WASHINGTON — After information broke that Vice President Kamala Harris had formally chosen Tim Walz as her operating mate, former president Trump’s marketing campaign blasted a fundraising electronic mail warning Walz would “unleash hell on earth” with far-left insurance policies. As Republicans scour Walz’ file for targets, the Minnesota governor’s controversial Covid-19 response is more likely to resurface.
In April 2020, Walz prolonged an emergency stay-at-home order which lasted by way of mid-Could — prompting then-president Trump to declare “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” on the social media platform X. A bit of over a month later, after easing the stay-at-home order, the Democratic governor issued an indoor masks mandate for the state.
Throughout a Philadelphia rally Tuesday evening, Walz took a number of pictures at Trump.“A few of us are sufficiently old to recollect when it was Republicans who have been speaking about freedom. It seems now what they meant was the federal government ought to be free to invade your physician’s workplace,” he stated to the gang. “If Trump will get an opportunity to return, he’s going to select up precisely the place he left off 4 years in the past.”
Walz’s Covid directives earned applause from public well being officers seeking to decelerate Covid-19 hospitalizations. However they sparked Republican assaults and several other lawsuits over Walz’ authority, underscoring the deep partisan divide over states’ pandemic response that continues to be a hot-button concern within the 2024 election.
Republicans have repeatedly accused Democratic leaders of imposing stringent masking insurance policies, social distancing guidelines, and distant studying necessities that impacted childrens’ psychological well being and studying. When Covid-19 circumstances spiked once more final summer season, Trump stated that “Covid Tyrants need to take away our Freedom” and that, if reelected, he would “use each obtainable authority to chop federal funding to any faculty, school, airline or public transportation system that imposes a masks mandate or a vaccine mandate.”
Walz knew his shutdown orders and masks mandates can be unpopular, he instructed Politico in December 2021. However his administration selected to “be certain we have been the entire unintended penalties, not simply from a well being consequence but in addition social implications and the financial system.”
As Walz joined the Democratic presidential ticket, Trump surrogates have been additionally fast to convey up the anti-racism protests in Minneapolis through the first summer season of the pandemic, following George Floyd’s homicide. Republicans accused Walz on the time of hesitating to deploy the Nationwide Guard, leading to thousands and thousands of {dollars} in property injury to dozens of downtown retail and meals companies already battling Covid lockdown insurance policies.
“Minnesota was floor zero for the [Black Lives Matter] riots of 2020,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wrote on X.
A number of teams have sought to evaluate how Minnesota’s Covid-19 response stacks up towards responses in different states. Minnesota was among the many states with the bottom coronavirus demise charges between February 2020 and April 2022, however nonetheless had prolonged intervals of crowded intensive care items, in response to an evaluation by the Commonwealth Fund, a basis selling well being care entry. (The Commonwealth Fund is a monetary supporter of STAT and isn’t concerned in any choices about our journalism.) Nonetheless, the state ranked ninth total on well being outcomes throughout that point, and first for the “Plains” area.
An evaluation co-authored by economists from the conservative suppose tank Heritage Basis and the free-market nonprofit Committee to Unleash Prosperity was much less favorable. They urged that states with essentially the most restrictive Covid-19 shutdowns didn’t see considerably improved well being outcomes through the pandemic. Minnesota scored a ‘C’ score of their evaluation, grading greater than many different Democrat-led states.
The state’s Supreme Court docket sided with Walz earlier this 12 months on a case, introduced by the Minnesota Voters Alliance, over whether or not the indoor masks mandates order violated a governor’s constitutional authority. The courtroom dominated the governor acted inside his peacetime emergency powers.
