First, it was the Tennessee Three. Then, a trans lawmaker was kicked out of Montana's House chamber. After that, Oregon's GOP senators held a quorum hostage in their Capitol to prevent Democrats from holding a vote. Now, the North Carolina legislature's GOP supermajority has introduced and passed a 12-week abortion ban in under 24 hours.
With the Supreme Court kicking abortion access back to the states, a deadlocked Congress held hostage by extremist rookies, and President Joe Biden pussyfooting around executive orders -- 2023 seems to be the year that America's state legislatures, the Wild West of political skullduggery, are finally stepping into the national spotlight and its long-overdue scrutiny. The dam was broken in 2010 when the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United opened the floodgates to unprecedented campaign spending by dark money groups. In 2010, Republicans held 3,246 state legislative seats to Democrats 4,031. After the 2010 elections, Democrats were down to 3,301 and Republican numbers grew to 3,946.
