Credit Gov. J.B. Pritzker for his persistence. It’s hard to keep up with his Covid Disaster Declarations. He’s issued so many – 38 straight dating back to March 2020 – that almost nobody reports on them any more. Just Wirepoints and a couple of other groups. The mainstream media gave up a long ago. Even we’re a bit behind in reporting on it this time.
Like most of his policy choices, the governor’s decision to maintain a disaster declaration makes Illinois a national outlier. Only nine states in the entire country are still left operating under a Covid emergency.
The governor has no real justification to continue the emergency. He should have ended them – or the Illinois legislature should have taken away his powers – long ago. But he hasn’t and they haven’t.
And as we’ve repeated ad nauseum, Illinois’ neighboring states ended their declarations months or years ago. Michigan and Wisconsin both ended theirs about two years ago, while the remainder of our neighbors stopped theirs nearly a year ago (see appendix).
One state many may be surprised to see still operating with emergency orders is Texas. But read the rationale in Gov. Greg Abbott’s declaration and you’ll quickly understand why:
WHEREAS, ending the disaster declaration would terminate the executive orders that protect Texans’ freedom by suspending the power of local governments to require masks, compel vaccinations, and close businesses; and
WHEREAS, I intend to keep these executive orders and suspensions in place until the Legislature can enact laws this session to prohibit local governments from imposing restrictions like mask mandates and vaccine mandates;
Pretty much the opposite of what Gov. Pritzker is doing. Gov. Abbott’s orders are in place to ensure localities don’t infringe on citizens’ rights. Pritzker’s orders are in place so he can impose one-size-fits all mask, vaccine and other restrictions on the entire state.
One last thing. Our recent Instagram reel highlighting Disaster Declaration No. 37 has seen a resurgence of sorts in the last few days.
Check it out. It captures the repetitive nature of Pritzker’s clockwork declarations and the madness of maintaining them even as the rest of the county returns to normal.
