At least two domestic indoor cats in Washington state have tested positive for avian influenza, or bird flu, after eating commercially available raw pet food, the state’s Department of Agriculture reported Wednesday.

One of the cats was euthanized, and the other is being treated by a veterinarian. The cats are from King and Snohomish County, and more cats are being tested.

The pet owners reported feeding their cats food from Wild Coast Raw pet food. The brand was connected earlier this month to severe illnesses in several housecats in Oregon that were euthanized after getting sick. The cats and the food in the Oregon cases tested positive for H5N1 Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI).

Certain lots of Wild Coast’s Boneless Free Range Chicken are now under a voluntary recall, and the Olympia-based company reported that it has switched to fully cooked poultry recipes.

Bird flu symptoms in cats include lethargy, low appetite, fever, hypothermia, progression of illness to pneumonia, progression of illness to neurologic abnormalities and upper respiratory infection. Cat owners who observe these symptoms should isolate their animals and call their veterinarians, informing them of symptoms so they can reduce the risk of transmission.

The currently circulating strain of HPAI is considered low-risk to the public, but there is greater risk for those who handle contaminated raw pet food products or who care for infected animals, the WSDA said in its press release. Currently, the WSDA does not recommend feeding raw pet food or raw milk to animals.

While rare, people can get sick with bird flu, killing one person in Louisiana earlier this year. Bird flu can also spread to cattle, which has prompted testing and precautions around milk and dairy herds.

This article was originally published by the Washington State Standard.

A federal judge in Seattle on Tuesday blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order halting the admission of refugees into the United States.

The ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Jamal Whitehead, a Biden appointee, is the first to block Trump’s order indefinitely suspending the United States Refugee Admissions Program. 

Whitehead said the president’s order likely “crossed the line.”

The order, one of many the president signed on his first day in office, describes the country as “inundated with record levels of migration” over the past four years, threatening resources for U.S. citizens.

The order says Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem should recommend within 90 days whether the refugee program should resume. 

The move stranded thousands of refugees expecting to come to the country. Days later, the White House also suspended funding for resettlement agencies, leading to layoffs and furloughs. 

Tuesday’s ruling comes days after a federal judge in Washington, D.C., denied a request to temporarily block the refugee funding freeze in a separate case.

Nine affected individuals and three resettlement organizations, including Lutheran Community Services Northwest in Tacoma, filed the lawsuit in Seattle court this month. The individual plaintiffs, identified in court papers only by their first names, include refugees, refugee applicants and people in the United States sponsoring refugees. 

One of them, a Bellevue woman, was sponsoring an Afghan refugee family before the federal government suspended their case, according to the complaint. Another was a refugee named Sara who was fleeing Iraq and awaiting travel plans to join her eldest son in Idaho before Trump’s executive order.

“When Sara closes her eyes, she still imagines herself at the airport and the joy she would feel in seeing her oldest son waiting for her,” the lawsuit reads. “He is now a U.S. citizen and is expecting his first child. Sara is crushed that she might miss the birth of her first grandchild.”

The plaintiffs argue Trump’s order violates the Administrative Procedure Act by skirting the usual process for agency actions. They claim the policy must include a public comment period under the law.

They also argue the executive action is at odds with the Refugee Act of 1980 that laid out the process for letting refugees into the country.

Attorneys for the Trump administration countered in court filings, stating Congress has delegated the admission of refugees to the president. So he can block their entry if he finds it “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States,” the Justice Department wrote.

The president also sets the refugee admissions goal each year. At the end of his first term, Trump set that number at 15,000. Last year, former President Joe Biden set the benchmark at 125,000.

“The president can set the number at zero and there’s no requirement for an explanation of that,” August Flentje, of the Department of Justice, said in court Tuesday.

In his first term, Trump tried to block refugee arrivals various times, leading to numerous successful court challenges. The plaintiffs say his order this time around goes even further than his previous attempts.

In an amicus brief, Washington Attorney General Nick Brown, a Democrat, and colleagues from 18 other states sided with the plaintiffs. The brief states Washington resettled 4% of the refugees nationwide in fiscal year 2024. 

The states called the order “arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law.”

The judge’s injunction in the case, known as Pacito v. Trump, will remain in effect until the case is resolved, unless the Justice Department successfully appeals it.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals would have jurisdiction over the appeal. Democratic presidents appointed a majority of the circuit court’s judges. The case would next go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

This is the latest rebuke for a Trump executive order from a federal judge in Seattle. Other judges have also sided against the Trump administration in cases against his birthright citizenship and gender-affirming care orders. The Washington state attorney general’s office brought both of those cases.

The Washington State Standard originally published this article on Feb. 25, 2025.

This article originally appeared in the Washington State Standard.

Washington state’s attempt to block the Trump administration’s plan to restrict birthright citizenship could soon be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

An appeals court late Wednesday rejected the Justice Department’s challenge to a lower court ruling that halted implementation of President Donald Trump’s executive order, teeing up an argument justices could soon hear.

Washington’s case, brought with Oregon, Arizona and Illinois as well as two pregnant women without legal immigration status, could be the first the Supreme Court takes up on the birthright citizenship question.

Two of the three judges from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found the Trump administration had not shown it was likely to succeed on the merits of its case. The three judges were appointed by three different presidents: Trump during his first term, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush.

In a concurring opinion, Judge Danielle Forrest, the Trump appointee, wrote she sided with her colleagues not because of the merits of the case but because the Justice Department hadn’t shown the circumstances were worthy of the emergency action it was seeking.

“Just because a district court grants preliminary relief halting a policy advanced by one of the political branches does not in and of itself an emergency make,” Forrest wrote. “A controversy, yes. Even an important controversy, yes. An emergency, not necessarily.”

U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour has called Trump’s order “blatantly unconstitutional.” In a Seattle courtroom earlier this month, he approved the second of four preliminary injunctions blocking Trump’s order until the case is resolved.

Even if the 9th Circuit judges had agreed with the Justice Department’s arguments Wednesday, the three other rulings still would have blocked Trump’s directive.

The executive action aims to end birthright citizenship for babies born to a mother and father who are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. Legal precedent has long upheld birthright citizenship since it was codified in the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868.

In court filings, attorneys for the administration had argued the executive order is one part of the White House’s efforts to curb illegal immigration by “removing incentives to unlawful immigration and closing exploitable loopholes.”

They also said the states “cannot plausibly claim any injury” from the administration’s preparations to implement the order. Washington state and the other plaintiffs have said Trump’s order could mean losing federal funding to provide services if people are no longer born citizens.

“The equities and public interest likewise cut decisively in favor of maintaining the injunction,” wrote Lane Polozola of the Washington state Attorney General’s office. 

Lifting the lower court ruling, Polozola added, “would cause the States to lose jurisdiction over thousands of their residents, forfeit unrecoverable funds from federal contracts, and invest millions to abruptly change major programs that turn on state residents’ citizenship.”

The Washington State Standard originally published this article on Feb. 20, 2025.

As the Trump administration pushes to cut billions in federal funding for public universities and research centers, local scientists gathered to protest the potential cuts to their jobs and the research that they say is vital to the community. 

At a rally outside the University of Washington’s Genome Sciences building on Wednesday, hundreds of people demonstrated against a new National Institute of Health directive that would carve a massive hole in research budgets at institutions across the country. 

Research universities like the UW receive hundreds of millions each year from the NIH. A lot of the money comes from reimbursements for “indirect costs” associated with research, such as facilities, administration, electricity, maintenance and salaries for support staff like postdoctoral research fellows. The UW has negotiated a 55.5% indirect cost rate for on-campus activities, which means the school gets $55.50 to help pay for overhead costs for every $100 it receives in research grants. 

But on Feb. 7, the NIH abruptly announced a new policy that would cap all reimbursements at 15%, even for grants that have already been awarded. Local research institutions say the restriction would be a massive blow. In a lawsuit challenging the order filed by Washington and 21 other states, UW said it would lose $90 million to $110 million — which would force the school to lay off staff; delay lifesaving research; and scale back ongoing clinical trials for kidney disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and other illnesses. Washington State University would also be affected.

A federal judge ordered a temporary pause on the planned funding cuts in response to the states’ lawsuit, but the future remains uncertain. Researchers were already reeling from Trump’s attacks on research funding tied to diversity, equity and inclusion, and researchers at the protest Wednesday said the looming specter of NIH cuts has rattled the scientific community. 

“It affects planning,” said Jack Castelli, a Ph.D. candidate at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center whose research involves hematopoietic stem cells and engineering immunity against HIV. “We don’t know if those funds are going to stay around or not, so we have to be more careful in what we purchase for research.” 

Fred Hutch stands to lose as much as $125 million under the proposed NIH cuts, The Seattle Times reported. 

Castelli, an organizer with UAW 4121, the union that organized Wednesday’s rally and represents academic student employees, postdocs and researchers at UW, noted that Fred Hutch has already rolled back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in response to President Trump’s executive order seeking to end grants related to DEI. 

“Bending to illegal orders like that is obviously going to impact the research,” Castelli said. 

Ansel Neunzert, an affiliate physics instructor at the University of Washington Bothell whose research involves gravitational waves, said the NIH order and DEI grant cuts are having a “chilling effect” on the next generation of researchers. 

“I’ve got students who are considering leaving the field, trying to think about whether or not they’re going to be able to do this kind of work,” Neuzert said. “I think that’s going to have a massive impact, regardless of what happens with the judicial outcome at the end.” 

If the cuts go through, the researchers who lose their jobs will be the first ones affected. But the damage will ultimately be felt by the entire community, said Valentina Alvarez, a biochemistry Ph.D. candidate at UW who researches immune diseases and cancer. 

“It’s definitely going to show up in lack of access to health care,” Alvarez said. “Slower waiting times, there’s going to be less people working in general, slower developments for life-saving medicine.” 

Eva Cherniavsky, an English professor at UW who attended the rally, worries that the loss of research grant funding could also lead to cuts at other departments. She’s doubtful the university would be able to fill the hole with tuition increases or funding from the state, which is already grappling with a massive budget deficit this year. It all adds up to a “perfect storm,” she said.  

“Different sections of the university are not hived off,” Cherniavsky said. “It’s kind of life or death for the University of Washington right now.” 

At the rally, U.S Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-WA7, said the NIH funds had been appropriated by Congress, and described the Trump administration’s efforts to cut them as “unconstitutional” and “an authoritarian power grab.” (The Atlantic reported yesterday that NIH staff weren’t aware of the policy change until the Department of Health and Human Services sent a memo ordering NIH staff to push it through the agency in a single day.) 

The NIH funds “critical research that is capable of saving countless lives,” Jayapal said to the gathered crowd of postdocs, Ph.D. candidates, teaching assistants, professors and other scientific researchers. “The cuts that they are proposing are devastating.”

Note: This story was updated on 2/20 to correct the spelling of Eva Cherniavsky's name. 

This article originally appeared in the Washington State Standard.

A federal judge in Seattle on Friday temporarily paused President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to stop federal funding for hospitals providing gender-affirming care for young people.

The temporary restraining order issued by U.S. District Court Judge Lauren King is the second on this issue in as many days. On Thursday, a federal judge in Maryland issued a 14-day nationwide pause in a case brought by several transgender youth along with parents and advocacy groups.

This case was filed last week by Washington, Oregon and Minnesota, along with three anonymous doctors representing themselves and their patients. 

In granting the order, King said Trump’s order likely won’t withstand “constitutional scrutiny.”

Late last month, Trump issued an executive order entitled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.” The order states “it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another.”

Trump’s order seeks to end grants to hospitals and medical schools providing gender-affirming care to people under age 19. 

Washington Attorney General Nick Brown argues the order is unconstitutional in several ways. 

In court filings, the states have said the order violates the 10th Amendment by trying to regulate medical care in the states, as well as the equal protection guarantee against discrimination in the 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

King repeatedly pressed the Trump administration’s attorney, Vinita Andrapalliyal, to explain what treatments covered in the executive order apply to both transgender and cisgender people. Andrapalliyal couldn’t provide one. 

The judge, who former President Joe Biden nominated for the bench in 2021, went on to push Andrapalliyal to answer numerous other questions about the meaning of the executive order. The attorney couldn’t answer them.

“You’re not answering my questions,” King said. “This is extremely frustrating.”

The states say cutting off federal funding could be devastating. For example, UW Medicine provides gender-affirming care and receives $500 million in federal funding each year, according to court documents. This withholding of funding already appropriated by Congress would also violate the separation of powers, the states argued.

Justice Department attorneys counter that the administration hadn’t moved to revoke any funding, so the states’ claims are, in legal parlance, unripe. They also say the executive order directs agencies to act on the president’s order “consistent with applicable law,” so the order can’t be construed as a directive to violate the law.

Care for gender dysphoria in youth can include puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgery. Trump has long argued, with little evidence, that young people regret transitioning. 

The order stoked confusion in hospitals across the country. The plaintiffs cite a White House press release stating the order was “already having its intended effect” as “hospitals around the country are taking action to downsize or eliminate their so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ programs.”

In Washington, Seattle Children’s reportedly postponed gender-affirming surgeries for trans youth after the president’s Jan. 28 order.

Speaking to reporters after the hearing, Brown thanked his staff “who demonstrated, once again, that this president of the United States is not above the law.”

“I want to encourage all of the providers in this state, in the state of Oregon and the state of Minnesota who also joined this effort to get back to work to continue to provide the medically necessary care for their children,” the attorney general added.

This is one of several orders Trump has signed targeting the transgender community. Others aim to ban trans women from playing women’s sports, prohibit transgender people from serving in the military and order incarcerated trans women be transferred to men’s prisons. He has also declared the federal government would recognize only two sexes.

King, the first Native American federal judge in Washington state, issued Friday’s order in front of a courtroom packed with observers wearing trans flag stickers. Applause broke out in the room. 

This is the second temporary restraining order Washington has won against a Trump order in federal court in Seattle. Last month, Judge John Coughenour issued a similar ruling in a case against Trump’s attempt to restrict birthright citizenship, calling the executive order “blatantly unconstitutional.”

These two cases will likely follow a similar path. 

The states will ask for a permanent preliminary injunction to last throughout the proceedings. Coughenour issued such an injunction last week in the birthright case. 

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the majority of which are Democratic appointees, would decide on appeals. From there, the case would go to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Trump appointed three of the justices. 

The Justice Department appealed Coughenour’s approval of the preliminary injunction in the birthright citizenship case, so that case is for now in the appellate court’s hands.

A hearing on a preliminary injunction in the gender-affirming care case would be set for Feb. 28.

The Washington State Standard originally published this article on Feb. 14, 2025.

The Seattle City Council is creating a new committee to respond to the volley of executive orders from President Donald Trump that have the potential to impact everything from federal grants to immigrant communities to LGBTQ+ rights.  

Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck proposed creating the Select Committee on Federal Administration and Policy Changes on Jan. 31.  

“Many organizations, programs and people within Seattle rely on federal funding to carry out their work and live healthy lives,” wrote Rinck in a press statement. “What is clear is that major changes are underway on the federal front, and local leaders must be tuned in.” 

Rinck cited a lengthy list of local issues that could be impacted by the loss of federal money, including housing, public safety, transportation, emergency and disaster aid, climate change, public health, human and social services, immigration, nutrition, economic development, small businesses and education. 

Council President Sara Nelson circulated a memo on Jan. 31 to create the committee.  

“It’s my responsibility as an elected official and as Seattle City Council President to make sure every one of my constituents feels safe, particularly our most vulnerable communities who are being targeted by the onslaught of executive orders on a daily basis. We’re all seeing the chaos and uncertainty in Washington, D.C. but we’re focused on stability here,” Nelson wrote in a press statement. 

Select committees like the one proposed by Rinck comprise all nine Council members and are meant to focus more sharply on an issue such as the city budget. They take up early versions of legislation to discuss and amend before bills head to a full City Council meeting for a final vote. 

The Council expects to hold the first meeting of the Select Committee on Federal Administration and Policy Changes in early March.

A “Youth Bill of Rights” adopted by the King County Council this month doesn’t require any action from elected officials, but its sponsor hopes this and the creation of a youth council will ensure that young peoples’ priorities have a meaningful role in policy debates. 

The Youth Bill of Rights was drafted over several years with input from more than 2,000 local young people ages 7 to 24. The document lists 10 priorities: basic needs and well-being; health; education and learning; equity and social justice; safety and security; community and belonging; environment; transportation; youth voice and recreation and sports. 

A motion to adopt the Bill of Rights passed unanimously earlier this month, with one councilmember excused. 

“As a country, we’re not always the best to our young people,” Rod Dembowski, the King County Councilmember who sponsored the motion, told Cascade PBS. “This is a way to lift up their voices, put them in front of people that are writing budgets and passing laws to say ‘Here’s what we think we need.’”

Will the Bill of Rights have a concrete impact on King County’s policies? Dembowski said “The truthful answer is it could go either way.” 

The effectiveness of the document will depend on how seriously elected officials decide to take it, Dembowski said. He hopes councilmembers consult the Youth Bill of Rights when considering budget or policy decisions that could impact young people. 

“One of the things we can do is bring forward this Bill of Rights and say ‘Well, the young folks in this county said they care about basic needs and well-being,” Dembowski said. “‘They care about health. They want investments in education and learning.’” 

The task force of young people who worked on the Youth Bill of Rights also recommended that the County Council create a youth commission of appointed representatives to advise the Council. Several Washington cities, including Seattle and Tacoma, have youth commissions in advisory roles. Dembowski said a youth commission could help “empower” the new Youth Bill of Rights. He hopes to start working on establishing the commission later this year. 

“If folks don’t bring the [Youth Bill of Rights] forward, or if we don’t establish the youth commission, then it certainly could fall by the wayside and be set on a shelf like a lot of government reports,” Dembowski said. “But hopefully that doesn’t happen.”

The Department of Natural Resources announced a six-month pause on timber harvest from some mature forests on Friday.

Limiting timber sales from such forests, also known as legacy forests, was a central campaign promise of the new Commissioner of Public Lands, Dave Upthegrove. Legacy forests are mature forests that have naturally regrown after logging activity or other disturbances, such as fire or landslides.

During the pause, DNR plans to identify and map the characteristics of the forests the agency manages in order to comply with its policy to conserve 10% to 15% of structurally complex forests. 

A key function of the DNR is to sell timber from public lands to generate revenue for rural communities to cover things such as education.

Environmental groups have expressed concern about harvesting from legacy forests, stating that they are essential in storing carbon and maintaining the area's biodiversity. Removing trees from such forests would negatively impact species and plants in the area. Advocacy groups have urged the DNR to implement more regulations regarding timber harvests on public lands. 

“Forests define Washington — they are vital to our habitats, to our communities, and our economy,” Upthegrove said. “I want to ensure that our forests will continue to work sustainably for the people of Washington for generations to come. The timeout will help us make that a reality.”

Once the criteria to exclude forests critical to carbon storage and habitat biodiversity is established, DNR said it will resume some of the paused sales.

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.

“We’ve received … sporadic reports over the years of instances of either physical abuse or sexual abuse at the facility,” said Aaron Korthuis, staff attorney for the NWIRP. “There was a more recent one that we heard about, and heard that it got reported to 911 – and that I think in particular spurred our desire to file a more comprehensive request for information at the facility, and that’s what led to the lawsuit.”

An ICE spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment, but has previously indicated the agency does not discuss matters related to ongoing litigation. 

On Oct. 2, the NWIRP filed a public records request under FOIA in order to access an array of documents ensuring both ICE and GEO’s implementation and compliance with the Prison Rape Elimination Act. 

Some of these documents entail: audits regarding NWIPC conducted pursuant to the PREA; written reports on sexual abuse incidents; results and findings from GEO’s annual sexual abuse reviews at the facility; records of disciplinary actions taken in response to sexual assault allegations; and the outcomes of any sexual abuse allegations within the facility.

The lawsuit states that six days after the request was filed, ICE acknowledged it had received it – and said it would invoke a 10-day extension of FOIA’s 20-business-day requirement, meaning ICE’s response would have been due by Nov. 13.

Korthuis said the goal with this case is to empower those unable to legally advocate for themselves due to lack of immigration status, and “shed light on what people need to do if they’re trying to hold the agency accountable and learn what works, what their rights are, and what they can expect in that process.”

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. 

Officials say the agreement, signed last week, will accelerate the cleanup of the site’s nuclear waste while maintaining safety. The project has busted budgets and deadlines in recent decades.

Last April, after four years of negotiations, the feds and state came to a tentative agreement to a 35-year legal contract governing Hanford’s cleanup, which includes how to deal with 56 million gallons of radioactive fluids and sludges in 177 leak-prone underground tanks roughly seven miles from the Columbia River.

The U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Washington Department of Ecology have spent the past eight months seeking public input and tweaking the tentative agreement.

In the early 1990s, state and federal officials decided Hanford tank waste should be mixed with glass flakes and melted together so the radioactive substances cannot escape for 10,000 years, a process called glassification. The original $4 billion glassification plant was supposed to be ready by 2009 and the work completed by 2019. The budget for glassification now is $17 billion and is expected to reach possibly $30 billion, according to various reports.

Currently, Hanford’s legal target calls for glassifying all wastes by 2052. DOE has internally moved those targets back to 2069,  according to a 2021 report by the Government Accountability Office. That date was not reflected in the changed legal agreement, but those deadlines could be changed in the future.

The new agreement keeps the previous timeline of starting to glassify less-radioactive tank wastes this year. Work on processing the 5 million to 6 million gallons of high-level wastes, which hold most of the radioactivity, is scheduled to start in 2033. However, the low-level waste glassification plant set to start operating this year can handle only roughly half of the wastes, which means a second plant will have to be built.

The finalized agreement also allows Hanford to use a new technology called grouting — mixing low-level wastes from 22 tanks within a type of cement. This technology has not yet been perfected with chemically complicated Hanford tank wastes. Other technologies and auxiliary plants are also covered in the new agreement. 

“More tank waste will get retrieved, treated, and disposed through 2040 and beyond. This is the best way to ensure surrounding communities and the Columbia River are protected,” said state ecology director Laura Watson in a press release.

 “This historic agreement … establishes an achievable plan for our Hanford tank waste mission for the next 15 years,” said DOE’s Hanford manager Brian Vance in the same news release.