A politician like Brad Little can be slippery because he can seem like a good-natured son of Idaho wealth. But it helps to pay attention to the people who he takes the greatest pains to please:

These people outlawed abortion in Idaho.

These people want to imprison doctors who give basic reproductive care.

These people want to outlaw women from traveling out of state for healthcare.

These people want to outlaw contraception.

These people don’t want parents to protect children from gun crime.

These people won’t protect children from cults that deny them life-saving medical care.

These people want to tell us what books we should read.

These people call us “pedophiles” if we oppose their anti-freedom attack on libraries.
These people fight to keep the minimum wage low.

These people fight against workers’ rights to organize.

These people don’t want sick people to have medical marijuana.

These people take millions from oil lobbyists and will not support alternative energy.

These people fight against laws to protect Idaho’s pure public waters.

These people complain about forest fires but won’t budget to fight them.

These people want to sell public lands.

These people say climate change is a liberal hoax.

These people call the rioters who desecrated our Capitol on January 6 “heroes.”

These people try to fix their friends’ “problems” by throwing money at them.

These people fix schools by starving them to death.

These people hate that facts refute their worldview.

These people want to censor public colleges and universities.

These people call human rights for LGBTQ people “special” rights.

These people call human rights for people of color “special” rights.

These people are confused.

These people are mean.

These are the people who Gov. Brad Little was talking to this week when he signed an executive order to bully transgender girls and women out of sports. He is them.

The post Brad Little’s People Fight the Bad Fight appeared first on Terri Pickens for Idaho Governor.

By jeering a jury that convicted Mr. Trump of financial crimes related to his tryst with a porn star, Mr. Little endorsed a plan to tyrannize the American people. That plan is detailed in a 900-page manifesto called Project 2025:  Read it here.

Project 2025 removes scientific data from decision-making, appeases cruel anti-abortion zealots, ignores climate change, impoverishes the poor while enriching the rich, and much more.

That’s fine with Mr. Little.

Later, we can explore other parts of Project 2025, but for now let’s look at abortion.

Idaho’s cruel anti-abortion law, which violates the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), was appealed to the US Supreme Court. Last week, SCOTUS punted. For now, they won’t say whether doctors must let women die rather than give life-saving abortion care. I’m sure SCOTUS will let us know sometime after the 2024 Presidential election.

For now, EMTALA requires hospitals that get federal funds to provide life-saving care, including abortions. Project 2025 would change that by having the federal government stop enforcing EMTALA.

When Mr. Little supports Project 2025 (and Idaho’s abortion bans), he supports letting women die—women who could be saved. Period. There is no “alternative” fact. Mr. Little supports the most radical anti-women’s medical care laws in history. That’s because Idaho politicians ignored the best medical science in our world’s history when they created those laws.

Think about it. What’s more radical than a “just let her die” philosophy? What’s more radical than forcing doctors NOT to save a woman who can be saved?

Our state government mandates our deaths. Our elected leaders passed the laws to create that death mandate. These were leaders who we elected to lead us because we trusted them.

It’s a stunning betrayal. And it makes no sense to me.

Don’t we all know some women—love some women—who could easily need abortion care to save their lives? Don’t Republican politicians love their mothers, their sisters, their daughters? I can’t imagine otherwise.

What political-zealotry drives Idaho’s elected leaders to outlaw the choice of life for pregnant women?

What leader forces a woman to rely on faith-healing when she would much rather rely on medical science?

What leader forces women to die?

And to think, these anti-medical science laws are what Mr. Little and other Republican leaders call “conservative ideas.” These laws that kill us.

There’s plenty more that’s bad about Project 2025. For instance, it has nothing to say about protecting birth control options from anti-reproductive-care zealots who have taken over Republican parties in Idaho and other states. That leaves people in states where zealotry reigns at the mercy of laws that ban abortion care, birth control, in vitro fertilization, and anything to do with a woman holding sovereignty over her body.

That’s fine with Mr. Little.

Of course, there’s more. Project 2025 also proposes that doctors, doulas and nurses NOT be taught how to give abortion care. And the Department of Justice will hunt down anyone who mails abortion pills.

In a way Mr. Little has created another situation where we have no choice. By backing laws that will kill us, he has made the outcome of the election a matter of life or death.We have no choice but to win.

The post Gov. Little Mandates Our Deaths appeared first on Terri Pickens for Idaho Governor.

The nicest thing I can say about that convention is that, while the convention was terrible for freedom, it was great for irony!

The people who attended all have “freedom” and “liberty” tattooed to their shirts, bumpers, buttons, flags, and forearms. Yet, they re-elected an anti-freedom chairwoman, Dorothy Moon, and doubled-down revoking the last 100 years of gains for women’s rights.

One hundred years? Well, they didn’t propose revoking the 19^th Amendment, which guarantees a woman’s right to vote, but I doubt the idea offends them. They did pass a platform plank to revoke every Idahoan’s right to vote for Idaho’s U.S. senators.

In the post-Roe v. Wade era, only fools, appeasers, and cowards deny the danger that extreme, anti-freedom forces in the Republican Party pose.

As for specifically taking away the rights of women, these lovers of “freedom and liberty” declare that embryos are people and that abortions (with zero exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of a pregnant person) be classified as murders. Thus, their platform reads, “We support the criminalization of all murders by abortion within the state’s jurisdiction.”

That means no more in vitro fertilization, IVF.

Logic tells me there must be energy behind finding ways to allow the State to track, record, and intercept our mail. Otherwise, Idaho women still have freedom to buy abortion pills. And, the State will need to prosecute that illicit mailing as murder and attempted murder.

Does any of this feel remotely like freedom to you? Does it look like liberty?

It sure does to my opponent, current Gov. Brad Little.

Mr. Little just sent a fundraising letter declaring that he wants to “KEEP IDAHO RED.”  

Ironically, Mr. Little bragged about his Idaho Launch program, which provides workforce training grants, as proof that Idaho Dems aren’t helping. Come on, Brad. That’s nuts. Not only were Democrats crucial for passing that program, IDGOP Chair Moon and her anti-freedom flag wavers have declared they don’t want Idaho funding education past high school—that’s the Red State opposing good ideas, not Democrats.

It’s worth repeating: Moon and her red state radicals want to end state-funding for higher education. That’s Idaho Republicans proposing a HUGE TUITION HIKE on Idaho families.

It’s all very very bad. And, by now, this isn’t the absent rambling from Idaho’s lunatic fringe that we can ignore. These are policy objectives that Brad Little will let become law, even if he whines about it a little. These ideas are what Idaho Republican lawmakers will champion. These ideas could potentially become instruments of State oppression because a few people—out-of-touch, mean people who only love freedom when it’s written on a t-shirt—held secret deliberations for a couple days in Coeur d’Alene.

It’s true. I have nothing nice to say about Brad Little, or Dorothy Moon, or her beady-eyed gang of red state radicals dead set on taking away our rights.

So, my campaign will operate under this guideline: It doesn’t matter if you can’t say anything nice as long as you’re telling the truth.

The post Moon, Little, and the Red State Radicals Agree: Freedom’s Just a Word On T-Shirts appeared first on Terri Pickens for Idaho Governor.

The post Alabama Ruling: Wrongful Death of Freedom appeared first on Terri Pickens for Idaho Governor.

The Legislature hasn’t changed so the same meanness is back. It’s actually worse. Powerful lawmakers have expanded their attack on powerless kids by working to make life easier for Idaho’s most reviled bullies–those who simply attack kids because they can.

This year’s attack on transgender kids comes by trying to change the words in Idaho code regarding “sex” and “gender” status. These anti-kid politicians use this perverse platform to stoke a base that is fueled with disinformation and inflamed with fear.  With the failure of their attacks on our kids in the courts, which have routinely upheld trans kids’ rights of due process, equal protection, and community status, now our GOP colleagues are wasting more time and energy trying to define identity.  I have an idea, how about they just leave it be and let our kids live without bullying and constant attacks by our government.

As a parent, and a friend of transgender kids, I won’t just stand by and watch this bullying. Real lives are at stake. Real consequences.

My daughter came out at age 11.  I found out through her counselor, who was required by law to disclose to me that my daughter was self-harming and suicidal.  She was suicidal because the person she saw in the mirror, the person she felt like inside, was not the identity that society had placed upon her.

Every time one of these disgraceful bills gets a hearing, the souls of the most vulnerable group of people in Idaho, our transgender youth, take a beating.

I know a mother who will never again hug her child again because he didn’t feel comfortable in his own skin, and he took his own life. 

 Shouldn’t our laws try to save kids’ lives? At least, do no harm? 

Instead of showing compassion, this same GOP Legislature is entertaining proposals that make it harder to prosecute domestic terrorists, allowing more guns in schools, and allowing lawsuits against librarians. I believe it’s no coincidence that hate groups such as these frequently attack LGBTQia community members.

As Idaho Governor, I won’t let the Legislature bully kids. I will stand up to hate groups.  And I will make sure that one message is received loud and clear, the government must stay out of our doctor’s offices, our bathrooms, our libraries, and our bedrooms. For the party of alleged “small government”, Idaho’s present GOP, the Governor included, sure wants to regulate and govern everything we do. That’s why a vote for me will be a vote for your fundamental freedoms.

The post Idaho Has a Problem With Bullies in Power appeared first on Terri Pickens for Idaho Governor.

This isn’t fearmongering. It’s happening now, in real-time. Just this month, an Ohio woman had her fate in the hands of a grand jury. The 34-year-old was charged with a felony after she miscarried a 22-week-old, unviable fetus in her home.

This happens, a miscarriage. It happens often. But we’ve lived in a society that, generally, has had the decency to stay out of it. We’ve agreed that this was a woman’s private matter. No decent person would consider adding pain to what may already be a traumatic situation.

Not now. Not in Idaho. Not anymore.

Idaho Republican Chair Dorothy Moon, and like-minded tyrants, are waging a perverse war on American democracy. Among the early casualties is basic decency. Make no mistake, these people are winning battle after battle in Idaho. And their success has to do with their opposition’s weakness. That opposition should be Idaho Gov. Brad Little. Unfortunately,  Moon and her unelected and unlikeable minions scare the Governor out of his boots.

For years, I have traveled Idaho and met folks in dozens of towns and cities. When they tell me what they want from their leaders, almost everyone demands a government that balances staying out of our private lives with providing vital services like roads, bridges, schools, and internet connectivity.
No one asks for politicians to attack women and families. 

No one asks for their Government to meddle in medical decisions. 

No one asks for less freedom and more politics. 

No one asks for innovative ways to make laws crueler. 

No one asks for Dorothy Moon to be a shadow governor.

Clearly, there’s a weird, mean group of anti-life people who Moon and her compatriots conspire with. Ever since they captured the Idaho GOP Party, Gov. Little barely fusses when they attack liberty after liberty.

So here we are. We have a Legislature poised to make murderers of women who dare declare sovereignty over their own bodies. We have unlikeable, unkind, and unpopular politicians who have made Idaho a dangerous place for women. If they win, Idaho will be more dangerous tomorrow.

Today, Moon and her allies are finding success in their crusade against women.

I intend to change that when I am elected Governor. A vote for me is a vote against tyranny. A vote for me is a vote for the freedom that we all want and we all deserve.

The post We Must Drop Politicians Who Make Idaho Dangerous for Women appeared first on Terri Pickens for Idaho Governor.