Both the Wyoming and Idaho Freedom Caucuses joined the D.C.-based national network of far-right political blocs two years ago, but they’ve since traveled two very different roads.

After a successful August primary, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus is poised to take control of the state House in November. Meanwhile, its Idaho counterpart has splintered, leaving original members fighting with a new collection of lawmakers being recruited by the State Freedom Caucus Network.

The Gem State schism has grown so petty that the two factions are squabbling over who owns the rights to the Idaho Freedom Caucus logo.

“If all this sounds improbable, well, it isn’t,” Randy Stapilus, who covers Idaho politics, wrote in an Idaho State Journal op-ed. “Given the nature of what underlies these groups, it’s probably better seen as inevitable. The other states with Freedom Caucuses are on notice.”

Still, of the dozen network members, the Idaho Freedom Caucus is the only one that has thus far imploded. Is it an outlier, or a warning sign to extremists who have banded together to take over their respective statehouses?

The answer will help determine if Wyoming’s Freedom Caucus can successfully make the transition from a group of obstructionists to a functional governing body that’s able to pass its own agenda. 

A loose-knit Wyoming Freedom Caucus formed in 2016 with roughly a half-dozen members, modeled after the GOP’s U.S. House Freedom Caucus that started a year earlier. There was little movement in its ranks until about 20 Republican incumbents and candidates met in Story in September 2020 to vent their frustration over their inability to ban abortion and eliminate gun regulations. They shared fundamental beliefs in smaller government, minimal taxes and a bare-bones state budget.

In 2021, the Freedom Caucus had about 18 members who could reliably be counted on to vote as a bloc. After the 2022 election, the caucus grew to about 26.

It was six votes short of the majority at the time, but its new-found strength was a wake-up call to “traditional” conservatives who formed the Wyoming Caucus in response. 

Then a dramatic shift in legislative power occurred this year. Thanks to the requirement that bills must have two-thirds support to be introduced in the budget session, on opening day the Freedom Caucus killed 13 committee-passed measures that would have normally sailed through the process. 

The war between the two groups began in earnest, and the battleground was the Republican primary election in August. The Freedom Caucus had a net gain of three House seats and is strongly positioned to obtain a clear majority in November. 

The Freedom Caucuses in Wyoming and Idaho joined the State Freedom Caucus Network in 2022. Leaders made separate trips to D.C. to learn more about the network’s tactics, which emphasized an us-versus-them divide between members of the populist state caucuses flying under its banner and the demonized “RINOs” — Republicans in name only.

The Wyoming group hasn’t accomplished everything on the national network’s long list of priorities, including a ban on teaching “critical race theory.” But far-right lawmakers successfully sponsored abortion bans currently on hold pending court action, as well as anti-transgender bills and the diversion of state public-school funds to private and religious schools.

By contrast, the short history of the Idaho Freedom Caucus reads like the playbook for a team bent on self-destruction. The Idaho caucus is much smaller than Wyoming’s, which allows anyone to join. According to Stapilus, the 12 Freedom Caucus members in Idaho had to be vetted and invited, but they couldn’t agree on their mission, and several didn’t like their organization’s subservient relationship with the network. 

A secretly taped recording of a fractious meeting was leaked to the public last May. Squaring off were the Idaho state director for the State Freedom Caucus Network and a caucus co-chair who backed moderate positions of the speaker of the House. Both sides were angry and couldn’t wait to break away from each other. 

In a newsletter earlier this month, the Idaho Freedom Caucus outlined its beef with the national network and the director, who was described as “more in line with the [network] than Caucus members, making the ongoing situation untenable.” The caucus claimed the network ordered it “to be dissolved and re-formed on the conditions that it alter its self-governing structure, rewrite its bylaws, and adhere to a rigid D.C.-driven agenda.”

Sounds like a whole lot of freedom going on, doesn’t it?

The national caucus network cut off financial and administrative support, and the former director was tasked with forming a competing state Freedom Caucus, according to the Idaho Freedom Caucus newsletter. 

But Stapilus wrote that the feisty original group, now down to seven members after resignations and primary losses, isn’t going away. The caucus declared it will “follow its own path,” and hired a former state senator as the new director.

Like Wyoming, Idaho’s far-right made significant gains by defeating more moderate opponents in the GOP primary. But it’s uncertain whether those wins will translate into a chance to control the Idaho House, or if the feud will continue to sap the group’s power.

Wyoming’s Freedom Caucus, to my knowledge, hasn’t been handicapped by such disputes. The members’ common bond seems to be the need to control the House, support senators who align with Freedom Caucus positions and elect more of their own to state offices, including the governorship. Chuck Gray, a member of the caucus when he was in the House, was elected secretary of state in 2022.

I don’t see a backlash here against the network’s leadership, largely because its campaign strategy has helped elect new Freedom Caucus members. The bare-knuckled tactics the network encourages, including mailers that opponents charge lied about their voting records, were key to several victories. 

“I took 22 hit pieces in the mail and 10 text messages against me, and that negativity works,” Rep. Dan Zwonitzer of Cheyenne, a Wyoming Caucus member who lost his bid for an 11th term, told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. He added it’s “the new normal, and that’s what bothers me.”

There have always been negative campaigns, but the 2024 Republican primary sunk to a new low in many districts. As its members try to build coalitions to help them govern, the Freedom Caucus should remember how the ex-Idaho director framed its work before the rebellion: “We can save the nation one state at a time, and the State Freedom Caucus has the formula.”

National groups have resources to help, but sometimes the reward isn’t worth the pain of complying to unbending rules, especially ones at odds with legislators’ views of their own state’s priorities.

I wonder why more Republicans aren’t worried about the clash between those who want to rigidly adhere to the extreme-right platform of the Wyoming Republican Party and the traditional conservative wing. It’s the perfect recipe to tear a political party apart.

An example of what can happen when a state caucus refuses to follow an unwanted national “formula” is only one state to our west. The Wyoming Freedom Caucus should take that lesson to heart, especially since it’s following orders from the same master that led to the implosion in Idaho.

The post Can Wyoming’s populist Freedom Caucus learn from the Idaho FC’s implosion? appeared first on WyoFile .

” width=”224″ height=”168″ align=”right” hspace=”10″ alt=”The aquifer in Idaho’s Teton Valley has been diminishing for years. One local group is hoping to change its trajectory.” title=”The aquifer in Idaho’s Teton Valley has been diminishing for years. One local group is hoping to change its trajectory.” />In Teton Valley,
Idaho, where water is as precious as its native trout, irrigators and
environmental groups have teamed up to recharge the area’s diminishing aquifer.
In the process, they want to do something novel: find someone to pay farmers for
the effort.

Read More

Advocates express relief but push for greater oversight of facilities statewide By Wilson Criscione /…

The post Idaho youth treatment home exposed in InvestigateWest investigation closes down first appeared on InvestigateWest.

The post Idaho youth treatment home exposed in InvestigateWest investigation closes down appeared first on InvestigateWest.

Idaho Kids Covered report recommends state legislators revamp Medicaid coverage for children and mothers By…

The post Idaho’s infant, mother death rate is rising, new report finds first appeared on InvestigateWest.

The post Idaho’s infant, mother death rate is rising, new report finds appeared first on InvestigateWest.

Legal experts say the case underscores Idaho’s weak protections for workers facing retaliation By Wilson…

The post ​​How an Idaho children’s facility got away with firing whistleblowers of child abuse first appeared on InvestigateWest.

The post ​​How an Idaho children’s facility got away with firing whistleblowers of child abuse appeared first on InvestigateWest.

Employees at Cornerstone Cottage alerted state officials to the dangers, only to be fired themselves…

The post Rape, beatings and racial slurs: None of it was enough to shut down this Idaho youth facility first appeared on InvestigateWest.

The post Rape, beatings and racial slurs: None of it was enough to shut down this Idaho youth facility appeared first on InvestigateWest.

People visited Bureau of Land Management land more than 80 million times in 2022, hiking, biking, driving, exploring, hunting, fishing, climbing, camping and otherwise recreating. That’s a 40% increase over the past decade. In the same time period, the BLM’s recreation budget rose by only 22%.

The combination translates into a vexing problem for public-land managers in the West: Popular areas risk being loved to death. On the ground, this means more cars, trucks and ATVs barreling over sensitive species, and more garbage littering more trails through winter wildlife range and campsites. Meanwhile, the agency lacks the resources to keep up.

“In the past, we’ve had the luxury of being passive, because our lands haven’t faced that much pressure,” says Joel Webster, vice president of Western conservation for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. “But now, if we’re not proactive, it’s going to have some serious consequences.”

In an attempt to head off those consequences, the BLM recently released a 28-page document called the “Blueprint for 21st Century Outdoor Recreation.” In it, the agency takes on persistent issues linked to recreation’s increasing popularity, including harm to sacred tribal sites, chronic funding shortfalls and barriers to equal use, such as limited outreach and lack of diverse staffing.

The plan itself reads at a high level, addressing four broad goals: bringing in more money, building partnerships across public and private sectors, improving outreach and inclusion, and protecting the land while meeting the demands of increased recreation. The public has until Sept. 30 to give feedback to the agency.

The document is not a formal plan, but Webster said its recommendations could help relieve some concrete recreational pressures, beginning with the fact that only about 30% of BLM lands have a basic travel management plan. That means new roads and trails pop up across landscapes from sagebrush to slickrock, with little regard for an area’s wildlife and cultural sites.

As a first step, the agency should account for existing trails and roads, said Megan Lawson, an economist for Headwaters Economics, a nonprofit research firm based in Montana. The BLM has successfully identified most of its natural resource development opportunities. Doing the same for its trails would not only help protect important sites, but also help local communities manage and benefit from recreation.

The agency also needs to figure out just how many people are using various sites and find ways to prevent crowding and overuse at the most popular areas.

Take Moab, Utah. Visitation exploded there with hikers, bikers, climbers and campers drawn by its famous swooping sandstone, wavy dunes and towering crags. But Moab is also heralded as an example of how to respond, with hikers, bikers — both motorized and non — and other community members working with the BLM diligently, year after year, to build and maintain trails able to handle the ever-increasing crush of visitors. The coalition has also helped ease the burden on nearby national parks by redirecting thrill-seekers to other vast tracts of public land.

But it takes money, Lawson said, to track trail-users and post signs, build outhouses and educate visitors in multiple languages, and not all communities have the financial resources of an outdoor mecca like Moab.

And the BLM’s recreation budget is “trending in the wrong direction,” said Kevin Oliver, BLM’s division chief for recreation and visitor services. Ten years ago, the BLM spent about 84 cents on each visit. Today that number has fallen to 74 cents.

The agency is seeking fundraising help from the Foundation for America’s Public Lands, its congressionally authorized charitable partner, Oliver said. This could include individual donations and possibly corporate sponsors. It is also hoping for a financial boost from federal laws like the Great American Outdoors Act, which set aside billions of dollars for access to and infrastructure improvements on public lands.

BLM officials aren’t complaining about having more visitors; Oliver called the recreation spike “fantastic.” But they acknowledge that, as things stand, they simply cannot cope with the increasing demands. They know that the 40% visitation bump isn’t an aberration: Americans want to get outside.

The new document stresses the importance of states, tribes and local communities working with the BLM to come up with solutions. But the coalitions they create need to be durable, Oliver said, given inevitable changes in administrations and political priorities.

Webster agrees. While the growing numbers of visitors have already damaged some popular areas and put pressure on wildlife from elk to sage grouse, especially in states like Colorado, the bulk of BLM lands are not yet recreation destinations. But that can change quickly, and Webster wants the agency to plan ahead.

“It’s a lot harder to pull things back in if you’ve made a mistake than it is to do it right from the beginning,” Webster said. “And there’s just more people in the West, and more people recreating on our public lands.”

Christine Peterson lives in Laramie, Wyoming, and has covered science, the environment and outdoor recreation in Wyoming for more than a decade. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, Outdoor Life and the Casper Star-Tribune, among others. We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.

TWIN FALLS, Idaho — When J.D. Davis, the department chair of English at Twin Falls High School, was told last year that half of the committee he was leading to pick new texts and materials for the district’s English Language Arts classrooms would be parents and community members, he objected.

“I said, ‘I’m not going to have parents involved! They don’t know what we’re doing. They don’t know what we need in a textbook as far as curriculum.’ I kind of scoffed at it,” said Davis, who also teaches journalism, oversees the school newspaper and advises the Gay-Straight Alliance.

A new Idaho law gave him no choice.

Across the U.S., educators typically lead textbook selections, although many districts, like Twin Falls, have long included parents in the process. Idaho’s “District Curricular Adoption Committees” law makes parent involvement mandatory — and then some — demanding districts form committees of at least 50 percent non-educators, including parents of current students, to review and recommend new texts and materials.

A year in, the law is reshaping what is or isn’t in the curriculum in many counties in this Western state, including how subjects like climate change or social movements are discussed in some courses.

It has spurred tough but positive parent-school discussions in Twin Falls where parents and educators say the conversations have forced them to consider one another’s concerns and perspectives. In other districts, however, it’s poised to harden divisions and keep students from getting learning tools they need.

Related: Inside Florida’s ‘underground lab’ for far-right policies

Around the country, curricula — books and materials that guide but don’t define lessons — have become a political target of conservatives who fear conflict with values they want to instill in their children. Over the past two years, 147 “parental rights” bills were introduced in state legislatures, according to a legal tracker by the education think tank FutureEd.

Only a handful passed. Many restrict discussions around race and gender. Several enforce parents’ ability to review texts and materials. A 2022 Georgia “Parents’ Bill of Rights” requires that schools provide parents access to classroom and assigned materials within three days of a request. The Idaho curriculum law, embraced by the state’s conservative legislature, went into effect in July 2022.

The curriculum law is noteworthy because it gives non-educators more power not just to inspect curriculum, but to help choose it.

Some educators view it as a political move to undercut their professional role. “The parent partnership is important,” said Peggy Hoy, an instructional coach in the Twin Falls district and the National Education Association director for Idaho. “The problem is when you make a rule like they did and there is this requirement, it feels as an educator that the underlying reason is to drive a wedge between the classroom and parents.”

Sally Toone, a recently retired state representative and veteran teacher who opposed the law, sees it as a legislative move by conservatives “to have parents be a driver, instead of a partner, in the educational process.”

Educators also voiced practical considerations. It can be tough for districts to find parents to devote time to curriculum review. Many have had to scramble, Hoy and others said. Only three non-educators agreed to serve on a math curriculum committee in Twin Falls, which meant that only three educators could participate — fewer than half the optimal number, said the educator who led the committee. Ditto for a science curriculum committee in Coeur D’Alene.

“My family and I are very religious. My biggest concern as a father was, ‘What are my children going to be reading?’ ”

Chris Reid, a father of seven who served on the committee to select a new English Language Arts curriculum for the Twin Falls School District

Having many non-educators involved also changes how materials are judged. Educators want to know, for example, if lessons are clear and organized, and whether they connect to prior learning and support students of differing levels. By contrast, “parents don’t understand the pedagogy of what happens in a curriculum,” said Hoy. They “look at the stories, the word problems, the way they are explaining it.”

Rep. Judy Boyle, a Republican state legislator who sponsored the law, initially agreed to an interview but did not respond to several requests to arrange it.

Related: Population booms overwhelm schools in the West: ‘Someone’s going to get left behind’

During the review process in Twin Falls, a district with 9,300 students in southern Idaho, parents objected to a theme around peaceful protests, the tone of questions around climate change and lessons that included social emotional learning.

The curriculum with social emotional learning “got nixed pretty quickly,” said Davis, the English teacher leading the committee. Social emotional learning (SEL) — tools and strategies that research shows can help students better grasp academic content — has become a new lightning rod for the far-right across and is often conflated with Critical Race Theory or CRT.

Chris Reid, a banker and vice mayor of Twin Falls and father with seven children in the public schools, said he was eager to help select the new English Language Arts curriculum and make sure materials were “age-appropriate” and not include “revisionist history,” LGBTQ themes or sexuality introduced “to younger-age children.”

“My family and I are very religious,” said Reid, sitting one afternoon in his mezzanine office at First Federal Bank. “My biggest concern as a father was, ‘What are my children going to be reading?’”

Despite some tense conversations, Davis, the teacher, said the process was overall “not threatening.” He also liked the curriculum choice, the myPerspectives textbooks by Savvas Learning Company. He does, however, see risks with the new mandate, including that a parent or community member with an agenda “could hamstring the district from getting the best textbook,” he said. “It could literally be one member of the committee.”

Committee member Anna Rill, a teacher at Canyon Ridge High School, said the difficult conversations about content “made us think a little more about the community you are living in and that you are serving.”

Twin Falls, named for the waterfalls formed by the Snake River Canyon dam, which in the early 1900s turned the area from desert into a rich agricultural region now called “The Magic Valley,” is politically conservative (70 percent voted for Donald Trump in 2020). L.H. Erickson, director of secondary programs for the school district, said he thought the curriculum “should meet the values and ideals of your community.”

Increasing public involvement makes good sense because schools must be responsive to parent views, said Erickson. “Parents give us their children for several hours a day and a lot of trust and we want to make sure to earn and keep that trust.”

Reid, the father of seven, liked being able to share his. “I got to hear other perspectives; they got to understand my side on the content,” he said. The experience led him to conclude that, “teachers are not evil. They are not trying to indoctrinate my child.”

Related: States were adding lessons about Native American history. Then came the anti-CRT movement

The new law may help to build bridges in Twin Falls and some other communities. But in West Bonner County, which serves about 1,000 students in rural north Idaho, a year-old dispute over an English Language Arts curriculum continues to fuel division.

The blow-up began last summer. In June, before the new law went into effect, the curriculum review committee, which included a few parents, chose the Wonders English Language Arts curriculum from McGraw-Hill. The school board approved it quickly and unanimously. The materials were purchased and delivered. “They were stacked in the hallways,” one parent said.

Then, some local conservative activists loudly objected, saying the materials contained social emotional learning components. In developing the curriculum, McGraw-Hill had partnered with Sesame Workshop to include SEL skills that language on the Wonders site said included “a focus on self-confidence, problem-solving, and pro-social behavior.” At a meeting on Aug. 24, 2022, the school board voted 3-1 to rescind the curriculum.

Because the existing curriculum is out of print, the district lacked a reading program last year.

“We had no spelling lists, no word work. The first unit was on the desert and we live in north Idaho,” said Whitney Urmann, who taught fourth grade last year at West Bonner County School District’s Priest Lake Elementary School. “Very early on, I stopped using the curriculum,” Urmann said.

She had two workbooks for her entire class and few books leveled to her students’ abilities. Other materials were incomplete or irrelevant, she said. From mid-October on, she said, she purchased materials herself, spending $2,000 of her $47,000 salary to be able to teach reading.

The board’s decision, said Margaret Hall, the board member who cast the dissenting vote, “has created some ill feelings.” Indeed: Two board members who voted to rescind the curriculum now face a recall after parents gathered enough signatures on petitions to force a vote.

Shouting at one school board meeting in June went on for nearly four hours.

The dispute, and the subsequent absence of teaching materials, has upset some local parents.

Hailey Scott, a mother of three, said she worries that her child entering first grade, an advanced reader, won’t “be challenged.” Meanwhile, her third grader is behind in reading, said Scott, “and I fear she will be set back even more by not having a state-approved curriculum in her classroom.”

Whitney Hutchins, who grew up in the district and works at the Priest Lake resort her family has owned and operated for generations, recently decided with her husband to move across the state line to Spokane, Washington.

“This is not the environment I want to raise my child in,” said Hutchins, mother of an 18-month-old. She said the curriculum law is part of a larger problem of extremists gaining control and destroying civic institutions.

“It is scary to me that 50 percent of people choosing the curriculum are not going to be teachers,” she said. “It is scary to me that it is going to be people with a political agenda who don’t believe in public education.”

Hutchins doesn’t see things improving. The school board, on a 3-2 vote, chose Branden Durst — who was previously a senior analyst at the far-right Idaho Freedom Foundation and has no educational experience — as the district’s new superintendent over Susie Luckey, the interim superintendent and a veteran educator in the district.

Durst said that he wanted the job because of the district’s challenges, including around curriculum. “I have a lot of ideas that are frankly unorthodox in education. I needed to prove to myself that those things are right,” he said. Those ideas could include using a curriculum developed by the conservative Christian Hillsdale College, he said.

Durst is currently assembling a new committee with plans to quickly adopt a new English Language Arts curriculum, but declined to share details.

“It is scary to me that 50 percent of people choosing the curriculum are not going to be teachers. It is scary to me that it is going to be people with a political agenda who don’t believe in public education.”

Whitney Hutchins, mother who recently decided to leave Twin Falls for Spokane, Washington

Jessica Rogers, who served on the committee that picked the Wonders curriculum, said she saw hints of trouble long before the vote to reject the curriculum. She said the curriculum adoption committee anticipated political attacks, including over images that showed racial diversity. “One of the things we did was go through the curriculum and see where the first blond-haired, blue-eyed boy was,” she recalled, adding that they noted pages to use as a defense.

It was, she said, “bizarre.”

Rogers and her husband recently built a home atop a hill with a broad view of Chase Lake. As her three daughters had a water fight on the patio, she hoped aloud that building in the West Bonner County School District was not a mistake.

This story about curriculum reviews was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post Who picks school curriculum? Idaho law hands more power to parents appeared first on The Hechinger Report.