Tennessee lawmakers race through special session
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The Tennessee State Capitol. Photo: David Underwood/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Tennessee lawmakers are poised to wrap up their special session Thursday after quickly advancing controversial measures to expand school vouchers and ramp up the state's participation in President Trump's immigration crackdown.
Why it matters: The rules of the special session allowed lawmakers to limit debate and push legislation through committees in a matter of days. The normal process would have taken weeks or months to complete.
State of play: Measures allocating Hurricane Helene relief funding to East Tennessee advanced with bipartisan support. But other bills approved this week spurred moments of intense criticism and protest.
- On Wednesday, state troopers carried some protesters of the immigration bill out of a hearing room.
🍎 School vouchers have been Gov. Bill Lee's top priority for years now. After years of false starts, his vision for statewide voucher expansion is on the verge of becoming law.
- Trump and Sen. Marsha Blackburn threw their support behind the effort this week.
Zoom in: The plan will allow parents across the state to use taxpayer money to pay for private school tuition. Up to 20,000 students will be able to participate.
- Public school officials around Tennessee have been critical of the plan, saying it will pull money away from their districts. The latest version of the plan sought to blunt that criticism by adding funding for public school maintenance.
- Teachers at public schools will get a one-time $2,000 bonus, but only if their districts publicly opt in.
The intrigue: Another criticism lobbed at voucher expansion was that it amounts to a state-funded coupon for families that can already afford to send their kids to private school, rather than opening doors for poor families.
- A legislative fiscal review estimated that nearly two thirds of the vouchers allocated in the first year will go to students who already attend private schools.
🚨 Immigration was a surprising addition to the special session. The sprawling $20.5 million immigration bill advanced by the Republican supermajority is built around Trump's plans for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
Friction point: One prong of that bill would make it a felony for local elected officials to vote in favor of so-called sanctuary policies that protect undocumented immigrants. Democrats and at least one Republican have blasted that provision, saying elected officials should not be penalized for how they vote.
- A legislative attorney said that element of the bill "may be constitutionally suspect," according to the Tennessee Lookout.