MIKE SIMPSON

The Biden administration on Tuesday released two reports arguing that removing dams on the lower Snake River may be needed to restore salmon runs to historic levels, and that replacing the energy created by the dams is possible but will cost $11 billion to $19 billion. The reports were released by the White House Council on Environmental Quality. “Business as usual will not restore salmon,” said Brenda Mallory, chair of the council.

Madison Cawthorn's unexpected victory in 2020 made him the youngest member of the House and a rising Republican star — until the scandals started piling up.

A Republican congressman whom Donald Trump once called a “third rate Grandstander” and a “disaster” for Kentucky coasted to victory Tuesday in his primary election. Rep. Thomas Massie had angered Trump by opposing a massive COVID-19 relief package in 2020 when he was in the White House.

Nuclear Waste Cleanup Idaho This 2014 aerial photo provided by Idaho Environmental Coalition shows the U.S. Department of Energy's 890-square-mile Radioactive Waste Management Complex site in eastern Idaho. The cleanup project, started in 2005, is named the Accelerated Retrieval Project and is one of about a dozen cleanup efforts of nuclear waste finished or ongoing at the Energy Department site. “What exciting news for DOE and the Idaho Cleanup project,” he said on Twitter about the landfill work. In 1989, the area became a Superfund site when it was was added to the National Priorities List for Uncontrolled Hazardous Waste Sites. The agreement was seen as a way to prevent the state from becoming a high-level nuclear waste repository.

U.S. officials say they have almost completed a lengthy project to dig up and remove radioactive and hazardous waste buried for decades in unlined pits at an eastern Idaho nuclear facility that sits atop a giant aquifer.

A lengthy project to dig up and remove radioactive and hazardous waste buried for decades in unlined pits at a nuclear facility that sits atop a giant aquifer in eastern Idaho is nearly finished, U.S. officials said. The U.S. Department of Energy said last week that it removed the final amount of specifically-targeted buried waste from a 97-acre (39-hectare) landfill at its 890-square-mile (2,300-square-kilometer) site that includes the Idaho National Laboratory. The targeted radioactive waste included plutonium-contaminated filters, graphite molds, sludges containing solvents and oxidized uranium generated during nuclear weapons production work at the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado.

Letters to the editor on tower project in Garden City, getting the vaccine, saving the salmon, Idaho ranking near the bottom and efforts to curtail climate change.

Salmon are headed to a point of no return throughout the US west. And the impact on Native American communities could be devastating Mike Tuell dip net fishes with Nat’aani McCaskey, 12. Photograph: Mason Trinca/The Guardian Knee-deep in the rumbling waters of Rapid River in western Idaho, Mike Tuell guided his dip net between boulders and tree branches in search of the calm pockets where salmon rest. It was a Tuesday evening in May, and his first time out fishing this season. The spring-summer

House Republicans narrowly voted Wednesday, March 17, to allow their members to seek earmarks under certain conditions, making a clean break from a decade-long ban against seeking money for specific projects back home. Scott Applewhite, File)WASHINGTON – House Republicans narrowly voted Wednesday to allow their members to seek earmarks under certain conditions, making a clean break from a decade-long ban against seeking money for specific projects back home. The 102-84 vote changes the party's internal rules and allows Republicans to join the Democratic House majority as it puts in place a new process for earmarks in spending and transportation bills. “I think members here know what’s most important about what’s going on in their district, not Biden,” McCarthy said. Rep. Ted Budd, R-N.C., said that even if Republicans and Democrats start requesting earmarks for local projects in future bills, he will not participate.

A dirty word for many Republicans is making the rounds on Capitol Hill -- earmarks. It's a question that's vexing Republicans as they consider whether to join a Democratic push to revive earmarks, the much-maligned practice where lawmakers direct federal spending to a specific project or institution back home. Democratic appropriators in the House see a solution and are proposing a revamped process allowing lawmakers to submit public requests for “community project funding” in federal spending bills. The ranking Republican on the committee, Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri, said earmarks would not increase the amount of money spent in a bill. “That’s something I feel pretty strongly about.”Norman worries that earmarks would be used to entice Republicans to vote for bills with expensive price tags.

Kathy Kratt of Orlando, Fla., displays her Trump flags as she and other protesters demonstrate their support for President Donald Trump at the Supreme Court in Washington, Friday, Dec. 11, 2020. Trump bemoaned the decision late Friday, tweeting: “The Supreme Court really let us down. Two days after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed his suit, Trump jumped into the high court case. “If the Supreme Court shows great Wisdom and Courage, the American People will win perhaps the most important case in history, and our Electoral Process will be respected again!” he tweeted Friday afternoon. Many Republican voters in several states won by Biden have demanded that their elected officials find a way to invalidate the president-elect's victories.