A federal judge took a rhetorical blowtorch to South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, saying in a decision this week that the state did “little or nothing” to stop COVID-19 from devastating the state. The Sioux Falls Leader Argus reports that US District Judge Charles Kornmann ordered a state court to stop using the pandemic as an excuse to delay a defendant’s trial. Then he went after the state’s response to the crisis itself. “South Dakota has done little or nothing to reduce the spread of the virus,” he wrote. “South Dakota cannot ‘take advantage’ of its own failures to follow scientific facts and safeguards by entering into widespread denials of the rights to quick trials.” Noem was opposed to mask mandates and other blockade measures, even as his state accumulated one of the country’s worst infection rates per capita. “Her example significantly encourages South Dakotans not to wear masks, wrote the judge. “South Dakota is now a very dangerous place to live due to the spread of COVID-19.”
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