West
Territorial 'tug of war' rages out west as blue state residents say enough is enough
Oregonians who are fed up with the blue state’s policies are seeking to relocate the Beaver State’s border to neighboring Idaho, where the red state policies “actually match their values.”
The Greater Idaho Movement’s Executive Director, Matt McCaw, told Fox News Digital that the movement to shift Oregon’s border 200 miles west was created to bridge the growing “tug of war” in the Beaver State.
“The state of Oregon is divided geographically by the Cascade Mountain Range and that geographic divide is also a huge cultural divide,” McCaw said. “So, on the west side of Oregon you have a different climate, it’s a different economy, it’s a different culture and more urban. It’s a very different place than the east side, where there are agricultural people who are very conservative and traditional.”
“You have these two very different groups of people in Oregon that try to play tug of war over state government,” he said.
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The Greater Idaho Movement seeks to shift the Idaho border west and move the Oregon border 200 miles west. (Greater Idaho Movement)
Matt McCaw, the executive director of the Greater Idaho Movement, discussed with Fox News Digital the grassroots movement to shift Oregon’s border. (Fox News Digital)
The political “tug of war” in Oregon has created a dividing conflict in the western state – aggravated by residents who have different values and needs from their elected officials.
“Eastern Oregonians are very different from western Oregonians,” McCaw said. “And you can take almost any issue that is a political hot topic, whether that’s immigration or taxes or abortion or gun rights or drug criminalization or decriminalization, you can take almost any issue, and what the people of Eastern Oregon want for their communities is different from what the people of Western Oregon want.”
The Greater Idaho Movement seeks to shift Oregon’s border and join the more conservative Idaho. (Greater Idaho Movement)
The Greater Idaho Movement hopes to bridge the gap by shifting Oregon’s border.
“Why don’t we find a long-term solution to allow people who are different to get different policies for their communities that make sense for them? That will lower political tension, it will lower political conflict. And it’s what people repeatedly say they want out of their politics,” McCaw said.
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“People are not looking for partisan bickering,” he said. “What most people want are bipartisan solutions that create win-wins for everybody involved. That’s what our solution does, that’s what Greater Idaho does.”
“It creates a situation where the people in eastern Oregon get the government that they want and what the people in western Oregon get the government that they want and vote for,” McCaw added. “And all that political tension that comes from sharing the same state goes away.”
The western side of Oregon is rainier and denser in population, while the state’s eastern side has a drier climate and is more rural. (Greater Idaho Movement)
The executive director of the Greater Idaho Movement explained that the “urban rural divide” has been in Oregon “since the beginning.”
“Since this state was created, you were always going to have this difference between the east side and the west side. And a lot of that is just straight up geography. The west side of Oregon has a completely different geography and climate than the east side of Oregon, and people are going to make their livings a different way.”
Many residents in eastern Oregon were soured by Oregon state’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. (Greater Idaho Movement)
McCaw said that the difference between the west and east sides of Oregon were only exacerbated during the coronavirus pandemic and helped “supercharge” their movement.
“During COVID, the state of Oregon was one of the most extreme. They closed businesses across the state, they closed churches across the state, they closed schools, they imposed mask mandates and later vaccine mandates,” McCaw said. “This was all state policy handed down through the government institutions like the Oregon Health Authority, which made these policies for the entire state.”
“It was very heavy-handed, and here in eastern Oregon, people [here] did not want those policies,” he said.
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“You had just this amazing amount of conflict and frustration out here, tension, because these policies were being forced on the east side of the state that we didn’t want. And all along, just to our east in our neighboring state, Idaho, you had a completely different government response from the state,” McCaw said.
McCaw said that many residents in eastern Oregon saw the pandemic as a wake-up call for residents to want politicians who reflect the community’s values.
“And those policies that happened during COVID were so impactful and so negative that I think that it kind of supercharged this movement,” he said. “It made people realize that the government can have a massive impact on my life in a really negative way, so we need to make sure that that government matches our values, matches our community’s values, so that the next time something like this comes along, we know our government response is going to be the kind of response that our community wants.”
The Greater Idaho Movement argues that a border is an “invisible line.” (Greater Idaho Movement)
“The people shouldn’t be serving this invisible line. The invisible line should serve the people,” McCaw said, referring to the border.
“This is an idea that is not crazy, we move invisible lines all the time in our country to get better representation for people,” he explained. “We redistrict every ten years, and we change that every ten years. Nobody blinks an eye about that.”
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McCaw argued that moving Oregon’s border would “actually make sense.”
“Let’s take this invisible line. Let’s move it to where it actually makes sense, where it actually would represent the people and group similar peoples together who want the same kind of government. And let’s use it to lower political tension, solve problems rather than make problems worse,” he said.
Matt McCaw told Fox News Digital that the Greater Idaho Movement has gained steam since its creation four years ago. (Greater Idaho Movement)
McCaw said that since the Genesis of the movement, just four years ago, it has gained traction from residents and local officials.
“We have gone to 13 counties in eastern Oregon and asked voters directly, ‘Do you want your elected leaders to pursue making this border change happen?’” McCaw said. “We’ve won in all 13 of those eastern Oregon counties, so we are looking at moving, in total, 17 full or partial counties into Idaho.”
“The people of Eastern Oregon want to have this conversation, and the people of Eastern Oregon deserve to have their elected leaders have this conversation on their behalf,” he said.
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Although newly minted GOP candidates for the U.S. House and U.S. Senate have garnered heavyweight endorsements, the Montana Republican Party said Thursday it won’t throw its support behind any candidates for federal office in the primary.
“The Montana Republican Party (MTGOP) stands behind its deep bench of qualified candidates seeking to represent Montanans and supports a competitive primary process to let voters pick their preferred candidates,” the Montana GOP said in a news release Thursday.
Monday, U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke announced he was retiring due to health concerns once his term ends, and he immediately tapped talk-show host Aaron Flint as his preferred successor in Congress.
Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen and Flathead County Republican Central Committee Chairperson Al Olszewski also filed for the U.S. House as Republicans, as did Ray Curtis of Bonner.
Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Steve Daines withdrew, and in a statement the same night, announced an endorsement of former U.S. Attorney Kurt Alme, who had filed the same day.
In the Senate, Lee Calhoun and Charles Walking Child also filed to run in the Republican primary.
Endorsements for Flint and Alme cascaded. U.S. President Donald Trump endorsed both candidates, and U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy and Gov. Greg Gianforte threw their weight behind Flint and Alme.
Late on Wednesday, the Montana GOP did not immediately have comment on the news Daines, Montana’s senior U.S. senator, had resigned, but Thursday, the party thanked Zinke and Daines for their service.
A news release said the party would not endorse any candidates in the federal primary and would leave the job in the hands of voters.
“The party hopes every candidate will make their case to the public, contrasting their Republican policies and principles with those of Democrats — as well as phony ‘Independents,’” the news release said.
Former University of Montana President Seth Bodnar announced a run for the U.S. Senate as an independent this week.
A tension within the Republican party has emerged in recent years between hardline conservatives and more moderate members, and some legislative primaries illustrate the split.
This week, the state GOP said the number of primaries for state legislative seats shows a high interest from Montanans who want to serve the state and pass Republican policy, and the MTGOP “is glad to see so many Republicans being called to public service.”
In a brief call, MTGOP spokesperson Ethan Holmes said the party had not ruled out endorsements in legislative primaries.
In the news release, however, the MTGOP offered its view of the larger political debate.
“Montana voters know that beyond the primaries, there is a clear choice between Republican and Democratic governance; one path leads to lower taxes, less crime and stronger families, and the other leads to higher taxes, more crime, and social decay,” MTGOP Chairperson Art Wittich said in a statement.
The news release also said the state GOP is working “tirelessly to deliver a Bright Red Future” at both the state and federal level and looks forward to help candidates whom voters select win in November.
LAS VEGAS (KSNV) — Authorities have canceled an AMBER Alert after they say a 10-month-old child taken by a non-custodial parent was found safe.
North Las Vegas Police said Thursday that Leilani Williams (aka Leilani Duke) was taken by her father, Roderick Duke.
Duke and Leilani were last seen at an apartment complex in the area of Martin L. King Boulevard and Cheyenne Avenue at 1:40 a.m.
“An AMBER Alert has been activated due to Roderick being in emotional crisis and making threats to harm himself and 10-month-old Leilani,” NLVPD said in a statement.
By 10:05 a.m., NLVPD said that Leilani was located unharmed.
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Officers took Duke into custody without further incident, and the AMBER Alert has been canceled.
The number of confirmed measles cases in New Mexico increased to six after the state’s Department of Health confirmed Wednesday a new case inside a local jail in Las Cruces.
A federal inmate being held in the Doña Ana County Detention Center is the latest person to have tested positive for measles. The New Mexico Department of Health said others may have been exposed to the highly contagious disease from this confirmed case if they visited the U.S. District Court building in Las Cruces on Feb. 24.
State heath officials are now urging anyone who was at the courthouse that day to check their vaccination status and report any measles symptoms from now until March 17 to a health care provider.
“The New Mexico Department of Health continues to urge people to get the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination,” Dr. Chad Smelser, New Mexico’s deputy state epidemiologist, said in a statement. “Vaccine is the best tool to protect you from measles.”
Measles spreads through the air and people who contract the virus may experience symptoms such as runny nose, fever, cough, red eyes and a distinctive blotchy rash. These symptoms can develop between one and three weeks after exposure.
All of the six confirmed measles cases in New Mexico so far are federal detainees.
The first measles case was detected in the Hidalgo County Detention Center on Feb. 25, when a detainee, whose vaccination status was unknown, tested positive for the disease by the New Mexico Department of Health’s Scientific Laboratory.
Two days later, a second federal inmate in the same jail tested positive for the virus alongside two detainees in the Luna County Detention Center and another in the Doña Ana County Detention Center.
Both the Luna County and Doña Ana detention centers are local jails that also serve as holding facilities for federal immigration enforcement.
New Mexico health officials said they are the state’s first confirmed cases of this year, following a statewide outbreak in 2025 that sickened 100 people from mid-February to mid-September.
With two measles cases reported on each of the three local jails, Smelser said that the New Mexico Department of Health has sent vaccination teams to all three facilities.
State health officials are also “coordinating with all the facilities to assure all quarantine, isolation, testing and vaccination protocols are followed to minimize risk of measles spread.”
According to the NBC News measles tracker, more than 1,000 cases have been counted nationwide just in the first two months of this year. That’s nearly half the amount of cases confirmed in the United States in all of last year.
As 2026 already stands as one of the three worst years for measles infections in the country since 2000, another measles outbreak was confirmed this week in Texas inside the nation’s largest immigration detention facility.
On Wednesday, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson told NBC News that a least 14 cases of measles were confirmed inside Camp East Montana, which is located on the Fort Bliss Army base in El Paso.
The people who tested positive for measles have been “cohorted and separated from the rest of the detained population to prevent further spread,” the ICE spokesperson said.
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