California’s Republican Senators have been expelled from the State Capitol.

After my colleague Brian Jones announced testing positive for COVID-19, the Senate President banned other Republican Senators from the building, saying they are “now unable to enter the Capitol without violating public health orders.”

The excluded Senators represent about 10 million Californians.

The Senate President cited a caucus lunch they’d had as the basis for a purely partisan exclusion, even though Jones had been on the Senate Floor with members of both parties.

When the Senate convened yesterday, only one Republican, Senator Jim Nielsen, was allowed to participate. He implored the Senate President not to proceed without the rest of his caucus, but was rebuffed.

The other 10 Senators will supposedly be given the right to vote remotely from their homes for the rest of the legislative session, even though that’s unconstitutional.

This would be less suspicious if it weren’t for the fact that silencing minority viewpoints is par for the course at our Capitol.

For instance, bills routinely get killed without a public hearing or vote, and committee chairs often try to cut off legislators from expressing viewpoints they dislike.

I’ve fought back repeatedly against this tendency to censor debate and stifle opposition. It’s why the Speaker moved me to the smallest office at the Capitol (“the doghouse”) as punishment, and why Gavin Newsom has specifically endorsed my opponent in the coming election.

But even for California, this is unheard of. In a representative government, you can’t just expel one party and carry on unabated.

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