Vice President Kamala Harris has made a last-minute trip to Tennessee to support two Democratic lawmakers who were expelled by the Republican-controlled state House for their role in a protest following a deadly school shooting in Nashville. Harris on Friday called for background checks and an assault weapons ban. She also condemned the GOP lawmakers as anti-democratic. The two ejected lawmakers had called for more gun control during a rally, and a third Democrat was narrowly spared by a one-vote margin. Harris said they were being silenced and stifled for standing up for the lives of schoolchildren. Harris received wild applause and several standing ovations as she told a crowd at Nashville’s historically Black Fisk University that the so-called Tennessee Three — ousted Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson and a third Democrat, Gloria Johnson, who avoided expulsion by a single vote — were being, in her words, silenced and stifled for standing up for the lives of schoolchildren. Friday's visit comes after President Joe Biden called the expulsions “shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent.” The White House also said Friday afternoon that Biden spoke with Jones, Pearson and Johnson via conference call, thanking them “for their leadership in seeking to ban assault weapons and standing up for our democratic values.” The oustings of Jones and Pearson drew accusations of racism. Johnson, who is white, was allowed to continue to serve in the chamber. Republican leadership denied that race was a factor. GOP leaders said Thursday’s actions — used only a handful times since the Civil War — were necessary to avoid setting a precedent that lawmakers’ disruptions of House proceedings through protest would be tolerated. Most state legislatures retain the power to expel members, but it is generally a rarely used punishment for lawmakers accused of serious misconduct.