This is the story of the takeover of a city and a political party and a state by the farthest right fringe of the Idaho Republican Party. These extremists want to defund education. They want to control everything, not just education.

The article focuses on one community college that they targeted, North Idaho College, which may lose its accreditation, not because of academic or financial problems but because its board is in chaos.

The extremists target all public education. They think education is indoctrination. They think it’s dangerous, even vocational and technical education.

Here are a few illustrative paragraphs:

The charter violations that kicked off this accreditation scandal four years ago never had anything to do with academics. The two-year community college offers a solid education and features the top nursing program in the state. Their finances are stable too. No, NIC might go under because the Board of Trustees has existed in a state of toxicity, chaos, and dysfunction ever since the far right gained a board majority four years ago.

It is difficult to overstate how catastrophic disaccreditation would be for the people of North Idaho. With a price tag 65 percent lower on average than four-year state institutions, community colleges place higher education within reach of the least advantaged Americans; over a third of their students make less than $20,000 per year. At NIC, 57 percent of students
receive financial aid. Local businesses depend on the college for employee training on everything from office software to forklift operation. High school students can enroll in dual credit programs, which let students get a head start on their first year of college and allow homeschoolers to obtain official transcripts….

How could this happen? The problem goes far beyond a three-person majority on the trustee board of a small community college. NIC and many other institutions are in danger because, over the last decade and a half, a core group of extremists has slowly taken over the Idaho Republican Party in the same way that a parasitic wasp slowly takes over its host. This required no astroturfing or Koch-fueled cash infusions, just a regular, everyday indifference to hyperlocal politics. The tactic is underway elsewhere, but Idaho got a head start. This crisis is what happens when insurgency bears fruit….

The consequences of that agenda go far beyond NIC’s accreditation crisis. Idaho’s abortion laws are among the strictest in the country; citing difficulty recruiting doctors given the risk of criminalization, two hospitals have already closed their labor and delivery departments, leaving many rural Idahoans hours from maternal care. Armed militia members have shown up in the children’s section of libraries looking for pornography, and libraries are limiting service due to legislation that holds librarians criminally liable for books deemed inappropriate. Idaho’s primary and secondary schools are literally falling apart; it spends less per student than any other state and ranks 43rd in education quality.

This “parasitic wasp” is at work in other red states.