While GOP states pushed curbs on abortion and restrictions on gender transitions and Democratic states focused on gun control measures and abortion rights, the legislative season became heavily polarized. Red states are getting redder and blue ones bluer:
CHICAGO — America’s state capitals are as polarized as they have been in decades, with lawmakers imposing unflinchingly conservative or liberal agendas this year, even in politically diverse places.
Some of the states that pursued ambitious partisan agendas had long been single-party strongholds. In Washington, where Democrats have had full control of state government for 14 of the past 19 years, lawmakers banned the sale of AR-15-style weapons and enshrined protections for abortion and transgender medical care in law.
“The real travesty is, that’s nearly 50% of the state that we represent,” said Mark Johnson, the Republican leader in the Minnesota Senate, “and so it’s constituents across the state that had little or no voice.” “Americans are taking notice as states around the country are looking to Iowa as a beacon for freedom and opportunity,” Reynolds said in a statement last month in which she called the legislative session “historic.”
Decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court last year added urgency, and often acrimony, to the lawmaking season. On a single day this session in Michigan, where Democrats won full control for the first time since the 1980s, lawmakers advanced bills to codify LGBTQ rights, create a red-flag gun law and repeal a so-called right-to-work law loathed by labor unions.
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