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Announcements of job losses are nothing new in West Virginia, and we all know the drill: The governor, members of Congress, legislators and other state officials would step up and try to persuade operators of the business in question to reconsider their decision. Persuasion sometimes would take the form of incentives to try to convince the operators to either reconsider or minimize the layoffs.

If that failed, there would be attempts to recruit new operators, followed by efforts to try to find new jobs for the affected employees. At the very least, state officials would make clear they stand four-square with the displaced workers.

This time around, the timidity of our elected officials is appalling.

Initial responses from Sens. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., and Jim Justice, R-W.Va., were tepid, with both expressing concern about the NIOSH layoffs, but prefacing their remarks by expressing support for the firing of federal workers in general.

Our House delegation of Republicans Carol Miller and Riley Moore evidently could not be bothered to comment about the firings, nor could Gov. Patrick Morrisey, or members of the GOP legislative supermajority.

As for closure of the Novelis plant, the only comment I saw was from Morrisey, who disputed statements from plant employees who said they were told the shutdown was driven in part by Trump’s imposition of high tariffs, which makes sense, considering that the company produces aluminum automobile parts.

Similarly, when Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — the man responsible for the NIOSH firings — publicly fat-shamed Morrisey during a joint appearance in Martinsburg, Morrisey dared not stand up for himself. Instead he embraced the humiliation inflicted by RFK Jr., claiming on social media that he had taken Kennedy’s fitness directives to heart, and is walking 10,000 steps a day to lose weight.

If you actually believe Morrisey is devoting the roughly two hours a day that it takes to walk five miles, then I have a bridge in his birthplace of Brooklyn to sell you.

Trumponomics delivered the coup de gras to the economy in the form of broad and outrageously steep tariffs on virtually every country in the world, with the short-term result being a stock market collapse that cratered retirement savings for many Americans, and the long-term result likely being a global trade war that will cause prices for consumer goods to soar. And there was nary a peep from any of West Virginia’s elected officials.

Indeed, when the U.S. Senate voted Wednesday on a joint resolution to repeal Trump tariffs on products from Canada, a measure that passed 51-48, Sens. Capito and Justice voted against the measure.

It was not unlike the response of the legislative supermajority which, when faced with the prospect of major cuts in federal Medicaid funding, chose not to fight the cuts, but to propose a trigger to drop more than 160,000 West Virginians off of Medicaid in the event the cuts come to fruition.

Many voters opted for Trump believing he would be better able to get a handle on inflation, and instead, he is personally inflicting inflation on a scale that the U.S. has not experienced in 45 years.

Unless our elected officials can grow enough backbone to stand up to Trump and his band of vengeful incompetents, West Virginia’s future looks increasingly bleak.

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This week, the House of Delegates passed 58-42 and sent to the Senate legislation to exempt the Legislature from provisions of the state Freedom of Information Act, allowing it to adopt its own rules for determining what documents it may or may not chose to release to the public (House Bill 3412).

The usually eloquent Speaker Roger Hanshaw, R-Clay, the bill’s lead sponsor, struggled to come up with a logical rationale for it, rambling on about how the Legislature has to deal with FOIA requests for drafts of bills that have yet to be, or may never get introduced.

Which raises the question, if the bills have not been introduced, how would reporters or members of the public know of their existence in order to FOIA them?

The obvious answer is that there are bill mills like the American Legislative Exchange Council and Heritage Foundation that provide copies of draft legislation to conservative legislators across the country, and are not shy about publicizing their legislative priorities.

ALEC’s Essential Policy Solutions 2025 is easily accessible on the internet. As the Center for Media and Democracy notes, it outlines legislative strategies for “preempting local regulation, bolstering favored industries such as fossil fuels, undermining public education, curtailing voting rights, and much more.�

Throw in weakening environmental regulations, and it sounds exactly like the playbook the legislative supermajority is following this session.

If legislators are cutting and pasting boilerplate bills from right-wing “think tanks� instead of having legislative attorneys and staff research and write fresh legislation to address specific state issues, the public and the press should have the right to know that, even if particular bills ultimately aren’t introduced in a given session.

Additionally, HB 3412 gives legislative leaders too much say-so regarding the joint rules the House and Senate would adopt in place of FOIA. They could adopt something that looks very much like current FOIA provisions, with the exception of the exemption for drafts of bills that Hanshaw is so concerned about, or they might decide to sharply restrict what documents are to be made available to the public.

Similarly, if a FOIA request is denied in whole or in part, the requester has the option of challenging the denial in Kanawha County Circuit Court. Whatever joint rules the Legislature might adopt may or may not have a method to appeal denials for requested documents.

Since we haven’t seen a draft of the proposed rules, we have to hope that legislators out of the goodness of their hearts see fit to maintain public transparency and accountability.

(Perhaps someone could FOIA the draft rules while they still can.)

This is one of those bills that would best be lost in the crush of the final days of the session.

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Finally, Republicans’ obsession with statuary would be hilarious were it not so sad. First, Trump issued an executive order demanding that Confederate monuments removed in recent years be restored.

Never mind that, as readers of this column are aware, almost none of the Confederate statues were erected by contemporaries, but were installed by white supremacist organizations at the height of Jim Crow, and again during integration of public schools. Trump’s motivation for restoring them could not be more obvious.

Closer to home, legislation has again been introduced (SB 294) to install statues of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, James Madison and Arthur Boreman in the upper Rotunda of the state Capitol, which would necessitate removal of the only statue currently residing there, that of late U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd.

I find it amusing that the advocates of the proposal (far right Sen. Mike Azinger, R-Wood, is lead sponsor) would go to the length and expense of commissioning not one, not two, but four statues to fill the upper Rotunda’s four alcoves, thus requiring the removal of the Byrd statue. The fiscal note estimates that four larger-than-life bronze statues with marble bases would run about $400,000, while four human-sized statues without bases could be had for about $100,000 — and undoubtedly would be absurdly underwhelming.

I’m sure it must grind the gears of members of the GOP supermajority to have to constantly pass by a tribute to West Virginia’s most esteemed Democrat, but they realize they would come off as snowflakes if they passed legislation to simply have it removed.

Former Byrd staffers Anne Barth, Mark Ferrell and Sam Petsonk recently rallied at the statue, handing out pocket-sized copies of the U.S. Constitution in recognition of Byrd’s strong advocacy of the Constitution, the rule of law, and three co-equal branches of government — principles that currently seem to be out of favor in both Washington and ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä.

Close followers of the legislative session might say, not to worry, SB 294 never made it out of committee this session. However, as Sen. Oshel Craigo used to say, there is a vehicle still in play that could keep the Rotunda statuary proposal alive.

On March 28, the House passed HB 3304, which calls for the installation of four patriotic statues in locations TBD around the state to commemorate the U.S. Semiquincentennial in 2026.

The bill, currently in Senate Finance, would create a commission chaired by the Secretary of Tourism to oversee the design, construction and installation of the statues — and that bill could readily be amended to direct that commission to also oversee installation of the Capitol Rotunda statues.

As we go into the final week of the regular session, stay tuned.