US VP Harris to meet lawmakers in Tennessee after House expulsion of two Democrats

US Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Tennessee on Friday to meet lawmakers the day after the state’s House of Representatives expelled two Democrats for breaking decorum during a gun control demonstration, the White House announced.

The Republican supermajority voted on Thursday to remove Representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, two young Black legislators. The move to oust a third Democratic member who stood with them during the protest on the House floor, Gloria Johnson, a white woman, came up one vote short.

The partisan battle in Nashville came just days after three 9-year-old children and three adults were killed in a shooting at a school in the city.

President Joe Biden on Thursday decried the proceedings, saying on Twitter that they were “shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent.”

Republicans who punished the two lawmakers could have pursued lesser forms of discipline, such as censure instead of expulsion.