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Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) admitted on Sunday that her administration’s pandemic-era lockdown policies went too far, such as her April 2020 executive order barring most stores from selling gardening supplies, including seeds and plants, to Americans who anted to grow their own fruits and vegetables.
“There were moments where, you know, we had to make some decisions that in retrospect don’t make a lot of sense, right? If you went to the hardware store, you could go to the hardware store but we didn’t want people to be congregating around the garden supplies,” Whitmer told CNN’s Chris Wallace.
“People said ‘oh, she’s outlawed seeds.’ It was February in Michigan, no one was planting anyway,” she continued (except it was in April). “But that being said, some of those policies I look back and think, you know, maybe that was a little more than what we needed to do.”
Whitmer’s office even published a list of prohibited items deemed “not necessary to sustain or protect life,” which couldn’t be sold during the height of the pandemic, and which required that businesses physically restrict customers from certain areas of stores, or to remove nonessential items – including gardening items, flooring materials, furniture and paint.
Just weeks after Whitmer imposed the statewide controversial ban, the order was rescinded due to widespread backlash, including from the Institute for Justice.
In a letter (pdf), the non-profit law firm criticized the governor’s “unconstitutional prohibition” for “impeding the rights of the many Michigan families who seek to grow their own food.” -Epoch Times
Whitmer’s order even banned travel from one residence to another, including vacation properties, rental properties, or second homes within the state.
