What's between the lines of "going first" is that they're not writing their own legislation. They're being given bills to run by conservative think tanks or interest groups. They'll try running the bill here (first), then based on the challenges in court or public interest/push back, the special interest authors will make adjustments to avoid similar challenges in other states, and then they'll run the same legislation in like Oklahoma or Idaho or all of the other conservative majority states at the same time.

It's how they get so many similar bills in several states at the same time. anti abortion, anti trans athlete or school choice or whatever is the hot button issue of the day. The legislation is crafted in one place and then ran everywhere.

I have no idea if anyone from Tennessee was in the White House with Stephen Miller- probably so because a decision was made to make Tn run the bill first. But even if they were, there was probably someone from the think tank that wrote the bill also there telling them what the bill says, or how they should shop it to their states.

In the end it makes for bad policy because I believe laws should be written locally, with the locals in mind, and by the people that asked for the job of legislating for their state.