The Canary in the Tennessee Coal Mine

Indifference and lassitude can be the death of this country.

This is a guest post by my friend and fellow University of Texas Law graduate, Mark Pulliam. Mark addresses the looming danger posed by the special election in middle Tennessee’s TN-7 congressional district and the risks posed by the Tennessee GOP’s ineptitude and potential voter lassitude in off-year special elections. I have appended a short note of my own at the end of Mark’s article.

Apocalypse Now?

NOVEMBER 30, 2025 BY MARK PULLIAM

Has the cultural rot evident in blue states spread to Tennessee? The December 2 special election in TN-7 is a canary in the coal mine.

I am not prone to doomsday thinking, but neither am I unrealistically optimistic. When President Trump won the election for a second term (against overwhelming odds) in 2024, I understood that the nation had not been “saved” from the radical Left’s destructive policies; we had merely gotten a reprieve. Still, events this year, since Trump 2.0 took office, make me wonder if the polity is too divided, too debased, too indoctrinated, and too detached from “traditional American values” to survive as a democratic republic committed to the rule of law. For the first time in my life, I am concerned about the survival of the United States—not from a foreign threat, but from within.

In other words, I fear that the reprieve delivered in November 2024 may have been short-lived. A special election in Middle Tennessee’s TN-7 scheduled for Tuesday, December 2, pitting Republican military veteran Matt Van Epps versus the radical Democrat Aftyn Behn (a former “community organizer” for the Soros-funded AstroTurf group Indivisible), may serve as a canary in the proverbial coal mine. The Nashville area congressional district has voted strongly Republican (by a 20+ point margin) in recent elections but at least one poll suggests that Behn is within striking distance.

The maniacal Aftyn Behn

The remarkable success of the Trump 2.0 agenda—particularly securing our borders and ending Biden’s insane immigration policies–should have assuaged some of the political opposition President Trump faced in 2020 and 2024. After four long years of disastrous national decline (and raging inflation) under Biden, support for MAGA should have increased when the public saw how quickly a strong leader could fix problems with resolute action. But it hasn’t. In fact, the Democrats have doubled-down in their embrace of illegal aliens and lawlessness in general.

Blue states and blue cities that had declared themselves “sanctuaries” for the millions of Third World invaders have now become the epicenter of a secession-like resistance to the enforcement of federal immigration law. Democrats’ frantic efforts to demonize, obstruct, and endanger ICE, with the active assistance of rogue judges, amount to an insurrection. Democrats seek to prevent the deportation of, and to grant de facto amnesty to, the millions of illegal aliens who flooded our borders under Biden—foiling our immigration laws. The only possible explanation is that Democrats hope to transform the electorate with Third World detritus, to whom they intend to grant de jureamnesty (and voting rights), thereby ensuring perpetual political control by presiding over the resulting welfare state.

This is not new—indeed, it has been going on for decades in California–but I had hoped the American public would rise up and oppose the Democrats’ Kevorkian-like national assisted suicide when it became apparent that importing the Third World was a conscious strategy to ruin America. Just look at the Somali enclaves in Minnesota and the Muslim enclaves in Michigan. They did not happen by accident. The massive influx of illegal aliens with foreign customs, attitudes, and beliefs—unwilling to assimilate and hostile to our culture–erodes the civic glue that binds us together as Americans. Thus, blue city voters elected a socialist pro-Palestinian Muslim as mayor of New York City, and the radical Left’s reaction to the assassination of a National Guard member by an unvetted Afghan refugee in the nation’s capital is to blame President Trump for deploying the National Guard.

Where is the outrage at widespread predation and fraud by foreign invaders?

The radical Left applauded the horrific assassination of Charlie Kirk (as they did the cold-blooded execution of healthcare executive Brian Thompson in NYC), while remaining mute as innocents are slaughtered or set on fire by repeat offenders while riding public transportation in Charlotte, North Carolina and Chicago. Two assassination attempts on President Trump (and one on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh) failed to convince Democrat officials that reckless political rhetoric (constantly comparing Republicans to Nazis, fascists, and even Hitler) was encouraging violence by unstable left-wing actors. Or perhaps that was the intended result.

Trump Derangement Syndrome has morphed into what Victor Davis Hanson calls “assassination chic.” Despite rampant urban crime in blue cities (especially Chicago), Democrat officials inexplicably oppose the use of federal resources to restore public safety, elevating the interests of violent criminals over those of their constituents. Yet, nearly half the nation’s voters support the Democrats’ ruinous policies.

Democrats’ lust for power is so strong that a half-dozen congressional lawmakers, dubbed the “Seditious Six,” recently did what was once unthinkable: They taped and released a video encouraging active-duty military personnel to question—and even defy—the chain of command if they disagreed with an order from their commander-in-chief. Fomenting insubordination–or worse, mutiny—in the military borders on sedition.

Blue state and blue city voters embrace campaign rhetoric and candidates that would have been anathema in the past. In Virginia, voters elected as attorney general a despicable candidate who openly fantasized about murdering a GOP colleague (and killing his children in front of their mother!). Avowed socialists—a label that until recently was fatal in American politics–were elected as mayor in NYC and Seattle. Woke billionaires such as George Soros and Reid Hoffman have poured enormous amounts of “dark” money into shadowy groups like Arabella Advisorsto influence elections.

The nation appears to be more polarized than ever before. Urban cohorts and younger voters are estranged from traditional American values and eagerly embrace radical policies such as open borders, amnesty for illegal aliens, socialism, transgender “treatment” for minors, defunding the police, eliminating cash bail, and even eliminating prisons. As late as 2024, red states residents comforted themselves that the “big sort” was creating two separate polities: coastal areas and urban centers would vote Democrat, and the rest of the country would vote Republican. Unfortunately, the cultural rot that has contaminated national politics is spreading to red states.

Which brings us back to Tuesday’s special election in TN-7. Republican Matt Van Epps is a fine candidate. He won the GOP primary 2-to-1 in a crowded field as a political novice. But special elections generate lower-than-usual voter turnout, especially when scheduled during the holidays. Republican voters in Tennessee have become complacent, the state GOP is weak and ineffective, and (thanks to certain noisy charlatans) internal divisions within the Republican ranks in Middle Tennessee have reduced the unity and enthusiasm that typically drive Republican voters to the polls.

Aftyn Behn is sometimes described as the “AOC of Tennessee,” but in reality she is far worse, and much more out-of-touch with her district. Behn, who is endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, is anti-police, anti-ICE, anti-motherhood, pro-trans, pro-abortion, and has publicly stated that she “hates” Nashville culture, including country music. She has had to be forcibly removed from the General Assembly and the Governor’s office due to unauthorized and unruly disruptions. She condemns Tennessee as “racist,” and has opposed marriage and child-bearing as the product of a “deeply patriarchal structure.” With a social work degree from the ultra-woke Steve Hicks School of Social Work at the University of Texas, Behn is a caricature of absurd left-wing posturing that is popular on social media but—at least in the past—toxic in Tennessee elections.

Aftyn Behn is a lunatic candidate espousing radical policies. The question is: Will Republican voters shake off their Thanksgiving torpor and show up to vote for Matt Van Epps on December 2? If Aftyn Behn, who makes AOC seem moderate (and well-adjusted) in comparison, wins on Tuesday, the MAGA agenda is in trouble, and so is America’s future. If Middle Tennessee goes woke, the rest of the country is not far behind.

Stay tuned.

Postscript: If, as I fervently hope, Matt Van Epps beats Aftyn Behn, the Republican leadership in Tennessee must overhaul the Tennessee Republican Party to focus on voter registration, voter turnout, grassroots organization, and messaging. It is pathetic that the RNC has had to take the lead in communicating with Republican voters in Tennessee.

Bravo Blue Note

Although Mark describes the GOP candidate, Matt Van Epps, as a “military veteran.” He also is a retired Lieutenant Colonel and a West Point graduate, Class of 2005.

In addition to her background that Mark notes, Aftyn Behn is a 2008 graduate of the Webb School of Knoxville (which three of my kids also attended, although one decided to transfer to a public high school after one year there). Although Behn’s allies in the “progressive” cult would describe Webb School as a “privileged and expensive private school” that inculcates “white privilege” in its graduates, I have seen zero mention of that in the media. Note that I’m not buying into that for all Webb School graduates, but it is the sort of attack on “white privilege” that has become commonplace among self-styled “progressives,” such as Behn.

Behn is well-financed. Reportedly, the majority of contributions to Van Epps’ campaign come from grassroots, small-dollar donors, much of the $1.2+ million that fuels Behn’s campaign comes from wealthy individuals and political action committees.

Voter turnout for this election will be a challenge, so for those of you who have friends in Tennessee, please consider forwarding this to them. Even if they do not live in TN-7, they may have friends who do.

And if you like Mark’s work as much as I do, you can see and subscribe to his blog at https://misruleoflaw.com/2025/11/30/apocalypse-now/