New details have emerged about Julie Frye-Mueller, the anti-LGBTQ, ultra-conservative, rank-in-file Republican state senator from South Dakota who was inexplicably stripped of her legislative power last week.
Frye-Mueller’s GOP colleagues voted to suspend her rights as an elected official and create a committee to investigate “serious allegations” lodged against her by an unnamed legislative staffer. At the time, no additional information was given as to why they were taking such extreme actions against one of their own.
We now have a better idea.
As it turns out, Frye-Mueller allegedly offered unsolicited advice to a woman about breastfeeding her baby son that went beyond–waaaaay beyond–what most people would consider appropriate workplace conversation, especially when that workplace is the South Dakota Senate.
In a statement released yesterday, the woman alleged: “I was told by Senator Frye-Mueller that my husband could ‘suck on my breasts’ to get milk to come in. She indicated ‘a good time for that is at night.’”
But it doesn’t stop there. Apparently, Frye-Mueller went on to offer a graphic demonstration on how to do it.
“She proceeded to provide hand gestures to her chest area and motion to her husband to see if he agreed,” the woman claimed. “He smiled and nodded.”
As if that wasn’t creepy enough, the woman also alleged Frye-Mueller warned her against having her baby son vaccinated, saying “this will cause him issues”, including giving him Down syndrome, autism, and causing him to “die from those vaccines.”
She also allegedly said that feeding babies formula made them “guinea pigs for Big Pharma” and warned that woman that she was “taking away God’s gift of immunity from your son.”
(For the record: None of these statements allegedly made by Frye-Mueller are true.)
To shut the conversation down, the woman eventually said she’d consider Frye-Mueller’s advice.
“I did so in the hope that it would end the conversation and not upset her further.”
The staffer is scheduled to testify behind closed doors before the Senate Select Committee on Discipline and Expulsion later today. Meanwhile, Frye-Mueller has filed a lawsuit against President Pro Tempore Lee Schoenbeck saying her suspension violates the 2023 approved Rules of the Senate.
The lawsuit accuses Schoenbeck of “chilling effect and actual denial” of Frye-Mueller’s protected speech and other constitutional rights, which she says had done “irreversible damage to her and her constituents.”
Frye-Mueller has served in the South Dakota Senate since 2021, after narrowly winning her primary by less than 40 votes. Before that, she served in the South Dakota House of Representatives from 2017 to 2021.
Last month, she announced she was drafting a bill to outlaw drag shows after a group of college students hosted one at South Dakota State University.
“This is absolutely sick, especially when families bring children,” she said, adding “we do have plans to bring some bills before the Legislature this year to address this kind of thing.”
Mister P
We have to keep these repugnants out of power. They should not be involved in public health discussions let alone public health policy.
ZzBomb
Frye-Mueller warned her against having her baby son vaccinated, saying “this will cause him issues”, including giving him Down syndrome, autism, and causing him to “die from those vaccines.”
She also allegedly said that feeding babies formula made them “guinea pigs for Big Pharma” and warned that woman that she was “taking away God’s gift of immunity from your son.”
It’s 2023 FFS, it’s time people stop believing this nonsense, top to bottom.
Den
Sadly, there a whole lot of people (most in the GOP/MAGA world) who have a medieval worldview. Their thought processes are more 1023 than 2023!
LumpyPillows
Drag is it’s own penalty. I’m so tired of drag. So much bad drag… I do support everyone else’s right to be exposed to drag and reach their own conclusions. We need no laws regarding drag and it’s first amendment protections.
On a snide note, she could use a drag queen makeover.
SFMike
It’s nice to see a female politician being called out on being in bad tase for a change.
Brian
I have way too much hope in our society, and so I’m still surprised when I hear wild claims like that vaccines can give you extra chromosomes. How would that even work? Whose chromosome would you get? Where does it come from? Does this woman really not know what Down Syndrome is? It’s kind of one of the most famous ones. She’s actually that stupid?? Did she ever attend school? She’s unqualified to be in the state senate, and she’s also unqualified for basically everything.
bachy
I’m unclear as to how Frye-Mueller’s party can condemn her for saying things like the above, yet are A-OK with the repeal of Roe vs Wade. So many of such attitudes seem cut from the same cloth – creepy, puerile and unexamined religious fundamentalism.
And if they’re going after Frye-Mueller, how is it that Taylor-Greene keeps getting a free pass?
Chaucer
This is what happens when crazy people get elected to office. The American electorate needs to be more discriminating and eliminate people who want to recreate the crusades!
Kangol2
Not happening anytime soon. If anything we’re becoming more and more an idiocracy by the day!
KlausIII
Yet further proof America has a mental health crisis. We really didn’t need more…..
Kangol2
The tragic thing for the US is that there are Mueller-Fryes in state legislatures, governors’ seats, and all through our US Congress, and it’s not getting better, it’s getting worse. This nutty woman shouldn’t be elected to a justice of the peace or anything else, but she’s in a position of power, pushing for inane, useless laws. The right-wing loves to decry how extreme the Left is and how the Left wants to cancel “free speech,” but is usually silent when it comes to dangerous people like Mueller-Frye and her attempt to criminalize speech she doesn’t like. Why?
lambchopp59
The ultimate fallacy behind politicians spouting “moral” issues is such knows no bottom. Religious systems must always create an enemy. That way it can get away with the most horrific periods of human history i.e. the holocaust.
It’s a useful tool to remind these fools of this. They Live for a fantasy world that has exterminated all LGBT. Let’s hypothesize they actually did this. “Crush your enemy” is still their bread and butter. So they seek more “immorality” digging deeper, deeper, until it finally includes more and more traits. Remind them that eventually, the extermination list includes “you”.