Idaho guardsmen have been policing Washington, D.C. since February under Trump's executive order. The ACLU wants them home. The Pentagon says it won't know the cost until the mission ends. And a D.C. resident has filed a $3 million claim saying Idaho guardsmen injured her.
Idaho cut most state agencies 4% this year and 5% next year to absorb a $155 million hole created by matching Trump's federal tax cuts. In July, Brad Little pointed at the $250 million left over and said he won't be putting any of it back.
House Bill 752 took effect in Idaho on July 1. A first offense is a misdemeanor. A second one within five years is a felony. Gov. Brad Little signed it, along with a second law fining schools $100,000 for not reporting kids to their parents.
So what did Brad Little do? He signed Idaho's first program to divert public tax dollars to private and home schooling.
Idaho's public schools were already starved. ConsumerAffairs' 2026 rankings place Idaho third worst in the nation for public education, dragged down by school funding and resources, where it ranks 48th — on its count, just $12,647 spent per K-12 student, the second-lowest amount in the country. Idaho also ranks 43rd for K-12 academic outcomes and 44th for higher education, and its 80% high school graduation rate is among the lowest anywhere.
Idahoans didn't want it. The House Revenue and Taxation Committee received more than 1,000 emails on the bill, and 94% of them opposed it. Little's own office said it received "thousands" of messages, then refused to release any data on how many were for or against — including in response to public-records requests from Idaho Education News.
Even Little admitted it was flawed. He had pledged to back only a private school choice program that was "fair, responsible, transparent and accountable." Two days before signing, he told reporters HB 93 didn't meet one of those standards: "There's not enough accountability in it." He signed it anyway.
Signed a Law to Strip Medicaid From Working Idahoans
We all deserve access to quality, affordable health care. In 2018, Idahoans voted at the ballot box to expand Medicaid, extending coverage to tens of thousands of working people.
Brad Little just signed a law designed to take it away from them.
Idaho law now gives the state until December 31, 2026 to put the work requirements in place. After that, nobody can enroll without first documenting three consecutive months of compliance, and the state must disenroll anyone already covered who cannot demonstrate it — burdensome paperwork that research shows kicks eligible people off coverage without helping anyone find a job.
The bill also gives the state health and welfare director broad power to enact cuts to the program on his own if the federal government stops covering 90% of Medicaid expansion costs while the Legislature is out of session.
Idahoans voted to expand Medicaid. Brad Little is unraveling it. We deserve better.
Took Money From Managed-Care Giants After Privatizing Medicaid
Our elected officials should work for us, the people.
Brad Little has raised $2,057,743 - more than every one of his challengers combined - and no single donor dominates it. His ten largest gave $120,000 between them, under 6% of the total.
What matters is not the size of the checks. It is who wrote them. Little is not a candidate making promises; he is a sitting governor who signs the laws, appoints the regulators and awards the contracts. And the money in his account comes, industry by industry, from the businesses on the other side of those decisions:
The Medicaid managed-care industry - $35,000. Elevance Health and AmeriHealth Caritas gave $10,000 each; Molina Healthcare, Magellan Health and Select Health $5,000 each. In March 2025 Little signed the law handing administration of Idaho's Medicaid program to private managed-care companies. The state's competitive bidding for those contracts is not due to be awarded until May 2027 - after the election. Molina already holds an Idaho Medicaid contract that began on January 1, 2026.
The utilities whose rates his appointees set - $26,000. Idaho Power gave $10,000, Intermountain Gas $6,000, and Avista and NextEra Energy Resources $5,000 each. The governor appoints all three members of the Idaho Public Utilities Commission, the body that regulates Idaho Power and Intermountain Gas and rules on their rate increases. Idaho Power has a general rate case pending that would raise bills starting in 2026.
The J.R. Simplot Company - $20,000, as much as any donor has given him. The Boise agribusiness giant is one of the largest private employers in the state and among the biggest users of Idaho land and water.
Mining - $35,000. Perpetua Resources Idaho, US Silver-Idaho and Delamar Mining each gave $10,000, with another $5,000 from Esto Perpetua - an industry that needs state permits, water rights and land access.
Construction and development - roughly $95,500, the largest single block of money in his account. Staker Parson Companies, McAlvain Companies and Torry McAlvain Jr. personally, R&S Properties and DF Development each gave $10,000.
The trade associations that lobby him. The Idaho Realtors PAC and the Idaho Bankers Association gave $10,000 each; the Idaho Dairymen's Association and the Idaho Dairy Industry PAC $5,000 each; the Amalgamated Sugar Company $5,000.
Brad Little privatized Idaho's Medicaid and appoints the people who set Idahoans' power bills. The companies on the other side of both decisions are paying for his campaign. We deserve better.
Signed an Abortion Ban So Extreme It Drove Away Our Doctors
Decisions about pregnancy should be made by a woman, her family, and her doctor — not by politicians.
Brad Little signed one of the most extreme abortion bans in the country, and the result has been a full-blown maternal health crisis: doctors fleeing the state, hospitals shutting down their baby-delivery units, and pregnant women airlifted out of Idaho to get emergency care.
Idaho became the only state in America without a maternal mortality review committee when the Legislature let it hit its sunset date in June 2023 — right when the ban's effects on pregnant women needed to be studied. Little signed a bill re-establishing the panel in March 2024, but it did not meet again until November 2024, leaving a year of Idaho maternal deaths unreviewed.
After the U.S. Supreme Court let the ban take effect in emergencies, St. Luke's hospitals airlifted six pregnant patients out of Idaho in just three months for emergency care — after airlifting only one in the previous year, while a court injunction was still in place.
Brad Little's ban has turned much of Idaho into a maternal health care desert. Idaho women deserve better.
Cheered On DOGE as It Took a Chainsaw to Government
We all want a government that works for us as efficiently as possible. But reforming something as big and complicated as government takes careful, well-thought-out solutions — not a chainsaw.
Brad Little chose the chainsaw. He publicly lined up behind billionaire Elon Musk and DOGE as they slashed their way through the federal government, and then brought the same approach home to Idaho.
Books swept up as "harmful" include classics like Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Blocked Federal Gun Safety Measures Days After a School Shooting
We all want our kids to come home from school. Keeping guns away from people who shouldn't have them isn't an attack on anybody's rights — it's the bare minimum.
Days after a sixth-grader opened fire inside an Idaho middle school, Brad Little signed a law forbidding Idaho from enforcing federal gun safety measures.
On May 10, 2021, Little signed Senate Bill 1205, legislation aimed at thwarting a half-dozen executive actions by President Joe Biden to combat gun violence — barring every Idaho government entity from enforcing federal orders, laws, or rules on firearms and ammunition that conflict with the Idaho Constitution. Among the measures blocked: cracking down on untraceable "ghost guns," regulating pistol-stabilizing braces, and red flag laws letting families ask a court to temporarily disarm someone in crisis.
He signed it less than a week after a school shooting. The new law came "less than a week after a shooting at an eastern Idaho middle school injured two students and a custodian" — a sixth-grade girl who pulled a handgun from her backpack at Rigby Middle School and fired multiple rounds before a teacher disarmed her.
Tried to Take Away Idahoans' Right to Govern Themselves
Idaho's constitution gives citizens the power to make law directly through ballot initiatives — the same power Idahoans used to expand Medicaid in 2018 after the Legislature refused to.
Brad Little tried to slam that door shut.
In 2021, Little signed Senate Bill 1110, which would have required initiative organizers to gather signatures from 6% of voters in every single one of Idaho's 35 legislative districts — up from 18 districts, a bar so high that critics said it would make it nearly impossible to bring an initiative forward.
The Idaho Supreme Court struck the law down as unconstitutional, ruling that the initiative and referendum powers are "fundamental rights, reserved to the people of Idaho." The court concluded that SB 1110 "gives every legislative district in the state veto power and turns a perceived fear of 'tyranny of the majority' into an actual 'tyranny of the minority'" — a conclusion Justice Robyn Brody wrote she agreed with "wholeheartedly."
Brad Little tried to take away one of Idahoans' most fundamental rights, and the courts had to stop him. We deserve better.
Whether white, black, or brown, we should all be able to live in Idaho and exercise our constitutional rights without fear that law enforcement will turn on us.
But as ICE has become an increasingly unaccountable federal force operating in masks and detaining people off the streets, Brad Little's answer was to send in Idaho's own troops and police to help.
Idaho's wild country is part of who we are, and how we manage it should be driven by science and by the agencies we pay to know the land.
Brad Little signed a law that erased most limits on killing wolves in Idaho — over the objections of his own wildlife department and of hunting groups.
The law lets wolves be hunted from airplanes, helicopters, ATVs, and snow machines, with baiting and night hunting by spotlight permitted, year-round trapping and snaring on private land, and an unlimited number of tags per hunter.
It also routes $300,000 in state funds toward killing wolves that prey on elk, on top of the more than $500,000 Idaho already spends killing wolves that attack livestock — money that can be paid to individuals as reimbursement, which critics call a return to bounty hunting.
Even hunters opposed it. The bill was opposed by organizations that traditionally support hunting, including Idaho's own Department of Fish and Game and the Idaho Sportsmen group. Little signed it anyway, calling it "an attempt to provide additional tools to address conflicts that negatively impact our wildlife populations and harm Idaho's agricultural industry."
Brad Little put a bounty on Idaho's wildlife and ignored his own wildlife experts to do it. We deserve better.
