Today's headlines:
- AG Nick Brown says states like Washington are having to pick up the slack on anti-trust litigation as federal lawyers drop cases.
- Central Valley School District expands free preschool, but the superintendent worries it's not enough.
- A "fish helix" could make salmon restoration easier without creating agricultural difficulties.
- The Trump administration officially cancels a Biden-era conservation rule for public lands.
And a week before Idaho’s primaries, we hear from a candidate in a closely watched Senate race in the state’s northernmost district.
Jim Woodward is facing off with Scott Herndon—again. The self-described "middle of the road Republican" incumbent is being challenged for the fourth time by Herndon, who has frequently criticized Woodward for breaking from the GOP on high-profile bills, like last year's tax cut or certain bills targeting the transgender community.
Click here for more information about the primary elections.
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SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting was contributed by Eliza Billingham, Bellamy Pailthorp and Owen Henderson.
The show is hosted and produced by Owen Henderson.
TRANSCRIPT
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OWEN HENDERSON: From Spokane Public Radio, it’s SPR News Today.
I’m Owen Henderson. It’s Tuesday, May 12, 2026.
On today’s show, the top attorneys from Washington and Oregon say states are having to pick up the slack as federal prosecution of anti-trust lawsuits lags.
Plus, a new way for fish to traverse dams could make salmon restoration easier without creating difficulties for farmers.
And a week before Idaho’s primaries, we hear from a candidate in a closely watched Senate race in the state’s northernmost district.
Jim Woodward is facing off with Scott Herndon—again—as mainstream conservatives and more hardline Republicans battle to control the legislature.
Those stories and more, coming up on SPR News Today.
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Washington and Oregon state attorneys general say the federal government isn’t enforcing anti-trust laws the way it has in the past—so they’re joining with the top lawyers from other states to fill the gaps.
SPR’s Eliza Billingham has more.
ELIZA BILLINGHAM: Cases brought against controversial mergers like Nexstar and Tegna, LiveNation and Ticketmaster, or Kroger and Albertsons are being led by states, not the feds.
Washington A-G Nick Brown said that the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission usually have hundreds of lawyers to fight monopolies.
But he said they’re dropping cases at an alarming rate, so anti-trust enforcement is falling on states’ shoulders.
NICK BROWN: In Washington, we're well positioned for this role. We've been working on building up our antitrust capacity for years. Twenty years ago we only had a few attorneys working in our antitrust division. Today, we've got about 15. We're now at a point where we can bring more antitrust cases on our own, but we need more resources. We need support and we need more collaboration across the states.
EB: Brown was joined by A-Gs from Oregon, Nevada, California and New York this week in a call for more resources.
Oregon A-G Dan Rayfield said his office will go to its state legislature to ask for 16 more employees.
California’s A-G said bringing an anti-monopoly case is uniquely expensive—a good rule of thumb is 20 people and $20 million dollars.
I’m Eliza Billingham, reporting.
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OH: Fifty more low-income families in the Central Valley School District will get free preschool to get their children ready for kindergarten.
Central Valley received a million more dollars through Washington’s Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program, or ECEAP [E-CAP].
That brings the total number of free preschool spots in the school district to about 580.
But Superintendent John Parker says that still isn’t enough.
JOHN PARKER: “We know that there have been students identified for these slots, as we call that, already… But I will also say a few years ago, there has been a can, so to speak, kick down the road to be able to accommodate all of the students that would otherwise qualify.”
OH: Parker says the state may soon require school districts to provide free preschool for every student who qualifies—but it’s unclear where the funding would come from.
Parker says these fifty extra spots are a big step in getting more students the introduction to education that they need.
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A new form of fish passage is bringing hope to those working to restore salmon runs in the Columbia River system.
The new spiral tower, called a “fish helix,” located above Cle Elum Dam.
It cost $288 million to construct, paid for with state and federal dollars.
Inside the helix, fish can slide down more gently than the old way of spilling over the top of the dam.
Urban Eberhard manages the Kittitas reclamation district, which supports farmers.
He says this project is a good example of the community cooperation that has been creating solutions for agriculture and fish.
URBAN EBERHART: “Making better water deliveries, more efficient water deliveries to the farms. At the same time, we are bringing back the habitat and opportunities for our salmon and steelhead production numbers to come up.”
OH: Meanwhile, Eberhart says the unprecedented fourth consecutive year of drought is severely affecting eastern and central Washington farms.
Some are going out of business.
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The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is following through on eliminating the so-called “Public Lands Rule.”
The Biden-era “Conservation and Landscape Health” rule required the agency to consider conservation equally alongside uses for public lands like mining, timber, grazing or recreation.
BLM officials published a notice yesterday, finalizing the rule’s elimination.
In the filing, the agency says the rule “threatened to restrict productive use” of the lands and “introduced unnecessary complexity” to the permitting and planning processes.
This comes alongside other Trump administration actions to expand commercial uses of public land, like oil drilling and mineral production.
BLM manages nearly 12 million acres in Idaho and more than 16 million acres across Washington and Oregon.
The rule’s elimination goes into effect June 11.
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Idaho’s primary elections are a week from today. Unlike Washington — where the top two vote-getters move on to the general election regardless of party affiliation — Idaho’s primaries are partisan.
That means many Republican primaries in north Idaho next week will likely decide who wins in November.
One contest getting attention is the senate race in the state’s northernmost district.
Incumbent Jim Woodward is a 56-year-old contractor and Navy veteran. He first won election in 2018.
One of his primary challengers that year was Scott Herndon, a self-described “constitutional conservative.”
Herndon went on to beat Woodward in the 2022 GOP primary.
Woodward regained the seat after winning the 2024 primary, and now the two are facing off for a fourth time.
I called Sen. Woodward ahead of the rematch.
Tell me a little bit about how you think about what role the state government should be playing when it comes to North Idaho-specific affairs. Where do city and county jobs stop and where do state responsibilities begin?
JIM WOODWARD: There's certainly been a lot of efforts in recent years to take away some of that local control. Take, for example, the flag bill that's been such an issue. You know, that was really a political fight in Boise in regard to the city of Boise flying the gay pride flag. But as legislation always does, it applies across the board. The city of Bonners Ferry became collateral damage.
The city of Bonners Ferry has flown the Canadian flag for many, many decades to show that respect for the partnership that we have across the border there. And that legislation was taking away the ability to have the right to fly a flag. At this point, then, you really start to see the contrast between myself and my opponent.
He was quite vocal on social media. In fact, he even went to a Bonners Ferry city council meeting and told them that they were breaking the law and flying that flag, told them on social media that they needed to be spanked and corrected, just like a small child. That's not representation. That's authoritarianism.
I went to the Senate floor and we amended that bill to make sure that we could continue to fly that flag. And so that, I think, where I've always asked to represent the community, you can see the difference between the two of us.
There are many more examples, but that's one of the more recent ones. And I think people are well aware of the issues around that flag bill.
OH: Your opponent, former Sen. Scott Herndon, he has criticized you pretty vocally for not supporting certain pieces of legislation. For example, some tax cuts last year, the private school choice tax credit, some legislation that has targeted the trans community. And so I would like to ask, why have you chosen to not vote with your caucus on some of these really high profile bills?
JW: Well, I think you're right. There are specific instances because we did pull the data here recently and I've shared that with folks that I do vote with the Republican caucus about 90% of the time.
In fact, even 94%, I think, is what we came up with over the six years I've served. And he votes with the Republican caucus about 70% of the time. And so where we always hear that, ‘Oh, they're more conservative,’ I think that that conservative brand is a mislabeling. He's more extreme. So let's take that tax bill, for example. In the time that I've served in the Idaho State Senate, the six years, I have voted for two tax cuts, income tax cuts, also voted for three tax rebates where we sent money back.
So I have been supportive of trying to keep the money in the taxpayers' pockets. But as far back as 2022, the last time I voted for an income tax cut, I wrote to the people of Bonner and Boundary County and said I would be cautious in the future about more. And I came back into the legislature in 2025.
There it was in front of us. And I thought this is going to be too much. We were going to hinder our ability to provide basic government services, public safety, education, transportation.
I don't think there are any arguments about whether or not state government is responsible for those services. And so I voted no. But within months, we could see that that tax cut was a problem.
And it's created a real struggle in the budgeting in the state of Idaho. So where that income tax cut had about a $250 million impact on state revenue, part of the result in the next year, the budget year we just got through with, is that we cut just about that much money out of our transportation program.
OH: Yeah, the legislature did spend quite a lot of time this past session on budget concerns. At the start of the session, Governor Brad Little suggested using some one-time funds to help balance the budget. There were some Democrats who suggested dipping into reserves. And a lot of the Republicans on the Budget Writing Committee supported very deep cuts. If you were the one writing the budget, how would you have liked to see the state approach the issue?
JW: Well, let me make it clear to everyone, I've never advocated for tax increases. We tax on percentages. If we simply leave the tax, if we had left it alone, then we would be okay right now. The income tax rate just eight years ago in Idaho was 7.4%, and now it is 5.3%. If we had brought it down and maybe left it at 6%, we would probably be okay. But that last cut went from 5.7% down to 5.3%, and that causes the problem. And so what would I have done differently? I would have not made that income tax cut in the previous year.
But this year, in regard to how to solve the problem, you heard that repeatedly from our JFAC co-chairs early in the session, we weren't going to use any one-time funds because that would not be balanced over time. And yet at the end of the session, that tune changed, and we used one-time funds to cover a number of expenses. So we'll be back next year.
It'll still be a struggle. The Idaho economy is still growing. We will see more revenue as the economy grows if we leave the tax rate where it is now.
I'm not certain if we can grow out of this. Maybe we can, but we're taxing at a lower rate, and so that means that we are going to change what the level of service is, but hopefully we can put ourselves back in a little bit better balance than we are now. Again, because I think we have these basic obligations in public safety, education, and transportation, those are the kind of investments we have to make in ourselves for us and for our kids.
When you talk about the transportation system, that's an easy one. That was where I said a $250 million reduction in revenue meant a $250 million reduction in transportation spending. But you don't notice that the first year, and you don't maybe notice it the second year.
But you get 10 years out, or 15 or 20, and that's when you realize that you're wearing out the farm because you haven't invested in it. And so I don't want to leave my kids with a problem. I don't want to live off the backs of our children. I want to make sure that we're doing the right thing today.
OH: That was Idaho District 1 state Sen. Jim Woodward. He’s running for re-election, facing former Sen. Scott Herndon in next week’s primary.
SPR has repeatedly invited Herndon to join us ahead of the primary, and that invitation remains open.
For more information about next Tuesday’s county, state and federal elections, visit our website: Spokane Public Radio dot org.
You’ll find 2026 Idaho Elections under the Regional News tab.
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OH: SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting today was contributed by Eliza Billingham, Bellamy Pailthorp and me, Owen Henderson.
I’m also your host and producer.
Thanks for listening.
It’s SPR.
