Some Republican-led states are joining Democrats in actively resisting school choice policies after dozens of red states have already begun implementing such changes.

School choice, which deposits public education funds directly to families to spend on where their children learn, became popular among Republican and Democratic voters in the wake of the pandemic after parents got an inside look at what their kids were being taught.

Some states, including Arizona, Utah, Iowa, West Virginia, and Arkansas, have adopted such policies, while dozens of others allow parents to take advantage of tax credits or savings programs for private schools or homeschool programs. However, some GOP officials in red states, including Tennessee, Idaho, and Wyoming, are seeing opposition from fellow Republicans.

Tennessee Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, a Republican, sponsored education savings account legislation in that state in 2019 targeting poor-performing public school districts with heavy minority populations.

“There was tremendous support for many, in the African American community or Hispanic community, as well as all folks that are in these urban areas where they have a failing school system,” Johnson told The Daily Wire. “That’s kind of where we drew the line for this initial legislation that we pass, and some would love to have statewide universal school choice.”

However, sources working in Tennessee’s state capitol told The Daily Wire of the harrowing fight lawmakers endured in passing the legislation due to the nature of the bill, which only covers a few hundred students. Although they expect that number to grow, sources said they don’t see universal school choice passing in Tennessee anytime soon due to the backlash not just from Democrats and teacher unions, but also from the overwhelmingly Republican legislature.

The House passed the policy with only one vote, prompting the House Speaker to keep the poll open for nearly an hour while he negotiated with other lawmakers to switch positions. Although Johnson supports expanding the law passed in 2019, he said he would take what he could get.

“I don’t want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” Johnson said. “I support school choice, and where we need it, the most are in the areas where we have it available now.”

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Idaho House members tried to expand grant programs to help parents pay for private school tuition or offer scholarships, but faced opposition from the state’s Republican Governor Brad Little.

Little included in his budget proposal this session a recommendation of $30 million in ongoing funds toward The Empowering Parents program, which would go toward grants designed for education needs that are up to $1,000 per student or $3,000 per family, local media reported. It would only go toward academic instruction for up to 2,000 students per year and prioritize families with the lowest household incomes.

Wyoming, which Gallup and Cook political reports mark as the reddest state in the union, had more than half of its Republican House chamber co-sponsoring a school choice bill after it cleared a Senate hurdle. However, Republican House Speaker Albert Sommers blocked its passage, saying the bill goes against his support for local control and ensures authority stays with local school boards, town councils, and county commissions.

Yet, some of his Republican colleagues argue that Wyoming teachers unions control Sommers because the bill would ban schools from including lessons about sexual orientation.

Rep. John Bear, chair of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, said that the state has “a lot of people who run as Republicans but have very progressive beliefs.”

Some Republican leaders and conservative parents oppose school choice legislation on some very different grounds and fear it will deprive public schools of funding.

Their concern is that allowing public funds to go to private institutions and homeschool programs might open the door to allow government interference.

Alex Newman, an analyst for The Freedom Project, explained those concerns from a coalition of Republicans and Democrats that blocked the failed Idaho school choice bill from advancing.

Opponents cited a lack of accountability in the bill, he argued, which presents challenges for homeschoolers using the voucher program.

“Once the money comes, then they’re gonna want accountability,” Newman said. “They’re going to want to know what we’re doing, what are we learning, etcetera, etcetera, and then eventually they’ll want to control it… They were concerned that government funding of homeschooling or private schools would lead almost inevitably to government regulation and then ultimately control.”

Jason Bedrick, an education research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Wire the more families that get involved with investing in private education, whether in a private school or homeschool environment, the greater the constituency there is to defend private school and homeschool autonomy, “if and when the government decides that they’re going to try to come after you.”

“When it comes to our liberties, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance,” Bedrick said. “So we always have to be vigilant. But I think we also have to recognize that the government doesn’t need to be funding private education for the government to try regulating it.”

Megan Basham contributed to this report.

A top House Republican expressed skepticism about calls to increase the federal bank deposit insurance cap.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Patrick McHenry (R-NC) cast doubt on such proposals Sunday on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.” Democrats have floated raising the FDIC bank deposit insurance cap from $250,000 to between $2-10 million. But McHenry said that Congress needs to balance the costs and risks to the financial system before making such a consequential change.

“It’s the first time I’ve heard a proposal like that,” McHenry said. “And I have not had a single conversation with the White House or the administration about deposit insurance, changing the levels. What I will do though, legislatively, and in an oversight function is to determine whether or not we need to address the FDIC deposit level. We did it after the last financial crisis raising from $100,000 to $250,000. We had a temporary program, post-financial crisis to support deposits, to ensure that folks had confidence in their local bank.”

But McHenry stressed the need to balance the benefits and the risks.

“What I want to know is the trade-off though, the moral hazard of having more risk-taking in the financial sector, and also the impact it would have on community banks,” he said. “We have far fewer community banks now than we’ve had in generations. That’s a significant problem for competition in the financial services arena.

“It is not a pure play of allowing a larger set of insurance coverage,” he added, “It costs the financial system significantly, and especially community banks. We need to look very carefully at this.”

Top democrats on the committees overseeing the financial sector called for the FDIC to increase the deposit insurance threshold on bank accounts in the wake of the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. The vast majority of depositors at the bank exceeded the $250,000 limit. Regulators scrambled to guarantee all deposits at SVB to avoid bank runs.

California Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who serves on the House Financial Services Committee, floated the idea in an interview with The New York Times Tuesday.

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“When you have something like Silicon Valley Bank with over 90% of its depositors uninsured, do we increase the amount of premiums that banks will pay in order to have a bigger insurance fund or do we just remain the way that we are and take it on a one-by-one basis for consideration?” she said.

Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, a member of the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, said Congress should “reexamine, just overall, about why we have limits” at the $250,000 threshold.

“Some small business, some nonprofit, needs a place to manage its money,” she said in an interview with CNBC, via The Hill. “They need to be able to make payroll, they need to be able to pay the utility bills, and they need a safe place to have that money where somebody’s going to keep it safe.”

Warren on Sunday said raising the cap has “got to be on the table right now.”

“I think that lifting the FDIC insurance cap is a good move,” said Warren. “Now the question is, where’s the right number on lifting it?… This is a question we got to work through. Is-is it $2 million? Is it $5 million? Is it 10 million?”