Tennessee lawmakers to debate legalizing medically assisted suicide following ban in West Virginia
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Tennessee lawmakers will again debate whether terminally ill patients have the right to choose medically assisted suicide this legislative session after one nearby state recently became the first to ban it in its Constitution, and voters had a say.
Ten states and Washington, D.C. currently allow medically assisted suicide for terminally ill patients, a controversial measure that enables a person with a fatal disease to choose when and where to die to avoid having to suffer through their pain.
In November 2024, voters in West Virginia narrowly chose to ban medically assisted suicide through an amendment to the state's Constitution, the first state in the U.S. to do so, after lawmakers approved a measure to allow the referendum on the ballot on the last night of the legislative session last March.
'An important part of the pro-life movement is ensuring life is protected from conception to natural death, and this is just another tool in the tool kit for that,' Del. Chris Pritt (R-Kanawha), the resolution's sponsor, told News 2's sister station, WOWK, in October 2024.
Right to die effort renewed in Tennessee
However, critics argued medically assisted suicide was already banned under West Virginia law.
'It's very bizarre that they are trying to constitutionally stop it, because it would be the first state in the country to ever do that, ever,' Del. Kayla Young (D-Kanawha) said.
Pritt argued the amendment would ensure a judge couldn't overturn the state's ban on medically assisted suicide.
'There could be a court that decides there is a right to, for example, to commit suicide using a physician, and what this does is it enshrines it in the state Constitution that that kind of activity is going to be prohibited going into the future,' Pritt said.
The constitutional amendment to prohibit medically assisted suicide passed in West Virginia by less than a single percentage point, or 5,882 votes.
The amendment reads, in part, 'No person, physician, or health care provider in the State of West Virginia shall participate in the practice of medically assisted suicide, euthanasia, or mercy killing of a person.'
Attorney recalls fight for the right to die in Tennessee
'You know I'm as pro-life as I can possibly get,' Gov. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.) said. 'I think listening to the great people of West Virginia, letting them make the decisions and everything, is always the smart money to us.'
Critics continued to push back against the amendment.
'Restoring reproductive freedom, we should be voting on that. But the Republicans won't let us vote on it because they know what the outcome will be, just like in every other state. So, instead, they put this meaningless constitutional amendment on that's banning something that's already banned,' State Party Chair Del. Mike Pushkin (D-Kanawha) said.
This legislative session, Tennessee lawmakers could consider passing a bill to legalize the measure. There is currently no legislative effort to constitutionally ban medically assisted suicide in the Volunteer State.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
29 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Vermont exempts some home kitchen businesses from licensing fees
MONTPELIER, Vt. (ABC22/FOX44) – Vermonters looking to sell at the state's over 60 farmers markets will have an easier time getting started. Governor Phil Scott on Monday signed House Bill 401 (H. 401), which eases the limits for how much some small food businesses can sell before being required to pay a licensing fee. Those fees can be as high as $350 for some bakeries in the state. Five farmers markets to visit in Vermont this weekend The bill passed the Vermont House May 20 without a floor vote, after passing the Senate a week earlier. It was sponsored by over 30 representatives, including Democrats, Republicans, and independents. H. 401 defines the new category of 'cottage food operators', which covers people who make in their home kitchen any of a wide variety of foods that do not easily spoil, including dry herbs and nuts, candy, dry coffee and tea, jams, and granola. According to current law, all food businesses that make above $10,000 a year in sales are required to pay a fee. With this new bill, this limit is $30,000 a year for this kind of food operation, or about $575 a week. Read the full text of the bill hereDownload Also included are certain types of home-canned goods. H. 401 allows the Commissioner of Health to add other items to the category later, which could expand the exemption to include even more of the vendors at local markets. Group in South Burlington buys land for regenerative farm The bill cites the goal that 'Vermonters have more access to the local food marketplace as bothproducers and consumers', along with higher supply-chain costs and the demand for local products made in Vermont by visitors to the state. H. 401 will take effect on July 1 of this year. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
42 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump's funding bill runs into Senate GOP fiscal hawks
As the Senate prepares to put its imprint on President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act this week, Republicans are grappling over the potential impact the megabill might have on the national debt, which has ballooned to nearly $37 trillion. With a 10-year budget bill, deficit hawks in the Senate like Rand Paul and Ron Johnson are drawing a red line — pushing for deeper cuts than those in the bill the House sent to them. As lawmakers aim to send a bill to Trump by the Fourth of July, those demands could complicate the Senate's calculus for passage — where Republicans can only afford three defections. On one hand, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act reduces outlays by more than $1.5 trillion against current baseline spending — according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office's preliminary analysis, meeting reconciliation's target for between $1.5 to $2 trillion in spending reductions. On the other hand, the bill still adds about $3.1 trillion to the debt, according to the CBO — though some Republicans like Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky predict it could add up to $20 trillion to the debt over the next decade. Paul and Johnson are directly at odds with the White House, which points to an analysis from the White House Council of Economic Advisors that finds the legislation will save $1.6 trillion over 10 years. "There's $1.6 trillion worth of savings in this bill," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a May 19 press briefing. "That's the largest savings for any legislation that has ever passed Capitol Hill in our nation's history." In a press briefing on Thursday, Leavitt attacked the CBO and other scorekeepers, saying they used "shoddy assumptions and have historically been terrible at forecasting across Democrat and Republican administrations alike." The Senate is expected to alter the House-passed proposal and some of the Senate's fiscal hawks have conditioned their support on the implementation of even steeper cuts. But any cuts these members want implemented will have to be balanced by Senate leadership against the desires of moderates who wish to preserve key social safety net programs, creating major challenges for hopes of offsetting the cost of the package. Another complication: any changes to the bill made by the Senate must be approved by the House, which narrowly sent the bill to the upper chamber by just one vote. Speaker Mike Johnson, who guided the bill through the House over the objections from both fiscal hard-liners and moderates in his conference, declared "It's not going to add to the debt," when asked if Trump would take ownership of an increase of the deficit. And he said he and Trump has the same concerns as Johnson and Paul. "He's also concerned as I am, as Ron Johnson is, as Rand Paul is, as all of us are about the nation's debt, and he and I talk about this frequently, and he is excited about changing that trajectory," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press." The bill sent to the Senate would also hike the federal debt limit by $4 trillion dollars, another sticking point with fiscal hawks. "There's nothing fiscally conservative about expanding the debt ceiling more than we've ever done it before," Paul said after the bill passed through the House two weeks ago. "This will be the greatest increase in the debt ceiling ever, and the GOP owns this now." At an event last week in Iowa, Paul repeated his disdain for the bill, calling the current cuts "wimpy and anemic" and suggesting that additional cutbacks could happen to entitlement programs like Medicaid and Social Security — areas where a line has been drawn by Trump and fellow GOP senators like Josh Hawley of Missouri, who called building the bill on cutting health insurance for the working poor "morally wrong and politically suicidal." Paul told CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday that he thought there were enough votes among his Senate Republican colleagues to block the bill. "I think there are four of us at this point, and I would be very surprised if the bill at least is not modified in a good direction," he said. Trump called Paul out over the weekend, writing on his Truth Social platform that if the senator votes against the bill, "Rand will be playing right into the hands of the Democrats, and the GREAT people of Kentucky will never forgive him!" Talking to reporters on Monday, Leavitt suggested there will be a price to pay for those who vote against it. "Their voters will know about it. That is unacceptable to Republican voters and all voters across the country who elected this president in a Republican majority to get things done on Capitol Hill," she said. Budget reconciliation, the tactic congressional Republicans are using to get the bill passed, is not subject to the filibuster, enabling the Republican majority to enact sweeping changes with only a simple majority. But changes to Social Security and Medicare are exempt from the fast-track budgeting process. Any changes to those entitlements would require 60 votes and bipartisan cooperation from Democrats — a prospect Republicans are not entertaining as they go it alone on the bill. Paul called for steeper spending cuts so that raising the debt limit would not be part of this bill. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has called on Congress to increase the statutory debt limit by the end of July to prevent the country from defaulting on its debt obligations. "I want [Trump's 2017] tax cuts to be permanent. But at the same time, I don't wanna raise the debt ceiling five trillion," he told CBS on Sunday. "The GOP will own the debt once they vote for this." Sen. Johnson, a notable fiscal hawk, has also signaled strongly that he would not support the bill in its current form, given that it adds to the debt. "It's so far off the mark. It's so bad," he told reporters at the Capitol while the House was still advancing the bill through the Rules Committee. "I've been trying to interject reality. I've been trying to interject facts and figures. They're on my side." At a Newsmaker luncheon Wednesday in Milwaukee hosted by WisPolitics and the Milwaukee Press Club, Johnson claimed there was "no amount of pressure" that Trump could place on him in order to support it in its current form. Asked Sunday on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures" if he was willing to push so far as to blow up Trump's agenda, Johnson stressed his loyalty was with the American people. "I want to see [Trump] succeed. But again, my loyalty is to the American people, to my kids and grandkids. We cannot continue to mortgage their future," Johnson said. Trump adviser Elon Musk, who left the White House on Friday after his role as a special government employee reached its 130-day limit, broke publicly with the president during an interview with CBS a couple days earlier in which he said he was "disappointed" by the massive spending bill. "I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful," Musk told CBS News, "but I don't know if it can be both. My personal opinion." -ABC News' Isabella Murray and Kelsey Walsh contributed to this report.
Yahoo
44 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Senators itching for Trump green light to move on Russia sanctions
Senators in both parties are itching to move a bipartisan Russia sanctions package as fighting escalates in the region, but Republicans are waiting on a green light from President Trump. The effort to pass a robust sanctions package is hitting high gear. Trump and his allies are sounding a considerably more negative tone about Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has shown few signs of slowing down his battle against Ukraine. Some of Trump's closest allies, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), are pushing hard to more aggressively target Putin. And both a stunning operation by Ukraine and an escalation of attacks by Russia are giving more senators the impetus to act. But while Trump's grown more vocal about Putin's unwillingness to move toward a peace deal, he has declined to throw in his lot with the sanctions bill, which has more than 80 co-sponsors in the upper chamber — effectively keeping it on ice for the time being. 'We're working with the White House. … We are prepared to move forward as soon as they feel like the timing is right. They're leading,' said Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), who, along with Graham, has had ongoing talks with Trump about the sanctions bill. 'We don't want to get in front of the White House.' 'We don't want to interfere in the middle of negotiations. … If we have to do this to get their attention, we most definitely will. We're 100 percent willing and able to move forward with it,' Mullin continued. 'It doesn't do us any good if we pass it in the House, pass it in the Senate and then the president is like, 'Hold on a second guys.' It puts him in a bad position [and it] puts us in a bad position.' Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters that the bill could hit the floor during the current four-week work period. '[The White House is] still hopeful they'll be able to strike some sort of a deal, but … there's a high level of interest here in the Senate on both sides of the aisle in moving on it,' he said. 'I think a genuine interest in doing something to make clear to Russia that they need to come to the table … I think that would have a big impact.' The package in question would implement some of the harshest sanctions possible on some of Moscow's top trading partners, including a 500 percent tariff on nations that purchase oil, gas, uranium and other goods from Russia. China and India are Russia's biggest customers for those items, accounting for 70 percent of Russia's energy exports. Graham, one of the leading proponents of the legislation, labeled it as 'the most draconian bill I've ever seen in my life in the Senate.' He also told The Associated Press that he crafted it in coordination with Trump's advisers and last week said he expected the Senate to start moving the bill this week. Nevertheless, Trump has remained noncommittal, even though he has increased his criticism of Putin in recent weeks. 'I don't know. I'll have to see it,' he said on Friday when asked about the proposal. The push comes on the heels of Graham's visit to Kyiv, where he and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and then Paris, where Graham spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss the latest state of play in the war. According to the South Carolina Republican, the only steps Putin is taking in the coming months to end the war is trying to defeat the Ukrainians. 'We saw credible evidence of a summer or early fall invasion, a new offensive by Putin,' Graham told The Associated Press. 'He's preparing for more war.' Russian, Ukrainian and U.S. officials convened in Istanbul for a second round of peace talks on Monday, where the two warring nations agreed to trade thousands of dead and seriously injured troops. However, there were no signs of progress toward concluding the 3-year-old war. The talks took place only days after Ukraine launched a stunning drone offensive that destroyed 40 Russian warplanes at air bases across the country. The total represents one-third of the Russian bomber fleet, and the attack happened after Ukraine smuggled 117 drones deep into Russia in an operation that took 18 months of planning. Russia, meanwhile, launched a heavy attack on Ukraine on Sunday. According to the Ukrainian air force, Russia launched 472 drones against Ukraine, marking the highest total since the beginning of the war. The intense back-and-forth in recent days is inspiring more lawmakers to push for action. 'I hate to say that I'm glad the president is seeing … Putin for the evil murderer that he is, but now we have to have a consequence for it,' Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said, adding that he would vote for the sanctions package 'in a heartbeat.' While Republicans wait on word from the president, Democrats have no such patience. 'The single best thing President Trump can do to strengthen Ukraine's hand right now is to show that the U.S. stands firmly behind them and squarely against Russia. But so far, Trump has not done that,' Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the floor Monday. 'Where is Donald Trump's backbone? Where is his conviction? Where's that toughness he likes to project?' Schumer asked. 'Frankly, senators from both sides of the aisle are getting tired of Donald Trump's wishy-washy approach to Putin. If Donald Trump won't stand up to him, the Senate must.' The New York Democrat also called the sanctions package a 'hammer blow' to Moscow. 'It's very much needed, and it's needed now,' he added. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
