GOP lawmaker damages state house steps after dousing them with olive oil to protest Satanists

On Friday, The Daily Beast reported that Washington state Rep. Matt Shea has been fined $4,700 for damaging the state house steps in protest of a nearby rally of the Satanic Temple of Washington.

As part of his protest, according to the report, Shea drenched the steps in olive oil, which "seeped into the legislature building’s porous steps, forcing workers to spend days giving them a deep clean."

Shea, who represents Spokane, has repeatedly attracted national attention. In 2018, he took credit for distributing a manifesto entitled "Biblical Basis for War," which called for subjugating or killing nonbelievers. In 2019, Shea was found to have privately messaged far-right activists discussing proposals to surveil and target liberals.

A subsequent investigation by the Washington House of Representatives found that Shea participated "in an act of domestic terrorism against the United States," and that, as a leader in the Patriot Movement, he "planned, engaged in, and promoted a total of three armed conflicts of political violence against the United States government."

Democratic and Republican leaders have both called on Shea to resign, but so far Republicans have refused to endorse a vote to expel him from the legislature, which would require a two-thirds vote.