The U.S. Survived A Civil War, World Wars, Depressions, Assassinations... But Will It Survive Donald Trump? Case: Wisconsin

On Wednesday, Wisconsin reported 291 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19, bringing state state's total to 10,902-- and 3 new deaths, boringly that total to 421. Is that a lot, a little? Well, there are 1,872 cases per million, which isn't good-- and that's been increasing. On Wednesday there were another 373 new cases confirmed, bringing the total to 11,275 and, worse, the cases per million to 1,936.

Nearly 100 of those cases came when the Republican-dominated legislature, backed by the same Republican-dominated Supreme Court overturned Governor Tony Evers' order to postpone the state primary, thereby forcing Wisconsinites to vote in person. Dozens of poll workers and voters began being diagnosed with COVID.

Voters defeated one of those right-wing extremist judges who was on the ballot, Daniel Kelly, replacing him with Democrat Jill Karofsky. But this week, Kelly was still on the court and got his revenge on the state, as the key vote to overturn Evers' extension of his stay at home order until May 26, again, at the request of the right-wing extremists in the state legislature. NY Times reporter Neil Vigdor wrote that the court ruled that "Wisconsin’s top health official had not followed the proper process in setting the strict limits for residents. Although the opinion centered on the technical method by which the limits had been set, several conservative justices conveyed their dismay at the restrictions themselves. 'This comprehensive claim to control virtually every aspect of a person’s life is something we normally associate with a prison, not a free society governed by the rule of law,' Justice Daniel Kelly wrote in a concurring opinion.

The ruling, Mr. Evers’s office said, appears to immediately end statewide provisions that have required many Wisconsin residents to stay home. Within hours of the ruling, some taverns were making plans for reopening, the governor’s office said.





“This turns the state to chaos,” Mr. Evers said in an interview. “People will get sick. And the Republicans own the chaos.”

...There have been legal challenges to stay-at-home orders in Michigan, California, Kentucky and Illinois, but none of those were successful in persuading a court to fully strike down the order, as the plaintiffs in the Wisconsin case were.

Wisconsin’s stay-at-home order took effect on March 25 and was extended by the governor on April 16, leading to a protest at the State Capitol.

During a 90-minute hearing about the order that was conducted over video chat last week, some justices asked tough questions of the lawyer defending the state’s top health official, Andrea Palm. “Isn’t it the very definition of tyranny for one person to order people to be imprisoned for going to work, among other ordinarily lawful activities?” Justice Rebecca Bradley asked.

In their majority opinion on Wednesday, the justices ruled that Ms. Palm did not follow the proper procedure for setting stay-at-home limits, and should have followed a rule-making process that permits members of the Legislature to provide input.

“We do not conclude that Palm was without any power to act in the face of this pandemic,” the justices wrote. “However, Palm must follow the law that is applicable to state-wide emergencies.”

The ruling appears to leave Mr. Evers and Republican leaders of the State Legislature in a position of negotiating any next steps for limits on businesses amid the pandemic. But their work relations have been extraordinarily tense, and many observers said the possibility of fruitful negotiation seemed remote.

Mr. Evers, who has already announced plans for a gradual reopening of businesses, said that he hoped to work with Republican lawmakers on next steps, but that in the meantime, he hoped that Wisconsin residents would remain safe, and at home.

“We are in a very perilous place,” he said.

Scott Fitzgerald, the leader of the Republican majority in the Wisconsin Senate, said lawmakers had long been seeking a voice in the conversation about how to respond to the pandemic, but that the governor’s office had, until now, kept them out of the process. “We’re more than willing to sit down with the governor,” he said.

For the moment, Mr. Fitzgerald said, residents would use their own judgment. “People understand, if you don’t want to go to church, you don’t go to church,” he said. “If you don’t want to go to work, you don’t go.”

Wisconsin is considered a swing state in November’s presidential election, and for much of the last decade it has been riven by an intense partisan battle.

When Mr. Evers was elected governor in 2018, it set off a sharp battle over the state’s direction on all sorts of policies. Republicans had full control of the state before that, during a period in which they curtailed bargaining rights for many public labor unions and moved the state sharply to the right.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court, while officially nonpartisan, has long been sharply divided along conservative-liberal lines that are well understood by the state’s voters. As partisan fights boiled over in the State Legislature, they emerged on the court as well, once leading to claims of a physical altercation between justices on opposing sides. Conservatives hold a majority on the court, and they will even after a new justice-- a liberal challenger who upset Justice Kelly this spring-- is seated in August.

This week’s court ruling did not provide a mechanism for a stay so that Republicans and Democrats could reach a compromise on reopening Wisconsin, which the dissenting justices wrote could endanger residents.

“The lack of a stay would be particularly breathtaking given the testimony yesterday before Congress by one of our nation’s top infectious disease experts, Dr. Anthony Fauci,” Justice Ann Walsh Bradley wrote. “He warned against lifting too quickly stay-at-home orders.”

Around the state, groups were trying to determine how the opinion would now affect life. A poll of Wisconsin residents released this week by Marquette University Law School found that 69 percent of those surveyed supported the state’s move to close schools and businesses and restrict public gatherings.

“Public health experts have been clear that prematurely lifting social distancing measures will have serious and deadly consequences, especially for vulnerable communities,” Chris Ott, the executive director of the A.C.L.U. of Wisconsin, said in a statement. He added, “Emergency orders can be necessary during crises like a pandemic, as long as they are grounded in science and consistent with the need to protect the health, safety, and civil liberties of us all.”

In 2018, Democrats won the big statewide races in Wisconsin. Senator Tammy Baldwin was reelected, beating top tier Republican Leah Vukmir 1,472,914 (55.4%) to 1,184,885 (44.6%); Tony Evers denied Scott Walker another term as governor, defeating him 1,324,307 (49.6%) to 1,295,080 (48.5%); and Rebecca Dallet beat neo-fascist Republican Michael Screnock for the open Supreme Court seat 55,848 (55.7%) to 440,808 (44.2%).

Unfortunately for Evers-- and the people of Wisconsin as it turns out-- the state legislative districts are so partisanly gerrymandered that even with the big Democratic wins statewide, the GOP maintained its hold on both houses of the legislature-- a 19-14 majority in the state Senate (down from a 20-13 majority) and a massive GOP majority in the Assembly, 63-36, los down slightly from 64-35.

Writing yesterday for Axios, where he is editor-in-chief, Nick Johnson noted that "Eight weeks into this nation's greatest crisis since World War II, we seem no closer to a national strategy to reopen the nation, rebuild the economy and defeat the coronavirus. America's ongoing cultural wars over everything have weakened our ability to respond to this pandemic. We may be our worst enemy. The response is being hobbled by the same trends that have impacted so much of our lives: growing income inequality, the rise of misinformation, lack of trust in institutions, the rural/urban divide and hyper-partisanship. We're not even seeing the same threat from the virus. Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to be worried about getting seriously ill, while Republicans-- including the president-- are more likely to think the death counts are too high. Without even a basic agreement on the danger of the pandemic and its toll, here's how we see the national response unfold:

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the crown jewel of the globe's public health infrastructure, has been sidelined, its recommendations dismissed by the White House.
• President Trump declares the U.S. has "prevailed on testing" at a time when health experts say we still need far more daily tests before the country can reopen safely.
• Distribution of the promising coronavirus drug remdesivir was initially botched because of miscommunication between government agencies.
• More than two thirds of Americans say it's unlikely they would use a cell phone-based contact tracing program established by the federal government, a key component of a testing regime to control the virus.
• The second phase of a program to aid small businesses isn't fully allocated because firms are either concerned about its changing rules, confused about how to access it, or find the structure won't help them stay in business.
• With the unemployment rate at a post-Depression record last month, and expected to go higher, there is no meaningful discussion between the parties in Congress on aid to the out-of-work.
• States and local governments are facing billions in losses without a strategy for assistance.
• The virus is literally inside the White House. Aides have tested positive for coronavirus, leading to quarantines for some of the nation's top public health officials and a new daily testing regime for White House staff and reporters who enter the West Wing.
• The No. 1 book on Amazon for a time was a book by an anti-vaxxer whose conspiracy-minded video about the pandemic spread widely across social media, leading to takedowns by platforms like YouTube and Facebook.

The bottom line: An existential threat-- like war or natural disaster-- usually brings people together to set a course of action in response. Somehow, we've let this one drive us apart." Somehow? This is how: