The white, female Democratic legislator was not expelled but the two black male Democratic legislators were. The white legislator barely escaped expulsion.

Legislators should not be expelled as a result of nonviolent civil disobedience. It is true that there are rules for expulsion and those rules were followed but when things like this are used in an unprecedented way and the normal way legislative bodies function gets upended suddenly it’s a bad sign. Democrats have not kept up with the new political reality.

> According to The Tennessean, House members had previously voted to expel a member in 1980 — but they hadn’t done so since the Civil War. The Tennessee Senate voted last year to expel a sitting member for the first time — Katrina Robinson — after she was convicted of federal wire fraud charges.

> But unlike in those instances, Johnson, Jones and Pearson faced no criminal or civil charges or any investigations.

I'm originally from Tennessee. Chapel Hill actually. Boyhood home of Nathan Bedford Forrest. There's a monument to the guy and our streets were literally named after him. I've seen firsthand the systemic racism that permeates the miseducated people of that State. That said, this doesn't surprise me.

I'm just glad I move to Austin and away from that crap.