who teach us to fly.”

No, that’s not sweet, it’s indoctrination, because only REAL mothers can do that, and besides, I learned to fly from an FAA certified flight instructor; my mother wouldn’t know an aileron from a baguette.

Ms. Mickey planned to read two books aloud on the theme; Miriam B. Schiffer’s Stella Brings the Family, a tale of a little girl who’s worried about her school’s Mother’s Day party because she has two dads, and Ryan T. Higgins’s Mother Bruce, a goofy story about a grumpy bear whose Uber Eats order goes terribly wrong and is sent a bunch of goose eggs that aren’t boiled, but instead hatch, and so the goslings treat him as their momma. In the Wonkette Sekrit Chatcave, Rebecca said it’s a darling book, and Evan said he was pretty sure he’s known at least one bear named Bruce. “‘Why are these goddamned goslings following me?’ said Bruce, yeah sounds about right.”

The reaction from Moms for White Evangelical Nationalism — to the school activity, not to Evan — was swift and furious. On a local message board, one woman accused Mickey of trying to “erase motherhood on Mother’s Day,” explaining that only women are mothers, and if a man is a caregiver, he’s a father, and look what’s happening to our “once wonderful” local school with all this indoctrination! (She also took issue with the library website’s “Reading changes your life” slogan, because why is the library trying to change children, huh?)

The rant even got angry about the notice that parents could opt out if they wanted, because “Why are opted out students, whose parents believe in traditional family values, going to be moved to another location so as to not disturb the supposed feelings of others?” And will the alternative lesson plan teach the “biblical definition of gender,” or some other horror?

The piece closes, “Please pray for the children of Hamilton County. The schools are coming after their hearts” and for good measure cites that line from Luke about how anyone who would lead children astray should “have a millstone hung around his neck and to be thrown into the sea.”

The note was followed by a distraught statement from Tonya Dodd, the local Moms for Liberty chair, who insisted that both books wouldn’t even be fit for middle schoolers, let alone second graders, because of all that gay and gender and evildoing, and also the “Social Emotional Learning (Cultural Marxism).” Dodd warned the school board that “As elected officials, you know you are appointed by God and you should be doing everything you can to keep children safe in their learning environment,” which, if you want to be technical, is not how school board elections actually work.

For extra cluelessness points, the Mad Moms chair complains that the librarian could have instead chosen books to

represent women who are moms that may not have given birth to their children; such as, grandmothers, aunts, stepmoms, adoptive moms, or any women that may be a mom to a child.

Which is actually pretty much the point of Stella Brings the Family, in which Stella’s friend suggests she invite both dads, her Nona, her uncle, her aunt, and a cousin, and everyone has a fine time except for the one kid who stands up, calls them all heathens and groomers, and says the Proud Boys are his real mother. (I am not allowed to write children’s books.)

The Post reports that some loving Christian parents in the area sent Ms. Mickey “long rambling rants” in emails in which they declared her a “groomer” and a literal enemy of motherhood.

Worse, as the Tennessee Holler tweeted, Mickey’s superintendent, Justin Robertson, didn’t even make a token attempt to defend her, and instead apologized and cancelled the lesson. No word on whether the books have yet been pulled from the school library.

Following the publication of the WaPo story, Dodd, the Moms for Censorship chair, took to Twitter today to reflect on her “success” and how lots of mean people not even from Chattanooga thought they had any right to have an opinion on the matter, but thank goodness she and her supporters fought against the ugly attempt to erase motherhood.

“Keep on cloud seeding and geoengeneering and see what happens. It never fails we have clear nice days, then a day full of trails in the sky, then crazy weather.”

Mind you, that was several hours after a middle-of-the night reply to a local TV weather report in which Dodd suggested that chemtrails are causing “crazy weather,” so thank goodness we have very calm normal people influencing what’s taught in schools.

OPEN THREAD.

[Washington Post (gift link) / Vice News / Chattanoogan]

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Following School Shooting, Tennessee Swiftly Protects Gun Businesses

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After every school shooting, anguished communities ask why lawmakers don’t do something about guns, and in most cases Republicans don’t do a damn thing except shake their heads sadly, explain that nothing can change until we all get Jesus in our hearts, and suggest that we all pray for for the victims before more of them pile up and God gets confused about which children we’re praying for.

You certainly aren’t seeing that kind of inaction in Tennessee, though, unless you mean Congressman Tim Burchett (R-Tennessee) who literally said “we’re not gonna fix it” and that any action Congress might take on guns would likely just “mess things up.”

Previously:

After Nashville School Shooting, Republicans Are Ready To Regulate Trans People

Tennessee Republicans Have Mass Shootings All Figured Out: More Guns, Everywhere, Always

Forgive Them Lord They … Oh Wait. They Do. Tennessee House Lets Its Racist Freak Flag Fly.

TN Gov. Bill Lee Asks For Stronger Gun Laws, Will Presumably Be Expelled From TN House

But at the state level, Tennessee lawmakers got right to work on expelling two Black Democrats who called for gun reform without permission. And now, mere weeks after the murders of three nine-year-olds and three adults at the Covenant School in Nashville, the state Senate has passed a bill to shield gun manufacturers as well as gun and ammunition dealers from lawsuits, beyond the protections they already have in federal law. The state House passed its own version of the bill before the school shooting, and apparently no one thought it might be a good idea to just set the bill aside following the massacre.

The bill, SB 822, now goes to Gov. Bill Lee (R) to sign, so sellers of guns and gun accessories can rest easy. Unfortunately, it looks like the Lege, in a rush to finish its session this week, won’t find the time or the votes to take any action on Lee’s request to create an extreme risk protection order law (or “red flag” law) that could keep guns out of the hands of people who might harm themselves or others. Who would have guessed?

The bill protecting innocent gun businesses from legal liability passed Tuesday on a vote of 19 to 9. While gun makers and dealers already have considerable liability protection under federal law, Republicans are very unhappy that some lawsuits still get through against the suppliers of the holy instruments for Second Amendment worship, so the Tennessee bill further restricts the circumstances under which gun bidnisses can be sued, as WBIR-TV explained when the bill passed in the state House.

A person could only sue if the dealer or manufacturer was directly involved in a crime that gave rise to the lawsuit. Someone could also sue if the other party is facing federal charges, or […] for “negligent entrustment” [if the seller knew the buyer was likely to harm someone else — Dok].

A person could also sue if the gun was made or sold in a way that violates a state or federal statute, or if there was a breach in the gun’s warranty. They could also sue if there is a defect in the gun that led to a death or injury.

Before the vote, Democratic state Sen. London Lamar said pushing the bill through so soon after a school shooting was “disrespectful timing,” particularly considering that protesters were at that moment marching outside the state Capitol to call for action to limit guns. Lamar said, “I am challenging you not to pass this bill because we need to do more to protect citizens from gun violence than the people making the guns that people can use to kill more people.”

But the bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Joey Hensley (R), insisted that nothing in his bill would prevent additional legislation on guns, cleverly leaving out the real point, which is that the Republican supermajority in both houses would manage that. He explained the bill “is just to try to help businesses in this state that have chosen to come here, to give them a little civil liability,” a fighting chance to sell guns without anyone holding them accountable unless they really screw up spectacularly.

Three Republicans joined all the Senate Democrats in voting against SB 822; one, state Sen. Art Swann, said that “gun-makers have encouraged the environment we’ve got right now,” and that “they’re accountable for it, and we need to hold them to it.”

The sole exceptions haven’t involved the inherent deadliness of guns, but instead gun companies’ bad behavior. Last year, Remington, which made the AR-15 rifle used by the Sandy Hook gunman, settled with victims’ families for $73 million over its irresponsible advertising practices, which included placements of its guns in first-person shooter video games and that infamous “Consider Your Man Card Reissued” ad for the very model used by the killer.

And as the AP ‘splains,

in February, families of those killed and injured in a 2018 Texas high school shooting settled a lawsuit they filed against a Tennessee-based online retailer, Lucky Gunner, that was accused of illegally selling ammunition to the student who authorities say fatally shot 10 people. The owner of the company, Jordan Mollenhour, sits on the Tennessee State Board of Education. The company was accused of failing to verify Dimitrios Pagourtzis’ age — he was 17, at the time — when he bought more than 100 rounds of ammunition on two occasions before the May 2018 shooting at Santa Fe High School.

Well it was sure nice of the Tennessee Lege to help out an upstanding Tennessee entrepreneur who happens to have been appointed by Bill Lee to the Ed Board and confirmed last year by the Senate.

But there’s always going to be grumblers, like state Sen. Jeff Yarbro (D), who said before the vote,

“There are people that we should be going out of way to protect this week. And we’ve been receiving emails and calls, people are holding up signs, telling us to go out of our way to help those people. Not one of those signs says to protect the gun manufacturers.”

Well maybe if people want the same protections from guns that Tennessee gives to guns, they should make a bundle of money and get themselves appointed to a position of influence. That’s how you get things done.

[AP / Tennessean / WBIR]

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Tennessee Republicans Are Racist, Corrupt Dicks Both Publicly And Privately, How Shocking

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What is going on with Republicans in the state of Tennessee? (State motto: That State That Looks A Bit Like One Of Those Shapes You Learned About In Math Class.) The GOP caucus in the state House has found so many ways to step on their own dicks lately that we can safely assume they will all pee sitting down for the rest of their lives.

If we’re picking the most prolific dick-stepper, we’re going with Tennessee Speaker Cameron Sexton, the Republican representative from Crossville. Or is he? Popular Information’s intrepid Judd Legum (full disclosure: yes, we’re very distant cousins, we think, but we have never met; believe it or not, Legums are innumerate in a couple of very specific sections of the mid-Atlantic) has been investigating whether Sexton actually lives in his district, or if he bought an expensive house in Nashville, moved his family there, but has nonetheless been dinging Tennessee’s taxpayers to the tune of thousands of dollars of per diem expenses.

Who wants to guess which way this is going?

Thanks to Legum’s reporting, Sexton admitted last week that he did indeed move his family to Nashville, even though the state legislature is only in session four months out of the year. Furthermore:

Sexton went to considerable lengths to obscure his purchase of his home in Nashville. He established an anonymous trust, the Beccani Trust, to buy the property. Cameron Sexton’s name does not appear anywhere on the documents memorializing the sale and the mortgage. A financial advisor based in Utah, Bret Bryce, was appointed trustee and signed most of the documents.

But Sexton’s wife, Lacey Sexton, signed the warranty deed for the property as the “affiant.”

This is 100 percent how you do real estate purchases when everything is on the up and up and you do have nothing to hide, such as whether you may now be ineligible under Article II, Section 5a of the Tennessee Constitution to represent the place you used to live that is two hours away from the state capital.

Sexton did at some point buy a condo in Crossville as a way-less-than-adequate residency fig leaf. Then he neglected to pay the property taxes on it until Popular Info brought it to the public’s attention.

Also, there is this:

But members who live more than 50 miles outside of Nashville are entitled to a much larger per diem, $313 in 2022, to cover the cost of lodging in Nashville. Sexton has taken the larger per diem, which is pegged to the cost of a hotel room in Nashville. On the forms, Sexton claims a roundtrip commute of 236 miles.

These per diems are also available when the legislature is out of session if a member has to travel to Nashville to conduct official business. Sexton makes extensive use of that privilege, consistently charging taxpayers the larger amount.

Since 2021, Sexton has charged Tennessee taxpayers $92,071 in per diem expenses.

Ninety-two thousand dollars in under two years! A fella could easily pay off two years of property taxes on a condo with that windfall, assuming he’s not spending it all on hair gel.

And to think, if Sexton and his caucus had merely censured those three Democrats for disrupting a legislative session instead of removing them from office, it would have been at best a thirty-second story on CNN and they would not have brought the attention of national reporters down on their own heads. Congrats, you idiots.

READ MOAR:

TN House GOP To Expel Democrat Terrorists Who Called For Saving Kids’ Lives Without Permission

Let’s Watch Tennessee House Beclown Itself By Expelling Three Democrats For ‘Insurrection’

Say It Loud: Justin Pearson’s Always Been Black And Proud

Meanwhile, someone secretly recorded Sexton’s caucus clawing at each other’s throats like highly aroused lemurs in a closed-door meeting. Then that someone leaked the audio to Justin Kanew of the Tennessee Holler:

If you listen to the recording, you will first hear one Rep. Jason Zachary very upset that Democrats have been trashing him as a racist simply because he and his mostly white fellow Republicans ponderously lectured two young Black legislators, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, before expelling them from the House for the crime of leading a protest against a gun control bill while Black:

“I think now more than ever, everyone should recognize the Democrats are not our friends…For the last three days all I have heard from them is how this is the most racist place…They destroy the foundation of the Republic and who we are, or we preserve it.”

Racist! Just because you gave the equivalent of the legislative death penalty to two young Black men over a gun violence protest when much less severe rebukes were available to you! So unfair!

Then a bunch of legislators get mad at one guy who did not vote to expel Gloria Johnson, the white lady who protested with Jones and Pearson but was spared expulsion by the skin of her teeth. Personally, we think they should be grateful. Expelling Johnson would have made the Republicans look like huge misogynists to go along with the racism. This way they had plausible deniability on that one. Fellas, maybe you should consider giving that one dude a hearty backslap and several shots of Tennessee whiskey instead of the full force of your whiny opprobrium.

All of this leads up to a chud of a legislator named Scott Cepicky giving the twenty-first century version of Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death” speech:

“I think the problem I’m having is if we don’t stick together, if you don’t believe we’re at war for our Republic, with all love and respect to you, you need a different job. The left wants Tennessee so bad, because if they get us, the Southeast falls and it’s game over for the Republic.”

Sir, if we may interrupt here and make one suggestion: decaf. Now please continue:

“This is not a neighborhood social gathering. We are fighting for the Republic of our country right now. And the world is staring at us – are we gonna stand our ground? I’ve gotten multiple phone calls from other reps going, we sure hope you guys stand up. Because maybe it will give us the courage to stand up and push back against what’s going to destroy our Republic…I’m gonna have to swallow this seeing Mr. Jones back up here walking these hallowed halls that the greats of Tennessee stood in and watch them disrespect this state…”

Cepciky then put on a powdered wig, leg breeches, and a tricorn hat before running off to sing “Rocky Top” in front of the nearest VFW.

[Popular Info / Twitter]

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Oh Sure Kamala And Old Joe LOOOOVE Insurrection When It’s … Nah We Can’t Keep This Up

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We’re pretty sure the Republican supermajority in the Tennessee House of Representatives had no idea that Thursday’s semi-successful effort to expel three Democratic lawmakers would get anything like the national attention it did. When they hold power, the comfortably bigoted have a hard time imagining anyone could possibly disagree with them, or pay attention to a little old score-settling against some pipsqueak liberals. The hasty, slapdash proceedings, with only a homeopathic trace of due process, made pretty clear the Republicans planned to quickly give the three a fast show trial and be done with them.

Instead, they ended up with a national media spectacle, and came out looking like arrogant, out of touch racists, expelling Reps. Justin Pearson and Justin Jones — two young, charismatic Black members — while falling one vote shy of expelling Rep. Gloria Johnson, the white, 60-year-old retired teacher whom they seemed to feel more kinship with. As we’ll note again and again, Johnson knew exactly what was up, telling reporters, “It might have to do with the color of our skin.”

Following the Republican lynching of democracy, Vice President Kamala Harris flew to Nashville Friday to call for gun control and to meet with all three Democrats — the ones targeted for expulsion, not all three Democrats in Tennessee. Heck, the Tennessee House has an entire Democratic caucus, and Harris met with them Friday, too.

Harris tweeted Thursday to call out the Republicans’ swift action on precisely the wrong thing:

Six people, including three children, were killed last week in a school shooting in Nashville.

How did Republican lawmakers in Tennessee respond?

By expelling their colleagues who stood with Tennesseans and said enough is enough.

This is undemocratic and dangerous.

Here’s her speech at Fisk University:

youtu.be

President Biden also issued a statement Thursday condemning the expulsions, noting that more than 7,000 students had gone to the Tennessee Capitol on March 30 to peacefully “call on their lawmakers to take action and keep them safe.”

Instead, state Republican lawmakers called votes today to expel three Democratic legislators who stood in solidarity with students and families and helped lift their voices. Today’s expulsion of lawmakers who engaged in peaceful protest is shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent. 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.

On Friday, before Harris met with Jones, Pearson, and Johnson, Biden also spoke with them on a conference call, and invited them to come to the White House sometime soon. As far as we know, none of the Republicans who engineered the expulsion effort have been invited anywhere nice. That statement will hold even if Donald Trump invites them to one of his trash palaces.

We also found this slightly encouraging news McNugget: Only one Republican in the Tennessee House, Rep. Charlie Baum, voted “Nay” on all three expulsions. Baum has a 92 percent rating from the NRA (and a 100 percent score from National Right to Life), but we want to to encourage Republicans when they do the right thing — positive reinforcement can lead to improvements. So an imaginary chocolate chip cookie to Rep. Baum, in hopes that he’ll stop selling death sticks and go home to rethink his life.

In Washington DC, the Congressional Black Caucus issued a statement condemning the expulsions, saying that the treatment of Reps. Pearson and Jones

makes clear that racism is alive and well in Tennessee. The GOP-led House chose to silence dissent from not only the Black representatives in the chamber, but the voices of their constituents as well. This move is not only racist and anti-democratic, it is morally bankrupt and out of step with the overwhelming majority of Americans who believe that we need common sense gun control reforms to save lives.

Not everyone found fault with the Tennessee Republicans, starting with the Tennessee Republican Party, which sent out a fundraising email praising the brave House Republicans who “upheld the rule of law” — or at least the iron rule of rules — by voting to “remove 2 Democrat State Representative that [it should be “who” — Dok] disrupted and protested the legislative process on March 30th,” which doesn’t make any sense at all since they were definitely not protesting the legislative process, they were protesting the GOP’s chronic firearms priapism disorder.

Fox News, not surprisingly, ran a ton of stories on its website, including one ripping Johnson for saying that “North Korea has more democracy” than Tennessee (the subhed said she “faced expulsion after storming the state Capitol with gun control protesters,” which would have been quite a feat since she was already inside the building, and the protesters had all gone through security like any visitor. The story repeated the claim that all three Democrats were charged with “rushing the state Capitol,” too. Another story Thursday claimed that “Chaos erupts again” at the Capitol because crowds came to protest the vote — or rather, “stormed the Capitol” and “chanted” like some kind of insurrectionists.

On Fox News proper, the Fox & Friends crowd Friday morning explained that the expulsions were justified, because rules are rules and they have to be followed unless you think Donald Trump’s election was stolen. Host Ainsley Earhardt said the expulsions sent an important message “not to storm our government buildings. Right?”

Wrong, as we keep noting, because nobody stormed anything, no matter how much the Right insists this was just like January 6. Earhart also straight up lied that the three Democrats “were leading those protesters onto the balcony in the House chamber last week,” a difficult trick to accomplish from the floor of the House, with people who went through security (but also shouted once inside!) And also, what is “gallery”?

Cohost Will Cain kept the bullshit comparison going, calling Joe Biden a hypocrite while he was at it.

So during January 6th, people condemnably rioted and stormed the Capitol and it is described as undemocratic. In Tennessee, people stormed the Capitol, interrupted the democratic process, and used bullhorns. And if you punish them, that’s undemocratic. So it’s undemocratic as long as it is in disfavor with Joe Biden.

Brian Kilmeade chimed in with a witty observation that would be funny to viewers who know nothing about what Fox staff were actually saying about January 6:

Here’s the big difference. It’s okay to storm the Capitol if you are against assault, against gun control laws, or if you’re for gun control, it is. Okay. Here’s the difference. It’s a statehouse as opposed to the Capitol. I get it. Number two is lawmakers were leaning toward this. They were just like, “Hey, guys, I agree with you, but get out.”

OK, scratch what I said before. That made no sense at all, the end.

[White House / USA Today / The Hill / Mediaite]

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Forgive Them Lord They … Oh Wait. They Do. Tennessee House Lets Its Racist Freak Flag Fly.

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The Republican supermajority that controls the Tennessee House of Representatives got most of what it wanted yesterday: It expelled two of the three Democrats it charged with the unspeakable crime of speaking out of order during a March 30 session, where the three had approached the “well” of the House to show support for hundreds of Nashville teens in the gallery (and thousands more outside) protesting for gun control. But they went to the podium without being recognized, breaking a very important rule and thereby dishonoring and disrupting the House.

Speaker Cameron Sexton (R) stripped the three of their committee assignments, but that wasn’t enough, so the Democrats — state Reps. Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones, and Justin Pearson — had resolutions of expulsion filed against them, which led to yesterday’s bumblefuck in the Tennessee House. We liveblogged the entire six and a half hours of it, and short of the Benghazi committee’s 11-hour interrogation of Hillary Clinton, we don’t think we’ve ever watched a more disgusting display of rightwing bile and bigotry.

Read More!

TN House GOP To Expel Democrat Terrorists Who Called For Saving Kids’ Lives Without Permission

Let’s Watch Tennessee House Beclown Itself By Expelling Three Democrats For ‘Insurrection’

It ended with the good old boys expelling the two young Black first-term representatives, Jones and Pearson, and a small surprise for Johnson: The final vote on her expulsion fell one vote short. Johnson, 60, is white, and has served since 2018, as well as an earlier single term from 2012 to 2014. A Republican might argue that she’s still in the House because she didn’t participate as actively in the “disgraceful” behavior, but as Johnson told reporters right after she left the chamber, “It might have to do with the color of our skin.” She got booed by a few people who heard that.

Calling A Lynching A Lynching

Once Rep. Jones, up first in Expulsionpalooza, was eventually allowed to speak, he began by noting that the outcome of the hearings had been decided in advance, and that several high ranking Republicans had said as much in the media. He said that this was going to be a lynching, not of him but of democracy in Tennessee. And wow was he right. He pointed out that, in the weekend between the protest last Thursday and Monday’s resolutions of expulsion, Speaker Sexton and other Republicans had been all over local media, claiming that the brief protest was an “insurrection”; he was especially annoyed that several suggested that the student protesters had been violent, or that they had stormed the Capitol, when they had all been admitted through the regular security process.

One Republican, Rep. Gino Bulso, was one of the Top Assholes of the day; he called the brief protest a “mutiny” and exclaimed that it was especially galling that Jones wouldn’t even admit that he had done wrong. He lectured Jones long and loud, after which Jones said he hadn’t actually heard Bulso ask a question, but that he did hear Bulso say, in effect, “what we have here is an uppity Negro.

Jones offered to apologize for breaking a House rule just as soon as Republicans apologize to the families of mass shooting victims, for passing laws that have flooded Tennessee with weapons of war. “I broke a rule,” he said, “but I did not break my oath.”

Democrats rose again and again to point out how ridiculous it was to expel members for simple rules violations; several noted times that fistfights had narrowly been averted (but threats of violence had not). Several, including Jones, recalled the case of former Rep. David Byrd (R), who was accused by three women of having sexually assaulted them in the 1980s, when they were minors and he was their high school basketball coach. Byrd was even secretly recorded apologizing to one victim, but his fellow Republicans voted against expulsion.

Republicans quickly voted to end debate, and then voted to expel Jones in less time than it took me to type this sentence. That said, I’m a terrible typist. A good typist might have banged out two sentences in the time it took to expel Jones.

Day of Betrayal

The expulsion hearing for Gloria Johnson began with her two attorneys presenting her defense; the first pointed out that it’s Holy Week, and that it was Maundy Thursday, the “Day of Betrayal” when Judas turned Jesus over to the Romans. He noted that the expulsion resolution for Rep. Johnson was flat out false, accusing her of shouting, pounding on the podium, and other actions that her two young colleagues had taken while she had simply accompanied them to the well. Any court in the state would throw those accusations out after a simple motion.

That said, he continued, protesting is the most patriotic thing a citizen can do. “America was born in protest,” he said, “and I am grateful it was!”

Bulso was Johnson’s designated questioner, and he badgered her over and over about particular moments in the protest, as if he were reconstructing a murder scene. Had she known the rules prohibit speaking at the well without permission? Didn’t she expect to face discipline? Eventually, she simply asked Bulso, “What is my crime, sir?” and, after one leading question, “I don’t think I’m going to agree with you at all.” When Bulso said that if she weren’t expelled, she would surely kill speak out of turn again, she replied, “You’re reading minds again, and I don’t like having my mind read.”

Johnson wisely spent much of her time replying perfunctorily to questions, then coming back to why the protest happened in the first place, and why she was proud to have stood with her colleagues: Democrats have been systematically silenced and ignored, and children’s lives are at stake. When her turn to present closing remarks came, she began by naming the children and adults killed at the Nashville school, as well as one of her own special ed students who died in a shooting in 2008. She closed by saying, “We want action. Our hearts demanded that we come up here to call for action.”

Then somehow, the vote came up one short of expelling her. It must help to be white and 60, and a lady at that, someone the old white Republicans can recognize as almost a colleague, even if she’s a crazy liberal. Not that the Rs would ever admit that. They were simply recognizing that, of the three Dems, she hadn’t chanted or megaphoned, that’s all. She was “the good one.”

Yeah, that must be it.

Be Careful Who You Persecute

The real star of the hearings was Rep. Justin Pearson, who was also the target of the most flagrantly racist, condescending questioning from Republicans. He had actually only been sworn in as a member of the House two weeks ago, shortly before the mass shooting that led to the protest that led to his expulsion. But my sweet Crom, he isn’t going to disappear. He began his testimony by singing, a capella, “Power to the People,” and ended his grilling an hour and a half later by preaching an Easter sermon.

He pointed out that, since rules are rules and must be obeyed, the actual House rules make clear that the proper penalty for what he, Jones, and Johnson did would be censure, not expulsion. He also reminded the House what led him and his colleagues to be in the well in the first place: “The move for justice can never die because the heart for justice can never be killed.”

Asked if he knew why he was standing before the House, Pearson said yes indeed he did: Because he’d spoken up for beautiful people murdered with an assault weapon.

Told that no, he’s there because he broke the rules of decorum, Pearson pushed back. No, he’s there to represent his constituents, to speak up for children who won’t grow up to speak. It was beautiful.

Pearson was mostly questioned by a real creep, Republican Rep. Andrew Farmer, who we kept expecting to slip up and call Pearson “Boy.” Get a load of this asshole, and enjoy Pearson’s brilliant reply:

He began with the quiet, “How many of you would want to be spoken to that way?” and built to an amazing crescendo. Like any good debater, Pearson took Farmer’s patronizing accusation that the protest was nothing more than an attention-seeking “temper tantrum” and turned it around on him. “Is elevating our voices for justice and change a temper tantrum?” He went on to invoke the children who will never have a temper tantrum again, and closed by pointing out that this country was founded by people who were dismissed as merely having a tantrum.

And he did it all extemporaneously, the way a lot of us might only fantasize we would reply to a bully — an hour afterwards.

Let’s wrap up this too-long review by watching and appreciating Pearson’s final statement, where he’s joined by members of the Black Caucus for an address that blends the Holy Week message of redemption with the ugly behavior of the Tennessee House, which is crucifying democracy. We imagine his references to Black Jesus must have particularly irked some Republican snowflakes. As a rhetoric guy, I just love Pearson’s linking Tennessee to the long dreadful Saturday before Easter: That’s where Tennessee is now, hopes crushed, the future unknowable, with only faith — and the strength of Black women — to hold onto while waiting for the Resurrection.

Rep. Pearson’s oratory wasn’t enough to move the Republicans who voted immediately to expel him. But then, they know not what they do, they never do. They created a political star who’s going to turn his two weeks (so far) in the Tennessee House into a nationally noticed career.

www.youtube.com

Now, I am not a believer, but I know when someone knows how to preach, and I will gladly join Rep. Pearson’s choir any day.

Also, we may well see both Jones and Pearson again much sooner than the next election day, since their county boards have the power to appoint their replacements. The Metropolitan Council of Davidson County seems likely to reappoint Jones, and Memphis’s Shelby County Board of Commissioners plans a meeting soon to choose a replacement; Pearson says he hopes to be reappointed, saying of the commissioners that “A lot of them, I know, are upset about the anti-democratic behavior of this white supremacist-led state legislature.” Reappointed or not, there will also be a special primary election for the seats within 55 to 60 days, followed by a special general election within 100 to 107 days.

We bet there’ll be some amazing campaign ads, as if they’re needed.

[CNN]

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Insurrection underway as anti-gun rioters storm Tennessee Capitol, but MSM don’t seem too concerned

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Stop the presses! No, really. Stop them. Because we have a feeling that our mainstream media won’t be rushing to use them to share information about what’s happening in the Tennessee State Capitol right now:

Ah.

This all looks quite violent.

Well, let’s see …

Give us a minute. We’re sure it’ll come to us … ah, right.

There it is:

It certainly seems very insurrection-y.

Capitol building being stormed by angry mob? Check.

No regard for the wellbeing of legislators? Check.

And yet, this “insurrection” won’t receive even a fraction of the coverage that the last one got. It won’t receive even a fraction of the condemnation, either.

OK, well, to be fair, that’s not entirely true … check out what this Nashville “news” reporter had to say about it:

Emotions were high, you guys. That’s all. It’s just people peacefully protesting:

Hmmm. Maybe “peaceful protest” is still too harsh a framing. How about this?

It’s just a gathering among friends.

We certainly do.

The media want you to know that, too.

Odd, but entirely expected. We know our media too well to not have expected them to pull this “mostly peaceful” crap.

Not according to the footage we’ve seen so far:

A riot is a riot is a riot.

Insane and disgusting that rioters — or “insurrectionists,” if you prefer that terminology — feel that they have a free pass to storm the Capitol. Because effectively, they do.

Where are the media? Where is the Resistance?

Here’s where they are:

Insurrections are goo(D), atually.

Don’t hold your breath for any of the usual suspects to utter even one word of condemnation, unless it’s in condemnation of Tennessee Republicans.

Editor’s note: This post has been updated with additional text and tweets.

***

Update:

Let’s check in on Nashville reporter Kelsey Gibbs again, shall we?

Oh.

But lest you think what she regrets about her tweets is that they were dishonest:

We have. And she can’t flush it down the memory hole.

***

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Tennessee Republicans Have Mass Shootings All Figured Out: More Guns, Everywhere, Always

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Following the latest mass shooting by a responsible gun owner — the killer had no criminal record and purchased at least two of the guns legally in Nashville — Tennessee Republicans are offering the expected prayers and thoughts, although none of the thoughts include reducing the nation’s ample supply of firearms.

As Yr Wonkette noted earlier, brand new member of Congress Rep. Andy Ogles, who only won his seat thanks to Republican gerrymandering, is getting dragged a-plenty for his Christmas card demonstrating his family’s devotion to the Prince of Pieces. We’ll just add that the caption on that December 2021 image was all about the divine power of guns, and we are not making this up: “The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference — they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.”

We aren’t sure it quite matches the meter of Mel Tormé’s “The Christmas Song,” but that’s certainly a Christmas wish! And it was so: The atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere is with America not only during the Sacred Baby Season but also all year long.

While Ogles hasn’t been in Congress long enough to vote on any gun bills, in his previous job as mayor of Maury County, Tennessee, he signed a March 2020 resolution declaring the county a “sanctuary community” for the Holy Second Amendment. That doesn’t mean a damn thing at all in practical terms, but it’s a symbolic statement that if Tennessee ever passes a “red flag” law (it hasn’t), maybe the county would just let people making violent threats keep their guns. Stalkers need to defend themselves, too! And now, if Joe Biden tries to take all the guns, the guns can take refuge in Maury County, where people will presumably hide them just like Anne Frank’s family.

Ogles yesterday tweeted a brief statement saying, “My family and I are devastated by the tragedy” at the private Christian school in his district, with the usual thoughts and prayers and an assurance that he was “heartbroken by this senseless act of violence.” The replies were mostly pictures of the Christmas card, with a variety of commentary: “This you?” “We see you,” and the evergreen standby, “Fuck you.”

As it happens, then-mayor Ogles signed his 2021 gun sanctuary resolution just a day after Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced his own plan to allow all Tennesseans to carry handguns — openly or concealed — without a permit, meaning they’d no longer need to take a tyrannical safety class or pass any tyrannical criminal background check (other than the tyrannical federal one required to buy a gun). That law passed easily, and Lee signed it into law later in 2021, and now Republicans in the Tennessee Legislature are considering broadening it to allow open carry of all “firearms,” including assault rifles, instead of just handguns. Very important for the atmosphere of firearms to include people walking around on the sidewalk with AR-15s at the ready.

Lee tweeted an inspiring suggestion that Tennesseans join him in prayer, for all that’s worth.

Lee has been very busy protecting Tennessee children this session — not so much from being shot at school but from seeing drag shows and also criminalizing gender affirming healthcare for trans kids so they can be forced to go through puberty as the gender they don’t identify with, which will make them stop being trans anymore (except for how that doesn’t work). Research keeps showing that when trans and nonbinary youth receive gender-affirming medical care, the appallingly high suicide rate among trans kids can be reduced by as much as 73 percent. But as long as they ignore all the warnings, forcing unwanted puberty on trans youth probably won’t have any risks that Republicans would worry about.

As ever: If you are having thoughts of suicide or self harm, call the national Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who’s benefited from more than $1.3 million in total spending by the National Rifle Association over her House and Senate career, did a routine “heartbroken” tweet, thanking first responders, but without “thoughts and prayers,” possibly for the sake of avoiding cliché.

Parkland school shooting survivor David Hogg offered a thoughtful revised version for Blackburn, a sort of “War Prayer” explication of the unspoken half part of her tweet:

Let me re write that for you.

Chuck & I are heartbroken to hear about the shooting at Covenant School in Nashville that was enabled by NRA puppets like me who are willing to let kids be fucking slaughtered so long as the NRA continues giving me millions.

Singer Roseanne Cash offered her own thoughts for Blackburn. Her tweet lacked any prayers:

Don’t even. You vote against every common sense gun control bill that comes across your desk, you’ve taken over $1 million from the NRA and you rank 14th in all Congress for NRA contributions. Spare us the hand-wringing @MarshaBlackburn

Possibly the most honest reaction to the shootings came from Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tennessee), who told reporters at the US Capitol what he and fellow Republicans would do to solve gun violence: Not a damn thing, because criminals will always find a way to get guns, like walking into a firearms dealer and buying one.

“It’s a horrible, horrible situation,” Burchett said. “And we’re not gonna fix it. Criminals are gonna be criminals and my daddy fought in the second world war, fought in the Pacific, fought the Japanese.” From that, the elder Burchett’s taught his son that “if somebody wants to take you out and doesn’t mind losing their life, there’s not a heck of a lot you can do about it.”

We aren’t sure whether Burchett is depressed or just lazy, since he didn’t even invoke the mythical “good guy with a gun.” He’s certainly not going to try to stop the massacres anyway, because government and laws are useless. Quite the argument to keep him in the lawmaking business, no?

No, there’s nothing Congress can do either, don’t be silly, because criminals are unstoppable lawbreakers: “I don’t see any real role that we could do other than mess things up.” He did point out that there’s one way to end mass shootings, though:

You gotta change people’s hearts. You know, as a Christian, as we talk about in the church, and I’ve said this many times, I think we really need a Revival in this nation.

That said, Rep. Burchett has an “A+” rating from a leading anti-abortion group, because you can definitely legislate away women’s reproductive freedom without waiting around for the filthy sinning strumpets to find Jesus and mend their ways.

Oh, and as for the safety of his own children, Burchett explained that’s not a problem, since his daughter is homeschooled and will never have to worry about her safety. Rest of you people are on your own, the end.

[Daily Herald / Tennessean / NBC News / Brennan Murphy on Twitter]

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Red States About Five Minutes Away From Legalized Lynching Of Trans People

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The rightwing war on transgender Americans keeps advancing through red state legislatures, and among the more notable developments is that, as many warned, the bigots who want trans people to disappear have moved, in many states, from banning gender affirming care for minors to attempting to ban or severely restrict healthcare for trans adults as well. It’s just getting uglier and uglier, as Republican legislators compete to see who can use the power of state government to most creatively make trans people’s lives worse.

The bigoted legislation is being spewed like a firehose of hate across the country, and it can be difficult to keep track of. Fortunately, the ACLU and the Equality Federation both have online bill trackers if you want to see what horrible ideas are being floated in your state.

But holy Crom Jebus Bodhisattva Hank Gritt Galactus, these bastards are busy working to genocide trans people by limiting their access to medical care, all the while lying about wanting to “protect” children.

Forget that lie: It’s about making trans people of all ages suffer for the sin of existing.

A quick review of the ongoing madness, in no particular order:

Mississippi

Gov. Tate Reeves signed a bill Wednesday outlawing gender-affirming treatment — puberty blockers, hormone therapy, or surgery — for anyone under 18. That makes Mississippi the seventh state to ban such care for minors, after Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, South Dakota, and Utah. The bans in Alabama and Arkansas have been blocked in federal court, and we assume the lawsuits against Mississippi’s ban — all the others — will soon be flying too. [ABC News]

It’s worth noting up front here that genital surgery for minors is extremely rare. Top surgery (mastectomy) for patients under 18 is only slightly more common; in one of its trans panic articles, the New York Times noted there are no official stats, but that 11 leading pediatric clinics in the US reported 203 procedures on minors in 2021; it’s also not something that anyone just rushes into. State laws vary, but nearly all minor patients get extensive counseling and need at least one parent’s permission. [NYT]

North Dakota

A raft of anti-trans bills is moving through the state Legislature, including a ban on gender-affirming treatment, with possible prison sentences and/or heavy fines for healthcare providers who provide such care. Another bill would prohibit changing birth certificates “due to a gender identity change,” unless it’s to correct a clerical error. People who have had genital surgery could change their birth certificates with proof from a medical professional, which is already the state’s standard.

Still another would “define ‘father,’ ‘female,’ ‘mother,’ ‘male’ and ‘sex,’ and would mandate school districts and vital statistics agencies identify people based solely on their sex assigned at birth,” with no exceptions. The state Senate passed a bill requiring parental permission for K-12 teachers to use trans kids’ preferred pronouns. And the state House also passed two separate bans on trans athletes in girls’ and women’s sports (one for public schools, one for colleges and universities), although there have been no complaints from athletes anywhere in the state. [Advocate]

Tennessee

Last week, the Legislature passed a ban on gender-affirming care for minors; the vote in the House was disgustingly lopsided, 77-16, with three Democrats even joining in on bashing trans kids. Gov. Bill Lee signed it yesterday, making Tennessee Number Eight in the nation, along with that stupid ban on drag shows (Wonk link), which purportedly harm The Children.

As always, the bill sponsors insist they want to “protect” kids from being who they are. 97.5 percent of adolescents who come out as trans continue to identify as trans or nonbinary after five years, but the bill’s sponsors pushed the lie that once kids get through puberty, they give up on that trans nonsense and settle down.

As with similar bills, Tennessee’s subjects healthcare providers to criminal penalties for treating trans youth, but the bill includes this bizarre exception: Doctors would be allowed to continue treating patients who began treatment before the bill’s effective date of July 1 this year, but would have to end all treatment by March 31, 2024. Hooray, you have a year to leave the state before your transition is cut off, kids. Shortly after Gov. Lee signed it, the ACLU announced it will sue to block the law from going into effect. [CBS News / AP / Pink News]

Tennessee has even worse legislation on the way, too. HB1215, currently making its way through the state House, would prohibit private managed care companies from contracting with the state’s Medicaid alternative, TennCare, if they provide any gender-affirming health services at all, even for adults. To be clear, this isn’t just a ban on gender affirming care for Medicaid patients in Tennessee: It would ban insurers from contracting with TennCare if they offer such care anywhere in the US.

Even though the federal government covers the majority of Medicaid, state Rep. Tim Rudd (R) explained that the bill was absolutely necessary to make sure Tennessee taxpayers’ dollars don’t fund transgender care in other states. Presumably Rs will now ban the sales of car brands in the state if the manufacturers allow vehicles to be sold to trans people anywhere. [Tennessee HB1215 / AP]

Oklahoma

On Tuesday, the Oklahoma House passed its version of a ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth and sent it to the state Senate. The bill includes a special extra Secret Sauce ban on insurance coverage for gender-affirming care — not only for minors, but for adults, too.

The bill’s author, Rep. Kevin West (R), was very proud of his work, claiming that the bill would “protect children and parents from being pressured into agreeing to harmful experimental transition procedures…” although gender affirming care is not “experimental” — at the risk of a tautology, it’s often covered by insurance, and insurance companies don’t cover experimental treatments. And that line about saving kids and parents from being “pressured” — a word that isn’t in the bill text — is a marvelously dishonest construction. Heavens, no one would ever want gender-affirming care; it’s simply that every trans person everywhere was brainwashed.

The Washington Post notes that another bill, SB 129, would go even farther, banning gender-affirming treatment up to the age of 26. The bill was originally titled the “Millstone Act,” a reference to the Biblical injunction that anyone who harms a child should “have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” The title was stripped out Wednesday, apparently in recognition that Oklahoma is landlocked and the penalty would be impractical. [Oklahoman / WaPo]

Kentucky

In an attempt to outdo all the other anti-trans legislation in the country, Kentucky Republicans in late February introduced HB 470, which independent journalist Erin Reed says “takes nearly every anti-trans youth bill from nearly every state in 2023 and combines them all into one single cruel piece of legislation. It then adds wrinkles not seen in any other state.”

It has all the expected bans on lifesaving gender-affirming medical care for anyone under the age of 18, but would go even farther: It would ban Medicaid coverage, end all public funding for trans youth care, and even investigate doctors and revoke their licenses if they provide gender-affirming care to youth. But there’s even more, as Reed details:

one section would require schools to disclose transgender students’ information to their parents, and another section would ban gender marker changes for transgender youths. A unique provision in this bill would also prohibit legal name changes for youth, but only if the name change is for “gender transition purposes.”

An amended version of the bill passed out of committee and went to the full House for debate (and — spoiler — passage) yesterday. Protesters chanted “Shame! Shame!” as the committee members headed to the House chamber.

The amended version of the bill stripped out a provision that would have been a whole new front in the war on care for trans youth, by banning counseling aimed at helping kids with social transition. Apparently the Rs decided it would be too difficult to enforce, or to defend in court — who knows, really?

The now-deleted provision would have effectively forced all mental health providers to enforce cisgender identity on trans youth, by banning “social transition services,” which the bill had defined as

any encouragement, advocacy, or affirmation including pronouns, affirming a name change, and affirming “sex specific behaviors that vary from those typically associated with a person’s sex.” It then states that mental health counselors are banned from any of this and by doing so, they could lose their licenses.

Eliminating that provision doesn’t make the bill any better; it still includes all the other cruelty, including the non-counseling portions of the ban on social transition, like changing the gender marker on official documents and the prohibition on changing a minor’s name for “gender transition purposes.” Kentucky may have stripped it from the bill for now, but look for future bills that will take the plunge and ban social transition counseling. There’s no reason to think there’s any bottom to the war on trans people.

HB 470 was passed and sent on to the state Senate yesterday. [Kentucky HB 470 / Erin in the Morning]

[Image: Ted Eytan, Creative CommonsLicense 2.0]

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