Russ McKinney

This year’s regular session of the General Assembly ended late Thursday, May 11, 2023. It ended where it began with Republicans attempting to enact a new, restrictive abortion bill. A House committee this week approved and sent to the full House a six-week, heartbeat bill similar to a law the state Supreme Court overturned in January. Gov. McMaster plans to call lawmakers back to Columbia next week, and House Speaker Murrell Smith vowed the House will pass the bill which has already been approved by the Senate.

With just six legislative days remaining in this year’s session of the General Assembly, Republican lawmakers are scrambling to pass as much of their agenda as possible. This week they claimed a long-sought victory for school choice but saw a new restrictive abortion bill scuttled in the State Senate.

With less than a month to go in this year’s session of the General Assembly it appears lawmakers will enact legislation they view as a priority under the broad description of judicial reform. Specifically, reducing the number of illegal weapons used in violent crimes, and tightening-up the state’s bond system to deny repeat offenders the opportunity to commit crimes while already out on bond for an earlier crime.

April will be the last full month for this year’s session of the General Assembly, and as the final weeks approach many of the session’s major bills are still pending.

In an un-precedented move Wednesday, March 15, a special committee of the State Senate recommended that the General Assembly remove from office Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom for "willful neglect" of duty.

State lawmakers have a long list of Public Safety bills on their agenda for this legislative session. That list includes cracking down on violent offenders being chronically released on bond, stemming the fentanyl epidemic, allowing capital punishment to resume, and pay increases for law enforcement officers. All those bills advanced through the General Assembly this week. So did a controversial gun bill that opponents claim will make the state less safe.

For the last twenty years, school choice advocates have been pushing to enact a law that would allow parents to use state tax dollars to send their children to private or religious schools. Public school supporters have long resisted the idea claiming such a program would hurt public schools.This year the Republican controlled General Assembly appears to be on the verge of establishing a school-voucher program.

The Republican controlled legislature’s conservative agenda was front and center at the Statehouse this week. Lawmakers advanced new, but not so new abortion bills, a bill that would restrict what teachers can teach in their classrooms, and elected a new Supreme Court justice that will leave the court without a female justice for the first time in 35 years.

The State Supreme Court’s overturning of the state’s six-week, heartbeat abortion law earlier this month is still reverberating through the State House.This week Gov. Henry McMaster again criticized the court’s decision as did some conservative legislators, and a proposed new abortion law has already advanced in the House of Representatives.

Republicans have controlled the South Carolina House of Representatives for almost thirty years. Following last November’s election, they achieved a super-majority with 88 of the 124 house seats held by Republicans. Ever since last year’s Republican Primaries a deep rift has been developing between members of the Freedom Caucus and many members of the mainline Republican Caucus leading to most Freedom Caucus members refusing to agree to sign-on to a set of G-O-P rules that they feel is aimed at muzzling them.