A longer version of this article originally appeared in the Washington State Standard.

A controversial plan to kill up to half a million invasive barred owls to protect endangered spotted owls is in jeopardy after the Trump administration terminated three critical grants funding the program. 

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s barred owl management strategy was approved last September. 

The plan, set to start this year and continue for three decades, called for the lethal removal of barred owls in Washington, Oregon and California by shooting them with shotguns or, less frequently, capturing and euthanizing them. 

Barred owls and spotted owls prefer the same habitat and compete for the same food. But the barred owl is larger and more aggressive, and typically prevails in conflicts with the spotted owl.

Julia Smith, endangered species recovery section manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, told the state Fish and Wildlife Commission last week that the northern spotted owl will be functionally extinct in Washington within the next decade if no new action is taken. 

“There’s no easy button to recover this bird, and we’re left with only the most difficult options,” Smith said. 

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has said its plan to shoot barred owls would result in the annual removal of less than one-half of 1% of the species’ North American population.

Animal rights activists and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have publicly opposed the plan, calling it costly, unsustainable and inhumane. 

Now the Trump administration has canceled $1.1 million in grants to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to enact the program, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday. 

The grant cancellation is the first public indication of the administration’s stance on the plan. 

Washington is home to the endangered northern spotted owl, which was designated as “threatened” under the federal Endangered Species Act nearly 25 years ago.

In the Pacific Northwest, spotted owls are known for their central role in the “timber wars” of the 1980s and 1990s, which pitted environmentalists concerned about saving old-growth trees against loggers. 

This conflict eventually led to the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan, which put new protections in place for forests where the spotted owl lives.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says that the rate of spotted owl population decline showed signs of improvement until about 2008, but accelerated soon after, and that the downturn coincided with the expansion of barred owls into spotted owls’ territory. 

Smith, with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, said modeling of what would happen if barred owls were no longer present in Washington showed the spotted owl population growing steadily for the next 15 years and stabilizing in 30 to 40 years.  

The Washington State Standard originally published a longer version of this story on July 22, 2025. Cascade PBS has edited this story for length.

This article originally appeared in the Washington State Standard.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday agreed with a Seattle judge’s decision to universally block President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship.

The appeals judges ruled 2-1 that Trump’s order, issued on Inauguration Day, violates the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which states “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

“One power that the President was not granted, by Article II or by any other source, is the power to modify or change any clause of the United States Constitution,” Judge Ronald Gould, a Clinton appointee, wrote in his opinion.

Gould’s opinion, joined by Judge Michael Hawkins, sides with U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour, who stopped Trump’s order with an indefinite preliminary injunction in February. Such orders block enforcement while the case proceeds through the courts.

Coughenour called Trump’s order “blatantly unconstitutional.” The lawsuit was brought by Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Illinois and two pregnant noncitizen women who feared their children could be born without citizenship in any country.

In a statement, Washington Attorney General Nick Brown applauded the appeals court ruling.

“The court agrees that the president cannot redefine what it means to be American with the stroke of a pen,” Brown said. “He cannot strip away the rights, liberties, and protections of children born in our country.”

The decision from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals adds to the list of courts that have found Trump’s move unconstitutional and blocked enforcement of it. The ruling comes after the Department of Justice and Washington attorney general’s office argued the case in early June.

Since those arguments, the U.S. Supreme Court decided judges like Coughenour had overstepped their authority in blocking Trump’s order nationwide. The justices ruled nationwide injunctions should be limited to when necessary to “provide complete relief to each plaintiff.”

The high court’s decision left the door open for creating a checkerboard of states where birthright citizenship remained and others where it didn’t.

The justices didn’t take up the merits of Trump’s order.

Wednesday’s ruling is the second to confirm a complete block is necessary since the Supreme Court decision, after a New Hampshire federal judge certified a nationwide class action suit. 

The Trump administration looks to define “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” as only covering people whose primary allegiance is to the United States. So people born to parents only here temporarily or without legal status wouldn’t qualify for citizenship at birth.  

In 2022, about 153,000 babies across the country were born to two parents without legal immigration status, including 4,000 in Washington, according to the plaintiffs. The states have said they stand to lose federal funding through programs like Medicaid that otherwise could help these children if they were citizens.

Gould found this argument persuasive, justifying “complete relief” to block the order nationwide. He wrote that Trump’s birthright citizenship order would require states to overhaul their eligibility verification systems for social service programs.

“The preliminary injunction here merely prevents the Executive Branch from denying citizenship to individuals who are likely constitutionally entitled to citizenship,” Gould wrote. “Because, as the district court correctly concluded, the Executive Branch does not have a legitimate interest in violating the Constitution, the Executive Branch has not shown that either the public interest or the balance of equities tips in its favor.”

Judge Patrick Bumatay, a Trump appointee, disagreed, arguing the states lack standing to bring litigation over the order because their financial loss would be a “self-inflicted injury” if they choose to provide benefits to immigrants without legal status.

In his dissent, Bumatay didn’t address the issue of the injunction’s scope.

The Washington State Standard originally published this article on July 23, 2025.

This story originally appeared in the Spokesman-Review.

Sighs of relief, hesitant celebrations, even tears emanated from after-school providers and advocacy groups around the nation when they got word that the Trump administration lifted a three-week pause on $1.3 billion in federal grants that paid for summertime, before- and after-school programs.

“I was so excited I almost cried, just because of the state of our staff. They were freaking out, like ‘Am I going to have a job?’” said Debra Raub, executive director of Communities in Schools of Northeast Washington, a recipient of millions in grant funding for programs at six schools in Spokane County.

The nonprofit will continue to host after-school programs at Bemiss, Cooper, Regal and Stevens elementaries in Spokane Public Schools, as well as Seth Woodard and Orchard Center elementaries in the West Valley School District. Each school has around 30 students enrolled in the grant-funded programs.

“That’s hundreds of kids that would lose before-school, after-school and summer programming, which also affects parents’ ability to provide child care during that time period,” Raub said.

In June, the Department of Education froze previously approved funding for six different educational grants totaling around $6 billion, including $1.3 billion nationally in 21st Century Community Learning Centers that the department restored on Friday after three weeks in limbo.

Washington received $21.3 million from the grant, doled out to providers and school districts to operate the services at 105 sites in the state, according to a spokesperson from the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Raub’s nonprofit was expecting around $9 million to operate the programs at six schools for three more years in Spokane County.

The Trump administration froze the funding to ensure it was in line with the president’s priorities.

The administration has yet to make a decision whether it will follow suit and release the $5.5 billion that pays for staff training, English-language education, migrant education and literacy programs for adults in five other paused grants, according to a notice sent to grantees from the Department of Education.

Friday’s release of some of the grant money doesn’t extend beyond the upcoming school year, despite Congress OKing the grants until 2028 without interruption.

President Donald Trump’s proposed 2026 budget doesn’t allocate any dollars to after-school programs specifically, instead consolidating the existing 21st Century Community Learning Center grants with 17 other K-12 grants and reducing their combined allocations by 69%, according to D.C.-based advocacy group Afterschool Alliance.

The group’s executive director, Jodi Grant, said the cuts would be premature for grantees expecting funding.

“It breaks my heart to see anybody going through this, any program where you’re impacting kids and families in schools,” Grant said.

The Spokesman-Review originally published this story on July 21, 2025. Elena Perry's work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. It is republished here under a Creative Commons license. 

A longer version of this article appeared in the Washington State Standard.

Catholic priests in Washington cannot be required to report child abuse or neglect they learn of in confession, a federal judge ruled Friday.

U.S. District Court Chief Judge David G. Estudillo granted a preliminary injunction, sought by three Catholic bishops, temporarily blocking enforcement of a controversial element in a new state law, SB 5375, set to take effect July 27.

Estudillo ruled that requiring disclosure of information priests hear in the confessional infringes on their First Amendment right to practice religion and will force them to violate their sacred vows or face punishment by the state.

SB 5375 added clergy to the state’s roster of professions that must report to law enforcement when they have “reasonable cause to believe that a child has suffered abuse or neglect.”

But the state, Estudillo ruled, cannot require Archbishop Paul Etienne of Seattle, Bishop Joseph Tyson of Yakima and Bishop Thomas Daly of Spokane — the three who filed the suit — or any Catholic priest in Washington under their direction to disclose such information they hear in confession.

The legislation “places them in the position of either complying with the requirements of their faith or violating the law. The consequences for violating the law are serious and, as Plaintiffs assert, the implications of violating the Sacramental Seal are more serious still,” Estudillo wrote.

Attorney General Nick Brown’s office emphasized that the ruling applies only to “the Sacrament of Confession,” and that if clergy learn about abuse in any other setting, the injunction does not change — they will be mandated reporters.

Attorneys for the bishops have argued the law treats Catholic priests, and the religious activity of confession, differently from other professions that involve confidential conversations. They pointed to House Bill 1171, which also takes effect July 27. 

That law exempts attorneys employed by public or private higher-education institutions, and employees under their supervision, from their mandatory reporting obligations if the information obtained is related to the representation of a client.

Estudillo agreed, ruling that this undermined the state’s argument that it was not singling out the church practice.

“Ultimately, Washington’s failure to demonstrate why it has an interest of the highest order in denying an exemption to clergy while making such exemptions available to other professionals who work with underserved children … is likely fatal” to the law, the judge wrote.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice sought to join the legal fight as an intervening party on the side of the bishops. The Trump administration also filed a separate request for a preliminary injunction. It is slated for a hearing next week.

Meanwhile, a similar legal battle is unfolding in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Washington. The Orthodox Church of America, along with other churches and individual priests, has sued state officials and county prosecutors, contending that the law violates the First Amendment right to practice one’s religion.

The Washington State Standard published a longer version of this story on July 18, 2025. Cascade PBS has edited this story for length.

On Thursday, Congress voted to eliminate funding for public media. Losing federal funding is a devastating blow to the trusted journalism, educational programs and enriching storytelling you rely on from Cascade PBS.

Today, I want to start by saying thank you – for your help advocating for us, for believing in what we do and for trying to help keep this essential service alive for future generations. Thousands of advocates, donors and viewers spoke up.

While most of our funding comes from community contributions, including individual donations, foundation grants and local underwriting, approximately 10% of our annual operating budget comes from a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) – about $3.6 million. This funding is gone, effective immediately.

With that support eliminated, we face critical challenges. In the coming weeks, I will share more information about what this means for our station and how you can help ensure public media remains strong in the Pacific Northwest.

To be clear, Cascade PBS is not going away. But our path forward will require more from the people who believe in us – people like you. Our ability to continue providing free, independent and locally rooted programming will depend more than ever on community support.

I am inspired by the incredible community we serve, and hope I can count on you as we make our way through these challenging times. Cascade PBS belongs to you, and I’m grateful for your support.

A longer version of this article originally appeared in the Washington State Standard.

Washington has launched a hotline to report hate crimes and bias in three of the state’s biggest counties.

Residents in King, Spokane and Clark counties can now report hate crimes and bias incidents to the non-emergency hotline at 1-855-225-1010 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. This pilot will last 18 months, before Washington expands the hotline statewide in January 2027.

Staff can help callers find support services or assist in reporting incidents to local police. Anyone in the three counties can also report online. If experiencing an active emergency, residents should call 911, not the new hotline.

“Hate crimes not only directly harm individuals but also can instill harm throughout the community,” state Attorney General Nick Brown said in a statement. 

The Legislature created the hotline last year, with mostly Democratic support. 

Most years, Washington sees 500 to 600 hate-crime incidents reported to police, according to the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs. This places Washington consistently in the top five states with the most reports. Hate crimes can be based on race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation or disability, among other protected classes.

Since 2019, legislators have made changes to the hate-crime statute, such as specifying the charge as a “crime against persons,” which makes perpetrators subject to supervised release after finishing their sentence. They also removed the requirement for “physical injury” to meet the hate-crime threshold. And they took out from the law the term “swastika” in recognition of religious communities that use the symbol Nazis appropriated.

Lawmakers also added property damage as a possible basis for a hate crime. And later this month, another law, passed this year, will take effect to clarify that bias need not be the only motivation to commit a hate crime. 

Washington’s state Republican Party called the new hotline a “snitch line” that would be “weaponized against those with viewpoint diversity.”

Beginning in July 2027, the attorney general’s office will publish annual reports on calls the hotline receives.

The Washington State Standard published a longer version of this article on July 8, 2025. Cascade PBS edited this article for length.

Twenty-two people applied to fill the District 5 Seattle City Council seat left vacant by Councilmember Cathy Moore’s early resignation.  

The most prominent name on the list: Debora Juarez, Moore’s predecessor. Juarez served two terms as District 5 Councilmember, representing north Seattle. During her final two years, Juarez led the body as Council President.  

In her application, Juarez said she would be honored to bring her “Elder Auntie” experience back to the Council as a “caretaker” for the position, meaning she would not run to stay in the seat beyond the appointment period.  

Nilu Jenks, political director with FairVote Washington and a former District 5 Council candidate, also applied to fill the vacancy. Jenks placed third in the 2023 primary behind Moore and ChrisTiana ObeySumner.  

The other applicants are: 

• Gregory Boldt, a software developer and consultant 
• Alan Bond, a Seattle Public Schools teacher 
• James Bourey, former city manager of Newport News, Va., and former director of Seattle’s Office of Planning 
• Jed Bradley, the University of Washington’s executive director of policy, planning & state operations 
• Brent Butler, former chief strategy officer for Port Townsend’s Community Development Department  
• Janice Clark, a podiatrist with the Seattle Indian Health Board 
• Nick Cunetta, a geologist 
• Katy Haima, a manager at Seattle’s Office of Planning and Community Development 
• Julie Kang, Seattle University’s director of professional learning and development 
• Lissa Latham, a project manager in UW’s radiology department  
• Shane Macomber, Real Change director of operations and another candidate for this seat in 2023 who lost in the primary  
• Mark Mendez, a recreation leader with Seattle’s Department of Parks and Recreation  
• Brandon Monson, the City of Kirkland’s special projects coordinator  
• Nic Rossouw, an architect and structural engineer 
• Ansel Sanger, a real estate broker 
• Nathan Schroeder, owner of Ballard Boxing 
• Justin Simmons, former event coordinator for UW’s alumni association 
• Eric Souder, vice president of business development at a technology security company  
• Chloe Tang, a partner at a climate tech startup and former Seattle Community Police Commission engagement manager 
• Robert Wilson, a senior product manager at Amazon 

Moore announced her resignation in June, citing health and personal reasons, and stepped down on July 7 with two and a half years remaining in her first term.  

Because Moore resigned after the filing deadline for the 2025 election, the City Charter dictates that the appointee will serve in the role until the next general election in 2026, when District 5 residents vote for someone to finish the final year of Moore’s term.  

The Council is expected to appoint her temporary replacement on July 28.  

Correction July 11, 2025: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated Robert Wilson's position at Amazon.

Washington could get $16 million in a recent round of settlements in lawsuits against opioid pill manufacturers over their role in worsening the opioid crisis, the Washington State Attorney General’s Office announced on Thursday.

Settlements with eight drug makers will bring in $720 million total nationwide. Of that, about $16 million is likely coming to Washington, depending on how many counties and cities join the settlement. Half of that will go to the state government and half to local governments to be used for opioid-abuse treatment and prevention efforts.

These funds are in addition to the $1.3 billion Washington has already received in opioid settlements over the past three years.

The eight companies involved in the settlements are Mylan, Hikma, Amneal, Apotex, Indivior, Sun, Alvogen and Zydus. The largest payer is Mylan, which is now part of Viatris, which will pay more than $284 million over the next nine years to the states involved in the settlement.

As part of the settlement, all the companies except Indivior agreed to stop promoting or marketing opioids nationwide. They must also limit the amount of oxycodone in each pill they sell to less than 40 milligrams and monitor and report suspicious orders, according to the Attorney General’s office.

Indivior cannot manufacture or sell opioid products over the next 10 years, but it can still market and sell medications to treat opioid-use disorder, according to the Attorney General’s office.

Of the $1.3 billion in settlement funds Washington’s received, state and local governments have set aside funds for things like treatment programs, increasing access to medications like naloxone, improving education in school or tribal settings and expanding crisis centers.

Gov. Bob Ferguson has committed to backfilling any Planned Parenthood funding cut in the federal spending plan approved by Congress last week.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Ferguson said he would divert state dollars toward Planned Parenthood clinics at risk of losing $11 million in federal funds as part of the “Big Beautiful Bill” signed by Trump on Friday.

The new law bans Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood for the next year, meaning clinics cannot be reimbursed for providing medical services to low-income patients insured under the federal health care program.

On Monday, a federal judge in Massachusetts blocked that ban, allowing payments to continue temporarily. The case is ongoing, but if the ban prevails, Ferguson said Washington is prepared to continue funding those services.

“We have to make sure that individuals in our state have access to the critical services provided by Planned Parenthood,” Ferguson said.

Planned Parenthood receives about $22 million in Medicaid funding each year, including $11 million from the federal government, according to the governor’s office.

The $11 million used to backfill the loss of federal dollars would come from the state Health Care Authority, Ferguson said, adding that the one-time cost makes up less than 1% of that agency’s budget.

Jennifer Allen, CEO of Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates, said the federal cuts were “politically motivated” and come at a time when the state’s budget for reproductive health is already strained.

The most recent state budget – signed by Ferguson in May – included a 50% funding cut for the Abortion Access Project, which supported clinics that saw an increase in out-of-state patients after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health overturned national abortion access protections.

That funding reduction was among about $3 billion in cuts in the most recent state budget.  Lawmakers had to fill a $15 billion shortfall over the next four years.

Ferguson said Wednesday that he and legislators will try to restore the Abortion Access Project funding once they are back in session in January.

Although Washington will backfill the abortion cuts in the federal budget, Ferguson said the state does not have the funds to backfill other cuts to Medicaid, food assistance programs and social safety net programs slashed in the new law.

“We’re talking billions of dollars,” Ferguson said. “The state of Washington does not have billions of dollars lying around.”

The Seattle City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to approve a $2 million loan to the fledgling Seattle Social Housing Developer.  

The bridge loan will help the public development authority pay for staffing and operations costs, and potentially purchase property, while it awaits the proceeds from a new business tax approved by voters in February. The Social Housing Developer will repay Seattle with revenue from the tax, which the city began collecting on Jan. 1, 2025 and the developer will start receiving in 2026.  

The “excess compensation” tax levies a 5% tax on employer payroll expenses for each Seattle-based employee paid over $1 million in annual compensation. It is expected to generate about $50 million a year for the Seattle Social Housing Developer.  

Mayor Bruce Harrell proposed the loan in June despite endorsing a competing Chamber of Commerce-backed measure that would have instead drawn from the existing Jumpstart payroll tax instead of establishing a new one. The Council voted 6-1 to place the competing measure on the ballot.  

“While there were different strategies for how to fund the social housing developer, we share a vision for this model to be successful and add more housing options across our city,” said Harrell in a statement in June.  

Seattleites strongly support the idea of social housing, which is publicly owned, mixed-income affordable housing that’s meant to serve middle- and low-income residents. Voters backed the creation of the Seattle Social Housing Developer 57% to 43% in 2023. The social housing tax measure passed 63% to 37% in February.  

The Social Housing Developer has struggled through a rocky start, however. The entity has just one staff member so far, CEO Roberto Jiménez. The Seattle Times reported that two of the board of directors’ 13 members quit recently, accusing Jiménez of “abuse, anti-Black racism, and bigotry.”  

Jiménez told the Times that discord is inevitable in a new organization, and chalked problems up to “growing pains.” The Social Housing Developer’s board of directors hired an outside investigator to look into the complaints.