ATLANTA — State lawmakers in Mississippi voted overwhelmingly last week to strip away the governor’s authority to spend more than $1.2 billion in federal funds. In Wisconsin, lawyers for the Legislature’s Republican leaders argued before the State Supreme Court their case for reining in the governor’s executive “safer-at-home” order.

As Lousiana legislators find themselves separated by masks and plexiglass barriers Blake Miguez, the leader of the Republican caucus in the State House of Representatives stated “I don’t want to have to override our governor, but the Legislature has become very frustrated. They’re hearing screams louder than ever from back home that we need to reopen the economy.”

Until recently, intergovernmental friction over individual state responses to the virus and plans for restarting state economies has been dominated by skirmishes between executives, with tension between mayors and governors, and governors and the president. Yet as more state legislatures reconvene, and as states take tentative steps toward some semblance of normalcy, lawmakers have increasingly asserted themselves, demanding to define a clearer role for the legislative branch and challenging governors who have become the face of their state’s response.

Lawmakers have emerged from isolation in recent weeks, mostly with the goal of curtailing executive orders imposed by governors and picking up the pace of reopening.

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