Keep an eye on the MAGA lab to WA’s right

The states are said to be the laboratories of democracy, where new social and economic experiments get workshopped before they hit the big time.

If so, Washington and its next-door neighbor Idaho have become like bizarro-world mad scientists.

Whatever’s being proposed or talked about over here in Washington, in Idaho they’re doing the polar opposite. And vice versa.

Take, say, guns. The big gun regulation idea in Olympia this year is to make people get permits before they can buy guns.

At the statehouse in Boise, it’s to allow the carrying of guns on college and university campuses.

Over here, Washington is a sanctuary state, meaning local officials are supposed to look the other way and not ask about anyone’s immigration status.

Over there, they’ve proposed turning Idaho into an anti-sanctuary, a no-go zone. A new bill says that most unauthorized immigrants found inside state borders could be arrested by local authorities and charged with criminal misdemeanors. I’m not sure this is even legal, as the feds are tasked with immigration enforcement. But some GOPers there are proposing it.

This schism extends across countless policy areas. In Washington there’s a bill proposing universal health care; in Idaho, there’s a bill to cut 90,000 Idahoans off health care, by repealing the Medicaid expansion created through the Affordable Care Act.

In Washington, they’re proposing a slew of new taxes, including one on billionaires. Over there, well, you can probably guess …

“There’s a race of sorts going on. For every new tax increase proposed in Washington state, there seems to be a new tax cut proposed in Idaho,” said one observer of both states.

Washington got rid of executions. In Idaho they’re all-in on executions to the point of proposing to make the old-fashioned firing squad the preferred killing method. And so on.

I bring up this divide among neighbors for two reasons. One is to highlight, again, the extreme ideological splitting taking place among these United States. Washington and Idaho have long been two distinct places, culturally and politically. But this is opposite-world stuff.

The other is to suggest that if you’re a clueless liberal and wondering where in the world Republicans and the Donald Trump administration might be headed, then keep an eye on Idaho.

What bubbles up in Washington state often finds its way into Democratic policy talk nationally. Likewise, what goes on in the GOP trenches is a harbinger, especially now that Republicans control all levers of power in Congress and the White House.

Which brings me to the warning part of this column. What happened the other day with same-sex marriage in Idaho was no fluke.

You may have figured gay marriage was a settled matter, but the Idaho state House just voted overwhelmingly against it, by a 46-24 margin. They passed a measure petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to end same-sex marriage nationwide.

“The Idaho Legislature calls upon the Supreme Court of the United States to reverse Obergefell and restore the natural definition of marriage, a union of one man and one woman,” the bill says, referring to the 2015 ruling that granted marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples.

What’s this about? It’s a memorial, meaning it’s only a request. One Democrat, of which there are astoundingly only 9 in the 70-member Idaho House, called it a “grumpy letter that will be thrown in the trash.”

I’m not so sure. This was not an Idaho one-off. Similar resolutions have been introduced in six states so far. Plus two U.S. Supreme Court justices have said they want to revisit the marriage ruling.

What’s stirring in Idaho could mark the beginning of a four-year nightmare for civil rights.

First, Republicans came for abortion rights, and won. Women had a fundamental civil right canceled. It was the biggest rollback in rights in more than a century. Yet, in the end, the person and the party responsible for it paid zero political price.

So why wouldn’t they keep coming for other rights they don’t like?

That’s the genesis of Trump’s order attempting to revoke birthright citizenship, and it’s the source of this Idaho eruption against same-sex marriage. It doesn’t mean they’re going to win on these issues, as they have to date on Roe v. Wade. But it signals they’re going to keep coming after them, unless and until they’re stopped by voters.

Republicans have a lot of leeway to crack down on immigration, as it was the No. 1 promise of the national campaigns. My hope is this extends not much farther than securing the border and deporting people with criminal records, not to permanently shutting down the refugee program, or redefining who gets to be an American. But we’ll see.

But do people want them going after gay rights again, or health care again, or other blasts from the past? I sure doubt it.

There are other strange smoke signals coming out of Idaho. One bill seeks to make clear that the state of Idaho can still charge the former national medical director during COVID-19, Dr. Anthony Fauci, with unspecified crimes. I know, it sounds whacky, but don’t be surprised if some red state plunges down that conspiracy-lined rabbit hole.

In Washington state, political leaders are crouching into resistance mode. Their policy ideas that push the envelope — like wealth taxes, or rent control — don’t have the national stage right now.

Instead keep an eye on Idaho, the new laboratory for MAGA.