Monday, June 11, 2018

NO DECISION on the Janus v. AFSCME case today. However, the Supreme Court announced it will next issue opinions this Thursday morning. So stay tuned…

LOCAL

► In the Seattle Times — Rep. Jayapal meets 174 asylum-seeking women, many separated from children, at SeaTac prison — Hundreds of immigrant-rights activists and protesters chanted and waved signs outside a federal prison in SeaTac following passionate speeches Saturday from Gov. Jay Inslee and other top officials condemning the Trump administration’s practice of separating children from their asylum-seeking parents. “Cruelty to children should not be part of American policy,” Inslee said. “America is better than this.

U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Seattle) had just met with the 174 women being held at the prison, most of whom came to the U.S. hoping for asylum and fleeing violence at home. Their children were taken away when they were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border or when they turned themselves in to petition for asylum, Jayapal said. “These women have no idea, in the vast majority of the cases, where their children are,” she said. “They literally never had a chance to say goodbye to their children.”

► From The Stranger — Jayapal met with asylum seekers held at SeaTac prison — One woman fled El Salvador after gang members fatally shot her child. Another woman feared her husband would rape her child. Rep. Pramila Jaypal teared up as she spoke about the 206 undocumented immigrants held inside a federal prison in SeaTac.

► In today’s Washington Post — ‘Mothers could not stop crying’: Lawmaker blasts Trump policy after visiting detained immigrants

► In today’s Bellingham Herald — ‘A tough loss’ for firefighters, his death is ruled in the line of duty for Whatcom — A former Whatcom County firefighter who died of cancer this week is being listed as a line-of-duty fatality under state law that classifies certain kinds of cancer as job-related. Firefighter John Swobody died Monday night after a years-long battle with lung cancer

THIS WASHINGTON

► BREAKING from AP — Big win for tribes as Supreme Court refuses to review culvert ruling, could cost state almost $2 billion — The Supreme Court is leaving in place a court order that forces Washington state to restore salmon habitat by removing barriers that block fish migration. The justices divided 4-4 Monday in the long-running dispute that pits the state against Indian tribes and the federal government. The tie serves to affirm a lower court ruling in favor of the tribes.

► In today’s (Everett) Herald — A glowing pitch to entice Boeing avoids some touchy issues (by Jerry Cornfield) — There’s no mention of labor relations, which in recent decades have included divisive contract battles and strikes. Neither is there discussion of a political climate in which some lawmakers want to require Boeing to sustain a minimum level of employment if it wants to keep receiving tax breaks worth hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Nor is there much on the bevy of business and environmental regulations of concern to the company.

ALSO from The Stand — Washington #1 state (by far) to build new Boeing jet, study says

EDITOR’S NOTE — The solution to smooth labor relations lies with the company itself, not with Washington state. As its profits continue to soar, if Boeing decides not to try to take another pound of flesh out of its workforce — as it did in 2013-14, when it took away the Machinists’ pensions — labor relations will be fine. If it decides to take away even more from its workers… not so smooth.

► In today’s Seattle Times — Interim chief to leave Western State Hospital as $53M federal funding decision lies ahead — The departure comes as the state moves to reshape the 857-bed hospital to focus on patients getting treatment as part of the criminal-justice system. A judge has fined the hospital millions of dollars for not providing timely services to defendants with mental illnesses.

THAT WASHINGTON

► From TPM — GOP fears Trump’s war on preexisting condition protections will backfire bigly — The Department of Justice’s announcement that it will take aim at the ACA’s most popular provisions — a ban on insurance companies discriminating against people based on preexisting conditions, and limits on how much insurers can hike premiums for older Americans — will be ammunition Democrats can use this November.

► From Reuters — ‘Fair trade, fool trade’, Trump’s tweets spew ire on NATO allies, Trudeau — U.S. President Donald Trump fired off a volley of tweets on Monday venting anger on NATO allies, the European Union and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the wake of a divisive G7 meeting over the weekend. Having left the Group of Seven summit in Canada early, Trump’s announcement that he was backing out of the joint communique torpedoed what appeared to be a fragile consensus on the trade dispute between Washington and its top allies.

EDITOR’S NOTE — While the White House has circulated this photo in an attempt to portray Trump as an avenging angel for American workers harmed by trade, The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent writes, “The photo is all gesture, with nothing at its core other than Trump’s petulant narcissism, destructiveness and increasing detachment from reality… Trump’s conduct this weekend was rooted in fabrications, and nothing whatsoever about it was pro-worker.”

► From TPM — Supreme Court greenlights Ohio’s voter purge policy — Monday’s decision will likely encourage other states to implement similar aggressive purge policies. The Ohio system puts voters who sit out just one presidential election and two midterms at risk for removal. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that the most likely voters to be purged under Ohio’s system are minority, low-income, disabled, and veteran voters. She said the majority’s opinion “entirely ignores the history of voter suppression against which the NVRA was enacted and upholds a program that appears to further the very disenfranchisement of minority and low-income voters that Congress set out to eradicate.”

NATIONAL

Apple product manufacturer Foxconn installed suicide nets in the Chinese township of Longhua to stop workers from jumping to their deaths.

► In the Seattle Times — Watchdog criticizes conditions at Chinese factory that builds Amazon Echo speakers — That assembly line, at a factory operated by Taiwanese manufacturing giant Foxconn, is described in a new report by a watchdog group that advocates for better working conditions at Chinese companies.  China Labor Watch sent a letter to Amazon last month outlining what it said were violations of Chinese labor law and urging the Seattle company to improve conditions at its supplier. Foxconn is perhaps best known in the U.S. as the primary builder of Apple’s iPhones. It made worldwide headlines in 2010 after a rash of suicides at a facility in Shenzhen, China, that prompted the company to install protective netting.

► From Reuters — Rolls-Royce, preparing to cut thousands of jobs, says engine problem has spread — Britain’s Rolls-Royce said a costly compressor problem that had grounded Boeing planes had now been found in a different type of engine, compounding pressures on a group that is due to cut more than 4,000 jobs this week.

THE AMEЯICANS

► MUST-READ from TPM — We’ve got a problem. A big problem. (by Josh Marshall) — Over the course of 16+ months, President Trump has acted consistently and with some success to destabilize and break up the western alliance, both its formal manifestation in NATO and its less formal dimensions in trade and other partnerships. He has also worked consistently on really every front to advance the interests of Russia… If candidate Trump and President Putin had made a corrupt bargain which obligated President Trump to destabilize all U.S. security and trade alliances and advance the strategic interests of Russia, there’s really nothing more remotely realistic he could have done to accomplish that than what he has in fact done… We have a President who clearly got a great deal of assistance from Russia in getting elected. We can argue about how important it was to his victory. But the reality of the help is not in any real dispute… He’s doing all the stuff he’d have been asked to do if such a corrupt bargain had been made. At a certain point – and I’d say we’re clearly at or past that point – it really doesn’t matter whether we can prove such a bargain was made.

► From Vox — There’s actually lots of evidence of Trump-Russia collusion

► And then, there’s this today from McClatchy — Web of elite Russians met with NRA execs during 2016 campaign — Several prominent Russians, some in President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle or high in the Russian Orthodox Church, now have been identified as having contact with National Rifle Association officials during the 2016 U.S. election campaign. The NRA, Trump’s biggest financial backer, spent more than $30 million to boost his upstart candidacy; that’s more than double what it laid out for 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney, and the NRA money started flowing much earlier in the cycle for Trump.

The Stand posts links to Washington state and national news of interest every weekday morning by 10 a.m.