Latest news with #TennesseeLegislature
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Instead of funding executions, Tennessee should support victims of violence
Five years ago, on a beautiful July day, my son Rodney J.B. Armstrong was shot and killed during a pool party at my home in Murfreesboro. My life since that devastating day bears little resemblance to the years before it. In the years since Rodney's death, I've met so many other grieving mothers like me. I've heard from countless victim family members about the things they need to begin the process of healing. I've also learned that the death penalty is not at the top of that list. In Tennessee, our State has been spending vast resources on capital punishment. At the same time, programs intended to serve families like mine and to prevent violence remain underfunded. This misguided allocation of public funds may look tough on the surface, but it perpetuates the cruel cycle of pain, violence and loss that fails to make Tennesseans safer. Meanwhile, recent changes to federal funding streams have put services for survivors of child abuse, elder abuse, gun violence, and sexual assault at risk. Yet in mid-March, The Tennessean reported that the state has spent nearly $600,000 since 2017 on lethal injection drugs. Much of that money appears to be for executions scheduled to resume in May 2025. We are left to wonder why the State has chosen to use scarce resources in this way. Opinion: Tennessee should end capital punishment and cancel execution dates for five men That is an exorbitant amount of money to buy lethal chemicals to kill a handful of prisoners who have been incarcerated without incident for years, if not decades. Those same public funds could, instead, do so much good work to assist survivors and support community-based violence prevention efforts. For example, last year, the Tennessee Legislature made changes aimed at improving access to resources through the Criminal Injuries Compensation Fund. This program helps cover funeral expenses, trauma counseling, and other important services for survivors of violence and their families. Public education and other support are essential to ensuring that those who qualify for such resources are able to access them. As the creator of the Healed People Heal People campaign, I am honored to lead it alongside Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and Mothers Over Murder, two organizations that mean so much to me. Together, we've been working to provide essential education and support that truly improves the lives of Tennesseans. Executions cannot do so. The young man who killed my son was not sentenced to death, but that was never my focus. I knew my son's life could not be restored by the sanctioned killing of the person who took it. Once the criminal proceedings ended, I turned my attention to my broken heart, my family, my community, and our collective healing. I urge Governor Lee to rethink plans to resume executions, and I am not alone. Other violence survivors in Tennessee also believe that the costs of executions, both in dollars and pain, are excessive, and the benefits murky at best. This is why dozens of victims and surviving family members have signed a letter to Governor Lee asking him to stop executions for those who are already incarcerated and instead to invest these resources into solving unsolved cases and supporting victim services to make us all safer and healthier. Rafiah Muhammad-McCormick is the director of community outreach for Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, and Victim Advocate and Founder, Rodney's Village. This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Healing for violence victims is in support, not executions | Opinion
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Don't fear the reefer
According to Vanderbilt University polls, a majority of Tennesseans favor the legalization of pot, even as the General Assembly restricts hemp products. () Let's talk weed! You know, pot, grass, dope, herb, skunk, ganja, reefer, maryjane, cheeba. (Cheeba?) Always on brand, Republicans at the state capitol put the bulk of their energy during the session that just wrapped pursuing craven new ways to ravage immigrant families and bully non-straight-white people. But they did manage to spare some time for the subject of cannabis, resulting in adoption of a big clunker of a new wacky baccy regulatory scheme. The cannabis state of play in Tennessee is strange and confusing, as those who produce or partake understand but others may not fully appreciate. Ours is among the minority of states where marijuana remains wholly illegal to cultivate, distribute, or possess, even for medical purposes, with criminal penalties for violations. And yet forms of cannabis that will get you plenty stoned are readily available in several forms for perfectly legal purchase and use. The simple story of how this came to be: The 2018 Farm Bill removed hemp from the definition of marijuana in federal law. Hemp plants are cannabis plants with very low concentrations of THC: under 0.3% means it's 'hemp' and it's legal everywhere, while over 0.3% makes it 'marijuana,' a controlled substance in federal law. And just as hemp as a plant isn't illegal in legislatively pot-hostile places like Tennessee, neither are its constituent compounds, like the (very small amount of) THC it contains. Hemp industry fears slate of restrictive bills could gut industry That led enterprising ganjapreneurs to figure out how to extract THC from low-THC hemp and embed it in the kinds of cannabis products (like edible gummies and smokable concentrates) found in states with full legalization. To avoid getting too deep in the weeds (yes I went there and I'm not proud of it) I'm omitting details around THC variations THCa, delta 8. and delta 9). The point is you can buy a gummy with 10 mg of THC in Metropolis, Illinois where recreational marijuana is legal, or you can buy a 10 mg gummy in Nashville where it isn't, and both will do the trick. The difference is that in Tennessee the ingredients will say 'hemp-derived THC.' The Tennessee Legislature waded into this free-for-all of stoner innovation two years ago with a bill regulating the production and distribution of 'hemp-derived cannabinoids.' With bipartisan support, the 2023 measure created licensing, testing, labeling, and selling requirements for hemp-derived products, spelled out criminal offenses for violations, and put in place a tax on sales to fund enforcement. Sure sounds like regulation, right? Yet just two years later GOP lawmakers said we have unregulated recreational pot, so they wrote this year's big do-over bill adding new regulations, levying new taxes, and shifting enforcement of the whole shebang to a different part of state government. Most significantly, it narrows the definition of hemp-derived products in ways that may force the industry to abandon some offerings (until they figure out how to innovate around it). In Senate committee testimony back in February, two hemp-related business owners said the bill will 'wipe out' their industry. Looking at the specifics of the bill and the composition of their products I'd say 'wipe out the industry' is a tad hyperbolic, but hempsters are not wrong to call the bill a recklessly crafted threat to a growing industry that contributes meaningfully to the state's agricultural (and jamband) economy. The backers of this year's bill blended reefer madness tactics with puzzling non sequiturs to justify their crackdown. 'I think the public does believe that small children should not be taking this,' Sen. Richard Briggs, a Knoxville Republican, freely associated with the committee last month. Apropos of who-the-hell-knows-what, Briggs lamented on the Senate floor ahead of final passage that the pot was much mellower at Woodstock compared to what you find now in Nashville. On the House side, sponsor Rep. William Lamberth, a Portland Republican,) declared that 'what we do with these products can change lives for the better or worse significantly.' I have no idea what that means. The arguments for keeping Tennessee in the column of retrograde states afraid of adult recreational pot may be murky, but there is clarity in public opinion on the other side. A Vanderbilt poll in late 2024 shows Tennessee voters favoring legalization for recreational use by almost two to one (a 63-36% margin), including majorities of both Republicans (53%) and Democrats (78%). Back in 2018 support for recreational access was just 37% in an MTSU poll, so Tennesseans have come a long way on this issue as they have watched other states legalize. The Tennessee state house is practiced at legislating against majority preferences, a relevant option when an issue stretches tensions between individual rights and collective will. But legal pot is not that sort of issue—there are no relevant rights in play (other than the right to not consume cannabis, which needs no protection). Tennessee is hardly the first state where elected lawmakers resist treating their adult citizens like adults on this issue. Of the more than two-dozen states that have legalized recreational weed, many got it done by going around their legislatures to legalize it through voter ballot initiative. There is little doubt that would work here as well — except for the pesky little fact that Tennessee's constitution allows no citizen-activated ballot initiatives ever on any subject. So instead we're stuck with a feckless legislature that chooses nanny-state provincialism over giving the people what they want. And what they want is to not have to drive to Metropolis, Illinois. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
GOP bill to bar immigrant kids without legal status from Tennessee public schools advances
Sylvia, who came to the Tennessee Legislature from Knoxville on Tuesday, cries as lawmakers on the House K-12 Subcommittee vote in favor of a bill to exclude children without legal immigration status from public schools. She asked that her name not be used out of fear of reprisal. (Photo: John Partipilo) A bill allowing Tennessee public schools to exclude children without legal immigration status cleared a House subcommittee Tuesday as protestors gathered outside the hearing room chanting 'stop hurting kids' and 'shame on you.' The bill by Republican House Majority Leader William Lamberth would give public K-12 and charter schools the option of enrolling or refusing to enroll a child who cannot offer proof of legal immigration status. It differs substantially from its companion bill in the Senate, carried by Sen. Bo Watson, a Hixson Republican. Amended last week, the Senate version would require public schools to verify student immigration status. Schools could then opt to charge tuition for children unable to prove they lawfully reside in the United States. As chanting protestors clogged the hallway outside the House K-12 Subcommittee meeting, inside Giselle Huerta pleaded with lawmakers to vote against the bill. 'Is this the Tennessee we want to be, a state that turns its back on children who pledge allegiance to our flag every morning?' said Huerta, co-founder of the child advocacy group, Hijos de Inmigrantes. Tennessee GOP bills target public school education for immigrant children without legal status 'Think about the message we are sending to young children who have known no other home but Tennessee — that they don't deserve an education, that they don't belong in a classroom alongside their friends and neighbors,' she said in her testimony before lawmakers. Knoxville sixth grader Damien Felipe Jimenez told lawmakers he dreamed of one day owning his own restaurant or perhaps becoming a scientist. 'I am the son of immigrant parents who have shown me to respect and value everyone,' he said. 'Just like me and all the kids in this country, we have the right to dream and make those dreams come true. The right to an education should not be taken away from us because of our immigration status,' he said. Lamberth called it 'false hope' to provide an education to children who would go on to face barriers to their professional dreams as adults as a result of their immigration status. 'It is false hope to give children the best education available in the world and then tell them they can be licensed professionals, they can be licensed doctors, they can be lawyers, they can be accountants, they can run for office, because it is not true,' Lamberth said. 'If they are illegally present, their dreams at some point will have a ceiling and that is inappropriate,' Lamberth said. The bill's sponsors have said they intend for the measure to serve as a test case of whether the Supreme Court will revisit its 1982 Plyler v. Doe decision establishing the right to a public education regardless of a child's immigration status. If enacted, the measure faces a certain legal challenge. Tennessee public schools could exclude immigrant children without legal status in GOP-backed bill Lamberth noted the bill was discretionary and stressed it was about local control. 'With this bill there is nobody that will force any school district to disenroll even one child,' he said. 'It is entirely their decision.' Some counties grappling with education budget shortfalls or overcrowded classrooms may decide that there's 'just no more' children they want to admit and begin excluding children without legal status, while others may opt out of the law — and likely make their communities a 'magnet' for immigrant families, he said. 'With this bill there is nobody that will force any school district to disenroll even one child,' he said. 'It is entirely their decision.' Opponents of the measure have countered the argument that educating immigrant children is a burden to Tennessee taxpayers, noting that immigrants without legal status pay the same taxes on gas, groceries and retail purchases that help fund public schools as every state resident. The bill was approved 5-3 Tuesday, with the committee's two Democrats — Rep. Yusuf Hakeem of Chattanooga and Rep. Sam Mackenzie of Knoxville joined by Republican Rep. Mark White dissenting. In a previous vote on the Senate version of the bill last week, three Republicans also joined the lone Democrat on the presiding committee in voting against the bill. 'Sometimes I think we don't look at human beings as human beings but as numbers or not like us,' Hakeem said Tuesday. 'I look at the parents, the road they've taken to try to improve the lives of their children and, here we are, talking about taking that away,' he said. The bill will be heard next in the House Education and the Senate Finance, Means and Ways Committees. Those hearings have not yet been scheduled. A crowd outside the committee room for the House K-12 Subcommittee meeting Tuesday. (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout) A mother, holding her child, enters a committee room to hear debate on a measure that could prevent immigrant kids from being denied a public education. (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout) Tears roll down Rep. Yusuf Hakem's face after the House K-12 Education Subcommittee meeting on March 11, 2025. Hakeem, a Chattanooga Democrat, was one of three lawmakers to vote against bill that could strip the right to public education from children not in the U.S. legally. (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout) Photographs by John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout ©2025 SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Bill criminalizing votes for immigrant sanctuary policies ‘constitutionally suspect'
Immigrant families and activists rally outside the Tennessee State Capitol in 2018, protesting a law to prohibit sanctuary cities.(Photo by) As Gov. Bill Lee's immigration enforcement plan moves swiftly through the Tennessee Legislature, one component of the bill — aimed at arresting local officials who support sanctuary policies for immigrants — drew scrutiny Tuesday. Included in the governor's wide-ranging proposal to coordinate with the Trump Administration on mass immigrant detentions and deportations is a provision that creates a Class E felony for public officials who vote to adopt or enact sanctuary policies. Sanctuary policies can shield undocumented immigrants and limit cooperation with enforcement action The felony charge, punishable by up to six years in prison and a $3,000 fine, would apply to any public official who votes in favor of a sanctuary law, policy or on non-binding resolutions. Sen. Todd Gardenhire, the Republican chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, blasted the provision Tuesday as a 'dangerous precedent.' 'We are a Republic, and a Republic is one that we elect people to vote the way they feel like is best for the district, the city, county or the state,' he said. 'If we set the precedent of penalizing any elected official for voting their conscience, whether it's good or bad, then we set a dangerous precedent for the future,' he said. Under Trump, immigration arrests at school could be a step too far for some Tennessee conservatives Democrats characterized the provision as a 'slippery slope' that could be invoked in future legislation to criminalize votes on any controversial issue. 'It is alarming we are sitting here talking about felonizing elected officials taking votes on behalf of their constituency,' Sen. Heidi Campbell, a Nashville Democrat, said. 'Boy, this is a slippery slope and be careful what you wish for if you vote for this.' Gardenhire was in the minority among Republicans who dominate the Senate Judiciary Committee. They quickly shot down Gardenhire's efforts to amend the bill to remove criminal penalties before voting to advance it in the legislature. Sanctuary policies are already prohibited by a 2019 Tennessee law that sought to prevent local governments from adopting sanctuary city status —as some other Democrat-led cities across the country have done. The 2019 Tennessee law gives citizens the right to file civil suits challenging any jurisdiction's adoption of sanctuary policies and the state the power to withhold funding over violations. 'When the state banned sanctuary cities, its remedies were to deny cities grants and to seek a court order,' said Ken Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University. 'Here the state is trying to control the actions of duly-elected officials through the police power,' he said. 'That's a dramatic escalation.' One national government accountability expert said he knew of no other state law that threatened to prosecute public officials for how they cast a vote. I don't know of any other laws, state or federal, that penalize elected officials on the basis of how they vote. This seems to defeat the whole purpose of democratic-republican (representative) government. – John Vile, Middle Tennessee State University 'It's an unprecedented power grab and criminalization of political discourse,' said Dan Vicuña, director of redistricting and representation for Common Cause, a Washington, D.C. advocacy group. 'It puts at risk the basic right to local representative and democratic government,' he said. And local legal experts, among them the legislature's own attorney, said the provision may be 'constitutionally suspect.' 'Generally speaking Tennessee courts have found legislative bodies have legislative immunity for acts that serve part of their legislative function and that legislative immunity extends to local legislative bodies,' Elizabeth Insogna, a Legislative attorney, told the committee. 'Be prepared' Nashville leaders caution immigrant communities about looming crackdowns 'It's possible that a criminal provision that is enforced against a member of a legislative body may be constitutionally suspect,' she said. 'It would be up for a court to determine.' John Vile, professor of political science and Dean of the University Honors College at Middle Tennessee State University said 'legislators should heed Article 1' of the Tennessee Constitution, which establishes a 'Declaration of Rights' for citizens and their elected representatives. 'I don't know of any other laws, state or federal, that penalize elected officials on the basis of how they vote,' he said. 'This seems to defeat the whole purpose of democratic-republican (representative) government. Republicans however noted the criminal penalties are aimed at elected officials attempting to pass legislation already outlawed in Tennessee. 'I think everybody would agree that's something that elected officials should be prohibited from doing, or should not do,' said Sen. Kerry Roberts, a Springfield Republican. 'The fact there's a consequence for it, I personally don't have a problem with that, because they ought not to be doing it in the first place. It's illegal.' Only two current laws provide criminal penalties for lawmakers acting in their official capacities, according to Stephen Crump, executive director of the Tennessee District Attorneys General Conference. One longstanding law allows criminal charges to be brought against county commissioners who fail to adequately fund local jails. Other lawmakers may be charged if their vote violates official misconduct statutes. 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