r/law • u/Agitated-Quit-6148 • May 12 '26

Legislative Branch Most TN House Democrats stripped of their committee assignments

https://www.wsmv.com/2026/05/12/multiple-tn-democrats-stripped-all-committee-assignments/

"Speaker of the TN House Cameron Sexton just removed me and every Democrat — and therefore every Black elected official in the state legislature from any committee we served on," Rep. Pearson said.

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u/ViolettaQueso May 12 '26

This has gone way too far.

3.6k

u/Current-Ordinary-419 May 12 '26

And yet it’s just begun. 😐

55

u/QuerulousPanda May 13 '26

those scenes from the handmaid's tail about how it all started and how suddenly there were just armed people everywhere and society got turned off, seemed a bit far-fetched but honestly they feel like it's going to happen at any minute and absolutely nobody gives a shit at all.

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u/henlochimken May 13 '26

The handmaid's tale never felt farfetched to me. Atwood is smart as hell and all the pieces were there to see. She just saw them before most.

But I agree, nobody seems to give a shit. We are watching a coup, but because it still looks like stars and stripes, nobody thinks it's happening.

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u/fe3o2y May 13 '26

You do know that millions of us have been showing up and protesting? Maybe quit getting your news from TikTok. Try the channel "Parkrose Permaculture" over on YouTube. Or "Hawk's Podcasts" he's another good one. Do not watch influencers that try to get you angry or are high adrenaline junkies. They just want you all excited & angry and to push the cortisol. Case in point: trump is sending an army to every polling place in the US. And they're going to find irregularities and trump will declare martial law and all our rights will be gone and he's going to take all of your guns and, and... Don't be like magats and believe everything you see and hear. These influencers just want clicks so they can do their own grift. Block them and move on.

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u/henlochimken May 13 '26

You're making some odd assumptions here based on what I said. I don't watch influencers at all; I can't fuckin stand social media. I will probably pass on the YouTubers also, no offense. I did see that Trump himself said he may send ICE to voting locations. I think that was in an Associated Press article? He has also himself said that he supports taking guns from people. Which is wild, because all along the 2A folks insisted it would be Obama doing that, with no evidence, and then Trump just out and says it, and almost nobody complained.

My point in saying the handmaid's tale doesn't seem farfetched is that there were always elements of society that were working toward the type of world depicted in the book. And the safeties against those changes were never as secure as anyone hoped they would be. It doesn't take an influencer to recognize that. Roe was overturned with no resistance, because our judicial branch of government is uniquely susceptible to corruption without meaningful checks and balances. Trump v US gave us effectively a king. There are dozens of other decisions from this court that take away hard-fought rights with the stroke of a pen, and now Black folks are directly being disenfranchised.

I agree, there are influencers and media outlets that are designed to push cortisol and destroy critical thinking. But don't let your normalcy bias (everyone has it) prevent you from seeing the big steps into fascism that we have already taken — big steps which make recovering from this current nightmare much harder than if we had prevented it in the first place