Evan Eichler casts out his fishing line over the ice and into Putters Lake in Rock Island Wednesday. He said it was his third time fishing this year but the first in Rock Island. He finished his venture when his line caught on the ice and snapped. Putters Lake, like the rest of the Rock Island ponds, are open year-round.
Don Seabrook: (509)661-5225
U.S. Representative Chip Roy (R-TX) departs after a Republican conference meeting on Capitol in Washington, D.C., Jan. 10.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. government was due to hit its $31.4 trillion borrowing limit on Thursday, amid a standoff between the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and President Joe Biden’s Democrats that could lead to a fiscal crisis in a few months.
Republicans, with a newly won House majority, aim to use the congressionally mandated federal debt ceiling to exact spending cuts from Biden and the Democratic-led Senate.
Thursday’s deadline will have little immediate effect, because Treasury officials are prepared to begin employing emergency cash management measures to stave off default. More serious risks will emerge closer to June, when the government approaches the so-called X date, beyond which the Treasury would run out of emergency maneuvers.
Ahead of that deadline, there was no sign that either side was willing to bend.
“It is something that should be done without conditions. We should not be negotiating around it. It is the basic duty of Congress to get that done,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.
Republicans are instead pursuing a “debt prioritization” plan that would seek to avert default by urging the Treasury to prioritize debt payments, and possibly other priorities such as Social Security and Medicare, should the limit be breached during negotiations. Republicans hope to complete the legislation by the end of March.
The prospect for brinkmanship has raised concerns in Washington and on Wall Street about a bruising fight over the debt ceiling this year that could be at least as disruptive as the protracted battle of 2011, which prompted a downgrade of the U.S. credit rating and years of forced domestic and military spending cuts.
“We’re not going to default on the debt. We have the ability to manage servicing and paying our interest. But we similarly should not blindly increase the debt ceiling,” U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, a leading conservative, told Reuters.
Roy dismissed concerns about unsettling markets and risking a recession.
“That’s what they say every time. It’s like clockwork,” Roy said in an interview. “We’re already barreling toward a recession. The question is what it’s going to look like — unless the combination of monetary policy and fiscal policy saves us from our stupidity of having spent so much money.”
Congress adopted a comprehensive debt ceiling, the statutory maximum of debt the government can issue, in 1939, intending to limit its growth. The measure has not had that effect, as, in practice, Congress has treated the annual budget process — deciding how much money to spend — separately from the debt ceiling — in essence, agreeing to cover the costs of previously approved spending.
Negotiations on debt prioritization and spending are not expected to get into full swing until lawmakers return to Washington next week.
The Republican plan calls for balancing the federal budget in 10 years by capping discretionary spending at 2022 levels, and using House oversight to identify federal programs that can be eliminated or scaled back in spending bills that are expected to emerge from the House Appropriations Committee later this year.
In the meantime, House Republicans are vowing to reject sweeping government funding bills from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, akin to the $1.66 trillion bipartisan omnibus package that Congress passed late last year.
White House officials also note that Republicans in Congress backed multiple increases to the debt ceiling when Republican Donald Trump was president.
Congress and the White House likely have until early June to find agreement on government funding, before Washington must confront the specter of a first-ever default, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
“We are optimistic that Democrats will come to the table and negotiate in good faith,” said Republican Representative Ben Cline, who leads a conservative task force on the budget and spending. “There’s a lot of room to negotiate when it comes to steps that can be taken to address the fiscal crisis that we find ourselves in.”
A view from the back of the house on the 1100 block of King Road in Moscow where police found four University of Idaho students stabbed to death Nov. 13.
BOISE, Idaho — At 1122 King Road in Moscow sits the gray six-bedroom, three-bathroom house that continues to be the source of significant national attention.
Someone walking by on Nov. 12 would have seen a lumpy couch on the back porch, trendy garden lights strung across the rear balcony and a pair of pink cowboy boots in one window — telltale signs that this house, like many in the area, was a student rental.
The most recent leaseholders were six University of Idaho undergraduates who signed a 12-month contract that began June 5, according to the property management firm that oversees the home.
Three of those renters would not live to see the end of their lease. And by Nov. 13, 1122 King Road would be surrounded by yellow crime scene tape.
The tenants were Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, Bethany Funke and Dylan Mortensen, as well as an unnamed sixth person on the lease who no longer lived there.
In the early morning hours that Sunday, Mogen, Goncalves, Kernodle and Kernodle’s boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, were stabbed to death in the house.
Following a 911 call made from the cellphone of one of the two surviving roommates at around noon, law enforcement arrived, marking the start of an investigation that would go on for nearly seven weeks before an arrest was made.
More than 2,500 miles away in a much smaller rural town — Albrightsville, Pennsylvania, population 211 — is another house. White with red shutters, it sits tucked into the rolling Pocono Mountains made famous for the escape they provide East Coast city-dwellers.
This house, too, saw a swarm of law enforcement when police came to arrest 28-year-old Washington State University graduate student Bryan Kohberger on Dec. 30.
Following Kohberger’s extradition to Idaho, police filed a 19-page affidavit that provided new details about what they think happened inside the house on King Road, and what was found.
The Idaho Statesman has used the affidavit to update its previous reporting on the house, which was based on photos from rental listings and documents submitted by former owners to the city of Moscow. Depictions of the floors and dimensions are approximations created by the Statesman based on that information.
Just north of the home is the university’s new Greek Row, where many fraternity and sorority activities take place. That proximity meant the area was particularly popular among those involved in U of I Greek life, including sorority members Goncalves, Kernodle and Mogen.
“It’s a tight-knit community,” Merida McClanahan, supervisor at Team Idaho Real Estate & Property Management, told the Statesman in a phone interview. “They’re on the back side of campus right across the street from Greek Row, and those kids cycle in and out.”
The King Road home’s six bedrooms had at one time been rented as separate apartments, McClanahan said.
“Primarily for the last 12 years, it has been rented as one unit as a single-family home,” she said.
The house originally had two floors, but an owner requested to add the lowest floor in 2000, according to Moscow city permits. Built into a hillside, the house has one exterior door on each floor.
The home is 3,120 square feet, according to Zillow. The Latah County Assessor’s Office assessed its value at $343,848 in August.
The listed owner of the King Road property didn’t return email and phone messages from the Statesman.
City records and photos from online rental listings indicate the first floor has two bedrooms that open into a shared hallway. The hallway also leads to a bathroom and a stairway that goes to the second floor.
All five tenants, plus Chapin, were home by 2 the morning of the killings, and everyone was in their bedrooms by 4 a.m., according to statements to police by surviving roommates Funke and Mortensen. Police believe the Nov. 13 attack took place between 4 a.m. and 4:25 a.m.
The Idaho Statesman previously reported that both surviving roommates had been on the first floor at the time of the attack after a Moscow Police Department spokesperson provided that information in an email on Nov. 21.
Contrary to that police statement, the affidavit revealed that Funke was the only roommate with a bedroom on the first floor. Her room was on the east side of the building.
Based on the affidavit, it appears no one slept in the first-floor bedroom on the west side that night. The sixth person who was on the lease moved out prior to the start of the semester, police said.
Police included no statement in the affidavit that indicated Funke saw or heard anything at the time of the attack.
Former first-floor tenant Ryan Augusta told Fox News that he typically “heard nothing” from the second and third floors when he lived there in 2019. Reached by the Statesman, Augusta said he stood by that statement.
Attempts by the Statesman to reach Funke and Mortensen have been unsuccessful.
Between the first-floor bedrooms, a door opens to the property’s driveway. Despite the home’s King Road mailing address, the driveway connects directly to Queen Road.
On Nov. 13, starting at 3:29 a.m., a camera captured a white Hyundai Elantra — the same type of car owned by Kohberger — driving past the house several times, according to the affidavit. As it neared the area a fourth time, at 4:04 a.m., the vehicle could be seen going past the house before stopping in front of a neighboring building, turning around and driving back toward the house. The camera shows it again at about 4:20 a.m., driving away from the house.
The second floor of the home includes two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and two separate staircases — one that leads to the first floor and one to the third floor.
This floor can be accessed from the outside through a sliding-glass door connecting the porch and kitchen.
Kernodle’s bedroom was on the west side of the second floor. Chapin’s mother, Stacy Chapin, previously confirmed to the Statesman that her son spent the night at his girlfriend’s house, and Kernodle’s father, Jeffrey Kernodle, told an Arizona TV station in an interview in November that his daughter and Chapin had been dating for about a year.
Mortensen’s bedroom, on the southeast side, was also on this floor. The affidavit provided new details about what Mortensen told police:
On the night of the attack, Mortensen said she was awakened at about 4 a.m. by what “sounded like Goncalves playing with her dog in one of the upstairs bedrooms.”
Shortly after, she thought someone, maybe Goncalves, said “something to the effect of ‘there’s someone here.’” Kernodle was still awake and using TikTok at 4:12 a.m., according to phone records cited in the affidavit. For this reason, police believe Kernodle could have been the person Mortensen heard.
The comment caused Mortensen to open her bedroom door to look out, but she did not see anyone.
Mortensen thought she heard crying from Kernodle’s room and a male voice say something to the effect of, “It’s OK, I’m going to help you.” She opened her bedroom door a second time.
At 4:17 a.m., a neighbor’s security camera, located less than 50 feet from Kernodle’s bedroom, “picked up distorted audio of what sounded like voices or a whimper followed by a loud thud,” and the sound of a dog barking.
Opening her door a third time, Mortensen said, she saw a male figure walking toward her dressed in black clothing and a mask that covered his mouth and nose. She didn’t recognize him, but estimated him to be at least 5 feet 10 inches, “not very muscular” and “athletically built with bushy eyebrows.” Mortensen told police that she stood in a “frozen shock phase” as he walked past her and headed toward the sliding glass door to the backyard, according to the affidavit.
She then locked herself in her bedroom, Mortensen said.
Investigators later found a shoe print that they say may have been left by the intruder just outside Mortensen’s bedroom door.
Police found the bodies of Kernodle and Chapin in either Kernodle’s bedroom or the second-floor bathroom. The affidavit is unclear, simply referring to “the room” where they were found.
“Just before this room there was a bathroom door on the south wall of the hallway,” the affidavit stated. “As I approached the room, I could see a body, later identified as Kernodle’s, laying on the floor.”
The third floor of the home includes a bathroom and two bedrooms. One of the bedrooms has a sliding-glass door that opens onto a balcony. Because the balcony doesn’t connect to the ground, the only traditional way to reach the third floor is from the staircase on the second floor.
Close friends since childhood, Goncalves and Mogen lived on the third floor — the former’s room on the west side and the latter’s in the southeast corner, according to the affidavit.
Police found both of their bodies in Mogen’s bed.
On the bed next to Mogen’s right side, officers also found a tan, leather knife sheath stamped with the inscriptions “Ka-Bar” and “USMC,” for the U.S. Marines.
Investigators said they found DNA on the button of the sheath that eventually helped lead to Kohberger’s arrest. The sheath DNA was compared to trash recovered from the Kohberger’s family’s residence in Albrightsville by Pennsylvania agents. The evidence was sent to the Idaho State Lab, and results came back with a high likelihood — over 99% — that the DNA in the trash belonged to the biological father of the person whose DNA was found on the sheath, according to the affidavit.
Police found Goncalves’ dog, a golden doodle named Murphy, in Goncalves’ room.
Reporters Kevin Fixler and Shaun Goodwin contributed.
Ukrainian servicemen stand on their tanks near the frontline town of Bakhmut, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Donetsk region, Ukraine on Jan. 13.
KYIV — Kyiv urged Western allies on Thursday to hurry up and supply tanks and air defense systems, saying Ukraine was paying in lives for the slow pace of discussions in foreign capitals.
“We have no time, the world does not have this time,” said Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Western allies meet at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Friday with the focus on whether Berlin will allow its Leopard 2 battle tanks to be supplied to Kyiv to help drive out Russian forces.
Fearing winter will give Russian forces time to regroup and launch a major attack, Ukraine is pushing for Leopard battle tanks, which are held by an array of NATO nations, but whose transfer to Ukraine requires Germany’s approval.
“The question of tanks for Ukraine must be closed as soon as possible. Just like the questions of additional air defence systems,” Yermak said in his statement.
“We are paying for the slowness with the lives of our Ukrainian people. It shouldn’t be like that.”
Germany has said it does not want to act alone on supplies of weapons to Ukraine. A German government source said Berlin would lift its objections if Washington sends Abrams tanks.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy made thinly disguised criticism of Germany on Thursday for its stance on tanks.
“’I am powerful in Europe, I will help if someone else outside of Europe will also help.’ It seems to me that this is not a very correct strategy,” he said.
Speaking remotely at the World Economic Forum, he said frontline fighting had slowed, not only because of bad winter weather but also because of Kyiv’s strength on the battlefield.
Almost 11 months since Russia invaded its neighbor, Moscow’s forces hold swathes of Ukraine’s east and south. The battlefield momentum has been with Kyiv for months, but Moscow has expended huge resources to try to advance in the east.
Ukraine, in a joint foreign and defense ministry statement, said the Kremlin was determined to escalate hostilities to revive its faltering invasion and that the threat of a new full-scale offensive by Russian forces was “very real.”
The statement acknowledged that the Kremlin retained a “substantial quantitative advantage in troops, weapons and military equipment” over Ukraine.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said Kyiv appealed to the nations that have Leopard 2 tanks — Greece, Denmark, Spain, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Turkey, Finland and Sweden — to supply them.
This week, Britain raised the pressure on Germany by becoming the first Western country to send Western tanks, a decision that Kyiv said it welcomed.
A stress box designed by Tracy Trotter with "Alice in Wonderland" themes.
A stress box designed by Tracy Trotter with "Alice in Wonderland" themes.
WENATCHEE — A child molestation case filed against a former Lake Chelan School District teacher accused of sexually abusing a former student was dismissed Wednesday in Chelan County Superior Court.
Jack Leeroy Rutter was charged in May 2019 with first-degree child molestation after a former student told the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office he was fondled by Rutter during physical education class between 2009 and 2011.
The Chelan County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office told Judge Robert Jourdan Wednesday that it did not have sufficient evidence and moved to dismiss the charge. Jourdan dismissed the case without prejudice.
Rutter’s attorney, Brandon Redal, said in an interview that post-arrest investigation found flaws in allegations made by the accuser.
“Ultimately, it came down to doing the investigation that wasn’t done before they charged him with a crime,” Redal said.
The alleged victim told detectives he was molested by Rutter in a room where balls were kept during PE classes, but interviews with former classmates and staff who worked closely with Rutter did not yield information to support the allegations, according to Redal.
He noted that a teacher who shared curriculum with Rutter was never interviewed by detectives prior to an arrest. The teacher never saw the alleged victim and Rutter leave with class together and other teachers at the school never noticed a change in the boy’s behavior, according to Redal.
Rutter, 72, taught at the district from 1980 to 2014.
Redal said that for Rutter, the dismissal is a “relief.”
“He told me last night was the first night they could sit down for dinner without the stress of not knowing what will happen next,” Redal said.
Rutter posted bail shortly after his arrest. As part of his conditions of release, the court placed restrictions on whom Rutter could contact and where he could travel.
“I think he’s happy to have those restraints lifted and, in his words, have his life back,” Redal said.
He cautioned against rushing to judgment following criminal accusations.
“This was a case study in why a person is innocent until proven guilty because cases like this happen,” Redal said. “This is why we need to have complete investigations before charging people with things that will alter their lives.”
Pete O’Cain: (509) 664-7152
First responders at the scene of a fatal collision Thursday morning.
EAST WENATCHEE — A section of Highway 2 in Douglas County shut down in both directions Thursday morning as Washington State Patrol investigated a double-fatality collision. The collision near Turtle Rock that killed both drivers was reported around 6:40 a.m.
A 33-year-old Wenatchee man, Luis Martinez Molina, in a 1993 Ford Probe was traveling eastbound on Highway 2 when the vehicle lost traction near milepost 135, according to Trooper Jeremy Weber.
The Ford Probe rotated counterclockwise and as the vehicle turned, it crossed the centerline and two lanes: lane two and lane one. A 2007 Honda Accord, driven by a 61-year-old East Wenatchee man, Peter Kobzar, was traveling westbound in lane one and struck the Ford Probe in the passenger side door.
Road conditions were slick and speeding too fast for conditions was cited as the cause of the accident, said Weber. Both drivers were wearing seatbelts.
Highway 2 at milepost 135 was closed in both directions by 7 a.m. The roadway reopened by 9:10 a.m.
Kalie Worthen: (509) 661-6372
