From WNYC Studios, I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Friday, April 7th.

Brian Lairer on WNYC, we want to open the phones now for anyone who wants to react to last night's expulsion of two young black Tennessee state House of Representatives members,

representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson. They had helped lead a protest in the chamber over the lack of gun control laws in the state after the school shooting in Nashville that left six people dead. They did not incite violence

by anybody's account. They did not post photos of themselves holding baseball bats to their

opponent's heads, just to take a random example of another instance, or say their protest would be

wild. There was no violence.

Here's a little bit of how it sounded on the Tennessee House floor as one of the expulsions was announced.

Pursuant to Article 2, Section 12 of the Constitution of State of Tennessee, I'm hereby

declare Representative Justin J. Pearson of the 86 Representative Dissick is spelled from

the House of the Representatives of the 103rd General Assembly of the 86 representative of this. It's spelled from the House of the Representatives

of the 103rd General Assembly of the state of Tennessee. And you can hear the many protesters

objecting in the background. As your calls are coming in, we also do have a guest with us for this.

It's Blaise Ganey, political reporter for Nashville's public radio station, WPLN.

Blaise, thanks for joining us on short notice and while your state is in the middle of all this.

Welcome to WNYC. Hello from New York.

Hello, how are you?

Good thanks. Can you describe, first of all, for listeners outside of Tennessee who may have

only heard about this whole issue for the first

time last night or this morning, the protests that the three representatives participated in?

Yeah, so they went to the podium called the well to speak during the time when they weren't supposed to, to bring attention to

the thousands of protesters that were surrounding the Capitol and inside of the Capitol calling

for the legislators to act on some sort of gun reform after this school shooting, the school shooting at covenant that left six dead,

...