Tempest in teapot stirs over pro-Israel action
After talking to every person in Memphis — all 628,127 of them to be exact — House Speaker Cameron Sexton wants to oust District Attorney Steve Mulroy over complaints about juvenile crime.
Sexton, a Crossville Republican, acknowledges he would have to talk to Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti to determine whether Mulroy’s indiscretions reach a high enough level to be booted. He hasn’t quite hit impeachment level yet, but Sexton has a hankering.
“The bar is high. If you cross that bar, there’s a possibility,” says Sexton, who first discussed the idea in a telephone town hall in August around the governor’s special session.
The fact he’s even broaching the matter only a year after Mulroy took office is a little odd, especially without a clear refusal by the DA to enforce a certain law, based on legislation the General Assembly passed to hammer Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk two years ago.
Sexton, who sponsored that measure, acknowledges district attorney generals have a bit of discretion but could be “derelict” in their duty.
And based in part on a visit to Shelby County this week, Sexton is almost ready to try to get rid of Mulroy, a Democrat who defeated Republican Amy Weirich in the 2022 election.
“The amount of people that I met with who said that juvenile crime is on the rise and it’s a problem is astronomical. To have a DA down there who says juvenile crime is not running amuck tells you, is he not listening to the people, does he not see it … if everybody else sees it, the carjackings and everything else,” Sexton says.
The speaker also says he’s talking to Memphis leaders about putting surveillance cameras throughout the downtown area to deter crime because of increases in break-ins, etc., mainly by juveniles.
“That’s on Mulroy. That’s on law enforcement to track ’em down and put ’em in jail and charge ’em. There has to be some accountability,” he says.
Sexton says he will continue to work with downtown business owners because he wants a “vibrant” Memphis and looks forward to working with Mayor-elect Paul Young to curtail crime.
Yet asked if he has any statistics showing juvenile crime increases, as opposed to anecdotal information, Sexton says, “Anecdotal, when you talk to every resident in Memphis and business owner, I don’t think is anecdotal. I think that … comes back to me as factual.”
Further, Sexton says, “What you have is you have so much juvenile crime that all of them are being arrested or being charged. And so we’ll continue to look at it. But it is a problem.”
He contends juvenile crime is bleeding into Tipton and other counties as well.
But wait a second, either they’re being arrested and prosecuted or they’re not. Which is it?
Also, statistics from police officials show Memphis gun thefts from vehicles started escalating well before Mulroy won election. They jumped to 2,740 in 2022 (a year split between Weirich and Mulroy) from 2,254 in 2021, 1,459 in 2020 and 1,159 in 2019. During the first three months of 2023, Memphis had 605 gun thefts from vehicles.
Clearly, Memphis and Shelby County have a problem. Some might say those increases coincide with the permit-less carry law passed in 2021, encouraging every numbskull with a pistol to store it in the car console or under the seat when they go into a bar to have a beer.
Mulroy declined comment Thursday.
The DA’s Office prosecutes petitions in the Juvenile Court and the judge decides the best treatment. In heinous cases, prosecutors can ask to transfer a child to Criminal Court for prosecution as an adult.
State Rep. G.A. Hardaway scoffs at Sexton’s notion.
The Memphis Democrat considers it the “same type of dysfunction and sleight of hand” that goes on in Washington, D.C. with the House Speaker’s race there.
“I don’t know why we’re trying to make up stories about Mulroy and pull out legislative processes, which in essence, interfere with the people’s choices to address crime,” Hardaway says. (The dreaded overreach.)
He argues that decades of leadership under Republicans in the DA’s office led to record-setting crime data for juveniles and other perpetrators.
“Unless I’ve missed his effort to impeach Amy Weirich, I’m mighty skeptical that he’s really that concerned about what’s going on in Memphis and Shelby County merely on merit,” Hardaway says. “It’s starting to look like the beginning of the governor’s race.”
Pronounced partisanship
Tennessee lawmakers love to talk about working across the aisle — except when they don’t — and the situation surrounding the Israel-Hamas appears to be no different.
Republicans and Democrats are battling over support for Israel as it responds to an attack from the Gaza Strip.
The kerfuffle started when Rep. John Ray Clemmons sent a pro-Israel letter to the entire General Assembly and gave members 24 hours to sign on, leading some Republicans such as Sens. Mark Pody and Becky Massey and Reps. Sam Whitson, Scott Cepicky, Dan Howell, Kevin Raper, Chris Hurt, Kelly Keisling, Lowell Russell and Charlie Baum to join him.
Clemmons sent the letter to Gov. Bill Lee and the state’s federal delegation in a request they provide aid and support to Israel and assist families of American victims who remain there.
“While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been and continues to be complicated and nuanced, terrorism targeting innocent civilians is clearly nothing short of abhorrent and barbaric,” Clemmons’ letter says. “The assaults, murders and kidnapping being carried out by Hamas terrorists constitute a direct threat to Israeli democracy and the regional and international peace for which many strive and work so hard.”
Over the last three days, Israel has bombed Gaza into oblivion. One wonders whether the Israelis or Palestinians give a whit about the machinations of the Tennessee General Assembly.
But since that’s what we cover, here’s a little more.
House Speaker Sexton and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally put together their own proclamation Tuesday condemning Hamas’ “heinous and unprovoked” attack on a trusted U.S. ally, leading to the deaths of hundreds of people, including American citizens, and the kidnapping of many more.
Their proclamation, though, initially contained only the signatures of House Republicans, no Democrats and no senators of any stripe. They put it on the X.
Clemmons says he and Minority Leader Karen Camper didn’t receive the Sexton-McNally proclamation to join until 1:50 Wednesday, and even though he responded immediately to the clerk’s office asking to be added, his and other’s names didn’t make the cut. He isn’t happy.
“What this blatant and incredibly inappropriate act of partisanship tends to indicate to me is that the TN GOP’s professed support for Israel and people of the Jewish faith begins and ends with politics,” says Clemmons, whose wife is Jewish. “That is absolutely heartbreaking to me. To think that we witnessed the largest mass killing of Jews since the Holocaust and some of my Republican colleagues’ number one priority is partisan politics and political posturing is sickening.”
Asked about the matter Thursday, Sexton says Clemmons and Democratic Rep. Caleb Hemmer would be added to the proclamation, and they were, according to an X post. Maybe that makes it ex post facto.
Sexton, however, declined to sign Clemmons’ letter and characterized it as “a little soft,” because it called the “attack” an “assault” and the “war” a “conflict.”
“And then I felt like we needed to go further and … have a voice to allow Israel to defend themselves by whatever means is necessary,” Sexton says.
No doubt this tussle will bring an end to a feud that’s been going on since the time of Abraham.
Getting in on the action
The Tennessee Equality Project and American Civil Liberties Union have sued the city of Murfreesboro over an ordinance and policy they claim was designed to stop the BoroPride Festival. It’s a similar situation to the state’s new law prohibiting kids from seeing drag shows.
That means Tennessee has legal challenges of anti-LGBTQ laws in all three grand divisions. We sure wouldn’t want to leave anyone out of the loop.
The city refused to approve BoroPride’s permit for Cannonsburgh Village and passed an ordinance in June restricting “indecent behavior” that could be “harmful to minors.” The group later worked with MTSU to hold the event.
Chris Sanders, executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project, says the latest ordinance is connected to another city code about homosexuality.
While city officials may claim the situation is being blown out of proportion, it must be noted the city approved a permit in 2017 for League of the South when officials said they had no other option.
They didn’t exactly make the league — hate group — feel welcome, erecting fencing around the Public Square and hiring every law officer within 200 miles to provide security.
It wound up being a neo-Nazi no-show because the group went to Shelbyville earlier in the day, spouted off for a while, then heard about the police force in Murfreesboro and went home.
Only a few jackballs showed up to support Southern secession. And you know who was there covering the whole ordeal, standing out in the cold while sick as a dog.
It’s always good to see the underbelly of America turn out, though, even if it’s just a handful of imbeciles. And we can thank Murfreesboro leaders – and former President Donald Trump — for giving them a platform while shutting out LGBTQ folks.
Get me out of here
The Federal Education Funding Working Group (short for We Hate the Feds Except When We Want Money) is set to hold seven meetings from Nov. 6 through Nov. 15 at Cordell Hull to make a recommendation on whether to continue accepting around $1.8 billion in federal education funds.
The group is the brainchild of Speaker Sexton, who early this year espoused rejecting federal education money because of the string attached. And so far Lt. Gov. McNally is going along with it, although the state gladly accepting billions in federal COVID-19 money in 202o and 2021?
Members of the group are Sen. Jon Lundberg, chairman of Senate Education, Sen. Raumesh Akbari, who opposes the idea, Sen. Joey Hensley, Sen. Bill Powers, Sen. Dawn White, Rep. Debra Moody, Rep. John Ragan, Rep. Timothy Hill (just re-elected), Rep. William Slater and Rep. Ronnie Glynn. Akbari and Glynn are the only Democrats.
No doubt, it will be super-scintillating sensational. The only thing I can say is: Thank God I’m having a hip replacement and will miss the first session.
“You better call up the ambulance. I’m deep in shock.”*
(*Van Halen II)
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Sam Stockard is a veteran Tennessee reporter and editor, having written for the Daily News Journal in Murfreesboro, where he served as lead editor when the paper won an award for being the state’s best Sunday newspaper two years in a row. He has led the Capitol Hill bureau for The Daily Memphian. His awards include Best Single Editorial from the Tennessee Press Association.
This article in this post was originally published on Tennessee Lookout and parts of it are included here under a Creative Commons license CC BY-ND 4.0
