Michigan’s Republican senators, who hold a majority in the state Senate, used a procedural method this week to support the repeal of a decades-old emergency powers law with a petition that cannot be vetoed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. 

Michigan senators voted along party lines, 20-15, backing the petition to repeal the Emergency Powers of Governor Act of 1945, which was brought by the group Unlock Michigan and various people critical of Whitmer’s use of emergency powers during the COVID-19 pandemic.