Food stamps | WNBA negotiations | Voter frustration

Monday, October 27, 2025

STRIKES

► From St. Louis Public Radio — St. Louis-area machinists narrowly reject Boeing’s latest contract proposal — In a statement, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers President Brian Bryant said the result of Sunday’s vote proves Boeing is not listening to their employees as they’ve claimed. “Boeing’s corporate executives continue to insult the very people who build the world’s most advanced military aircraft — the same planes and military systems that keep our service members and nation safe,” Bryant said. “Our members aren’t going to be fooled by PR spin. It’s well past time for Boeing to stop cheaping out on the workers who make its success possible and bargain a fair deal that respects their skill and sacrifice.”

LOCAL

► From the Spokesman Review — ‘Everybody that’s retired now is scared’: Washington residents to lose food stamps if shutdown extends beyond Friday — Norah West, a spokesperson for the Washington Department of Social and Health Services, said Friday that more than 540,000 households in the state, representing nearly 930,000 people, would not receive benefits if Congress fails to reach a deal to reopen the government…The prospect of losing her food stamps has been “really getting to” Brantt. “All my friends are on disability. Everybody that’s retired now is scared,” she said. “But because they’re going to go ahead and do a fancy-dancy addition to the White House, destroying history, then they’re going to take our Medicare and food stamps? That’s not right. It doesn’t help the American people.”

► From the Washington State Standard — WA’s food aid program for infants and mothers now funded through most of November — Federal food benefits for Washington mothers and their babies at risk due to the federal government shutdown will continue into mid-to-late November, the state announced Thursday. Funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture will allow the state to keep up food benefits under the Women, Infants and Children program, known as WIC, and support the 11 workers still administering it in Washington…The estimate of assistance lasting until mid-to-late November is based on current use. If enrollees start increasing their usage, the funding could run out sooner, according to the state Department of Health.

► From the Tri-City Herald — Food banks brace for end of food stamps as shutdown threatens Tri-Cities paychecks — More than 20,000 in the Tri-Cities work for either the federal government or contractors. Most of the contractors are split between the Hanford site and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. It’s unclear how long these companies can continue paying employees. If the shutdown continues, these workers could eventually have to dig into savings to pay bills, leaving them with a need to turn to food banks to feed their families…One in every six Tri-Cities households receive SNAP benefits, according to USDA data. That’s nearly 17,000 Tri-Cities families that could be impacted by the program going unfunded.

► From KUOW — Furloughed feds pick up Seattle beach trash to keep serving the public — Their sodden volunteerism was part of a national week of service for civil servants prevented from doing their jobs by the federal government shutdown. Rather than professional skills, officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration used tongs to keep pollution from entering Puget Sound and harming things like salmon and orcas, which their agency is responsible for protecting. Other members of International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers Local 8a, a union that represents NOAA employees, volunteered at the Seattle ReCreative facility in Georgetown to sort used art supplies and keep them out of landfills.

► From Cascade PBS — The Newsfeed: Concerns over legal service access at Tacoma ICE facility — VanDerhoef says the increased volume of detainees has impacted access to quality legal counsel and created other issues for detainees. “We understand the contract that the GEO Group, who runs the facility, has with the Department of Homeland Security, as they are to provide by the contract 10 spaces or rooms for legal visits. They’ve never provided that, in the time that I have been working with people down there,” he said.  “In fact, it was seven rooms, [and] more recently, two of them have been taken away. They’re using … two entirely, now, for court hearings being done by video by judges across the country. So we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the population, and in fact a decrease in actual physical access to be able to visit our clients.”

CONTRACT FIGHTS

► From the New York Times’ Athletic — More than 70 legislators, including Zohran Mamdani, sign letter in support of WNBA players union — Players Association representatives have been in contact with other unions for multiple years, sharing information about what their core issues are with the current CBA structure, while also explaining the systems underlying their frustrations. In September 2024, the Washington Labor Council AFL-CIO [sic] published a resolution in support of Seattle Storm players in the contract talks, becoming the first AFL-CIO chapter to voice its support for the WNBPA in the negotiations.

► From People’s World — UAW Chattanooga Volkswagen workers ready to strike, despite GOP flak — Some 4,200 autoworkers at the Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tenn., are ready to strike—over the foreign carmaker’s local bosses’ stalling in talks, and labor law-breaking. And that’s despite flak from a locally powerful right-wing Republican politician. If this scenario sounds familiar to the followers of Auto Workers Local 42’s successful fight for a union in Chattanooga, it is.  That’s because the first time the union tried to organize the Deep South plant, years ago, workers were scared off by political threats of yanking subsidies for the firm’s expansion plans. The threats came from Tennessee’s governor and legislature and Chattanooga’s then-mayor.

ORGANIZING

► From Otakukart — Power Up: How Game Workers Rewrite Industry Rules with Unionization — After years of abrupt layoffs, poor working conditions, and public scandals, many game developers decided that enough was enough. For decades, unions in the video game industry were nearly nonexistent; studios cultivated images of “fun jobs” with perks, hoping to foster loyalty and discourage collective bargaining. Yet recent waves of layoffs, workplace controversies, and increasing fears about automation have driven a major change.​ Motivating this new energy are real stories of overwork and insecurity.

NATIONAL

► From the Hill — Major airports see flight disruptions as air traffic controller shortage grows — Major airports across the country saw flight delays this weekend amid growing staffing issues among air traffic controllers. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a temporary ground stop Sunday because of a staffing shortage at a Southern California air traffic facility. The ground stop came shortly after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that air traffic controllers are struggling amid the ongoing government shutdown, which has stretched nearly four weeks.

► From Mass Live — Air traffic controllers say they want their minds on the sky, not missing paychecks, as federal shutdown rolls on — On Tuesday, on what would normally be payday for them, air traffic controllers will be visible in the passenger terminals at Boston Logan International Airport handing out leaflets and making their case to the traveling public, said Kevin Curtiss, regional vice president of the New England chapter of NATCA, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association…As necessary federal workers, air traffic controllers come to work even if the federal government has not passed legislation to pay them. Meanwhile, Curtiss said mortgages and childcare bills are due. “That’s something controllers are thinking of as they come into work,” he said this week. The job is already high-stress and demanding, he said. “We need to be right all the time.”

► From the Washington State Standard — A new car vs. health insurance? Average family job-based coverage hits $27K — Premiums for job-based health insurance rose 6% in 2025 to an average of $26,993 a year for family coverage, according to an annual survey of employers released Oct. 22 by KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News. It’s the first time in two decades that the cost of covering a family of four has risen by 6% or more for three consecutive years, data from KFF shows…Most people with job-based insurance contribute to the cost of their premiums, with the average worker this year contributing $1,440 for individual coverage or $6,850 for family coverage. Over time, more workers have paid increasingly higher deductibles, the amount they must spend out-of-pocket on medical services before their insurer pitches in. More than one‑third of covered workers are enrolled in a plan with a deductible of $2,000 or more for an individual. The share of workers with such a plan has increased 32% over the last five years and 77% over the last 10 years, the report said.

► From the Washington Post — What happens when private equity takes over hospitals — In the past few years, two major hospital chains have gone bankrupt. First, in March 2024, there was Steward Health Care, which owned 31 hospitals across the country. Then came Prospect, which owned 16 hospitals when it declared bankruptcy at the start of this year. The financial condition of the hospitals had wreaked havoc on the ability of the low-income communities where both hospitals operated to deliver care even before the bankruptcies. “They died in hallways. In line. Alone,” wrote the Boston Globe of Steward’s patients. “Their deaths are the human cost of Steward’s financial neglect.”…Both Steward and Prospect were owned by private equity firms that delivered hefty profits for their investors.

► From KUOW — It’s the deadliest year for ICE in decades. As detentions rise, the trend may continue — According to a review of deaths by NPR, at least 20 people have died in ICE custody so far this year. The number comes as ICE is also holding nearly 60,000 people in immigration detention, the highest number in several years. Deaths reached a peak in 2025 for the first time since 32 deaths were recorded in 2004, and 20 deaths were recorded in 2005. Former agency officials are warning that increased detention population, decreased oversight, an increase in street and community arrests and continued difficulties staffing medical teams will result in more deaths.

► From the New York Times — Trump Officials Float New Plan for Abrego Garcia: Send Him to Liberia — The proposal to deport Mr. Abrego Garcia to Liberia was the latest twist in a byzantine saga that has transformed him over the past seven months from an unknown Salvadoran migrant living in Maryland into one of the best-known symbols of President Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda. Virtually from the moment in August that a federal judge released Mr. Abrego Garcia from custody on the criminal charges he is facing and immigration authorities rearrested him, the Trump administration has scrambled to find a country to which to deport him for a second time. Administration officials appear to be driven by a promise made by several top aides to Mr. Trump that Mr. Abrego Garcia would never walk free on U.S. soil.

POLITICS & POLICY

► From AP News — Trump administration posts notice that no federal food aid will go out Nov. 1 — The U.S. Department of Agriculture has posted a notice on its website saying federal food aid will not go out Nov. 1, raising the stakes for families nationwide as the government shutdown drags on. The new notice comes after the Trump administration said it would not tap roughly $5 billion in contingency funds to keep benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly referred to as SNAP, flowing into November. That program helps about 1 in 8 Americans buy groceries.

► From the AP — Republicans grapple with voter frustration over rising health care premiums — The first caller on a telephone town hall with Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, leader of the House’s conservative Freedom Caucus, came ready with a question about the Affordable Care Act. Her cousin’s disabled son is at risk of losing the insurance he gained under that law, the caller said. Harris, a seven-term Republican, didn’t have a clear answer. “We think the solution is to try to do something to make sure all the premiums go down,” he said, predicting Congress would “probably negotiate some off-ramp” later. His uncertainty reflected a familiar Republican dilemma: Fifteen years after the Affordable Care Act was enacted, the party remains united in criticizing the law but divided on how to move forward.

► From the New York Times — Keeping the House Absent, Johnson Marginalizes Congress and Himself — It’s an approach born of political expedience that could have far-reaching consequences for an institution that has already ceded much of its power to President Trump. And Mr. Johnson, who without the president’s backing wields little influence over his own members, has chosen to make himself subservient to Mr. Trump, a break with many speakers of the past who sought in their own ways to act more as a governing partner with the president than as his underling. “I’m the speaker and the president,” Mr. Trump has joked, according to two people who heard the remark and relayed it on the condition of anonymity because of concern about sharing private conversations with him.

► From Common Dreams — As Pentagon Takes Secretive Donation for Military Salaries, AFL-CIO Says Pay All Workers Impacted by Shutdown — As the Pentagon plans to put a $130 million donation from an anonymous “friend” of President Donald Trump toward military salaries, the largest federation of unions in the United States on Friday demanded that federal lawmakers “stop playing political games” and pay all workers affected by the government shutdown. “As the government shutdown drags into its fourth week, 1.4 million federal workers and at least 1 million federal contractors have missed a paycheck and will soon miss another if Congress fails to act,” the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) noted in a statement.

► From Wired — DHS Wants a Fleet of AI-Powered Surveillance Trucks  — The US Department of Homeland Security is seeking to develop a new mobile surveillance platform that fuses artificial intelligence, radar, high-powered cameras, and wireless networking into a single system, according to federal contracting records reviewed by WIRED. The technology would mount on 4×4 vehicles capable of reaching remote areas and transforming into rolling, autonomous observation towers, extending the reach of border surveillance far beyond its current fixed sites. The proposed system surfaced Friday after US Customs and Border Protection quietly published a pre-solicitation notice for what it’s calling a Modular Mobile Surveillance System, or M2S2. The listing includes draft technical documents, data requirements, and design objectives.

► From the Washington State Standard — Social Security payments to rise 2.8%, a tick below inflation rate — The 75 million Americans who receive Social Security benefits will see a 2.8% increase in payments next year, the Social Security Administration said Friday. The cost-of-living adjustment is just below the inflation rate of 3% announced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, also on Friday. The adjustment is lower than the average over the past decade, but higher than last year’s. The average adjustment for the past 10 years is 3.1%, including a 2.5% increase last year. On average, beneficiaries’ monthly payments will rise by about $56, the SSA said.

► From the Seattle Times — Can WA Republicans regain the Eastside Senate seat lost in Trump era?  — Magendanz said he voted for Trump in the 2024 presidential election over Democrat Kamala Harris, who won more than 57% of the vote in the 5th Legislative District. But he has been critical of Trump’s rhetoric and some of his actions, saying he’s “very concerned” with the flurry of executive orders by the president that “are arguably unconstitutional.” Still, he added: “I don’t think you can take everything that comes out of his mouth literally. I think he’s kind of proven that he’s testing the waters or joking around about stuff.”

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