Republican lawmakers in conservative states hope to weaponize President-elect Donald Trump's election win as justification to push through extreme right-wing policies, such as steep tax cuts, anti-LGBT legislation in schools, and religion in the classroom, according to a new report.
Presidents including Trump have touted election wins to assert they have a "mandate" for sweeping changes.
"[T]he beauty is that we won by so much. The mandate was massive," Trump said of his victory in an interview with Time magazine last month after being named its "Person of the Year."
Additionally, Trump echoed those sentiments during his victory speech.
"America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate," he said at the time.
That claim has been repeated by numerous other Republicans since capturing a trifecta at the federal level, winning the presidency and a majority in Congress.
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Journalist Eric Berger reported for The Guardian on Wednesday that GOP lawmakers hope to use such language to enact right-wing policies. That includes Arkansas, where state Rep. Ryan Rose, a Republican, said residents in that state view Trump and Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders similarly.
“That will only empower our state to continue forward with more conservative policies, putting more money back in the pockets of hard-working Arkansans with tax cuts and supporting Arkansas conservative family values," said Rose.
GOP states, according to the report, appear to be targeting school choice — allowing families to send children to private and often religious schools — as well as curriculums. Others, such as Ohio, have also proposed a so-called "Parents’ Bill of Rights” to force public schools to alert parents of a student’s mental, emotional or physical health, including “any request by a student to identify as a gender that does not align with the student’s biological sex," according to the report.
Furthermore, states have proposed at least 129 anti-LGBT bills, such as some that would bar doctors from prescribing puberty blockers or gender reassignment surgery to minors, according to the ACLU.
