Howard Schweber, a political-science professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said the conflicts in all three states reflect the intense partisan divide, with Democratic governors and one or both houses of the legislative branch controlled by Republicans.
“What we have is just a sort of state-level version of what is sometimes called constitutional hardball,” he said. “Parties pushing the rules of the game and their interests to the extreme that the system will allow, which would be unfortunate if we were talking about, say, fiscal policy, but in the case of a genuine public-health crisis, is truly disastrous.”