{"id":15723,"date":"2021-03-24T01:42:53","date_gmt":"2021-03-24T01:42:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=15723"},"modified":"2021-03-24T15:00:20","modified_gmt":"2021-03-24T15:00:20","slug":"hot-spot-shut-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2021\/03\/24\/hot-spot-shut-down\/","title":{"rendered":"Hot Spot Shut Down"},"content":{"rendered":"

At least 10 Idaho <\/i><\/span>lawmakers, staff get COVID-19<\/i><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

By Eric Valentine<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
Sen. Michelle Stennett
Photo credit: Idaho State
Legislature<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Careful what you ask for. The place where a mask-burning rally happened less than two weeks prior has been shut down.<\/p>\n

The Idaho State Legislature, which has tried to keep and has kept certain COVID safety restrictions at bay for themselves and others this legislative session, wasn\u2019t able to fend off the actual virus in recent days. Upon the approval of both branches of the legislature, the state Capitol was shut down last week due to a quick uptick in COVID-19 cases that hit lawmakers and staffers in recent days. Specifically, 10 or more lawmakers and staff came down with the virus that has officially killed at least 543,000 Americans.<\/p>\n

The recess for both the House and Senate will end April 6 at noon, when Gem State reps will have about a week\u2019s worth of legislating to wrap up.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Rep. Scott Bedke
Photo credit: Idaho State
Legislature<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

District 26 Sen. Michelle Stennett, in response to an email by \u201cWood River Weekly\u201d asking if she was disappointed with how restriction-lenient some fellow lawmakers had been during the legislative session, had this to say:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the sudden escalation of COVID infection in the Idaho House, they determined it was best to recess to bring it under control. The Idaho Senate, which has practiced better protocols and has remained substantially less infected, concurred with the House to recess until April 6th.\u201d<\/p>\n

The exact number of cases per chamber and per political party are not known at this time. However, it is true the House has had more confirmed cases than the Senate and Republican lawmakers had more confirmed cases than Democrats. To be clear, both the Senate and House have more Republicans than Democrats, so in a relatively small sample size (10 cases), more Republicans will be COVID positive. In the Senate, it\u2019s 28 red to 7 blue; in the House, it\u2019s 58 red to 12 blue, if you\u2019re keeping score.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take long for either side to spin the matter as they see fit. On Twitter alone:<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s be clear: the Republicans and the Republican leadership refused to wear masks, that is why this is happening. Period. Recessing won\u2019t stop the spread. Masks will.\u201d \u2014Idaho Democratic Party<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could have met remotely or worn masks and distanced reliably but no, we go home now and stop doing the people\u2019s business.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Democratic state Sen. David Nelson<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s majority leader Rep. Scott Bedke from District 27, who said this when announcing the House\u2019s recess and whether it would negatively impact lawmaking progress:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would\u2019ve been nice if we could\u2019ve finished completely, but we didn\u2019t, and we\u2019ll come back and finish the job.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll we did was press pause. Nothing gets erased. We take it back up on the 6th.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are many outstanding issues, including property taxes, the transportation bill, the income tax bill, the separation of powers bill, just to name a few.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bedke, who just days before the shutdown was asking Republican lawmakers to take precautions, said he will not require masks to be worn when their work resumes in April.<\/p>\n

What could go wrong?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At least 10 Idaho lawmakers, staff get COVID-19 By Eric Valentine Careful what you ask for. The place where a mask-burning rally happened less than two weeks prior has been shut down. The Idaho State Legislature, which has tried to keep and has kept certain COVID safety restrictions at bay for themselves and others this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15619,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[83,18,26],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15723","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-idaho","8":"category-news","9":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15723"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15726,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15723\/revisions\/15726"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}