This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Reproductive Rights Reporting Fund.

It is part two in a three-part series on the reproductive health crisis and Christian nationalism in Idaho. Read part one here. For more on-the-ground reporting from Idaho, visit our Instagram. Part three coming next Monday.

There was never an abortion clinic in Sandpoint, Idaho. But about a decade ago, locals in Sandpoint and surrounding towns started to notice the presence of one of the country’s most hardline anti-abortion groups. They showed up at the farmers’ market, Walmart, and local schools, carrying large signs with gruesome photos and approaching passersby—including children—to “preach the gospel.” One of the group’s leaders often brought his own kids.

That man assumed office as an Idaho state senator in December 2022. His name is Scott Herndon.

“All of us were surprised that he actually got elected,” one local resident told me. “It should never have happened.”

Herndon is far from the only extremist who has infiltrated Idaho politics. North Idaho, in particular, is a hotbed for the rise of Christian nationalism and overtly fascist ideology.

“I always laugh about Project 2025,” said Reclaim Idaho organizer Alicia Abbott, referring to the much-publicized ultra-conservative plan to reshape the federal government in the event of another Trump-esque presidency. “Babes, it’s been happening for a decade at our lower levels in ‘red’ states … Project 2025 was, like, Project 2016 here.”

This is the political climate that produced Idaho’s abortion bans. Locals say it has also created dysfunction at all levels of government, and it is difficult to counter because extremist leaders are so hostile toward dissenters.

In Sandpoint, said Abbott, a far-right takeover of local offices—and ensuing political drama—has led to infrastructure collapse. This includes, but goes beyond, the shuttering of the local labor and delivery ward. For example, “our county commissioners have severed ties with our health department,” she said. “You can go out in rural Idaho right now and go step in a foot full of shit because … there’s no communication between planning and zoning and our septic people. It’s awful.”

Abbott traces the start of this local takeover back to the Tea Party movement, which rose to prominence in 2009 after the election of President Barack Obama. (It seemed to be a grassroots conservative effort, but was actually funded by conservative mega-donors, including the Koch brothers.) Around the same time, a far-right small government group called the John Birch Society, which had its heyday in the 1960s, reemerged in local and national politics.

Christa Hazel, who lives about an hour south of Sandpoint near Coeur d’Alene, is a former elected precinct member on the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee (KCRCC). She also noticed a shift around this time, between 2008 and 2012.

“The Ron Paul-ers were very upset in 2008 that the Idaho Republican Party went with McCain,” she said. “And they vowed at that time … that they would take over every single position starting from the lowest seat. They would run for every position, water board, sewer, library, school district. And that has been consistently what we see.”

“It’s a systematic approach at every level to decrease services, to defund public assets, and to stick it to the federal government, whether or not it hurts us,” she added. “There’s just no regard to whether or not we’re cutting our nose off to spite our face with some of these stances.”

Hazel resigned from her post in 2017, shortly after a man named Brent Regan was elected KCRCC chair. He remains in the role. Regan also serves as the board chair for the Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF), an influential far-right think tank that, among other things, reviews and scores proposed bills and gives lawmakers “grades.” (Herndon is IFF’s top-ranked Idaho state senator.) KCRCC touts its similar “rating and vetting” program for candidates, which it employs even for offices that are technically nonpartisan.

In another example of the dysfunction Hazel and Abbott describe, when KCRCC-backed trustees gained a majority on the nonpartisan board of trustees for North Idaho College—a community college in Coeur d’Alene that is a major economic engine for the small city—their mismanagement nearly caused the college to lose its accreditation. The school’s future still hangs in the balance.

“This is bad governance in action,” Hazel texted me during an October 25 board meeting, as trustee Greg McKenzie, who was running the meeting, called for security to remove a member of the public........

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