Gov. Jared Polis and health officials across the state of Colorado have done a great job keeping the public informed about the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But the far-right Republican Minority Leader in the Colorado House, Rep. Patrick Neville, has refused to apologize for comparing the state’s first Jewish governor to the Gestapo and encouraging his political followers to disobey stay-at-home orders.

Reached by the Denver Post after Gov. Polis condemned the comparison of stay-at-home orders to Nazism, Minority Leader Neville “declined to apologize.” And even now as the evidence grows that everything we’ve done to fight this pandemic is working and has saved untold numbers of Coloradans, Neville and his small but noisy fringe of far-right activists who wield disproportionate influence in the Colorado Republican Party are giving their supporters advice that could cost lives.