Today's headlines:
- Panhandle Health District are happy to renounce CDC guidelines.
- New report raises concerns about sexual assault investigations at WA's largest immigration detention center.
- Washington's Department for Ecology asks for public input on water use this summer.
- Spokane Valley bans cryptocurrency kiosks.
Plus, this fire season is poised to be historic – not just because of the record-low snowpack and unprecedented spring heat. It will also be the first for the U.S. Wildland Fire Service.
The Mountain West News Bureau’s Murphy Woodhouse speaks with Brian Fennessy, the Interior Department agency’s inaugural chief.
TRANSCRIPT
[THEME MUSIC]
OWEN HENDERSON: From Spokane Public Radio, it’s SPR News Today.
I’m Owen Henderson. It’s Thursday, May 7, 2026.
On today’s show, north Idaho’s Panhandle Health District is continuing its push to align more with the “Make America Health Again” movement—emphasizing holistic medicine and preventing chronic diseases and moving away from some federal guidelines.
And a new report is raising concerns about how sexual assault investigations are handled in the northwest’s largest immigration detention facility.
Plus, the brand new U.S. Wildland Fire Service’s first season is likely to be a very active one—and not just because of the record-low snowpack and unprecedented spring heat.
Those stories and more, coming up on SPR News Today.
[FADE OUT THEME]
The Panhandle Health District is moving away from guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control.
The Health District has been visiting the five north Idaho counties to present their proposed budget for next fiscal year.
Medical director Gregory Pennock says there will be more emphasis on chronic disease prevention through holistic and naturopathic medicine.
Bonner County Commissioner Ron Korn says he won’t approve any budget until the health district includes “informed consent” in its practice.
Pennock says they do inform patients as legally required, including distributing information from the CDC.
Here’s their back and forth, starting with Korn:
RON KORN: “To me, that's not a big help.”
GREGORY PENNOCK: “I couldn't agree more.”
RK: “And I would like to see Panhandle Health make a statement here and say ‘Hey, we’re gonna go above and beyond.’ Not that…I know how politics works. You're not going to sit there and denounce the CDC. That's not what we're asking. We're just asking—”
GP: “—I actually don't have a problem with that.”
RK: “I'm glad to hear that, on a personal note.”
OH: Pennock says he is hiring healthcare workers who are willing to spend more time with patients and not practice <quote> “guideline-directed, cookbook-style medicine.”
The CDC acknowledges the benefits of many naturopathic practices but recommends consulting your doctor before starting alternative or complementary treatments.
— — —
A new report from the UW Center for Human Rights raises questions about how immigrant lockup in Tacoma handles of sexual assault investigations.
KUOW’s Gustavo Sagrero reports.
GUSTAVO SAGRERO: The analysis from the human right’s group looked at a decade of sexual assault reports at the detention facility from 2015 to 2025.
They found over 170 individual cases of sexual assault. But only 19 were found credible. The reports are investigations conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and GEO Group, the private contractor.
Angelina Godoy directs the human rights center, and says the facility investigating itself is a problem.
ANGELINA GODOY: “They have these elaborate accountability mechanisms and choose simply to ignore them because they assume there will never be any consequence for them.”
GS: A spokesperson for GEO Group argues they take all allegations of sexual abuse seriously, and have policies to identify, investigate and remedy reported cases.
A 2023 investigation from the Department of Homeland Security found that administrators at the Tacoma immigrant lockup failed to meet standards for its sexual assault reviews.
I'm Gustavo Sagrero reporting.
— — —
The state of Washington is experiencing drought conditions for the fourth consecutive year.
Ecology Department Director Casey Sixkiller says it’s time to adjust to what may be a permanent drier climate.
CASEY SIXKILLER: “Because the cost of inaction is already showing up in drought emergencies, flood damage, stressed salmon runs, and uncertainty for communities trying to plan their future, whether that's to create jobs or build new housing, or to ensure a reliable supply of safe drinking water.”
OH: Ecology says it will convene a series of town hall meetings this summer to address the ongoing drought.
Sixkiller says his department will use the roundtables to help his agency develop policies that govern water supply and usage.
He says those will be presented to the legislature next year.
— — —
Businesses in Spokane Valley have about a month to get rid of their cryptocurrency kiosks.
The Valley is the most recent Washington city to ban the kiosks after residents have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars to scams.
Spokane Valley Police Sergeant Patrick Bloomer says bad actors scare people into putting cash into “Bitcoin ATMs” and sending virtual currency into foreign bank accounts.
PATRICK BLOOMER: “We're seeing more AI being used in these. So you got voice modulators. Now you have videos that may be made. They can take a photo off of Facebook, off of Instagram and actually make a video and ask them to plead for money, from mom and dad or from grandma and grandpa.”
OH: Other strategies include sending official looking arrest warrants with real officers’ names on them.
City council voted this week to make it a civil infraction for Spokane Valley businesses to operate or host crypto kiosks.
Spokane and Kennewick already have similar bans.
[SHORT MUSIC BED]
This fire season is poised to be historic—not just because of the record-low snowpack and unprecedented spring heat.
It will also be the first for the U.S. Wildland Fire Service.
From our partners at the Mountain West News Bureau, here’s Murphy Woodhouse, who recently spoke with the Interior Department agency’s inaugural chief.
MURPHY WOODHOUSE: Brian Fennessy grew up in the Los Angeles area, and got into wildland fire straight out of high school in the late 1970s. He mostly worked on—and eventually led—interagency hotshot crews—among the most respected in the country.
Even decades ago, he says there were questions about why federal wildfire response was split between multiple agencies.
BRIAN FENNESSY: “Throwing dirt is throwing dirt, right, and hiking jeep cans up the hills. Doesn't matter what patch you're wearing, it's the same work. And you know, why wouldn't there be one agency?”
MW: Nearly five decades after he first dug fireline, Fennessy was hired as the U.S. Wildland Fire Service’s very first chief. The service was formed earlier this year by consolidating the fire programs of several Department of Interior agencies, including those of the Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service.
That came in the wake of a June 2025 Trump administration executive order that called for the Departments of Agriculture and Interior to consolidate their fire programs “to the maximum degree practicable.” But for now the massive Forest Service fire program remains within Agriculture.
In announcing the new agency, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said it would improve fire response.
BF: “I believe in what they're talking about: Reduction of bureaucracy, alignment in mission, firefighters reporting to firefighters, the fire service having not only the authority, but being held accountable for making fire decisions.”
[RED LODGE AMBI]
MW: In a recent video shared by Accuweather, torching timber in Montana’s East Side Fire sends billowing smoke into the air— a striking sight so far north so early in the year.
[AMBI: “There’s literally a house right there, you guys.”]
The Plains States have already seen ripping grassfires, including one in Nebraska that ran over 600 thousand acres. Georgia has already lost more than 100 homes. ‘Incredible’ is how Fennessy described these early season incidents.
BF: “I'm seeing columns and plume-dominated fire behaviors. Like what?!? That's the southeast!”
MW: But early signs of a potentially epic season isn’t the only worry in the air. Many experts are also anxious about what the new service means for this summer, and summers to come. Some see it as representing a severing of land and fire management. Here’s Wilderness Society President Tracy Stone-Manning—who served as Biden’s BLM Director.
TRACY STONE-MANNING: “You can't manage and be a land steward without managing wildfire. These lands are evolved with wildfire. Everybody in the West lives in a fire landscape. So the idea of decoupling those two things is very dangerous.”
MW: Previously, Fennessy explains, fire officials were subordinate to land management officials. The big change, he says, is that now final authority for fireline decisions rests with the wildland fire service. But success requires close collaboration.
BF: “They’re exactly right, wildfire’s interwoven in all of it, and has to be. I mean, we have to be standing side by side by our land managers and these land management agencies.”
MW: There’s also the age-old debate of when to suppress fires, and when to light them intentionally—or allow them to burn—for ecological benefits and community protection. Pointing to his department’s obligation to protect communities, Secretary Burgum recently wrote in a memo to fire leadership that <quote> “we will enter this season with the presumption of a full suppression strategy applied to every wildfire under DOI management.”
While acknowledging the importance of prescribed fires, Burgum said they will be allowed only <quote>—and in all caps—when conditions permit. Here’s how that sounded to Dave Calkin, an influential fire scientist who previously worked more than two decades at the Forest Service.
DAVE CALKIN: “It is, ‘Make every fire go away as quickly and easily as possible.’ And that's what we've been trying for 100 years and have failed miserably at, which is why we're in a crisis.”
MW: Many researchers and officials say that there is an extraordinary deficit of low- and moderate-intensity fires on many Western landscapes.
DC: “The more we suppress fire, the more fuels we get on the landscape, the more fuels we get on the landscape. When fires do occur, they're much harder to suppress and much more likely to be damaging.”
MW: Here’s Chief Fennessy.
BF: “What I like about the secretary's intent memo is that, you know, it's clear that this is what we're doing. It's not ambiguous. We are suppressing, we're getting after fire.”
MW: That’s based in part, he explains, on just how extreme the conditions already are this year. But he’s also frank about the long-term prospects of emerging from the wildland fire crisis without substantial increases in fuels reduction treatments like prescribed fire, which can counter the buildup of fuels.
BF: “Suppression is important and it always will be. But you know as well as I do, if we don't really start having a bigger impact in treating the landscape, I mean, we're not going to get out of this… We're not going to suppress our way out of this situation.”
MW: And he says consolidation could help provide capacity for more of that mitigation work.
But there are also concerns about capacity for the already started fire season. Here’s Stone-Manning, the former BLM director.
TSM: “I'm worried that the administration has gutted our land management agencies. That there are thousands and thousands of people who don't work there anymore, who did last summer, and that we're not going to have enough people to do the job.”
MW: In the wake of Trump administration cuts to the federal workforce, states across the West saw public land agency employees fall by double-digit percentages.
Fennessy noted that fire personnel were exempted from the deferred resignation program and other efforts early in the Trump administration. But he also argued that some of those who chose to leave may have been planning on retiring anyway. And that many of those who took deferred resignations may still be available during the fire season.
He says firefighter hiring for the season is going as planned, and that they expect to have at least as many as last year—some 57 hundred wildland fire personnel, along with 900 Tribal firefighters.
But Calkin is also worried about what happens when the season really picks up, preparedness levels are at their highest, and the specialized teams that handle the most serious incidents start to stretch thin.
DC: “What happens when we're in PL five, when we have 25 available complex incident management teams and there's 80 fires—80 large ripping fires?”
BF: “Are we going to run out of them quickly should we get really busy? I think so.”
MW: Fennessy says other teams can pull up some of the slack, and he’d like to do more to train up the next generation of incident command.
Even among critics, there’s respect for Fennessy’s experience, which and hope that consolidation could bring some positive changes. Timothy Ingalsbee with the wildfire advocacy group FUSEE shares many of Stone-Manning and Calkin’s concerns, but called the new chief an exceptional individual.
TIMOTHY INGALSBEE: “He has a lot of trust amongst the crews. The question is, how much latitude does he have from the administration?”
MW: In Fennessy, many firefighters see someone who has put in the same hard fireline hours that they have, and paid a high price. He says he was successfully treated for prostate cancer, which he chalked up to his career.
BF: “I look at things like cancer awareness and prevention. That's got to be at the top right next to, you know, health and wellness. Those two things are my top, the very top of my priorities.”
LUKE MAYFIELD: “And we believe that they selected the right person for the job.”
MW: Luke Mayfield, a former hotshot and co-founder of the advocacy group Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, says it’s hard to overstate how significant it is to have someone with that experience at the head of the service.
He’s a strong supporter of consolidation, but says the benefits will be hard fought.
LM: “This is going to be messy.”
MW: And the first thing—he says—will be to take care of the firefighters.
For the Mountain West News Bureau, I’m Murphy Woodhouse.
[SHORT MUSIC BED]
OH: SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting today was contributed by Eliza Billingham, Gustavo Sagrero, Doug Nadvornick and Murphy Woodhouse.
I’m Owen Henderson, your host and producer. Eliza Billingham provides digital support.
Thanks for listening.
It’s SPR.
