“We’ve had a big problem with the young, a woman governor,” President Donald Trump told his favorite television pundit, Sean Hannity, two weeks ago. The president continued musing, “You know who I’m talking about, from Michigan,” and later added, “All she does is sit there and blame the federal government. She doesn’t get it done.” Then, the ultimate dismissal of strong women who dare to confront the monarch of Trumpworld: Working with her had “not been pleasant.”

A day later, at his regular White House briefing, Trump doubled down on his criticism of the 48-year-old governor, telling Vice President Mike Pence, who is in charge of the administration’s COVID-19 response, “don’t call the woman in Michigan” because she wasn’t “appreciative” of Trump’s help. (He later acknowledged that Pence was indeed going to call her and denied that he had tried to block that conversation from taking place.)

Whitmer was quick to respond on social media. “Hi, my name is Gretchen Whitmer, and that governor is me,” she wrote on Twitter, adding to her message a waving-hand emoji. “I’ve asked repeatedly and respectfully for help. We need it. No more political attacks, just PPEs, ventilators, N95 masks, test kits. You said you stand with Michigan—prove it.”

In a normal world, none of us would be talking about Gretchen Whitmer at a national level; the governor has been on the job for less than two years. A former state senator with a relatively low profile, Whitmer ran on the slogan “Fix the Damn Roads”, riding a blue wave during the 2018 midterm elections and defeating a more charismatic candidate (and a Bernie Sanders favorite), Abdul El-Sayed, in the Democratic primary.

But these are not normal times. These aren’t even abnormal Trump times. No, this is the new normal—pandemic normal—and in pandemic normal governors are the new YouTube stars: Cuomo of New York, Hogan of Maryland, Inslee of Washington, Newsom of California, and Whitmer of Michigan. These governors—who live in unglamorous places like Sacramento, Albany, and Lansing, their State of the State speeches unwatched, their annual budgets attacked from all sides—have shown in recent weeks that they are crucial first responders in a national emergency. Given the needed resources, they have the power to save lives: the lives of their citizens through stay-at-home orders, the lives of frontline workers with needed personal protective equipment, and the lives of patients with crucial and scarce ventilators. None of this has been easy to impose or to obtain—but they are doing their best. (Let’s try to forget, at least for a moment, the bumbling, bungling, uninformed responses of Georgia’s Brian Kemp and Florida’s Ron DeSantis.)