Narrator: Presentation of Idaho Reports on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho.

By the Friends of Idaho Public Television and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Melissa Davlin: We made it through the 2025 legislative session, but there's still plenty to talk about tonight, what passed, what didn't, and what lawsuits are already underway.

I'm Melissa Devlin.

Idaho reports starts now.

Davlin: Hello and welcome to Idaho Reports.

This week, Geoffrey Heeren, professor with the University of Idaho College of Law, discusses legal questions around a recent immigration bill in Idaho, as well as the revocation of visas for some international college students.

Then Kevin Richert of Idaho Education News and doctor Jaclyn Kettler of Boise State University's School of Public Service join me to discuss the end of the 2025 legislative session and what might be next.

But first, let's get you caught up on the week.

Governor Brad Little held a public signing Wednesday for a bill that increases the child welfare budget by $23.2 million and allocates 63 new positions for the Division of Youth, Safety and Permanency.

This comes after the state has long struggled to find enough foster families.

when I started, when many of us started together, we had 74 foster parents for every 100 kids come into the system.

We said we want to be a state where families are waiting on kids, not kids waiting on families.

So we've set a goal of getting 150 foster families for every 100 kids coming in.

The legislature saw that and responded, and they said, let's set a goal somewhere in between.

They want a 1 to 1.

They want 100 families for every 100 kids coming into the system.

And if we don't hit that by January, then they could take away six of those staff that the governor spoke to.

Do I think anyone up here is losing sleep over that?

No, because we're confident we're going to hit that.

Today we're at 94 families per 100 kids.

In just a few short months, we've gone from 74 families per hundred kids to 94 families per 100 kids and we’re confident in this investment, that it's going to make a meaningful difference.

Davlin: Idaho reports will continue to follow this story and attempts to improve the foster care system.

Secretary of State Phil McGrane testified before a U.S. House subcommittee on elections on Tuesday, sharing his thoughts on what Congress could do to help states improve election integrity.

Phil McGrane: Over the 2024 election, I think one of the biggest things that stands out, though, is our use of the SAVE database and the SAVE tools.

Governor Little and I signed an executive order last summer, the Only Citizens Can Vote Act to ensure that only American citizens were on our voter rolls, headed into the November election.

And we did a comparison with all of the data and had a close working relationship with DHS.

But I think one of the telling things and something that you can do about this is we talk about the SAVE database or the SAVE program.

It's not actually a program or a database.

It's a patchwork of varying databases that really was never intended for election integrity work.

And I think one of the things this committee can do is invest in the tools that we need as states to ensure that our voter rolls are accurate.

Davlin: This week, President Donald Trump's administration announced the reappointment of Bart Davis to be the U.S. attorney for Idaho.

Davis served as Idaho Senate Majority Leader from 2002 until his first appointment to the federal prosecutor's office in 2017.

During Trump's first term, Davis must still go through the Senate confirmation process.

Davlin: On Thursday, a federal judge in Idaho extended the temporary restraining order on House Bill 83 or the Idaho Ice Act.

The bill would allow magistrate judges to deport undocumented immigrants who had been taken into custody in lieu of prosecution under certain circumstances.

The ACLU sued over that legislation in March.

Also Thursday, Professor Geoff Heeren of the University of Idaho College of Law joined me to discuss the legislation as well as the recent revocation of student visas for two University of Idaho students.

Davlin: Thank you so much for joining us this week.

How often do we see states try to intervene or have more of a say in the immigration process?

Geoffrey Heeren: Yeah,.

so there is a history of states attempting to intervene in the immigration process, really going back to the 19th century, at a time when states like New York and California were attempting to impose fees on passengers coming into the United States.

And beginning at that time, the Supreme Court started issuing decisions in which it emphasized the importance of a federal role in immigration.

And that the country needed to speak with a single voice on immigration because it touches on foreign policy, touches on foreign affairs, even on national security.

And for that reason, it's really important that there not be 50 different immigration policies in the United States, that there just be a single immigration policy.

Davlin: Now, more recently, we have seen other states enact legislation that has made its way through the courts.

What's happened with those laws?

Heeren: Right.

So I think, this recent trend, which, as I said, kind of harkens back to earlier trends as well, started with Texas, with the Texas law, which is very similar to the Idaho law, and that law was challenged in Texas courts, rather in federal courts in Texas.

And was enjoined by a district court and that, the at the state of Texas requested that higher courts stay that injunction.

So, in other words, the order that was stopping the law from going into effect, they requested a stay of that.

The case went up to the US Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court very briefly allowed the law to go into effect.

For some complicated legal reasons.

But when the case went back to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Fifth Circuit ultimately denied a stay of the injunction based on its finding or its holding, rather, that the state of Texas was unlikely to prevail on the merits of its claim that, the law was, not preempted by federal law.

And again, the issue here is one of preemption.

And what that means, to put it kind of in layman's terms, is that the federal government has a very important role on this issue.

And because of that, state laws that sort of intrude into that space are found to typically be preempted by federal law.

Davlin: So just to be clear, that Texas law, after going through that process, in layman's terms, is not currently in effect.

Heeren: Right.

So it's been halted by a court order.

And we've seen similar laws also in Iowa and Oklahoma, which have also been challenged in the courts.

And, the courts in those cases have also, enjoined those laws.

More recently, the Trump administration has a different position than the Biden administration did.

And they have, I believe, sought the dismissal of those cases.

Originally in those cases, the federal government was the plaintiff.

There were sometimes other plaintiffs as well, sometimes organizations or individuals who were impacted by the laws.

But the federal government under the Trump administration has I believe their position is they want to withdraw from litigation of that type.

That being said, those decisions are still out there and, may carry precedential force.

Davlin: Another issue that we and so many other states are keeping an eye on is the issue of international student visas being revoked by the U.S. State Department.

As of Thursday, CNN reported more than 400 college students and researchers and professors had had those visas revoked.

And it's important to note that two University of Idaho students have had their visas revoked.

You are not their attorney, nor are you speaking on behalf of the university.

But generally speaking, do non-citizens have the same constitutional free speech protections as citizens?

Heeren: Yes they do.

And that's something with quite a bit of history, too, that I think is actually quite relevant to, what's happening in our current moment.

I would, as I think about what's happening right, right now, I think back to the first Red scare after World War One and after the, Soviet revolution.

And, that was a time period when a lot of non-citizens were being rounded up during the so-called Palmer Raids, put on by Attorney General Mitchell Palmer in conjunction with J. Edgar Hoover.

And people were arrested because of their political beliefs, because of their labor activism and support for the labor movement.

And many, many prominent activists from that time period, like Emma Goldman, were deported from the United States.

There was, a backlash to that.

We, the ACLU, formed around that time period.

The Supreme Court ultimately, issued decisions which led to a much more robust period of First Amendment protection, which is the period we're in right now.

And when we get to the time of the McCarthy era in 1945, the US Supreme Court considered the case of an Australian labor organizer named Harry Bridges, who is in deportation proceedings in part because of his labor organizing work.

And the court made it clear that non-citizens like Harry Bridges had a right to free speech in our country.

And that's been the law since then.

And, so the law is that individuals have a right to free speech.

That non-citizens have a right to free speech.

And, I think that a number of the non-citizens who've had their visas revoked have filed litigation based on first Amendment claims as of this time.

Davlin: Along those lines, how about due process?

Heeren: Absolutely.

And in fact, I would say that one of the clearest rights that non-citizens have in the United States is the right to due process.

And provisions like the First Amendment and the Fifth Amendment due Process Clause, don't speak in terms of citizenship.

The Fifth Amendment Due Process clause refers to persons, and so it's clear that all persons in the United States have that right.

Basically, in layman's terms, again, this is the right to notice and to an opportunity to be heard before you're, important interests or liberty are stripped away from you.

Davlin: Along those lines.

Heeren: And.

Go ahead, sorry.

Davlin: Along those lines, we don't know the specifics publicly of these two University of Idaho students and why their visas were revoked, whether it was because they wrote op eds like we've seen other student in the cases in other students.

But if it was something similar, do these two University of Idaho students have any recourse to appeal their visa revocation?

Heeren: So that's a complex question that, involves the interpretation of some complicated regulations and also, some complicated issues related to federal courts.

But the, I would distinguish here between the revocation of a visa and the termination of what's called the SEVIS record, which is the record that the government maintains in conjunction with schools that, sets out essentially whether they are in authorized status in the United States or not.

The Secretary of State does have very broad discretion to revoke somebody's visas for virtually any reason.

With respect to SEVIS terminations, there's more limited grounds for that that are set out in the regulations.

Somebody might also be put into deportation proceedings as the result of the revocation of a visa or as a result of their failure to maintain status.

And in deportation proceedings, somebody could try to raise arguments related to the illegality of the termination of their, revocation of their visa.

Somebody could also file a federal lawsuit, as some people have done, and raise claims that the actions are unconstitutional, perhaps because they violate their First Amendment freedoms.

And so that's something that I think we've seen is, a number of the students who've had their visas revoked or some of the LPR’s even, the lawful permanent residents who have been put in deportation proceedings because of their political advocacy, have filed federal lawsuits and federal claims.

And that is another possibility that somebody could take in this situation.

Davlin: National media is focused a lot on how this affects students and university researchers.

But should other immigrants like green card holders, who have different conditions surrounding their legal status here, should they be concerned about what they're posting to social media, or their other First Amendment activities?

Heeren: So I would never want to discourage anyone from speaking and exercising their constitutional rights.

But I do want to note that a couple of the most prominent cases, including the cases of Mahmoud Khalil and Yunseo Chung, both involved lawful permanent residents who had green card status in the United States and who were put into deportation proceedings.

And again, my point in mentioning this is not to try to silence anybody, but to emphasize how much is at stake in these cases, because it's all the more important when immigrants, when non-citizens are being, when their rights are being limited, that those of us who are citizens in the United States speak out and make it clear that our rights are important to us.

As Benjamin Franklin said, we have a republic, if we keep it.

And in order to keep it, we have to be prepared to exercise our rights to defend it.

Davlin: Geoff Heeren, professor of law at University of Idaho’s School of Law, thanks so much for joining us.

Heeren: Thank you.

Melissa Davlin: Joining me at the table this week is Kevin Richert of Idaho Education News.

And Dr. Jaclyn Kettler of Boise State University school of Public service.

Kevin.

Idaho Education news has been following the revocation of the international student visas.

And this isn't just about the the two students who are immediately affected that we know about at U.I.

This has broader implications.

Kevin Ritchert: It certainly does.

We'll be tracking it in inside higher Ed is tracking it on a national scale, and we ran their story on Thursday.

As far as we know, this is only affected students at the University of Idaho, but for colleges and universities across the state and across the nation, this is a big deal because a lot of colleges, including College of Idaho in Caldwell, have made attracting and retaining international students a part of their identity.

One of the attributes that they promote and sell to prospective students, domestic and international.

This is a big deal to a lot of colleges and universities.

Davlin: And you and Ryan, your colleague Ryan Suppe also this week had a really great run down of legislation that passed.

And also what didn't this session.

Let's let's start with what did pass.

What were the highlights?

Richert: A lot a lot of things passed this year.

I think the biggest one that we will be following most closely is House Bill 93.

That is the private school tax credit law that went into effect, the $50 million program.

Ryan has been our lead reporter on this all session.

A lot of implementation work that he's going to be looking at.

How does this fold?

How does this unfold?

How does the money go out?

Where is it used?

What sort of student demographics are we seeing going through this program?

That's the biggest one.

We'll be watching closely what happens on the medical education front.

What the state board does there.

Probably to me, the biggest thing they didn't pass is anything regarding special education funding.

We had no movement, really, on revamping the school funding formula.

Know, even though you have been debating about this for years, and even though the Office of Performance Evaluations put out a report in March talking about the problem with the funding formula, nothing happened in the funding formula.

This legislature even turned down a $3 million proposal that was very directed to helping school districts pay for high needs students, student that may need a full time ASL interpreter or a full time aide.

That small program failed on the Senate floor by one vote, $3 million out of what is now projected to be, according to OPE, an $82 million funding shortfall for special education.

The legislature really did nothing to address special education, and if anything, they looked at the $82 million gap as a reason to not fund the $3 million program.

They said, well, if we spent $3 million, now we're looking at $82 million down the road.

The high needs program was not designed to address an $82 million shortfall.

And really, maybe the legislature should be talking about why do we have an $82 million shortfall affecting the most vulnerable kids in the state?

Davlin: And Jaci this conversation is happening and I bring this up almost every week.

While there's a lot of uncertainty about what federal funding might look like on, on so many different levels, but when it comes to education, particularly special education, and those programs and those requirements that school districts follow, right.

Jaclyn Kettler: A lot of this is federal guidelines and federal funding that comes through as grants.

Right.

And so we still don't know what that's going to look like.

What, you know, what's going to happen with some changes to the Department of Education, the potential elimination and kind of movement of those, their responsibilities to other entities.

So there is a lot of uncertainty about what federal resources will be available in the future.

Davlin: You know, we're having this conversation, and a lot of it ties back to money and outcomes.

And and in my time covering the legislature, we have had that conversation, that exact same conversation, and heard that same debate almost every single year.

This week, our director, Morgan McCollum, was going through the Idaho Public Television Archive and found this clip from then Governor Cecil Andrus from 1991.

Cecil Cecil Andrus: We have spent every spare dollar Idaho has on our sluggish educational system, and we haven't been able to raise the performance.

We still have children who go to school hungry.

We still have children who don't have their shots.

And we still have children shutting down their minds when that last bell rings.

Davlin: So, as you just heard, we could have taken that same clip and given that script to just about any lawmaker heard concern about throwing money at a problem and not necessarily seeing the outcomes that we desired.

Kevin, did anything happen this year that might shake us loose from that debate?

Richert: Well, it all has a consistent ring, doesn't it?

A couple of things that jumped out at me this session on this, funding versus outcomes debate literacy.

The legislature did pass a bill that will create a training program for K through three reading teachers so that they can focus more on a phonics based approach.

This has been piloted in some schools in the state.

superintendent Debbie Critchfield says it's had success.

A lot of the debate through this process centered on the literacy program and the money that's been put into literacy and has a lot of money that's been put into literacy.

We're well above $70 million a year now.

And legislators saying, what have we gotten for the money?

Reading the scores are mixed.

It depends on which grade and which you know which reading score you look at.

You can argue improvements.

You can argue stagnation in those numbers, and you hurt both ends of that argument.

So I think that was the biggest outcomes based debate that I heard in education this year.

Davlin: It's certainly to I would imagine that some of the, proponents of House Bill 93, the public money for various private education costs, would argue that this is Idaho's chance to potentially get some students out of a public education system that might not be working for them.

Kettler: Some of the arguments we heard right, that some students need some different support, different opportunities, and what they can find in their traditional public school.

And so that this sort of tax credit can help families afford, whether it's private school, what those options might be to help help students that that need these additional resources or are a different type of a focus on what they might receive elsewhere.

Davlin: And certainly to I think some of that looking at how that shakes out when you talk about metrics of success and what things we're measuring, what are going to be the metrics of success when we look at putting $50 million towards tax credits for these, for these funds.

Richert: And it's going to be harder to because we're talking about private schools and we're talking about, schools that may not have the same level of accountability.

They may not have to do the same kind of testing.

So it will be really hard to get apples versus apples comparisons about success and outcomes in the private school realm, as opposed to the public school realm.

Davlin: Jaci, Kevin mentioned that a lot of different bills ended up passing this year.

There were a whole lot more that were introduced, and if you look at the raw numbers, kind of shocking number compared to some other sessions, you took a look at this.

Kettler: Yeah.

So over a thousand pieces of legislation prepared over 700, slightly over 700 bills introduced, which is an increase from previous years.

And so I think there's a lot of questions, right, about what what's happening here.

Why are we seeing the surge in legislation.

Perhaps legislators are getting more ideas from constituents.

I've heard some concerned about the role of of lobbying or think tanks.

And, you know, providing legislation that's being introduced maybe as a growing state.

We have more issues that need to address.

A lot of things could be motivating more legislation.

But I think one question is will we continue to see this increase?

If so, does the legislature have the capacity to handle this workload?

Davlin: And this is a part time legislature.

So you and I were talking earlier, it would almost be more concerning if there weren't.

There were a very, very small number of bills, because that means that maybe these bills are already greased and ready to go through the system.

And we're not seeing those debates publicly, or maybe they're not working these issues out during committee and getting those issues fixed, but, you know, on the flip side, more than a thousand pieces of legislation in three months, that's a lot of information for these lawmakers to process.

Kettler: Right, not everything can be fully debated.

Right.

And so and perhaps some of the intent is not for everything to receive a lot of attention.

But there are questions on how do you handle the workload of a growing number of bills.

Richert: And I think a lot of things may be factoring into these numbers.

And I have not had really the chance to to crunch the numbers.

I think maybe the Jpac budget process has probably contributed somewhat to this, because now you have maintenance budget bills, you have these enhancement budget bills for agencies.

And we saw in several cases, numerous cases, enhancement bills that were rejected the first time around, JFAC had to come back with a new version of the enhancements, you know, and these are the the add on budgets.

You know, the maintenance budget basically is, you know, base funding from the previous year.

So I think the jpac process is very contributed to it.

But I think a lot of the policy issues we're seeing bills written, rewritten, reintroduced, reworked, maybe more than we've seen in the past.

And sometimes those bills are very different than what we saw the first time medical education, the first bill that we saw would have severed Idaho's ties with WWAMI with the University of Washington medical education program entirely would have two years.

We're getting out of our alliance with WWAMI, the new bill, which was then amended, changes that there's no requirement now that the state severs its ties with WWAMI.

It may remain in place.

It may increase, it may decrease.

That's up to the state board and a state board committee to decide very different bills.

But I guess what I'm getting at is that on this issue, on proposals to rework launch on a host of education issues, you saw different bills, different versions of bills introduced along the way.

Davlin: Let's touch on launch.

You brought that up.

And that has been, you know, a hallmark for Governor Little throughout his entire time as governor, starting with, you know, his election in in 2018.

And even before that, he wanted to increase Idaho's go on rate.

That was one of his goals as lieutenant governor and then as governor.

What's the status of lunch after this session?

Richert: It is intact.

It's unchanged basically.

But we saw a bill that passed the House.

It stalled in the Senate.

That would have really changed the way lunch we're how students could use launch money would have basically driven that spending into, CTE programs, into short term training, into associate degrees at the community colleges.

Most of that money right now is being spent at the four year colleges and universities, millions of dollars going into, grants to help students go to a four year school like Boise State or U of I, or the community colleges as well, would have really changed the way launch works and how the money is spent.

At a point where we really don't have any outcomes.

It's not very clear how this is working out.

We're only in the first classes of launch students, so we don't really know our students getting, education that tracks them into degrees or they staying in Idaho.

We don't have any of that data yet.

Davlin: Because they haven't had a chance to finish their higher education or their career training and decide to stay in Idaho.

Kettler: Right.

But we do know there's demand, right?

Like it's been a popular program in terms of of high school students applying for the, for launch, grants and funds.

So at least in that sense, there's a lot of demand for it.

Davlin: Looking at the whole picture of higher education, Kevin, you had a piece analyzing how higher ed fared.

This session.

Could have been better, could have been worse.

Richert: It could have been a lot worse.

I think for higher ed, for the four year schools, if the launch program had been reworked, I mean, there were budget cuts to Boise State and U of I, what they would have lost if launch had been reworked would have been much more than what the JFAC had cut out of this budget.

Davlin: About 90s left, but there was also some breaking news late this week about the state Board of Education.

What's the latest, Kevin?

Richert: Yeah, new executive director is coming on board, Jennifer White.

She had been with Boise State.

She had been on their legal team.

She had also been on their government relations team.

So she was a regular at the state House representing Boise State.

She stepped in, Josh Whitworth, who had just taken the job a year ago, is going into the private sector .

Davlin: This comes also as Alex Adams with the Department of Health and Welfare is conceivably leaving that post if his Senate confirmation goes through with DHS.

Lots of turnover that we are keeping an eye on, as we go into the summer months.

What are you going to be keeping an eye on after all of this legislation passed?

Kettler: Well, I mean, it will be, you know, kind of the effects of some of these implemented as, as they're implemented.

But we still don't know fully what's going to happen at the federal level.

So there's going to be a lot of questions about governance, policy implementation moving forward on those fronts.

Davlin: Certainly something that is changing hour by hour.

And I know that we're keeping an eye on things like FEMA funding even is up in the air, and how that might affect Idaho as we get into flood and fire season.

All right, doctor Jaclyn Kettler of Boise State University School of Public Service Kevin Richert, Idaho Education news, thank you for joining us and thank you for watching.

We have so much more online.

You can find our coverage at Idaho reports.org.

We'll see you next week.

Narrator: Presentation of Idaho Reports on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho.

By the Friends of Idaho Public Television and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.