New: My dispatch from Idaho's Christian nationalist insurgency, where extremists are seizing power, in part, by targeting their opponents w/ shocking cruelty.
Now, a 'cry for help' & a warning from those targeted: Idaho is a blueprint & a bellwether.
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This is the story Idaho Lt. Gov Janice McGeachin — running for governor in today's primary — teased for everyone last week
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Janice McGeachin
@JaniceMcGeachin
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Sounds like unbiased journalism to me... 
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McGeachin is part of a large & growing radical MAGA faction in the state’s GOP which has openly allied itself w/ white nationalists & militias to a shocking extent, even for the Trump era.
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Vincent James Foxx bragged of his "deep connections" to McGeachin & other GOP figures in the state.
Fascists like Foxx are famous fabulists, experts at exaggerating their influence and success. But Foxx wasn’t just talking shit. huffpost.com/entry/far-righ
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This radical wing of the GOP is accruing more & more power there. It's a statehouse w/ a lot of Marjorie Taylor Greenes and Steve Kings.
At the local level, this faction is seizing seats on school boards and county commissions at a fast clip.
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The people I talked to were unaccustomed to alarmism, which made it striking to hear their voices tremble when they talked abt what’s happening to their home. Their message for the rest of the country? It’s gonna get worse. The GOP really will go that far
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The story begins in Kootenai County, near the ruins of the Aryan Nations, where the local GOP committee endorsed a white supremacist — who marched in Charlottesville — for office last year... & then refused to apologize.
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“They have literally excommunicated & cleaned house of any rational, regular conservative from their ranks, telling them, ‘You don’t belong here. You have not passed the purity test.’ It’s a bit of a purge. A big purge,” Dem activist Shawn Keenan told me.
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Everyone I talked to mentioned the Idaho Freedom Foundation, a dark money PAC, as playing a giant part in the GOP's radicalization here.
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IFF has amassed influence largely by a tool it calls “The Freedom Index,” a system of scoring and ranking lawmakers. If a GOP legislator’s score falls too low for IFF’s liking, that legislator can expect IFF to back a primary opponent.
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This has led to a caucus of IFF sycophants in the capital who fall over themselves to do the group’s bidding, chasing after high Freedom Index scores like a 4th grader working toward their next shiny gold star.
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And to give you an idea of how extreme IFF is, here are some of its top-graded legislators huffpost.com/entry/far-righ
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I interviewed Democratic state Rep. Chris Mathias, & after joking around for a few mins abt having ... the same name... he told me abt his experience with extremists in the statehouse, & being the only Black state legislator in Idaho. huffpost.com/entry/far-righ
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A part of this describes how the far right is seizing historically nonpartisan positions in local government and making them partisan, installing loyalists with sometimes disastrous results.
Take the story of Dr. Ted Epperly, for example.
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Epperly is a nationally renowned doctor — was the doctor to two presidents. But he's a Dem who believes COVID is real, so local county commissioners replaced him on the health board with an anti-vaxx influencer who called the vaccine "needle rape." huffpost.com/entry/far-righ
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A bombshell report by found Epperly's replacement— who claimed in a viral vid that COVID causes cancer — has misdiagnosed two women with cancer, including one woman who underwent a major surgery for an illness she didn't have
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There are other stories like Epperly's, something I tried to connect to the far-right's wider vision of seizing democratic institutions in order to dismantle them.
huffpost.com/entry/far-righ
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