Senate targets Medicaid | WA is $$$ | Tracking Trump

Tuesday, June 17, 2025

STRIKES

► From the Colorado Sun — Safeway workers in more parts of Colorado hit the picket lines amid union’s strike — That brings the number of locations on strike to seven, which includes stores in Estes Park, Fountain, two in Pueblo, plus a Safeway distribution center in Denver. Workers are on the picket lines to protest understaffing, proposed cuts to employee health care benefits and a change to pension benefits for retired workers. Kim Cordova, president of United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 7, vowed that more of the 105 Safeway and Albertsons stores in the state could join the strike if an impasse between Albertsons-owned Safeway and the labor union isn’t resolved.

LOCAL

► From Cascade PBS — REI member sues co-op over refusal to release election information — The REI Union had nominated two pro-labor candidates to run for open board seats, but the company blocked those candidates from appearing on the ballot, and instead put forward an uncontested slate of its own candidates. The union encouraged members to vote to “withhold” their votes in protest. That spring, in a show of protest over labor issues and the Burgum endorsement, REI members voted to reject the three candidates put forward by the board. REI didn’t share how many votes each candidate received. A company spokesperson told Huffpost that REI does not release the full voting results because the outcome “is the primary issue.” [Petitioner] Lloyd disagrees. He thinks that information would add critical context to the ongoing debate over REI’s governance and broader identity.

► From the KING 5 — Here’s the salary needed to ‘live comfortably’ in Washington — Financial technology company SmartAsset used the 50/30/20 rule to determine what salary a person in each state would need to maintain a sustainable lifestyle. The rule suggests putting 50% of income to necessities, 30% to discretionary spending and 20% to long-term goals like savings or paying off debt. Washington state requires the fifth-highest income for a single adult to “live comfortably” at $109,658, according to SmartAsset. For a family of four, the number jumps to $277,888. SmartAsset said the income needed for a family of four jumped 7.95% from 2024, while the single-adult income needed to live comfortably increased 2.97%.

► From SEIU 6:

AEROSPACE

► From Flight Global — Fresh uncertainty aside, Boeing has made quality and safety strides: senator — While the cause of the 12 June crash of an Air India Boeing 787-8 remains unclear, a leading Republican senator says everything he sees out of Boeing suggests the company is succeeding in turning itself around…The company has faced criticism for focusing too closely in recent decades on financial returns at the expense of engineering excellence.

NATIONAL

► From the AP — ICE using no-bid contracts, boosting big firms, to get more detention beds — The federal government has signed a deal with the private prison firm CoreCivic Corp. to reopen a 1,033-bed prison in Leavenworth as part of a surge of contracts U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has issued without seeking competitive bids. ICE has cited a “compelling urgency” for thousands more detention beds, and its efforts have sent profit estimates soaring for politically connected private companies, including CoreCivic, based in the Nashville, Tennessee, area and another giant firm, The Geo Group Inc., headquartered in southern Florida.

► From CBS News — Cuts to FEMA’s storm prep program hammer communities that voted for Trump –“Flood water doesn’t discriminate,” said Evans, a Republican and supporter of President Trump. ‘”Any person that flooded is shocked that it would be considered politics to do flood mitigation.” So when he received word in April that FEMA was canceling a grant program that would provide nearly $40 million for a new flood control system in Central, he was angry. In a press release, FEMA said the program, which provided funding for infrastructure projects in storm-prone communities, was “wasteful” and had become “more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans recover from natural disasters.”

► From the Tennessee Lookout — Advocacy organizations warn ‘we are all Kilmar’; pledge to fight for immigrant rights — Vonda McDaniel, president of the Central Labor Council of Nashville and Middle Tennessee, demanded fair treatment for Abrego Garcia, saying his case will not “disappear in the shadows of a courtroom.” She also questioned the legitimacy of the charges against him, which were filed after his deportation. “This is a clear attempt to criminalize Kilmar retroactively in order to justify what they did to him illegally, and to intimidate other immigrants (and) workers who might dare to fight back when their rights are violated … Today, we stand before you to demand justice, not vengeance,” McDaniel said.

► From the Hill — The remote work revolution is here to stay — A study by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics sheds light on the relationship between remote work and productivity. Analyzing 61 industries across the private sector, the study found a positive correlation between the rise in remote work and total factor productivity, even after accounting for pre-pandemic trends. This report confirms the findings of a comprehensive May 2025 report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office titled “Telework: Private Sector Stakeholder and Expert Views,” which also presents compelling evidence that today’s return-to-office mandates may be misguided.

► From the Seattle Times — NAACP files intent to sue Elon Musk’s xAI company over supercomputer air pollution — The NAACP filed an intent to sue Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI on Tuesday over concerns about air pollution generated by a supercomputer located near predominantly Black communities. The xAI data center began operating gas turbines last year, emitting air pollution, without first applying for a permit under an exemption that allowed them to do so for 364 days.

POLITICS & POLICY

Federal updates here, local news and deeper dives below:

• Judge rules some NIH grant cuts illegal, saying he’s never seen such discrimination in 40 years (AP)

► From the Washington Post — Senate overhauls Trump’s tax bill, setting up brawl with House — Senate Republicans on Monday suggested massive changes to President Donald Trump’s second-term legislative agenda, setting up a potential brawl with the GOP-controlled House by slashing the child tax credit and state and local tax deductions while temporarily preserving some Biden-era climate programs…The Senate Finance Committee released its proposals Monday afternoon, and they are some of the most controversial in the mammoth legislation. The panel is responsible for codifying trillions of dollars in tax cuts and pays for them largely by slashing Medicaid, the federal health insurance program for low-income individuals.

► From the Washington Post — Trump officials reverse guidance exempting farms, hotels from immigration raids — The Department of Homeland Security on Monday told staff that it was reversing guidance issued last week that agents were not to conduct immigration raids at farms, hotels and restaurants — a decision that stood at odds with President Donald Trump’s calls for mass deportations of anyone without legal status. Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including its Homeland Security Investigations division, told agency leaders in a call Monday that agents must continue conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels and restaurants, according to two people familiar with the call.

► From UFW:

A “shift” never happened. A chaotic raid at a worksite and a warrantless sweep in our communities have the same outcome. Bullshit rhetoric aside, they’re hunting us down while we’re trying to feed you.

Who’s actually in charge? pic.twitter.com/oSFjZpX7KK

— United Farm Workers (@UFWupdates) June 17, 2025

► From Law 360 — AFL-CIO, Unions Seek Early Win To Block Slash Of FMCS — A group of unions and the AFL-CIO urged a New York federal judge to find the Trump administration’s staffing cuts and shuttering of field offices at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service are unlawful, arguing the government did not have an explanation for slashing the agency’s services. The Trump administration went too far with a March 14 executive order reducing services and staff at the FMCS, said the AFL-CIO and a coalition of unions in a motion for summary judgment Friday, looking to restore the agency’s operations before many mediators are put on administrative leave. The FMCS provides mediation services for labor disputes.

► From Huffington Post — Senate Republicans Want To Charge Federal Workers Thousands Of Dollars For Job Security — Senate Republicans are pursuing a plan through their “big, beautiful bill” that would force new federal employees to pay for traditional job protections, a major reform that unions have decried as “extortion.” The measure put forth late last week by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee mirrors a similar one House Republicans included in their version of the reconciliation bill that passed last month. It would require federal workers to pay thousands of additional dollars into their government retirement plans each year unless they choose to be “at-will” employees who can be fired without cause.

► From KUOW — Top House Democrat asks Microsoft about DOGE code allegedly tied to NLRB data removal — The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee is asking Microsoft to share information about a Department of Government Efficiency staffer’s account on a Microsoft-owned website that allegedly hosted what the lawmaker called “bespoke code” designed to remove data from a sensitive case management database used by the National Labor Relations Board.

► From Cascade PBS — WA’s workers’ compensation system ensnarls some hurt on the job — Washington’s 3.8 million workers filed more than 111,500 worker compensation claims last year, most of which were approved and continued without any disagreement, according to L&I data. But a system established to provide workers with swift medical support and wage replacement also forces many through a battery of skeptical examinations and legal challenges, leading to an appeals process that reverses L&I decisions about a third of the time. Workers told Cascade PBS longstanding barriers leave some coping with worsening injuries, financial instability or mental health issues.

► From the union-busting Columbian — ‘The RFA is the ticket’: Camas-Washougal firefighters union want the regional fire authority back on the ballot — Two months after voters rejected the formation of a Camas-Washougal regional fire authority, the head of the local firefighters’ union is urging officials to revamp the proposal and get it back on the ballot as soon as possible. “We need to be able to govern and support ourselves, and the RFA is the ticket,” said Aaron Cliburn, president of the International Association of Firefighters Local 2444, the union representing CamasWashougal Fire Department and East County Fire and Rescue firefighters. Cliburn wants officials to call for another vote before the first week of August. If they don’t, he said, the cities could begin the process of dismantling the Camas-Washougal Fire Department and unwinding the interlocal agreement that formed the joint fire department over a decade ago.

TODAY’S MUST-READ

► From Wired — 6 Tools for Tracking the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Civil Liberties — With so much happening at once, numerous organizations and individuals have launched databases, interactive maps, and other trackers to catalog these government actions and their impacts on people’s civil rights across the US. Using open source intelligence, public data, news coverage, and other research, these tools are vital resources for documenting, contextualizing, and analyzing the flood of federal activity that is fundamentally reshaping the US. Here are a few prominent examples.

The Stand posts links to local, national and international labor news every weekday morning. Subscribe to get daily news in your inbox. The next edition of the News Roundup will be Friday, June 20.