The markets were rattled after Trump’s plans were confirmed, with U.S. stock futures plummeting in after-hours trading. CNN reported that gold, “considered a safe having amid economic and political uncertainty,” went the opposite direction, and “the most actively traded gold futures contract in New York briefly rose above $3,200 a troy ounce, a record high.”
Numerous commentators have criticized the new tariffs for not just the economic havoc they were poised to spark, but for falsely categorizing value-added taxes and other sales or corporate taxes as tariffs.
The White House tweeted a series of tweets with the countries included in the “reciprocal tariffs.”
Not on the list? Russia. Also absent: Belarus, which has been actively allied with Russia in its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
Ukraine is on the list, as are many other former Soviet satellites and republics. Multiple social media accounts posted about Russia’s absence from Trump’s list of the new tariffs.
NOTUS reporter Jasmine Wright reported that a White House official claimed that the reason for Russia’s omission was that sanctions imposed after the war with Ukraine began had “already rendered trade between the two countries as zero.”
That does not seem to be accurate.
Trade between Russia and the U.S. did in fact drop significantly after the invasion of Ukraine, but not to zero. A Forbes article from Jan. 2024 described it as “plummeting to lowest levels since [the] demise of Soviet Union,” but still reported that the November YTD total at that time was $4.81 billion.
The website for the Office of the United States Trade Representative provides an even lower number for 2024, but the total was still several billion dollars and showed a trade deficit:
U.S. total goods trade with Russia were an estimated $3.5 billion in 2024. U.S. goods exports to Russia in 2024 were $526.1 million, down 12.3 percent ($73.5 million) from 2023. U.S. goods imports from Russia totaled $3.0 billion in 2024, down 34.2 percent ($1.6 billion) from 2023. The U.S. goods trade deficit with Russia was $2.5 billion in 2024, a 37.5 percent decrease ($1.5 billion) over 2023.
Idaho state Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen, R-Idaho Falls, has spoken up on behalf of migrant workers — a stand that attracted social media taunts and a call for Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids at her farms from a far-right political opponent.
A Report for America corps member, Daniel Walters covers democracy and extremism across the region. He can be reached at daniel@investigatewest.org
Mar 26, 2025
President Donald Trump’s second term was only in its second day when Ryan Spoon — vice chair of the local Republican Party apparatus in Idaho’s Ada County — turned the force of the federal government against a political enemy.
“Could you please send some illegal immigration raids to the businesses owned by Idaho state Rep. Stephanie Mickelson?” he wrote in an X post, misspelling Mickelsen’s last name and tagging Trump’s border czar Tom Homan. “She has been bragging about how many illegals her businesses employ.”
As his social media posts about contacting ICE began to rack up more than 2,000 shares, Spoon stressed that simply sharing on social media wasn’t enough. He was officially reporting Mickelsen’s farming businesses to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement tip line and website.
“You can report her, too!” he wrote in a post festooned with flexing muscle and American flag emojis.
Three days later, Mickelsen said, ICE agents appeared at Mickelsen Farms, where a slew of varieties of commercial and seed potatoes grow across thousands of acres in southeastern Idaho.
“They just showed up out of the blue Friday morning,” said Mickelsen, a moderate Republican legislator and the former director for the Idaho Farm Bureau, a lobbying group for the agriculture industry.
By Jan. 27, just one week into the second Trump administration, a Mickelsen Farms employee had been arrested by ICE. Records reviewed by InvestigateWest show that a Mexican immigrant who listed his employer as Mickelsen Farms on his Facebook page was being held at a Nevada Southern Detention Center in Las Vegas.
As the Trump administration attempts to carry out its campaign promise of mass deportations, it’s promoted the official ICE tip line as a vital part of its strategy. The phone tip line was so overwhelmed the day after Trump’s inauguration, Spoon wrote on X, that he hung up and submitted a tip on the ICE website instead.
Some on the right have wielded threats of ICE reports as kind of a gloating taunt — a way of rubbing Trump’s election in the faces of undocumented immigrants and anyone who supports them. A postcard sent to a Californian immigration non-profit, for example, touted the ICE tip line with the words “Have your bags packed — Trump’s coming” written on the return address line.
On X, Ada County Republican Central Committee Vice Chair Ryan Spoon has taken a scorched earth approach to those he sees as defending illegal immigration — including reporting at least one Republican state legislator to ICE.
Daniel Walters/InvestigateWest
But Spoon targeting a Republican state legislator by calling up ICE is particularly noteworthy – and all the more so because ICE responded within days.
“It’s so ripe for abuse,” Chris Thomas, a Colorado-based attorney with 28 years of experience practicing immigration law, said about the use of the federal tip line. “We’ve got the government under enormous pressure to respond to every tip they receive. … It’s just very clear that at all levels, this is a full assault on undocumented people in the country.”
Spoon, who moved to Boise from San Francisco in 2019 to work remotely as a loss prevention specialist, and Mickelsen, a state legislator who is one of the biggest potato producers in southeast Idaho, are on opposite ends of the state’s Republican Party. And immigration is a particularly incendiary flashpoint: Mickelsen argues migrants are an essential part of the agricultural economy, while Spoon portrays both undocumented immigrants and legal refugees as a sinister foreign invasion force.
Mickelsen had beaten back attempts by the hard right to defeat her in a primary — and even strip her of the Republican label. But Spoon’s tactics represented a new avenue of attack. For farm owners, it raises the possibility that speaking out — or running for office or backing the wrong bill — could trigger a political enemy to try to call down an ICE raid.
Mickelsen knows who the employee is, that he’s a father of three and that his criminal record was what got him deported. But even now, she said, she doesn’t exactly know the exact nature of the man’s immigration status during the time he worked for her family business. Employers of migrants can face legal risks if they inquire too aggressively into the immigration statuses of their employees.
Immigration is a complicated topic, Mickelsen wrote in a statement to InvestigateWest, but using the issue to “bully individuals and businesses trying to navigate complicated and often competing employee documentation laws is a disgusting and reprehensible way to act and should not be tolerated by anyone.”
She’s unsettled. She removed the names of her businesses from her campaign site, believing it would be unfair to subject her family to the same level of nastiness that politicians have come to expect.
“I’m being way more cautious in the bills that I’m standing up against, because I’m afraid of being targeted,” Mickelsen said. “Which makes me a less effective legislator for my community right now.”
Deportation glee
In early January, Homan, Trump’s pick for border czar, floated the immigration tip line as a “fresh idea.”
“I want a place where American citizens can call and report,” he told NBC News. “We need to take care of the American people.”
ICE, to be clear, has had a tip line for over two decades.
“The difference is, in many ways, the tip line in the past was a black hole,” Thomas said. “People would make tips and usually nothing would ever come of it.”
Thomas said immigration tips are always prone to be taken advantage by those with scores to settle — abused by bitter exes and business rivals. In the past, he’s defended at least three companies — a janitorial service, an agricultural company and a bakery — who were reported to ICE by competitors. But after Trump’s second inauguration, he said, the entire framework of the federal government was refocused on immigration-related offensives.
Ryan Spoon, vice chair of the Ada County Republican Central Committee, called for federal immigration raids at Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen’s farms in a series of posts on X just days after President Trump was inaugurated.
Ada County Republican Central Committee
“They have to arrest certain numbers of undocumented people each week,” Thomas said. “They need to serve employers each week with notices of inspection. … They’re even under pressure to conduct raids.”
Effectively, Thomas said, ICE was being forced to rely on the tip line and the online tip website to fill its quotas. ICE tips had been transformed from mostly inert to a live weapon.
While overall deportations have fallen due to fewer border crossings, Reuters reported, ICE arrests surged during the first week of Trump’s administration. In the weeks since, the agency indicated there’s been so much ICE activity that it’s too busy to provide many specifics about ICE activity.
Asked about Mickelsen, an ICE spokesperson said that because of their “operational tempo” and increased interest in their agency, they were not able to respond to queries about rumors or routine operations.
The news of actual ICE raids, along with the string of false reports and hoaxes, have made migrant farmworkers afraid. No matter their immigration status, many don’t want to come to work, much less attend protests or share their stories publicly.
“Nobody’s wanting to raise their head and speak up,” said Ben Tindall, executive director of Save Family Farming, a group representing farmers in neighboring Washington state. “Regardless of whether they’re here legally or not, they’re afraid they’re going to get a target on their back and ICE is going to come knocking on their door.”
Freddy Cruz, who tracks extremists with the Western States Center, said he’s seen a surge of white nationalist groups like the White Lives Matter Montana chapter encouraging people to report unauthorized immigrants to ICE.
“The ICE information tip line has come up more and more as a tactic,” Cruz said. “Almost like weaponizing a government agency to try to intimidate not just undocumented immigrants, but also organizations that might be providing immigrant-rights services to folks.”
Along with the Californiannonprofit, three offices of the United Farm Workers union were anonymously sent postcards featuring the phrases “Report Illegal Aliens” and “There is nowhere to hide,” along with the ICE tip line.
At ArizonaStateUniversity, the College Republicans United club teamed up with a Hitler-saluting neo-Nazi to sell club T-shirts with the phrase “ICE Volunteer” and began urging students to report “their criminal classmates to ICE for deportation.”
But Spoon represents a more influential and mainstream example of this trend. Last year, Spoon was the chairman of the Idaho Freedom PAC, the political action committee linked to the political machine of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, a historically influential think tank that purports to separate true conservatives from “Republicans in Name Only” — or “RINOS.”
When Idaho Congressman Mike Simpson co-sponsored a bill to expand the temporary farmworker visa program and give migrants a path to permanent legal status, he was accused by Ryan Spoon, the vice chair of the Ada County Republican Central Committee, of commiting “a literal act of treason.”
simpson.house.gov
In the last two decades, more radical Republicans like Spoon immigrated to Idaho from left-leaning states like California, flooding the local Republican parties. Many of them cared less about the bottom line of Idaho’s big businesses than culture wars and conservative purity — and immigration was a topic they were willing to drench with invective.
On X, Spoon accused those who argue that migrant workers are necessary for the region’s agriculture of being willing to pay anything “for cheaper blueberries” — “their daughters raped by illegals, their young people unemployed, foreign slaves exploited, drugs & crime flooding their communities.”
When Idaho Congressman Mike Simpson co-sponsored a bipartisan bill to expand the temporary farmworker visa program and give migrants a path to permanent legal status, Spoon accused Simpson of a “literal act of treason against the U.S., facilitating a foreign invasion.” Spoon argues he’s not anti-immigrant — his wife is a legal immigrant from Germany — just anti illegal-immigration.
“Americans across a broad spectrum of politics are really fed up with the illegal immigration issue,” he said. “The tone has definitely changed there, and people’s willingness to confront that issue has changed.”
The reactions he’s received for calling ICE on Mickelsen’s businesses, Spoon claimed, have been “overwhelmingly positive.”
But Mickelsen said she’s heard from a lot of legislators who were “completely disgusted” by his tactics.
“It’s probably very disturbing for them to see this kind of treatment of a fellow legislator,” Mickelsen said.
‘Now we’re playing offense’
Spoon has repeatedly accused Mickelsen of being a “Plantation Mistress,” taunting her that “we’re gonna take your farm slaves away from you.”
But he told InvestigateWest that it’s a “mischaracterization” to accuse him of going after Mickelsen. She’s the one to blame for the reports, he argued.
“Her own testimony drew attention to herself,” he said.
Mickelsen Farms operates potato farms and other agricultural businesses in southeastern Idaho.
Mickelsen Farms
Last March, during the debate about Idaho House Bill 753, intended to give local law enforcement and judges the ability to enforce immigration laws, Mickelsenbristledat what she felt was the denigration of the foreign-born workforce by her fellow legislators.
Pointing to the production chain involving everyone from construction companies to the hospitality industry, and “every food processor, probably, in the state,” Mickelsen declared that “if you think that you haven’t been touched by an illegal immigrant’s hands in some way … you are kidding yourself.”
To Spoon, it was practically a signed confession.
“While it is not reasonable to think that she is able to speak for every food processor, it is reasonable to think that she can speak for the food processor that she owns,” Spoon said.
To Mickelsen, she wasn’t saying anything that hasn’t been widely discussed: There likely are many unauthorized immigrants working for Idaho businesses. The Center for Migration Studies, a New York-based think tank focused on immigration issues, estimated that in 2021 there were roughly 10,000 unauthorized immigrants working in Idaho agriculture alone.
Mickelsen told InvestigateWest that their farming operation relies on the legal temporary seasonal guest worker program to hire migrant laborers — a program that has grown by nearly two-thirds since 2016.
“It would be wonderful if you could hire a domestic workforce. But the problem is, people don’t like to do farming jobs,” Mickelsen said.
Her son, Andrew, Mickelsen Farms’ chief operations manager, said in a statement that “we would never knowingly employ an undocumented worker” and that “our business cooperates with all authorities and supports our government’s efforts to secure the border and keep Americans safe.”
“We follow all applicable federal and state laws to stay in compliance,” Rep. Mickelsen said. “We want to be good neighbors.”
Farm owners like Mickelsen are caught in a pincer between two federal agencies, said Thomas, the immigration attorney: Either accept documents at face value — some of which may be fakes from unauthorized immigrants — and risk punishment by Homeland Security, or question documents too closely and risk being sued by the “wildly aggressive” Immigrant and Employee Rights division of the Department of Justice.
Ultimately, Mickelsen voted for HB 753. But that did little to appease her critics.
“Should we post RINO Stephanie Mickelsen’s (District 32) pro-illegal alien video every week until she is voted out of office?” asked the Stop Idaho Rino’s X account.
After Spoon bragged on X about reporting Mickelsen to ICE, one conservative Idaho commenter mockingly envisioned ICE listening to the “passion-filled speech she said on the House floor.”
“Bet once she talks they drop their badges and quit on the spot,” he snarked.
Spoon replied with wink and grin emojis.
Mickelsen is not the only legislator Spoon has gone after.
In September, Spoon targeted Rep. Jack Nelsen for the family dairy he’d worked on for decades, claiming on X that “Plantation slaves at the NelsenDairy in Jerome, ID are ILLEGAL immigrants.” (Nelsen no longer personally has a stake in the business.)
Spoon said he’s reported only Mickelsen’s businesses to ICE “so far,” but pressed about whether he planned to report others, would only say “I’m going to hold onto that for now.”
At what cost?
For Mickelsen, Spoon’s actions spurred restless nights.
“I laid in bed at night for two nights in a row, and I said to myself, ‘Am I willing to jump on this same bandwagon in the name of political theater, and not say anything? Not say ‘wait a minute, this is wrong?’” Mickelsen said. “Or am I just going to be silent?”
In her interviews with InvestigateWest, Mickelsen sounded energetically defiant at moments — floating the possibility of taking legal action.
Just a few days after being publicly reported to ICE, Mickelsen took another risky political stand on immigration: opposing a bill to require businesses to use E-Verify, a federal website intending to verify whether workers are legal. Mickelsen says that the program is plagued by inaccuracy, inconsistency and delays.
But at other moments, her frustration and exhaustion shone through.
“You have to say to yourself, as this rancor gets worse, at what point is it worth it for me to serve in the Legislature?” Mickelsen said. “If my family and everybody around me is at risk?”
On social media, Spoon has often relished the idea of making Idaho so miserable for “leftists” that they leave the state entirely.
That strategy sounds familiar to Mike Colson, chair of the GOP Central Committee in southeastern Idaho’s Bonneville County. Mickelsen helped Colson lead a wave of moderates last year to take back their local Republican party from hardliners with a similar approach to Spoon.
“That’s part of their playbook for these legislators, to make it so miserable and so uncomfortable for them that hopefully they won’t run again next time,” Colson said. “That’s what they’re hoping for. That’s what they want. They want us to quit.”
Mickelsen’s concern goes beyond any risk to her family’s business — it’s the worry that someone reading the vitriol online could do something drastic. She’s been reading a lot about white nationalists lately.
“I have to actually think about my physical safety in a way that I probably haven’t the entire time I’ve been in the Legislature,” Mickelsen said.
She said she was advised to carry a gun — she has a concealed carry permit. But she worried that if the gun was wrested away from her by a larger attacker, it could ultimately put her at more risk.
Today, Colson suspects Spoon’s ICE reports were part of “a coordinated attempt to send a chilling message to a number of persons that may not see eye-to-eye with some of their political allies,” he said.
But the immigrant ICE arrested from Mickelsen Farms was vulnerable for another reason as well. The Trump administration had been touting its focus on arresting “criminal aliens,” unauthorized immigrants with criminal records.
In November 2022, the Mickelsen Farms employee, Sajid Soto, had previously been charged with battery and drug possession. According to the Bonneville County Sheriff’s Department, he admitted to choking his wife during an argument and then, while being booked in the local jail, officers found a tiny amount of methamphetamine in his wallet.
Even a migrant with permanent resident status can lose that status as a consequence of a domestic violence conviction, Thomas said.
Soto had served his jail time, the restraining order had been lifted, and his felony possession conviction — which can cause a temporary agricultural visa to be revoked — had been dismissed after the farmworker completed probation.
“Now you have three children that are American citizens who are entitled to social benefits because their dad was supporting them and will not be any longer,” Mickelsen said.
“Works at Mickelsen Farms,” remains on the dad’s Facebook page. Scroll down, and his cover photo from six years ago, taken through the rain-flecked windshield of his truck, shows a long row of green-and-gold John Deere tractors and combines lined up on a stretch of farm soil.
“Listos para sacar papas,” he wrote.
Ready to pull out potatoes.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the family relationship of Andrew and Stephanie Mickelsen.
April 5, 1910 Emil Seidel was elected mayor of Milwaukee and became the first socialist mayor of a major city in the United States. During his administration the first public works department was established, the first fire and police commissions were organized, and a city park system came into being. In 1912, the Socialist Party nominated Emil Seidel as their vice presidential candidate to run with Eugene Debs. Emil Seidel Read more about Emil Seidel Milwaukee’s Socialist Era
April 5, 1930 Mohandas Gandhi and his followers reached the end of their 400 km (240 mile) march to the Indian Ocean coast at Dandi. He had left his ashram with 78 satyagrahis (“soldiers” of peaceful resistance), but the procession grew over the 23 days of traveling on foot until it stretched more than 3 km (2 miles). When they arrived at the seaside, Gandhi made salt by allowing seawater to evaporate. This simple task was an act of civil disobedience because the British Raj, the governing colonial authority, had made salt-making a monopoly and a crime for others; additionally, there was a tax on salt, a necessary element of the Indian diet. Gandhi picking up salt. Gandhi had chosen this issue to demonstrate how British control affected all Indians, regardless of ethnicity, religion or caste. The nature of this “crime” allowed him to resist that power without violence. And the British were faced with potentially arresting millions who might now be willing to flout the Salt Laws. He had written to Lord Irwin, the Viceroy of India, a month earlier: “Dear Friend, I cannot intentionally hurt anything that lives, much less fellow human beings, even though they may do the greatest wrong to me and mine. Whilst, therefore, I hold the British rule to be a curse, I do not intend to harm to a single Englishman or to any legitimate interest he may have in India . . . .” Read Gandhi’s letter
April 5, 1972 The Harrisburg Seven case ended in mistrial after 11 weeks.The Seven were charged with plotting to kidnap Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, among other alleged crimes. The defense attorney, recent former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, asked by the presiding judge to call his first witness said, “Your Honor, the defendants shall always seek peace. They continue to proclaim their innocence. Elizabeth McAllister and Philip Berrigan, two of the Harrisburg Seven The defense rests.” Only Philip Berrigan and Sister Elizabeth McAllister were declared guilty—of smuggling letters in and out of prison. They later married, co-founding Baltimore’s Jonah House. Visit Jonah House
April 5, 1977 Demonstrations and sit-ins began at regional offices of the U.S. Department of Health, Education & Welfare (HEW, now Department of Health & Human Services) urging HEW Secretary Joseph Califano to implement an extension of civil rights that included the disabled. Since non-discrimination protection had been part of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the department had failed to agree to regulations (under Section 504) that would give the law practical effect in the lives of those it intended to protect. Discrimination on the basis of disability was to be illegal in any program which received federal funds. At all the offices the demonstrators left at the end of the working day, except two: Washington, DC and the San Francisco regional headquarters. Though negotiations were continuing between the Carter administration and the American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities, those in San Francisco, led by Judith Heumann, held their ground until Califano signed the Sec. 504 regulations on April 28. It had been the longest sit-in of a federal office in history. Judith Heumann, Advisor for Disability and Development. sign from the campaign Short film about the sit-in (“Recalling an invigorating act of civil disobedience”) How Section 504 became law and how its supporters prevailed
April 5, 1982 Dublin, Ireland, declared itself a nuclear-free zone by vote of its City Council.
April 5, 1985 Columbia University students occupied Hamilton Hall to demand divestment by the university of its assets invested in companies doing business with South Africa. The selling off was intended to pressure the racially separatist government to eliminate its racially separatist policy of apartheid.
April 5, 1989 Solidarity (Solidarnosc in Polish) became the first independent labor union given legal status in Poland. It started out as a strike committee among shipyard workers advocating democratic reforms during the summer of 1980 in Gdansk (FKA Danzig). A very high percentage of the Polish workers, a broad representation of the political and social opposition to the communist military regime, became members despite the union’s having been declared illegal in October of 1982. Solidarity’s legacy
April 5, 1992 The March for Women’s Lives, in support of women’s reproductive rights and equality, drew several hundred thousand people to Washington, D.C. There were students representing 600 college campuses. Part of the huge turnout taking part in the March for Women’s Lives
One of the largest protests ever in the nation’s capital, the pro-choice rally occurred as the U.S. Supreme Court was about to consider the constitutionality of a Pennsylvania law that limited access to abortions.Many abortion-rights advocates feared that the high court, with its conservative majority, might find the Pennsylvania law constitutional, or even overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that made abortion legal. Read more about this march
April 5, 1996 54 were arrested in a Good Friday protest at Livermore Nuclear Weapons Laboratory in California.
Does this keep us safe? What harm does washing her hands cause? What is more traumatic, a passing trans person in the bathroom washing their hands or the police barging in and arresting someone in the bathroom. I can see the mistake she made. She thinks they know in their hearts that it is wrong to make bans on trans people. No they are sure their god, one with the same name as her own god, but their god is the hateful vengeful fundamentalist Old Testament god while her is a loving Jesus. Hugs.
Left – Wikimedia Commons, Khrystinasnell // Right: Marcy Rheintgen, selfie
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When 20-year-old college student Marcy Rheintgen made her yearly spring break trip to her grandparents’ property in Florida, she said she felt at peace — until March 19, when police escorted her out of the bathroom of the State Capitol Building and placed her in handcuffs. Evidently, Rheintgen had violated a 2023 state law criminalizing trans people who use government-owned public restrooms that align with their gender.
Tampa Bay Times reporter Romy Ellenbogen accompanied Rheintgen to the Capitol. When they arrived, several officers were stationed outside the women’s restroom doors. They warned her not to enter the women’s restroom. Draped in a white, frilly dress and a pink bow, Rheintgen went in anyway and washed her hands.
That’s when police entered the restroom and told Rheintgen she was being detained. A devout Catholic, she had wanted to take a moment to pray the rosary, but she never got the chance.
After spending less than 60 seconds in the women’s restroom, Rheintgen said, she was charged with trespassing with a warning.
Meanwhile, her rosary was confiscated as an officer from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement handcuffed and detained Rheintgen, searched her person and her vehicle, and then shuttled her to the Leon County Detention Facility, where she stayed overnight in the men’s ward. If convicted, she could spend up to 60 days incarcerated.
The FDLE did not respond to a request for comment.
About a week before her trek, she sent about a hundred and sixty print letters to Florida lawmakers announcing she would engage in the time-honored practice of civil disobedience: She would use the women’s restroom at the Florida State Capitol. She named her date and time.
The letter sent to Florida legislators. Image courtesy of Marcy Rheintgen.
“I know that as a transgender woman, this means I will probably be arrested. I am violating laws because I personally believe it to be wrong.
“I’m not a political activist,” she told Erin in the Morning. “I’m just a normal college student who thinks this law is wrong.”
The letters included a photo of herself so that officials could identify her. “I understand I could go to jail for up to sixty days in a men’s prison, where if the statistics are true, I would likely be raped.”
She writes that going to jail would “uproot her life,” but this was a risk she was willing to take:
“I understand that if you’re receiving this letter, you’re part of the Florida Bicameral Legislature, which means you’re probably one of the people who wrote this law or voted for it. I know that you know in your heart that this law is wrong and unjust. I know that you know in your heart that it’s wrong to arrest me and jail me for sixty days for simply using the bathroom. I know that you know in your heart that transgender people are human too, and that you can’t arrest us away. I know that you know in your heart that transgender people are no different from you or anybody else. I know that you know in your heart that the same people that go to church with you, eat in the same restaurants, go to the same schools, root for the same sports teams, watch the same movies and pray to the same God as you cannot be all bad. I know that you know that I have dignity. That’s why I know that you won’t arrest me.”
Signing off, she added: “Pray for me.”
“I’m a really religious person,” she told Erin in the Morning. She’s a devout Catholic who describes herself as a political centrist, with an appreciation for “family values” but a soft spot for Dorothy Day, the prolific Catholic leftwing activist.
A police affidavit she shared with Erin in the Morning — with her deadname (blurred out below), and the wrong pronouns listed — otherwise corroborates most all of her story.
Photo Rheintgen’s affidavit, but her deadname has been blurred out for privacy. Image courtesy of Marcy Rheintgen.
Rheintgen’s telling is also corroborated by reports from the Tampa Bay Times journalist who accompanied Rheintgen to the bathroom.
A selfie. Image courtesy of Marcy Rheintgen.
“I actually wanted to move to Florida when I was older, growing up, but I don’t know if I can do that now, ” she said. She fondly remembers her favorite beaches and bologna sandwiches with her grandparents. But now, it seems, her “home away from home” isn’t safe for her.
“I don’t want attention. I just want people to see this law and how crazy it is to put people like us in jail. I was so terrified,” she said. She admits she hadn’t consulted legal or advocacy organizations before the endeavor; she didn’t know what to expect. “They were treating me like I murdered someone — but I just used the wrong bathroom.”
Rheintgen said she was motivated to act after seeing the anti-trans legislation surge throughout the United States, and when she read about Hunter Schafer, the Euphoria actress, who was issued a “male” passport despite being a woman. “She’s a personal hero of mine,” Rheintgen said. The fear and the vitriol she saw play out over the news cycle brought her to a breaking point.
While bills like bathroom bans and drag bans have been sweeping the country in recent years, the criminalization of gender diverse people is by no means new. Black and brown trans women, especially, have been routinely criminalized for decades under the guise of “solicitation” or “loitering” ordinances, even in a so-called liberal stronghold like New York. The phenomenon is so pervasive that it has been dubbed the “Walking While Trans Ban.”
Jon Harris Maurer, Public Policy Director of Equality Florida, emphasized that the bathroom bans are just the latest attempt by the state’s GOP to eradicate trans people from public life. “These are hard working, tax paying individuals who are our family, neighbors, and colleagues,” he told Erin in the Morning. “Weaponizing bathroom access in a place like the State Capitol is an antidemocratic effort to block them from directly participating in government while simultaneously stripping their rights behind closed doors.”
Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Idaho state Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen, R-Idaho Falls, has spoken up on behalf of migrant workers — a stand that attracted social media taunts and a call for Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids at her farms from a far-right political opponent.
Sarah A. Miller/Idaho Statesman
On X, Ada County Republican Central Committee Vice Chair Ryan Spoon has taken a scorched earth approach to those he sees as defending illegal immigration — including reporting at least one Republican state legislator to ICE.Daniel Walters/InvestigateWest
Ryan Spoon, vice chair of the Ada County Republican Central Committee, called for federal immigration raids at Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen’s farms in a series of posts on X just days after President Trump was inaugurated.Ada County Republican Central Committee
When Idaho Congressman Mike Simpson co-sponsored a bill to expand the temporary farmworker visa program and give migrants a path to permanent legal status, he was accused by Ryan Spoon, the vice chair of the Ada County Republican Central Committee, of commiting “a literal act of treason.”simpson.house.gov
Mickelsen Farms operates potato farms and other agricultural businesses in southeastern Idaho.Mickelsen Farms
Scottie's Playtime 