The new House and Senate majorities have been working at a breakneck pace. The initiatives they have enacted or are on their way to passing include a new tax credit for the working poor, repeal of anti-union legislation and several initiatives designed to curb gun violence ― something very much on the mind of Michiganders following February’s mass shooting at Michigan State University.
“Right now, there’s a nationwide assault on our LGBTQ+ community, especially our trans neighbors, family and friends,” Whitmer said. “There are state legislatures across this country dedicating themselves to legalizing discrimination. It’s dangerous, it’s wrong and it’s un-American.”
Like Whitmer, DeSantis just won a resounding reelection and has partisan allies in the legislature passing a flurry of laws. But the actual content of that legislation is quite different. Instead of passing laws that make it harder to get and carry a gun, DeSantis and Florida Republicans are about to make it easier. Instead of repealing old bans on abortion, they are enacting new ones.
“Michigan is a state where we stand up for people’s fundamental freedoms,” Whitmer said, “whether it’s your freedom to make your own decisions about your body, your freedom to go to school or work without being worried about a mass shooting, or your freedom to be who you are, love who you love.”
The appeal to freedom is one that national advocates have also been making. “What people don’t want is politicians deciding their healthcare,” Kelley Robinson, Human Rights Campaign president, told HuffPost on Friday. “They don’t want politicians telling you where to go to the bathroom, they don’t want politicians telling you what books to read.”
The Elliott-Larsen amendment is a Democratic bill signed by a Democratic governor. But Whitmer, in her remarks, emphasized the role Republicans have played in promoting civil rights, now and in the past.
This is not the kind of rhetoric that DeSantis, the Florida Republicans or their counterparts across the country typically offer. Instead, they seem far more interested in scoring points with Fox News viewers by making Democrats out to be the enemy, not just of Republican voters but of America itself. In fact, one Florida Republican lawmaker recently introduced a stunt bill to effectively eliminate the state’s Democratic Party.
