The court-mandated legislative district map for Washington that created a new Latino-majority voting district in Central Washington’s 14th District will stay intact under a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals filed Wednesday.

The three-judge panel stated that a group of conservative Latino voters, which included Jose Trevino, a Yakima County resident who ran for Congress in 2022 and state Rep. Alex Ybarra (R-Quincy) of the 13th Legislative District,  did not demonstrate that the new map, adopted by the U.S. District Court in March 2024, violated the federal Equal Protection Clause.

Appellate Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote that the panel contends that the group did not prove a racial gerrymander, which would be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. The panel states the U.S. District Court drew a map based not on Latino voters’ race but their common interests, which include living in predominantly agricultural areas, having large Spanish-speaking populations and dealing with common issues such as insufficient access to affordable housing.

The fight over the maps began after the Washington State Redistricting Commission drew a map in 2021, putting a Latino majority in the 15th District. A group of Latino voters, including Susan Soto Palmer, a Democrat who has run for office in Yakima County several times, sued the state in 2022, saying that the way the commission drew the map divided Latino voters in the Yakima Valley, diluting their voting power. U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik sided with plaintiffs in his August 2023 ruling, stating that the state commission’s map violated federal voting rights laws and ordering a new map to be drawn.

The new map switched the Latino-voter-majority district from the 15th to the 14th, uniting Latino communities in Central Washington from the east part of Yakima to Pasco in neighboring Franklin County, including Latino communities along the Lower Yakima Valley.

The conservative Latino voters appealed both the redrawn map and Lasnik’s ruling in Palmer v. Hobbs. Along with this week’s ruling stating that the new map did not violate the Equal Protection Clause, the appeals court dismissed the conservative voters’ appeal on the original August 2023 decision, stating they did not have standing to do so.

This article originally appeared in the Washington State Standard.

Homelessness is still on the rise in Washington, but data collected by the state Department of Commerce shows that the growth rate across much of the state slowed last year. 

This comes as the state has been spending billions of dollars in recent years to expand affordable housing and help transition people out of homelessness. The Department of Commerce data is from the 2025 Point In Time Count, an annual count of people experiencing homelessness on one night in January. 

Notably, the report did not include figures for unsheltered homelessness in King County, where Seattle is located. King County completes its full Point In Time Count in even-numbered years, which is why its unsheltered data was left out. 

Historically, King County accounts for roughly 50% of the total state unsheltered results, according to the Department of Commerce. Unsheltered homelessness refers to people living on the streets or in other public places.

On Jan. 30, the state count recorded 22,173 people who were homeless in Washington. 

Of the total, 33% were experiencing unsheltered homelessness and 67% were experiencing sheltered homelessness in locations such as emergency shelters or transitional housing, according to the Department of Commerce.

The total number of people counted as homeless in January increased 4.4% over  2024 and 25% overall since 2022. The year-over-year increase is roughly in line with the 4.07% rise from 2023 to 2024, but well below the 14.8% jump between 2022 and 2023. 

While the Point In Time Count is a valuable tool for comparing states on a single night every year, it is not the most reliable assessment of homelessness, according to the Department of Commerce. Results are influenced by weather, shelter bed availability, number of volunteers, different methodologies used by counties and other factors.

For more reliable data to complement the count, the Department of Commerce assembles an annual Snapshot of Homelessness report, which combines client information from three state agency data systems to provide a comprehensive estimate of the homeless and unstably housed population in the state. 

This report also found a continued but slowed increase in homelessness in Washington as a whole over the past year, including King County figures. The report counted 158,791 people in emergency shelters or unhoused in January 2025, a 2.2% increase from 155,356 in January 2024 and an 8.9% increase from 145,736 in January 2022..

Snapshot report data shows that homelessness in Washington actually decreased slightly between 2023 and 2024, dropping from 159,525 people counted in 2023 to 155,356 in 2024, but rebounded this year. 

Department of Commerce Director Joe Nguyễn said the latest numbers are still too high and more action is needed to reverse the trends. 

“Too many people in our communities don’t know where they’re going to sleep at night, or if they’ll be safe when they try to rest,” Nguyễn said this week in a statement.

The Legislature has invested about $1.8 billion over the 2025-27 biennium in housing and homelessness, including Commerce programs such as the Housing Trust Fund, Connecting Housing to Infrastructure, and adult, family and youth homelessness programs.

The Washington State Standard originally published this story on Aug. 22, 2025.

Washington’s Department of Natural Resources is setting aside more than 77,000 acres of forest lands in Western Washington for conservation, the largest such effort in a generation, according to Commissioner of Public Lands Dave Upthegrove.

Upthegrove signed an order on Tuesday to protect these “structurally complex” forests, or older forests that are naturally diverse but not yet considered old-growth.

“Conserving these acres will allow us to nurture and steward them in new ways so we can do more for our climate, more for our habitat, and more for the communities we serve,” he said.

Conserving these older forests was a campaign promise for Upthegrove, who paused logging on all of these types of lands once he took office in January.

An analysis from the Department found 106,000 acres of structurally complex and older forests in Western Washington. The 29,000 acres not included in the conservation efforts will still be available for harvest.

Under the plan released Tuesday, the Department intends to focus on improving habitat and forest health, which could mean a loss in funding for the schools and communities that rely on revenue from timber sales.

To make up for that loss, Upthegrove said the Department will look for ways to maximize the value of other lands and find new opportunities to generate revenue on the conserved lands, like selling carbon credits, which would require legislative approval.

Tuesday’s announcement was welcomed by conservation groups.

“We must recognize the economic value of timber, but also the clean air, clean water, wildlife habitat, carbon storage and cultural value of the forest lands for which our state is famous,” said Alyssa Macy, chief executive officer of Washington Conservation Action.

But the timber industry argued that older trees are needed for certain wood products and stopping timber sales would hurt communities that receive that revenue.

“Removing these acres from sustainable harvest will mean less revenue for schools, fire districts, hospitals, and libraries that depend on trust land funds, and fewer family-wage jobs in Washington’s forest sector,” said Travis Joseph, American Forest Resource Council president, in a statement Tuesday.

Joseph urged the Board of Natural Resources and the Legislature to “closely scrutinize” the proposal and provide “oversight, clarity and stability so beneficiaries, communities, and Washington’s forest sector can plan for the future.”

Uber Eats will pay a record $15 million in back pay, interest and civil penalties to more than 16,000 Seattle workers after allegedly violating the city’s gig-worker protection laws. The company will also pay a $33,620 fine to the city.  

It is the largest settlement in the history of Seattle’s Office of Labor Standards (OLS), which is responsible for investigating violations of the city’s labor laws.  

“This historic $15 million settlement is a major win for workers and a strong reminder that in Seattle, we hold large companies accountable when they sidestep their responsibilities and shortchange workers,” said Mayor Bruce Harrell in a statement announcing the settlements.  

OLS alleged that Uber Eats violated the pay transparency requirements of Seattle’s independent-contractor protections ordinance with its “Boost earnings multiplier” promotion. The OLS investigation began in November 2023.  

The company promised additional earnings to workers delivering to busy locations and during busy times. OLS alleged that Uber Eats failed to disclose that the promotion applied only to a portion of the workers’ fares.  

The company will pay $13.5 million to settle those claims with OLS.  

OLS opened its second investigation in November 2024. The office concluded that Uber Eats violated Seattle’s app-based-worker minimum pay law, which requires that companies pay a minimum rate based on time worked and distance traveled, even when a job is cancelled.  

OLS alleged that the company had failed to pay or was underpaying workers for cancelled jobs and had not provided all required information on electronic receipts and weekly reports.  

Uber Eats is paying another $1.5 million to settle the second investigation.  

Despite agreeing to the settlements, Uber Eats denies any allegations of wrongdoing in both cases.  

The investigations stemmed from complaints filed by gig workers to OLS.  

“If companies are unclear or fail to keep promises, workers in Seattle should know their rights and available recourse with OLS,” said OLS director Steven Marchese in a statement. “When workers come forward, OLS can help bring workplace injustices to light and put hard-earned money back where it belongs … in their pockets.”  

About 28.6% of the state’s 4.4 million registered voters participated in the August primary, according to the Washington Secretary of State’s Office.

Deputy Secretary of State Randy Bolerjack certified the August primary on Aug. 20.

This year also was the first time that the state separately tracked statistics for those 17-year-olds eligible to vote through the state’s Future Voter program. In this program, 17-year-olds who will turn 18 by General Election Day are eligible to vote. About 16.9% — or 1,292 of 7,611 — 17-year-olds in the program cast a ballot in the primary.

While the number of 17-year-old Future Voters is small compared to the 1.2 million ballots returned in the primary, they returned their ballots at a greater percentage than voters 18 to 24 (13.2%) or voters 25 to 34 (15.5%), according to the state’s ballot return statistics dashboard.

The top two vote-getters in each race on the primary ballot will face off in the General Election on Nov. 4. General Election ballots will be mailed to voters by Oct. 17.

Washington residents can register to vote in the General Election online or by mail by Oct. 27, or a resident can register in person at their local county elections office until 8 p.m. Election Day.

Washington Attorney General Nick Brown has joined attorneys general and a governor from 16 other states to ask the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to remove some restrictions on mifepristone, a drug used in medication abortions, which they say make it burdensome to prescribe and provide the drug to patients.

The attorneys general in the 15 states and District of Columbia, along with Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, filed a citizen petition, which is the formal process for requesting FDA changes, and provided evidence of the safety of medication abortion in their states as well as the burdens caused by the FDA’s restrictions on mifepristone.

This is the latest legal action by Washington state, including from Brown’s predecessor as attorney general, now Gov. Bob Ferguson, to push for broader access to the drug.

The FDA’s restrictions include requiring providers to become registered prescribers of mifepristone; requiring pharmacies to obtain special certification to dispense the drug; and requiring patients to sign a form agreeing to terminate their pregnancy voluntarily before receiving a prescription.

In declarations submitted by the state, Washington physicians say the current registration requirement leaves providers feeling vulnerable to possible attacks by anti-abortion activists and have resulted in fewer providers able to prescribe medication abortion, particularly in rural areas with limited health care options.

The states also contend such restrictions are not warranted given the safety record of medication abortion, the most common means of abortion in the United States. Data compiled by the Washington State Department of Health shows that of the nearly 30,000 medication abortions provided in Washington in 2023 and 2024, fewer than 0.2% resulted in a complication severe enough to warrant hospitalization.

 Along with Brown and Shapiro, the citizen petition to the FDA includes the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai‘i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and the District of Columbia. In addition to filing their own citizen petition, the states joined a separate petition filed earlier by the states of Massachusetts, California, New Jersey and New York.

A longer version of this article appeared in The News Tribune.

After several months of delay, Pierce County’s annual survey of those experiencing homelessness counted an 11% increase over the previous year.

While the annual Point-In-Time count is nationally recognized as one of the best ways to quantify the extent of homelessness, outreach workers and other metrics suggest the survey severely undercounts the true scale of the crisis.

The PIT count is a one-night survey of everyone in Pierce County living either in shelters or outdoors. It occurs every January and relies on the efforts of volunteers.

According to the county’s 2025 PIT Count report, 2,955 were counted on Jan. 30, up from 2,661 the previous year. The survey counted 1,522 people in shelters and 1,422 people who were unsheltered at the time of the count.

The report was published Aug. 18. According to the county, the number of people counted in the PIT count has more than doubled since 2015, showing a 130% increase. The county, which maintains the homelessness crisis is directly related to the cost and availability of housing, pointed out that median home prices have seen a 125% increase during the same period.

“This crisis didn’t happen overnight — it’s the direct result of a housing market that has simply become unaffordable for too many of our neighbors,” Pierce County Executive Ryan Mello wrote in a statement regarding the PIT count data.

The most commonly reported reason for being homeless was “family crisis or breakup” at 9%, followed by “eviction,” “no affordable housing,” “loss of job” and “fleeing domestic violence,” cited by 7% of respondents each. Nearly 40% of survey respondents did not answer the question of how they became homeless.

The county’s report noted that count results are influenced by the weather, local encampment removal and relocation, availability of overflow shelter beds, the number of volunteers and the level of engagement of the people whom volunteers interview.

However, other numbers indicate the homelessness crisis is much larger than the PIT count would suggest.

According to the county, more than 17,500 people have entered the county’s homeless crisis response system in 2025 so far, with only 1,375 exiting into permanent housing. The Washington State Department of Commerce issued a report estimating that more than 39,000 people experienced homelessness in Pierce County during fiscal year 2024. To draw the estimates, the study used data from Medicaid, economic programs and the Homelessness Management Information System.

Cameron Sheppard is a WSU News Fellow based at The News Tribune, which published a longer version of this story on Aug. 19, 2025.

Voters in Yakima will decide in November whether to authorize a $6 million levy to cover a sizable portion of the city’s anticipated 2026 budget deficit, preventing deep cuts in public safety and recreation services.

The Yakima City Council voted 4-3 in late July to bring the levy referendum to voters in the general election ballot. The vote came after Council members considered several options to address the $9 million deficit, including covering it entirely through budget cuts.

The levy requires a majority-plus-one vote to pass.

Even if the levy passes, the city will still have to cut $3 million in spending. The proposed cuts include eliminating crime-analyst positions in the Yakima Police Department, reducing funds for downtown beautification efforts, reduced operation of several city-run community centers, closing or reducing hours for local pools and eliminating funding for economic development efforts.

If voters reject the levy, the city will have to make deeper cuts to public safety and parks and recreation services that include eliminating entire police and fire departments, closing a fire station and eliminating dozens of positions.

Three Council members voted against bringing a levy before voters: assistant mayor Matt Brown, Leo Roy and Reedy Berg. 

Roy’s and Berg’s elections to the Yakima City Council in 2023 helped lead to a conservative supermajority of five to two. Addressing anticipated multimillion-dollar budget deficits was a major issue in the 2023 Council election.

However, two members of that conservative majority — Mayor Patricia Byers and Councilman Rick Glenn, who also won election in 2023 — voted for the levy resolution. 

The levy will appear on the Nov. 5 ballot.

Cascade PBS and the Pierce County Library District are hosting a free screening of Priced Out: Fear and resistance in WA mobile home parks. In the short documentary, the Cascade PBS investigative team examines the practices of mobile home park ownership group Hurst & Son. Residents in the parks across the Pacific Northwest say sudden increases in rent and cuts to maintenance have made it difficult to continue to afford their homes.  

The film follows the ensuing tenant organizing efforts, and examines the effectiveness of legal protections for residents in Washington state. Following the screening, join Cascade PBS journalists for a Q&A regarding the reporting process, mobile home tenant protections and updated state laws. 

The event will be held Tuesday, September 16, 6-7:30 p.m. at University Place Pierce County Library, 3609 Market Place West, University Place, Wash. Street parking is available. The event is free and open to the public. RSVP here.  

If you would like to submit a question prior to the screening, please fill out this form for the chance to have your question answered by a reporter. 

A longer version of this article was originally published by the Washington State Standard.  

John Braun, the top Republican in the Washington state Senate, launched his campaign Tuesday to unseat Democratic U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez next year. 

Braun, Senate minority leader since 2020, will take on the two-term incumbent in southwest Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, which has drawn national attention as an electoral battleground that helps decide which party controls the U.S. House. 

“I think the incumbent is genuine and good at press releases but hasn’t really done much to improve the lives of residents in southwest Washington,” Braun, of Centralia, told the Standard on Tuesday. 

The district encompasses Clark, Cowlitz, Lewis, Pacific, Wahkiakum and Skamania counties and a small part of Thurston County.  

President Donald Trump won it three times, including last year. But Republicans lost the congressional seat in 2022 when Gluesenkamp Perez, co-owner of an auto repair and machine shop, beat Republican Joe Kent, a former Army Special Forces soldier whom Trump backed. 

Braun, now in his fourth term as a state senator, brings legislative experience, electoral know-how and a brand of Republicanism he hopes will appeal to independent and GOP voters who shunned Kent. 

Asked whether he has Trump’s backing, Braun said there is “a clear path to earning the president’s support. We’ve got to do the work first.” 

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee swiftly blasted Braun’s entrance into the race. 

“Voters know Braun is nothing more than a suit in Olympia who works for special interests like Big Pharma, not for working people,” said DCCC spokesperson Lindsay Reilly. “He’s a swamp creature who will be more of the same in D.C., championing the status quo.” 

Washington State Democratic Party Chair Shasti Conrad said Braun would be a “disastrous choice” to represent the district. 

Gluesenkamp Perez raised just over $900,000 in the most recent three-month period and had $1.1 million on hand on June 30, according to her latest filings with the Federal Election Commission. First-time candidate Antony Barran, owner of Willapa Wild, an oyster farm in Willapa Bay, raised $10,000 in his first three months campaigning.  

In the 2024 election, outside forces spent roughly $18.5 million independent of the candidates, according to Open Secrets.  

The Washington State Standard originally ran a longer version of this article on Aug. 12, 2025. Cascade PBS has edited this article for length.