Political polarization is increasingly reflected in state laws, and the specifics are … telling, as is the media’s treatment of it.
“After the governor of Texas ordered state agencies to investigate parents for child abuse if they provide certain medical treatments to their transgender children, California lawmakers proposed a law making the state a refuge for transgender youths and their families,” The New York Times reports. “When Idaho proposed a ban on abortions that empowers relatives to sue anyone who helps terminate a pregnancy after six weeks, nearby Oregon approved $15 million to help cover the abortion expenses of patients from out-of-state.”
Unfortunately, the Times doesn’t understand how a lot of the worst Republican laws work, writing, “The moves, in an election year, have raised questions about the extent to which they are performative, as opposed to substantial. Some Republican bills are bold at first glance but vaguely worded. Some appear designed largely to energize base voters.”
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The vagueness is part of the point. It gives Republicans semi-plausible deniability—plausible to some reporters, anyway—that their laws were meant to intimidate or harm the people they were definitely meant to intimidate or harm. But teachers in states that have passed broad but vague prohibitions on teaching about race that might upset white people have explained that the vagueness of those laws makes them even more scary, because no one knows quite what is or isn’t allowed, leaving teachers at risk from basically any complaint, no matter how ridiculous.
As the Times headline has it, red states and blue states may be moving further apart, but the big moves are almost all on one side.
The overall effect of the recent polarization of state lawmaking is that Republican state lawmakers are passing brutally restrictive laws targeting vulnerable people, and Democratic state lawmakers are trying to mitigate the harm. That’s a worthy goal, but Democrats should stop playing defense and pass more laws actively making life better for people.
Putting the right to an abortion in state law, as Colorado and Vermont have recently done, is an important and necessary response to the Supreme Court’s anticipated overturning of Roe v. Wade. But making sure a right that’s existed for nearly 50 years isn’t rolled back isn’t exactly moving anyone forward. Some other states have expanded access. But every blue state should be doing that.
California Democrats are moving to protect abortion providers and transgender teens from legal attacks coming from other states, and are planning to copy the structure of the Texas abortion bounty hunter law to crack down on ghost guns and assault weapons.
Protecting reproductive rights, legislating equality for LGBTQ people, strengthening gun laws, and bolstering voting rights—all things that Democratic state lawmakers have moved to do as those values have come under attack in Republican-controlled states—are important. But Democrats could do more. Just nine states and Washington, D.C., have paid family leave, with the Maryland legislature having passed a bill and getting ready to override a veto from Republican Gov. Larry Hogan.
(One type of state law that isn’t purely partisan despite being a progressive priority is raising the minimum wage: Arkansas, Florida, and Missouri are among several red states with minimum wages well above the federal level of $7.25 an hour. But preemption laws prohibiting cities and counties from raising their minimum wages are a common red state phenomenon, and both Arkansas and Florida have those, too.)
When it comes to passing their agenda, Republicans are fearless. They just go for it on the absolute worst they can come up with. Democrats need to be equally fearless when it comes to promoting equality and a fair economy.