(Permanent Musical Accompaniment to This Post)

Presenting our semi-regular weekly survey of what’s goin’ down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin’ gets done and where there are no sins inside the gates of Eden.

Let’s begin in Louisiana, always a target-rich environment for semi-regular weekly surveys of this type. First, let’s check in on Jeff Landry, who has been governor long enough to make a Trumpian stooge of himself. The other night, prior to its epic game against Iowa, the Louisiana State University women’s basketball team left the floor after pregame warmups, as has been its custom for quite some time. This meant that the Tigers were not on the floor during the playing of Our National Anthem. The team from Iowa, on the other hand, was on the court and assumed the typical reverential position. This prompted the usual caterwauling from the meat puppets who had apparently not yet exhausted themselves howling about Transgender Day of Visibility and the White House Easter eggs. Governor Landry, who would have been better off arranging for someone to kidnap Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, joined in the chorus and even pushed the fauxtrage a little further, owing to his official position. From NOLA.com:

Landry issued a statement Tuesday morning challenging Louisiana lawmakers to help implement policy that would require that the state’s student athletes be present for the national anthem.

“My mother coached women’s high school basketball during the height of desegregation; no one has a greater respect for the sport and for Coach Mulkey,” Landry said in a post on X. “However, above respect for that game is a deeper respect for those that serve to protect us and unite us under one flag!

“It is time that all college boards, including Regent, put a policy in place that student athletes be present for the national anthem or risk their athletic scholarship! This is a matter of respect that all collegiate coaches should instill.”

The conspicuous scattering of exclamation points is a dead giveaway that the writer is channeling the former president*! No all caps, however. Landry still has some work to do. Meanwhile, as he was working on his performative outrage, the Louisiana legislature was up to even more mischief. Welcome to the Banana Farm, people. First, there’s this, from Book Riot:

Louisiana continues these efforts in an ongoing move by politicians in the state to damage public libraries with House Bill 777. HB 777 was introduced March 25 by Representative Kellee Dickerson, who helped fund the Louisiana Freedom Caucus. The bill would criminalize library workers and libraries for joining the American Library Association.

It really does. You can read it yourself.

First Amendment? Freedom of assembly? Is the Freedom Caucus aware of...well...freedom? The Bill of Rights? Does any of this sound familiar, Representative Kellee?

(Alabama’s up to the same shenanigans, too.)

Then there’s this bit of madness.

A. Defamation is the malicious publication or expression in any manner, to anyone other than the party defamed, of anything which tends to do any of the following: (1) Exposes any person to hatred, contempt, or ridicule, or deprives him of the benefit of public confidence or social intercourse. (2) Exposes the memory of a deceased person to hatred, contempt, or ridicule.

You could go to jail for defaming a dead person? Who thinks up this stuff? You’ll forgive me if I see the fine hand of the Lost Cause behind this. Conceivably, you could be convicted of defamation if you accused General John Bell Hood of being in league with human traffickers, or if you called the perpetrators of the Colfax Massacre terrorists. You would think that the Louisiana legislature would have more important things to do. Or maybe not. From ProPublica:

In 1994, the Justice Department reported that Angola inmates were punished for seeking medical care, with seriously ill patients placed in “isolation rooms.” Prison staff failed to “recognize, diagnose, treat, or monitor” inmates’ medical needs, including “serious chronic illnesses and dangerous infections and contagious diseases.” Two decades later, a federal judge wrote that Angola’s medical care has caused “unspeakable” harm and amounts to “abhorrent cruel and unusual punishment.” For years, Jeff Landry, Louisiana’s new governor, defended the quality of Angola’s medical care. When he was attorney general, a post he held from 2016 until January, he argued that inmates are entitled only to “adequate” medical care, which is what they got. During the pandemic, Landry opposed releasing elderly and medically vulnerable prisoners, warning that it could result in a “crime wave” more dangerous than the “potential public-health issue” in the state’s prisons.

Of course, everybody might have missed this while standing for Our National Anthem, that catchy tune with the lyric about slaughtering “the hireling and slave.” Or did I just defame Francis Scott Key?

We move on to Wisconsin, where the state’s Republicans are getting evermore creative about maintaining the advantages they’d gained during the days of grotesque gerrymandering. And it’s working. From Wisconsin Public Radio:

The rules for running elections in Wisconsin have changed after voters approved two constitutional amendments Tuesday that will restrict the use of private money, and consultants, to support election administration. Both amendments are responses to the use of private funds in the 2020 presidential election. The prohibition on outside funding means that Wisconsin election workers will only be able to access public funds, and cannot apply for or receive private grant money to support their work.

These referenda are a direct result of the disappointment among state Republicans that their iron control over the state supreme court and the state legislature has been shattered, and their everlasting sadness that El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago lost the state in 2020.

Although elections have historically been funded through a mix of public and private funds, private money was under particular scrutiny in 2020, an election year that required unprecedented financial support to comply with then-nascent Covid-19 requirements. Some Republicans protested the use of grant money from nonprofits tied to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg that went to propping up election administration in municipalities across the country. Critics argued that outside money could be used to subvert election systems entirely, although numerous reviews and court rulings affirmed Wisconsin’s 2020 outcome. Republicans also argued the funds could be used to improve ballot access in some communities over others, creating a partisan imbalance. In Wisconsin in 2020, hundreds of communities received grants, but those that received the largest grants were cities that skewed Democratic. GOP backers of the amendments also cited the use of outside consultants, who they said had unreasonable access to Wisconsin’s election systems in 2020.

The most money went to election systems serving the places with the most people? I, for one, am shocked. As The Washington Post points out, this is the latest gambit among Republican state legislators around the country.

Since the 2020 election, 27 other states have prohibited or limited such grants, according to the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures. In Wisconsin, a swing state that is likely to be crucial to the outcome in the presidential race, Republicans who control the legislature asked voters to amend the state constitution to ban the grants after Gov. Tony Evers (D) vetoed their initial attempt to halt private funding for elections.

And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, where Blog Official Crow Whisperer Friedman of the Plains brings us the answer to that age-old question: “What do you have to do to get out of this chicken proposal?” From Tulsa Public Radio:

Tulsa officials confirmed Monday that the city’s government opposes House Bill 4118, which would keep municipalities from bringing lawsuits against poultry companies accused of polluting water supplies with feces. Administrative staff approved the formal stance “based on the evaluation of the Water & Sewer Department,” said mayor's spokesperson Michelle Brooks.

I think if poultry companies are dumping chicken shit into a city’s water supply, then the city should have a right to sue them into the next decade. But apparently, I have misread The Market.

The bill’s author, Rep. David Hardin, has defended it by arguing poultry businesses would still have to follow a self-created nutrient management plan approved by the state if they wish to be protected from litigation.

Self-regulation! A proven remedy for Big Government! Sometimes it helps to defeat Big Government by helping to blow up entire towns.

HB 4118 was introduced after a federal judge ruled for Oklahoma in a nearly two-decades-long legal battle to get Tyson Foods and ten other poultry farmers to remedy phosphorous pollution from poultry feces. In 2023, Judge Gregory Frizzell said that the world’s largest poultry producer and the farmers violated two of Oklahoma’s anti-pollution laws and caused irreparable damage to the Illinois River watershed. Now the bill that may limit similar liabilities passed the Senate Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee Monday. It was approved by the House of Representatives in February.

So this bill is a protection racket for Big Poultry, which lost a lawsuit and is now very mad about it because it has never learned the fundamental chemistry for the production of chicken salad.

This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.

Headshot of Charles P. Pierce
Charles P. Pierce

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.