PAYBACK

Tennessee GOP Strips Money from Memphis for Removing Confederate Monuments

One Republican lawmaker compared officials to ISIS for taking down Civil War relics.

Republican state lawmakers in Tennessee punished the City of Memphis on Tuesday for taking down Confederate monuments by stripping $250,000 away from an upcoming bicentennial celebration, the AP reported. The amendment was added to a state House appropriations bill. “You remove money from a city because we removed your God from our grounds,” Rep. Antonio Parkinson said. Last year, Memphis officials removed a bust of a Confederate soldier and statues of Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest and Confederate President Jefferson Davis after selling public parks to a nonprofit, a move that jumped through a legal loophole. A state Republican said Memphis deserved punishment for removing Confederate relics and added “that’s what ISIS does.”