By Christina Lords | Editor-in-Chief
“We hear people’s stories in the process. People are telling us about the hardships they face because of this radiation exposure, or their family’s exposure. So, it really reflects that archival work is care work. … You are taking care of records so that hopefully in the future, they are a benefit to somebody.” - Dulce Kersting-Lark, who leads University of Idaho’s Library’s Special Collections and Archives
In her home, Tona Henderson has a wall dedicated to images and the names of people who were diagnosed with cancer and living in Idaho at the time of nuclear testing from 1951 to 1962. (Photo courtesy of Tona Henderson)
HEALTH
The government is paying Idahoans who got sick after nuclear bomb tests. Here’s how some get proof.
By Kyle Pfannenstiel
Cheryl Poxleitner, 71, grew up on farms in North Central Idaho’s Lewis County.
When she was 8, her family moved to Craigmont — a small town near Grangeville, where her dad raised dairy cows.
“That’s probably where I was exposed to radiation,” she recalled in a recent interview. “Becuase many people are saying that the cows eat the grass, which has been contaminated. And … when they produce the milk, the milk is contaminated.”
Within months of each other almost a decade ago, she and her sister were diagnosed with thyroid cancer.
“The surgeon was really stumped,” Poxleitner said. “He said, ‘This is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen: two sisters with thyroid cancer, and so much alike.’”
Now she and many other Idahoans are newly eligible for $100,000 in compensation from the federal government for illnesses linked to nuclear weapon tests in the mid-1900s in Nevada. That came after Congress expanded a compensation program, called the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, also known as RECA, to include Idaho.
A voter casts a ballot in the primary election on May 19, 2026, at Club Apple in Idaho Falls. (Photo by Pat Sutphin for the Idaho Capital Sun)
ELECTION 2026
Idaho Secretary of State’s Office investigated more than 40 campaign complaints before primary
By Laura Guido
Ahead of the May 19 primary, Idaho’s statewide election office investigated more than 40 official complaints against campaigns.
Most of those complaints were resolved without penalties, one candidate withdrew himself from the race after he was arrested, and five of those investigations are ongoing, according to Idaho Secretary of State records obtained by the Idaho Capital Sun.
A federal official overseeing a major rural health grant approved by Congress last summer emphasized to Idaho lawmakers that time was of the essence this summer if the state wanted to make full use of the award. (Photo by Getty Images)
HEALTH
Federal official tells Idaho lawmakers there’s ‘no leeway’ in awarding rural health funds
By Laura Guido
Kate Sapra, deputy director of the Office of Rural Health Transformation within the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told legislators on the Idaho Rural Health Transformation Committee that there was “no leeway” for distributing the state’s entire share of the federal grant by the Oct. 30 deadline.
“If the funds are not obligated, we have to recover them and redistribute them to other states,” she told the committee at a meeting Thursday at the Capitol in Boise.
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