Last week, the state Senate overwhelmingly passed a pair of bills aimed at putting very modest limits on the excessive tactics of Trump’s immigration goons. S.208 would require all officers to identify themselves with name or badge number and restrict their ability to wear masks or face coverings while carrying out their duties. S.209 would bar civil immigration arrests in “sensitive locations” including schools, child care centers, places of worship, and hospitals.

Both bills passed on identical 27-2 votes, including unanimous Democratic/Progressive support plus a lopsided majority of the Republican caucus. (The newly appointed John Morley, who succeeded Sam Douglass, was absent for both tallies.)

Which means the two dissidents need to be identified in the hope that their votes are a lasting stain on their records. It probably won’t keep them from being re-elected since they hail from very safe Republican districts, but given the rising tide of anti-Trump feeling I suppose all things are possible.

The two senators who are okay with masked, anonymous federal enforcers invading schools, day care centers and hospitals are… Russ Ingalls of Essex County (pictured above) and Terry Williams of Rutland County (pictured below in an apparent attack of constipation).

Ah, the face of empathy.

This isn’t the first time Ingalls and Williams have found themselves on the very short side of an anti-Trump measure. Last spring, a grand total of 27 senators co-sponsored a nonbinding Senate resolution supporting “warm and cooperative relations” between the U.S. and Canada and “urging” Trump to remove tariffs on Canadian products. The only three who wouldn’t put their names to it: Ingalls, Williams, and David Weeks of Rutland.

And when the resolution came to a vote, Ingalls was the sole dissenter. Ingalls, whose district includes a hefty chunk of the Canadian border and whose constituents are especially vulnerable to the consequences of Trump tariffs.

Williams is in his second term in the Senate, where he has cut an undistinguished profile. He’s a reliable “No” vote on Democratic priorities but if he’s made any positive contributions to the Legislature, they’ve escaped my notice. He is a decorated military veteran and, per Wikipedia, “a life member of the National Rifle Association” and “a member of Gun Owners of Vermont,” the most politically active of Vermont’s pro-gun brigade. I suspect him of being an ultraconservative who’s successfully depicted himself as a Phil Scott-style “common sense” type, but he keeps a pretty low profile.

He did, however, share a lectern with known nutcases Gregory Thayer, John Klar, and Martha Hafner at a Statehouse “Parents’ Rights in Education” rally last spring. Lie down with dogs…

Ingalls is much more of a known quantity and, oddly enough, a more formidable presence in the Statehouse. He’s chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and in the 2023-24 biennium he chaired Senate Institutions. Last year he purchased a set of radio stations in the Northeast Kingdom and, after promising not to inject politics in the programming, he deep-sixed newscasts from mainstream outlets and replaced them with Fox News content. In explaining the move, Ingalls said the three major networks and the Associated Press all “hate Trump,” which puts the senator firmly in the ranks of far-right true believers.

Last fall, Ingalls made a bid to unseat Vermont Republican Party chair Paul Dame that fell short by a handful of votes. Ingalls’ campaign painted Dame as an organizational and financial failure. And while Dame was re-elected, a close vote isn’t something you like to see if your aim is to unify the party under your leadership.

There is much to uncover about the beliefs of Williams, Ingalls, and two or three dozen other Republicans in the Legislature who ran as “common sense” fiscal conservatives but are likely from the extreme end of the party. Much work remains to be done on that score — and I would invite the mainstream media to start doing some of that work, on behalf of voters who deserve to know who they’re being asked to support. But the votes on S.208 and S.209 are now entered in the ledgers of Sens. Ingalls and WIlliams, to their abiding discredit.