the plot thickens

Creepy new details emerge about drag-hating senator whose GOP colleagues mysteriously turned on her last week

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.”

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