Among all the states in this country, standing as one of the most conservative, one of the most loyal to President Donald Trump and his right-wing agenda is Tennessee, where the state legislature’s GOP supermajority in Nashville and Republican Gov. Bill Lee have enacted into law numerous measures in alliance with the president’s cruel vision for our nation.
Since Trump’s inauguration, the legislature has funneled tax dollars into the administration’s mass deportation campaign; passed a pair of discriminatory laws against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI); and enacted, in an effort to privatize public education, a statewide school voucher program.
It’s all in service to a theocratic, exclusive vision for Tennessee, at the behest of Gov. Lee and his Christian nationalist agenda.
But as a term-limited official in his second stint as governor, Lee’s days in power are numbered. Seeking to replace him is someone who will take the Volunteer State further down the dangerous path of autocracy: U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn.
Announcing her gubernatorial candidacy this week, Blackburn’s political intentions as governor are quite clear. In her opening campaign ad, the senator lavished her dear leader Trump with praise, promised to define “boys and girls the way God made them,” and further lent her support toward the president’s effort to deport undocumented immigrants, “whether it takes planes, trains or starships.”