As Washington voters fill out their ballots, Initiative 638, which would require sex verification for female school sports, deserves careful reflection. Much of the discussion around I-638 is around political commentary, but I have a perspective based in experience: I’ve actually coached a trans athlete.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/53292583

The early voting for the Midterms is now available in many places. You can early vote at a polling place: https://www.eac.gov/voters/register-and-vote-in-your-state

Or you can use mail-in voting: https://www.eac.gov/voters/national-mail-voter-registration-form

It's highly recommended to avoid election day voting in person, and vote early.

The Point Chehalis peninsula has always been a place of “shifting sands.”

Today, the peninsula is home to Westport Light State Park and the surrounding coastal town, which depends on commercial and charter fishing, surfing and beach tourism. Those draws are possible in part because of a 130-year-old commitment from the federal government to maintain a navigable channel to the Port of Grays Harbor with a mileslong jetty, undersea dredging and beach replenishment.

The latest possible shift, both geophysical and metaphorical, is the build-out of a links-style golf course like those along the Scottish coast. That proposal, called Westport Golf Links, will be the subject of a special meeting of the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission on Monday at Aberdeen High School.

Nearly a decade after Washington State Parks designated Westport Light State Park as a prime location for privately developed recreation and seven years after a Seattle homebuilder and part-time Westport resident pitched the $60 million-$70 million investment, the commission seems close to making a decision on the long-debated project.

Proponents tout the economic benefits of jobs and visitor revenue in Washington’s eighth-poorest county, plus the opportunity for private capital to help a cash-strapped state agency address longstanding concerns around invasive species and fire risk. Opponents have cried foul over a litany of issues, chief among them wetland disturbance, chemical application for grounds maintenance and risk of further coastal erosion.

The unprecedented proposal has also left the community pondering the park’s future. Will the nature lovers and grungy surfers be able to coexist with well-heeled golfers?

Against a backdrop of increased immigration enforcement nationwide, a new report from the University of Washington Center of Human Rights confirms ICE is still using state data to find targets in Washington.

The relocation comes as Camas High School, one of the four schools entered in the meet, is receiving national attention due to the participation of a transgender girl on the girls cross-country team. The Class 4A Greater St. Helens League district cross-country championships will now be hosted at the former Underwriters Laboratories campus in Camas, instead of Lewisville Regional Park.

The Columbian reported that league athletic directors voted 9-0 to move the race. League president Bob Kickner did not immediately respond to The Seattle Times’ request for comment on Wednesday night.

“Based on the controversial climate surrounding the cross-country community, the Greater St. Helens League reevaluated our potential host courses in terms of safety, security, controllability, staffing and course conditions,” Kickner told The Columbian. “We feel this move will put all the student athletes in the best position to have a successful and competitive championship.”

The Camas School District owns the Underwriters Laboratories campus property, according to The Columbian, which allows district security officers to patrol the site. Five district security officers and two Camas police vehicles were at Tuesday’s meet, the report noted.

Runners at the new site are also more visible as there is less tree coverage than the other course, according to The Columbian. Tension has built within the Camas High School girls cross-country program in recent weeks as online posts criticized a transgender sophomore for participating in the girls category. Athletes and a parent from Skyview High School protested the athlete’s participation during a dual meet on Sept. 15.

“Saying that we would love and care for any child was not enough,” Jenn DeGross said. “They were asking us then to be very specific: ‘Will you use their preferred pronouns? Will you take them to Pride parades? Will you take them to [gender-affirming] medical appointments?’ Things that, as Christians, we could not be supportive of or affirm.”

The DeGrosses refused, and the state declined to renew their license — raising questions about the religious freedom of foster parents, the role of Washington state in protecting youth in care, and how best to manage the shortage of qualified foster parents.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal advocacy organization, sued on the DeGrosses’ behalf, saying the new license requirement violated their constitutional rights to free speech and free exercise of their religion. The organization has brought similar lawsuits in Massachusetts and Vermont.

Washington state chose to settle and agreed to remove the requirement that people who want to be foster parents support children’s gender identity and sexuality.

Thousands of children are in foster care in Washington state. They enter the system after a state department verifies reports of abuse, neglect, or abandonment. If they don’t have family members who can care for them, they’re often placed with a licensed foster caregiver.

No one tracks how many of Washington’s foster children identify as LGBTQ+, but about a quarter of young adults under 30 do, and children in foster care are more likely to identify as LGBTQ+ than the population as a whole.

Washington's only non-profit appellate public defense law firm has historically been tasked with handling around 40% of public defense appeals. But without a new contract agreement, it could have to close its doors at the end of the year, throwing hundreds of active cases into jeopardy.

On Oct. 15, 2026, students, families, neighbors and employees will drop, cover and hold on for the Great Washington ShakeOut, part of the country’s largest earthquake drill. The event also includes siren tests and evacuation drills in some schools.

At 10:15 a.m. on Oct. 15, you’re invited to drop, cover and hold on wherever you are – whether it’s at work, home or school. Practicing builds muscle memory for when the real earthquake comes. This will help you react quicker and be safer.

At about the same time, more than 120 Washington tsunami sirens along the inner and outer coast will be tested using the real wailing sound of a tsunami warning, not the Westminster Chimes that are typically used during the monthly tests. PLEASE DO NOT CALL 911.

There WILL be a test of the Emergency Alert System on radio and television this year.

The Wireless Emergency Alert text system on cell phones will NOT be tested.

Those who have downloaded the free MyShake Earthquake Early Warning App on their phones will get a test. Sirens related to the Columbia Generating Station will be tested in the Tri-Cities areas and some local jurisdictions will test their reverse 911 and opt-in text alerts. NOAA Weather Radios will also sound an alarm. To make sure you’re signed up for alerts, visit https://mil.wa.gov/alerts

Lahar sirens in Pierce County will not be tested.

This year’s ShakeOut theme is “Prepared Neighbors.” After a major earthquake and/or tsunami, there will be help coming in the forms of first responders and assistance coming in from all over the country. But in the immediate aftermath of a quake, individuals and neighbors in local communities will be the first ones responding. In addition to practicing Drop, Cover, and Hold On this ShakeOut, everyone is encouraged to do at least one more thing to help their neighborhood become more prepared. Learn more at https://mil.wa.gov/neighborhoods

Registration isn’t required but it helps the state understand how effective its outreach is. It’s also free and easy to register at https://www.shakeout.org/washington

Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings, who has previously called for the rejection of IP26-645 along with travel expert Rick Steves, speaks directly to the camera in the thirty-second ad, seated in a chair, while explanatory graphics appear next to him.

"I’m Ken Jennings, host of Jeopardy!, here with a pop quiz.

Did you know Initiative 645 would give millionaires and billionaires a thirteen billion dollar tax break, making Washington’s unfair tax system, where working families pay two times more than the wealthiest, even worse?

Or that 645 would mean huge cuts to public schools?

Or that teachers, nurses and small businesses all oppose 645?

It doesn’t take a quiz show host to know that 645 is wrong for Washington.

Vote NO."

The woman, identified in court documents as A.P., is a UW sorority member, according to her attorneys. Her lawsuit against the university and Wyatt Ohara was filed in King County Superior Court last year.

The lawsuit alleges UW knew about a temporary civil restraining order involving Ohara and another woman before A.P. was raped, but failed to adequately regulate, monitor, or restrict him to protect other students.

UW disputes the significance of that allegation.

In a statement to KIRO 7, UW said court records show the temporary civil restraining order was issued before Ohara and the other woman enrolled at UW and was no longer in effect by the time they began attending the university.

“The University was not aware of any active court-approved restraining or protective orders in effect against the respondent student when he was admitted or when he enrolled,” UW spokesperson Victor Balta said.

According to the lawsuit, the earlier order had been obtained by another woman, identified in court documents as Jane Doe 2. A.P.’s attorneys say the order prohibited Ohara from attending the same parties as that woman.

...

According to the lawsuit, filed Nov. 19, 2022, and brought against the fraternity member and the University of Washington, A.P. attended two parties at the fraternity house – a brunch and later a tailgate dubbed Pi Kappa “live-out” – where she was served “excessive amounts of alcohol as a minor.”

A.P. and the fraternity member did not know one another. During the tailgate event, the fraternity member allegedly provided A.P. with excessive amounts of alcohol, prior to which she did not appear intoxicated. “However, after drinking on the balcony with the frat member, A.P. was intoxicated to the point where she could not stand on her own nor verbally complete full sentences,” the lawsuit states.

The frat member then took A.P. from the Pi Kappa live-out to the fraternity house where he proceeded to sexually assault her while she was completely unconscious, according to the lawsuit. Fellow students eventually gained access to the room, despite the locked door, where they observed A.P. impaired and noted her blood in the fraternity member’s bed, the lawsuit states.

Following, the frat member admitted to engaging in sexual intercourse with A.P., and on Nov. 22, 2024, pled guilty to rape in the third degree.

Just a reminder to vote No on this trash initiative next month.

Engine-room workers, who often alternate seven daily 12-hour shifts with seven days off, say they’ve piled up overtime for years, to keep the nation’s biggest ferry fleet running. Performance even improved recently to 98% trips completed and 80% on time, and reliable service during FIFA World Cup.

Burnout finally caught up with the boys in the boat. The consequence was 13 of 18 ferries idle, scuttling people’s trips across Puget Sound for commutes, leisure, or medical appointments.

Washington state’s struggle to operate aging boats is well known to the public, but the nation’s largest ferry fleet, serving 20 million people a year, is also vulnerable if more than a few people cancel their shifts.

There are no quick solutions. The union and Gov. Bob Ferguson listened to each other in meetings after last week’s Monday morning sickout. They agreed engine-room pay and working conditions must improve.

“I do not expect something like this to happen again,” said Eric Winge, representative of the Marine Engineers Benefit Association (MEBA). “We’re working hard to ensure that it doesn’t, but we’re asking for some help. Let’s get the staffing levels up to where we’re not expected to come in so much on overtime. That is not a sustainable or safe way to run the ferry system, right?”

Gov. Bob Ferguson, in a letter to MEBA members Friday, expressed appreciation for their service, and said he’s ordering a new salary study as a basis for higher pay, after the current contract expires June 30, 2027.

“Going forward, in order to maintain a constructive partnership, it is imperative that there are no further service disruptions,” he wrote.

The candidates fielded questions from moderators Ken Boddie and Lisa Balick on a broad slate of topics, including healthcare, taxes, workplace safety, data centers and immigration enforcement.

Braun and Gluesenkamp Perez offered similar stances on some issues — both said they support vote-by-mail and temporarily freezing the federal gas tax, while neither supports a federal moratorium on data centers.

That didn’t stop them from relentlessly attacking each other. Braun referred to Gluesenkamp Perez derogatorily as a “D.C. politician” seven times, while Gluesenkamp Perez repeatedly argued Braun’s loyalty lies with President Donald Trump, who has endorsed the longtime state lawmaker.

The daylight between the candidates expanded when Balick asked them about their stance on the SAVE America Act, a Republican-led bill aimed at overhauling U.S. election administration rules by tightening proof-of-citizenship and photo identification requirements.

Braun said he supports the bill, while Gluesenkamp Perez — despite voting for an earlier version of the bill — stood by her February decision to vote against its latest form, which added voter ID requirements.

The candidates were also asked about their positions on the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics.

Braun opened his answer by blaming the Biden administration’s border policy, and added that he’d like to see deportations focus mainly on those who committed crimes. He also argued that “local and state law enforcement be allowed to cooperate professionally with federal law enforcement.”

For her part, Gluesenkamp Perez emphasized the need for secure borders.

“But I also know that the reason that people come here is because we’re a country of law and order. That matters to us, and that goes for everybody,” she said. “We want to see federal law enforcement follow these same high standards.”

The 80,000-square-foot facility is a public-private partnership between the city and the Seattle Kraken, at the site of the former Houghton Place Park and Ride.

Kirkland had bought the property from the state with plans to build an aquatic and recreation center. But the proposed levy measure to fund it failed spectacularly, said City Manager Kurt Triplett.

“A lot of our community said, ‘Find a way to create recreational opportunities without general taxation,’” Triplett said. “Seek out partners and also create a sense of community.”

That’s when Seattle Kraken approached the city with an idea — what about putting an iceplex instead, similar to the NHL team’s practice facility in Northgate?

“We’re just busting at the seams,” said Krista Leesment, VP of business operations at the Kraken Community Iceplex.

Leesment estimated the Seattle area has about 13 ice rinks, not enough to meet the growing demand as more children and adults participate in ice sports.

When the Northgate facility opened five years ago it had six youth teams, Leesment said. Today it has 42.

“On Monday, thousands across Puget Sound showed up for their ferry and found it tied to the dock. Twenty-three engine room workers had called out sick, every qualified replacement turned down the shift and at one point 13 of the state’s 18 operating ferries sat idle.

Washington State Ferries’ social media explanation came with a salary attached. Staff chief engineers, the agency wrote, “have a base salary of $157,000, and can make more than $350,000 a year with overtime.”

But the staff chief is a vessel’s most senior chief engineer, the third-highest-paid job on board. The assistant engineers, oilers and wipers make far less. A new wiper starts at $31.57 an hour.

Engineers work seven 12-hour days in a row, then get seven off. Shifts can end in the middle of the night with an hour’s drive ahead. Every week on is 84 hours, with about 104 hours a year of mandatory overtime built in. That’s what the base pays for. Getting anywhere near $350,000 means working well over 100 of their 182 days off. By that logic, a Washington minimum-wage worker on that same schedule would make more than $70,000. Nobody would call that overpaid. They’d call it no days off.

Engineers work those extra days because the state hasn’t hired enough of them, and a ferry can’t sail without a full engine crew. Every one of those shifts is paid at time and a half. The shortage isn’t saving the state money. It’s costing more. WSF says every boat starts the day staffed at Coast Guard minimums. That’s true only because worn-out people keep saying yes to overtime, which the engineers’ union warned this week isn’t safe.

Engineers earn good money by local standards. That’s not the issue. A Coast Guard unlimited-horsepower engineer’s license is good on any U.S.-flagged ship. Washington State Ferries pays below industry, and worst in the engine room: chief engineers earn about 17% less than its captains. In a June survey, more than 60% of engine room workers said they were likely to retire or leave. The ferries run on their goodwill.

The state says there’s no budget. Going into the 2027-29 contracts, it offered no raises. Neutral arbitrators found that unfair for most ferry workers and awarded some employees raises of up to 4.5% a year. The engine room got nothing. With Seattle-area prices up 4.9% over the past year, that’s a pay cut. And those raises still need state funding approval, which has been denied before. Squeezing crews, maintenance and new boats pushes the bill down the road, the way Boeing’s cost-cutting did.

In 1999, Initiative 695 repealed the car-tab tax that paid for about 70% of the ferry system’s capital budget and nearly a third of its operating budget. For years the cuts landed on the fleet. Now they’re landing on the crews.

The root problem is how Washington raises money. As of 2024, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy ranked our tax system the second most regressive in the country. The poorest fifth of households paid 13.8% of their income in state and local taxes; the top 1% paid 4.1%. A new 9.9% tax on wage income over $1 million is a start, but it faces a challenge from Initiative 645, which proposes repealing it.

If you care about the ferries, call your legislators before January’s session. Tell them to fund the crews’ raises and fix the tax system that keeps coming up short.

Washington created its ferry system in 1951 as a stopgap until bridges were built. In 1992, Vashon islanders turned out by the thousands against a proposed bridge because they wanted to stay small. That’s their right, but it has a price, and taxpayers statewide are paying it. If the state won’t pay to run ferries properly, it should build the bridges or ask the counties that chose ferries to share the cost. What it can’t do is keep running ferries on the cheap and explaining canceled sailings.”

I wrote earlier this summer about how Christian Nationalists were trying to take over the town of Battle Ground, Washington—just north of Portland, Oregon. Basically, the wealthy right-wing business owners of Maddox, an electrical equipment company, were buying up properties all over the place, claiming they were doing so to help revitalize the area. But in doing so, they were effectively making it impossible for anyone to stand in their way if they disagreed with how the owners were reimagining the city. Hell, they took over the local newspaper, too.

Those owners, including Maddox CEO Camden Spiller, are connected to Christian Nationalist pastor Doug Wilson, which makes all of this even more concerning.

One Maddox manager was elected mayor. The deputy mayor was married to another Maddox employee. Another person tied to the company was on the public school board. And another manager, who co-hosted a podcast with a prominent local pastor, said their show was “an experiment in Christian localism,” talking about how they wanted to control as much as they could in Battle Ground. (Reporter Erik Neumann of Oregon Public Broadcasting has done extensive reporting on all of this.)

Back in May, the city council considered adding religious invocations to the starts of their meetings. In August, it became a reality. As writer Brian Kaylor notes, at the meeting when they considered a formal resolution, one pastor even said during the public comments that an “invocation prayer at the beginning of each council meeting will be a blessing. I know because the Bible tells us so.”

So the city passed a resolution allowing invocations prayers—it was a 5-1 vote—and said speakers would be chosen on a “rotating, first-come, first-served basis.” Speakers would only be allowed to give those invocations once a year and anyone who wanted a slot could schedule it by calling the City Manager or filling out an online form. The only rules were that the invocations had to be under three minutes, the message had to be “positive and uplifting,” and speakers could not “denigrate any other faiths or beliefs, including nonbelievers, threaten damnation, proselytize, or preach conversion.”

If the goal was to avoid any lawsuits, they seemed to check all the boxes. I have to assume they thought only Christians would sign up to do the honors.

Instead, the first person to sign up was a Satanist.

More than four hundred Washingtonians across 19 locations took to the streets Sunday to demand a statewide moratorium on data centers.

In Walla Walla, where a $4.8 billion Amazon data center project is planned, the tension among opponents and local officials was palpable.

“Some of you standing here today have been called extremists and communists for standing with us,” Ben Mattice, co-founder of the Walla Walla Anti-Data Center League said to a crowd of about 60. “You are not extremists for wanting transparency. You are not extremists for wanting clean drinking water.”

The state, home to 130 data centers, offers tax breaks on labor and new computer equipment for data center operators. Washington ranks 10th in the country for the number of data centers in operation.

“It is our job to call on officials … to protect our communities and to, at the very least, put a pause on hyperscale data centers,” Mattice said.

More in the article.

On Oct. 2, King County Superior Judge Janet Helson approved the $14 million lawsuit settlement over years of misleading marketing emails from the grocery wholesaler. Eligible Costco members, who received the marketing material between June 2, 2021, and July 7, 2026, were contacted in July to file as members of the possible settlement. Members had until Aug. 24 to complete the claim form. Costco has denied any wrongdoing.

In addition to the $14 million settlement, Costco will also be required to pay $4.6 million in counsel fees and $2,500 to Michael Aaland, the named representative in the case. All remaining funds will go to the nonprofit Legal Foundation of Washington, according to court documents.

What is the Costco case about?

The class action lawsuit, originally filed in King County Superior Court in 2025, alleges that the wholesaler violated state law by sending emails "containing false or misleading subject lines" to Washington shoppers. Some of these emails, according to the settlement website, contained message like “Today is the last day to access Member-Only Saving” and “Hot Buys available for 5 Days Only.”

According to court documents, Costco is accused of violating the Washington Commercial Electronic Mail Act and the Washington Consumer Protection Act. According to the state's Commercial Electronic Mail Act, Washington residents who receive these illegal emails can seek up to $500 in damages.

More in the article.

Reiterating how much he values the 23 Washington State Ferries engineers who called out sick Monday in protest of low wages, today Gov. Bob Ferguson thanked them for returning to work by throwing the below-deck staff an extra fish.