Idaho’s rogue Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin doesn’t like having to explain her actions. When a CNN reporter asked her Friday to explain why she was “undermining” her boss by issuing a rogue ban on vaccine mandates, she shot back, “I’m not going to talk anymore to an activist.” Gov. Brad Little was out of state on official business this week when McGeachin sneakily issued an executive order banning COVID vaccine mandates in schools. It was the third time McGeachin, who reportedly intends to run for governor, double-crossed her boss while he was out of town; she previously imposed a state-wide mask ban and mobilized National Guard troops to go to the Mexico border.
“What do you say to your critics who say this is absurd?” the reporter asked McGeachin Friday. “Again, you’re being an activist,” she said, adding she’s not anti-vax but is anti-mandate. The reporter pointed out there are no vaccine mandates in Idaho. “Interview’s over,” she said as she stormed off.
I think she’s 2024 VP material, don’t you?
What a gal:
In February 2019, McGeachin posted a photo on her Facebook page of her posing in front of her Idaho State Capitol door with two members of the 3 Percenters, an anti-government militia movement group. The men wore shirts promoting Todd Engel, who was sentenced to prison in connection with the Bundy standoff fatal encounter with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). For the caption, she wrote “Sending love to Todd Engel from the Idaho Capital and ‘getting to know’ the new Senate Pages.” McGeachin faced public criticism for the photo and quickly deleted it. In a subsequent statement, McGeachin described the men as “two Second Amendment supporters who were here to support Todd Engel, an Idahoan who was treated unjustly by the court system,” and said that she deleted the post after “a few people had begun erroneously assigning sinister motives which are contrary to my true character.” The Idaho Falls Post Register editorial board criticized McGeachin for embracing the 3 Percenters and militia movement.
In 2021, McGeachin convened an “education indoctrination task force” co-chaired by fellow Republican Priscilla Giddings. The committee was premised on the notion that “the scourge of critical race theory, socialism, communism, and Marxism” was “infiltrating” the Idaho school and college system. Committee members discussed proposals to abolish the Idaho State Board of Education. Idaho teachers described McGeachin’s committee as a McCarthyist attack on teachers and a distraction from the challenges faced by Idaho’s education system in reality.The Idaho Statesman editorial board described the effort as “a manufactured witch hunt” driven by the “far-right fringe of Idaho’s politics.”
In August 2021, a state judge fined McGeachin $750 for violating the Idaho Public Records Act by failing to turn over documents requested by the Idaho Press Club. The judge found that McGeachin acted “in bad faith” and that “It appears to the court that respondent would stop at nothing, no matter how misguided, to shield public records from the public.”
She is a dedicated Trump cultist, a Trump delegate to the 2016 RNC and vice chair of his campaign in Idaho in 2020. Let’s just say that I’m pretty sure if Trump asked her to overturn the election she wouldn’t hesitate.