Tennessee’s House Divided
Slate Daily Feed
Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 11 April 2023
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Tennessee House, which has a Republican supermajority, voted last week on motions to expel three Democratic members for “disorderly behavior” after they led protest chants from the floor of the chamber.
Two Black lawmakers, Rep. Justin Jones and Rep. Justin Pearson—both in their late 20s and new to the House this session—were ousted. The motion to boot the other Rep. Gloria Johnson, who’s white, failed by one vote.
Guest: Melissa Brown, state politics reporter for The Tennessean.
If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Amicus—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work.
Make an impact this Earth Month by helping Macy’s on their mission to bring more parks to more people across the country. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | If you live in Tennessee, the last month has been a bit of a blur. |
| 0:11.1 | Over the last 10 days, thousands have descended upon the legislature, both the protest, gun |
| 0:15.8 | control, and the expulsion of beleaguered former representatives just in Jones and just |
| 0:20.1 | in Pearson. |
| 0:21.1 | It started with the Covenant school shooting in Nashville on March 27th. |
| 0:26.6 | Most people were killed and immediately people began congregating at the Tennessee |
| 0:31.9 | State Capitol, demanding change. |
| 0:35.0 | So I was at the State Capitol just five or six hours after the shooting was first reported. |
| 0:41.8 | We were just getting details about the victims, including three children. |
| 0:46.9 | Emotions were very high and I think it seemed like this situation might be a little bit different. |
| 0:52.6 | And of course, you really couldn't know how things would develop and sort of evolve over |
| 0:58.0 | the next few days. |
| 1:01.0 | Melissa Brown covers state politics for the Tennessee and that means she had front row seats for |
| 1:07.2 | what happened next. |
| 1:09.0 | House Democrats were very angry that evening, tensions and emotions were very high. |
| 1:14.8 | And representative Justin Pearson, who is now former representative, his mic was actually |
| 1:18.9 | silenced at one point when he was criticizing a resolution to honor the Second Amendment |
| 1:25.3 | from several weeks back. |
| 1:26.9 | And he was screaming as colleagues to, quote, do something, do something. |
| 1:32.5 | Melissa says former representative because Justin Pearson, he got expelled from the Tennessee |
| 1:38.4 | legislature, so did fellow Democrat Justin Jones. |
| 1:42.9 | Their colleague, Gloria Johnson, held on to her seat by just one vote. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Slate and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.