A federal judge has taken a rhetorical torch to South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, saying in a ruling this week that the state did “little, if anything” to stop COVID-19 from destroying the state. Sioux Waterfall Argus Leader reports that U.S. District Judge Charles Kornmann has ordered a state court to stop using the pandemic as an excuse to delay a defendant’s trial. Then it went after the state’s response to the crisis itself. “South Dakota has done little, if anything, to reduce the spread of the virus,” he wrote. “South Dakota cannot” take advantage “of its own failures to comply with scientific facts and safeguards when it falls into the general denial of fast-track rights.” Noem opposed masked warrants and other blockade measures, even though his state has accumulated one of the worst per capita infection rates in the country. “Her example significantly encourages South Dakotans not to wear masks,” the judge wrote. “South Dakota is now a very dangerous place to live because of the spread of COVID-19.”
Read it at Argus Leader