Vice President Kamala Harris is making a last-minute trip to Tennessee on Friday, hours after the Republican-controlled state House of Representatives expelled two black Democratic lawmakers in retaliation for participating in a protest demanding greater control of the weapons after a shooting at a Nashville school.
Another, white Democrat, who also participated in the protest, was saved by an ouster vote.
Harris will meet with lawmakers as well as young people advocating for stricter gun control laws, her spokeswoman, Kirsten Allen, said on Twitter.
He will also meet with ousted state representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, and with Rep. Gloria Johnson, who survived the vote, The Associated Press reported.
President Joe Biden on Thursday called the expulsions "
shocking, undemocratic and unprecedented
. "
"Instead of debating the merits of the [gun control] issue, these Republican legislators chose to punish, silence and expel duly elected representatives of the people," he added.
Justin Jones, Gloria Johnson and Justin Pearson embrace on Capitol Hill in Nashville, Tennessee, United States, on April 6, 2023. STRINGER/REUTERS
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The expulsions of Jones and Pearson, both black, raised accusations of racism, which Republicans denied, explaining that they were necessary to avoid setting a precedent of tolerating interruptions of lawmakers over protests.
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Republican state Rep. Gino Bulso said the three Democrats had "effectively staged a riot" for chanting the gun control protests outside the House.
Most state legislatures retain the power to expel their members, but this is often a rarely used punishment for lawmakers accused of serious misconduct.
In Tennessee it had hardly been used since the Civil War.
