America’s state capitals are as polarized as they’ve been in many years, with lawmakers imposing unflinchingly conservative or liberal agendas this yr, even in politically various locations.

The 2022 election introduced single-party management of the governor’s workplace and legislature to 39 states, the most in at least three decades.

Many of the 22 Republican-led states pushed new curbs on abortion, sweeping restrictions on gender transitions for teens and legal guidelines limiting dialogue about sexuality in class lecture rooms. Democrats, who’ve full management in 17 states, handed new gun management measures, set limits on carbon emissions, and created protected havens for abortion and medical look after transgender folks.

The outcome was that the legislative season, which has led to a lot of the nation, left a fair wider divide between Republican and Democratic states on the nation’s thorniest social points. In some Republican states, lawmakers additionally took purpose on the powers of Democratic officeholders or sought to restrict native management in liberal-leaning cities.

“We’ve always known that California was progressive, Texas was conservative, but it now feels like almost every state is kind of falling into one of those categories,” mentioned Tim Storey, the chief govt of the National Conference of State Legislatures, a nonpartisan group.

Some of the states that pursued bold partisan agendas had lengthy been single-party strongholds. In Washington, the place Democrats have had full management of state authorities for 14 of the final 19 years, lawmakers banned the sale of AR-15-style weapons and enshrined protections for abortion and transgender medical care in legislation. In North Dakota, the place Republicans have led the federal government since 1995, officers banned transition care for minors, outlawed abortion and barred supplies deemed to be sexually express from the kids’s part of libraries.

But even in states with latest histories as political battlegrounds, lawmakers pushed laborious this yr to the left or proper, probably leaving a major section of residents alienated.

In Florida, which voted twice for Barack Obama however has since swung decisively towards Republicans, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legal guidelines restricting abortion, banning transgender medical care for minors, loosening the necessities to impose the death penalty and permitting concealed guns to be carried with out a allow. In Minnesota, the place Democrats flipped a legislative chamber final yr to narrowly take full management of the statehouse, Gov. Tim Walz signed payments codifying abortion rights, legalizing leisure marijuana and increasing voting rights for felons, a spree of liberal wins that drew the eye of Mr. Obama.

“If you need a reminder that elections have consequences,” the previous president said on Twitter, “check out what’s happening in Minnesota.”

Minnesota Republicans didn’t want reminding. In the course of only a few months, that they had watched from the sidelines as their state grew to become a laboratory of progressive policymaking, although a whole bunch of hundreds of Minnesotans vote Republican.

“The real travesty is, that’s nearly 50 percent of the state that we represent,” mentioned Mark Johnson, the Republican chief within the Minnesota Senate, “and so it’s constituents across the state that had little or no voice.”

State Representative Tony McCombie, the House chief of the Republican minority in Illinois, the place Democrats are of their fifth consecutive yr of single-party management, mentioned majority events that lurch too far in a single path threat long-term political peril.

“States that do this on the right or the left — it’s going to blow up, the pendulum will swing the other way,” Ms. McCombie mentioned.

In Iowa, it was Republicans urgent the benefit conferred by their trifecta — management of the governorship and each legislative chambers — and persevering with the transformation of their former swing state right into a bastion of conservatism. Gov. Kim Reynolds signed payments handed by her fellow Republicans that loosened child labor rules and allowed households to place taxpayer cash towards private-school tuition. Her state was additionally one among at the very least 16 this yr that banned or considerably restricted gender transition remedies for minors.

“Americans are taking notice as states around the country are looking to Iowa as a beacon for freedom and opportunity,” Ms. Reynolds mentioned in a statement final month through which she referred to as the legislative session “historic.”

On Thursday, Ms. Reynolds signed a few of the final payments of the session into legislation, together with a measure limiting the authority of the state auditor to entry private info and to take state companies to courtroom when performing investigations, drawing adamant objections from Democrats. The auditor, Rob Sand, occurs to be the one Iowa Democrat nonetheless holding a statewide workplace.

Mr. Sand framed the laws as partisan overreach that might impede his means to do his job. And he described a broader shift, in Iowa and nationally, away from listening to the minority occasion that “shows us that the system that we’re running right now doesn’t work anymore.” A spokesman for the governor didn’t reply to an interview request.

Republicans in a number of states wielded their energy in ways in which silenced or decreased the ability of elected Democrats. In Mississippi, Republicans imposed a state-controlled police drive and a second courtroom system inside the boundaries of Jackson, the largely Black and Democratic capital metropolis. In Texas, Republicans passed a invoice that may increase state oversight of elections within the county that features Houston. In Tennessee, Republicans expelled two Democratic legislators who protested on the House flooring. And in Montana, a Democratic lawmaker was barred from the House flooring after talking in opposition to a invoice limiting transgender rights.

Decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court final yr added urgency, and sometimes acrimony, to the lawmaking season.

After the courtroom mentioned Americans have the best to carry guns outdoors their house, Democrats handed new legal guidelines this yr searching for to restrict entry to firearms, whereas gun rights supporters filed lawsuits difficult restrictions and Republicans handed legal guidelines increasing gun entry. On abortion, a difficulty the courtroom returned to the states, Republicans moved to severely prohibit or ban entry in a number of states, together with Florida, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Carolina and Wyoming, regardless of intraparty fights about how far to go. Democrats sought to strengthen abortion protections in lots of their states.

Democrats entered this year with full energy in 4 new states — Maryland and Massachusetts, the place the governorship flipped, and Michigan and Minnesota, the place legislative management shifted — and extra states below their management than at any level since 2009. After Republicans spent greater than a decade consolidating state-level energy and passing sweeping new legal guidelines, Democrats noticed this session as a possibility to reverse latest historical past, with barely extra Americans now residing in states below their management than in these the place Republicans are in cost.

“I’ve been working my entire life to have an opportunity like this,” mentioned Melissa Hortman, the speaker of the Minnesota House. “I mean, it was a golden moment this year to have the trifecta and to have a surplus and to have bills and authors that were ready to go.”

On a single day this session in Michigan, the place Democrats gained full management for the primary time for the reason that Eighties, lawmakers advanced bills to codify L.G.B.T.Q. rights, create a red-flag gun law and repeal a so-called right-to-work law loathed by labor unions.

“There were a lot of things that we knew exactly what we wanted to do, and we knew what those policies looked like,” mentioned Winnie Brinks, the bulk chief within the Michigan Senate. But whereas she expressed no regrets about performing rapidly, Ms. Brinks acknowledged that doing so “was not exactly the most beneficial in terms of establishing really good working relationships” with Republicans.

Across the nation, some matters resonated repeatedly throughout partisan traces, together with financial improvement and psychological well being. And with the economic system comparatively steady and a few federal pandemic aid funds nonetheless unspent, many states had cash out there to create new applications, pass tax cuts or ship checks to residents. California, with a projected finances deficit within the tens of billions of {dollars}, was a notable exception.

Though the session was outlined by the bulk occasion scoring coverage wins, there have been moments when minority lawmakers made their presence recognized. In Oregon, the State Senate got here to a standstill after Republicans fled the capitol, denying the bulk Democrats a quorum and the flexibility to move their agenda. And in Missouri and Nebraska, filibusters by Democrats ate up valuable legislative time and helped to extract restricted concessions from Republicans on payments proscribing transgender rights.

There have been additionally moments of intraparty disagreement, together with in New York, the place some legislative Democrats deemed a judicial nominee put forth by the Democratic governor to be too conservative, and in Texas, the place Republicans diverged on whether or not to question the state’s Republican legal professional common.

In Colorado, a former swing state the place Democrats have steadily constructed energy in recent times, lawmakers raised the minimal age to buy a gun, required gender-neutral bathrooms in new public buildings and handed a first-of-its-kind legislation making it simpler for farmers to repair their own equipment as a substitute of counting on producers. But Democrats diverged on a measure that may have banned sure high-powered weapons, dooming that invoice.

“We’re not in a world where the Democrats all line up and vote the way the party is telling them to,” mentioned Julie McCluskie, the Democratic speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives.

As polarized because the nation’s legislative season was this yr, the following one has the potential to be much more lopsided. Though most states won’t maintain statewide elections once more till 2024, a handful of races this November give Republicans a gap to say as much as three extra trifectas.

Democrats are defending governorships in Kentucky and Louisiana, each states that vote reliably Republican in presidential races. And Republicans must flip only some seats to win a Senate majority in Virginia, a state the place Democrats misplaced management of the House and governor’s mansion in recent times.