It’s a good exercise to talk to Americans beyond my bubble. I understand, painfully and profoundly, how few of them take Project 2025 seriously.
Which makes Project 2025 Happening NOW even more relevant and, I hope, persuasive as we approach the November election.
Today, we turn our lens to Idaho. How has Idaho’s Republican majority passed legislation to implement directives of Project 2025?
ABORTION
HHS should return to being known as the Department of Life by explicitly rejecting the notion that abortion is health care and by restoring its mission statement under the Strategic Plan and elsewhere to include furthering the health and well-being of all Americans “from conception to natural death.”
Project 2025, page 489
In Idaho, abortion is banned at 6 weeks, before most people know they are pregnant. Abortions are illegal except to save the mother’s life. Anyone found providing an abortion can be charged with a felony punishable by a revocation of a medical license and up to 5 years in prison.
The state of Idaho recently argued that providing abortions to save the mother’s health (as required by EMTALA) violates Idaho’s abortion ban. Christo-fascist Supreme Court justices seemed sympathetic to that argument.
The state of Idaho is attempting to prevent people - both minors and adults - from traveling for abortion-related healthcare. Because when people say, “State governments can’t prevent people from traveling across state lines for abortions; that won’t ever happen,” please understand: In red states like Idaho, IT IS ALREADY HAPPENING. More below from TIME Magazine:
Adults would be facing felony charges and could be punished with two to five years in state prison for aiding with procuring an abortion, whether that be driving a minor across state lines, or helping them find an abortion provider out-of-state. Doctors who perform abortions would also be liable to criminal penalties. The law adds to the state’s near-total abortion ban, which prohibits abortions unless a pregnancy is the result of rape or incest (which has to be reported to law enforcement), or is a life-saving measure.
Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union announced on Wednesday that they are suing Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador after he issued a legal opinion that said state law prohibits medical practitioners from referring a patient across state lines to obtain abortion services.
His opinion said that even doctors who offer information about abortion providers and funds in other states would violate Idaho’s existing abortion ban.
Source: TIME
Idaho stopped tracking maternal death data in July 2023. They have also suffered an exodus of obstetric and gynecologic healthcare providers. Since their ban went into effect, the state has lost 22% of its OB-GYNs. Twenty-two (of 44) counties have no obstetricians.
TRANSGENDER CARE
Abolishing the Gender Policy Council would eliminate central promotion of abortion (“health services”); comprehensive sexuality education (“education”); and the new woke gender ideology, which has as a principal tenet “gender affirming care” and “sex-change” surgeries on minors.
Project 2025, page 62
Idaho has banned gender-affirming care for minors under age 18. The Supreme Court recently upheld that ban as it works its way through the courts. Doctors who violate this ban will be charged with a felony. This law makes it illegal to take a minor out of state for gender-affirming care. From Newsweek:
The HB675 bill would make it a crime, punishable by life in prison, not only to provide the trans-related gender treatment, but to provide permission for a minor to receive it, or to permit a minor to travel out of state to receive it.
Idaho was the first state to pass restrictions on transgender students competing in sports, declaring that boys are boys and girls are girls. This law is blocked as it is challenged in court.
Idaho joined a multi-state lawsuit against the federal government requiring them to abide by Title IX regulations regarding discrimination against transgender and nonbinary students. This includes using the bathroom of one’s sex assigned at birth and similar. These attacks on Title IX protections are endorsed in Project 2025.
LGBTQIA+ ISSUES
In April 2024, the Idaho legislature passed several bills restricting LGBTQIA+ expression. One no longer requires public employees to use a person’s preferred pronouns. Another defines gender as “sex assigned at birth.”
EDUCATION
Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Depart-ment of Education should be eliminated.
Project 2025, page 319
In January 2024, Idaho legislators introduced new school choice legislation that would allow taxpayer funds to be used to pay for private and religious schools.
CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM AND IDAHO
An internet search for “Christian Nationalism and Idaho” yields dozens of results. Idaho has become a haven for radicalized Christian Nationalism and an incubator for what Christo-fascists might do with government nationwide. Here are a few headline highlights:
How Big Christian Nationalism Has Come Courting in North Idaho, from Religion News
“Make It a Christian Town:” The Ultra-Conservative Church on the Rise in Idaho, from The Guardian
A Spiritual War: Are Christian Nationalists Threatening to Turn the US Into a Religious State, from Sky News
Living with the Far-Right Insurgency in Idaho, from HuffPost
I close today with a comment from an Oklahoma reader. It is vital that blue-state Americans and disinterested voters pay attention to people who are already living under the heel of a Christo-fascist government.
In my home state of Oklahoma, where my ancestors have been born for 7 generations and have mostly been very poor, the Christian Nationalist Governor has just signed a law to levy fines on the homeless. Since there is only a tiny minority of Democrats in our state govt, there was little they could do but they tried to stop it. In a state that reliably votes 80% plus for Republicans, there’s little that can be done about any of this take over of our society and lives. All horrible laws are first passed in Texas then, in very short order are passed here.
Folks that don’t live in a state where the people vote in huge majorities for Rs need to take heed and do all you can, Please, to hold back the tide. Once it’s all locked up it’s too late.
Idaho is more than just potatoes. It’s also home to 22 hate and anti-government (people who hate, too) groups. Several decades ago, Northern Idaho especially was transformed from a beautiful place to boat, swim, fish and camp to a “great” place for people with extremist beliefs to move to. Instead of joining a health club or the Elks club, they started actively getting together to share their racism, misogyny, “patriotism”.
You’ve detailed the extreme right swing for women’s health care for us and thanks you.
Ok, part 2 because my fingers go wild.
Idaho is home to some of the most active people who are taking on the Federal Government. There’s plenty of stand offs with guns to write about.
It was only a matter of time for the extremists to invade state, county and city governments. You could say Idaho has been infected and is actively trying to spread their disease.
1. Anti-trans bills (2020)
2. Extremists receive huge cryptocurrency donation
3. Promoting Trump immigration plans (2024)
4. Idaho lawmaker pals with extremists
5. Patriot Front members on Idaho Wanted List
6. “Child Genital Mutilation” bill (anti-trans)
7. Speech by Antisemite at Republican club
Where these ugly beliefs flourish, democracy will be challenged, women and LBGTQ+ will be targeted by groups and legislators.
(Info from The Southern Poverty Law Center)