One proposal eliminates the voucher program for private school and homeschooled students. Arts programs, suicide prevention and dual immersion may also be trimmed.

Utah’s education leaders are considering what programs should be cut to meet the Utah Legislature’s mandate to trim 5% of the state’s budget — and everything from suicide prevention to school vouchers is on the block.

The Utah State Board of Education is meeting Thursday to consider recommendations to cut the state’s nearly $6 billion schools budget. The board is scheduled to meet at noon to discuss two proposals, each of which recommends cuts of just over $295.7 million.

The biggest proposed cut is the elimination of Utah Fits All, the voucher program that allocates money to students in private schools or being homeschooled.

One proposal recommends defunding the $122.6 million Utah Fits All program, while the other suggests cutting $6.1 million, or 5%, of the voucher program.

These are some of the programs suggested for elimination in both proposals:

• Student mental health screenings, a program the Legislature created in 2024 to improve students’ well-being: $1 million.

• A suicide-prevention program the Legislature created last year, to help prevent student suicides and track schools’ efforts: $1 million.

• Carson Smith Special Needs Scholarships, which are available to students with disabilities who attend private schools: $8.6 million.

• Dual immersion programs that allow students to learn a second language through classes that are half in English and half in another language: $7.9 million.

• A program that helps school districts with construction, renovation and debt service of new buildings: $27.6 million.

• A program that adds $4,100 to the salaries of qualifying secondary math and science teachers: $26 million.

• Software licenses for early literacy education to help students in grades K-3 who are reading below grade level: $10.6 million.

• Digital teaching and learning programs that help educators find ways to use technology in the classroom: $18.4 million.

Each of the two proposals also recommends eliminating one of the state’s arts education programs. One suggests cutting the $19.4 million allocated to the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts Learning Program, which provides funding for arts-integrated education in elementary schools.

The other calls for cutting the $6.1 million given to the Professional Outreach Programs in the Schools, or POPS, which pays to bring in nonprofits — including Tanner Dance, the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art and others — to teach the arts in schools.

Here are other programs that are being suggested for elimination on one of the two proposals:

• A program aiming to strengthen human trafficking and child sexual abuse education in elementary and secondary public schools: $1 million.

• Software that evaluates the reading level of elementary school students: $2.8 million.

The Utah Legislature has asked all state agencies to look for 5% to cut from their budgets, House Majority Whip Rep. Candice Pierucci, R-Riverton, said Monday at a United Way-sponsored preview breakfast. Pierucci said House Speaker Mike Schultz is spearheading the budget cutbacks, which she said are a response to the rise in local property taxes around the state.

“With everything we see at the local level, we thought we could not ask our local [leaders] to cut budgets if we’re not willing to show [we can do] that,” Pierucci said.

Whatever recommendation USBE approves Thursday will next go to the Utah Legislature for consideration. The Legislature’s 2026 general session begins Tuesday.

This is a developing story.

For many outdoors enthusiasts in the West, rabbit hunting is more than a pastime—it’s a rite of winter, a way to connect with the land, and a chance to sharpen skills in one of America’s most iconic ecosystems: the sagebrush sea. Stretching across 13 states, this sprawling habitat is home to a variety of rabbit species, from the elusive pygmy rabbit to the more abundant cottontail and jackrabbit. In Wyoming, hunters find themselves at the heart of prime rabbit country, where wide-open valleys, rolling sage flats, and rocky outcrops create both challenge and opportunity.

If you’re new to it, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department lays out the rules to keep it all fair and sustainable.

Wyoming’s organized rabbit-hunting history dates back nearly a century. On December 27, 1926, community leaders in Rawlins embarked on the state’s first formal rabbit hunt in the mountains near Medicine Bow. The event was a resounding success, returning nearly 1,000 rabbits to town to be distributed to families in need.

The tradition continued in 1934 when Casper held its own community hunt. According to the Casper Star-Tribune, the hunt “provided enough rabbits to feed hundreds of families… No one tried to take more than a reasonable share; the most taken by one family was 11 rabbits for a family of 10. The result was that rabbit sizzled and fried in hundreds of Casper homes last night.” These early hunts highlight Wyoming’s unique connection to rabbit hunting—not only as recreation but also as a vital support for local communities.

Fast forward to last weekend, and the spirit of Wyoming’s rabbit-hunting community is alive and thriving. Riverton hosted the 47th Annual 5-Shot Rabbit Hunt, a beloved event that brings together the local women’s hunting community. Organized by Jessica Smith for the past eight years, the hunt challenges teams of two to harvest the most rabbits, with each participant limited to five shots—creating a goal of 10 rabbits per team.

This year’s warmer temperatures and rabbit disease shifted the focus from cottontails to the notoriously skittish jackrabbits, adding a layer of difficulty. For all their cuteness, rabbits are not easy to hunt. They bolt suddenly, cover ground incredibly fast, and are experts at dodging, backtracking, and vanishing into cover. Their coloring blends perfectly with natural environments, and they often freeze, lying flat to the ground, making them nearly invisible. And those large ears detect threats from afar, giving them ample warning to escape before a hunter gets close.

Wyoming’s vast landscapes reward patience and observation. Cottontails favor brushy creek bottoms, rocky outcrops, and dense patches of sage and rabbitbrush. Jackrabbits thrive in open sage flats, using their speed and alertness to evade predators. Pygmy rabbits, the state’s smallest and rarest, dig intricate burrows in big sagebrush with deep soils. Early morning and late afternoon are prime times to spot rabbits moving between feeding and resting areas.

Rabbit hunting in Wyoming offers a mix of history, skill, and time outdoors. From the early community hunts in Rawlins and Casper to modern events like the 5-Shot Rabbit Hunt, the tradition continues to bring people together and connect them with the land. Whether you’re glassing the sagebrush flats or carefully stalking rabbits along rocky draws, the hunt provides an enjoyable and accessible way to experience Wyoming’s wide-open spaces while practicing responsible and sustainable hunting.

Oregon election officials are set to begin removing hundreds of thousands of inactive voters from the state’s registration rolls, a move that comes after years of inaction, mounting public pressure, and lawsuits filed against the state in recent months.

Oregon’s Democratic Secretary of State Tobias Read, in a press release Friday, outlined two new directives he said will “restart” the “routine cleanup of outdated, inactive voter registration records” in accordance with state law to address the roughly 800,000 inactive voter records that are being maintained by election officials.

The first directive orders counties to immediately cancel long-inactive voter registrations that already met the legal requirements for removal before 2017. These are registrations where election mail was returned as undeliverable, voters failed to respond to official notices, and they did not participate in multiple federal elections. State officials estimate roughly 160,000 registrations fall into this category and should have been removed years ago.

The second directive changes how the state handles inactive voters going forward. It updates the language on voter confirmation cards to clearly warn voters that their registrations will be canceled if they do not respond or vote within the required time frame. State officials say this step restores a process that allows routine cleanup of inactive registrations under federal law.

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Together, the directives are designed to address a backlog of inactive records and restart regular voter-roll maintenance after Oregon paused removals in 2017. 

“These directives are about cleaning up old data that’s no longer in use so Oregonians can be confident that our voter records are up-to-date,” Read said. “From day one, our goal was clear: run elections that are secure, fair, and accurate. This move will strengthen our voter rolls and reinforce public trust in our elections.”

State officials acknowledge there are about 800,000 inactive registrations total, roughly 20% of Oregon’s voter rolls, though they stress multiple times in the press release that inactive voters do not currently receive ballots, saying at one point, “again, none of the individuals associated with these records will receive ballots, and these inactive records have no impact on Oregon elections.”

Being marked “inactive” in Oregon means you’re still listed as a registered voter, but you aren’t receiving ballot mail from the state until you reactivate your registration.

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However, inactive voters are still counted in the official voter roll totals, included in public records, and many experts have made the case that accurate rolls should reflect real, current voters, not people who moved years ago or can’t be located. Leaving outdated records in place increases the risk of mistakes, an expert on the subject told Fox News Digital. 

“First of all, it’s astounding that they haven’t been removing anybody from the voter force in almost a decade because this is very basic 101 level election administration,” said Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project. 

Snead explained that voter rolls naturally change every year as people move, die, lose eligibility due to felony convictions, or leave the state, creating constant churn that must be managed. When states fail to keep up, Snead says, voter rolls become bloated and outdated, making elections harder to administer and increasing the risk of errors and abuse.

Snead emphasized that the problem is especially serious in mail-in voting states like Oregon. He argues that automatically mailing ballots while failing to routinely clean voter rolls makes it more likely that ballots will be sent to people who are no longer eligible, including those who have moved or died. Even if state officials say inactive voters don’t receive ballots, Snead says Oregon’s recent administrative failures, including the suspension of its automatic voter registration program in 2024 after non-citizens were mistakenly registered, justify skepticism about whether safeguards are consistently working as claimed.

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“I think there’s clearly a degree of skepticism that’s warranted, and I think that it really speaks to the need to always be focused on the basics of election administration,” Snead said. “Cleaning of the vote rolls is really one of the most foundational, important things that a secretary of state should be doing.”

Oregon has been slapped with several lawsuits in recent months related to its handling of voter rolls, from Judicial Watch, Public Interest Legal Foundation, as well as Trump’s Department of Justice, and Snead suspects the timing of the Secretary of State’s announcement is “probably to some degree” related to that. 

“There’s an almost pathological resistance on the left to cleaning up the voter rolls, they call it voter purge, and they say that this is going to disenfranchise voters,” Snead said. “We’ve heard of all of the various statements. You know, lots of different ways and lots of different examples. But then when you actually bring litigation over this, sometimes that forces their hand.”

In a statement to Fox News Digital after publication, an Oregon SOS spokesperson said, “We can’t comment on pending litigation.  I can say that getting this done was a priority for Secretary Read before he even took office, and he took this step because it’s the right thing to do. He wants his office focused on the details.  We know this won’t satisfy those bad actors trying to undermine our free, fair, secure American elections, but the average Oregon voter can rest assured we are doing the hard work of running accurate and transparent elections.”

“Furthermore, the DOJ lawsuit is not related – it’s about whether we have to hand over Oregonians’ private voter data. Which we have no intent of doing.”

Cleaning up voter rolls has become an increasingly politicized issue in recent years, with Republicans pushing for more oversight in the name of election integrity and Democrats accusing Republicans of attempting to “disenfranchise” voters. 

“Democrats support normal list maintenance and reasonable efforts to keep voter rolls up to date and in compliance with federal law,” DNC Spokesperson Albert Fujii told Fox News Digital. “The contrast could not be clearer: Donald Trump and the Republican Party are pushing aggressive voter purges to systematically disenfranchise eligible voters across the country, especially voters of color.” 

In a statement to Fox News Digital, RNC National Press Secretary Kiersten Pels said, “Oregon’s Democrat Secretary of State has presided over one of the most bloated voter rolls in the country, with more than 800,000 inactive registrations.”

“Democratic states have allowed their voter rolls to spiral out of control, especially in mail-in voting systems like Oregon’s. The RNC is taking action nationwide to ensure states are cleaning their voter rolls as required by law.”