Idaho could unravel itself more slowly from its current physician education partnership under a new bill introduced Wednesday.

The new plan from Rep. Dustin Manwaring (R-Pocatello) would create 30 new seats with University of Utah’s medical school over the next three years.

Beginning in the fall of 2027, Idaho would cut at least 10 guaranteed seats enrolled in the WWAMI program. It currently has 40 guaranteed spots for Idaho residents.

WWAMI is a partnership with the University of Washington School of Medicine and states around the Northwest region.

Students enrolled in WWAMI take their first two years of medical education at the University of Idaho. They then transition to hospitals or clinics across the five partner states for their final two years of education.

Manwaring’s bill would also direct the state board of education to draft a new medical education roadmap.

“So, we may have room to keep some of that WWAMI program and I’m trying to give a path for the [Idaho State Board of Education] to do that,” he said.

Rep. Mark Sauter (R-Sandpoint) was the only lawmaker to vote against the bill’s introduction. He said the bill puts the cart before the horse.

“I have some real questions about really messing with the WWAMI program at all until we get some traction on a future program,” Sauter said.

Manwaring said WWAMI’s leadership has failed to expand Idaho’s guaranteed seats in recent years to address the state’s physician shortage.

Another bill he sponsors would completely sever ties with the WWAMI program, but the House has repeatedly postponed debate on the issue.

Manwaring’s new proposal still needs a public hearing before it can reach the House floor.

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BOISE, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) — State lawmakers are looking to put new rules in place when it comes to rental application fees for homes and apartments.

“What this bill does is simply it makes a change where landlords are only allowed to charge rental applicants 2 fees at a time, rather than charging everyone who applies,” says District 16 State Senator Alison Rabe.

Senate bill 1042aa, also known as the “rental applications, fee and limit bill,” passed the senate last month. Those against the bill argued it’s government overreach, but the sponsor, Senator Rabe, says that this proposal came out of conversations with some of the largest landlord associations in the state who helped draft the language.

“Many of us don’t like telling people what to do but the businesses are coming to us asking us to codify what they’re already doing,” says Rabe.

According to the bill’s statement of purpose, the property owner or managers must actually run a background check in order to charge an application fee, and a rental must be available or expected to be available with 60 days unless the tenants agree otherwise.

“My Management” is a company that owns various rental properties in the Magic Valley, who supports this proposal.

“In my personal experience of having worked in this industry for a long time, i think there is a lot of room for vulnerable people to be taken advantage of,” says Briten Perron.

Briten Perron is the company’s asset manager. He says he’s left jobs before because of predatory application fees and believes this bill will make agencies be more honest and ethical.

“When you start an application on our website, before it even ask for a single thing, it has a list of things that says, ‘hey, if you have any of this going on, you may not even pass,’ and this one of those things the bill is looking to address — to be transparent about what is going to qualify people or disqualify them,” says Perron.

The house business committee discussed the measure Wednesday, but some people who testified argued that parts of the bill’s language are not clear. At the end of the hearing, lawmakers called for a substitute motion to hold the bill in committee and requested the sponsors re-draft a new bill.

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WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Wednesday moved to drop an emergency abortion case in Idaho in one of its first moves on the issue since President Donald Trump began his second term.

The Justice Department filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which was originally filed by the Biden administration, in a reversal that could have national implications for urgent care.

The lawsuit had argued that emergency-room doctors treating pregnant women had to provide terminations if needed to save their lives or to avoid serious health consequences in Idaho, which has one of the country’s strictest abortion bans.

The Democratic administration had given similar guidance to hospitals nationwide in the wake of the Supreme Court 2022 decision overturning the right to abortion. It’s being challenged in other conservative states.

In Idaho, the state argued that its law does allow life-saving abortions and the Biden administration wrongly sought to expand the exceptions. The state agrees with the dismissal, so it does not need judicial approval, Justice Department attorneys wrote in court documents.

Idaho doctors, meanwhile, say it remains unclear which abortion are legal, forcing them to airlift pregnant women of state if a termination might be part of the standard of care. It’s often unclear in fast-moving emergencies whether pregnancy complications could ultimately prove fatal, doctors said in court documents.

A judge has blocked Idaho from any abortion ban enforcement that would change emergency treatment at the state’s largest hospital system for now.

In his first term, Trump, a Republican, appointed many of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturned the constitutional right to abortion. He has since said the issue should be left to the states.

Complaints that pregnant women were turned away from U.S. emergency rooms spiked after the overturning of Roe v. Wade amid questions about what care hospitals could legally provide, federal records showed.

The Supreme Court stepped into the Idaho case last year. It ultimately handed down a narrow ruling that allowed hospitals to keep making determinations about emergency pregnancy terminations but left key legal questions unresolved.

The case went before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in December. Those judges have not yet ruled.

About 50,000 people in the U.S. develop life-threatening pregnancy complications each year, including major blood loss, sepsis or the loss of reproductive organs. In rare cases, doctors might need to terminate a pregnancy to protect the health of the pregnant person, especially in cases where there is no chance for a fetus to survive.

Most Republican-controlled states have started enforcing new bans or restrictions since 2022. Currently, 12 states are enforcing bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with limited exceptions, and four have bans that kick in at or about six weeks into pregnancy — often before women realize they’re pregnant.

— Lindsay Whitehurst and Rebecca Boone