A Tennessee Democratic lawmaker facing expulsion for storming the state Capitol with gun control protesters fired back at her Republican colleagues by saying, “North Korea has more democracy” than the Volunteer State while adding that their potential ousting is a step toward fascism.
“I feel like North Korea has more democracy than we do in the state of Tennessee, and it’s terrifying to me that we’re in this march to fascism,” state Rep. Gloria Johnson told left-wing outlet Mother Jones in an interview.
Johnson and two other Tennessee Democratic lawmakers – state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson – face expulsion after rushing the state Capitol with gun protesters following Nashville’s Covington School shooting that left three adults and three children dead.
Tennessee House Republicans voted Monday to strip committee assignments from the three representatives.
Cameron Sexton, the Republican Speaker of the House, on Monday said the lawmakers’ participation in the protest was “unacceptable.”
“Their actions are and will always be unacceptable, and they break several rules of decorum and procedure on the House floor,” he wrote on Twitter.
“Their actions and beliefs that they could be arrested on the House floor were an effort, unfortunately, to make themselves the victims. In effect, those actions took away the voices of the protestors, the focus on the six victims who lost their lives, and the families who lost their loved ones.”
Jones said in a press conference Monday that Sexton is prioritizing politics over addressing the school shooting.
“We are members, who are standing in the well, telling our speakers and our colleagues that kids should not be murdered in school,” Jones said. “And rather than address that issue, the speaker has spent more time on Twitter this weekend talking about a fake insurrection than he did about the deaths of six people including 9-year-old children.”