This Week in Statehouse Action: Suicide Squad edition

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The result looked more like a Donald Trump rally than anything else, as many risk-loving demonstrators paraded on foot with flags and Trump campaign paraphernalia.
- At least two confederate flags made an appearance.
- The protest even featured a “lock her up” chant in reference to Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, whose decisive action to protect Michiganders from coronavirus and refusal to kiss Trump’s ass has drawn the ire of the president.
But possibly the most dangerous aspect of the pro-coronavirus protest is the fact that Republican members of the legislature, many of whom initially backed Whitmer’s moves to combat the spread of the pandemic, are now echoing far-right Trumpist rhetoric in criticizing those measures.

The GOP is a death cult

Unfortunately, Republicans’ criticisms of Whitmer have the potential to become damning legislative action in the near future.

I guess we’ll see soon enough just how much the Republican majority cares about the deaths of folks in Detroit, where 79% of the residents are Black and and more than 80% of Michigan’s coronavirus cases are located.

In Pennsylvania, where there have been over 746 deaths and over 25,000 cases of COVID-19 since the outbreak began, Republicans in the legislature are taking extraordinary steps to endanger their fellow Keystone Staters.

This week, the GOP-controlled legislature abruptly brought a bill to the floor to override Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s stay-at-home order.

The GOP is a death cult

House Republicans couldn’t even keep all of their members in line to vote on the clearly partisan rebuke to the Democratic governor.
- Two GOP members representing the Philadelphia suburbs, which is dealing with thousands of coronavirus cases and where hundreds have died, voted against the measure.
- It passed the Senate on a strict party-line vote.
Democrats correctly blasted the legislation as premature and unsafe.
Wolf is certain to veto the legislation, and Republican lawmakers lack the votes necessary to override it.

While a lot of the opposition to state-imposed coronavirus safety measures is GOP legislature-on-Democratic governor violence, so to speak, Republican governors who are playing insufficiently fast and loose with people’s lives and health are also coming under fire from members of their own party.

Take, for instance, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine.

DeWine took swift and decisive action to halt the spread of the coronavirus in his state, including being among the first nine states in the nation to issue a statewide stay-at-home order.
- At one point, models in Ohio forecasted 10,000 new cases a day, but recent models put that number closer to 1,600 at the peak later in April.
- But instead of grasping the extremely basic concept of the forecast improving because the governor’s mitigation measures had the desired effect, GOP Rep. J. Todd Smith (no word on whether or not the J stands for Jerk) is complaining that “the data is not matching up to what we were told would happen.”
  - Because of that, according to Smith, “There should be some thought to rescinding some of these restrictions. What’s happening to our economy is actually more harmful than the lives that are being lost.”
    - So … the Republican argument is that the mitigation measures are working, so let’s stop doing the things that are working.

The GOP is a death cult

In Minnesota, members of the GOP-controlled state Senate (Democrats have a majority in the House) have lashed out at Democratic Gov. Tim Waltz’s anti-coronavirus measures via Twitter.

Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka tweeted, “I do not approve of the Governor’s unilateral decision to continue the order to shelter at home until May 4th. We have to get on with our lives.”
Republican Sen. Jim Abeler added, “Many [businesses] should have never been closed in the first place. Tragically some of those are gone for good. Unnecessary collateral damage in the Covid War.”

The GOP is a death cult

And you may recall the Kansas kerfuffle I wrote about in this space last week.

Shortly before Easter, Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly issued an executive order expanding an earlier one that banned gatherings of more than 10 people to end an exemption for religious gatherings and funerals.
- In light of the fact that at least three instances of coronavirus community spread in the state are attributable to church services—a quarter of the known COVID-19 clusters in the state, this was a smart move on her part.
Enter the GOP, who apparently had no problem putting Kansans at risk of coronavirus exposure in the name of sticking it to the governor. Or religion. Or whatever.
- Members of the Legislative Coordinating Council voted along party lines to overturn the new executive order, which not only demonstrated Republicans’ utter contempt for both the governor and public safety, but also created confusion about the validity of the previous executive order banning gatherings of more than 10 people.
- Gov. Kelly immediately filed a lawsuit with the Kansas Supreme Court challenging the LCC’s authority to overturn executive orders.
Well, some good news for a change: The Court ruled in Kelly’s favor.
- Specifically, it ruled that the LCC does not have the authority to overturn a governor’s executive order—something that could make Kelly’s ongoing fight against the spread of coronavirus in her state a little easier in the face of a hostile, GOP-controlled legislature.

And speaking of state Supreme Courts, another item from last week worth closing the loop on: That chaotic Wisconsin Supreme Court election.

The April 7 contest was held after a wild couple of weeks of legal and political back-and-forths in multiple venues—and amid a goddamn pandemic.
- After Democratic Gov. Tony Evers issued a last-minute order last week seeking to postpone the election, the conservatives on the state Supreme Court quickly quashed it, forcing Wisconsinites to choose between exercising their right to vote and protecting their health.
- An extreme shortage of poll workers led to excessively long lines in the few precincts that were able to open.
  - And adding to the confusion, conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a federal judge’s ruling in a separate case that extended the deadline to return absentee ballots.
  - SCOTUS instead mandating that they be postmarked by Election Day, April 7—a decision that disenfranchised an untold number of voters, including some who only received ballots after the deadline and others whose ballots, for a variety of reasons, failed to receive a postmark.
But despite Republicans’ best efforts to use the coronavirus pandemic as a voter suppression tactic, progressive Circuit Court Judge Jill Karofsky successfully unseated Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly in a key race that will narrow the court’s conservative majority in this crucial swing state.
- The win—a whopping 11-point romp—also sets progressives up to take control of the court when its next member is up for election.
  - While it remains unconscionable that Wisconsinites had to risk their health and safety to cast ballots because Republicans will stoop to basically any available low to keep people from voting, it’s heartening to see the GOP’s use of coronavirus as a voter suppression tactic backfire on them.