He was angered by the edicts of Orwellian thought police in a state whose motto is “Live free or die”. In that spirit, he added his signature to a nationwide petition called a “pledge to teach the truth”, which vowed to oppose state-sponsored censorship.
Dube added a note explaining why he had signed. It said: “I believe in encouraging my students to think critically.”
The backlash was instant. Granite Grok, a local rightwing website, posted the names of all New Hampshire signatories, and within hours of that Dube received a Facebook message that read: “Whats up homo? I heard your teaching Marxist commie CRT in your classrooms. You can fuck right off you garbage human.” Dube calmly replied that he would not be intimidated.
Within days, police officers turned up at his house, having been dispatched by the FBI. Dube’s name was circulating on obscure chatrooms frequented by violent militia members. He was urged to install security cameras at home, but when he asked why the police didn’t arrest the perpetrators of the threats, he was told that was impossible on free speech grounds.
Now it was third time lucky, and Smith was seeking reassurance from her doctor. Would she and her baby be OK? The physician looked at her and said: “Idaho is not a safe place to be pregnant right now.” Then, as the devastating truth sank in, he added: “If you were my daughter, I’d have told you not to get pregnant in this state.” There was little to discuss after that. “That pretty much sealed the deal for us,” Smith said.
Cooper, her husband and two young children left Idaho in April 2023 and now live in Minnesota. Six of Idaho’s initial nine maternal fetal medicine specialists have abandoned the state or retired since the abortion ban, with almost one in four of all OB-GYNs leaving.
“To have to move state to be able to practice medicine … I did not expect that in modern-day America,” Cooper said.
The blitz of federal actions has left Sandra angry, sad and confused. She keeps asking herself: why should the US president, who has the world to worry about, be focused on her family?
“We’re just a regular American family doing the laundry, buying groceries, making sure the kid does homework. To have the president obsess on us is bizarre, and very intrusive.”