ZOOEY ZEPHYR was tired of watching Montana's Republican-controlled legislature pass laws targeting trans residents, so the Missoula native decided to join the chamber herself. She ran for an open seat last year, and won 79 percent of the vote. "If you wanna make a difference, get in that room," Zephyr said in a 2022 interview, recalling something a fellow Democrat told her. "So I'm getting in that room."
She stayed there until late April, when her colleagues threw her out. Zephyr's trouble began this spring, when Republicans pushed a new measure to ban gender-affirming care for minors. In a floor speech, she said colleagues backing the bill had "blood on [their] hands." When protesters in the gallery began to chant, the Democrat held up the microphone to amplify their dissent. Republicans, accusing Zephyr of "encouraging an insurrection," barred her from reentering the chamber. She can vote, but only remotely. Zephyr is effectively banished from the legislature-and so, by extension, is the young, liberal, urban community she represents.
Zephyr and her constituents aren't the only ones being silenced. In red states across the country, Republican legislatures and governors are moving to curb the power of blue municipalities that don't fall in line, expel those communities' elected officials, erase their residents' say in government, and strip them of redress. It is a war on local control-a challenge to the agency of public school systems, district attorneys, ballot initiatives, and even the kinds of corporate fiefdoms that Republicans might otherwise sanctify. These crackdowns are part of a broader story in national politics that has gained new traction in the Trump era, casting liberal governance and Democratic dissent as not just wrong, but illegitimate.
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