NEWS ROUNDUP

Immigration & inflation | Understaffed ATC | Budget cuts

Thursday, February 13, 2025

 

LOCAL

► From the Spokesman Review — ‘We cannot feed ourselves as a country’: Northwest agriculture could be in jeopardy if mass deportations happen, farm groups warn — “Food inflation was a critical issue when it came to the ballot box in November. If you start to deport every single worker in the country that is unauthorized, you are going to have extreme inflation in those areas of our economy. That goes against the message the voters sent in November.” A big misconception surrounding immigrant farmworkers, Macias said, is that foreign workers are prioritized over local, domestic workers. Of the employers who do take part in a visa program, though, about 20% of their workers are foreign, and are filling positions that domestic workers did not take.

► From Northwest Public Broadcasting — An exhibition in Richland highlights the Latino contributions at Hanford — The exhibit showcases photographs, historical documents, and stories about the Latinos who worked on the Manhattan Project —  a top secret project for producing plutonium used in the world’s first atomic bombs during World War II. “Latinos have been vibrant parts of this community since the transformation of Hanford in World War II to the birth of Hanford into what the Tri-Cities is today,” said Robert Franklin, an assistant professor of history at Washington State University.

► From the Washington State Standard — Washington to begin speed camera enforcement in roadwork zones — Cameras will only be active while workers are on site. Washington averages over 1,300 work zone crashes annually, according to the state Department of Transportation. In 2023, there were eight fatal crashes in work zones across the state, while another 28 caused serious injuries. Speeding was a factor in about a third of those crashes. “The people being hurt and killed are not just our workers. They involve drivers, passengers and other travelers,” said state Transportation Secretary Julie Meredith.

► From Cascade PBS — How Washington communities are responding to ICE deportation orders — About 200,000 households in Washington have at least one undocumented immigrant — 6.4% of all households in the state. More than one out of 10 K-12 students in Washington have at least one parent who is undocumented, according to Pew Research Center figures. Roxana Norouzi, executive director of OneAmerica, an immigrant rights organization, said that she knows most people mean well when sharing reports, but often this results in incorrect information spreading instead. “It’s spreading a wave of fear, which is not what we want,” Norouzi said. “We want to spread power, not fear.”

 

AEROSPACE

► From the Seattle Times — Jeff Bezos’ Kent-based Blue Origin plans to cut 10% of workforce — Blue Origin employees found out about the layoffs at a virtual all-hands meeting Thursday morning. They were notified of that meeting in an unexpected companywide email Wednesday afternoon that instructed employees to work from home the next day. Employees will learn who is affected by the cuts by email Thursday morning

 

NATIONAL

► From the New York Times — D.C. Plane Crash Happened After Years of Warnings — Repeated attempts to draw attention to safety lapses and potentially dangerous operating conditions at the control tower at Reagan National at times went unheeded, according to four people familiar with the matter and F.A.A. safety records reviewed by The Times. The air traffic control tower has also been chronically understaffed, putting extra strain on employees. Last month, the tower was nearly 20 percent below its target staffing level, with 23 fully certified controllers instead of 28, according to data from the union representing controllers that was obtained by The Times. That was not unusual: More than 90 percent of the country’s 313 air traffic control facilities operate below recommended staffing levels, a Times analysis showed.

► From America’s Work Force Podcast — LISTEN: Lessons from Alabama’s Coal Mines in organizing diverse groups — In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Alabama’s coal fields were among the few examples of interracial collaboration. The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) played a pivotal role in organizing across racial lines.

► From GBH — How teachers union leaders are gearing up for the ‘resistance’ — “The AFT, in conjunction with other unions and groups, filed a federal lawsuit just yesterday under the Privacy Act to expose the theft of data that’s happening right now. We don’t know what’s happening with that information, but a lot of people may not even know that that actually even happened because there’s been so much chaos and confusion.”

► From the Washington Post — Delayed CDC report shows increased evidence of bird flu spread to people — A scientific report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published Thursday shows some veterinarians who provide care for cattle were unknowingly infected with the H5N1 avian influenza virus last year. The report is the latest evidence that the outbreak in dairy herds is spreading undetected in cows, and the spillover into people at highest risk of exposure is going unnoticed.

 

POLITICS & POLICY

Federal updates here, local news and deeper dives below:

► From the Washington State Standard — Ferguson wants to cut WA agency spending by 6%. Here’s what that looks like — However, public safety and public schools could still face reductions under Ferguson because he’s repeatedly said — including in the memo — that his across-the-board cuts are intended to be on top of the $2 billion in savings former Gov. Jay Inslee wrote into his last budget proposal. Nor has he said he disagrees with closing the Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women, a minimum-security prison in Belfair, south of Bremerton, and shuttering residential habilitation centers at Rainier School and Yakima Valley School by 2027 that provide care for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities.

► From Common Dreams — As GOP Pushes Tax Giveaways for the Rich, Sanders Launches ‘National Tour to Fight Oligarchy’ — A Sanders aide told Politico that the senator aims to influence the Republicans’ fight over the budget, which has reportedly made some GOP members of the House, where the party holds a slim majority, uneasy about backlash from voters in upcoming elections in 2026 and 2028. As Common Dreams reported on Tuesday, a recent poll by progressive think tank Data for Progress showed voters from across the political spectrum don’t want lawmakers to make cuts to federal student loans, Medicare, Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or renewable energy programs — all of which the GOP has eyed as it aims to do the bidding of wealthy donors and extend the 2017 tax cuts which primarily benefited the country’s top earners.

► From NPR — Elon Musk’s DOGE takes aim at agency that had plans of regulating X — “The fact that Musk is now engaged in payment businesses that would be regulated by the CFPB at the same time he’s trying to tear down the CFPB puts in sharp relief the conflicts of interests here and how much this disserves the general public,” said Richard Cordray, who led the CFPB under President Barack Obama. “The whole situation is rife with conflicts of interest.”

► From the Washington Post — Trump closes down federal worker buyout offer after judge lifts hold — A judge on Wednesday lifted his pause on the federal government’s deferred resignation program, prompting the Trump administration to swiftly declare victory as it closed the offer to any more workers who might still have been mulling it. O’Toole, who was nominated in 1995 by President Bill Clinton, did not opine on the buyout program’s legality.

► From Bloomberg Law — DOGE’s Access to Health, Financial Records Draws Union Challenge — “DOGE is violating multiple laws, from constitutional limits on executive power, to laws protecting civil servants from arbitrary threats and adverse action, to crucial protections for government data,” the complaint says. The coalition bringing the lawsuit includes the AFL-CIO and American Federation of Teachers. They added the claims concerning HHS and the CFPB to their pending lawsuit against DOGE and the Department of Labor in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. The amended suit says DOGE’s access to HHS records exposes personal information of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, health care providers, and agency employees.

 

TODAY’S MUST-READ

► From Politico — Voters Were Right About the Economy. The Data Was Wrong. — Take, as a particularly egregious example, what is perhaps the most widely reported economic indicator: unemployment..the near-record low unemployment figures — the figure was a mere 4.2 percent in November — counted homeless people doing occasional work as “employed.” But the implications are powerful. If you filter the statistic to include as unemployed people who can’t find anything but part-time work or who make a poverty wage (roughly $25,000), the percentage is actually 23.7 percent. In other words, nearly one of every four workers is functionally unemployed in America today.

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