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Posts published in May 2023

Limony Snicket prize

May 8, 2023

A bright ray of love and compassion has just broken through the ugly cloud of misinformation about transgender kids that was created in the just-concluded legislative session. At a time when extremist legislators, particularly from the northern climes of the state, seemed hell-bent on punishing these kids, a courageous panhandle librarian was selected for a national award for supporting LGBTQ teens, despite backlash from some in her community.

Denise Neujahr, a librarian at the Community Library Network based in Post Falls and Hayden, will receive the American Library Association’s “Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced with Adversity” in June. The award is for the Rainbow Squad Program she initiated in 2019 to bring LGBTQ kids and their allies together on a monthly basis to interact in a non-threatening atmosphere. Neujahr said the program lets the kids “be themselves without any judgment or bullying, which they experience daily at school, church or home.”

Neujahr’s work is important because of the hysteria raised about transgender youth by some legislative troublemakers this year. Transgender-bashing has become the foremost national culture war issue this year, designed primarily to stoke fear and score political points. In spite of the fact that nobody has been able to point to evidence of a transgender problem in Idaho, legislative miscreants targeted this bullied minority, causing untold grief and dread for them and their families. And it is not as if these kids did not already have more than enough derision, severe depression and suicidal ideation to deal with before the legislators piled on.

Legislators who have claimed to be dead set against the government meddling in family medical decisions, could not wait to prohibit families with trans kids from getting the gender affirming medical care prescribed by their doctors. In fact, the Legislature provided in House Bill 71 (HB 71) that those doctors could spend up to 10 years in prison for providing that care. That will certainly give more doctors a good reason to move out of state, making it more difficult for even the extremists to find a doctor.

Dorothy Moon, the head of the extremist branch of the Idaho GOP, appears to believe that people choose to be in the LGBTQ community, speaking of the “LGBTQ+ ideology.” It is not a choice and it is not an ideology. Rather, according to medical experts, it is biology with an element of genetics. As one expert put it, “The idea that a person’s sex is determined by their anatomy at birth is not true, and we’ve known that it’s not true for decades.” Gender identity “comes from the brain, not the body.”

Moon claims that doctors must be prevented from providing gender affirming care because it is harmful to children. Mainstream doctors in Idaho and across the country say that is flat wrong and attest that gender affirming treatment is essential to the well-being of transgender kids. Indeed, one recent study showed 60% less depression and 73% less suicidality in kids who received such care.

HB 71 will be challenged in court and likely be declared unconstitutional. The state will be stuck with paying substantial attorney fees for both sides. The proponents of the legislation probably knew this would be the result but decided that point scoring with their base was more important, even if it caused immense fear and heartache for transgender kids and their families.

In this combative atmosphere, where facts have played little part in the war against transgender kids, it is encouraging to see people like Denise Neujahr standing up for an oppressed minority group and extending a hand of compassion and inclusion. Despite the ugliness emanating from the Legislature, decency is still alive and well in the Gem State.

 

An election afterthought

May 7, 2023

Our courts tend to be afterthoughts in our politics and elections, barely considered compared to the higher-profile elected legislators.

Many voters in Oregon pick up their ballots and voter guides at election time, marching through their votes for offices like president, governor, senator and representative, but pause when they hit judges and justices up for election.

Many are unopposed: Should they simply check the box? If they’re opposed: Who to vote for? The campaigns are usually low-key and often the candidates say little that would help voters choose between their options.

But those options do matter, nationally and notably in Oregon, and the evidence is all over the headlines.

The most significant election of the year nationally may have been last month’s state Supreme Court contest in Wisconsin, unusual in the attention it has gotten, the money spent on it and the political impact it may have. But its political contours – a technically nonpartisan race between candidates openly supported by Democratic against Republican interests – are clear.

In Texas, a single federal judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk, has claimed the authority to pull a drug from use nationwide, which inserts him into the center of national politics while that claim is heavily disputed. Oregonians can find the impact of local judges closer to home.

Last year, on a close vote (50.6% approval), Oregon’s voters passed Measure 114, which provides for limits on gun sales, ownership and transfers and related activities. It was challenged swiftly in federal court in Portland, where the Oregon Firearms Federation and Sherman County Sheriff Brad Lohrey sued, arguing the measure violated the Second Amendment to the federal Constitution. On Feb. 20, a federal judge gave the measure a legal go-ahead with some delay so some provisions could be properly carried out.

The measure’s critics have not stopped there, however. Long before the federal judge ruled, on Dec. 2, the Gun Owners of America, the Gun Owners Foundation, Gliff Asmussen, and Joseph Arnold went to state court. They did not file in Portland or in Salem but in the state’s 24th judicial district, which covers Harney and Grant counties and has one elected judge, Robert S. Raschio. Three hours after the federal court ruling cleared a path for the measure, Raschio blocked it – statewide – at his court in Burns.

You didn’t have to read too carefully between the lines of the decision to find an attitude more attuned to Burns than to Portland. Raschio wrote in his Jan. 2 decision, “The court finds that there is less than a one in 1,000,000 chance of a person being a fatality in a mass shooting in Oregon. And even less with an offender who is using large capacity magazines.”

State attorneys have asked the state Supreme Court to intervene, but it has declined, so far. The measure has sat in the Burns courthouse for several months.

The latest effort to overcome the judicial blockade has been a measure in the Oregon Legislature, Senate Bill 348, now working its way through the Senate, which seeks to implement (with some adjustments) the terms of Measure 114. It also includes a striking additional provision: A requirement that any legal challenges to it would have to be run through courts at Marion County in Salem. (This isn’t the first time such a provision has been added to legislation.)

All of this should put to rest the mythology that judges simply and dispassionately apply the law to whatever is brought before them. In the case of Measure 114, one group of plaintiffs, dissatisfied with the results from one court, shopped the case around to another. Another interest, dissatisfied there, determined that the case must go to a third venue.

Courts are powerful. In Oregon appellate court decisions – properly decided or not – effectively have set state policy on issues from public employee retirements to campaign finance to the limits of free speech. And as the recent decisions from Harney County demonstrate, the Supreme Court isn’t the only one that matters.

But we know little about the judges or where they’re coming from. Rachio’s opinion seems to have adopted a number of broad arguments and language from gun rights advocates (somewhat like the federal judge in Amarillo, Texas, seems to have done in the case of the abortion pill). That suggests background steeped in particular social patterns of thought found outside of legal case books; possibly you could find something similar –  though from a different perspective) in the case of judges based in Portland or Eugene.

This may be inevitable; whatever professional training we may have, we all bring some of our own social and experiential baggage to what we do.

But in the case of judges, it may mean we need to take a closer look – and inquire more closely when appointed or elected – so that we know what we’re getting. Because that will vary.

 

The danger within

The danger within

May 6, 2023

“These right-wing extremist groups — first of all, they’re fed with grievances. And whenever you have a charismatic leader that attracts those with grievances against the institutions, against society, and you blame the government or an institution [for] it, and then you build in the violence and the racial, just hatred aspect of it, it’s just a boiling pot, and it could pour over the pot any time into violence. … It’s something that is part of human nature — that whenever you are aggrieved or you feel like you’re a victim, you try to find somebody to blame or an institution to blame. And if the conspiracy theories are fomented and spread … a certain element of those turn violent.”

Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, a GOP presidential candidate polling at 1%

On a coal-black Friday night just over 40 years ago – April 8, 1983 to be precise – a group of self-described white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Klan members and Christian nationalists ignited fuel-soaked burlap wrapped around a 20-foot-tall cross in a farmer’s field in southern Idaho.

The image of the burning cross may have been more dramatic than the crowd that watched the spectacle. Only about 20 Nazi saluting radicals showed up to shout “white power,” but they symbolized then – and continue to symbolize today – the fraught history of white supremacist hatred that is all too deeply embedded in the DNA of Idaho and much of the Pacific Northwest.

Richard Butler, the dangerous bigot who then led the north Idaho-based Aryan Nations, was dressed that night in Klan robes and made it clear that the cross burning was in response – a moral act, Butler said – to anti-harassment legislation that had recently been approved by the Idaho legislature.

The malicious harassment law did not address a cross burning protest on private land, and the demonstration was on private property, but as the reporter for the Twin Falls Times-News pointed out, “nevertheless, the ceremony served to challenge the law and the establishment that enacted it.”

The more things change.

This week, as was demonstrated by legal filings presented to an Idaho court, the state’s rightwing radical of the moment, Ammon Bundy, is defying the law and the establishment that enacted it.

Bundy’s prolonged and complicated legal battle with Idaho’s largest health care system has, according to legal representations made by St. Luke’s Health System, involved witness intimidation, bullying and threats to medical professionals.

The hospital system is suing Bundy because of the intimidating protests he and his followers mounted around the downtown Boise hospital. A child of a Bundy follower was involved in a child welfare case, and as a result the youngster was being cared for at the hospital.

Bundy and his network of followers, the People’s Rights Network – some estimates claim the Network includes 10,000 individuals spread across the American west – have spun the circumstances of the child and the hospital into a conspiracy to infringe on parental rights. This is very much a pretense in search of violence.

As the Idaho Statesman reported, the St. Luke’s “suit claims that the defendants posted lies about the hospital system online and did so in part to raise money and gain a bigger political following.” The hospital says it has spent millions to upgrade security even as health care workers have been threatened and harassed in a variety of ways.

And much as Richard Butler did decades ago, Bundy has flipped a middle finger at the courts and law enforcement by failing to honor demands for material, accept subpoenas and by claiming that he is the one being harassed.

A former Boise police captain filed an affidavit on behalf of the hospital in the Bundy case, saying, “It is my opinion that extremist groups like People’s Rights Network have a playbook that involves the intentional use of misinformation and disinformation to radicalize others to take action, including violent action, against individuals identified by the extremist group.”

If you wonder just what Bundy and his band are capable of recall the armed standoff at the Oregon wildlife refuge in 2016. Or the earlier defiance of federal law at Bundy’s father’s ranch in Nevada. Or the demonstrations designed to intimidate and frighten police and elected officials. Who knows what the man’s end game might be, but his history tells us he’s capable of even more and bigger outrages, including violence.

Meanwhile, Idaho is again defined, as it was 40 years ago, as a hateful haven for anti-government radicals who barely bother to disguise the violence lurking beneath their sheets or brewing under their ridiculously large cowboy hats.

What is different 40-years on is the willingness, at least on the part of most of the state’s political leadership, to quietly shrug Bundy’s nonsense off. The official silence is deafening.

By the time Richard Butler staged his cross burning in the spring of 1983 a bipartisan consensus had formed in Idaho that aggressively and on a sustained basis pushed back against his hatred. A Democratic governor, John Evans, and a Republican attorney general, Jim Jones, regularly condemned the white supremacists. Local groups formed to push back with messages of tolerance and reality. A Republican legislature passed the law referenced earlier. The state’s Human Rights Commission was at the center of the response of decency.

Today, many in the legislature, some even openly, identify with Bundy and his anti-government, conspiracy-driven radicalism. The attorney general openly courts the radical right. The governor apparently believes silence will just make the outrages go away. The sheriff in the governor’s own home county is intimidated by Bundy and his followers.

Hand it to the hospital executives, the health care workers and their lawyers who have carried the battle against extremism, mostly with little political cover.

The success of a Richard Butler or an Ammon Bundy depends upon intimidation and fear. One of the Idaho cross burners said in 1983, “we’re going to have our redress of grievances one way or the other.” After law enforcement personnel confronted Bundy (before they backed down) he said he was being threatened to the point where “I feel like they are going to keep pushing and pushing until I become what they say I am.”

Butler and his violence prone followers were eventually routed in Idaho by a dogged and sustained effort to hold him to account in the courts and in the court of public opinion. Unless Bundy is confronted in precisely the same way he’ll continue and grow his campaign of fear and intimidation. It’s all he’s got to keep his followers riled up and armed.

And like Butler four decades ago, Bundy is also playing a long game.

On that long ago night as the disgusting cross-burning crowd dispersed in southern Idaho, the Times-News noted the bigots “were cheered by the fact that the glowing cross … had attracted a steady stream of car-bound sightseers.”

Most of the gawkers appeared to be teenagers and, as one of the white supremacist said, “that’s OK.”

(image/Wikimedia Commons, Tyler Merbler)

 

Something new at Twin Falls

May 5, 2023

Touring around southern Idaho last week, I wandered through places I hadn’t visited in a while to check on their progress. For better or worse, I didn’t observe a lot of surprises.

Until I got to downtown Twin Falls, and it gave me pause for thought.

For some years, mainly in the years before and after the turn of the century, I made my way regularly to Twin, mainly for watching updates in the Snake River water adjudication. The city itself I noticed in passing as not changing enormously, other than gradually expanding commerce along Blue Lakes Boulevard - the northern entryway into town from the Snake River Canyon - and along a few of the commercial arterials along it.

Twin Falls never seemed to decline or stagnate, and it never seemed less than at least reasonably prosperous. But for much of the time I watched it, it didn’t seem to change a lot either. It didn’t develop or change, at least from what I could see on the surface. You could see some of this in the population stats for much of the twentieth century. Twin’s population in 1960 was 20,126; in 1990 it was 27,591, a reasonable increase but nothing earth-shattering.

Now - as of 2020 - three decades on, the population has abruptly exploded, to 51,807: It is, roughly, twice the city I generally was accustomed to years ago.

I hadn’t stopped by for some years but last month I stopped in downtown for a coffee visit, and exited my car in what seemed like a city that hadn’t existed not so long before.

Downtown in Twin was years ago pleasant but low-key and a little old-fashioned, and areas along its periphery were starting to go quiet or even vacant. No more. It’s now packed with new businesses - and older ones that have upgraded. Downtown is loaded with new restaurants, shopping and more. There’s new downtown residential development, in part to service the corporations that have been developing offices nearby. There’s a large, open civic area, home now to various civic events, overseen by a great statue of one of the area’s pioneers.

City hall, rebuilt out of an old department store building, has - without being extravagant - become one of the most innovative and even flashy public buildings anywhere in the state.

Twin Falls still has issues, of course. Currently, many of those - stresses of traffic, resources, and within the lives of people - seem to be issues growing out of rapid growth. It also has found some advantages it is trying to exploit.

Some of where this growth came from is clear enough. In the last generation, population centers within regions have typically come at the expense of the region’s smaller communities, or rural areas. (The Magic Valley minus Twin Falls County - but including Elmore County - grew in population by 37.7 percent from 1990 to 2020, while Twin Falls County grew by 66.4 percent). Changes in agribusiness, in dairy and other products, have helped, as have good roadway networks; much of this in the Magic Valley has become increasingly centralized around Twin Falls. Local civic advocates would point out other advantages as well.

Where all this goes is another question. Does Twin Falls become an urban center in a way it hasn’t to now - maybe beyond what Idaho Falls and Pocatello do in their regions, more like what Boise is becoming in the context of Idaho overall? Hang around the downtown and you might start to think so. Consider this idea: The nature of Twin Falls is breaking away from, growing apart from, the nature of the Magic Valley around it.

Twin Falls, its ongoing struggle with air transportation notwithstanding, is becoming more diverse and even more cosmopolitan. It may become a different kind of creature in the years ahead. As such, it could become something of a template for other Idaho

No place ever stays the same forever. Twin Falls once seemed as if it might. It doesn’t seem so now.

 

Idaho case for Biden

Idaho case for Biden

May 3, 2023

So our 80-year-old president, Joe Biden, is seeking a second term. No big surprise there. And it doesn’t take much of a political prophet to predict that Biden will not carry Idaho’s electoral votes – regardless of who the Republicans come up with as their nominee.

The president won’t have help from the sidelines in the Gem State, at least on the Republican side. Sen. Mike Crapo talks plenty about Biden’s poor fiscal policies, Sen. Jim Risch hits the president for his failed foreign policies and Congressman Russ Fulcher mention’s Biden’s reduced mental capacity. Gov. Brad Little, Attorney General Raul Labrador and Congressman Mike Simpson also will take well-timed swings at the president.

All of the above, at least in spirit, will be wearing MAGA hats if the 2024 election is a Biden-Trump rematch – a scenario that people are not excited to see. Polls show that about 70 percent of Americans don’t want Biden to run again and some 60 percent don’t want Trump on the campaign trail. Yet it’s these two old men, one who is just north of 80 and the other who is a few years younger, who have the most clear path to the nominations. You’d think that the two major parties could do better.

If ever there was a presidential-election year that was prime for a strong independent candidate, such as Liz Cheney, this is it. Cheney has said she will do “anything” to keep Trump out of the White House, and a run for the presidency might be the ticket. And who knows, she might win if voters are disgusted enough by the top of the tickets.

Rep. Lauren Necochea, who chairs the state Democratic Party, also wants to keep Trump out of the Oval Office. But she prefers the old-fashioned route – with Biden scoring a resounding victory. She sees good reasons for backing the president.

“President Biden has a proven track record in delivering smart policies benefiting our state, like the bipartisan infrastructure act and the CHIPS act passed despite opposition from Idaho’s Republican delegation – underscoring the importance of having representation in Washington, looking out for our economic future,” she said.

Former Idaho Congressman Larry LaRocco, who co-chaired Biden’s White House run in 2020, says Biden has an “enviable record of achievement” as far as creating jobs and building the infrastructure. “In 2020, America sensed that Biden could lead us through a pandemic and restore our economy for working Americans.”

Biden has delivered on his campaign pledges, LaRocco says. “His policies are geared toward middle America and those left behind by prior policies that favored the Uber-wealthy and well connected.”

Necochea says Biden is the strongest candidate available, given his record for defeating Trump. “As congressional Republicans continue to push for cuts to Social Security, veterans’ health care and other benefits that Americans earned, it is even more imperative that Democrats take the White House.”

If Trump is “the guy” on the GOP ticket, then LaRocco is ready.

“Joe Biden stands up for our fragile democracy attacked by Trump’s lies, distortions and conspiracy theories,” says LaRocco. “The Big Lie political base propelling Trump to the GOP nomination will stand in stark contrast to the honest approach by Biden’s White House.”

Of course … there’s the “age thing.” Biden is 80 and will be 82 by the next inauguration day. He’d by 86 if he finishes a second term. Trump is just four years younger, with more than a few detractors suggesting that he’s “too old,” or mentally incapable, to be president. LaRocco, for one, is not dwelling on age.

“I am proud to stand with President Biden. Preserving our freedoms from the authoritarianism of Trump will overshadow concerns of age,” LaRocco says.

The comments from Necochea and LaRocco likely will not turn Idaho into a “blue” state in next year’s presidential election, but they offer a fair glimpse of what Democrats will be saying nationally.

Chuck Malloy is a long-time Idaho journalist and columnist. He may be reached at ctmalloy@outlook.com

(image/Wikimedia Commons)

Where are the rules

May 2, 2023

When I was just a young pup - a long, L-O-N-G - time ago, there were community and other assorted standards you could believe in.

Rock solid.  Steady.  Never changing.  You could count on ' em being just what they were and what they stood for.

Banks.  Insurance companies.  Certain retailers like J.C. Penney, Sears-Roebuck and Co., Woolworth's and "Monkey" Ward.  Our Congress in Washington.  They were what they said and they were to be trusted.

And, the courts.  Whether the local magistrate or the U.S. Supreme Court.  These were the standards of trust, honesty and law that were held out to you as people and institutions that would last forever.

So, I was taught.  So were you.

Now, 60 or 70 years later, here we are.  Most of those retailers are long gone.  Congress is filled with politicians more concerned with keeping their place at the public trough than representing constituents.  And the courts?  What the Hell happened?

Look at banks.  Feeding dollars into investor pockets while those same banks are going under - being driven into insolvency by the same people.  The real pain, of course, is being felt by depositors who likely will never see any sizeable recapture.

We've got SCOTUS justices "on-the-take."  Worldwide travel and "free" vacations in far-off places.  Real estate deals putting money in their pockets with not a word to the public.  The wife of one receiving  over $10-million in attorney "headhunting" fees.  With some of the "recruited" having much business before the court.

Much of this hush-hush SCOTUS business is because there is no defined code of conduct or other public requirement for such conduct or honest reporting of the activities of Justices.  Nearly all other jurists in all other courts have 'em.  Not SCOTUS.

But, suppose there was an effort by Congress to create restrictions and reporting responsibilities for the court.  Creating written rules for openness and transparency by those nine members.

The present Congress writing rules for honesty by others?  Congress being the author of rules for transparency and conduct?  Congress?  Our Congress?

Surely, you jest, Sir.

If not Congress to set the guidelines, then whom?  Who would we turn to for such an arduous task?

There may be one body that could be charged with such an undertaking.  The National Bar Association.  Possibly a "blue ribbon" committee composed of senior members, some jurists from lower courts and maybe a couple of folks from Congress with law backgrounds.  Possibly.

But, what do we do with the less-than-honest SCOTUS characters we've got?  Neil Gorsuch and his million-dollar-plus real estate dealings.  The wife of another who's made over $10-million "headhunting" in the legal field.  And Thomas.  And his wife.

Clarence's unreported activities - and in some areas questionable activities - are being disclosed nearly every day.  Like peeling an onion.  Just a bit more disclosure by investigative reporters as they dig around in banking, travel and real estate records.

Truly, Thomas is being shown to be someone who needs a code of conduct.  Rules.  Written rules enforced by others, either on the bench or in the legal business.   Or, just in the "honesty" business.

I keep wondering, given all the details of how Thomas has wallowed in free gifts so far, how much more is there to uncover?

The institutions we were raised to trust don't seem all that trustworthy, do they?  Like monumental buildings of success built on foundations of sand.

There's not much we public can do about banks and insurance companies failing.  Their operations are private. Without more strictures, placed on them by those who make up their membership, more will succumb to bad actors.

But, courts are public.  Maybe our most important edifices of public trust and honor.  Transparency and openness are absolute requirements in their conduct of our affairs in the legal system.

Without those qualities - without absolutely honest conduct by the occupants of our court system - you get a Clarence Thomas.  A man who seems to enjoy living lavishly with the cost being picked up by others.  Others who, someday, may have business before the court on which Justice Thomas sits.  With no requirement for his recusal.

Maybe if we did away with lifetime appointments.  Maybe if we developed codes of conduct with tough, legal teeth to put some "bite" in 'em.  Maybe if we required annual reporting of the previous year's activities - both public and private.

Thomas - and a couple of others on that same exalted bench - apparently can't be trusted to conduct themselves in accordance with what should be expected by their appointments.

We need some rules.  Some legal requirements for transparent conduct.  And we need 'em now!

 

Back to live and let live

May 1, 2023

Idaho has never been perfect but over the long haul Idahoans have generally been practical in their politics and tolerant in their dealings with one another. Idaho Territory was given life by Abraham Lincoln on March 4, 1863, in the midst of the Civil War. Statehood followed in 1890. Idaho residents were concerned with real problems–getting the Gem State up and running, bringing water to the arid soil, establishing businesses to serve the natural resource industries and setting up a government that would operate with a light, pragmatic hand to do what individuals could not accomplish on their own.

I have followed Idaho politics since 1966, when I cut my teeth in the re-election campaign of former Republican Senator Len Jordan. With glitches here and there along the way, we have done a pretty good job of working together to advance our common interests. Things occasionally got contentious, but throughout the 20th century there was a live-and-let-live attitude amongst Idahoans, both in the personal and political spheres. That has largely disappeared in this new century.

In recent times Idahoans have been turned against one another by disruptive out-of-state actors. I attribute it to two main factors–the influence of extreme-right media outlets, primarily Fox News, and the closure of the Republican primary in 2012. Fox has fueled fierce culture wars over imaginary issues that are designed to fill its corporate bank accounts. Fox talking heads have spewed out a wide range of misinformation on fake issues to increase its viewership by sowing fear and outrage.

For just one instance, Fox host Tucker Carlson practically invented critical race theory as a nationwide issue in September 2020. With the help of extremist groups like Idaho’s Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF), the hysteria spread to Idaho in 2021, resulting in the passage of a confusing law that will eventually be found unconstitutional. There have been so many similar issues that Carlson and other Fox troublemakers have invented to inflame viewer anger that it is hard to keep up.

Perhaps no issue has grabbed more public attention than the Fox lies regarding the 2020 election–that Donald Trump actually won the election. Despite failing to produce any evidence to back up the false claim, Carlson and others have flogged the claim on a continual basis for the last two years. That is, until Fox had to answer for its election lies by handing over 787.5 million dollars to a voting machine company for those falsehoods. That, plus the fact that Fox faces an additional gigantic liability to another voting machine company for those lies, might explain why Fox just canned Carlson.

The other factor that has influenced the toxic nature of Idaho politics is the closing of the GOP primary election in 2012. It was intended to result in a much more conservative Republican Legislature and it has succeeded beyond belief. Just a small minority of Idaho voters have a say in who serves in the Legislature in most districts of this one-party state. Since the extremists have captured the party machinery in most counties, an even smaller group of voters is able to elect the most extreme candidates in most districts.

Extreme right groups like IFF and the Idaho Family Policy Center, which engineered the recently enacted transgender medical care prohibition, took their lead from Fox to interfere with the family medical decisions of this bullied population. It would never have been possible without the extremist-controlled Legislature brought into being by a primary system that allows a minority of Idaho voters to control a majority of the seats in the state’s law-making body.

I’m dreaming of a day when Idaho can return to its roots as a tolerant place where people are willing to live and let live. An Idaho where a minority is no longer able to capture the governmental machinery and employ it against the majority of Republican, independent and Democratic voters. It will all start with eliminating the closed GOP primary. That time may be closer than many suspect.