Also, older people were more prone to dying from Covid. That left a lot of room for conspiracy theories regarding what actually killed them. Heard of lot of conservative family members say “oh, it was probably just a bad flu that killed them.” And when the vaccines came out that quickly changed to “the vaccine killed them.”
And now that Republicans are set to have the Presidency, Congress and SCOTUS all at the same time, there doesn’t seem to be any barriers left.
Abolish capital punishment!