The ground floor windows of the Coeur d’Alene Public Library are tinted in such a way so you can see out, but you can’t see in.
Inside, Idaho Governor Brad Little talked to media about his priorities for the state’s budget and future.
Outside, a couple dozen protesters gathered. They held signs that said “Locked books = locked minds,” “Repeal HB 710,” and “Fascists Ban Books.”
But they had no way to tell if the governor was paying attention to them.
On Wednesday, Little stopped in Coeur d’Alene to promote his “Enduring Idaho” plan—a buildout of his State of the State speech that kicked off this year’s legislative session.
As Idaho faces a looming budget deficit, the governor and the legislature disagree on how much to cut—and where.
The governor has been a staunch advocate of maintaining current funding for K-12 education, plus Idaho’s LAUNCH program that provides scholarships for higher ed.
Legislators aren’t so sure. They put public education on the chopping block earlier this week, then walked it back after outcry from educators.
But some protesters at the library still didn’t feel like public education was safe.
Despite improvements under Little, Idaho still has some of the worst reading scores in the nation. Tamara Sines-Kermelis works in an Idaho public school, specifically helping kids who struggle with reading. She has two kids who attend public school in the state, too.
“I think access to books is a really important issue, especially in our public libraries,” she said.
Reading books in Idaho is difficult in more ways than one.
HB 710, now law, restricts access to certain types of books at libraries.
Books with material considered unsuitable for children must be relocated to a section designated for adults only. Unsuitable material includes “any act of homosexuality.”
“I was really upset when [Little] signed what he called 'that stinkin’ library bill’ that basically gave libraries the ability to take books off of shelves just for having an LGBTQ character or author,” Sines-Kermelis said. “One of my kids is gender diverse, and just being able to have access to books that have characters that are like them—I think it's really important that we keep those kind of books in public libraries.”
The Idaho governor acknowledged the protestors once.
“It says ‘Fund Public Education,’” he said, referring to one of the largest cardboard signs pressed against the window. “Checked that box. That’s what we’re doing.”
‘I was a staunch Republican until they ripped my party apart.’
Next to the education protesters, Amanda Mood sat next to a sign that read “Women are dying. Do you care?”
Mood is spending her life honoring her daughter. Her daughter was stillborn, and Mood needed medical help to induce labor.
“Me and my husband didn't know where to go–if we should go to Coeur d'Alene or Spokane,” Mood said. “But I was very pro-life at the time because I thought that they would take care of dying women first. I had no idea what was going to happen.”
Mood decided to get medical help in Coeur d’Alene.
“They just ripped her out of me, sewed her back together and said, ‘Have a funeral. She was a baby. She wasn't just a fetus,’” Mood said. “I'm like, ‘Well, I was planning her funeral already, buddy. You don't have to tell me.’ They were fixated on the fact that she was still a baby, but they didn't treat her like one.”
Mood worries that pregnant women today will get worse treatment.
“Since the legislation has changed, they would let me die,” she said. “But they wouldn't let me die. They would just ship me to Spokane, which is not fair to women.”
Mood is trying to become a nurse. She dreams of starting a medical evacuation company that could get mothers and babies to the care that they need.
“We’d have a team of doctors and nurses and people that are there to try to save the woman first and then the baby,” she said. “All of the lives matter. But number one is the vessel that's carrying the life. And for some reason, we've totally forgotten that.”
It’s not just Idaho’s vision for maternal health care that concerns Mood. Little and the legislature are going back and forth over if and how to cut Medicaid benefits. That’s top of mind for Mood right now.
“I just had back surgery, and with the Affordable Care Act that I'm on, we thought that maybe this month my insurance was going to go up to over $1,000 for just me,” Mood said. “So I really, really want [Little] to take his lips off of Trump's buttocks and let us have our Affordable Care Act until he gets something else in place. Why would you rip something away from somebody before you have something else in place?”
Mood clarifies that she thought the Democratic party was “evil” her whole life.
“I was a staunch Republican until they ripped my party apart. And that's all thanks to Donald Trump,” she said. “I hated him just as bad as I hated Hillary Clinton when I was a huge Christian, because he said that if he ever ran for office, he would run as a Republican because we're so stupid, we would just go along with anything he said. And that made me so offended that I hated Trump. And then they nominated him. My party nominated him. So I have to be an Independent now.”
