It’s a familiar scenario: Republican legislators in a cash-rich Western state are looking to slash higher education funding.

In this case, though, the battleground is not Idaho, but Wyoming, And the stakes are high.

Led by lawmakers in its conservative Freedom Caucus, the Wyoming Legislature is looking at cutting more than $42 million in block grants for the University of Wyoming, the state’s lone four-year school. Also on the block: $28 million for employee pay raises and $6 million for athletics.

David Jesse of the Chronicle for Higher Education runs down the proposed cuts, and the political fallout.

The proposed cuts have nothing to do with cashflow, Jesse wrote, since Wyoming has more than $250 million in budget reserves.

Instead, campus politics are at the heart of the debate. Lawmakers want to cut the budget as retribution over what they consider UW’s liberal leanings.

“The University of Wyoming is a land-grant university that has forgotten its founding purpose,” state Rep. Ken Pendergraft, a Freedom Caucus member who pushed for the funding cuts, wrote in an email to the Chronicle.

UW’s retiring president calls the proposed cuts “both harmful and unnecessary,” and said they have prompted him to enter the political fray.

“During my time as president, I have followed a general policy of not commenting on day-to-day legislative actions, largely because of the fluidity of the legislative session and the multiphase nature of the legislative process,” Ed Seidel  wrote in an email to the campus community, obtained by the Chronicle.