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1 month ago | 
cascadepbs.org | Shauneen Miranda |Nate Sanford |Laurel Demkovich |Lizz Giordano
A pro-Palestine encampment filled the University of Washington Quad for weeks in the spring of 2024. UW is one of four Washington schools that received a letter from the US Department of Education warning school’s that funding could be cut for alleged antisemitism on campuses. (Genna Martin / Cascade PBS) This article was originally published by the Washington State Standard.
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1 month ago | 
cascadepbs.org | Nate Sanford |Laurel Demkovich |Lizz Giordano |Jake Goldstein-Street
In this 2017 file photograph, the City of Seattle's democracy vouchers are seen on a table. (Aly Chu/Cascade PBS) Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell is asking Seattleites to renew the city’s democracy voucher program — a first-of-its-kind public campaign-financing system that gives voters money to donate to local political candidates. Seattle voters first approved the program in 2015 through a citizen initiative that created a 10-year property tax levy to fund it, passing 63% to 37%.
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1 month ago | 
cascadepbs.org | Laurel Demkovich |Nate Sanford |Lizz Giordano |Jake Goldstein-Street
Washington Attorney General Nick Brown at a press conference on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. Brown announced Washington state is suing Adams County over its cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson) Washington Attorney General Nick Brown sued the Adams County Sheriff’s Office on Monday, alleging it broke state law by aiding the federal government in immigration enforcement.
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1 month ago | 
cascadepbs.org | Nate Sanford |Lizz Giordano |Jake Goldstein-Street |Bill Lucia
As the Trump administration pushes to dramatically downsize the federal government, new state data released this week show a big uptick in federal workers applying for unemployment benefits in Washington. As of March 5, 952 federal employees have filed unemployment claims with Washington’s Employment Security Department this year — about double the number of claims from the same time period last year, which saw 472 claims.
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1 month ago | 
cascadepbs.org | Lizz Giordano |Jake Goldstein-Street |Nate Sanford |Bill Lucia
The state Department of Labor & Industries will begin raising penalty amounts annually, based on inflation, in an effort to make fines for health and safety violations a more effective deterrent. Health and safety fines in Washington state have lagged behind the national average since 2019. The most recent data from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration show the state’s fines for serious violations fell to a little over half of the national average in 2023.
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Jan 17, 2025 | 
cascadepbs.org | Jaelynn Grisso |Farah Eltohamy |John Stang |Lizz Giordano
The Northwest ICE Processing Center is a privately-operated facility in Tacoma that holds detainees for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, seen here in 2019. (Lindsey Wasson for Cascade PBS) House Democrats introduced a new bill to bolster and broaden the state’s authority to inspect private detention facilities amid recent legal battles over the monitoring of the Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWIPC) in Tacoma. Rep.
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Jan 16, 2025 | 
cascadepbs.org | Farah Eltohamy |John Stang |Lizz Giordano |Nate Sanford
The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, a Seattle-based human rights group, filed a lawsuit against U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in federal court on Tuesday, alleging violations of the Freedom of Information Act. The complaint, filed in the Western District of Washington, challenges ICE’s failure to turn over public records relating to sexual abuse incidents at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, which is run by the GEO Group, a private detention services company.
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Jan 14, 2025 | 
cascadepbs.org | John Stang |Lizz Giordano |Nate Sanford |Jerry Cornfield
In this July 9, 2014, file photo, workers wearing protective clothing and footwear inspect a valve at the "C" tank farm on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland, Wash. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren) State and federal officials have officially signed off on an agreement changing the legal cleanup schedule at the Hanford nuclear reservation, which houses the most radioactively contaminated waste in the Western Hemisphere.
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Jan 13, 2025 | 
cascadepbs.org | Lizz Giordano |Nate Sanford |John Stang |Jerry Cornfield
Democratic staffers in the Washington state Legislature unanimously approved a two-year contract days before the start of the 2025 session, but the terms will not go into effect until this summer. Legislative assistants, communications staff and policy analysts in both chambers began unionizing after winning the right to organize in 2022. Republican staffers were the first to approve a contract when they reached a deal in September.
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Dec 24, 2024 | 
cascadepbs.org | Lizz Giordano
A new law aims to ease strain on health care staff by requiring hospital break-tracking. Some workers say the reported compliance rate seems too high. Trevor Gjendem poses for a portrait at his home in Stanwood, Washington in 2023. Gjendem, a nurse who works at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett, has been vocal about labor issues for nurses at the hospital.
