The Constitutional Clash

Governors, courts and law enforcement are butting heads over constitutional rights.

Protesters in Wisconsin, Virginia and Michigan — all headed by Democrat governors — are lashing out at lockdown measures they claim are repressive.

On Wednesday the Wisconsin Supreme Court threw out a stay-at-home order, ruling health secretary Andrea Palm didn't have the authority to issue it.

And in Virginia, Culpeper County Sheriff Scott Jenkins refused to enforce Gov. Ralph Northam's executive order, saying "we will not trample the constitutional freedoms of our citizens to enforce an edict of the governor."

Seattle police officer Greg Anderson was fired after a video he made went viral.

Anderson: "Regardless of where you stand on the coronavirus, we don't have the authority to do those things to people just because a mayor or governor tells you otherwise." 

On Wednesday, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer spoke about protesters wanting to open the state back up for business: "This is not appropriate in a global pandemic, but it's certainly not an exercise of democratic principles where we have free speech. This is calls to violence. This is racist and misogynistic."

Whitmer continues, "These protests, you know, in a perverse way, make it likelier that we're going to have to stay in a stay-home posture."

Across the United States, people are becoming more restless, wanting to return to work and the way life was before, and they're not taking no for an answer, setting up a larger clash that will not only wind its way through courts, but also have a resounding effect on the November election.