UI for Strikers | WA Budget | Social security

Monday, April 28, 2025

STRIKES

► From KION — Statewide strike May 1 over UC’s hiring freeze — A statewide strike is planned on May 1 with over 20,000 UC healthcare researchers and technical workers in protest against the system’s hiring freeze. According to the University Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE), the ongoing staffing shortages is harming patient care and research.

LOCAL

► From the Spokesman Review — Spokane’s Afghan community grapples with more uncertainty as Trump administration ends Temporary Protected Status — Kazim Abdullahi, a resident of Spokane, said he knows more than 20 families in the county who will be affected – all of whom are too afraid to speak out. “They don’t want to raise their voice, because they know that if they do that, they will get deported, and they don’t want to put their life at risk,” Abdullahi said. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has decided to end TPS, also known as Temporary Protected Status, for Afghans in the United States after determining that Afghanistan no longer meets the requirements for its TPS designation.

► From the Seattle Times — Washington residents, businesses gave $5.3M to Trump inauguration — Four of Trump’s five top donors from Washington state face active enforcement actions or lawsuits initiated by the federal government, as is true of many of the top donors to the inauguration nationally. Eighty-eight corporations facing investigations or legal actions by the federal government provided $50 million — more than 20% of the total Trump’s committee collected — the left-leaning nonprofit Public Citizen, which tracks the political influence economy, noted in a statement.

► From the Tri-City Herald — ICE arrests Tri-Cities food truck owner at appointment 3 years into immigration process — Cerdio said her husband was taken to the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center, an immigration prison run by ICE. He was able to call her shortly after he was detained and again the following morning. He had not appeared before a judge. She called her husband a law-abiding father of three who is doing his best to run the food truck they launched in 2023. She said he first entered the U.S. illegally in 1998 at the age of 14, when an adult relative brought him from his native Mexico. His record is otherwise clean, she said. “He does everything right. My husband is not a criminal. He’s a good man. He’s a family man,” said Cerdio who is a U.S. citizen.

► From Cascade PBS — USDA set to cut $1B for food programs. WA food banks are worried  — The USDA has already cut $500 million from the Local Food Purchase Assistance program (LFPA) and is in the process of cutting $500 million from The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP). TEFAP was created by Congress in 1981 to purchase excess food from farmers. USDA distributes those commodities to the states, which in turn distribute them to food banks and meal programs. The program is a win/win for farmers and food banks: Growers get financial support when they have crops they either can’t sell or would have to sell at below-market rates. Food banks get staple foods for their clients such as milk, frozen and canned meat and dried fruit.

NATIONAL

► From KUOW — U.S. judge says 2-year-old apparently deported to Honduras ‘with no meaningful process’ — U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty wrote that the toddler, identified as VML, had been sent to Honduras on Friday, alongside her mother and sister, even as the court had sought to clarify the girl’s status. He set a hearing on the case for May 16 “in the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”

► From the Washington Post — Public isn’t buying Trump’s message about Kilmar Abrego García, polls show — More Americans say Abrego García should be returned to the United States than say he should remain in prison in El Salvador, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released Friday. Forty-two percent say Abrego García should be brought back, vs. 26 percent who say he should remain imprisoned abroad. Meanwhile, 31 percent of voters said they approved of Trump’s handling of the Abrego García case compared with 52 percent who said they disapproved of the president’s approach, according to a New York Times-Siena College poll released Friday.

► From NPR — Fired, rehired, and fired again: Some federal workers find they’re suddenly uninsured — An attorney recruited to the Commerce Department’s CHIPS for America program in 2023, Waterfield had felt she was part of something monumental, something that would move the country forward: rebuilding America’s semiconductor industry. Instead, nearly two months after being fired in the Trump administration’s purge of newer — or “probationary” — federal employees, Waterfield is enmeshed in a bureaucratic mess over her health care coverage. It’s a mess that’s left her fearing her entire family may now be uninsured.

► From the Washington Post — Pregnant and cut by DOGE, aid workers beg Trump administration for compassion — Pregnant employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has many overseas workers and has been gutted by DOGE-driven cuts, are in particularly dire straits. Many of the agency’s workers are losing their housing along with some or all of their parental leave as they’re forced to move back to the United States from abroad ahead of their due dates.

► From the Washington Post — Alexis Herman, labor secretary raised in segregated South, dies at 77 — Alexis Herman, who as a child in Alabama watched Ku Klux Klan members assault her father and who rose to become the nation’s first Black labor secretary in a tenure that included intense mediation to end a strike by United Parcel Service workers in 1997, died April 25 at age 77.

POLITICS & POLICY

► From the Washington State Standard — Striking worker unemployment benefit bill headed to WA governor — Unemployment benefits for striking workers are close to becoming law in Washington after a compromise proposal cleared the state House and Senate. Striking workers could expect to receive the benefits for up to six weeks under the legislation. Senate Bill 5041 now awaits a signature from Gov. Bob Ferguson.

► From the Washington State Standard — Washington lawmakers close out session, sending budgets to governor — Washington lawmakers wrapped up around 6 p.m. Sunday. They spent their final day approving new two-year budgets for the state’s day-to-day operations, transportation system and capital construction. The tax package Democrats assembled totals around $9.4 billion over four years. Much of that money — around $5.6 billion — will come from increases in the state’s main business tax. There’s also a higher rate added to the state’s capital gains tax for gains above $1 million. State employee unions scored wins, with lawmakers foregoing plans for furloughs floated earlier in the session and commitments in the budget to support new collective bargaining agreements that will provide 5% pay raises over two years.

► From Cascadia Daily News — WA Legislature approves 6-cent gas tax increase, plan headed to governor — The Senate late Friday approved the gas tax hike, the first in Washington in nearly a decade. House Democrats approved the plan Thursday. The increase would bring the state’s per-gallon gas tax from 49.4 cents to 55.4 cents, then raise it by 2% each year to account for inflation. “I don’t want to hide the ball,” said Sen. Marko Liias, the Senate’s lead transportation budget writer. “We’re asking Washingtonians to pay some more to fund our transportation system, but we’re spending it on keeping our promises, on preserving and maintaining and filling potholes on the highways that people are seeing, and we’re spending it on safety.”

► From the Washington State Standard — WA lawmakers shift approach on closing center for people with disabilities — But a Republican amendment approved on the House floor, and agreed to by the Senate, will instead prohibit new long-term admissions starting July 27 this year and stop short-term admissions starting June 30, 2027. Under the amended version, the center would close when there are no more long-term residents. Former long-term residents would have the ability to return within one year of transitioning out of the center.

► From the New York Times — Washington State Lawmakers Vote to Limit Rent Increases — Between 2001 and 2023, median residential rents in Washington State rose by 43 percent, adjusted for inflation, outpacing the 26 percent rise in renters’ incomes over the same period, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a national research group. And while there is broad consensus that more housing needs to be built, supporters of the caps say they can offer short-term predictability and protections for tenants who have been forced to move because of steep price increases.

► From the Washington Post — Judge blocks Trump executive order gutting federal unions — U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman of the District of Columbia said President Donald Trump’s March directive stripping federal workers at dozens of agencies of their union rights was unlawful, in an order granting a temporary injunction. In a statement, Doreen Greenwald, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which filed the lawsuit, called the order “a victory for federal employees, their union rights and the American people they serve.”

► From the Wall Street Journal — Trump Tightens Control of Federal Workforce as Musk Pulls Back From DOGE — The Trump administration is moving to consolidate control over the hiring and firing of federal workers, positioning a key agency to continue some of Elon Musk’s shrinking of the U.S. government as the Tesla CEO pulls back from Washington. The effort is centralized in the Office of Personnel Management, the human-resources arm of the government. The office, a hub of Musk’s project, has begun approving positions federal agencies want to add, according to agency bulletins reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. That is a change; agencies have typically decided which positions they filled.

► From Reuters — Exclusive: White House wants to defund independent Social Security board, sources say — The White House’s Office of Management and Budget has notified staff at the Social Security Advisory Board that it plans to cut the board’s annual budget from around $3 million to zero, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss non-public budgetary details. While the board does not have decision-making power, its research has helped shape how the SSA runs itself and facilitated legislation. It has also played a role in important policy debates, including a 2005 effort under then-President George W. Bush to privatize the agency that ultimately failed.

► From CNN — Analyzing the scale of Trump’s federal layoffs in his first 100 days — At least 121,000 federal workers have been fired or laid off in the three months since President Donald Trump’s second term began, according to a CNN analysis of official statements, internal memos from government officials and news reports. It’s a vast number that doesn’t count those placed on administrative leave or who took voluntary buyouts. The fallout of the sweeping layoffs has already had a ripple effect across the country and raised questions about the government’s capacity to meet public needs when it comes to education, healthcare, transportation and public safety, experts told CNN.

► From the New York Times — Trump Budget to Take Ax to ‘Radical’ Safety Net Programs — The proposed budget for the 2026 fiscal year would cut billions of dollars from programs that support child care, health research, education, housing assistance, community development and the elderly, according to preliminary documents reviewed by The New York Times. The proposal, which is being finalized by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, also targets longstanding initiatives that have been prized by Democrats and that Republicans view as “woke” or wasteful spending.

► From Politico — ‘A gut punch’: Trump admin cuts wipe out firefighter health and safety programs — NIOSH’s congressionally mandated Health Hazard Evaluation program is one of many health and safety services on which firefighters depend that’s been shrunk or eliminated by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “reduction in force” — a purge of more than 10,000 employees. Firefighters are regularly exposed to toxins and chemicals that affect their physical and mental health, problems compounded by stress and irregular sleep. NIOSH research found that firefighters have a 9 percent greater risk of a cancer diagnosis and a 14 percent greater risk of dying from cancer than the general population.

INTERNATIONAL

► From the Independent — Canada election live: Polls open for crucial vote after Trump and his trade war dominate campaign — Voters will pick either current prime minister Mark Carney, head of a Liberal party that has had a decade in power, or leader of the opposition Conservatives, Pierre Poilievre. A poll by Abacus Data published on Sunday, found that the Liberals were on 41 per cent of the vote compared with 39 per cent for Conservatives.

TODAY’S MUST-LISTEN

► From NPR — A Whistleblower Takes on DOGE : Up First from NPR — NPR’s cybersecurity correspondent Jenna McLaughlin recently broke a story about a whistleblower inside the federal government who says DOGE representatives appear to have taken sensitive data, then covered their tracks. Daniel Berulis works for the National Labor Relations Board and he has shared evidence that DOGE engineers disabled security protocols, exported reams of sensitive data and used a “hacker’s toolkit” to hide their activities. And he thinks his agency is not alone.

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