Kamala Harris to visit Tennessee after two Black Democrats expelled from legislature – live

We are keeping an eye on Kamala Harris’s last-minute trip to Tennessee following the expulsion of two Black lawmakers via Becca Andrews, a reporter based in Nashville. She is sitting in what appears to be a church sanctuary awaiting Harris’s arrival.

Two Black parents, their midwife and other supporters are calling on Dallas child protective services to return an infant who advocates say was “kidnapped” because the couple chose to use a midwife and treat their child’s jaundice at home instead of at a hospital, Jezebel reports.

Rodney and Temecia Jackson of Dallas say that police came to their home late last month to tell them that they had to turn their daughter Mila over based on a doctor’s report. They refused, and days later police returned, arrested Rodney, and used his key to enter the home and take the infant from Temecia.

I felt like they had stolen my baby, as I’d had a home birth. I didn’t know where to turn,” Temecia said.

This is one of the latest examples of what advocates describe as a historical pattern of US child welfare services dividing poor, Black and Indigenous families in particular on the grounds of alleged neglect and abuse. As my colleague Edwin Rios reported in March, Bianca Clayborne and Deonte Williams’s five children were taken into the state of Tennessee’s custody after Williams was arrested during a traffic stop.

The state’s department of children’s services ultimately alleged that Clayborne and Williams’s children were being abused to obtain an emergency order to take them away.

Read more of Edwin’s coverage here.

And the Jezebel article here.

Good afternoon, I’m Abené Clayton, taking over the blog from the west coast.

My colleague Martin Pengelly reported on Clarence Thomas’s response to Thursday’s ProPublica investigation that found that the supreme court justice has long accepted expensive gifts, including yacht trips and luxury resort stays, from Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow.

Thomas says that he was advised early on in his tenure that this “personal hospitality from close personal friends” did not need to be disclosed.

But a rule change last month now requires gifts like rides on private jets to be reported. Thomas says he will follow the updated guidance in the future.

Following the ProPublica report, the justice has been lambasted by Democratic officials including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who said: “Thomas must be impeached,” as the court was becoming known for “rank corruption, erosion of democracy and the stripping of human rights”.

Read the rest of Martin’s story here.

Kyrsten Sinema, the enigmatic Arizona senator who stunned colleagues by announcing she was flipping to become an independent after Democrats retained control of the chamber in December, plans to defend her seat, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The newspaper reported on Friday that Sinema is “preparing for a re-election campaign, setting the stage for what could be an unpredictable three-way contest” next year in the key swing state.

The article said Sinema met with staff at a retreat in Phoenix earlier this week to begin laying the groundwork for her campaign.

Along with West Virginia Democrat and centrist senator Joe Manchin, Sinema was a holdout on several key elements of Joe Biden’s legislative agenda during the first two years of his administration, though she still caucuses with, and usually votes in tandem with Democrats.

A federal appeals court sided with the justice department on Friday in a case that could have upended hundreds of charges brought in the January 6 Capitol riot, the Associated Press reports.

The decision, however, leaves open the possibility of further challenges to the charge of obstruction of Congress, which has been brought against more than 300 defendants in the massive federal prosecutions following the deadly violence, the agency says.

In a 2-1 ruling, a three judge panel of the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit said a lower court judge was wrong in dismissing the charge in three cases in which the judge concluded it didn’t cover the defendants’ conduct. Those defendants may ask the full appeals court or the supreme court to review the decision.

The charge of obstruction of an official proceeding, which carries a prison term of up to 20 years, is among the most widely used felony charges in the January 6 cases. It has been brought against extremists accused of plotting to stop the transfer of presidential power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden as well as in dozens of less serious cases.

Gloria Johnson, the Tennessee Democratic house lawmaker spared from expulsion as two Black colleagues were booted, is accusing Republicans of conducting effectively a sham trial.

Johnson has just been speaking on CNN, where she said she was subjected to a markedly different tone during questioning than that directed at her ousted Black colleagues Justin Jones and Justin Pearson:

Justin Jones, whose resolution went before mine, made such a beautiful defense. I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, I could never be that eloquent and articulate’. [He is] a powerful speaker, and Justin Pearson after that.

But when you heard the tone of the questioning in there, on how they were questioned, and how I was questioned, it was clear what that was about.

They were talking down, they were rude. It was like they were prosecutors, but then they didn’t allow us to build a defense. They allowed themselves to bring video but we were told we could not bring video.

They were dishonest throughout the procedure.

Johnson took issue with a statement from Republican caucus chair Jeremy Faison, who said the trio might have been spared an expulsion vote of they had apologized for taking part in a protest on the House floor for gun reforms:

They can say that now. But that certainly wasn’t the tone of the questioning.

Regarding meeting vice-president Kamala Harris later, Johnson said she would be raising the immediate need for firearms reforms following last week’s mass shooting at Nashville’s Covenant school that left six dead:

I just want to talk about the immediacy of getting solutions for gun violence. I’m so very proud of this young generation who are organizing and fighting and working so hard, showing up and speaking up at the Capitol.

It’s a rare day on the politics blog when we get to the afternoon without a Donald Trump-related post. My colleague Kari Paul has this look at an interview given by adult movie actress Stormy Daniels, and the hush-money payment made by the former president that led to this week’s criminal charges against him:

In her first major interview since Donald Trump’s indictment, Stormy Daniels has said that while she wants the former president to be “held accountable” she doesn’t believe he should go to prison.

“I don’t think that his crimes against me are worthy of incarceration. I feel like the other things that he has done, if he is found guilty, absolutely,” Daniels, 44, said in an interview with Fox Nation’s Piers Morgan released on Thursday.

Daniels sat down with Morgan for a 1.5 hour interview, which she called her most extensive yet. She thanked people for “love and support” in a tweet, saying that the segment “laid to rest a lot of misinformation”.

When asked by Morgan how it felt to see Trump appear in court, Daniels said she was “shocked”. “I thought he was going to get away with not being accountable,” she said.

“The king has been dethroned – he’s no longer untouchable,” she said. “Nobody should be untouchable, doesn’t matter what your job description is – whether you’re the president – you should be held responsible for your actions.”

Daniels, who postponed the original timing of her interview with Morgan last week citing “security concerns”, said she was also regularly receiving threats. She told Morgan that one in 10 messages she gets now are death threats, and that the tone has become increasingly violent.

“It’s like a suicide bomber,” she said. “In the depths of their soul, they feel like they’re doing the right thing.”

Read the full story:

A rare joint statement from Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and his Republican counterpart Mitch McConnell is calling on Russia to release an American Wall Street Journal reporter who was arrested last week.

Authorities in Moscow have charged Evan Gershkovich with espionage, Reuters reported on Friday, citing the Interfax news agency. The 31-year-old journalist was detained last month during a reporting trip to the city of Yekaterinburg, and faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

According to the news agency, Gershkovich pleaded not guilty during a court hearing on Friday.

In their statement, the senate leaders insisted “journalism is not a crime”:

We strongly condemn the wrongful detention of US citizen and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, and demand the immediate release of this internationally known and respected independent journalist.

Russian authorities have failed to present any credible evidence to justify their fabricated charges.

Black Democratic party legislators in Tennessee are appealing to Republicans to hold talks with them over the shock expulsion of two state lawmakers last night because they joined a public demonstration in the legislative chamber demanding greater gun safety after yet another school shooting.

Amid news that US vice-president Kamala Harris is hastily arranging to visit Tennessee later today and meet with the ousted lawmakers, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, the Tennessee Black caucus of state legislators spoke outside the state capitol a little earlier.

Representative Sam McKenzie of Knoxville, chairman of the Tennessee Black caucus, called almost unprecedented ousting of the lawmakers “an injustice”, local media reported.

“The world saw the optics. I don’t have to say a word about the fact that our two young African American brothers were unfairly prosecuted with information … evidence introduced inappropriately, but they handled themselves like true champions,” he said.

The two lawmakers, and Democratic state representative Gloria Johnson, are now known as the Tennessee Three. Johnson narrowly survived a vote to expel her. The two men are in their twenties. Johnson is white and in her sixties. “I made it through, and these two young men did not make it through,” she said earlier today, and it was reported that she agreed when asked if her being white played a part in her not being expelled from the legislature.

Nashville representative Vincent Dixie said: “Welcome to Tennessee, where there’s a pattern of racism that has permeated these halls that we walked through that were supposed to make laws for everyone here in Tennessee.”

He continued: “The world is watching. And what are we going to do now? Is it gonna be business as usual? ‘Well, it happened to two Black men. Oh, well. Let’s move on.’ Or are we going to actually do something about it?” WBIR.com reported.

US vice-president Kamala Harris plans to travel to Nashville, Tennessee, today after the Republicans controlling the state legislature expelled two young Black lawmakers last night for joining public protests demanding greater gun safety in the wake of a mass shooting at an elementary school in the city.

Here’s a tweet from Harris’s press secretary, Kirsten Allen.

Harris will meet with the two lawmakers, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, and a third Democratic lawmaker, Gloria Johnson, who is white and narrowly avoided being expelled.

The move has been condemned as racist, anti-democratic and not in the interests of protecting children’s safety from gun violence and school shootings, critics say.