Written by Ainsley Jackman
On July 30, Republican State Senators Brian Jones and Melissa Melendez attempted to put to an end Gov. Newsom’s gross abuse of California’s State of Emergency by bringing SCR 93 to the Senate Floor.
The resolution “would declare that the state of emergency proclaimed by the Governor on March 4, 2020, is at an end, thereby terminating the emergency powers granted to the Governor as a result of that proclamation.”
The primary concern they express is that Gov. Newsom has been taking advantage of the pandemic and acting unconstitutionally to advance his political goals with the power he has been self-granted. Melendez notes that “a ‘state of emergency’ in California is a legal term describing not merely conditions of extreme peril, but also the inadequacy of state and local institutions to combat the threat within the constraints of the California Constitution.”
She goes on to list the power local governments have to leverage state resources and manage the pandemic independently, demonstrating how unnecessary a statewide State of Emergency is and also points out how Newsom has taken advantage of the emergency to increase his own power.
“The State of Emergency powers that were ceded by the Legislature to the Governor back in March were intended to be TEMPORARY,” Senator Brian Jones added. “Unfortunately, during the last five months Governor Newsom exceeded this authority by signing billions of dollars in no-bid contracts for masks; issuing confusing, contradictory, and conflicting shutdown orders on hundreds of thousands of California businesses; and restricting Californians from using public beaches, parks, and attending religious services. We elect Governors, we don’t coronate Kings in this country and certainly not in California.”
Despite the fact that Newsom’s actions now only confirm his blatant disregard for democracy, Democrats in the State Senate blocked SCR 93 from being advanced with a party line vote.
These results, along with the governor’s own words on the subject, make it even more clear that the politics behind the COVID-19 response have a lot less to do with the actual state of the pandemic, and a lot more to do with the political agendas of Newsom and those who support him. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that an end to Newsom’s authoritarian reign is anywhere in sight.
