by Steve Timmer

Sep 16, 2025, 5:00 PM

“She seems nice” part 3

For a Typhoid Mary

This story is the third in the series; the first two should appear in the sidebar to the story.

Continuing a perusal of Minnesota House member and now Republican candidate for governor in ’26, Kristen Robbins, we continue to find nuggets of poor judgment by Robbins in her legislative record. Today, we’ll discuss H.F. 21.

Some of you remember the COVID pandemic. About 1.2 million Americans don’t remember it, of course, because they died of COVID. According to the Minnesota Department of Health, just under 17,000 of them were Minnesotans.

Some of you who didn’t die of COVID will also remember that red states and Republicans were inexplicably harder hit by the virus and died in greater number.

Well, not so inexplicably, really. The higher death rate among red states and Republicans began to manifest itself shortly after COVID vaccines became available. Blue staters and Democrats got vaccinated at higher rates; red staters and Republicans listened to guys like Scott Jensen.

Here’s the real kicker, though. The Harvard School of Public Health found that having elected Republican leadership increased the death rate:

The study found that the higher the exposure to conservatism on each political metric [identified in the study at the link], the higher the COVID-19 age-standardized mortality rates, even after adjusting for the district’s social characteristics, voters’ political lean, and vaccination rates. The same relationship held true for stress on hospital ICU capacity.

For COVID-19 mortality rates, for example, models controlling for political and social metrics and vaccination rates showed that Republican trifectas were, respectively, 11% higher and conservative voter political lean 26% higher.

In other words, it was possible to die just from having Republican leadership, although it was even more likely if you were a Republican.

Which brings back (belatedly, sorry, but the background is important), to Robbins. She was the chief author of H.F. 21, which would have required — it didn’t become law — a vote of a super majority of both houses of the Legislature to continue a peacetime public health emergency beyond 14 days.

COVID survivors will recall that during the pandemic, Gov. Walz called a public health emergency on March 13, 2020, it was confirmed by the Executive Council (the constitutional officers), and then it was confirmed every thirty days by the Legislature in a simple majority vote. It lasted until July 1, 2021.

After each vote to renew the emergency order, there was always a spittle-flecked, adolescent-oppositional-disordered clot of Republicans, undoubtedly including candidate Robbins, holding a presser to whine about the extension.

In the closely-divided Legislatures we have around here, the practical effect of Robbins’ bill would mean that no public health emergency would last more than 14 days. If we elect Robbins as governor, that thoughtless fool wouldn’t ever call one in the first place, so there’s that.

H.F. 21 had 32 Republican sponsors:

H.F. 21 Minn. House authors

Perhaps you’re willing to put public health, including that of your kids, in the hands of this bunch.

Me? No thanks.

– o O o –

Update 9/17: We need to remember that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is Trump’s Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. He took a chainsaw to a dead whale once and now he’s taking one to the Centers for Disease Control. The current crop of Republicans, at all levels of government, are unserious people. RFK hates vaccines, and the prospect of another pandemic looms.

If there was ever a time we needed a robust public health emergency apparatus, it’s now. We certainly can’t depend on the unserious Kristen Robbins to deliver.