Expelled Tennessee rep has council support to return
Freshly expelled Tennessee politician Justin Jones appears to have enough votes in the Nashville Metropolitan Council to send him back to the state Legislature.
Jones, along with fellow Democrat Justin Pearson, was removed from his elected position Thursday in a nearly unprecedented vote in the Republican-dominated Tennessee House of Representatives.
Along with a third lawmaker — a white woman who was not expelled — the Black legislators participated in a highly spirited House-floor protest over gun control last week that “knowingly and intentionally (brought) disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives,” according to House Speaker Cameron Sexton.
According to NBC News, Jones has the 23 vote majority he needs in the 40-member Metropolitan Council to be reinstated. That tally is reportedly from a collection of interviews and social media posts collected by NBC.
—New York Daily News
Lawmakers issue statement against reporter arrest
The Russian arrest of American journalist Evan Gershkovich drew a rare joint statement from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who demanded the reporter’s immediate release on Friday.
The Senate’s Democratic and Republican leaders said the March 29 jailing of Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was “wrongful” and marked the latest transgression in Russia’s “long and disturbing history of unjustly detaining U.S. citizens.”
“Let there be no mistake: journalism is not a crime,” Schumer, a New York Democrat, and McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said in the statement.
“We demand the baseless, fabricated charges against Mr. Gershkovich be dropped and he be immediately released,” they added, “and reiterate our condemnation of the Russian government’s continued attempts to intimidate, repress, and punish independent journalists and civil society voices.”
—New York Daily News
Harris embraces her biracial identity in Africa
LUSAKA, Zambia — Crowds of locals packed onto balconies and cheered as Vice President Kamala Harris' motorcade pulled onto a manicured, palm-tree lined driveway, near where she had visited her grandfather in the late 1960s. But something wasn't quite right.
Harris was wrapping up a weeklong trip across Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia aimed at highlighting Africa's economic potential. Like any vice president facing a near-certain reelection campaign, though, she was also focused on her political future.
As the No. 2 to America's oldest-ever chief executive, she wanted to show off her foreign policy bona fides and reassure voters that she's prepared to lead.
Last week's trip also offered Harris, who prefers projecting her strength and expertise to displaying the vulnerability that comes with talking about biography and family history, an opportunity to remind the public of her personal story, and to tie together its many threads.
That's the sort of mission a visit to your Indian grandfather's house in Zambia is supposed to accomplish.
—Los Angeles Times
Ex-soldier with Jan. 6 ties gets 7 years prison
TAMPA, Fla. — Jeremy Brown, the retired U.S. Army Special Forces master sergeant ensnared in a federal investigation of the events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, received a sentence of seven years in federal prison Friday for having two illegal guns, a set of hand grenades and a classified military document at his Tampa home.
Senior U.S. District Judge Susan Bucklew also ordered Brown to complete three years of supervision upon his release, with a condition that he undergo an evaluation for mental health treatment.
The prison sentence, which totaled 87 months, came after the judge spoke of Brown’s 20 years of service as a Green Beret, but also his actions since his retirement, which she said demonstrated Brown put himself above the law.
“You’ve accepted no responsibility for what you’ve done in this case,” Bucklew said. “And you are defiant to the end.”
—Tampa Bay Times
China hits back at Tsai trip with military drills
China hit back over Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s visits to the United States by announcing live-fire military drills in the Taiwan Strait and leveling largely symbolic sanctions on the venue that hosted her in California.
The live-fire exercises will take place in the Taiwan Strait off Pingtan county from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Monday, the Fujian provincial maritime administration said in a statement. Pingtan is about 80 miles from Taiwan. That came after officials in the same province announced a patrol operation in the strait.
The statement didn’t mention Tsai’s visits to New York and Los Angeles, which included meetings with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other U.S. officials and lawmakers. But they echoed past such actions and came soon after China also announced a raft of sanctions and other measures to express its displeasure.
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, where Tsai met McCarthy, and the Hudson Institute think tank were targeted because they provided a platform for her “separatist activities,” the Foreign Ministry in Beijing said in a statement Friday. Tsai spoke at an event in New York last week that was organized by the conservative Hudson Institute, saying the security of the world hinges on self-ruled Taiwan’s fate.
—Bloomberg News
