Prominent ex-Tennessee lawmaker dies after jet ski accident

Roy Herron, a longtime Tennessee state lawmaker and former chairperson of the state Democratic Party, died Sunday from injuries sustained in a jet ski accident. He was 69.

Herron died at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, according to a statement from his family. He had been hospitalized since a July 1 collision with another jet ski on Kentucky Lake, in which he suffered internal bleeding and extensive injuries to his arm and pelvis, according to his family’s Caring Bridge website.

The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency was investigating the collision, the details of which were not immediately available.

“Roy loved his family with all his might,” Herron’s wife, Rev. Nancy Carol Miller-Herron, said. “He passed doing what he loved most — spending time with our sons and their friends in the Tennessee outdoors where his spirit was always most free.”

Herron, an attorney from Dresden, Tennessee, served a combined 26 years in the state’s House and Senate, where he became floor leader and caucus chair for the Democrats. He never missed a day of session, except for when his youngest son was born, according to his website. He chaired the state Democratic Party from 2013 to 2015.

A graduate of the University of Tennessee at Martin, Herron was also one of the first students to earn joint degrees in divinity and law from Vanderbilt University. An ordained Methodist minister, Herron also authored three books, including one titled, “God and Politics: How Can a Christian Be in Politics?”

Funeral services were planned for Saturday at First United Methodist Church in Martin.

Condolences poured in on Sunday. On Twitter, former Vice President Al Gore called his fellow Tennessee Democrat “a dear friend and one of Tennessee’s most devoted citizens.” Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen called Herron “bright, diligent, and honest. A politician destined for greatness.” Republican Rep. David Kustoff said Herron ”dedicated his life to serving West Tennessee, and the entire Volunteer State.”

Tennessee House Republican Caucus Chairman Jeremy Faison said on Twitter he was “the kind of guy that you couldn’t help but like.”

Joe Hill, a longtime Tennessee Democratic political operative who worked with Herron on multiple campaigns, said he “brought a zeal for making health care more accessible to disadvantaged Tennesseans” when he was elected to the state House. Hill said he also brought that commitment to “education, victims’ rights, environmental quality and so many other things that affect average people.”

“His legacy of advocating for ‘the least among us’ will represent the gold standard of service for Democrats and Republicans in Tennessee’s future,” Hill told The Associated Press on Sunday.

That nature applied to Herron’s friendships as well, Hill said. He recalled how Herron drove 140 miles to be with him and his family in Memphis, after one of Hill’s children was involved in a car crash.

“We left home in such a hurry and didn’t bring extra clothes,” Hill said. “My wife, Susan, was freezing in the cold hospital waiting room, and Roy gave her his shirt so she could be warm. That’s the kind of genuine human being he was.”

In 2010, after briefly running for governor, Herron became the Democratic nominee in Tennessee’s 8th Congressional District, when then-Rep. John Tanner announced his retirement, after more than 20 years in the seat. Herron ultimately lost the general election to Republican Stephen Fincher.

“I was hoping when I retired, that he would win the seat,” Tanner told the AP on Sunday.

After a tornado devastated his hometown of Dresden just before Christmas in 2021, Herron marshaled a fundraising effort, amassing more than $100,000 to aid recovery efforts.

“It’s an overused term — that he was a dedicated public servant — but that really was Roy,” Tanner said. “He worked tirelessly for causes that he took up, and he had a good heart.”

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Judge dismisses lawsuit seeking reparations for 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

An Oklahoma judge has thrown out a lawsuit seeking reparations for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, dashing an effort to obtain some measure of legal justice by survivors of the deadly racist rampage.

Judge Caroline Wall on Friday dismissed with prejudice the lawsuit trying to force the city and others to make recompense for the destruction of the once-thriving Black district known as Greenwood.

The order comes in a case initiated by three survivors of the attack, who are all now over 100 years old and who sued in 2020 with the hope of seeing what their attorney called “justice in their lifetime.”

Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum said in a statement that the city has yet to receive the full court order. “The city remains committed to finding the graves of 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre victims, fostering economic investment in the Greenwood District, educating future generations about the worst event in our community’s history, and building a city where every person has an equal opportunity for a great life,” he said.

A lawyer for the survivors — Lessie Benningfield Randle, Viola Fletcher and Hughes Van Ellis — did not say Sunday whether they plan to appeal. But a group supporting the lawsuit suggested they are likely to challenge Wall’s decision.

“Judge Wall effectively condemned the three living Tulsa Race Massacre Survivors to languish — genuinely to death — on Oklahoma’s appellate docket,” the group, Justice for Greenwood, said in a statement. “There is no semblance of justice or access to justice here.”

Wall, a Tulsa County District Court judge, wrote in a brief order that she was tossing the case based on arguments from the city, regional chamber of commerce and other state and local government agencies. She had ruled against the defendants’ motions to dismiss and allowed the case to proceed last year.

Local judicial elections in Oklahoma are technically nonpartisan, but Wall has described herself as a “Constitutional Conservative” in past campaign questionnaires.

The lawsuit was brought under Oklahoma’s public nuisance law, saying the actions of the white mob that killed hundreds of Black residents and destroyed what had been the nation’s most prosperous Black business district continue to affect the city today.

It contended that Tulsa’s long history of racial division and tension stemmed from the massacre, during which an angry white mob descended on a 35-block area, looting, killing and burning it to the ground. Beyond those killed, thousands more were left homeless and living in a hastily constructed internment camp.

The city and insurance companies never compensated victims for their losses, and the massacre ultimately resulted in racial and economic disparities that still exist today, the lawsuit argued. It sought a detailed accounting of the property and wealth lost or stolen in the massacre, the construction of a hospital in north Tulsa and the creation of a victims compensation fund, among other things.

A Chamber of Commerce attorney previously said that the massacre was horrible, but the nuisance it caused was not ongoing.

Fletcher, who is 109 and the oldest living survivor, released a memoir last week about the life she lived in the shadow of the massacre. It will become widely available for purchase in August.

In 2019, Oklahoma’s attorney general used the public nuisance law to force opioid drug maker Johnson & Johnson to pay the state $465 million in damages. The Oklahoma Supreme Court overturned that decision two years later.

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Social media companies beware: Governor says lawsuits coming in Utah

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said Sunday he is getting ready to sue social media companies for the harm caused to his state's young people.

“In the coming months, you will see lawsuits being filed by the state of Utah to hold them accountable,” Cox, a Republican, said during an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“We believe they’ve known about the dangers, some of this has been leaked out, Meta and others, very clear evidence that they knew the harms that their products were causing to kids, and that they intentionally tried to hide that information.”

Cox signed legislation earlier this year that sets limits on the ways minors are able to use social media. The laws, which will take effect next year, set a digital curfew on social media users younger than 18, require minors to get parental consent to sign up for accounts and demand social media companies verify the ages of users in Utah.

The laws are the first of their kind in the U.S., though Cox has acknowledged that they will be difficult to enforce — and could face legal challenges.

“I suspect that at some point, the Supreme Court will weigh in on this decision when it comes to restricting youth access,” he said Sunday.

"What we're trying to do is give families more control over what is happening on social media. When you when you look at the new research that's coming out, there's not just a correlation between social media use and an increase in suicide, anxiety, depression, self-harm, there is a causal link there.”

The goal, he added, is to give parents and kids more control over their experiences with social media, by “making these social media companies turn off the algorithms that we know are driving so much of this harmful addiction.”

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Yellen says China talks productive at end of Beijing trip

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Yellen, the second Biden administration official to visit the country in the last few weeks, said conversations with her counterparts were “direct, substantive and productive.” The talks covered the U.S.-China economic relationship, national security, climate change and global debt challenges.

The big takeaway as Yellen prepared to leave Beijing: The U.S. believes the world’s two largest economies can have a constructive relationship despite their geopolitical tensions, which have included export controls for high-tech goods.

While she said the U.S. will continue to take actions to protect its national security interests, Yellen and President Joe Biden believe there can be “healthy economic competition” between the U.S. and China — “an economic relationship that is mutually beneficial in the long term.”

“I do believe that it’s possible for both countries to be attentive to and to take actions to protect their national security interests,” she said.

The major win from Yellen’s visit appeared to be a willingness on the part of both sides to keep talking after years of escalating tensions over trade and security. Yellen said the trip was an opportunity for U.S. officials and a new economic team in Beijing to “establish a desire and willingness to work together to discuss issues where we have disagreements and see deeper engagement on the part of our staffs.”

Yellen's trip included meetings with Vice Premier He Lifeng and People’s Bank of China Head Pan Gongsheng.

“Certainly, I expect our staffs to be in much more regular communication about the full range of issues that we discussed that require greater work,” she said.

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