Biden to host ‘Tennessee Three’ who disrupted legislators

President Biden has formally invited three Tennessee lawmakers who disrupted legislative proceedings with a pro-gun control protest last month to the White House — but has no plans to meet with victims of the school shooting that prompted the demonstration, his top spokeswoman confirmed Wednesday.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the president will meet Monday with state Reps. Justin Jones (D-Nashville), Justin Pearson (D-Memphis) and Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville), a little more than two weeks after Jones and Pearson were briefly expelled from the Tennessee House of Representatives over their March 30 demonstration.

The White House flack said the trio “were subjugated to expulsion votes in the Tennessee state House for peacefully protesting in support of stronger gun safety laws.”

The so-called “Tennessee Three” joined hundreds of students, parents and teachers in a march into the state Capitol to demand firearm restrictions after a March 27 shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville left three adults and three 9-year-old children dead.

When asked whether victims or families who were affected by the Covenant School shooting had been invited to Washington, Jean-Pierre declined to comment.

“I don’t have anything to read out to you about any invite,” she told Fox News’ Peter Doocy.

Jean-Pierre added that Biden had already spoken with the three reps by phone earlier this month and “thanked them for their leadership in seeking to ban assault weapons.”

Jones, Pearson and Johnson led protesters in chants and displayed anti-gun signs on the House floor, halting deliberations and forcing the chamber into recess.

“No action, no peace,” Jones shouted through a bullhorn as he held up a sign that read “Protect kids, not guns.”

The Republican-controlled state House later voted to expel Jones, 27, and Pearson, 28, for their “disorderly behavior” and improper display of political messages — but the two were reinstated days later by local officials.

Jones frequently engaged in protests before his political career and was even charged during Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020 with assaulting a driver and Tennessee state trooper in two separate incidents.

He later had those charges dropped.

A third vote to expel Johnson, 60, fell just short of the two-thirds majority needed — prompting her to accuse her GOP colleagues of racial motives for Jones and Pearson’s punishment.

“I’m a 60-year-old white woman, and they are two young black men,” she said on CNN following the vote.

Vice President Kamala Harris visited the lawmakers in Nashville shortly after the expulsion votes — but did not meet with family members of the Covenant School victims: students Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney and staffers Cynthia Peak, 61, Mike Hill, 61, and Katherine Koonce, 60.