Politics

Dirk Kempthorne, former Idaho governor and U.S. Interior secretary, dies at 74

Published

2 months ago

April 25, 2026

BOISE, Idaho — Former Idaho Gov. and U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has died at age 74, his family said in a written statement Saturday.

Kempthorne died Friday evening in Boise, the statement said. No cause was given, but he had been diagnosed with colon cancer last year.

“Beyond his public service, he was a devoted husband, father, and grandfather whose greatest joy came from time spent with family and the people he met along the way,” his family said. “He had a rare gift for truly seeing others — remembering names, stories, and the small details that made each person feel known and valued.”

Kempthorne, a Republican, was elected mayor of Boise at age 34 and served seven years before winning the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Sen. Steve Symms. Rather than run for reelection in 1998, he entered an open election for governor, trouncing his Democratic opponent by garnering more than two-thirds of the vote.

President George W. Bush appointed him Interior secretary in 2006, a position he held until the end of Bush’s presidency — and during which he lived on a houseboat docked in the Potomac River. Kempthorne was responsible for the polar bear being listed as a threatened species in 2008, though environmentalists often found him too accommodating of the oil and gas industry.

“As Governor, Dirk left an enduring mark on our state,” Idaho Gov. Brad Little said in a written statement. With the partnership of his wife, Patricia, Kempthorne “championed children and families, strengthened public education, and led transformational investments in our transportation system that will benefit Idahoans for generations.”

In a 2023 question-and-answer session with the George W. Bush Presidential Center, Kempthorne recalled helping evacuate nearly 400 U.S. citizens and Afghan allies from Afghanistan two years earlier, as many were being sought by the Taliban following the U.S. military’s chaotic withdrawal. Kemthorne and others worked frantically for months to raise money and garner the support of diplomatic channels to charter buses and an Airbus A340 to help resettle the evacuees in the U.S. and Canada.

At one point, with the flight fully booked, the organizers received a list of more people who needed to leave urgently.

“That night, at a total loss for answers, alone, I knelt in prayer,” Kempthorne recalled. “I said, ‘Dear God, we cannot leave these people behind, please give a path forward.’ ”

He said he then had a vision of Mother Mary holding the infant Jesus. It gave him an idea: The babies on the flight didn’t need their own seats, as their parents could hold them. The organizers confirmed that with the airline and were able to add an additional 50 people to the flight, Kempthorne said.

Kempthorne is survived by his wife, as well as their children Heather and Jeff and their families.

Politics

How I failed to make it to my first World Cup match

Published

34 minutes ago

June 12, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

I’ve been reporting on the obstacles ticketholders will have navigating America’s balkanized public transit system. But on the way to my first ever FIFA World Cup match in Toronto, extreme weather tripped me up as I tried to leave New York City on Thursday night.

Now I’m missing Canada playing Bosnia and Herzegovina, the first World Cup game ever played in the land my ancestors left France for in the 1600s. Blue Light News is also out $627.11 for a nonrefundable hotel room.

For a fan who saved up to attend a match, this would be a devastating setback.

A lot of the coverage about World Cup weather, particularly high heat, has focused on players and fans in the stadiums. But the weather also threatens to keep people away from the matches entirely.

My problem was a wall of thunderstorms marching across the continent. About 250 flights have been canceled leaving New York City’s three major airports since yesterday, according to FlightAware. Most of those nixed flights were at LaGuardia Airport, where I sat on a runway for some two hours last evening before being told to go home. Another flight scheduled for this morning out of Newark Liberty International Airport was canceled before I even went to bed.

Flight problems were not even at the top of the transit worries I’ve been paying attention to.

For several years, officials in New York and New Jersey — which are co-hosting tournament games to be played at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey — have been gearing up for a surge of fans from around the world. Unhelpfully, summer 2024 turned out to be a terrible season for train travel in the region because of electrical problems tied in part to heat but also aging infrastructure.

Now, that same stretch of tracks is being counted on to get tens of thousands of fans to matches. Even before a heat wave hit the city, there was a rash of incidents, including a brush fire in New Jersey in May and several fires and electric problems at New York Penn Station, the nation’s busiest train hall.

New Jersey officials have buses and boats on standby to help move fans to or from matches and some lawmakers from both parties are pressuring the Trump administration to keep an eye on things to make sure they don’t go off the rails.

But there isn’t much he can do to stop a storm from raining on the world’s parade.

Politics

The Epic Story of How Trump Seized the World Cup

Published

2 hours ago

June 12, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

“I was undecided with whether I never wanted to see these people ever again, because we had a pretty good idea of what had happened,” said former U.S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati about a stunning FIFA vote that handed the World Cup to Qatar over a favored American bid. “Or if I want to start bidding the next hour.”

Read the fullinside story of how FIFA’s rejection of a U.S. effort to host the 2022 World Cup sparked bitterness, indictments, a reorganization of soccer’s governing body and, ultimately, a North American World Cup.