Thousands of miles from the American coronavirus epicenter in New York City, rancher Ammon Bundy and other skeptical Idahoan politicians are questioning state-mandated guidelines against congregating in public spaces.
Bundy, who has led militia standoffs in the past, announced on Sunday that he is searching for a venue to hold an Easter gathering in Idaho that could attract up to 1,000 visitors. He added that he is willing to defend his constitutional rights during state-mandated quarantines that have kept many Americans stuck inside during the pandemic.
“If it gets bad enough, and our rights are infringed upon enough, we can physically stand in defense in whatever way we need to,” Bundy told a group who met on Saturday in defiance of Idaho Gov. Brad Little’s orders to stay home. “But we hope we don’t have to get there.”
Though Bundy is known for his controversial tactics, his decision to meet in person with like-minded people is not out of step for Idahoans who have yet to see a marked spike in coronavirus cases or deaths in their state. Bonner County Sheriff Daryl Wheeler penned an open letter to residents ripping the World Health Organization and claiming that the public had been “misled” by state officials. He demanded the state legislature be called to debate stay-at-home orders.
Republican state Rep. Heather Scott also wrote a letter to her constituents on the outskirts of Coeur d’Alene that encouraged them to rally against shelter-at-home orders. The letter was titled, in part, “The virus that tried to kill the constitution,” and said that Idahoans have “a God-given constitutionally protected right to peacefully assemble.” In a YouTube video posted on April 2, Scott acknowledged that the virus is problematic but warned that “it is not the role of government in a free society to tell us what we can and cannot do.”
Bundy catapulted to fame on the Right during a 2014 standoff in Nevada between the Bureau of Land Management and his father, Cliven Bundy, after federal agents seized 500 cattle that the elder Bundy had been grazing illegally on public land since 1993. In 2016, the younger Bundy and his brother, Ryan Bundy, led an armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon and were later cleared of conspiracy charges by a jury after a man was killed during the 41-day standoff.
