The data is out, and the lesson is clear: States that took and held onto draconian lockdown measures for much longer than the states that didn’t have been hit the hardest economically. States such as Florida, whose governor applied fewer COVID restrictions and eased those restrictions more quickly, “recovered by year-end,” The Wall Street Journal reports.

Of course, it’s not merely economically speaking that residents in Democrat-controlled lockdown states have needlessly suffered. Many Americans have endured infringement of their constitutionally protected rights, specifically their First Amendment rights to religious liberty.

The U.S. Supreme Court has once again slapped down a California order that unjustly targeted religious rights. In a 5-4 ruling in Tadon v. Newsom, the Court overturned a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision upholding Governor Gavin Newsom’s lockdown rule banning groups of more than three families meeting and worshiping in a private home.

In the ruling, the majority justices wrote, “California treats some comparable secular activities more favorably than at-home religious exercise, permitting hair salons, retail stores, personal care services, movie theaters, private suites at sporting events and concerts, and indoor restaurants to bring together more than three households at a time.” It was a welcome ruling, yet it also represents the fifth time since the pandemic began that SCOTUS has overturned the Ninth Circuit on religious freedom issues. That shouldn’t be necessary. Alas, it has been.

It’s almost as if Newsom and governors like him have taken George Soros’s leftist revolutionary advice to heart during the pandemic and struck while the iron was hot. As Soros contended last year, “I would describe it as a revolutionary moment when the range of possibilities is much greater than in normal times. What is inconceivable in normal times becomes not only possible but actually happens. People are disoriented and scared.”

Tyrannical leftists have predictably stoked the fear and then exploited it to achieve things that would otherwise not have been possible. “You can’t worship at home” would have been an unthinkable statement in America pre-2020. “Stay home and avoid groups of more than 10” would have sounded authoritarian and foreign just two years ago. Unfortunately, the Biden-Harris administration wants to keep things this way. Democrats want the pandemic to serve as the rationale for doing big things — “revolutionary” things that aren’t possible “in normal times,” as Soros put it.

“[The president] sees this as a moment for taking action,” one senior administration official said. “It’s not a feint or a negotiating ploy. What he’s putting on the table is what he thinks is necessary to address systemic problems we’ve faced not just over the last year, but for several decades.”

From spending insane amounts of money and restructuring the economy to addressing “systemic” issues and reworking America’s very institutions, Team Biden has big plans. It’s going to cost you, and the Left is going to claim it was a legitimate and necessary response to COVID.