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Far-right US politicians label lockdowns anti-constitutional

Published:Tuesday | April 14, 2020 | 9:58 AM
In this Friday, February 15, 2019 file photo, Washington state representative Matt Shea, R-Spokane Valley, gestures as he gives a speech in front of the liberty state flag at the Capitol in Olympia, Washington, during a rally held by people advocating splitting Washington state into two separate states and questioning the legality of Washington's I-1639 gun-control measure. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)

SPOKANE, Washington (AP) — In deeply conservative eastern Washington state, a prominent state lawmaker kicked out of his Republican Party caucus labels the coronavirus as a foreign bio-weapon, accuses Marxists of using the pandemic to advance totalitarianism and rails against lockdown restrictions imposed by the Democratic governor.

A California teleconference last week to consider sport fishing limits in rural areas unprepared to handle influxes of anglers descended into chaos — with callers branding state officials as “fascists” and declaring it was time to “make fishing great again.”

Across the US, elected officials from Pennsylvania to Oklahoma suspicious of big government and outraged with orders to close churches, gun stores and other businesses deemed non-essential insist that the public health response is being used as an excuse to trample constitutional rights.

The shutdowns reinforce long-held beliefs by some that governments would eventually use a national emergency to limit civil liberties and the vitriol is particularly strong across the pine forests of eastern Washington state — where conservative Matt Shea is a co-founder of the Coalition of Western States, a loose federation of politicians suspicious of big government, plus militia supporters.

Its goal is to “stop unconstitutional actions against United States citizens,″ according to a December report into Shea’s activities paid for by the Washington state House issued just before his own caucus exiled him.

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