Washington state went all in on expanding public broadband this year. So much so, that the Legislature passed two different bills aimed at extending high-speed internet to people in rural areas. Continue Reading Two Bills Aim Read More
LISTEN BY AILSA CHANG, JASON FULLER & SARAH HANDEL Tennessee could owe a historically Black university more than a half-billion dollars after it withheld funding for decades. A bipartisan legislative… Continue Reading Read More
A wide-ranging proposal to save wild salmon by removing the four Lower Snake River dams may be dead in the water. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Sen. Patty Murray say any proposal for the controversial dams needs a “science-based,” “community-driven” approach. Read More
House Republicans have removed Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming as conference chair in retaliation for her unyielding criticism of former President Donald Trump, his continued false claims of a stolen election, his role in the Jan. 6 riot and his future in the Republican Party. Read More
Responding to concerns raised by the U.S. Justice Department about aspects of a controversial election review, the leader of Arizona's state Senate says plans to go door-to-door asking residents about their voting history are "indefinitely" on hold. Read More
The Justice Department has filed federal criminal charges against Derek Chauvin, accusing the former police officer of using excessive force and violating the civil rights of George Floyd. Floyd died after Chauvin pressed on his neck for more than nine minutes on the pavement outside a convenience store last year in Minneapolis. Read More
Stargazers across the Pacific Northwest were treated to quite a light show in late March when the errant reentry of a spent rocket sent fireballs streaking high overhead. The uncontrolled disintegration of the rocket rained debris onto eastern Washington. While the search for mangled rocket parts goes on, the event also provided a great learning opportunity for researchers Read More
Nước — the Vietnamese word for country and water — permeates Eric Nguyen's haunting debut. Signifying both a place of origin and the means by which a boat refugee departs from such place of origin, Things We Lost to the Water poignantly explores all the ways in which Vietnamese refugees are affected by country and water — in sum, by dislocation. Read More
The analysis comes from researchers at the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, who looked at excess mortality from March 2020 through May 3, 2021, compared it with what would be expected in a typical non-pandemic year, then adjusted those figures to account for a handful of other pandemic-related factors. Read More
In the middle of this year’s legislative session, the Washington Supreme Court dropped its Blake decision, declaring the law criminalizing drug possession in the state to be unconstitutional. What followed was a sprint by lawmakers to answer the justices’ enormous ruling — a balancing act between conservatives eager to make drug possession a felony again and progressives Read More
Facebook was justified in its decision to suspend then-President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the company's Oversight Board said on Wednesday. Continue Reading Facebook Ban On Donald Trump Will Hold, Read More
Mary Big Bull-Lewis sees the way forward for Native people in Washington: ownership of the land and the stories attached to it. Continue Reading In Wenatchee, A Wenatchi Designer Has A Plan To Buy Back Native LandsRead More
After spending much of the past year tending to elderly patients, doctors are seeing a clear demographic shift: young and middle-aged adults make up a growing share of the patients in COVID-19 hospital wards. Continue Reading COVID Read More
The far-right media outlet Newsmax, which amplified former President Donald Trump's false allegations of election rigging and widespread voter fraud, said on Friday there is no evidence that Dominion Voting Systems and one of its top employees, Eric Coomer, manipulated election results in 2020. Read More
You fall in love with a person, but you get a package deal. That's one of the big messages of two new novels that ruminate on love and family, particularly the family that's thrust upon you when you happen to mate with one of their kith or kin. Read More
While some Washingtonians appear eager to get vaccinated and get on with their lives, a new poll reveals even some people who are fully vaccinated remain cautious about getting back to normal. Continue Reading Poll: Washingtonians Aren’t Read More
Across the Northwest, many Latinx families are facing similar barriers to getting vaccinated and other issues. Adding to the complexity is powerful misinformation on social media and by word-of-mouth, the recent health concerns over the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and religious reasons for vaccine hesitancy. Read More
Top Washington state legislators want to put a price on carbon to raise money for transportation projects. But with time running out, they can’t agree on the details. Continue Reading The Future Of Washington’s Read More
The White House has walked back its announcement that it will keep this year's historically low refugee ceiling of 15,000 set by the Trump administration, saying its earlier statement Friday, which was panned by fellow Democrats, was meant only to ease restrictions from countries from which refugees are currently banned. Read More
The Indian Health Service has been lauded for the success of its vaccination campaign. But not every Native American got to be part of that. Tribes that aren't recognized by the U.S. government have received none of the resources directed to Indian Country to help them survive the pandemic. Read More
To say that The Final Revival of Opal & Nev is a sly simulacrum of a rock oral history is to acknowledge only the most obvious of this novel's achievements. Walton aspires to so much more in this story about music, race and family secrets that spans five decades. And, all the glitzy, quick-change narrative styles don't detract attention from the core emotional power of her Read More
In a converted 107-year-old former bank building in Centralia’s quaint downtown, Praxis Laboratory tested pot from growers across the state. Small samples of marijuana flowers would arrive in baggies. Maybe 4 grams or so from every few square feet of leafy canopy. Read More
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the blood clots are extremely rare but that it is reviewing the cases. The agency says it expects this pause to last for "a matter of days." Continue Reading What Read More
President Biden will withdraw all remaining U.S. troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that prompted America's involvement in its longest war, a senior administration official told reporters on Tuesday. Read More
When Duke Ellington famously coined the phrase "beyond category," he was talking about freedom — of choice, of expression, of belonging. He meant following your heart and your instincts into an artistic territory without borders. And that's the place where violinist Regina Carter makes her home. Read More
Libertie, a new novel by Kaitlyn Greenidge, is inspired by the life of Dr. Susan Smith McKinney-Steward, the third African American woman to earn a medical degree in this country. Continue Reading BOOK REVIEW: A Daughter Struggles To Read More
A new possible problem with Boeing's 737 Max airplanes has several airlines once again pulling dozens of the troubled jets out of service. Boeing said in a statement that it has "recommended to 16 customers that they address a potential electrical issue in a specific group of 737 MAX airplanes prior to further operations." Read More
The vast majority of votes cast by Amazon's workers in Bessemer, Ala., were against joining the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union in a stinging defeat of the union drive. The final tally showed 1,798 votes against unionizing and 738 votes in favor of the union. Read More
A Crosscut investigation found at least 183 police officers flagged for issues such as dishonesty, bias and excessive force remain in law enforcement. Continue Reading Investigation Reveals Nearly 200 Read More
Lawmakers convened for the first time in 18 days — after calling a sudden and historic recess in an attempt to slow a Statehouse coronavirus outbreak. The first sessions were brief: The House reconvened at about 12:05 p.m., and stayed on the floor for about 25 minutes. The Senate went into session at about 12:25 p.m., and was in session for just 10 minutes. Read More
Growing up poor in Washington state, singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile learned about harmony and rhythm while performing as a backup singer for a friend's dad, who worked as an Elvis impersonator. Continue Reading Northwest Read More
The National Security Agency considers itself the world's most formidable cyber power, with an army of computer warriors who constantly scan the wired world. Yet by law, the NSA only collects intelligence abroad, and not inside the U.S. Continue Reading Read More
An out-of-state hospital is often the closest, most convenient option for patients and their families and can ensure patients get state-of-the-art care, since only a limited number of hospitals and physicians in the country have the skills and experience to best treat children with certain conditions. Read More
The author of two poetry books and a member of the Lhaq'temish (Lummi) Nation, Priest is the sixth poet and first Native person to be selected for the two-year term, a program of the Washington State Arts Commission and Humanities Washington. Continue Read More
One U.S. Capitol Police officer is dead and another is hospitalized with injuries after an apparent attack Friday at a Capitol checkpoint in which a man rammed his car into officers and lunged at them with a knife, police said. Continue Read More
A study released this month in the Journal of Hospital Medicine, led by researchers from Vanderbilt University Medical Center, found that across 44 children's hospitals, the number of pediatric patients hospitalized for respiratory illnesses is down 62%. Deaths have dropped dramatically too, compared with the last 10 years: The number of flu deaths among children is Read More
Lawmakers in Olympia are scrambling to respond to a Washington Supreme Court decision that declared the state’s law criminalizing drug possession unconstitutional because it did not require prosecutors to prove intent. Continue Read More
The Life of the Mind is about endings that dribble to a close, the inexorable erosion of dreams, the slow leak of youthful buoyancy. It's about being young-ish at a time in history when it feels like many things might be fading away, including the natural world. The great accomplishment of Smallwood's taut novel is that while it is, indeed, about all those grim subjects, Read More
A staggering 98% of these crimes have been committed by men, according to The Violence Project, a nonpartisan research group that tracks U.S. mass shooting data dating back to 1966. Continue Reading Why Nearly All Mass Shooters Are MenRead More
Most Americans are eligible for free tax-preparation services, but the truly free options can be hard to find. If you’re not careful, you could end up using a service that says it’s free but demands payment after you’ve spent time entering your information. Read More
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Thursday signed a massive overhaul of election laws, shortly after the Republican-controlled state legislature approved it. The bill enacts new limitations on mail-in voting, expands most voters' access to in-person early voting and caps a months-long battle over voting in a battleground state. Read More
A year after the pandemic shut down the country, a growing number of infectious disease experts, epidemiologists, public health officials and others have started to entertain a notion that has long seemed out of reach: The worst of the pandemic may be over for the United States. Read More
There have been many fine films over the past several years about characters struggling with the onset of Alzheimer's disease and dementia, like Away From Her, Still Alice and the recent Colin Firth/Stanley Tucci drama Supernova. But few of them have gone as deeply and unnervingly into the recesses of a deteriorating mind as The Father, a powerful new chamber drama built Read More
Without emergency hires, the Moses Lake School District would not have the staffing necessary to comply with the Washington State Department of Health’s reopening guidelines, according to district Superintendent Dr. Joshua Meek. They are essential to the district's reopening, he said. Read More
LISTEN BY CARRIE JOHNSON Christopher Wray is only the eighth director to lead the FBI — and the only one whose appointment was announced on Twitter. For the past 3… Continue Reading ‘We’re Going To Keep Read More
In John Lanchester's collection, Reality and Other Stories, the supernatural manifests itself through cell phones, social media, computers, reality tv shows, and smart houses. "Signal," the opening story, was originally published in The New Yorker and it's a standout: an eerie homage to Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. Read More
For advocates of drug policy reform and those in the world of criminal defense, the ruling “was a much-needed nail in the coffin on the war on drugs,” said Ali Hohman, director of legal services at the Washington Defender Association. Meanwhile, many prosecutors, law enforcement officials and lawmakers are nervous about its implications. Read More
BY FRANCO ORDOÑEZ & JOHN BURNETT A record number of migrant children and teenagers are being held in warehouse-like detention facilities run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection near the… Continue Reading Children Read More
Doctors treating COVID-19 patients early in the pandemic often reached for antibiotics. But those drugs were not helpful in most cases, and overuse of antibiotics is a serious concern. Continue Reading Antibiotic Use Ran High In Early Days Read More
Jury selection in the highly anticipated trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin began in district court on Tuesday, even as the judge in the case awaits higher courts' rulings that could halt the proceedings. Chauvin faces charges in the killing of George Floyd last Memorial Day. Read More
