Biden meets with ‘Tennessee Three’ at the White House

President Biden welcomed three Democratic Tennessee lawmakers to the White House Monday, weeks after they faced expulsion votes for disrupting legislative proceedings by staging a pro-gun control demonstration.

Biden, 80, called it an “honor” to have the so-called “Tennessee Three” – Justin Jones, Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson –  join him and Vice President Kamala Harris in the Oval Office, but gave no indication when or if he would extend a similar invitation to the victims of the school shooting that sparked the protest or the hero cops who prevented a worse tragedy.

Jones, Pearson and Johnson caused a stir earlier this month when they took to the state House floor with a bullhorn to protest in favor of stricter gun control measures moments before protesters stormed the Tennessee Capitol Building. 

The protest took place three days after Audrey Hale opened fire at The Covenant School March 27, killing three 9-year-old students and three staff members. Hale, who identified as transgender, was shot and killed by responding police officers.

When asked last week if Biden would meet with families of the victims, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responded with a bureaucratic: “I don’t have anything to read out to you about any invite.”

“You’re standing up for our kids, you’re standing up for our communities – safe communities – and democratic values,” Biden told the three lawmakers.  

“All three of you speak so well about why you did what you did,” the president told the trio, who met with Harris in Nashville earlier this month.

Jones, 27, and Pearson, 28, who are black, were expelled from the Republican-controlled Tennessee House on April 6 for their “disorderly behavior” and improper display of political messages. Johnson, 60, who is white, survived the expulsion resolution against her by one vote. 

The two expelled lawmakers were both reinstated by local officials days later and plan to run in forthcoming special elections to finish out their terms.

“What the Republican legislature did was shocking, it was undemocratic and without any precedent but you turned it around very quickly,” Biden said Monday.

During the meeting, the president touted his record on gun control while in politics, including his signing last year of a bill expanding background checks and providing federal funding for so-called red flag laws and his work as a senator securing the passage of the 1994 ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. 

“You’ve been out in front and you understand exactly what it’s like, it’s just tragic to see what’s happening in your state, in particular, in your city, but also also across the country and, you know, nothing is guaranteed about democracy,” Biden told the lawmakers, before asking the press to leave the Oval Office. “Every generation has to fight for it and you all are doing just that.”

Before the meeting, Jones tweeted, “From the People’s House to the White House, Tennessee can set the model for the nation.”

Outside the West Wing after the meeting, Jones described seeing busts of Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez in the Oval Office, describing them as people who “acted outside of the political paradigm of what was possible, and they changed political realities.”

“Sometimes,” he said, “we have to do something out of the ordinary.”

With Post wires