With Idaho Gov. Brad Little out of the state on Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin asked the head of the Idaho National Guard about what it would take to deploy troops to the U.S. southern border with Mexico.

She was rebuffed by Major General Michael J. Garshak.

The maneuvering of Idaho’s top leaders came while Little was in Texas meeting with nine other Republican governors over concerns on how President Joe Biden is handling border issues. McGeachin, a far-right Republican, is running for governor. In Idaho, the governor and lieutenant governor don’t run on the same ticket.

“As of Wednesday, my constitutional authority as Governor affords me the power of activating the Idaho National Guard,” McGeachin wrote to Garshak in the letter obtained by The Associated Press. “As the Adjutant General, I am requesting information from you on the steps needed for the Governor to activate the National Guard.”

Garshak replied with one paragraph on Tuesday afternoon.

“I am unaware of any request for Idaho National Guard assistance under the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) from Texas or Arizona,” Garshak wrote, in part, to McGeachin. “As you are aware, the Idaho National Guard is not a law enforcement agency.”

Little in June sent a team of Idaho State Police troopers to the border to help with intelligence gathering and investigative work to stop drugs from coming across the border.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Republican Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona had requested the help under the Emergency Management Assistance Compact that empowers states to help other states in times of disasters or emergencies.

“On Sept 24, I spoke to my counterpart in Texas, Lt Gov. Dan Patrick’s office, and they affirmed the need for additional resources in helping the situation on our southern border,” McGeachin told Garshak.

McGeachin’s office on Tuesday didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“Attempting to deploy our National Guard for political grandstanding is an affront to the Idaho constitution and insults the men and women who have dedicated their life to serving our state and the country,” Little said in a statement.

In May when Little was out of state, she issued an executive order banning mask mandates that Little eliminated when he returned, saying mask mandate decisions were best left to local officials. Little has never issued a mask mandate.

Little also rescinded McGeachin’s executive order issued Tuesday afternoon that seeks, among other things, to prevent employers from requiring their employees be vaccinated against COVID-19. Most mainstream Republicans prefer to stay out of the employee-employer relationship.

“I am in Texas performing my duties as the duly elected Governor of Idaho, and I have not authorized the Lt. Governor to act on my behalf,” Little said in a statement shortly after arriving in Texas on Tuesday. “I will be rescinding and reversing any actions taken by the Lt. Governor when I return.”

Little was expected to be back in the state Wednesday evening.

The U.S. Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program said Monday it has completed putting into dry storage all the spent fuel that was in water pool storage before Jan. 1, 2017. The project was finished 18 months ahead of a required schedule in a 2008 agreement with Idaho.

The agreement was an addendum to a much broader 1995 pact that Idaho reached with the U.S. Department of Energy following a series of lawsuits. The 1995 agreement is widely seen as preventing Idaho from becoming a nuclear waste dump.

The spent fuel processed by the Navy comes from ships, submarines and prototype reactor sites. Since 1957, the Navy has sent the fuel to its Naval Reactors Facility located at the Energy Department’s 890-square-mile (2,305-square-kilometer) site west of Idaho Falls.

The Energy Department site also includes the Idaho National Laboratory, a leading nuclear research lab.

The spent fuel is cooled in water before being placed in special canisters and concrete “overpacks,” then stored in buildings at the site.

“The effort to meet this milestone was monumental,” Adm.l J.F. Caldwell Jr., director of the Naval Reactors Facility, said in a statement.

The 2008 addendum allows the Navy to continue to process and temporarily store spent nuclear fuel at the site past a 2035 deadline as originally spelled out in the 1995 agreement. But it also requires the spent fuel to be stored safely in Idaho and ultimately removed from the state.

After Jan. 1, 2035, the 2008 agreement allows the Navy to average no more than 20 shipments a year of spent fuel to the state, and to continue to process and store spent nuclear fuel at the site. But the Navy is limited to 9.9 tons (9 metric tons).

However, the nation has no repository for spent nuclear fuel, so where it will go after that deadline is not clear. The Navy said that so far, it has placed more than 33 tons (30 metric tons) of its spent fuel in dry storage after it came from more than 250 naval reactor cores.

The Naval Reactors Facility, which has a workforce of about 1,400, is where the Navy replicated the propulsion plant aboard the USS Nautilus, the nation’s first nuclear-powered submarine. The Navy said the facility continues to play a vital role in designing, building, operating and disposing of nuclear reactors from submarines and aircraft carriers.

In a related matter, the Navy plans to launch the USS Idaho, a Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarine, in 2023. It’s scheduled to spend three decades in service.

The Air Force filed the appeal with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday. The military says air support for ground forces is increasingly required in urban combat areas.

The U.S. Justice Department, which is representing the Air Force, didn’t respond Wednesday to a request for comment sent through its online media inquiry portal. Monday was the 60-day deadline for the Air Force to appeal.

Seven Boise residents and an environmental group filed the lawsuit last year contending the training endangers the health, safety and quality of life of residents and wildlife.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Candy Dale ruled in October that the Air Force violated environmental laws by not adequately studying how noise from the military jets could harm humans and wildlife.

Dale agreed with the plaintiffs that the Air Force hadn’t done a good job with an environmental assessment it created to OK the flights. She also said the Air Force didn’t address sleep interference the fights might cause, adequately back up its claim that the flights wouldn’t interfere with people trying to have a conversation, or support its conclusion that birds and wildlife would not be affected by the noise.

Dale ordered the Air Force to conduct a more thorough study called an environmental impact statement before the training exercises can resume in nine urban centers. The jets would fly over Boise, Mountain Home, Burley, Twin Falls, Grand View, Bruneau, Glenns Ferry, Hammett and Mountain Home Air Force Base.

“This was not a close question,” said Laird Lucas of Advocates for the West, who is representing the group. “This was the Air Force not doing a very good job in their environmental analysis. I would think the court of appeals will be troubled just like the district court was.”

Court documents said a four-aircraft formation would produce a loudness equivalent to a vacuum cleaner. The training flights would originate at Mountain Home Air Force Base. The military flights involve two to four F-15E and F-15SG aircrews plus plain-clothed soldiers on the ground to simulate urban combat.

Boise residents complained to the mayor’s office in 2015 about noise from the military flights, prompting the Air Force to stop the previously undisclosed urban training program and begin preparing the environmental assessment. The study found that the training flights would have no significant impact on humans or wildlife.

The Air Force proposed 160 training events involving 400 training operations to prepare aircrews before being deployed abroad. Of those training events, 120 would include a maximum of three hours of flight over an urban center per day. Up to 40 annual training events would include day and night training operations, according to court documents.

During the training, the jets would fly between 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) and 18,000 feet (5,500 meters) in air-to-air and air-to-ground missions.

In a related matter, the Air Force announced in October that it wants to fly supersonic fighter jets at lower altitudes in lightly populated areas of southwestern Idaho, northern Nevada and southeastern Oregon to better simulate combat conditions.

The Air Force said it plans to prepare an environmental impact statement to study that idea.

Marine veteran Jordan Duncan, 25, and Paul James Kryscuk, 35, both of Boise, each waived hearings in the case, clearing the way for the transfers. The case also involves another former Marine, 21-year-old Liam Montgomery Collins. Authorities said Collins is from Johnston, Rhode Island.

Authorities say Duncan and Collins were previously assigned to Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina.

Court documents say the conspiracy involved Collins and Kryscuk manufacturing and selling hard-to-obtain firearms and firearm parts so purchasers of the weapons would be unknown to government authorities.

U.S. District Court Judge Ronald E. Bush in Boise said he did not have a timeline for the transfers by the U.S. Marshals Service.

The U.S. Justice Department as well as court documents say Kryscuk received money from Collins for a short-barreled rifle and a 9mm pistol with a suppressor, which is placed on the end of a gun barrel to reduce noise when the weapon is fired. The devices are highly regulated in the U.S. Authorities say Kryscuk bought supplies to make suppressors.

Authorities also say Kryscuk, using an alias, mailed weapons from Idaho to Jacksonville, North Carolina. Documents also say Kryscuk shipped the short-barreled rifle to Collins. Court documents say the rifle went to Pennsylvania.

Collins and Kryscuk are charged with conspiracy to manufacture unregistered weapons and ship them across state lines without a license. They each could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Authorities say Duncan was aware of the conspiracy and participated. He’s charged with conspiracy to manufacture firearms and ship them across state lines. He could face up to five years in prison if convicted.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Candy Dale ruled last week that the Air Force must conduct a more thorough study, called an environmental impact statement, before the training exercises can resume in nine urban centers.

Seven Boise residents and an environmental group filed the lawsuit last year contending the training out of Mountain Home Air Force Base endangers the health, safety and quality of life of residents and wildlife.

The military says air support for ground forces is increasingly required in urban combat areas.

Specifically, Dale ruled that the Air Force failed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, which sets procedures that agencies must follow before making decisions that could harm the environment.

Dale agreed with the plaintiffs that the Air Force hadn’t done a good job with an environmental assessment, or EA, it created to OK the flights.

“There appears to be no quantitative assessment undertaken in the EA to assess the noise impact of overhead flights upon areas that experience background noise at levels much less than the assumed average,” Dale wrote.

She also said the Air Force didn’t address sleep interference the flights might cause, adequately back up its claim that the flights wouldn’t interfere with people trying to have a conversation, or support its conclusion that birds and wildlife would not be affected by the noise.

“The residents of Boise and southern Idaho deserve better!” Anne Stites Hausrath, a former Boise City Council member who took part in the lawsuit, said in a statement.

Court documents said a four-aircraft formation would produce a loudness equivalent to a vacuum cleaner.

Officials at Mountain Home Air Force Base, where the training flights originate, didn’t respond to an inquiry sent through the base website by The Associated Press, or to email and phone inquiries from Air Force Times. The base is currently in the midst of a long, holiday weekend.

Boise residents complained to the mayor’s office in 2015 about noise from the military flights, prompting the Air Force to stop the previously undisclosed urban training program and begin preparing the environmental assessment. The study found that the training flights would have no significant impact on humans or wildlife.

The military flights involve the use of two to four F-15E and F-15SG aircrews plus teams of unarmed JTACs in civilian clothes, who would drive around city streets with radio communications gear to direct simulated air strikes in urban combat.

The jets would fly over Boise, Mountain Home, Burley, Twin Falls, Grand View, Bruneau, Glenns Ferry, Hammett and Mountain Home Air Force Base.

The Air Force proposed 160 training events involving 400 training operations to prepare aircrews before being deployed abroad. Of those training events, 120 would include a maximum of three hours of flight over an urban center per day. Up to 40 annual training events would include day and night training operations, according to court documents.

During the training, the jets would fly between 10,000 feet and 18,000 feet in air-to-air and air-to-ground missions.

The Air Force on Wednesday said it plans to prepare an environmental impact statement to study the idea and will hold meetings and take public comments through Nov. 25 to help shape the study.

Mountain Home Air Force Base in southwestern Idaho operates flights over portions of the three states.

“Modifying this airspace will allow the USAF to provide a more realistic and efficient airspace training environment and improve aircrew proficiency in low-altitude tactics and radar masking using mountainous terrain for survival in a highly contested environment,” the Air Force said.

The airspace overlays the borders where Idaho, Oregon and Nevada meet. The Air Force divides that area into six Military Operations Areas.

In two of those, aircraft can fly as low as 100 feet (30 meters) above the ground. The four others have restrictions of 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) above sea level or 3,000 feet (915 meters) above ground level, whichever is higher.

Supersonic flights, in which aircraft travel faster than the speed of sound and can create a sonic boom, are allowed at 30,000 feet (9,100 meters) above sea level in all the Military Operations Areas except over the Duck Valley Indian Reservation.

The changes would allow jets to descend at supersonic speeds. The specific altitudes are will be defined in the environmental impact statement.

The first public meeting where comments will be accepted is Nov. 4 in McDermitt, Nevada. Later that week in Idaho, meetings are planned for Boise, Grand View, and Mountain Home.

Separately, the Air Force is fighting a lawsuit filed by seven Boise residents and an environmental group involving soldiers and military jets coordinating exercises in nine urban centers in Idaho.

Under that plan, aircrews would communicate with service members on the ground dressed as civilians to blend in as they identify targets with low-power lasers.

The lawsuit filed in April contends the Air Force did not do enough to inform the public about the exercises and failed to prepare a full environmental impact statement — a process that can take years.

The Air Force has said the lawsuit should be dismissed because the proposed training is needed due to the nature of modern war.

The Western Governors’ Association on Friday sent letters to the U.S. Senate and U.S. House urging passage of proposed changes to a law involving “downwinders.”

The U.S. between 1945 and 1992 conducted more than 1,000 nuclear weapons tests, nearly 200 in the atmosphere. Most were conducted in Western states or islands in the Pacific Ocean.

The changes to the 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act would add all of Nevada, Arizona and Utah, and include for the first time downwinders in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and the island territory of Guam.

The changes would also include increasing the maximum payment to $150,000 for someone filing a claim. Compensation currently ranges from lump sums of $100,000 for uranium workers to $50,000 for those who lived downwind of the Nevada Test Site.

The new legislation called the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Amendments of 2019 would also include those who lived downwind of the 1945 Trinity Test in New Mexico’s Tularosa Basin.

“We encourage you to expeditiously consider and approve this important legislation, which acknowledges that nuclear weapons production and testing has had much broader impacts than currently recognized by statute,” the governors wrote in letters to each chamber signed by Oregon Democratic Gov. Kate Brown and North Dakota Republican Gov. Doug Burgum.

Tona Henderson is the director of Idaho Downwinders, which for years has sought the inclusion of Idaho in the compensation program.

She said 14 of her 38 family members in the Emmett area in southwestern Idaho have died of cancer, the youngest at 15, and many others have survived that and other diseases. She has battled cancer and other health issues.

During the nuclear testing, farmers would go out to their fields on summer mornings to find them covered with dust carried on the wind from the nuclear blasts, she said. The dust occurred so often, she said, it picked up the name “summer frost.”

“I don’t know why we weren’t included,” said Henderson, who was an infant growing up on her parents’ dairy farm during the tail end of the atmospheric testing in the early 1960s. “Other than the government didn’t want to admit that they did something wrong.”

The Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium in New Mexico is another group seeking recognition as having been adversely affected by nuclear testing.

“We don’t wonder if we’re going to get cancer, we wonder when,” said Tina Cordova, a cancer survivor and co-founder of the Tularosa consortium.

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was first passed in 1990 as an alternative to costly litigation to ensure the federal government met its financial responsibilities to workers who became sick as a result of the radiation hazards of their jobs.

The proposed legislation on the Senate side was introduced earlier this year by U.S. Republican Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho. Crapo for years has sought the inclusion of Idaho as a downwind state.

Besides downwinders, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act also includes money for workers made sick during uranium ore mining and milling activities that took place in 11 states in the Western U.S.

Downwinders should receive equal compensation as offered those workers, Henderson said.

“Energy workers knew what they were signing up for,” she said. “We didn’t know what was happening to us.”

Officials on Tuesday said the new facility is needed at keeping nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines deployed.

The facility will be built at the Energy Department’s 890-square-mile site that includes the Idaho National Laboratory, considered the nation’s primary lab for nuclear research.

The decision concludes a lengthy environmental process that also looked at continuing using outdated facilities or overhauling them.

Officials say the new facility will operate through at least 2060 and can handle a new type of spent-fuel shipping container used by the latest warships.

20th CBRNE Command’s Nuclear Disablement Team members in a reactor control room simulator determine the necessary steps to safely shutdown the reactor at Idaho National Laboratory, Oct. 23, 2015.

Photo Credit: Idaho National Laboratory

20th CBRNE Command’s Nuclear Disablement Team members in a reactor control room simulator determine the necessary steps to safely shutdown the reactor at Idaho National Laboratory, Oct. 23, 2015.

Photo Credit: Idaho National Laboratory

Barring protests, a document approving the plan could be issued early next month. Officials say site preparation would likely begin in 2017, with the facility becoming operational in the early 2020s.

“The facility would be designed with the flexibility to integrate future identified mission needs,” the environmental impact statement says.

It notes that a new building is needed to handle a new type of spent-fuel shipping container, which is not possible at the current facility. The Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, when it becomes operational, will use the new container, as will nuclear-powered submarines under construction, officials said.

The container requires a larger pool with a different configuration to submerge the fuel waste so it cools before going into dry storage.

The existing pools have not been upgraded to seismic standards, should there be an earthquake, but the new facility would meet them, the document said.

Nuclear waste coming into Idaho spawned lawsuits when state leaders in the late 1980s and early 1990s thought the site was becoming a nuclear waste repository.

The lawsuits culminated in a 1995 agreement, then a 2008 addendum, limiting such shipments and requiring most nuclear waste be removed from the federal site by 2035. The deal applies to the Navy’s spent nuclear fuel.

That means the fuel waste will come to the new facility after 2035 but it will only remain for the six years it takes to cool in pools, Burke said. After that, it’s required to be put in dry storage and taken out of Idaho.

The document released Friday said the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program is committed to complying with the agreement.