Starves Our Public Schools While Funneling Millions to Private Ones
- 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 — 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.
- In February 2025, Little signed House Bill 93, creating a $50 million program that hands private- and home-schooling families up to $5,000 per student ($7,500 for special-needs students) in taxpayer money — state money that could have gone to Idaho's chronically underfunded public schools.
- 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.
- Research on states that have already tried this finds vouchers mostly fund students who are already attending private school, with wealthy families "overwhelmingly the recipients" — while draining the public schools most kids rely on.
Brad Little is siphoning our tax dollars into private schools while Idaho's public schools rank near dead last. Our kids deserve better.
Is Ripping Health Coverage Away 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.
- In March 2025, Little signed House Bill 345, which imposes work requirements on Medicaid recipients, shifts management of the whole program to private managed-care companies, and directs the state to seek federal approval for enrollee cost-sharing.
- The new rules require people to document at least twenty hours a week of work, a work program, or volunteering — burdensome paperwork that research shows kicks eligible people off coverage without helping anyone find a job.
- Idahoans told him no. At the House committee hearing, 13 people testified against the bill and four in favor; of those who signed up online, 167 registered opposition and 15 support. Idaho Democratic Party Chair Lauren Necochea said Little and every Republican legislator "just ripped health coverage away from thousands of Idahoans" — the same working people who lose insulin, cancer treatment, and mental-health care when they fall through the cracks.
- 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.
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.
- Little signed Idaho's abortion bans: the 2020 trigger law that made abortion a felony with exceptions only for rape, incest, and saving the pregnant person's life, and a 2022 six-week "heartbeat" ban modeled on Texas's law. He signed the second one while conceding in his own transmittal letter that its private-lawsuit enforcement scheme would "in short order be proven both unconstitutional and unwise."
- In between, in April 2021, he signed House Bill 366, an earlier six-week ban written to take effect only if a federal appeals court upheld a similar ban elsewhere. He didn't hedge about what he wanted: "We should never relent in our efforts to protect the lives of the preborn," Little said, adding that he was "proud to sign the bill into law today."
- In 2023 he signed a first-in-the-nation "abortion trafficking" law (HB 242) — making it a crime punishable by two to five years in prison to help a minor travel out of state for an abortion without parental consent.
- Doctors are fleeing. Idaho lost roughly a third of its OB-GYNs — 94 of 268 — after the ban took effect, leaving rural mothers driving hours to find care.
- Hospitals are closing their delivery rooms. Bonner General Health in Sandpoint shut down its labor-and-delivery unit, citing Idaho's "legal and political climate" — the hospital staffed the county's only OB-GYNs, and 13 of Idaho's 44 counties are now maternity care deserts.
- 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.
- 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.
Brad Little cheered on the reckless gutting of the government we all depend on — and then copied it. We deserve better.
Signed a Book-Banning Law That Targets Our Libraries
Our public libraries belong to all of us, and parents — not the government — should decide what their own kids read.
Brad Little signed a law that turned Idaho's librarians into targets and pulled classic literature off the shelves.
- In April 2024, Little signed House Bill 710, which bars libraries and schools from letting anyone under 18 access material with "sexual content," making no distinction between an infant and a 17-year-old and ignoring a book's literary merit. If a library doesn't move a challenged book to an adults-only area within 30 days, any minor, parent, or guardian can sue it for $250 in statutory damages plus actual damages.
- 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.
- A coalition of publishers, authors, parents, students, and the Donnelly Public Library sued to block it, and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the lower court and sent the challenge back for a preliminary injunction. Donnelly's tiny one-room library had already responded to the law by going adults-only and barring children entirely.
Brad Little put a bounty on Idaho's librarians and pulled classic books off the shelves. We deserve better.
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.
Idaho kids were shot at school, and Brad Little's response was to make it harder to keep guns out of dangerous hands. We deserve better.
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." Justice Robyn Brody wrote 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.'"
Brad Little tried to take away one of Idahoans' most fundamental rights, and the courts had to stop him. We deserve better.
Made Criminals of Doctors Who Care for Transgender Kids
Every Idaho family deserves to make private medical decisions with their own doctor, free from government interference.
Brad Little put the government in the exam room — and threatened Idaho doctors with a decade in prison.
Brad Little uses the power of the state to target Idaho families for who their kids are. We deserve better.
Made Idaho the Only State to Execute People by Firing Squad
How a state carries out its most serious powers says a lot about its leaders.
Brad Little made Idaho a national outlier — the only state in the country where the firing squad is the primary method of execution.
Brad Little made Idaho stand alone in America. We deserve better.
Sent the Idaho National Guard to Help ICE
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.
Brad Little put Idaho's troops and police at the service of an out-of-control federal agency. We deserve better.
Signed a Law to Wipe Out 90% of Idaho's Wolves
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.
- In May 2021, Little signed Senate Bill 1211, which allows hunters and private contractors to kill 90 percent or more of the state's roughly 1,500 wolves — the most sweeping expansion of wolf hunting in Idaho's history.
- 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.