This Week in Statehouse Action: Wolverine-al Failure edition

This is close to a swear as Mike Pence will ever get

Republican legislators in key swing states still aren’t ruling out elector-related shenanigans designed to steal the election for Donald Trump, but there’s still a pandemic on, and a bunch of domestic terrorists just got arrested for plotting to overthrow Michigan’s government, so I’m going to shift focus a little this week.

To me, my statehouse action!

(But for real, the guy who wrote the law review article that inspired all of this and helped establish Pennsylvania as a potential Ground Zero for legislator-instigated elector-related constitutional crisis still thinks that this scenario is very much in play. And given what I’ve learned from working in and writing about state legislative politics for the past decade or so, I do, too.)

Anyway.

House of M: Michigan is hands-down the most action-packed state that hasn’t or isn’t about to play host to a vice/presidential debate.

• First, late last week, the state Supreme Court struck down Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s executive authority to issue emergency orders, which she’s of course been doing to help her state fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • The decision was 4-3, which matters because
    • Conservatives have a 4-3 majority on the court
    • The decision was straight along partisan lines
    • Progressives have a chance this fall to flip the Michigan Supreme Court to a 4-3 conservative minority.
• The retirement of a conservative justice has created an opportunity to shift the highest court in this key swing state away from the GOP.
  • Democrats have a lot of balls in the air right now for sure, but Republicans have a history of not sleeping on court elections.
  • Dems, on the other hand … have yet to really get their act together when it comes to investing in these incredibly important, high-stakes, and infrequent (state supreme court terms are at least six years; in Michigan, justices serve eight-year terms) races.
    • Daily Kos has endorsed progressive Michigan Supreme Court candidate Elizabeth Welch in this race, but it’s not clear that the Democratic establishment outside of the state is paying any attention at all.

le sigh

• So, the state Supreme Court’s ruling against Whitmer’s emergency executive powers last Friday threw her coronavirus-related orders into legal limbo.
  • The GOP-controlled legislature is meeting this week and next to take actions “to keep Michigan families safe from COVID-19.”

Good, right?

• But given that the Senate majority leader is opposed to a statewide mask requirement, and
• GOP House members are feigning outrage because the governor is working to help elect a Democratic majority to the state House (and never mind that Republican lawmakers have been fighting Whitmer on her coronavirus-related executive orders for many months already),
  • … the outlook for real progress on protecting the state from the pandemic looks less than rosy.

And this all brings us to Thursday, when 13 white guys (well …. probably white. I haven’t found an article yet that describes them as anything but, and in my experience, news outlets tend to not mention someone’s race unless they’re NOT white, in which case, they ALWAYS mention it. Please feel free to hit me up with any examples you find that contradict this) were charged for participating in an alleged domestic terrorism plot that involved kidnapping Michigan’s governor and possibly murdering her or other state leaders they perceived as “violating the U.S. Constitution.”

• And these weren’t just a bunch of disgruntled assholes.
  • These terrorists were members of Michigan “militias” (extreme anti-government groups).
  • They engaged in extensive planning and surveillance of the governor, the state capitol, her vacation home, and more.
  • They purchased weapons.
  • They wanted to start a civil war.
• After their arrests were announced Thursday, Whitmer tied these men to
  • Trump’s failure last week to condemn white supremacist (with which which Michigan’s militias have flirted) and extreme right-wing groups and
  • Trump’s tweeted encouragement to “LIBERATE MICHIGAN” earlier this year in response to protests of the governor’s coronavirus safety measures.
    • In response, the White House accused Whitmer of “sowing devision.”

Yes, let’s blame the victim

So, yeah, the Wolverine State is having a super normal one.

The Dark Keystone Saga: But just because Pennsylvania GOP legislative leaders aren’t currently, right at this moment, actively working to steal the state’s electors for Donald Trump, don’t think for a second there aren’t shenanigans afoot there.

• A shady resolution (read: Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf can’t veto it) establishing a “Select Committee on Election Integrity” charged with investigating and reviewing “the regulation and conduct of the 2020 general election” still awaits a full House floor vote, which it may get as soon as Oct. 19, when the legislature reconvenes.
  • This committee will be made up of three Republicans and two Democrats, has subpoena power, and is authorized to “prepare and file pleadings and other legal documents” (emphasis mine).

… like, say, a certificate of ascertainment for Trump’s electors ..?

• The subpoena and investigatory power the resolution endows this “Select Committee” with with the power to find supposed “facts” designed to demonstrate that the election was not run properly or fairly.
  • The resolution appeared “out of nowhere” on last week—literally a day after Trump claimed during the presidential debate (somehow that was JUST LAST WEEK) that “bad things happen in Philadelphia” (he also encouraged his supporters to intimidate voters at polls there, but that’s a whole other matter).
    • This resolution is also likely a response to a recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision that extended the deadline for receipt of ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 to three days after the election.
      • Pennsylvania Republicans are, naturally, appealing the hell out of this ruling.
• And speaking of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court …
  • One Keystone State GOPer is returning to a familiar Republican well when it comes to judicial rulings they don’t like: impeaching members of the court.
    • GOP state Rep. Frank Ryan introduced a resolution this week to impeach a member of the Democratic majority on the state Supreme court.
    • While the measure had 35 co-sponsors, it’s honestly unlikely to get traction before the end of this year’s session.
      • But it’s a helpful reminder of the lengths to which Pennsylvania Republicans will go in response to judicial decisions that don’t go their way.
        • GOP lawmakers have been after the state Supreme Court ever since it had the temerity to overturn and redraw the state’s extremely gerrymandered congressional map in early 2018.
          • First, Republicans moved to impeach the Democrats on Pennsylvania’s highest court.
            • That effort ultimately fizzled.
        • But late last year, Republicans embarked on a different route intended to end the tenures of justices they find disagreeable.
          • The GOP-controlled House passed a stand-alone proposed amendment to the state constitution that would allow lawmakers themselves to draw judicial districts for the state Supreme, Superior, and Commonwealth courts.
          • This proposal that would allow lawmakers to gerrymander the state’s highest court then went to the Senate, where it passed in mid-July.
          • Now it must pass both chambers again during the 2021-2022 legislative session.
          • … and then it will go before voters to be approved as a referendum.

But!

• If Democrats can flip one of Pennsylvania’s legislative chambers (28 R/21 D Senate, 109 R/92 D House [2 vacancies]) next month, this GOP power-grab will die a delicious and deserved death.

Age of Coronapocalypse: In Virginia, where lawmakers are still meeting in special session to deal with racial justice, police reform, and coronavirus-related budget issues, one Republican may have put her legislative colleagues in grave danger.

• State Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel attended the Rose Garden event announcing the nomination of conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court—an event now notorious for likely being responsible for numerous attendees’ subsequent COVID-19 diagnoses.
  • Just a couple of days after attending the gathering, at which photos reveal social distancing and mask-wearing guidelines were most definitely NOT followed, Vogel returned to Richmond for two days of in-person session with many of her Senate colleagues.
    • Vogel reports that she has since tested negative for COVID-19, but it’s not clear that those results came back before session last week—or that she even got tested before other Rose Garden event attendees’ coronavirus diagnoses came to light.
• Vogel’s not alone in placing her colleagues in unnecessary danger when it comes to the coronavirus.
  • In September, another Republican member of the Virginia General Assembly came under fire when news emerged that he’d informed his local church of his late-August COVID-19 diagnosis but had not warned his fellow lawmakers, despite the fact that he’d joined session in person during the period during which he may have been contagious.
  • And remember when Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania concealed their fellow GOPer’s coronavirus diagnosis from their Democratic colleagues?

… just something to bear in mind the next time Republicans rail about “transparency” and “good faith.”

Welp, that’s a wrap for this week. (Better than a rap, because my rhymes would be almost as bad as my puns, and better than a rap sheet, because we’re not white domestic terrorists who’ve been arrested for plotting to overthrow state governments, hm?)

Hang in there. We have a few laps yet to put behind us before we cross anything resembling a finish line in this election.

Maybe you’re tired.

Stressed.

Sick.

Sad.

Something else entirely.

Some unfortunate combination of any of those things.

I see you. And I hope you’ll do something to take care of yourself this week.

Because you’re important.

And we need you.