From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tevernice and this is The Daily.

In a stunning act of political retribution, Tennessee's Republican-controlled House,

last week, expelled two of its members, both young black Democrats.

Today, my colleague Emily Cochran, on the story behind that extraordinary move,

and what it tells us about this moment in American politics.

It's Monday, April 10th.

So, Emily, you're in Tennessee where we saw this really remarkable vote in the state house

on Thursday. Tell us what happened.

So, the Tennessee House of Representatives voted to expel two lawmakers from the chamber.

These two men, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson are two relatively new young black legislators

who represent parts of the state's biggest cities, Nashville and Memphis.

This type of thing is incredibly rare. Since the Civil War era,

it's only happened two times in Tennessee. And typically, those expulsions have involved

some sort of an investigation, a lawmaker who faced criminal charges or accusations of sexual

misconduct. It's not something done lightly. But that wasn't what was going on here.

There was no criminal misconduct.

So, what was going on in this case, Emily? Like, why exactly were these two lawmakers expelled?

So, it came after they led a protest on the House floor. I think this has a lot to do with an

intensifying political divide between blue cities and red states like Tennessee. Over time,

the states, larger cities, Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, they have remained defiantly blue,

even as the rest of the state has gotten increasingly conservative and taken increasingly

hard-line positions. And that tension is what we saw essentially blow up this week in Tennessee.

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