Why expelling me from the legislature backfired on Tennessee Republicans

[Daily Kos Morning Roundup]( A morning roundup of worthy pundit and news reads, brought to you by Daily Kos. [Click here to read the full web version.]( - [Why expelling me from the legislature backfired on Tennessee Republicans]( Why expelling me from the legislature backfired on Tennessee Republicans, Justin J. Pearson, CNN This should be a chastening moment for revanchist forces in Tennessee’s legislature and across the country. Over the long haul, the undemocratic machinations employed to oust us from office are destined to fail. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once famously said that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice. Events this week demonstrated, more than ever, that this is indeed the case. The stated reason for my expulsion was that I, Rep. Jones and another Democratic colleague, Gloria Johnson, “breached decorum” by peacefully walking side by side to the well of the House Chamber to acknowledge rampant gun violence that has victimized and traumatized grieving children and families across our state and around the nation. If decorum was breached, it was by the heavy-handed Republican supermajority in the Tennessee House, which denied us the chance to speak during regular order, cut off our microphones, later disabled our voting machines and revoked our access to the building. [...] The spectacle was a gross miscalculation by Republicans in the chamber. It turns out that most Americans care deeply about democracy. Most people care about equality and progress. And over two-thirds of Americans — including four out of 10 Republicans — support the kind of common sense gun safety laws that Rep. Jones, Rep. Johnson and I were protesting in favor of, in the wake of the senseless March 27 Covenant School massacre. - [Appeals court partially blocks ruling that imperils access to key abortion pill]( Appeals court partially blocks ruling that imperils access to key abortion pill , Lawrence Hurley and Laura Jarrett, NBC News The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted the Justice Department's emergency request to put on hold the part of the decision issued by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk that suspended the Food and Drug Administration's original approval of mifepristone, which dates to 2000. But the three-judge panel said a separate part of Kacsmaryk's decision, which suspends changes the FDA made to the drug's approved use in 2016, could go into effect. The panel also determined that the agency's finding in 2021 that mifepristone can be distributed by mail would be paused, as well, as Kacsmaryk ordered. The court's decision imperils widespread availability of the drug, as it would require patients to make in-person visits to obtain it. The 2016 changes, among other things, reduced the number of in-person visits that patients are required to make from three to one and allowed the pills to be prescribed to women at up to 10 weeks' gestation instead of up to seven weeks. The appeals court said it would expedite its full consideration of the case. - [Bad news: Daily Kos is facing tough financial times. Grassroots donors like you help us make ends meet. Can you chip in $5 to help us keep fighting?]( - [What Are Biden’s 2024 Chances? I Asked These Democratic Campaign Veterans.]( What Are Biden’s 2024 Chances? I Asked These Democratic Campaign Veterans., Charles Blow, The New York Times In the most recent midterm elections, even in places where Democrats fielded strong Black candidates against flawed Republican opponents, Carville considered Black turnout underwhelming. But he isn’t sure what’s causing this problem, or how to fix it. I talked to Terrance Woodbury, a founding partner at the consultancy HIT Strategies, which researches Black voter sentiment. A January survey found that three-quarters of Black voters don’t believe their lives have improved since Biden became president, despite his administration’s “initiating or completing” a majority of the Black agenda, Woodbury said. Woodbury underscored what can only be described as a glaring communications failure, particularly when it comes to young people. As he said, “It’s not that we haven’t made progress,” it’s that younger Black voters “don’t know about the progress.” Now, people can chafe at Woodbury’s characterization and criticize voters for not staying abreast of political news‌, but it’s not a winning strategy to place blam‌e on the voters you’re trying to court‌. - [Leaker of U.S. secret documents worked on military base, friend says]( Leaker of U.S. secret documents worked on military base, friend says, Shane Harris and Samuel Oakford, The Washington Post United by their mutual love of guns, military gear and God, the group of roughly two dozen — mostly men and boys — formed an invitation-only clubhouse in 2020 on Discord, an online platform popular with gamers. But they paid little attention last year when the man some call “OG” posted a message laden with strange acronyms and jargon. The words were unfamiliar, and few people read the long note, one of the members explained. But he revered OG, the elder leader of their tiny tribe, who claimed to know secrets that the government withheld from ordinary people. The young member read OG’s message closely, and the hundreds more that he said followed on a regular basis for months. They were, he recalled, what appeared to be near-verbatim transcripts of classified intelligence documents that OG indicated he had brought home from his job on a “military base,” which the member declined to identify. OG claimed he spent at least some of his day inside a secure facility that prohibited cellphones and other electronic devices, which could be used to document the secret information housed on government computer networks or spooling out from printers. He annotated some of the hand-typed documents, the member said, translating arcane intel-speak for the uninitiated, such as explaining that “NOFORN” meant the information in the document was so sensitive it must not be shared with foreign nationals. OG told the group he toiled for hours writing up the classified documents to share with his companions in the Discord server he controlled. The gathering spot had been a pandemic refuge, particularly for teen gamers locked in their houses and cut off from their real-world friends. The members swapped memes, offensive jokes and idle chitchat. They watched movies together, joked around and prayed. But OG also lectured them about world affairs and secretive government operations. He wanted to “keep us in the loop,” the member said, and seemed to think that his insider knowledge would offer the others protection from the troubled world around them. “He’s a smart person. He knew what he was doing when he posted these documents, of course. These weren’t accidental leaks of any kind,” the member said. - [Daily Kos t-shirts are going fast. Get one now and show your support for progressive, independent media!]( - [You cannot love America and avoid the topic of race]( You cannot love America and avoid the topic of race, Theodore R. Johnson, The Washington Post Race isn’t the problem with the American experiment so much as it is the best indicator of the experiment’s structural problems. Consider slavery: It’s not the nation’s original sin because a significant number of White Americans enslaved Black people; it looms so large for America because the nation was supposedly founded on the idea of human equality yet allowed this grossest of inequalities to persist and expand. The criminal justice system doesn’t need reform because it disproportionately confronts and punishes Black, Native and Hispanic Americans, but because abuse of power by the state should not be tolerated in a nation founded on the idea of government by and for the people — all people. The racial inequalities we see in health care and education outcomes — even when controlled for class — do not exist because of Black Americans’ race or some imagined cultural carelessness, but because those systems are from a different era and poorly designed to account for Black people’s distinctive American journey. As structured, they hinder the ability to pursue happiness, stability and security unless they are tailored to the communities they serve. The democratic backsliding the nation is experiencing today is an indicator of the way race factored into the cultural, political and legislative conflicts of the past three decades. - [New US Car and Truck Emissions Standards Will Make or Break Biden’s Climate Legacy]( New US Car and Truck Emissions Standards Will Make or Break Biden’s Climate Legacy, Marianne Lavelle, Inside Climate News The new U.S. vehicle emissions standards proposed Wednesday by the Environmental Protection Agency could become the most consequential part of President Joe Biden’s climate legacy—avoiding nearly 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide pollution through 2055. [...] But to fulfill the promise of the strongest-ever pollution standards proposed for cars and trucks, the Biden administration is relying on both automakers and consumers to embrace the electric vehicle revolution. Within a decade, two-thirds of passenger cars, half of freight delivery vehicles and a quarter of heavy trucks purchased would be electric under the plan. In 2022, EVs accounted for just 7 percent of vehicle sales. Administration officials believe that the goal is reachable thanks in part due to historic multi-billion dollar investments that both the federal government and the auto industry are making in the wake of the clean energy spending bills by Congress, including last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. ICYMI: Popular stories from the past week you won't want to miss: - [Trump hire causes civil war between MTG and another white nationalist]( - [Tennessee House speaker who pushed to expel Democrats needs to answer questions about where he lives]( - [If the leaked documents are real, then they're a good sign for Ukraine]( Want even more Daily Kos? 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