Wisconsin’s Supreme Court blocks the governor from extending the state’s stay-at-home order.

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the extension of a stay-at-home order by Gov. Tony Evers, siding with Republicans in one of most high-profile challenges of its kind to the emergency authority of a statewide official during the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr. Evers, a Democrat, had extended the prohibition on most travel and operations of nonessential businesses until May 26.

But in a 4-to-3 ruling, the conservative-leaning court said that measure had exceeded the authority given to Wisconsin’s top health official under state law.

“An agency cannot confer on itself the power to dictate the lives of law-abiding individuals as comprehensively as the order does without reaching beyond the executive branch’s authority,” the justices wrote in the ruling.

There have been legal challenges to stay-at-home orders in Michigan, California, Kentucky and Illinois, but none of those were successful in persuading a court to fully strike down the order, as the plaintiffs in the Wisconsin case were.

The ruling, a spokeswoman for Mr. Evers said, appears to immediately end all provisions that have required Wisconsin residents to stay home.

“We’re definitely concerned,” the spokeswoman, Melissa Baldauff, said of the safety and health of residents.

The ruling did not provide a mechanism for a stay so that Republicans and Democrats could reach a compromise on reopening Wisconsin, which the dissenting justices wrote could endanger people in the state.

“The lack of a stay would be particularly breathtaking given the testimony yesterday before Congress by one of our nation’s top infectious disease experts, Dr. Anthony Fauci,” one of the dissenting opinions said. “He cautioned that if the country reopens too soon, it will result in ‘some suffering and death that could be avoided [and] could even set you back on the road to trying to get economic recovery.’”

Gov. Doug Ducey fires the scientists who warn he’s making a mistake by reopening Arizona

Opinion: Gov. Doug Ducey wants to reopen the state, and it seems he’d rather not let anything stand in his way.

For seven weeks, Gov. Doug Ducey has assured us that his decisions to reopen the state would be based not on politics or wishful thinking or even a wing and a prayer.

Data, he has said over and over again, would be in the drivers’ seat when it comes to steering Arizona through the coronavirus.

Now Ducey has tossed a significant piece of that data – public health models that predict we could be headed toward disaster – out the window.

Just hours after Ducey announced on Monday that he’s accelerating the reopening of parts of the state’s economy, state health officials told a team of university experts to stop working on models that project what will happen next.

The universities’ models had shown that the only way to avoid a dramatic spike in cases was to delay reopening the state until the end of May.

Instead, Ducey will rely on a federal model – one we aren’t allowed to even see.

Where we are? Or where we wish we were?

Dr. Cara Christ, director of the state Department of Health Services, downplayed the decision.

“We just asked them to take a pause for a little bit,” she told The Arizona Republic’s Rachel Leingang. “We are continuing to get updated FEMA models and we think that that is really representative of where we are.”

Representative of where we are, Dr. Christ? Or where a certain governor would like us to be?

Just a week ago, Ducey extended his stay-at-home order until May 15, saying it was working and that available data didn’t support reopening the economy just yet.

“We’ve earned where we are today, and we are not going to undo this,” he said.

Five days later – with Republicans ready to revolt and a president itching to reopen the country – he began to undo this.

Ducey on Monday decreed that barbershops and hair salons could reopen on Friday and restaurants on May 11. The stay-at-home order is expected to end next week.

Ducey’s decision to end the quarantine next week made sense – to me, at least.  At some point, you have to begin resuscitating the economy and considering the harm to people as a result of remaining closed. The goal in issuing the March 30 stay-at-home order was never to remain closeted until the virus had passed. It was to “flatten the curve”, to slow the spread of the virus to prevent hospitals from being overrun.

Christ said last week that goal had been met.

So Ducey is turning on the “green light”, citing a sudden “downward trajectory” on metrics tracking the spread of the virus.

GOP or scientists: Guess which side lost?

There is, however, a rather significant chance of rain on his parade.

The universities’ model – an Arizona-specific model created by 23 researchers from Arizona State University and the University of Arizona – has projected that the only way to avoid a dramatic increase in coronavirus cases is to wait to reopen at the end of May. 

“I can say, scientifically, no, it’s not safe to reopen unless you’re planning on, you know, shutting down again after a couple of weeks,” Tim Lant, a mathematical epidemiologist at ASU, told The Republic on April 22.

Shortly after Ducey’s Monday announcement that he’s reopening parts of the economy, DHS notified Lant and his team that their services are no longer needed.

And not only that, but they’ll be cut off from access to state data they need to continue their modeling.

Better, apparently, not to know the dangers that may lie ahead.

One would think the governor would want at least know what the university models show as he moves forward in the coming days and weeks, to at least factor their predictions into his decision making. But no.

“We realize that you have been, and continue to be working very hard on this effort, so we wanted to let you know as soon as possible so that you won’t expend further time and effort needlessly,” S. Robert Bailey, DHS bureau chief of public health statistics, wrote in an email to the modeling team.

The email said the request came at the director of DHS’s senior leadership.

Which came at the request of … the governor?

Ducey’s an ambitious guy and he’s in a spot as he steers the state forward through the greatest threat to public health in a century. I don’t envy him. He’s got to consider both the threat in opening up the state and the threat in remaining closed.

He’s got a president up for re-election who desperately wants to reopen the country, a party that is leaning on him to reopen the state and a team of university scientists who are cautioning him to go slow.

Guess which one landed in the ditch this week?

GOP Governor Infects National Food Supply

GOP governor infects national food supply while threatening the lives of his citizens

“On Tuesday, March 31, an emergency room doctor at the main hospital in Grand Island, Nebraska, sent an urgent email to the regional health department: “Numerous patients” from the JBS beef packing plant had tested positive for COVID-19. The plant, he feared, was becoming a coronavirus “hot spot.”

The town’s medical clinics were also reporting a rapid increase in cases among JBS workers. The next day, Dr. Rebecca Steinke, a family medicine doctor at one of the clinics, wrote to the department’s director: “Our message is really that JBS should shut down for 2 weeks and have a solid screening plan before re-opening.”

Teresa Anderson, the regional health director, immediately drafted a letter to the governor.

But during a conference call that Sunday, Gov. Pete Ricketts made it clear that the plant, which produces nearly 1 billion pounds of beef a year and is the town’s largest employer, would not be shut down.”

Reich at Home: Why Trump’s Plan to Open the Economy will be Lethal

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich is discussing how Trump is selling out Americans’ health to boost his election chances and give his GOP donors short-term stock gains. 2,909 Americans died from the virus on Thursday, the highest single day total since the pandemic began.‬ Only 6.5 million of 200 million adult Americans have been tested.‬

Any rush to reopen without adequate testing and tracing – far more than now under way – will cause a resurgence of the disease and another, longer economic crisis. Trump couldn’t care less.