WASHINGTON – A farmer who grows vegetables in Idaho and Oregon testified alongside the head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in a Senate hearing Wednesday, urging senators to pass a bill championed by Northwest lawmakers to fix an immigration system Republicans and Democrats agree is broken and threatens the nation’s food supply.

Rep. Priscilla Giddings says an ethics investigation she’s facing is “dirty politics,” but her opponent in the race for lieutenant governor, House Speaker Scott Bedke, said Wednesday the probe is legitimate and the complaint signed by a bipartisan group of 24 lawmakers was dated before Giddings announced she was running.

An Idaho lawmaker who publicized the name of a 19-year-old intern who accused another state lawmaker of rape will face a legislative ethics hearing next month.

BOISE – The Idaho Press Club is suing Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin after several journalists said they were wrongly denied access to public records.

For the next three to four months, the central rotunda of Idaho’s state Capitol will become a noisy construction site.

BOISE – Anti-government activist Ammon Bundy has asked a judge to throw out his conviction for trespassing at the Idaho Capitol and acquit him instead because he says the state’s trespassing law should not be applied to public property.

State lawmakers and Republican Gov. Brad Little are failing Idaho residents by not preventing employers from requiring workers to get the COVID-19 vaccine, GOP Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin said Thursday.

 Republican state senators plan to meet this week to discuss the possibility of a special session after three large health care providers announced policies requiring employees to get COVID-19 vaccinations, the top Senate Republican said Monday.

BOISE – It’s early yet – the primary is still nearly a year away – but we’re up to 11 candidates who have filed preliminary paperwork with the state to start fundraising for runs for governor in 2022.

Dustin Hurst, vice president of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, has been fined $250 for lobbying on Idaho’s higher education budget without first registering as a lobbyist.

WASHINGTON – In a mostly party-line vote, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed a roughly $760 billion transportation and infrastructure bill Thursday, marking the first time lawmakers have approved earmarks since Congress revived the practice that lets members direct funds to projects in their home states.

WASHINGTON – A bipartisan group of 21 Northwest lawmakers called on President Joe Biden on Tuesday to prioritize a long-running effort to renegotiate a 60-year-old treaty that governs how the United States and Canada share the waters of the Columbia River Basin.

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden has invited the governors of several Western states to the White House on Wednesday to discuss wildfires and the historic drought gripping the American West, but the governors of Washington, Idaho and Montana will not be in attendance, Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Friday.

The former representative from Post Falls was ordered to pay nearly $680,000 in restitution and will be on probation for 3 years after his six-month imprisonment ends. He has appealed the sentence to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. 

The Republican governor was speaking at one of the countless sites where that question has come up: at the intersection of U.S. Highway 95 and Lakeshore Drive, near the south end of the Long Bridge, which crosses Lake Pend Oreille, connecting Sagle to Sandpoint.