When people in Southern Oregon learn I am from Idaho, they will sometimes ask, “why did you leave?” I usually respond, “Have you read any news about Idaho lately?”
So here’s my up-to-date (April 11th, 2025, #61) list of reasons why I left Idaho and why you, too, should avoid the Handmaid State. Now with subject emojis:
🌲 marijuanaphobia,
✊🏿 racism,
🌈 homo/transphobia,
🚺 misogyny,
✝️ Christian nationalism,
🐘 fascism,
💰 oligarchy,
📖 anti-intellectualism/science,
💉 anti-healthcare,
👶🏻 anti-child,
🏡 anti-homeless,
🌮 anti-immigrant,
🔫 gun nuttery,
💣 explosives nuttery, and
🚬 smoking.
Click the heading arrows ▶️ to read more. Use anchor hashtags (like radicalruss.com/idaho/#50) to link to a specific heading.
1) 🌲It is illegal for me (or anyone with marijuana in their system) to be out in public.
January 6th, 2024
Idaho is one of four remaining (and the most punitive) states without any sort of legal marijuana. Merely being high in public is a jailable offense. Making a bong is a felony.
Seriously, the State of Idaho has such a vendetta against marijuana that it was the last state in the USA to pass legislation to allow for industrial hemp—the non-psychoactive cannabis cousin that Mitch McConnell worked to legalize federally in 2018. Even with its hemp law, hemp is still illegal in Idaho unless you have a state permit for it.
Once, Idaho State Police crowed about its “largest ever drug bust.” It was 6,700lbs of legal hemp being trucked to Colorado.
In my twenty years working in marijuana law reform, I’m often asked, “which will be the last state to legalize pot?” I have always had my money on Idaho. Remember, this is the only state where a governor vetoed a non-psychoactive CBD oil bill for epileptic kids, citing the risks to “public safety” in a state where you can take a loaded AR-15 into the state capitol.
In fact, to my knowledge, the State of Idaho is the only political jurisdiction in America that went out of its way to proactively declare that marijuana shall never be legal for any purpose.
2) ✝️👶🏻💉 “Faith Healing” your baby to death is legal.
January 31st, 2024
In Idaho, it is perfectly legal to refuse to take your child to a doctor or give them medicine if you believe only God heals the sick, such that there are infant graveyards like in pioneer days.
My ex-wife’s grandfather was the co-founder of the Followers of Christ sect that prays their sick kids to death because they only believe in “faith healing.” Because of that, she lived with a cranial injury from age 11 and endometriosis from age 12 that she couldn’t treat until she was 18.
She’s got dead infant cousins in those Idaho graveyards. If only their parents had been cultivating a cannabis plant, they could’ve done some prison time.
3) 💣 You can buy (but not use 😉 ) illegal fireworks.
February 6th, 2024
In Idaho, aerial fireworks are illegal to fire off, but not illegal to buy, so long as you promise to only shoot them where they are legal, and North Dakota is the nearest state where they are. There are fireworks stores off the freeway near Boise where the floor is painted blue on one side, red on the other. The fireworks on the blue floor are the legal ones and on the red floor are the illegal ones.
So, no, cancer patient, you can’t have a joint, even with a note from your doctor. But you can buy all the Roman candles you like, as long as you swear not to use them.
4) 🔫 Guns everywhere for everybody all the time.
February 8th, 2024
Guns everywhere. No license required for anything. Concealed carry anywhere. AR-15s with bump stocks and 100rd barrel mags carried openly into the state capitol by a wife beater? Sure! But whatever you do, don’t bring a joint with you.
According to Everytown for Gun Safety, Idaho is third behind Mississippi and Arkansas in lax gun laws.
5) 🐘 Republicans dominate the state.
February 10th, 2024
Since 1995, Republicans have controlled House, Senate, Governor, Sec’y of State, & Attorney General. Idaho’s Senate is 28–7 Republican (the most Democrats since ’95), Idaho’s House is 59–10 (fewest Democrats since ’00). Idaho went 59% Trump in ’16, 64% Trump in ’20, and 67% Trump in ’24.
Idaho also has the highest per capita Mormon population outside of Utah, and some of the LDS Church’s high-ranking officials also serve in the legislature as Republicans.
6) 🚺💉 Abortion is completely banned.
February 17th, 2024
Idaho has been waiting to ban abortion since 2020, when it passed a “trigger ban” meant to take effect as soon as Roe v. Wade fell, as it did in 2022 because Ruth Bader Ginsburg wouldn’t retire, Barack Obama cowed to Mitch McConnell stealing a Supreme Court nomination, Hillary Clinton didn’t bother campaigning in Wisconsin, and Donald Trump’s three Supreme Court appointees boldly lied in confirmation hearings.
Idaho’s law has the worst of everything on reproductive freedom. All abortions are illegal, unless the mother is on death’s door, or if she’s a victim of rape or incest who has reported it to the police within the first trimester. Like Texas law, private citizens can collect a bounty for turning in women who have an abortion.
Idaho even went so far as to challenge, all the way to the Supreme Court, the federal law that mandates abortion healthcare to save the life of the mother. The Court reversed the Ninth Circuit in January and allowed Idaho to continue letting women nearly die, before deciding in June that Idaho should try to save women’s lives while the lower courts examine this issue further.
7) 🚺 Abortion trafficking is a felony.
February 20th, 2024
Idaho’s “Abortion trafficking” felony makes it illegal to help a pregnant teen girl leave Idaho for abortion healthcare out-of-state without her parent’s permission. The intent of this law would have state police interrogating any drivers with a teen girl in the car heading toward Oregon or Washington. It also makes driving the teen to the post office to pick up abortion pills a felony. A girl impregnated by her father is going to have that baby and there’s nothing you can do about it.
8) 🌈👶🏻 Providing gender-affirming healthcare for transgender kids is a felony.
February 29th, 2024
In Idaho, it is a felony to provide the healthcare trans kids need to escape increased risk of suicide. According to the ACLU: The law bans puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and certain surgeries for transgender youth, threatening medical providers with felony charges and up to 10 years in prison.
The argument is that kids are too young to be making such a decision. Their minds aren’t fully developed to take on a risk that could leave them with permanent irreversible physical damage and lifelong effects on their mental health. There is a great deal of social pressure surrounding this decision, as well, and we can’t know for certain they really want to make that decision for themselves or because of peer pressure. While there may be those who later in life excel and thrive after that decision, there are also those who regret the decision and cannot undo the toll that decision has wrought upon their mind and body. I’m talking, of course, about the decision to play tackle football, which never seems to occur to the “what about the children?” chorus that rails against transgender healthcare for teens.
9) ✊🏿 Half-assed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
March 12th, 2024
Idaho is well-known to be one of the whitest states in the U.S. and has for decades been a sort of Mecca (they’ll hate that metaphor) for the white Christian Nationalist types.
Nowhere is that more evident than in the state’s half-assed approach to the federal Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Idaho was the 47th state to recognize the holiday, but then named it “Martin Luther King Jr. – Idaho Human Rights Day.” It’s the “All Holidays Matter” way to celebrate Dr. King.
10) 🚺 Bikini “strip clubs” more modest than the beach.
March 17th, 2024
It is illegal in Idaho for anyone to dance nude in a private facility to an audience of adults—or what most people think of as a “strip bar” or “gentleman’s club.”
Idaho does have such clubs, but the rules are as prude as you’d expect. There can be no hard alcohol sold in any such club where dancers are exposing themselves for tips. In the clubs where beer and wine are sold, the dancers must wear bikinis—breast and nipples and butt crack and pubic area must always be covered. A bikini a woman could wear in public at the beach, like a thong, could be against the law if she wore it while dancing in a club.
Only in clubs where no alcohol is sold—which then lower their entry age to 18 from 21—may dancers go topless.
11) 🚬 Smoking in bars is legal.
March 20th, 2024
Idaho has a Clear Indoor Air Act, but it only got rid of smoking in restaurants and public buildings. Smoking in bars is legal (though some voluntarily restrict it). Just don’t show your titties.
12) 📖 Nazi professors.
The Guardian reported that a professor at Boise State University was involved with spreading far-right hatred online.
March 29th, 2024
13) 🌈 Deadnaming and misgendering trans people is protected by law.
April 2nd, 2024
While other states are protecting trans people from the harassment of deadnaming (addressing them by their pre-transition name) and misgendering (purposefully using pronouns counter to their gender), Idaho proactively protected the bigots who engage in that harassment.
Bonus disgust: Sen. Ben Adams, who represents Nampa, the town where I was born, explained the “common sense” bill to permit deadnaming and misgendering trans people.
“Just because you say it, it doesn’t make it real. I have a 3-year-old and a 9-year-old and if I wear a gorilla suit, my child might actually believe I’m a gorilla,” Adams said on the Senate floor. “But that doesn’t make me a gorilla. I’m still a human being in a gorilla suit.”
I have my doubts about that, Senator.
14) ✊🏿 Someone might scream “N*****!” at any moment.
April 3rd, 2024
NPR reported: Police in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and the FBI are investigating after a team in the NCAA Women’s basketball tournament said they were racially harassed while staying in the city.
Members of the University of Utah women’s team told police someone in a truck displaying a confederate flag yelled racial slurs and revved the engine in a menacing way as players and staff walked to dinner last Thursday. They say that same truck and a second were waiting as the team returned from dinner and followed them back to their hotel.
15) 💰 Landlords can discriminate against poor people.
April 3rd, 2024
Idaho passed a law this year that allows landlords to reject Section 8 housing vouchers that help poor people secure housing. It also bans any city from enacting any sort of rent controls.
16) ✊🏿 It’s not a great place for Black people.
April 3rd, 2024
To say that Idaho isn’t a great place for Black folks is putting it mildly. The entire Black population of the state (12,700) wouldn’t completely fill the state’s largest basketball arena (13,390). Until the 1990s, there was an active neo-Nazi compound in the state.
17) 🚺💉 OB/GYN doctors are fleeing the state.
April 21st, 2024
Because of the abortion ban (#6), gynecologists and obstetricians are fleeing the state. Since the ban took effect, 51 of the state’s 227 doctors left Idaho, and only two doctors came to Idaho.
In addition, two entire hospital obstetrics programs have closed.
18) 🚺💉 Bi-monthly emergency pregnancy airlifts out-of-state.
May 3rd, 2024
Since the abortion ban, women who have had severe life-threatening complications in their pregnancy are airlifted across the border to Oregon, Washington. or Montana for the healthcare that is banned in Idaho. Stories of women rejected from emergency room after emergency room for miscarriages abound, with some bleeding out in the parking lot, some developing sepsis, hoping they live long enough at death’s door to be deemed worthy of a “life of the mother” exception abotion.
19) 📖 The idiotic crusade to ban books.
May 9th, 2024
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver had a wonderful segment about the Idahoans on a crusade to ban books at their local library with themes they find offensive. The only catch? The library didn’t have any copies of the banned books on the shelves anyway.
20) 📖👶🏻 The idiotic crusade to make libraries “adults only.”
May 20th, 2024
Idaho passed a law that forces libraries to move a book to an “adults-only section” if someone files a complaint. The problem for the tiny library in Donnelly is that there isn’t enough room in it to have an “adults-only section.” The solution, of course, is to declare the whole library “adults-only” and forbid any unaccompanied minors from entry.
21) 🌈 Malicious defamation of drag performers.
May 24th, 2024
A North Idaho blogger named Summer Bushnell deceptively edited the performance of a Post Falls drag queen Mona Liza Million (aka Eric Posey) by placing a censorship blur over his genital area in a video of Posey’s performance at Pride. In fact, Posey’s genitals were never exposed, but Bushnell claimed that Posey was exposing himself to the children in attendance at the Pride event. Posey sued for defamation and was awarded over one million dollars.
22) ✊🏿 Rejection of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
May 24th, 2024
Idaho by law rejects the concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion at all public colleges. Higher education institutions cannot inquire about a prospective student’s race, sex, ethnicity or sexual orientation, as well as their views on any subject of social justice.
23) ✊🏿 Rejection of critical race theory.
May 24th, 2024
Idaho has passed a law banning the teaching of critical race theory in Idaho schools, something that isn’t taught in Idaho schools except maybe some higher level criminal justice classes at a university.
24) 🌈 Mocking Gay Pride with “Straight Pride.”
June 2nd, 2024
From the Daily Mail: An Idaho bar has opted to counter LGBTQ Pride Month by celebrating ‘Heterosexual Awesomeness Month’ during the month of June, saying that without them ‘none of us would be here.’
Old State Saloon in Eagle, Idaho, which is just outside of Boise, announced this past Wednesday that each Monday would be ‘Hetero Male Monday.’
Any man dressed ‘like a heterosexual male’ will be entitled to a free draught beer, according to a Facebook post from the bar.
25) 🔫 …and raffling off AR-15s on “Conspiracy Theory Trivia Night.”
June 6th, 2024
From KTVB: BOISE, Idaho — An Eagle bar has gotten local attention in the 18 months it’s been open after holding promotional events such as Conspiracy Theory Trivia Night – where you can win an AR-15 – Christian singles mingle nights and hosting flat-earther events.
26) 🌈 My hometown is officially “against” LGBT Pride.
June 26th, 2024
When my hometown in the conservative county outside Boise’s held its first ever LGBT Pride event, the mayor proclaimed that Nampa is “against what she [and] the city council… believe.”
27) ✝️ White Christian Nationalist Patriarchy is popular.
July 1st, 2024
Reporting in Slate, Sarah Stankorb writes: The people who spoke to me included women who understood a wifely duty of sexual availability meant they could not refuse their husbands, girls touched inappropriately at [private religious school], students whom [they] asked intrusive questions about their sexual activity, and one girl coached in counseling by [them] to forgive her father for inappropriately touching her and watching her shower.
There’s not much you can’t get away with in Idaho by claiming it’s your religion. Only in the last four years has Idaho repealed its statutes criminalizing adultery, fornication, and sodomy, and only recently raised its age of consent to marriage to 16.
28) 📖💉🚺 Public funds may not be used to promote abortion.
July 3rd, 2024
Idaho forbids any taxpayer money from being spent for abortion education. The law is so strict that teachers and professors—recipients of public funds—are restrained from discussing abortion. The measure’s free speech constitutionality has yet to be challenged because the Attorney General has promised not to enforce the statute, thereby robbing the professors who sued over the law any standing with which to sue, as the judge ruled.
So, then, Idaho still has a felony law that threatens 14 years in jail and a $10,000 fine if a professor “promotes abortion,” which can’t be challenged as a threat to free speech because the Attorney General won’t prosecute it. Unless, perhaps, the next Attorney General does prosecute, and then that professor would have the standing to go through an arrest and booking and mugshot and their name all over the news and the expense and time to file another lawsuit which would probably be in their favor.
29) 📖 Anti-government specialty license plates (but no Pride plates).
July 15th, 2024
As @Shootfilm on Threads so eloquently puts it: Idaho is getting “Don’t Tread On Me” specialty license plates. So let me get this straight. You don’t like the government, but you’re going to give the government extra money for your plates to say you don’t like the government. Rocket scientists!
30) 💰🏡 Bans on tiny-home living.
July 25th, 2024
In the city of Meridian (next door to Boise), a woman bought a tiny house on wheels. A friend of hers agreed to let her park it on his property next to his house. That’s when they learned that while it is perfectly legal for the friend to place his own tiny house on his own property next to his main house, it is illegal to place somebody else’s tiny house in that same spot.
That’s right, she can’t park her tiny house on his property and pay rent for the space. But he could park his own tiny house on his property and charge her rent to live in it. Essentially, the law incentivizes her to not own her own tiny house.
31) 🐘 Anti-environmentalism (in one of the most beautiful states).
August 20th, 2024
For a state with some of the greatest natural beauty in North America, Idahoans are fiercely anti-environmentalism. You’ll see plenty of those “rolling coal” diesel pickups, purposefully belching out thick black smoke to “own the libs.” It’ll probably have an “Earth First: We’ll Log The Other Planets Later” bumper sticker on it. One person in my comments noted seeing a “Welcome Environmentalists: we haven’t had a good lynching since ’56,” which again brings the racism of the state into the picture.
From @orstoddard
32) 🚺👶🏻 Incest victims must get daddy’s permission for a police rape kit.
August 30th, 2024
Idaho, in its anti-abortion, anti-trans zeal, passed a law that requires parental permission before a minor can receive any healthcare. While they were mainly considering preventing doctors from providing abortion or gender-affirming healthcare, they forgot that the administration of a rape kit—the testing for DNA evidence of the crime—is a medical procedure.
Recall from #7 above that it’s a felony to help the pregnant teen girl who was raped by her father to cross the border for an abortion. Recall from #6 above that the exception for rape or incest for an abortion in the first trimester in Idaho can only be in effect if the rape has been reported to the police. Now, to report that rape to the police, the victim of incest has to get her rapist’s permission to administer the rape kit that reports the rape that allows her to have an abortion.
34) 🌈 Universities that refuse to play against trans athletes.
September 28th, 2024
From Erin in the Morning: Boise State University has forfeited their volleyball game to SJSU rather than play a team with a trans player. She was forcibly outed as trans by an anti-trans magazine, and then a teammate.
35) 🌈 …and the governor of the state praising the university for it.
September 28th, 2024
Gov. Little signed an executive order directing the state department of education to oppose all federal efforts for trans recognition and inclusion in schools. No word on whether that was why Boise State refused to play SJSU after learning there was a trans athlete in the team—despite having played against her the past two years prior.
36) 🌈👶🏻 Attorney General sues to stop pediatricians from recommending trans healthcare.
September 28th, 2024
Idaho’s Attorney General is suing to prevent the American Academy of Pediatricians from recommending gender-affirming healthcare for trans kids. Not just trans kids in Idaho. Trans kids anywhere in the United States.
37) ✊🏿 Politicians who yell “go back where you came from” to opponents.
October 4th, 2024
At a candidates forum in the northern Idaho town of Kendrick, things got heated between a male Republican and the female Democrat vying to take his sear.
From the Moscow Pullman Daily News:
Trish Carter-Goodheart, a Democratic House candidate for Seat A in the district, said in a news release that after a question was asked about discrimination and whether it exists in Idaho, she said that, “just because someone hasn’t personally experienced discrimination, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Racism and discrimination are real issues here in Idaho, as anyone familiar with our state’s history knows.”
Sen. Dan Foreman, R-Viola, reportedly responded to Carter-Goodheart, “I’m so sick and tired of this liberal bull—-. Why don’t you go back to where you came from?”
Not only was Trish Carter-Goodheart born and raised in Northern Idaho… she’s a member of the Nez Perce tribe. Northern Idaho IS where she comes from, long before the Foreman family ever set foot in North America.
38) 🚺👶🏻 Pregnant teens in labor denied medical care.
October 21st, 2024
Since Idaho requires parental consent for any medical care for a minor, a teenage girl going into labor can’t be treated until doctors can find her homeless mom or her incarcerated grandmother for permission.
From the Washington Post:
The patient, 36 weeks pregnant, was having mild but frequent contractions. She had come to the emergency room in this small lakeside town because she was new to the area and had no doctor. In most cases, physician Caitlin Gustafson would have begun a pelvic exam to determine whether labor had started. This time, she called the hospital’s lawyers.
Mom-to-be Aleah was only 13 years old. And under a new Idaho law requiring parental consent for nearly all minors’ health care, Gustafson could be sued for treating her because the girl had been brought in by her great-aunt.
What followed were more than two frantic hours of trying to contact Aleah’s mother, who was living in a car, and her grandmother, who was the teen’s legal guardian. The grandmother finally gave verbal consent for the exam — from the Boise-area jail where she was incarcerated on drug charges.
REMEMBER, “drug charges” in Idaho can be weed.
39) 💉 Health Department denying COVID vaccinations.
November 20th, 2024
AP: A regional public health department in Idaho is no longer providing COVID-19 vaccines to residents in six counties after a narrow decision by its board.
Southwest District Health appears to be the first in the nation to be restricted from giving COVID-19 vaccines. Vaccinations are an essential function of a public health department.
Don’t worry folks, it’s just the Southwest District, only six counties, not including the one Boise is in, but including the one I was born in and in which my elderly parents still live.
40) 💰👶🏻 Ice cream parlors working kids til midnight
December 12th, 2024
A local ice cream shop that began in my hometown is fined over $320,000 by the U.S. Department of Labor for child labor law violations that included working the kids on industrial mixers, siphoning some of their tips off to management, and keeping them past midnight on school nights.
41) 🌈💉 Medicaid denies healthcare for trans (but not cis) patients
January 3rd, 2025
A bill sponsored by another fellow Nampan, Rep. Bruce Skaug, bans the use of taxpayer dollars (Medicaid—which Republicans like Skaug denied Idahoans, who only got Medicaid expansion thanks to the citizen initiative power the Republicans try to destroy) to provide any sort of gender-affirming healthcare for transgender people—not just the trans children whose healthcare is criminalized (see #8 above), but for adults, too.
But not cisgender adults seeking the same exact treatment are welcome to use taxpayer funds. See, it’s not the medical procedure that’s dangerous in Idaho, it’s how that procedure aligns with someone’s pronouns that’s dangerous.
Idaho Capital Sun: Federal judge denies bid to block Idaho’s ban on public funds for gender care
The bill creating the new law — House Bill 668 — was approved by all but one Idaho Republican state legislators this spring before Gov. Brad Little signed it into law.
Bill sponsors argued the bill ensures taxpayer dollars are not inappropriately used. Opponents said major medical groups say gender-affirming care is medically necessary and safe, and warned the law could lead to a lawsuit.
According to the law, public funds cannot cover hormone therapy, puberty blockers or surgical procedures for the purpose “to affirm the individual’s perception” of their sex. But the law outlines other coverage of the procedures still legally allowed.
For example, if you’re a cisgender woman with extreme periods, Medicaid in Idaho will pay for your hysterectomy. But if you’re a transgender man with extreme periods, Medicaid in Idaho will not pay.
The lawsuit filings included a declaration by Dr. Misa Perron-Burdick, an Idaho OB-GYN. In 2023, she wrote she met a transmasculine patient — not named in the filing — who wanted a hysterectomy for heavy and painful bleeding during menstruation, called dysmenorrhea.
But, she wrote, “Medicaid denied the request for not meeting … criteria for medical necessity,” and a “reviewer stated that while the patient had some bleeding, the majority of the notes indicated that this was a planned elective surgery for gender reassignment.”
Medicaid, over the last year, “has authorized hysterectomies for 3 cisgendered patients for the diagnosis of painful periods,” Dr. Perron-Burdick wrote. “Although this transgender patient has the exact same complaint and indication for hysterectomy as my cisgender patients, Medicaid has denied him necessary medical care.”
42) 🐘 Idaho hates citizen initiatives
January 6th, 2025
Idaho is one of less than half the U.S. states that have the power of direct democracy through citizen initiatives. That power was used sparingly by Idahoans over the decades and largely without concern, until pesky California in 1996 went and legalized medical marijuana by initiative, followed by next-door Oregon and Washington in 1998. By 2004, Idaho was nearly surrounded by legal medical marijuana.
So, Idaho legislators got to work on various schemes to thwart citizen initiatives. The state constitution is vague about how the people enacted initiatives, allowing the legislature to set the standard.
At first, that standard was to collect the signatures of 6% of the state’s registered voters. But Idaho is a very rural state, with its population centered mostly around Boise, Coeur d’Alene, Pocatello, and Twin Falls. Fearful that the liberal (for Idaho) cityfolk would control the initiative process, the legislature added a geographic requirement. Not only would you have to gather 6% of the voters’ signatures, you must exceed a 6% threshold in each of 22 of 44 of the state’s counties, forcing initiatives to get rural support.
The problem is that Idaho just made a signature in, say, Dickshooter or Athol, worth a whole lot more than a signature in Boise or Nampa. If county A has 100 people and county B has 100,000, 6% of A is 6, while 6% of B is 6,000. 1 signature in county A is 1/6th of the way to the goal of 6%, while 1 signature in county B is 1/6000th. Rather than make initiatives get rural support, the county requirement actually decreased urban power, and was declared unconstitutional for violating the Equal Protection Clause principle of “one man, one vote.”
Undeterred, in 2013 the legislature finally found a sneaky workaround for their problem with them damn liberal (for Idaho) cityfolk threatening to pass a medical marijuana initiative. Instead of basing the 6% requirement on counties, which have different populations, they set a benchmark for 6% of the voters from 18 of the 35 state legislative districts, which have roughly the same population, ensuring roughly one man, one vote.
But that didn’t really solve the cityfolk problem for them. There are 14 districts in the Boise Metro Area, home to 40% of the state, then another 4 between Pocatello and Idaho Falls. It only made initiatives generally more difficult by adding paperwork.
Then, a watershed moment happened in Idaho politics. A group called Reclaim Idaho in 2018 put forth a citizen initiative that got on the ballot and passed to bring Medicaid expansion dollars to the state that had been routinely rejected by Idaho’s supermajority Republican legislature. Not only did it get support from both rural and urban districts, it passed statewide with 61% of the vote.
This is about the time I was brought in to work on the 2020 effort to pass medical marijuana in Idaho. A few attempts had been made throughout the 2010s, all falling short of the 6% signature goals. My effort in 2020 was the most successful to date, on track to make the ballot, when COVID lockdowns killed our final three months of signature gathering.
I tried again for 2022 with a decriminalization measure that would have legalized the purchases of now-legal marijuana across nearly all Idaho’s borders. But by then I had found that any activist support for changing Idaho’s marijuana laws has been blunted (heh heh) by the easy access of legal marijuana across state lines, the careful consideration of police in not persecuting medical users, and the influx of MAGA conservatives from legal marijuana states fleeing that smell.
During the years I was there, the legislature made several attempts to make my job harder. They tried to increase the 6% districts required from 18 to 24. They tried increasing the 6% threshold to 10%. They tried reducing the signature gathering time from nine months to 90 days. They tried making it unconstitutional for initiatives to change drug laws. And when they found me collecting signatures across the Oregon border at the pot shops Idahoans frequent, they required all Idaho initiatives to be signed on Idaho soil, until they realized that disenfranchised Mormon missionaries, soldiers deployed overseas, and businessmen out of the country, so they carved out exceptions just for them.
Much of this anti-democratic zealotry was spearheaded by an Idaho Senator who is also one of the high religious leaders of the Mormon church, who goes by the ironic name of C. Scott Grow.
43) 🌈 Idaho wants SCOTUS to end gay marriage
January 8th, 2025
The Idaho state legislature has passed a non-binding resolution calling on the Supreme Court to overturn its 2015 Obergefell v Hodges decision that recognized an equal right to marry someone of the same sex, legalizing so-called “gay marriage” nationwide. (I always thought the “gay” part was irrelevant; where is it government’s job to dictate a specific sex to marry? It’s blatant sexist discrimination, no matter how you’re oriented.)
The Advocate: Idaho Republicans file resolution to repeal marriage equality
The measure, House Joint Memorial 1, claims the Supreme Court overstepped its authority by requiring states to recognize same-sex marriages. It also calls for a return to the so-called “natural definition” of marriage as between one man and one woman, a concept supporters insist is rooted in tradition.
44) 🐘 Brownshirts forcibly removing dissidents from GOP town halls
February 22nd, 2025
COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho – A woman attending a Kootenai County Republican Central Committee townhall on Saturday appeared to be dragged from the meeting.
Video sent to NonStop Local appears to show a woman being asked to leave repeatedly before being physically removed.
The Kootenai County Republican Central Committee acknowledged the incident Saturday afternoon and claimed that the removal of the individual was necessary.
45) 🌲 A $300 mandatory minimum fine for marijuana possession
February 26th, 2025
I told you at the beginning of this list that Idaho’s Republican legislature really, really, really hates pot. While you can cross the Idaho border into Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Montana, and Canada to buy legal weed, or cross into Utah for medical marijuana, Idaho, along with Wyoming, maintains a criminal marijuana prohibition. Under the prohibition, the mere smell of weed is reason enough for cops to pull you out of your car, spread its contents all over the side of the freeway, run a dog around them that will alert (whether you have weed or not) to allow them to go through all your stuff, and when they find that marijuana, they can cuff your hands behind your back, put you in the squad car, drive you to the jail, book you, fingerprint you, mug shot you (which then appears on a searchable website forever), charge you with the crime of possession, keep you in jail if you can’t make bail, take you to court, convict you of a misdemeanor, leaving you a person with a criminal drug record, which impacts your ability to get jobs, housing, loans, and credit.
But that hasn’t been deterrence enough for Idaho, because still, every month Idahoans cross the border, buy legal weed, and bring it back to Idaho to smoke. The king of the bordertown marijuana is the little town of Ontario, Oregon (pop. 11,000 and birthplace of the tater tot), which is just one hour from Boise and the 850,000 people of its metro area. That little town sells over $8,000,000 worth of marijuana every month. It is always the third greatest sales by county in the state of Oregon, and the #1 & #2 counties are the ones containing Portland and Beaverton.
Now, Idaho Gov. Brad Little has signed into law a new mandatory minimum $300 fine for marijuana possession. Remember, Idaho had a fine of up $1,000 for marijuana possession of up to 3 ounces, and sale of any amount is a felony with possible 5 years and $15,000 fine, as is the growing of a single cannabis plant. In fact, even possession of a pot pipe is a misdemeanor with 1 year and a $1,000 fine, and sales of a pot pipe is a felony with 9 years and $30,000 possible.
46) ✊🏿 Forcing teachers to take down inclusion posters
March 11th, 2025
BOISE, Idaho — A middle school teacher in West Ada School District has been instructed to remove two inclusive signs from her classroom, sparking controversy over the district’s interpretation of its content neutrality policy.
Sarah Inama, who has taught world civilization to 6th graders at Lewis and Clark Middle School for four years, was told by school administrators to take down signs stating “everyone in this room is welcome, important, accepted, respected, encouraged, valued, and equal” and “everyone is welcome here.” The district claims these signs violate policy requiring classroom content to be neutral.
47) 🌲💉 Amending the Idaho Constitution to ban marijuana initiatives
March 12th, 2025
Since California passed a medical marijuana initiative in 1996, followed by Oregon and Washington in 1998, the Idaho Legislature has been terrified that big money out-of-state interests will put together a successful citizen initiative to legalize marijuana.
Never mind that grassroots groups have been trying to put a marijuana initiative on Idaho’s ballot unsuccessfully for the past sixteen years, never coming close to even gathering enough signatures to make the ballot, much less pass. I know—I was a part of the 2016, 2020, and 2022 attempts—and even with my connections to those big money out-of-state interests, they have never had any interest in funneling money to an Idaho marijuana campaign. They were far more interested in funding campaigns in South Dakota, which were successful in making the ballot and passing, but unsuccessful in adhering to the state’s single subject rule, and thus declared unconstitutional by the South Dakota Supreme Court. Money well spent, fellas.
Now comes from the Idaho Legislature its third attempt in four years to put before the voters an amendment to the state constitution to kill the people’s initiative power on the subject of legalizing marijuana. I wrote here about the legislature’s first attempt back in 2022. House Joint Resolution 4 just passed the Senate and if signed by the governor, it would put before the voters in the next election the following question:
“Shall Section 26, Article III of the Constitution of the State of Idaho be amended to provide that only the Idaho Legislature shall have power and authority to legalize the growing, producing, manufacturing, transporting, selling, delivering, dispensing, administering, prescribing, distributing, possessing, or using of marijuana, narcotics, or other psychoactive substances?”
The primary force behind this amendment is the ironically named Sen. C. Scott Grow, who just happened to also be a high-ranking member of the Mormon Church’s governance. As part of his campaigns against marijuana legalization, he likes to cite the Idaho Constitution’s “temperance clause”:
“The first concern of all good government is the virtue and sobriety of the people, and the purity of the home. The legislature should further all wise and well directed efforts for the promotion of temperance and morality.”
I guess that explains why the Idaho House this session has passed by a margin of 67–3 a bill to allow more movie theaters that sell alcohol by the drink to allow underage kids in to see their movies. I guess that’s why the Idaho Senate in 2022 voted 23–10 to reduce its alcohol server’s minimum age from 19 to 17 (it didn’t pass, and Grow did vote against it).
48) 💰🏡 Criminalizing homelessness
March 18th, 2025
Idaho’s legislature, emboldened by the Johnson v. Grants Pass decision by SCOTUS that allows cities to criminalize people in cities existing without homes, has put forth two bills to ensure that people in cities without homes have nowhere to exist.
SB 1166 will prohibit the existence of a homeless shelter in any city larger than 100,000 people, if that shelter is within 300 feet of where people with homes live. This endangers the ongoing construction of such a shelter in the old Salvation army warehouse on State Street, a location that is primarily on a five-lane boulevard full of commercial properties, which has neighborhoods on the residential streets paralleling the boulevard.
SB 1141 will ban sleeping and camping on any public properties in large cities (the only ones over 100,000 population are Boise, Meridian, and Nampa, all within the southwestern Idaho Boise metro area—an area, by the way, that’s the same size as Gaza), making tent encampments criminal. Effectively, these two bills make it impossible to exist outside if you have no home, and make it impossible for those who’d provide shelter to house you.
Proponents of the bills make the usual complaints about neighborhood quality of life, sanitary conditions, and crime they associate with people who lack housing. Yet these same proponents last year passed laws allowing landlords to reject Section 8 housing vouchers, bans cities from enacting any rent controls, and bans property owners from allowing tiny home living (see #15 and #30 above). They say “homelessness is a choice,” even though “The Idaho House and Finance Association’s 2024 State of Homelessness Report shows that the primary causes of homelessness in Idaho are domestic violence at 31%, loss of income or increased rent at 28%, and disabilities at 13%. The report also indicates that 78% of Idahoans experiencing homelessness in 2024 did so for the first time.”
49) 💉 The crusade for “health freedom” to infect others
March 21st, 2025
Nothing turbocharged the paranoid conspiracy theories about the eeeevil big gubmint in Idaho like the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Already a haven for anti-science vaccine ignorance and rejection, Idaho has an apocalyptic movement called “Health Freedom Idaho” that fights against any public health mandates.
Their work has led the Idaho Legislature to pass SB 1023. Currently under Idaho law, no business, school, or government entity can mandate the COVID-19 vaccine. Now the legislature is broadening that ban to include any medical treatment.
As House Democratic Leader Ilana Rubel explained to Boise Public Radio, “[This bill] says they can’t make you bandage oozing wounds, that they can’t make you get lice treatments, that they can’t make you cover your mouth if you have Ebola and you’re coughing on people.”
To be fair, 14 Republicans did vote against the bill. One of them noted that under the bill, a business couldn’t turn away a customer with an active case of the measles.
But Republican supporters argued that their new law wouldn’t be a communicable virus’s dream scenario. “I want to meet the person who can diagnose measles when a person walks in their door, in their business,” said Rep. Cornel Rasor (R-Sagle), who was raised on a cattle ranch, ran an Army/Navy surplus store, and has zero education and training on infectious communicable disease.
Rep. Lucas Cayler (R-Caldwell), an electronics technician with the Navy and former big rig trucking mechanic with zero education and training on infectious communicable disease agreed, saying SB 1023 wouldn’t cause disease to run rampant, “Because it’s a part of life. It’s always been a part of life. It’s what makes us human. We have immune systems and those immune systems, by and large, regulate.”
Republican Gov. Brad Little has five days to sign, veto, or let the bill become law without his signature. UPDATE: Gov. Little vetoed that bill, but supporters are back with new bills that are virtually identical with the exception for schools being allowed to send home sick children.
50) 🚺🌈 Criminalization of (trans) women’s bare breasts
March 27th, 2025
Remember my hometown mayor in Nampa being officially “against” gay pride (see #26 above)? That event caused an extreme emergency in the Handmaid State. For out there in Lakeview Park, in public, during the festivities, a woman was dancing around topless.
Nampa City Councilmember Sebastian Griffin was so offended he approached a Nampa Police officer observing the dancer. Griffin demanded the officer arrest the woman for indecent exposure. The officer explained he could do nothing because the law does not prevent a man with breast implants from being topless. (Reports on the event are unclear whether the person presents as transgender.)
For the record, Idaho law at the time didn’t prevent a cisgender woman from exposing her breasts in public, either. Indecency laws at the time only criminalized the public exposure of genitalia.
Fearful that Idaho would soon be overrun with people flaunting their boobs in public, Griffin worked with his legislators to craft House Bill 270, signed into law by Gov. Little, to immediately criminalize exposure of “developed female breasts, adult male breasts that have been medically or hormonally altered to appear like developing or developed female breasts, or artificial breasts intended to resemble female breasts.”
But that’s not all. The law also adds “toys or products designed to resemble male or female genitals” as something you cannot display publicly. So, that novelty cap with a pair of boobs on it yo/u got at the bachelor party? Don’t wear it in public. You definitely cannot display any dildos in public. And, sorry MAGA, the law also applies to your big 4×4 pickup’s “truck nuts.”
Showing your boobs or displaying truck nuts once or twice is a misdemeanor, but get your third strike and that’s a felony for which you can be imprisoned five years.
51) 👶🏻 Reducing staffing at child care centers
March 27th, 2025
Idaho, not content with being 41st in the nation in child care staffing ratios, passes a new law to make it 45th in the nation in child care staffing ratios. And just in case any of those hippie-dippie radical-leftie cities in Idaho think there ought to be more adults supervising a room full of infants, toddlers, and kids, the law prevents them from setting more stringent standards locally.
52) 🚺 Only one hospital in the state can perform emergency abortions
March 29th, 2025
After the Dobbs decision, Idaho’s trigger law went into effect banning all abortion. Sure, they have the exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. But as you’ve read above in numbers 6, 7, 17, 18, 28, 32, 33, and 38 above, you have to report the rape to the police and, in the case of incest, get your rapist’s permission for police to administer a rape kit. As for the life of the mother, she has to be on death’s door before that exception kicks in.
St. Luke’s hospital system—the state’s largest—sued over this, because there is a federal law called EMTALA (Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act) that requires hospitals to provide stabilizing care to pregnant patients. Federal Judge B. Lynn Winmill initially ordered an injunction that allowed all Idaho hospitals to follow the guidelines of the federal law in saving the lives of pregnant women having an emergency medical condition.
But now comes Judge Winmill’s decision in the case. Responding to the argument from the state Attorney General Raul Labrador, who said that allowing all the hospitals to continue saving pregnant women from imminent death was too broad, because only St. Luke’s was suing over EMTALA, Judge Winmill agreed that only St. Luke’s was the only party showing harm, therefore, only St. Luke’s should be covered by the injunction.
In other words, in a state of two million people coverinig 83,557 square miles, only the one St. Luke’s Hospital in Boise may perform emergency treatments in accordance with EMTALA to save a pregnant woman’s life.
53) 💉🚺🌈 Doctors and therapists can refuse to treat you over their “morals.”
March 31st, 2025
Back in 2024, Idaho passed SB 1352, which allows for counselors and therapists to deny treatment “in support of goals, outcomes, or behaviors that conflict” with their “sincerely held religious, moral, or ethical principles. This year (2025), the legislature passed HB 59, the so-called “Medical Ethics Defense Act” that extends the right of morality-based discrimination to all health care providers.
“Health care providers shall have the right of conscience and, pursuant to this right, shall not be required to participate in or pay for a medical procedure, treatment, or service that violates such health care provider’s conscience,” the bill states.
Planned Parenthood warns that “Patients could be denied essential care — ranging from birth control to tubal ligation.” It’s not hard to imagine religious providers denying PrEP treatment for AIDS patients, birth control for unmarried women, gender-affirming care for trans adults (it’s already an Idaho felony for trans kids to receive such care, see #8 above), counseling for married people in affairs, administering naloxone for opioid overdoses, or even the wholesale rejection of any treatment for any LGBTQ, atheist, liberal, socialist, or Satanist patient.
54) 🏡 Extorting cities to ban public camping
April 2nd, 2025
Senate Bill 1141 (see #48 above) was passed into law. It requires cities over 100,000 population (Boise, Meridian, and Nampa) to ban public camping, which includes sleeping in cars or even taking a nap in the park. But the ban does not create an enforcement action against the person sleeping. The ban fines the cities $10,000 for each person caught sleeping.
55) 💉👶🏻 Banning food, immunizations, and pre-natal care for immigrants
April 2nd, 2025
House Bill 135, which has passed the legislature and awaits Gov. Little’s signature, requires state agencies to verify the citizenship of any person seeking state-funded vaccinations, communicable disease testing and treatment, prenatal and postnatal care, and food assistance (WIC) for children. Because what makes Idaho greater than having an unvaccinated, infected, untreated immigrant labor force whose pregnant women deliver infants with no medical assistance that then go hungry?
56) 🌲 Criminalizing advertisement of marijuana
April 3rd, 2025
When I began this list, I told you how much the Idaho Legislature hates marijuana. Oregon legalized marijuana for medical use in 1998. Ever since, legislators have feared that “big money out-of-state marijuana legalizers” would descend upon Idaho and use the citizen initiative process to unleash the devil’s lettuce across the Gem State. Because, y’know, nobody ever grows it, sells it, and smokes it within Idaho. 😉
By the early 2010’s, the border town of Ontario (birthplace of the tater tot) had become home to the 45th Parallel, a gray market dispensary providing medical cannabis to registered patients. It was raided and its operators jailed in 2012 (I interviewed one of them in 2014 here). Of course, much of that marijuana was finding its way into Idaho.
In 2014, Oregon legalized marijuana for recreational purposes. Originally, the initiative provided that marijuana sales would be legal throughout the state, with the ability for cities and counties to “opt out” by a vote of the people. Oregon legislators from the eastern counties rebelled and got passed a change that banned sales in every county that rejected the statewide legalization (the eastern ones), with the ability for cities and counties to “opt in” by a vote of the people.
Thus, legal pot shops remained over 200 miles from the Idaho border until 2017, when a town in Eastern Oregon just thirty miles across the border passed a local initiative to allow pot shops. Huntington was a dying little town of a few hundred that had been situated on a highway that was now bypassed by Interstate 84, the freeway from Boise to Portland. Soon, it was home to three legal marijuana shops, a constant flow of customers bearing Idaho license plates, and write-ups in national newspapers.
By 2019, Ontario had passed a local initiative to allow for pot shops (my ladylove Lori Duckworth was instrumental in its passage). Today, there are a dozen dispensaries doing about $8 million in sales every month, to a customer base that is 90% Idahoans. For almost eight years now, these marijuana shops have been buying billboard advertising in Idaho.
Those days are no more with the April 1st signing of House Bill 271, which makes a misdemeanor out of advertising any drug that is illegal in the state of Idaho, punishable by a $500 per day fine.
This has generated little fanfare in the media; I could find no mention of it in a Google News search. Perhaps there’s no shock in the idea of a state in which marijuana is illegal making it illegal to advertise marijuana—even if the advertisement is enticing someone to use the drug where it is legal.
A consequence of this is the hit this will deliver to activists working to change Idaho laws. For instance, the Boise Hempfest is an annual public festival to educate on cannabis as medicine and marijuana law reform. It has been deriving much support from those dispensaries through their advertising at the event.
The Senate did have the foresight to change the original House Bill’s ban on advertising “illegal products and services” to a ban on “illegal drugs.” Can you imagine the uproar if Planned Parenthood couldn’t distribute pamphlets for legal abortion healthcare just over the border in Oregon, Washington, Nevada, and Montana? Or if FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM, and various out-of-state casinos weren’t allowed to advertise the gambling services they provide that are illegal in Idaho?
57) ✝️ Mandatory anti-abortion indoctrination and abstinence-based sex education (if any)
April 4th, 2025
Gov. Little signed SB 1046, a law championed by religious anti-abortion activists that requires the presentation of fetal development videos produced by the anti-abortion group Live Action to public school students, beginning in fifth grade and continuing through graduation.
“Live Action exists today to shift public opinion against abortion,” their website explains, noting that their content that will be forced viewing for nine- and ten-year-olds in public schools has “43% of surveyed followers saying Live Action’s content has changed their position against abortion” and “exposes the abortion industry’s exploitation of women and families for profit.”
Now, there’s nothing wrong in theory with presenting the biological facts of human fetal development—in a high school biology course. But presenting highly-stylized animations produced by anti-abortion activists every year from fifth grade on is clearly promoting an anti-abortion agenda. Especially when compared with Idaho laws regarding sex education in schools, which require that “any program in family life and sex education is to be introduced in the schools is a matter for determination at the local district level by the local school board” and mandate that teens be taught “the power of the sex drive and the necessity of controlling that drive by self-discipline” and about “adoption resources and current adoption practices.”
58) 💉🔫 Firing squad executions and roadside lethal injection drug deals
April 6th, 2025
Idaho is one of many states that has the death penalty. For the record, I am 100% in favor of the death penalty in any system of justice that is 100% accurate—but since none are and innocent people get executed, I abhor the death penalty.
As a death penalty state, Idaho has had a great deal of difficulty finding the lethal injection drugs it wants. Even though a 2022 Idaho law keeps secret the suppliers of lethal injection drugs for the state, there is still a nationwide shortage of them. The makers of these drugs don’t want their product involved in executions because of the enormous media focus on such cases. Nobody wants to be known as the company that makes execution drugs, especially when those drugs often have other legitimate, non-execution medical uses. There’s also the risk of a botched execution and the lawsuits and liability they’d face.
So, in 2023, Idaho legalized the use of firing squads for executions, but only for cases where they cannot get a supply of lethal injection drugs. Other states have made similar laws, and some have revived the use of the electric chair, experimented with fentanyl overdoses, and even used nitrogen gas to suffocate people to death. Gosh, why all the restraint? Why not just tie the prisoner to a chair with a pound of TNT under it and blow him up? Or just revive the hangman’s gallows or bring back tying them to the stake and burning them, as is our American tradition?
Later in 2023, prison officials tried to make up for their lack of lethal injection drugs—in this case, pentobarbital—by meeting some anonymous dealers in an unmarked van for a drug deal at a barren rural crossroads miles outside the prison. The officials won’t identify the people at the two drug deals, whether it was the same people at both deals, or what vehicle or vehicles they used, thanks to that 2022 secrecy law.
Court documents revealed by NBC News show that the prison officials believe the pentobarbital “probably were” manufactured by an FDA-approved company, because they were still in “an original-type manufacturer’s box.” Records show the state has purchased $300,000 worth of pentobarbital. The two U.S. manufacturers have demanded Idaho never use their drugs for executions, with one company noting the roadside drug deal vials weren’t manufactured by them and the other company refusing comment.
That supply was meant in part for the execution of Thomas Creech, a death row inmate who’s been there since I was in high school. They tried killing him in February 2024, but couldn’t get the I.V. line properly set up and the execution was halted. Since then, all that pentobarbital has expired.
59) 💰 De-incentivizing solar power
April 6th, 2025
While I rag on Idaho for its politics and people, geographically and climate-wise, it is a fantastic state. The southern part of the state from Boise to Pocatello boasts many days of sunny weather. This makes it an ideal place for solar panels on the rooftops of homes, especially with the influx of so many new residents and so much new construction.
Part of the allure of solar is being able to offset one’s home power bills through credits for how much energy your solar panels are putting back into the grid when there’s more than enough to power your home. This is called net metering. Idaho Power had been offering its customers 8.8 cents for every kilowatt hour of energy their solar panels put back into the grid.
But as more people add solar panels, more household power bills decline, bringing in less money to Idaho Power. So, in January of 2024, Idaho Power cut that net metering rate from 8.8 to 6.18 cents. Now the utility is back asking the state Public Utilities Commission to allow it to lower the rate to just 2.46 cents, a 60% decline. And it’s not as if people were using solar to bring their bills down to zero or even get refunds; there had always been a $5 monthly bill minimum that Idaho Power raised to $15 in January. In other words, your entire rooftop could be solar and generating more energy than your home can use and sending the energy to other consumers on the grid, and you still have to pay a $15 electricity bill.
Naturally, homeowners who invested in solar panels are upset their power bills are going back up. Builders who had been adding solar to their designs are going to cut back. One resident explained, “They have completely removed the incentive for solar power.”
60) 🔫 Cops gunning down autistic kid behind a fence
April 10th, 2025
An non-verbal autistic 17-year-old boy with cerebral palsy named Victor Perez was having an episode. He was outside on his yard on the ground holding a long kitchen butcher knife. His mother was trying to get the knife from the boy, who waved it about while still on the ground, nowhere near the mother.
Neighbors who were filming the incident called 911, asking the police to come to de-escalate the situation. In the span of twenty seconds, the police arrive, jump out of their vehicles with handguns and rifles drawn, yelling at the boy to drop his knife as they approached the four-foot-tall chain-link fence separating them from the boy on the ground, twelve to fifteen feet behind the fence. When the boy stands up and moves toward the fence, they all open fire.
WARNING, snuff film ahead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdLnFSQNkMM
From behind the chain-link fence. The boy never even made it halfway to the fence, much less had any chance as a kid with cerebral palsy to hop it in a single bound and plunge a knife through the Kevlar body armor being warn by four police officers. Because they heard there was a drunk Mexican with a knife.
In addition to the devastated family are the devastated neighbors who called 911. These are white folks in a white city who are culturally inculcated in the reverence and respect for police. Their communities haven’t been rocked week after week, city after city, year after year with their young men turned into hashtags. They don’t know not to call the cops in situations better handled by social workers. They really thought they were doing the right thing.
“He (Victor) was having a really bad day with mental issues, but he wasn’t chasing anybody, and everybody could easily get out of the reach of his knife,” said Brad Andres, who shot the initial video. “So this wasn’t a really dangerous situation. The police were more called to come in and help the family deescalate and get it under control. This is the biggest tragedy. I witnessed it, and it was really tough on me and my son to watch that. I just want to send out my deepest sympathies to the family, and we were trying to help you. We weren’t trying to bring a firing squad down to Harrison Street.“
The police are trying to justify their trigger-happy shoot-first-ask-no-questions behavior by saying everything happens in a split second, that those cops make sudden life-or-death decisions, and that the suspect had a weapon and they had no way of knowing his condition (the 911 callers said the boy “appeared drunk” and everyone involved was speaking Spanish).
I’m reminded of John Witherspoon’s quote in the 1995 movie “Friday”: “You kids today ain’t nothing but punks. Sissified. So quick to pick up a gun. You scared to take an ass whipping.” The punk kids today are the cops. So terrified that the four of them with tasers and Billy clubs and wearing body armor would take an ass whipping from a teenager with a knife that they had to quickly pick up a gun.
I know this isn’t quite fair to be a reason to boycott Idaho, since cops are sissified punks all cross this country. But since Victor Perez is now fighting for his life in critical condition and has already had one leg amputated over the injuries he sustained, I couldn’t leave Pocatello cops off this list.
UPDATE: Victor Perez, age 17, showing no signs of brain activity, was taken off life support and died on April 12th, 2025.
61) 🌮 Usurping federal jurisdiction to enforce immigration laws
April 11th, 2025
A federal judge has placed an injunction on Idaho’s House Bill 83, the so-called “Immigration Cooperation and Enforcement Act” that creates crimes of “illegal entry” and “illegal entry” of undocumented immigrants and directs law enforcement to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
This is modeled after a similar bill in Texas, also under injunction. At issue is the fact that the federal government, not the states, have jurisdiction over federal immigration laws. Idaho AG Raul Labrador insists that the law is just about stopping criminal aliens, as people can’t be prosecuted under HB 83 unless they have first been suspected of other crimes.
“Suspected of,” not convicted of. So, when the clerk who sees the Mexican mom out shopping with her kids suspects her of shoplifting, he calls the cops. When cops detain her, they discover that she is innocent of shoplifting. Meanwhile, they ask to see a driver’s license or a passport, the proof required in HB 83 to be innocently within Idaho. Without those, they cuff her in front of her kids and stuff her in the squad car, while somebody tries to find someone to care for the now bawling kids. Next, they turn her over to ICE and, who knows, maybe she’s shipped to Louisiana and deported to, who knows, El Salvador?
Repeat this scenario for the Next Door neighbor who calls 911 because there’s a brown-skinned guy walking the streets at night (“suspected of prowling!”). Or the convenience store clerk who calls because a couple of brown-skinned guys are hanging out talking (“suspected of loitering!”). Because we all know damn well nobody is going to be “suspected of” anything if they are, say, a white immigrant from South Africa, and even if they are, forgetting to carry their license, green card, or passport isn’t going to trigger any cops to whip out the cuffs and make calls to ICE.
