The latest movement, Greater Idaho, seeks to slice off almost everything east of the Cascade Mountains and add it to Idaho, uniting the right-leaning portions of the Beaver State with its more conservative neighbor. Nearly two dozen people conceived the idea over pizza and soft drinks in a La Pine, Oregon, restaurant in 2019.

Organizers frame Greater Idaho as a natural byproduct of Oregon’s “urban/rural divide” — shorthand for how populous cities can sway a state’s politics. The idea is far-fetched: In order for eastern Oregon to become Idaho, Oregon’s Democratic-dominated Legislature, Idaho’s Republican-dominated Legislature and the divided United States Congress would all have to agree. Still, the campaign has gained attention, garnering articles in national media outlets; in 2021, The Atlantic called it “Modern America’s Most Successful Secessionist Movement.”

But less attention has been paid to its underlying motives and how they fit into the Northwest’s long history of racially motivated secessionism. Over time, Greater Idaho has slowly revealed itself to be something of a poisoned apple: framed as a gift to discontented rural people, but actually a front for far-right culture war talking points, including racist ones.

The movement’s website and leaders echo Trumpian rhetoric about “illegals” and lambast Oregon for education programs about Black history and public health measures that prioritize communities of color. During the first year of COVID-19 restrictions, in 2020, Mike McCarter, a movement leader, told a regional website that Oregon “protects Antifa arsonists, not normal Oregonians.” He added, “It prioritizes one race above another for vaccines and program money and in the school curriculum, and it prioritizes Willamette Valley” — where Portland is located — “above rural Oregon.”

In 2021, Eric Ward, then-executive director of Western States Center, a Portland-based pro-democracy think tank, accused Greater Idaho of simply reviving what the Oregon Capital Insider described as a “white ethno-state dream.” The center’s advocacy arm later sponsored anti-Greater Idaho TV ads.

Over time, Greater Idaho has slowly revealed itself to be something of a poisoned apple: framed as a gift to discontented rural people, but actually a front for far-right culture war talking points, including racist ones.

McCarter pushed back: “Calling us racist seems to be an attempt to associate a legitimate, grass-roots movement of rural Oregonians with Hollywood’s stereotypes of low-class, ignorant, evil, ugly, dirty Southerners,” he said in a statement posted alongside photographs of Ward and Western States Center’s board — who are all Black — and the center’s staff. “(Ward’s) words mark anyone with a Greater Idaho sign or a Greater Idaho hat as targets for violent antifa members.”

Meanwhile, prominent racists were fired up about the idea. White nationalist leader Jared Taylor touted it on his podcast: “People who live out in the continents of rural sanity, they don’t want to be governed by the people who live on those islands of urban insanity,” he said. The audio was repurposed for a video on the far-right social network Gab — where former Fox News host Tucker Carlson is considered a trusted media source and no one would get banned for posting a swastika. Users buzzed about Greater Idaho.

Articles and clips on the anti-immigrant website VDARE also promoted it. One blog post said that Greater Idaho “would free eastern Oregonians from the anti-white, totalitarian leftists who rule the state.” A video warned that Oregon “won’t protect its residents from thugs, illegal aliens, communist rioters and other undesirables.”

Because Greater Idaho is unlikely to become a reality, “people dismiss it,” said Stephen Piggott, a program director with Western States Center. And that, he believes, is dangerous: “People are not connecting the dots,” he said. “The people who want to create a white homeland are backing it.”

WHEN OREGON WAS ADMITTED to the Union, its Constitution contained a clause banning Black people from moving there — the only state with such a provision. Even before its borders were drawn, people floated the idea of creating a slave-owning haven in what is now southern Oregon and Northern California, branding it the “Territory of Jackson,” after President Andrew Jackson. Confederate sympathizers considered several of the new state’s southernmost counties “the Dixie of Oregon.” Later, in the mid-20th century, the State of Jefferson movement emerged in the same area; it nixed owning slaves, but retained a slave owner as its namesake. Driven by people who felt they were over-taxed by Oregon and California, the movement still has supporters.

The secessionist torch passed from generation to generation. The phrasing changed, but the talking points remained the same.

In 1986, after migrating from California to North Idaho to build a racist refuge for his group the Aryan Nations, white supremacist Richard Butler hosted his annual Aryan World Congress — a national gathering of neo-Nazis, racist skinheads and members of the Ku Klux Klan. They agreed that, in the not-so-distant future, U.S. cities would become so overrun by minority groups that white people would be forced to flee to an “Aryan homeland” they envisioned in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

Butler died in 2004. Eventually, his compound was fully bulldozed and his acolytes scattered, but his ideas remained and evolved. In 2011, survivalist blogger and New York Times best-selling novelist James Wesley, Rawles floated an idea called “The American Redoubt.” (According to the Anti-Defamation League, some individuals add errant punctuation to their names to distinguish their first and middle names from their government-imposed or family names.) He encouraged Christians of any race who felt alienated by urban progressive politics to relocate to the Northwest, writing: “I’m inviting people with the same outlook to move to the Redoubt states.” Recently, the Idaho Freedom Foundation, a right-wing political think tank, echoed this. “Are you a refugee from California, or some other liberal playground?” it asked on its website, welcoming those newcomers as “true” Idahoans.

Starting in 2015, then-Washington state Rep. Matt Shea, R, pushed to sever his state at the Cascades, rebranding the rural eastern half as “The State of Liberty,” which advocated against same-sex marriage, marijuana and environmental regulations. Shea distributed a document calling for Old Testament biblical law to be enacted. On its website, Liberty State organizers suggest that if Liberty becomes a reality, they would be open to merging with Greater Idaho.

Within the last two years, Vincent James Foxx, a white nationalist associated with the Rise Above Movement — a group the Southern Poverty Law Center described as “an overtly racist, violent right-wing fight club”— relocated to Post Falls, Idaho. “A true, actual right-wing takeover is happening right now in the state of Idaho,” Foxx declared.

Greater Idaho is driven by ideas similar to those behind past movements: fleeing cities, lauding traditionalist Christian values, pushing a far-right political agenda. “Ultimately, I think in some ways, Butler’s vision is coming true,” said David Neiwert, an expert on far-right extremism and the author of The Age of Insurrection.

What all these secessionist ideas have in common, Neiwert said, is that they are anti-democracy. Greater Idaho’s organizers “don’t really want to put up with democracy,” he said. “They don’t want to deal with the fact that if you want to have your position win in the political arena, you have to convince a bunch of people. They just want to take their ball and create a new playground.”

Gary Raney, former sheriff of Idaho’s Ada County, where Boise is located, disliked seeing his state “being advertised as an extremist haven.” In response, last year he founded Defend and Protect Idaho, a political action committee that fights political extremism. “Everybody’s entitled to their opinion, and I welcome that discourse and discussion,” he said. “But when people are wanting to overthrow our government or our republic or our democracy … there’s nothing healthy about that.”

What all these secessionist ideas have in common, Neiwert said, is that they are anti-democracy. Greater Idaho’s organizers “don’t really want to put up with democracy,” he said.

In 2023, the Idaho House of Repre-sentatives passed a nonbinding proposal calling for formal talks with the Oregon Legislature about moving the border, though no such talks occurred. Raney sees Greater Idaho as “driving a wedge” in rural communities, using resentment over urban power to recruit people to more extreme causes. “The good people of Oregon who are doing this for the right reasons: Be realistic that it’s never going to happen, and be more influential in the Oregon Legislature,” Raney said. “For the extremists who are simply using this to divide and create their right-wing haven?

“Stay the hell out of Idaho,” he said. “Because we don’t want you.”

BY GREATER IDAHO spokesman Matt McCaw’s telling, the movement is born out of opposites that run as deep as the land itself. “The west side of the state is urban. It’s green, it’s very left-leaning,” he said in an interview with High Country News. “The east side of the state is conservative, it’s rural, it’s very dry. It’s a different climate.

“Give me a topic, and I can tell you that the people in Portland feel one way about it and vote one way, and the people in eastern Oregon or rural Oregon feel one way about it and vote differently,” he said. “Stereotype is a word that maybe gets a bad rap.”

To become Idahoans, McCaw explained, would mean “to have traditional values that focus on faith, freedom, individualism and tradition.” He pointed to Oregon’s liberal voting record on gun control, abortion and drug legalization. “Broadly, the people (in eastern Oregon) are very like-minded, just like broadly the people in the Portland metro area are very like-minded,” he said. “On these issues, Portland has a very distinctly different set of values than rural America.”

Speaking of differences, there are big ones between Idaho and Oregon. In rural Oregon counties, minimum wage is $12.50; in Idaho, it’s $7.25. Marijuana is legal in Oregon; in Idaho, possession can be punishable with jail time. In Idaho, abortion is essentially illegal; earlier this year, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek announced the state had acquired a three-year stockpile of mifepristone, a drug used for medical abortions. While there are no detailed plans on how Greater Idaho would bridge these gaps, McCaw said that “all of these things can be worked out.”

But is he upset by the white supremacist support for Greater Idaho? “I think that the extremist thing gets overblown,” he said. “In any group, there are going to be extremists that latch on, no matter if you want them or not.”

Nella Mae Parks, an eastern Oregonian, was raised in Union County, Oregon, and runs a farm there. She doesn’t recognize Greater Idaho’s portrayal of her home. “I think it’s a bought-and-paid-for narrative about what it means to be a rural American,” she said.

On the day Parks spoke to High Country News, she and a dozen other eastern Oregonians had just returned home after a 12-hour round-trip drive to Salem, Oregon’s capital, in an effort to get legislators to address nitrate water pollution. In 2022, commissioners in nearby Morrow County declared a state of emergency after high levels of nitrate — which is common in fertilizer and can cause cancer and respiratory issues  — were found in domestic wells.

Parks’ group came home unsure if they had accomplished anything. “The governor won’t meet with us on our issues, some of our own legislators don’t care about our issues,” Parks said. “I can understand why people feel left behind or left out, or in other ways sort of alienated from the more urban centers of power in Oregon. I think a lot of us feel that way, regardless of our politics.

“When we get blown off, that is widening this rural/urban divide,” she said.

But Parks’ solution is not to leave the state; it’s to fix it. And in May, it seemed like the effort had been worth it: Kotek told eastern Oregon leaders that she had asked the state for $6.2 million to address the nitrate issue. “It has taken a while to get here,” she admitted.

Gwen Trice, who grew up in eastern Oregon, is the executive director of the Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center, a museum in Joseph dedicated to the multicultural histories of Oregon’s loggers. She won’t call Greater Idaho a movement, or even an idea. Instead, she calls it “a notion.”

“I can understand why people feel left behind or left out, or in other ways sort of alienated from the more urban centers of power in Oregon. I think a lot of us feel that way, regardless of our politics.”

Trice founded the museum when she realized that the stories of the region’s Black loggers — including her father — had never been told. The logging industry once thrived in Maxville, now a ghost town. The Bowman-Hicks Lumber Company recruited skilled loggers from the South, regardless of race, despite laws that had long excluded Black people from settling in Oregon. “We’ve worked hard to tell, honor and even embrace the messy part of our history,” she said, “and really tell a truthful story.”

Speaking as a historian, Trice said there’s no difference between Greater Idaho and the previous, more explicitly racist movements. “It’s repackaged,” she said. “I don’t think that anything is being hidden, and it’s appealing to a certain group of people only.

“It’s symbolic of dominant culture saying, ‘We know what’s better for you than you do.’”

Pauline Braymen, an 85-year-old retired rancher in Harney County, called Greater Idaho ideological, and impractical — a way of going back in time. “The urban/rural divide is an emotionally based state of mind that distorts reality,” she said. “The changes and steps forward in our quality of life in the 20th century, during my lifetime, were amazing. I just see all of that progress and vision being destroyed.

“If I wanted to live in Idaho,” she added, “I would move there.”

ON A MAP OF THE NORTHWEST, Washington and Oregon nestle together in semi-rectangular sameness. Divided in part by the Columbia River, Washington eases its southern border into the curve of Oregon’s north, like two spoons in a drawer. But next door, Idaho asserts itself like an index finger declaring “Aha!” or a handgun aimed at the sky for a warning shot.

McCaw, the Greater Idaho spokesman, often says that borders are imaginary lines: “a tool that we use to group similarly minded people, like-minded people, culturally similar people.”

“That whole statement is absolute nonsense,” said former Idaho State Historian Keith Petersen, who wrote a book about the borders in question, titled Inventing Idaho: The Gem State’s Eccentric Shape. The Idaho-Oregon border, he said, simply made the most geographical sense.

In 1857, two years before statehood, delegates from across Oregon Territory gathered to determine the new state’s edges. They decided that Oregon’s border should run from Hells Canyon south into the belly of the Snake and Owyhee rivers, then drop straight down to the 42nd Parallel. Only one delegate championed the Cascade Mountains as the new state’s easternmost edge, fearful that people too far from the capital wouldn’t be effectively represented.

“This grievance that ‘the population is over there, it’s so far to get there, we’ll never have power and influence,’” Petersen said, “hasn’t changed.”

Earlier this year, at a virtual town hall, two of eastern Oregon’s own instruments of power and influence in Salem — elected Republican lawmakers — grumbled that Greater Idaho was actually siphoning authority away from them, making it hard to effectively govern.

“The Greater Idaho people keep saying we need to do this,” said Oregon State Sen. Lynn Findley, who represents people from the Cascades to Idaho. Greater Idaho supporters have proposed ballot measures across Oregon that would force county officials to hold regular discussions about joining Idaho. None of the measures actually call for moving the border. And support hasn’t exactly been overwhelming; the most recent measure, in Wallowa County, passed by just seven votes. Still, by spring 2023, voters in 12 eastern Oregon counties had approved similar measures. “I’m no longer working on gun bills, abortion bills and other infrastructure bills,” Findley said. “It’s taken time away that I think would be better spent working on tax issues, and a whole plethora of other stuff.”

“We understand the intent and we understand the frustration,” agreed Rep. Mark Owens. “But I’m not going to apologize for having not given up on Oregon.”

But by May, it seemed Findley was, in a way, giving up. He was one of a dozen Republican senators and one Independent who walked out of the Statehouse for several weeks to protest bills on abortion access, gender-affirming care and raising the minimum age to purchase semi-automatic rifles.

In the midst of the walkout, just before Memorial Day, as the rhododendrons in Northeast Portland erupted in magenta blooms, McCaw, in a blue suit and crisp white shirt, sat in front of a live audience at the Alberta Rose Theatre. He was participating in a public discussion hosted by Oregon Humanities, which facilitates statewide conversations “across differences of background, experience and belief.” The event was ostensibly about borders, but by the end it was clear that it was really about Greater Idaho. McCaw repeated his talking points: Eastern Oregonians and western Oregonians are fundamentally different; borders create tension.

“We have a permanent political minority on the east side of the state,” he said.

Beside him were two other panelists, who shifted uncomfortably in their seats. One was Alexander Baretich, who designed the Cascadia flag: a blue-, white- and green-striped banner with a Douglas Fir at its center. The flag represents the larger Cascades and Columbia River Basin bioregion, “a living space — a life space,” he explained. “Once you get into that consciousness that you are interconnected with everything around you … those political borders dissolve.”

It’s the antithesis of Greater Idaho: Cascadia unites, Greater Idaho divides. “That flag is to create that consciousness that we are one with the planet,” Baretich said. McCaw furrowed his brow.

The moderator, Adam Davis, interjected: “I actually get viscerally uncomfortable … when I hear, ‘There’s people on the east side are one way, people on the west side are another way.’” Tension, he said, is difficult, but crucial. “That tension holds what our democracy, if it’s going to be an inclusive democracy, kind of requires.”

McCaw said eastern Oregonians, in 2020, didn’t feel like Oregon was being inclusive when it issued statewide indoor mask mandates. It “super-charged our movement,” he said. “The people on the east side of the state did not want those restrictions.”

“To form a movement because other people aren’t feeling like they have a voice in the state, while completely disregarding this reality and how effective it’s been towards Indigenous people? That is the gaslighting part.”

“I’m just going to straight-up disagree,” said the other panelist, Carina Miller, a member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and chair of the Columbia River Gorge Commission. Miller lives east of the Cascades on the Warm Springs Reservation, which McCaw told High Country News would be excluded from Greater Idaho, along with the city of Bend, because of their liberal politics.

Throughout the night, Miller repeated one phrase — “societal gaslighting.” She described growing up Indigenous in Oregon, where she received an education that normalized racist policies toward tribes, and where a boarding school built to assimilate Native youth still operates.

“To form a movement because other people aren’t feeling like they have a voice in the state, while completely disregarding this reality and how effective it’s been towards Indigenous people? That is the gaslighting part,” she said. Miller asked McCaw a question: “Do you really think that people who are advocating for Greater Idaho are the most disenfranchised people in these communities?”

People clapped before McCaw could respond.

“A strong majority of people in eastern Oregon do want this to move forward,” he said.

“But is the answer yes or no?” Miller pressed. “Are they the most disenfranchised?”

“I have no idea,” McCaw said.

Miller got the last word: She encouraged people to “hold onto each other and work it out.” The room erupted in applause.

McCaw didn’t join in. Instead, he sat perfectly still, his hands clasped tightly in his lap.   

Leah Sottile was a former correspondent for High Country News. She is a freelance journalist, the author of When the Moon Turns to Blood and the host of the podcasts Bundyville, Two Minutes Past Nine and Burn Wild. Subscribe to her newsletter The Truth Does Not Change According to Our Ability to Stomach It.

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PARKERSBURG — Brightly colored doodles, poetry and character sheets for role-playing games line the walls of the teen section in the Parkersburg and Wood County Public Library. Each month, several groups of teenagers gather here to create characters, battle monsters and explore fantasy worlds as a part of the branch’s long-running Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

“D&D is a hobby of mine,” said teen librarian Edain Campbell, who takes on the role of Dungeon Master. “Getting to share that with these kids and see how stoked they get, especially about really ridiculous stuff — there’s nothing more satisfying to me.” 

The library’s Dungeons & Dragons campaign and other role playing games have become so popular that there’s even a waiting list to get in.

Getting teenagers to the library is a win. With games, crafts and other activities, they have a place to express themselves in an environment where being different is encouraged. And it’s all working. Teen participation in library programs is up 500%, Campbell said.

Still, a small, but vocal group of local residents sees something more dangerous among the books. On a nearby shelf, two sex education books — Let’s Talk About It by Erica Moen and This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson — are sandwiched between other titles. 

Both books have recently been at the center of controversy for the library, as concerned parents and residents urge library administrators to remove these titles from public collections that children have access to.

As some have tried to get books removed from West Virginia libraries, a group of people in Wood County is eying a more forceful approach. They’ve taken aim at library funding, urged elected officials to restrict books and are seeking to seat a supporter on the boards that oversee public schools and libraries.

They have even worked with a local state senator to propose a sweeping bill to regulate books — and tried to have library leaders thrown in jail.

To librarians working with the Parkersburg and Wood County Public Library, the most valuable aspect of the library is free access to information. They say the library exists to educate — even when the conversation gets tough.

“Just because something frightens you or is uncomfortable or makes you upset doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value,” Campbell said. “In fact, I would argue that things that are upsetting and difficult are even more important.”

Book bans and police reports

On a weekday afternoon in April, Wood County residents Jessica Rowley and John Davis walked into the Parkersburg Police Department carrying a stack of library books and documents. 

They sat in the police chief’s office and complained that they had evidence of a crime:  The Parkersbug and Wood County Public Library and its director Brian Raitz were violating state law by showing obscene material to minors. 

This wasn’t the first attempt by Rowley, Davis and other Wood County residents to restrict access to certain books in the library’s collection. In fall of last year, a display for “Banned Books Week” that included the adult graphic memoir Gender Queer almost caused the library’s censure by the Parkersburg City Council. 

In the following months, members of the small but vocal Mid-Ohio Valley Citizens Action Coalition spoke about Gender Queer and other books at public meeting after meeting, unsuccessfully campaigning against levy votes that provide crucial funding to the library and pushing public officials to restrict the books to adults only. Rowley and Davis are both members of the citizen action group. 

In January, Sen. Mike Azinger, R-Wood, introduced a bill that the group helped craft to expand the definition of obscene material and ban it in public schools and nearby facilities  – such as libraries. It would also criminalize “any transvestite and/or transgender exposure, performances or display to any minor.”

He said the bill, which did not get out of committee during this year’s session, was intended to prohibit three specific books from Wood County libraries and schools.

In March, Rowley lodged a challenge, the library’s formal process for objecting to material, against Let’s Talk About It, saying the book taught teenagers how to engage in sexual activities. She asked that the book be replaced with a children’s Bible; however, her request was denied. There are several children’s Bibles already at the library.

In the chief’s office, Rowley and Davis told the police chief and another officer that they did not want to remove books entirely from the library’s collection, but instead place them in a separate location where children could not access them. 

“There appears to be an ongoing effort to sexually groom young children, and it must stop,” Davis wrote to the police in an email shortly before the meeting. “If not, it will surely lead to more children being harmed by adults seeking pedophilia relationships.” 

But documents show that the Wood County Prosecutor advised that the current definition of obscene material — which would have been expanded by Azinger’s proposed law — would prevent prosecution. The case was closed.

Which library books are being challenged?

The books challenged in Parkersburg all contain mentions of sex, in text or illustrations, either as a plot-point or a sexual education device. The most cited sexual reference at public meetings throughout the county has been from Gender Queer, when one character performs oral sex on another character who is nonbinary. No contested titles are in the children’s section, two are in the teen section, and the rest are part of the public library’s adult collection.

But while those opposing the inclusion of these books at the Wood County library are pushing to restrict access, the only books the library keeps locked up are ones that are archival or potentially fragile. Raitz said that access is the guiding principle for selecting a diverse range of books for the collection, and that restricting these titles — as the library’s critics have suggested — is not the library’s role.

“We leave it to the parents and guardians and the individual to make that decision for themselves,” he said. The library’s policy states that any parent or guardian is responsible for the content checked out on a child’s library card.

But Sean Keefe, a member of the citizen action group pushing for the removal of the books, doesn’t agree. 

“It should not be available only to that child,” said Keefe, who said he does not own a library card. “It should be available to the parent.”

Putting some books into a separate collection will have the same effect as censoring the books from the library completely, said Courtney Young, former president of the American Library Association.  

“It is perceived as a compromise, but is still not a good thing,” she said. 

Young said separating the books and making patrons specifically request access would both create a fear and stigma surrounding the book and also make it more likely that children will search for the material. 

A national movement to challenge and ban books

Challenges to books are on the rise across the country. And Wood County is not the only place in West Virginia where contentious conversations about books have come up in recent years. 

In 2021, a Pocahontas County teacher faced criticism from parents for including The Hate U Give in the year’s curriculum; the parents complained the book contained a large amount of sexual content. Last year, a petition garnered almost 300 signatures to try and have The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison removed from the high school English curriculum at a Berkeley County school over concerns that minors were being exposed to adult themes.

Public libraries across the country have also become political battlegrounds. In Washington State, officials in a Spokane suburb tried to take control of the library after a challenge to its inclusion of Gender Queer and a library in one Michigan town was defunded for keeping a LGBTQ+ title in its collection. 

Librarians across the country face harassment and judgment, while new programs emerge out of the controversy to help them better understand the importance of libraries with large and diverse collections. 

Young, the former American Library Association head, said she is scared for librarians who have to deal with issues of censorship and book challenges in their daily work. 

“You should not be attacking them personally because there is bound paper on a shelf in a building,” she said. 

Lots of noise, but few formal book challenges

While community members have repeatedly spoken against the books at public meetings, political events, and on social media, only a handful of challenges — the formal process for a book to be removed from the library collection — have been brought to the library director.

Raitz, the library director, said local residents have filed a total of three challenges in the last year. All have been denied. 

That’s been frustrating for Rowley and other members of the community action group. 

“The ones that are even supposedly on our side won’t even speak out against it,” Rowley said in May. “They won’t say anything.”

Earlier this year, the group changed tactics and is now pushing to get one of their members on the library board that has the final say about what books are and are not at the library. 

The group has backed Chad Conley, a substitute teacher who has criticized the books in the library and the selection process for its board, to be appointed to the library board. He is also running for a board of education seat in 2024 under the tagline of “Protecting Our Children” after an unsuccessful run last year. 

Applications closed earlier this week and the Board of Education expects to announce their selection in August. The newest member of the board will serve alongside four other board members.

While heated discussions continue about what books are in the library, Raitz is focused on showing that the library is more than a few controversial books. 

The library has undergone significant changes to house more patrons and provide more spaces for collaboration, Raitz explained as he walked through the basement of the library. The new linoleum flooring was a mid-pandemic renovation to replace 20-year-old carpet.

The library has also expanded to provide more space for programs like tax filing prep and the biweekly Friends of the Library used book sale. No matter what material or resource people are looking for, Raitz said that the library will be a place that protects the freedom to read — not censors.

“Once you start opening that door, where does the line get drawn?” he said.

Battle over books: Wood County residents pressure library to restrict titles with LGBTQ, sexual themes appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

NELSONVILLE, Ohio — Calls to protest library LGBTQ+ Pride displays and holdings instead prompted a 100-strong crowd supportive of the displays and library materials to show up to the July board meetings of the Athens County Public Libraries and Nelsonville-York City School District.

Around 80 people crammed into the Nelsonville Public Library, at 95 W. Washington St., on July 19, with a crowd of about 30 others assembled outside. Fourteen people spoke during the meeting’s public comment period — all in support of LGBTQ+ rights and current library practices. Many others held signs or Pride flags to signal their support for the same.

“LGBTQ+ individuals are our neighbors, our friends, our coworkers and service providers,” said local resident Susan Westenbarger at the meeting. “They deserve to occupy space in the libraries just like anyone else, and they deserve to have their presence acknowledged.”

Letters published in the Athens News between June 15 and July 18 called for protests at the libraries.

Some letters claimed pride displays pushed “the trans lifestyle on our kids and communities,” caused “traditional families” to feel uncomfortable and/or advanced the “radical agenda of the left.” One described a young adult graphic novel about the author’s journey with queer gender and sexuality as “gross and vulgar,” while another joined its call to ban such holdings. Yet another described library sessions of the popular role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons as “anti-religious meetings.” 

These letters prompted twice as many defending the libraries, library holdings and pride displays.

Nelsonville reflects the nation

Library Director Nick Tepe told the Independent that as the letters trickled in, he thought, “Well, it’s finally come to us.” 

Libraries across the country have faced similar complaints for years, with an uptick beginning in 2016. In many places, these complaints have resulted in less LGBTQ+ programming, partly due to self-censorship (for instance, librarians wanting to avoid controversy).

The library board has regularly discussed over the past two years how to respond in the event of similar controversy here, Tepe said. 

At the meeting, Tepe broadly defended LGBTQ+ library holdings and Pride displays as appropriate within library policy, citing broad community interest in LGBTQ+ books and materials and Pride Month celebrations.

“Displaying library materials on topics of great interest meets the collection development policy standards of providing library patrons with access to authoritative opinion on the topic of varying levels of difficulty, complexity and length,” Tepe said at the meeting.

Tepe also noted that the library system has received no formal complaints from any of the individuals who wrote letters to the Athens News. He told the Independent that he recently received two related complaints about library holdings. While one complaint is still being processed, neither has yet resulted in the removal of library materials, Tepe said.

ACPL Board Vice President Suzanne Ragg and member Steve Cox both expressed support for Tepe and current library policy as it relates to LGBTQ+ holdings and displays.

“I’m very proud of the development that our library has done in their policies concerning inclusiveness in our community — our whole community — and I appreciate everything our administration has done to stand up,” Cox said.

To convey the breadth of community interest in LGBTQ+ holdings and displays, Tepe referenced bipartisan federal recognition of Pride Month by U.S. Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, as well as media coverage and widespread attendance of Pride Month events locally.

However, Tepe told the Independent that none of this is necessary for the libraries to recognize feature LGBTQ+ pride displays, whether in June or at any other time of year: “The fact that there is a community in Athens who is interested in that topic means that it will continue to be at the library.”

Many who spoke during the public comment period at the library board meeting emphasized the importance of varied library holdings to individual exploration and discovery, particularly as it relates to identity.

“It wasn’t until a public library opened in the town over from mine in eighth grade that I was able to start navigating big questions around how my identity and beliefs might differ from others,” said local resident Becca Lachman. “There are items in our libraries I don’t agree with either or want my child to read or view, but I welcome those conversations with her when she does, and I can’t imagine parenting without access to all that a public library offers.” 

Others said that pride displays and LGBTQ+ holdings have helped them feel welcome at the county’s public libraries.

“For those of us who are a part of the LGBT community, it’s important for us to feel included and to know that libraries are for everyone, especially those of us who have been excluded or pushed out of public spaces,” said Miranda Christy.

Tepe told the Independent that these comments reinforced the importance of the library’s displays and holdings.

“The comments that were made by members of the community last night talking about how they felt welcome in the library and safe in the library because of that visible recognition is meaningful to us, because we do want everybody to feel safe and welcomed in the library — so so that is definitely something that we are taking into account as we make decisions about displays,” Tepe said.

On to Buchtel

After the ACPL board meeting concluded, about 50 attendees traveled to the Nelsonville-York Board of Education meeting. The board chooses the board members for ACPL, which prompted letters to the Athens News calling for anti-LGBTQ+ protests at the July 19 school board meeting.

One attendee addressed the turnout during the public comment period, noting that those in attendance wished to support the library’s current administration. No other members of the public made comments.

School board president Micah Covert did not respond to the Independent’s request for comment.

Tepe said it will be important for the public to continue supporting the library’s board and administration. 

“We’re not expecting this to be done after this board meeting,” Tepe said. “The pattern in other places is that the complaints continue — and there’s always the possibility that people who are objecting to the presence of particular viewpoints in the library will continue to complain and come to board meetings and continue to challenge library materials. So, we will continue to need the support of everybody in our community as we make sure that we are providing information for the entire community.”

The next ACPL board meeting will be at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 16, again at the Nelsonville branch. The next Nelsonville-York Board of Education meeting will be at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 9, in the junior high school/high school cafeteria.

The post Calls for anti-LGBTQ+ protests backfire appeared first on Athens County Independent.

A draft resolution before the Shasta County Board today says that Supervisors believe California has passed gun laws that will later be determined to be unconstitutional by the courts and that infringe on rights under the Second Amendment. 

That’s why, the draft resolution states, they “may use all lawful means to prohibit any Shasta County Department, Officer, or Employee acting in their official capacity, from applying for grants, spending county public funds, using County public resources or County public employees, that directly or indirectly support any past, present, or future, state or federal infringement on the Second Amendment.”

The Board will also “use all lawful means at its disposal,” the draft resolution says, “to support and defend the Second Amendment,” including considering drafting or amending county policies, procedures, or ordinances in defense of it.

The draft resolution leaves the decision on what passes constitutional standards when it comes to the Second Amendment, in the hands of the Board itself. That is problematic, according to clear feedback from the Board’s legal counsel over the last draft of the resolution which came before the Board in February.

In a redlined version of the last version of the resolution, the County’s legal counsel at the time, Rubin Cruse Jr., noted a 2004 California Supreme Court ruling that confirmed that public officials may not decide for themselves whether or not laws are constitutional. 

Instead, the Court said, public officials must “faithfully uphold the Constitution by complying with legal mandates and leaving it up to the courts to decide whether they’re valid . . . A public official does not honor his or her oath to defend the Constitution by taking action in contravention of the restrictions of his or her office and justifying such action by reference to his or her personal constitutional views.”

That 2004 ruling confirmed what’s already clear in the California Constitution, that power is separated among three branches of government: the legislative branch which makes the laws, the executive branch which enforces them, and the judicial branch which interprets them. 

When it comes to local decision-making the Board does have some power in multiple branches of government according to the California State Association of Counties, which says that county boards have some executive and legislative roles in running local government as well as limited quasi-judicial power. 

None of those roles would allow county boards to determine what laws meet constitutional standards. 

The draft of the resolution in support of the 2nd Amendment, which will be considered by Supervisors today, July 25, was contributed to by the California Pistol and Rifle Association or CPRA. 

Only minimal revisions have been made to this second draft resolution despite the fact that it repeats some of the concerns with the last heavily red-lined version. 

Since February, both Rubin Cruse Jr. and his successor James Ross, have left their roles as County Counsel. The position is currently vacant. The staff report for the draft resolution says it was approved by the newly-appointed County CEO, David Rickert. 

In the coming days, local government leaders across West Virginia are set to elect five board members for the foundation tasked with managing the majority of the state’s opioid settlement funds, a sum that totals right around $1 billion as of July. The new members of the West Virginia First Foundation will join Dr. Tom Kelly, an emergency medicine physician who was elected last week, and five members chosen by Gov. Jim Justice. The governor has also indicated that he’ll make his selections “really soon.”

Selecting the right people for these positions is essential, says Drema Hill, a West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine professor who helped the Attorney General’s Office determine how the state can spend its opioid settlement winnings.

“It is really going to have the power to make the decisions over these funds,” Hill said. “That’s why it’s very important who is elected to be on this board.”

We break down how West Virginia local governments are choosing their board members, how the foundation can spend its settlement funds, how well those members will represent areas most impacted by the substance use crisis and how transparent the foundation’s operations will be.

How are the opioid settlement foundation board members chosen for each region?

While West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and other state lawyers were pursuing lawsuits against pharmaceutical supply chain companies, they developed a Memorandum of Understanding for the money from the lawsuits. The memorandum guides how the state can spend this money and established governing guidelines for the West Virginia First Foundation.

The document split the state into six regions based on existing designations from the state’s Bureau for Behavioral Health. Each region will have one resident serving as a board member for the foundation.

Officials from the towns, cities and counties of each region — with the exception of people from seven small local governments that never signed on to the memorandum — can nominate one person to be their region’s board member. Once all the nominations are in, the regions will host public meetings, where representatives from each local government included will vote on the candidates.
So far, the only meeting that’s taken place has been the one for Region Six, a series of southern West Virginia counties that were targeted by prescription drug distributors. Its local elected officials selected Kelly. The other five regions will choose their representatives on July 12 and July 13.

Who can be nominated?

The memorandum says board members should have expertise that could be helpful for guiding the foundation; examples range from substance use treatment practitioners to people experienced in finance.

A letter from Morrisey’s office to local governments says that nominating current elected officials is “highly discouraged.” According to his press secretary, that’s an attempt to prevent the selection from becoming political. 

But that hasn’t stopped local governments from nominating elected officials. Mercer County Commissioner Greg Puckett was nominated for Region Six’s board seat but ultimately not selected.

In Region Three, an area made up of counties in the Mid-Ohio Valley, Parkersburg Mayor Tom Joyce will be on the ballot. Over the past two years, Joyce has, contrary to local data, attributed rises in Wood County crime to local substance use treatment efforts and successfully lobbied for state legislation that prevents Wood County from adding more treatment facilities. He did not respond to phone and email interview requests for this story.

Vienna Mayor Randall Rapp, who nominated the Parkersburg mayor for the board, cited Joyce’s professional experience working for hospitals as a major reason why he nominated him.

“I just think that [with] his background and his character, Tom will do the right thing,” Rapp said.

Wood County Commissioner Blair Couch was less comfortable with the prospect of Joyce as the Region Three representative. His commission nominated Westbrook Health Services president Kevin Trippett, and Couch said he would prefer someone like Kelly.

“I think politicians can be swayed more than a doctor from Raleigh County,” Couch said.

Will the foundation board be fair to the places most impacted by the crisis?

The money will be split according to a formula that assigns percentages — based on a municipality’s population, number of prescription pain pills received, and overdose death count — of how much of West Virginia’s total opioid crisis took place in an area.

For example, the formula determined that about 9% of the total crisis took place in Cabell County and Huntington. It calculated a similar estimate for Kanawha County and Charleston.

But each region will still only get one vote on the foundation. That means that despite the calculation that Region Five, which includes both Kanawha and Cabell counties, was affected more than other regions, it will have the same vote on the board as Couch’s Region Three.

“How can you have Cabell and Kanawha in the same region?” Couch asked. “Those two big ass counties, who have suffered a lot through the opioid [epidemic], are going to have one vote on this 11-member panel.”

How transparent will the foundation be?

Drema Hill says the West Virginia First Foundation is being set up as a private nonprofit to discourage the funds from being politicized and misused. But this has raised questions about whether the foundation will be subject to the same rules as government organizations. 

Morrisey’s press secretary did not respond to phone and email questions asking whether the foundation will be subject to the state’s Freedom of Information Act. But courts have previously ruled that private foundations created by state authorities are subject to the law, according to Suzanne Weise, a West Virginia University law professor who specializes in government transparency.

A list of “frequently asked questions” developed by the Attorney General’s Office says that the foundation won’t be subject to the state’s Open Meetings Act. The memorandum does say that all meetings related to the foundation should be open to the public and gives the state’s attorney general the power to audit it. But some local government officials have already raised concerns about whether those provisions will create enough accountability for the organization.

How will the foundation spend the settlement money?

Once the attorneys’ fees for the settlements are finalized, the West Virginia First Foundation will be responsible for managing hundreds of millions of dollars. The board members are supposed to invest the majority of that sum, but the memorandum also instructs them to distribute 20% of the foundation’s yearly budget to the six regions each of the next seven years.

Each regional board member will also double as their area’s director; that job entails leading regional governing groups that decide how their shares of the money get spent. The foundation’s board members will collectively be responsible for determining the process by which West Virginia government and non-government organizations can apply for regional funds.

Conny Priddy, the program coordinator of Huntington’s Quick Response Team, is confident the money will help reduce the damage of the state’s opioid crisis. But she worries it won’t be enough.

In the 2021 trial that pitted Huntington and Cabell County against drug distribution companies, an epidemiologist and a forensic economist estimated that it would take $2.5 billion just to address the problem in that county. In the wake of U.S. District Judge David Faber’s ruling in favor of the drug distributors, lawyers for Huntington and Cabell have appealed the decision to the 4th U.S. Circuit.  

Now, the foundation will only have access to a portion of $1 billion to address problems throughout the entire state. Priddy said some money is better than nothing, but she doesn’t know what impact it will ultimately have for the West Virginia families who have suffered the most.

“I hate to say it, but you can’t throw a little bit of money at it and then expect the problem to go away,” she said. “It has become generational.”

Disclaimer: Weise is the secretary of Mountain State Spotlight’s Board of Directors.

Mountain State Spotlight explains: West Virginia’s opioid settlement foundation will soon have board members. Here’s how they’re picked appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia's civic newsroom.

Las elecciones locales se estarán realizando este año en 90 condados de Carolina del Norte.

La entrada Elecciones municipales en 90 condados de Carolina del Norte se publicó primero en Enlace Latino NC.

More than 450 people have so far lost health coverage through Wyoming Medicaid or Kid Care CHIP as the state moves away from pandemic-era measures, the state health department reported at the end of June. Thousands more are expected to lose coverage over the next nine months. 

The largest factors in losing eligibility were age, residency and income, according to Wyoming Department of Health spokesperson Kim Deti. 

The health department has estimated that between 10,000 and 15,000 residents could lose access to Medicaid programs this year as it conducts a yearlong renewal process. Some free medical clinics expect the increase in uninsured residents to further strain resources. 

That annual process was put on hold during the pandemic to ensure coverage for more people in exchange for a temporary increase in federal funding. Starting in April, Wyoming health officials began removing people who no longer qualify, but a more complete picture of these “procedural removals” is expected to come out next month.

Early reports from Montana show more than 70% of those at risk of losing coverage simply didn’t provide requested information to health officials.

Wyoming’s health department started updating people’s contact details back in March, the agency stated, to make sure those who are still eligible get the renewal notice. 

“Because of the pause, our clients have not received these notices by mail over the last three years,” Lee Grossman, state Medicaid agent and senior WDH administrator, said in a March press release. “We know living situations may have changed during that time for many people.”

Income has been one of the largest factors in losing eligibility so far, but thousands of Wyomingites already fall into a “gap” where they make too much to qualify for Medicaid in the state but too little to afford private insurance. To shore up this gap, 41 states have expanded Medicaid, but Wyoming lawmakers have yet to do so, often citing concerns that the federal government won’t hold up its end of the bargain to help pay for it.

The state estimates Medicaid expansion would insure about 19,000 people over two years. 

To ensure they get a renewal notice, Wyoming Medicaid enrollees can update their contact information at www.wesystem.wyo.gov or by calling 1-855-294-2127.

The post Hundreds lose Wyoming Medicaid and Kid Care coverage appeared first on WyoFile.

More than 1.7 million rural Americans live in counties where there aren’t enough jobs for people who want them, making it harder for SNAP recipients to meet work requirements that were reinstated when the federal pandemic emergency declaration ended.

Able-bodied adults without dependents must work 80 hours or more per month to continue receiving benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps. The Trump administration suspended the requirement at the start of the pandemic, and the old requirements resumed in May.

The burden of meeting the work requirement may be more challenging in rural areas, which on average have fewer jobs, greater transportation needs, and less access to broadband. The work requirement was waived during the federal pandemic emergency. But rural America still doesn’t have as many jobs as it did before Covid-19.

“We know there are a lot of people who struggle in the economy who want full-time jobs but can’t get them,” said Ellen Vollinger, SNAP director at the nonprofit Food Research & Action Center (FRAC). “It may well be an issue in rural areas where people want the full time work, but they can’t find those hours or find a full-time job.”

States can ask for area waivers from the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS)  so work requirements don’t apply to areas without enough jobs. But some states restrict governors from requesting waivers.

A Third of Labor Surplus Areas Are in Rural Counties

The United States Department of Labor maintains a list of Labor Surplus Areas (LSA), or places where there are not enough jobs for the working age population. Researchers and federal agencies can use the list for a variety of purposes, including to identify where federal funding should be emphasized. 

Time Limits on SNAP

Able bodied people without dependents between the ages of 18 and 50 are eligible for three months of benefits every three years without an employment requirement. But after that 90 day period, people have to work at least 20 hours per week to continue receiving benefits. 

But for the recipients who live in places with insufficient jobs, that’s easier said than done. A 2022 survey of 25,000 American adults found that the most common reason people are unemployed is because of job availability. Twenty-eight percent of survey respondents said that there were no jobs that were good fits in terms of geography, wages, or hours of employment.

East Carroll Parish, Louisiana, for example, is a rural LSA in the Mississippi Delta. In 2021, 30% of households were receiving SNAP benefits, compared to only 14% of the total rural population, according to recent estimates. 

Exceptions to the Rule

States can apply for waivers from the federal government to eliminate the SNAP time constraints in areas with insufficient employment. Insufficient employment is a vague term, so it’s up to the discretion of the federal government and state policymakers to determine eligibility on a case by case basis. 

Governors make the waiver requests, and they will often use the LSA list to justify need in certain areas of the state. The FNS can then exempt those areas from the normal constraints. That means people who live in LSAs can remain on SNAP for longer than three months regardless of whether they meet employment requirements.

But Governors are not required to ask for waivers. And in some states, legislation actually prohibits them from doing so. In April of this year, Republican Governor Brad Little of Idaho signed a bill that increased the work requirement in the state from 20 to 30 hours per week. 

“Many states did a good job of using area waivers,” Volling said. “But several states, mainly in the Southeast, chose not to use the area waivers.”

Mississippi prohibits work requirements waivers on the basis of job availability. Twenty-four percent of Mississippi households in a county with an LSA received SNAP benefits in 2021. Over 160,000 people live in an LSA in Mississippi, but if they are of working age and without dependents, they still have to meet work requirements to continue getting benefits.

“It’s a really harsh and arbitrary provision,” Vollinger said. 

The post Rural SNAP Recipients Will Have Harder Time with Return to Work Requirements appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

The new requirement, considered part of a larger trend of voter suppression efforts in North Carolina, has drawn criticism from civil rights groups, experts, and nonprofit voting organizations in the state, as it is believed to make it more difficult for minority voters to cast their votes.

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