So for those not following VA politics, I’ll do up a bit of a TL;DR:
Pre-Nov-2023:
- Governor: Republican
- Legislature: 1 house was Dem, 1 house was Republican
- Abortion was used to try to drum up support to make both legislative houses Republican in the Nov 2023 elections (among other things)
Nov 2023 elections happen.
- Plan backfires. Dems get both legislative houses, but Gov seat is still Republican.
New Legislative session starts for 2024.
- Republican filed a bill to remove funding for abortions
- Dems were like “lol no”, wanted to bring a floor vote on the bill to get votes recorded on where everyone stands on it
- Republicans tried to revoke and water down bill, Dems were like “lol no”
- Dems forced the bill to floor vote
- Almost every single Republican decided to vote “no” on bill, so it failed by 97 votes (out of 100).
You know how bugs are expected in computer programming? I wonder why this was a long-standing tradition for lawmakers - maybe there’s something I don’t understand.
On the surface it definitely sounds whack to me, I definitely agree.