Today's headlines:
- New federal student loan limits are now in place. What does that mean for borrowers?
- McClatchy journalists in Washington and Idaho secure contract with AI protections and pay raises.
- Western governors move to start upgrading aging power grid.
- After a year of just warnings, speeding in a Washington work zone now comes with fines.
- Washington's newspaper archive surpasses 1 million pages.
Plus, Spokane County has seen a surge in domestic violence cases being declined, data shows. While the prosecuting attorney, Spokane police and survivor advocates point to differing reasons for the case refusals, they agree that the county’s criminal justice system is at capacity. InvestigateWest's Kelsey Turner explains.
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SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting was contributed by Noel Gasca, Mitch Borden, Owen Henderson, Doug Nadvornick and Kelsey Turner.
Owen Henderson hosts and produces the show.
TRANSCRIPT
[THEME MUSIC]
OWEN HENDERSON: From Spokane Public Radio, it’s SPR News Today.
I’m Owen Henderson. It’s Thursday, July 2, 2026.
On today’s show, if you’re planning on attending graduate school in the future, you may be subject to new federal student loan caps. The limits are part of several student loan policy changes that took effect yesterday.
And unionized newspaper journalists in Washington and Idaho have ratified a new contract with McClatchy Media, scoring protections against artificial intelligence use.
Plus, last fall, Spokane County started declining to prosecute felony domestic violence cases much more often. Why?
Those stories and more, coming up on SPR News Today.
[FADE OUT THEME]
New federal student loan policies are in effect as of yesterday.
As KUOW’s Noel Gasca reports, this means people may start paying more.
NOEL GASCA: The Saving on a Valuable Education Plan aimed to decrease monthly payments for lower income people. Some paid zero dollars a month.
But as of July 1, SAVE is dead.
If you’re one of the 7 million borrowers enrolled in SAVE, you’ll have 90 days to pick a new plan.
WINSTON BERKMAN-BREEN: “If you miss this window, this 90 days to select the plan that’s maybe not good, but the best for you, you’ll be forcibly placed on a more expensive plan.”
NG: That’s Winston Berkman-Breen, the legal director for Protect Borrowers, a D.C.-based non-profit.
If you miss the deadline, Berkman-Breen says you can still apply for a new repayment plan.
But, you may end up with steep bills for a couple of months as the Department of Education processes your paperwork.
I’m Noel Gasca in Seattle.
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OH: After going on strike in May, unionized journalists at five McClatchy Media-owned newspapers in Washington and Idaho ratified a new contract.
According to the Washington state and Idaho News Guilds, the three-year agreement secured pay increases for their members.
It also institutes an array of protections against artificial intelligence.
Tacoma News Tribune reporter and union steward Becca Most explains the safeguards.
BECCA MOST: “McClatchy cannot force us to use AI. AI can’t be used to reduce staff, pay or working hours or eliminate future reporter positions. The company has to disclose if content is created by AI.”
OH: The contract also specifies McClatchy cannot use AI to impersonate reporters, according to a press release from the news guilds.
McClatchy Media has yet to respond to a request for a comment.
Along with the News Tribune, the unions represent newspapers like The Olympian and the Idaho Statesman.
— — —
Governors of Washington, Idaho and 9 other western states are moving to create a task force for updating the region’s energy grid.
The bipartisan group signed a letter endorsing the Western Transmission Expansion Coalition Tuesday in Utah.
The task force would conduct a study and create an action plan aimed at reducing <quote> “bottlenecks that restrict energy choices and limit access to low-cost power.”
Much of the West’s power grid was built more than 60 years ago and is too old or expanding too slowly to meet increasing energy demand, the officials say.
The governors also committed to creating a group to help coordinate between states and the federal government to develop new transmission lines faster.
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Drivers caught speeding through Washington highway work zones now face $125 fines.
From April 2025 until yesterday, 85,000 motorists caught breaking the limits by the state’s new speed cameras got warnings.
First infractions are $125. Subsequent work zone speeding will cost about $250.
The state says in one area where it piloted the cameras, more than 60% of drivers were speeding.
Officials say that number dropped to 30% with the cameras enforcing the limits.
— — —
The Washington State Library’s newspaper archive now holds more than a million pages.
As SPR’s Doug Nadvornick reports, the stacks go all the way back to 1852.
DOUG NADVORNICK: Coordinator Shawn Schollmeyer says the million pages are from both some of the state’s most well-known papers and some of its most obscure.
SHAWN SCHOLLMEYER: “You know, we do try to do newspapers of record. We do try to do, you know, county seats. We do also try to do a variety of industries and organizations that are unique to Washington that show our economic and industrial and agricultural development.”
DN: Niche newspapers like The Industrial Worker, a publication from Spokane and Seattle, mostly circulated during the 1910s and ‘20s.
The archives come from papers from all corners of the state. Schollmeyer says some of the latest additions include eight years of Newport Miner coverage from the 2010s and more than 20 years of The Fig Tree, which covers religion in the Inland Northwest.
She says it’s important to save the clippings for future research.
The archive is funded by a federal agency called the Institute of Museum and Library Services. It’s available in person or online at Washington Digital Newspapers dot org.
I’m Doug Nadvornick reporting.
[SHORT MUSIC BED]
OH: Spokane County has one of the highest domestic violence rates in Washington state.
Spokane Regional Health District estimates there are about 3900 confirmed victims each year. Data from the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence shows the county saw more than 100 domestic violence homicides between 1997 and 2025, the third highest number in Washington.
In domestic violence cases, law enforcement agencies investigate, eventually turning over their evidence to county prosecutors, at which point it's up to the prosecutors to review the case and file criminal charges.
But there's recently been a change in how felony domestic violence cases are getting prosecuted in Spokane County. We're joined now by Kelsey Turner, who reported this story for our partners at Investigate West. Kelsey, thanks for being here.
KELSEY TURNER: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
OH: So when it comes to these prosecutions in Spokane County over the last year, what did you find?
KT: The Spokane County Prosecutor's Office has started declining more felony domestic violence cases over the last few months. Previously, when law enforcement would refer domestic violence cases, there would be very few cases that were declined for prosecution.
It would be like one or two per month, maybe. But since about last October, the number shot up where now it's like a dozen or more cases that are being declined for prosecution.
And these are felony domestic violence cases, which could include assaults, strangulations, or violations of no-contact orders, which is a type of restraining order, basically.
And so that's been the trend over the last several months.
OH: Our current prosecuting attorney in Spokane County is Preston McCollam. He was appointed last summer just before these declinations started to rise. What did he and his office say when you asked about this?
KT: So Preston McCollam's office is struggling a lot right now with staffing issues on the prosecution side. And so they're operating with around 40 criminal lawyers when they should have over 50. That basically forces them to have to prioritize certain cases over others.
Over time, there are certain domestic violence cases that they're not able to prioritize. And one of those, they call them invited violations of no-contact orders. So it's pretty much if a survivor has a no-contact order against their abuser, but then that survivor allows the alleged abuser to violate that no-contact order.
The prosecutor's office is basically, like, blanket, not prosecuting those cases anymore. Their staffing issues that they're facing, it's causing them to make decisions like that.
OH: Now, another piece of context here: Last June, the Washington State Supreme Court moved to limit the workloads of public defenders who have for a while been saying they cannot handle the number of cases they're being asked to handle. How does that factor into all of this?
KT: Yeah, so that's another big piece that's contributing to, on a statewide level, the court's lack of capacity to take all of the cases that are being referred to them. Public defenders are really, really struggling with staffing shortages as well.
Yeah, all this to say that's another factor that's creating this bottleneck in the court system, and that prosecutors need to consider that when they're deciding which cases to charge. Because pretty much if they charge a case knowing that there's not enough public defenders to take them all, then that risks later in the process a judge just having to drop the case because there's not a public defender. And so prosecutors are having to be more selective with the cases that they file.
And it's almost this discernment that they have to make on the front end, which cases to move forward with in order to make sure that it is able to move through the whole process.
OH: Another piece of this whole puzzle is organizations that advocate for survivors and offer survivors resources. What have you heard from them about this whole situation?
KT: The YWCA in Spokane County has also been really concerned about how there's more domestic violence cases being declined for prosecution.
I spoke to Sally Winn, who's their director of legal services. She was explaining how there can still be a lot of benefits to filing criminal charges. And one of those is that a no contact order is put in place.
It also launches a process for having the alleged abuser relinquish their firearms. They've been really concerned that these declines are going up. And in turn, they've been filing protection orders through the civil process rather than the criminal process.
And it's, again, just another thing that's kind of bottlenecking the court process.
OH: There's rarely a single solution for situations and issues like this, especially when it's this complicated. But what are some things that could improve the situation?
KT: That's a great question and I think something that a lot of people are struggling with right now, because it doesn't seem like there's much of an end in sight. Washington state does a poor job of funding public defense. Basically, what prosecutors and advocates are hoping for is just for more state funding for public defense, more local funding, which can come from county commissioners.
Yeah, in terms of advocates, also, they've been losing a lot of funding over the last few years on a federal level as well. So they're also facing capacity issues.
And so some prosecutors are encouraging that the state Supreme Court also should re-look at this decision with the public defender caseload standards, if that's something that's possible, because they just don't see this being a feasible thing that can be implemented in the next 10 years.
OH: Kelsey Turner covers gender-based violence, poverty, and marginalized communities for Investigate West. You can read her whole story at spokanepublicradio.org. Kelsey, thank you for sharing your reporting with us this morning.
KT: Thanks so much, absolutely.
[SHORT MUSIC BED]
OH: SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting today was contributed by Noel Gasca, Mitch Borden, Doug Nadvornick, Kelsey Turner and me, Owen Henderson.
I’m also your host and producer.
Thanks for listening, and have a good weekend. We’re off for the holiday tomorrow, so we’ll be back in your feeds next week.
It’s SPR.
