Monday, June 18, 2018

NO JANUS DECISION TODAY — The U.S. Supreme Court released opinions today, but not in the Janus v. AFSCME case. The next possible date for this announcement will be Thursday, June 21. Stay tuned and get ready!

AMERICA’S SHAME: CHILDREN IN CAGES

► From AP — Hundreds of children wait in Border Patrol facility in Texas — Inside an old warehouse in South Texas, hundreds of children wait in a series of cages created by metal fencing. One cage had 20 children inside. Scattered about are bottles of water, bags of chips and large foil sheets intended to serve as blankets. One teenager there said she was helping care for a young child she didn’t know because the child’s aunt was somewhere else in the facility. She said she had to show others in her cell how to change the girl’s diaper.

► From HuffPost — The heartbreaking story behind that viral crying toddler photo — A viral photograph captured last week in the Rio Grande Valley has been hailed as a poignant distillation of the heartache and desperation felt by the many families being separated by the Trump administration at the U.S.-Mexico border every day.

► From HuffPost — Dems beg GOP for help stopping immigrant family separations — Trump could single-handedly end the practice of splitting up families at the border, but Democrats have little hope he will halt a policy that he thinks will deter unauthorized immigration and win him leverage for a border wall and a broader immigration crackdown. And Republicans in Congress have done little to pressure the president to change his mind.

► In today’s Washington Post — Trump team cannot get its story straight on separating migrant families — They are alternating between defending the initiative as a necessary deterrent, distancing themselves, blaming Democrats, trying to use it as leverage for negotiations with Congress, or denying that it exists at all.

► In today’s NY Times — Trump and the baby snatchers (by Charles Blow) — I don’t have a long treatise to issue here, no meandering argument. I am simply outraged beyond my ability to articulate it. This practice of family separation must end, and Trump and every other politician who was silent about it or worse, endorsed it, must be held to account at the ballot box.

► From HuffPost — Laura Bush calls family separations cruel and immoral

LOCAL

► From KING 5 — ‘Families Belong Together’ rally held in Seattle — Rallies were held across the country Sunday to protest the border separation of children from their parents. A group called “Families Belong Together” held a rally in Seattle’s Westlake Park on Father’s Day.

► In the Bellingham Herald — Even $15 an hour won’t be enough when it comes to paying rent in Whatcom County — It turns out Whatcom County is far from alone when it comes to not having enough affordable rental units. There isn’t a single county in the U.S. where a worker earning the minimum wage can afford a two-bedroom rental at fair market rent by working a 40-hour week, according to a study released earlier this week by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

THIS WASHINGTON

► In today’s Olympian — After sex harassment reports, state Department of Fish & Wildlife has new director — The state Department of Fish and Wildlife, a state agency recently troubled by reports of sexual harassment, including a former manager convicted of rape, announced Saturday that Kelly Susewind has been appointed director of the agency.

► In the News Tribune — Washington school funding plan finally wins favor, but not in Tacoma (editorial) — We’ll give the state’s multi-billion dollar K-12 funding plan a B-, along with an urgent plea for legislators to do better. A handful of school districts, including Tacoma, must still be made whole.

THAT WASHINGTON

► In today’s Washington Post — Safety concerns grow as inmates are guarded by teachers and secretaries — A staffing scramble is playing out at federal prisons across the country. As the Trump administration has curtailed hiring in its quest to reduce the size of the government, some prisons are so pressed for guards that they regularly compel teachers, nurses, secretaries and other support staff to step in.

► In today’s Washington Post — Right-wingers kill clean votes on ‘dreamers’ — and bring up two worse bills instead (editorial) — House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) ended the moderates’ gambit to force a vote on relatively clean dreamers bills, which the vast majority of Americans support, by promising that the House would vote on two other bills more heavily influenced by the Republican Party’s increasingly toxic immigration politics… As all of this plays out, remember that a generation of immigrants that has known no country but the United States continues to suffer in unnecessary policy limbo. If both bills fail, the moderates can and should resurrect their effort to force votes on better bills.

► In today’s Washington Post — Supreme Court sidesteps decision on partisan gerrymandering in rulings on Wisconsin, Maryland cases — The Supreme Court on Monday sidestepped a decision on when partisan gerrymandering goes too far, ruling against the challengers of a Republican-drawn map in Wisconsin and a Democratic redistricting in Maryland. The decisions in the separate cases once again puts off a decision on when courts can find that partisan efforts to keep parties in power goes so far as to be unconstitutional.

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