An informal coalition of influential conservative leaders and groups, some with close connections to the White House, has been quietly working to nurture protests and apply political and legal pressure to overturn state and local orders intended to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
The groups have tapped their networks to drive up turnout at recent rallies in state capitals, dispatched their lawyers to file lawsuits, and paid for polling and research to undercut the arguments behind restrictions that have closed businesses and limited the movement of most Americans.
Among those fighting the orders are FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots, which played pivotal roles in the beginning of Tea Party protests starting more than a decade ago. Also involved are a law firm led partly by former Trump White House officials, a network of state-based conservative policy groups, and an ad hoc coalition of conservative leaders known as Save Our Country that has advised the White House on strategies for a tiered reopening of the economy.
The effort picked up some influential support on Tuesday, when Attorney General William P. Barr expressed concerns about state-level restrictions potentially infringing on constitutional rights, and suggested that, if that occurred, the Justice Department might weigh in, including by supporting legal challenges by others. Separately, in Wisconsin, Republicans in the state legislature sued to block the Democratic governor’s order extending stay-at-home rules through May 26.
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Support for the protests features more direct ties to the White House than simply support for Mr. Trump. The administration recently formed an advisory group for reopening the economy that included Stephen Moore, the conservative economics commentator. Mr. Moore had been coordinating with FreedomWorks, the Tea Party Patriots and the American Legislative Exchange Council in a coalition called “Save Our Country,” which was formed to push for a quicker easing of restrictions.
At my autism blog, I have a post about the overlap between the anti-shutdown movement and the antivaccine movement.
A year ago, Arthur Allen reported at Politico that Republican state legislators are taking up the antivaccine cause:
The GOP tilt is more pronounced among state lawmakers than among federal ones; many prominent Republicans in Congress including most of the 16 GOP doctors have endorsed vaccines. The most visible and voluble exception is Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), an ophthalmologist who says his own kids were vaccinated but the decision should be left to the parents, not the government.
But in states where legislators have advanced serious efforts to tighten restrictions, such as Maine, Washington, Colorado and Oregon, nearly all of the opponents are Republicans who’ve taken a medical freedom stance.
“The more they dig into it being about freedom, the more susceptible they become to the theories,” said Dave Gorski, a Michigan physician who has tracked the anti-vaccine movement for two decades. “Appeals to freedom are like the gateway drug to pseudoscience.”
At the extremes are legislators like Jonathan Stickland, a pro-National Rifle Association, Christian conservative in the Texas Assembly, who has described vaccines as “sorcery” while personally attacking Baylor University scientist Peter Hotez, who has a daughter with autism and works on vaccines for neglected tropical diseases. “Parental rights mean more to us than your self-enriching 'science,'" Stickland tweeted at Hotez earlier this month.
That same day, the Oregon Republican Party’s official Twitter account posted that Oregon Democrats were “ramming forced injections down every Oregon parent's throat.”
Other Republican state officials have blamed Central American immigrants for disease outbreaks, echoing a talking point of Fox commentator Lou Dobbs. In fact, experts say, children in many of those countries are more thoroughly vaccinated than their U.S. counterparts against diseases like whooping cough and measles.
[I]t was dismaying to see state Senate Minority Leader Sen. Shannon Grove of Bakersfield and other Republican legislators side with the opponents on the bills to close a loophole that was allowing people to get around the state’s vaccination laws.
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If this is a ploy to turn the so-called “anti-vaxxers” into GOP voters, they may not have great luck. Those opposed to mandatory vaccines don’t split along party lines. In fact, some of the places that have seen the lowest vaccination rates are solidly liberal communities, like Marin County and Santa Cruz.
