Bloglander

ON INLANDER.COM

NEWS: Democratic candidate for Washington's 5th district, Lisa Brown, is generally critical of the current administration's immigration policies. And she's quick to call out her opponent, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers. But Brown has yet to offer any specifics on her own views.

NEWS: Pullman's revival is in full swing. Now what to do about the rot in the middle?

OUTDOORS: The annual Outdoors issue is on stands today. It's packed with stories about trail-builders, urban wildlife and some breathtaking photography. Here, we compiled some of the best spots to hike, camp, bike, paddle and do pretty much anything else out of doors.


IN OTHER NEWS

'Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right'
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement yesterday. For the past three decades, Kennedy has spent his time in the court's ideological center, often casting the critical "swing vote."

Kennedy has rejected that moniker. Yet he's sided with more liberal justices on gay rights, abortion and affirmative action. On voting rights, campaign spending and Second Amendment cases, Kennedy went to the right.

Now, President Donald Trump will appoint his replacement, and experts speculate whether precedents set in the 51 decisions in which Kennedy sided with the liberal majority could be in danger. (New York Times)

Pusher man
A longtime Spokane dentist is staring at a federal indictment for illegally writing hundreds of prescriptions for opioid pills, totaling more than 17,000 tablets. Lawyers for Dr. James Shelby say "there are unique and complex circumstances surrounding his management of this particular patient." (Spokesman-Review)

Portland protesters arrested
At least eight people were arrested Thursday after protesting in front of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland. Federal agents had previously warned protesters to clear the building's entrance, but they remained there for days, saying they would not leave until ICE was abolished. (Willamette Week)

Tacoma protesters arrested
Ten people were arrested Tuesday outside the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, where people are held while they wait for their deportation proceedings to move forward. (News Tribune)

Replacing Joe Albi
The Spokane Public Schools board still has questions about the proposed downtown spots stadium to replace existing Joe Albi. (Spokesman-Review)

U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers dodges tough questions like a politician.

She'll dodge by answering questions you didn't ask for. She'll seek to return to safe talking points.  ("Donald Trump was elected president... .") Sometimes, you have to ask the same question two or three times to get a straight answer.

But her opponent, Lisa Brown? So far, she seems to dodge tough questions more like an academic — or a college administrator. 

She'll say she hasn't formed a view on that issue yet or doesn't have enough data. She'll call for the creation of a committee to study the topic. She'll suggest she wants to spend time listening before articulating a position.

It's not like Brown hasn't had an opportunity to form detailed opinions on political issues:
Brown first entered politics in the Washington state Legislature in 1992. She spent two decades in the thick of the political debate, rising to become the Senate Majority Leader of the Washington state Democrats.

But on one of the most controversial issues of the day, immigration, Brown offers fiery critiques against Trump and McMorris Rodgers, but says that she hasn't yet developed specific answers to several major questions.

And it's not clear whether she will before the election.

Last week, in an interview with the Inlander in the midst of the national outcry against Trump's family separation policy, Brown joined the chorus of condemnations against Trump, calling his policy "both inhumane and a human rights violation, particularly given that some of these families are fleeing desperate or even violent situations and seeking asylum here."

She called for Trump to end his family separation policy and argued that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program should be reinstated as well.

And then, she says, there needs to be "a comprehensive immigration bill that is negotiated between the House and the Senate and the Democrats and the Republicans. It would be multifaceted and long overdue."

She says that sort of bill should address issues around temporary worker programs, the asylum process and border security. She's critical of Congress' inability to strike a bipartisan compromise.

But when pressed on what her ideal immigration system would look like, she offers few general principles — and even fewer specifics.

"Should border security be increased?" the Inlander asks.

"I think that border security is part of immigration policy," Brown responds.

She declines to elaborate on what that border security should look like, or whether it should be increased or not.

"I’m not prepared to talk about all the details on all the bills that are out there," she says.

Should we decrease or increase legal immigration?

“I honestly need to review those questions in light of current policy," Brown says. "I’m not prepared to talk about all the different aspects.”

Should Immigration and Customs Enforcement be abolished, as some activists — including a surprise winner of last night's Democratic primary in New York — have demanded?

"I'd have to review that as well," Brown says.

The Inlander asks about a concern raised by some that by not detaining asylum seekers until their hearing that they may disappear and never show up for court.

Brown says that's something she would be digging into — if she were in Congress.

"That’s the kind of thing that were I in Congress, I would be listening to the evidence to be coming forward from law enforcement, the legal justice system, and a whole variety of stakeholders who have knowledge of the process, and then weigh the pros and cons of how to move forward to have the right systems in the right place have a fair system," Brown says. "Really that hasn’t happened. There’s been a logjam in America for quite a long time."

And how about the visa system? What should we do to improve it?

Brown says that she's heard from constituents that there are bureaucratic problems with the system that needs to be reformed.

"I don’t have the details of what that should look like," Brown says.

Brown argues that, as a candidate, she doesn't have the same power to get answers as she would as a policymaker.

"My approach as a policymaker was always to get an analysis of a status quo and the problems that the people in my district are experiencing with it," Brown says. "That is, to understand the lay of the land … and then work on a path forward. As a candidate, I'm not in that position."

She says she'll be happy to comment on specific bills that are introduced or to raise issues raised by her constituents. But don't expect her to come out with, say, a detailed immigration plan.

"I’m not prepared to put out a comprehensive immigration bill," Brown told the Inlander last week. 

In other interviews, Brown has given slightly more hints about her position. In an Inlander interview in May, Brown slammed McMorris Rodgers for using DACA recipients as "bargaining chips" as part of a larger immigration deal, said she was opposed to Trump's wall proposal and also suggested she might be open to a form of amnesty.

"We have people here who are living in the shadows," Brown said. "We need to come up with a process of bringing them out into the open and giving them ways to work towards citizenship."

And in February, a Spokesman-Review questionnaire laid out the general positions of both candidates, with Brown staking out positions supportive of DACA and family reunification, but opposed to Trump's border wall.

But here too, she was vague in several areas. 

“I don’t think an arbitrary number is the right approach,” she said when asked about how many refugees should be allowed in the United States each year. On guest worker visas she said she needs to study the issue more to find out which changes need to be made.

"I don’t have the ideal immigration policy sketched out," she told the Spokesman. "I’ll work on the details of that as we go forward.”

More than four months have passed since.

Immigration isn't the only area where Brown has declined to outline a specific policy on major questions.

Asked if she'd support a bill to ban AR-15 rifles, Brown doesn't say yes or no. Instead, she says that she'd form a bipartisan committee to study the issue.

"I'm not going to prejudge where that would lead," Brown tells the Inlander. "I don't come into my candidacy for Congress with a 10-point plan. I'm traveling throughout the district and listening to what people have to say."

Contrast that sort of language with a story from 2012, and notice how deeply Brown plunges into the weeds and how specific she gets when talking about her advocacy for an income tax and family leave policies.

Immigration, meanwhile, is a particularly important issue for a candidate who desires to serve on the House agriculture committee. And unlike, say, taxes or education, we don't have a long record of statements and votes from her state Legislature years to understand her views on immigration.

Brown is not the only Democrat reticent to go beyond anti-Trump rhetoric on immigration. On an episode of the liberal Pod Save America podcast last week, former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett lamented Democratic timidity on this issue:

Democrats are afraid of this issue. They're afraid to say 'Here's what I'm for on immigration.'

Not just on pieces of it. Not just on DACA. Not just on children being ripped away from their parents. Not just on asylum. Not just on refugees. But what is our immigration policy as a party? How many people should come in? What should we do at the border? What should we do with people who are undocumented? How long until they can get on the path to citizenship? All of that stuff, we have walked away from it basically completely in terms of what we talk about every single day. ...

The only argument is the Trump argument and the anti-Trump argument, but that is a fraction of the complicated conversation we need to have about the fact that our immigration system is totally broken."

If Brown wants to have that complicated conversation — and talk specifically about what sort of comprehensive bill she'd support and what kind she would oppose — the Inlander will be ready to write about it.

In the meantime, McMorris Rodgers has been in the thick of detailed immigration policy discussions, caught between two wings of her own party. She was part of the leadership attempt to quell the moderates who wanted to push a standalone DACA bill, but also voted in opposition to a hardline immigration bill championed by Idaho's Raúl Labrador.

Yet her own preferred comprehensive bill failed miserably today, 301 to 121.

Now, McMorris Rodgers says she's going to take the lead on a more narrow bill to address family separation legislatively.

ON INLANDER.COM

TV: The Maze was not meant for Wilson. An Inlander staff writer shares his disappointment with the season two finale of Westworld.

BIZ: A local company in State Line is bringing its wood stove, “the Optimum stove,” to a Washington, D.C. competition for “green heat.” The stove design is built to uphold new standards put in place by the EPA by 2020.

MUSIC: The I Love the '90s Tour is coming to Northern Quest on Thursday with Salt-N-Pepa, Vanilla Ice and others. This is either super fresh, or totally lame. Read our review of other '90s acts we think deserve the nostalgia treatment.

IN OTHER NEWS

30 Days
A judge in San Diego has ordered that children who were separated from their parents by the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy must be reunited within 30 days. For younger children, the timeline is shorter. (Washington Post)

Recognize, Dems
A 28-year-old political novice running a freely liberal campaign defeated incumbent House Democrat Joe Crowley in New York in Tuesday’s primaries. “The community is ready for a movement of economic and social justice. That is what we tried to deliver,” victor Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said. The win shook things up in D.C., as Crowley was considered a potential replacement for Nancy Pelosi. (Associated Press)

The Return of Romney
He’s back. At 71 years, the former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential contender received the GOP’s nomination for Utah’s U.S. Senate race. (Salt Lake Tribune)

In season one of Westworld, the Man in Black, William, is on a quest to find the end of "the Maze," a feat he believes would lead him to a deeper understanding of the world he helped create, a sense of meaning that he had, as of yet, been missing.

The hosts try to warn him: “The Maze isn’t meant for you.” But the Man in Black persists anyway. By the end of the season, he’s left unsatisfied when he finds out they were right.
The Maze wasn’t meant for humans: It was meant for the hosts, the robots, to achieve consciousness.

After watching Sunday’s season two finale, I find myself returning to that plotline. I’m starting to relate to the Man in Black’s futile season-one quest more and more. This show wasn’t meant for us, the viewers. I know this because it’s unreasonable for the show to expect any single viewer to come away from the show knowing exactly what they just saw, besides a vague sense of a narrative buried under larger themes and ideas.

(Warning: spoilers) The surviving hosts have gone to a new world, a matrix of sorts, where they may or may not experience true freedom. Maeve, the robot, dies experiencing the most human of emotions — love for her daughter — after briefly becoming something like Neo. Delores, the robot, escapes to the actual human world in a replica of an actual human body, where she is recreating her creator, Arnold, who was a human, but is now a robot named Bernard. The Man in Black is now a Robot-Human Hybrid in Black?

It’s confusing on purpose. We’re not meant to understand it fully. We’re meant to endlessly speculate on what it means. And like the Man in Black, we’re meant to turn toward technology for answers, toward internet forums, podcasts and social media. That world is where we go to understand each episode, to answer questions until the next episode again raises more. That’s what this show, this Maze, is for.

As the show kills and revives humans and robots alike, I find myself wondering why any of it matters at all. Do I really care that a robot, which can be revived according to its popularity, has died? Do I care that a human has died and become a robot? Usually, no.

That’s not to say the show isn’t occasionally excellent. It’s chilling to watch episode four of this season, “The Riddle of the Sphinx,” a poignant exploration of a powerful man stuck in a loop of his own making, going insane from his own immortality. And episode eight, “Kiksuya,” which follows a robot named Akecheta, is a good example of how the show could succeed while handling the same themes in a simpler narrative.

Like the Man in Black, I find myself looking for real stakes, real life-and-death scenarios in the show. I’ve become frustrated chasing down Westworld narratives that seem inconsequential. I feel stuck in a show that won’t provide any answers, only more questions. And I can’t help but think that at the end, I won’t be satisfied, and I’ll remember that the show had been warning me all along.

A fabrication company in State Line is making a new stove that can burn more efficiently and meet strict Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines, and it just might be able to beat out international competitors in a wood stove design challenge in Washington D.C. this fall.

The Optimum stove, made by 509 Fabrication right on the Idaho border, was invented by a friend of the company's owners in Hayden, Idaho, several years ago.

"It’s more like a wood stove than a pellet stove, but it still burns biofuel," says Dusty Henderson, who owns 509 Fab with his father Gary. "Frank Reed built and designed the first model. He had it in his shop. He kind of did it on a dare that somebody told him you couldn’t burn one piece of wood at a time."

Instead of feeding chopped logs into the front of the stove, pressed logs made out of sawdust are placed in a tube on top, stacked end on end to feed themselves into the fire. Depending on the settings, Henderson says that the stove can burn on its own overnight without being stoked.

Part of what makes the stove so efficient is an improved design made after Henderson and his dad bought the right to patent it. In the original design, the feed tube was at about a 70-degree angle, Henderson says, but the new design is at 90 degrees, which makes more space for metal tubes that absorb the heat, which is then blown out to the room by a fan.

"Your logs are stacked on end, and as your bottom log burns, you’re burning about 4 inches at a time," Henderson says. "Your upper logs push it down, so it burns down."

The fuel burns so hot and efficiently that there isn't an ash pen to collect ashes, Henderson says.

"The ash accumulates outside of the firebox and you only have to clean it every 14 days or so," if you're running the stove 24/7, he says.

By 2020, all new stoves have to meet new strict EPA guidelines on how many grams of particulate-matter pollution are created per hour of use. For pellet stoves, that requirement is no more than 2 grams per hour.

"Back in the '80s, wood stoves would put out 60 to 80 grams of emissions an hour," Henderson says. "We came in at 1.49 grams of emissions. The industry's come a long ways."

The 509 Fab stove will be one of a dozen to compete in the Alliance for Green Heat's fourth Wood Stove Design Challenge starting Nov. 9, which is designed to inspire innovation in home heating, where there hasn't been as much advancement as with other tools used in daily life. The teams will compete for up to $50,000.

"Wood stoves are still used by 30 – 60 percent of homes in hundreds of rural and suburban counties around the country," an Alliance for Green Heat announcement of the event states. "Yet, the technology revolution that has swept household appliances in the last 20 years has bypassed wood stove technology."

One part of the competition will include other stove designs that integrate thermoelectric elements to generate electricity for everything from batteries to cell phones or lighting.

For 509 Fab's stove, the competition is about automating the stove heating process.

The stove is currently being sold factory-direct to consumers until the company sets up a base of dealers. 

ON INLANDER.COM

NEWS: Despite a USA Today map that said otherwise, Pioneer Human Services is not housing immigrant children separated from their families in Spokane. Neither, for that matter, is Martin Hall Juvenile Detention Center.

NEWS: State law requires juvenile courts to notify school principals when a student commits a crime. But an audit found no evidence that Spokane County Juvenile Court did so.

IN OTHER NEWS

WSU quarterback had CTE
An autopsy revealed that Tyler Hilinski, the Washington State University quarterback who took his own life earlier this year, had signs of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE. The degenerative brain disease found in athletes, primarily football players, is the result of repetitive brain trauma. Here are his parents speaking about the results on the Today show. (ESPN) 

“Medical examiner said he had the brain of a 65-year-old, which is really hard to take.” Parents of Tyler Hilinski, the promising football player who took his own life at 21, discuss the findings from their son’s autopsy. pic.twitter.com/UTVcnWNIm3

— TODAY (@TODAYshow) June 26, 2018

Travel ban upheld
President Trump's travel ban, which barred people from entering the U.S. from five mainly Muslim countries, was upheld this morning by the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump called it a "tremendous victory for the American People and the Constitution" and a "profound vindication following months of hysterical commentary from the media and Democratic politicians who refuse to do what it takes to secure our border and our country." (NPR)

Trade war backfires
In response to tariffs that the European Union imposed from Trump's trade war, Harley-Davidson announced it would move some of its production overseas. Trump lashed out on Twitter. (New York Times)

Housing for parking
With Spokane City Council looking for more housing, the council voted last night to suspend minimum parking requirements. (KXLY)

Pioneer Human Services runs a number of programs in Spokane: Re-entry programs with transitional housing. The Carlyle Care Center. But one thing they don't have in Spokane: immigrant children separated from their families.

"We don’t have any youth programs in Spokane," says Harold Wright, director of Youth and Young Adult Services for Pioneer Human Services.

That's despite a USA Today graphic published last week that set local activists abuzz. A map compiled from "federal contracting records, local news reports and the limited information being released by federal agencies" purported to show that Spokane was one of the communities housing children who'd been separated from their immigrant parents by the the Trump administration's "zero tolerance policy."

With little to go on other than that it was a "facility run by Pioneer Human Services," activists tried to gather as much information as they could.

One possible reason there may have been confusion on USA Today's part? Pioneer Human Services does have a 23-bed facility for unaccompanied immigrant minors at Selma Carson Home, in Fife, Washington, in the Tacoma suburbs.

Wright says they've been operating the facility since about 2003.

"We have unaccompanied youth who are about 16 years old," Wright says. But at Selma Carson Home, Wright says, the goal is to try to reunite unaccompanied minors with their families, or at least find them stable, supportive foster families.

"We're trying to reunify them with their families or a healthy adult," Wright says. "We’re trying to provide support around mental health. Substance abuse. Jobs skills. English."

A recent Tacoma News Tribune article quoted a Seattle-based attorney who claimed that at least one immigrant child separated from their parents had been sent to Selma Carson, but Pioneer Human Services said that was inaccurate. They have kids that crossed the border on their own, but not separated from their parents because of the Trump policy.

"We checked all of the files of our clients and with confidence I can say that up to this point we have not served any youth who have been separated from their parents at the border in the U.S.," Art Tel, Selma Carson's director of programming, told the News Tribune. "Clearly all of the youth we serve are separated from their families in their country of origin by choice, force or out of desperation. Also, their detainment in the U.S. is a separation — but the youth we serve have not been taken from their parents here."

This weekend, some local activists suspected that the facility in Spokane referred to by USA Today was Martin Hall Juvenile Facility, a detention center in Medical Lake. Some even drove out to the area to try to see if Martin Hall — or the nearby shuttered Pine Lodge Correctional Facility  — was a location undocumented children were being held.

But that's not the case with either facility. The former Pine Lodge site is owned by the Department of Social and Human Services. It's the site for Consolidated Support Services, a DSHS office that provides maintenance support for a variety of local DSHS sites.

"No undocumented children are housed there," DSHS spokeswoman Mindy Chambers says.

Meanwhile, Robert Palmquist, a juvenile detention facility administrator at Martin Hall, shoots down the idea that Martin Hall holds any separated immigrant children.

“No we don’t,” Palmquist says, “And I’m glad.”

Nine local counties currently contract with Martin Hall for juvenile detention services. It isn't operated by Pioneer Human Services — it's operated by a nonprofit corporation called Community, Counseling and Correctional Services based in Butte, Montana.

Palmquist says Martin Hall used to take in unaccompanied immigrant minors under a contract with the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service. But that contract ended, and he says Martin Hall has “not been in that business” since before the Obama administration.

USA Today did not immediately reply to an email from the Inlander asking why the publication had claimed a Spokane facility operated by Pioneer Health Services was housing children separated from their families.

When a student commits a crime, state law says that juvenile courts are supposed to notify public school principals.

But until recently, Spokane County Juvenile Court kept no record to show it had sent schools any notifications at all.

"They didn't have any documentation that we could use to verify they sent notifications," says Lori Garretson, lead performance auditor for the Washington State Auditor's Office.

That's important, Garretson says, because the proper notifications can ensure school safety and help schools smooth the student's return to class.

Garretson led the audit, which looked into the issue of student crime notifications among juvenile courts in Washington. The audit sampled 10 of the state's judicial districts, including Spokane. Spokane was one of two judicial courts audited that failed to record any notifications to schools regarding student offenses.

That doesn't necessarily mean it didn't send them, Garretson says. And Spokane County Juvenile Court, for its part, said it did send notifications, it just didn't retain the documentation to prove it. State law does not require courts to retain the documentation, but keeping a record of notifications could protect the court from a potential lawsuit.

Since the audit, Garretson says, the court has changed that.

"They were very prompt to take corrective action," Garretson says.

The audit looked at data from 2016. It identified more than 330 types of offenses that would require courts to contact school principals. That adds up to an estimated 10,000 notifications per year in the state.

Overall, the courts audited in the state could prove they made notifications to schools about student offenses just 51 percent of the time. In 29 percent of cases, no documentation was kept to verify notifications were sent. Those figures do not include Spokane or the other court that didn't keep records at all.

"The audit found a number of ways notification processes can break down and significant opportunities for improving the flow of information about students who have committed criminal offenses," the report says.

This is the first time the Auditor's Office has looked at this issue, specifically, says Garretson. She says they chose to look into this process because the Auditor's Office "received personal communication that indicated some gaps in overall processes." There was also concern following a court case in which school personnel in Bethel School District were unaware that a student was a registered sex offender. That student then raped another 14-year-old student.

The reasons for juvenile courts not notifying principals about student offenses vary. Lack of staff training contributed to the gaps, the report says. The courts have since committed to improving training and monitoring.

Garretson says this is just the first audit looking at the issue of notification of student criminal offenses. While this audit focused on the court sending information to schools, the next will cover whether or not schools have records of receiving notifications.

The audit report recommends that the state Legislature formalize a workgroup of stakeholders that already began meeting during the course of the audit in order to streamline the process.

You can view the full report here. 

The U.S. Supreme Court will not review the gay rights case involving a Richland, Washington, florist, who refused to provide floral arrangements for a gay wedding.

In 2017, the Washington State Supreme Court unanimously decided that Barronelle Stutzman, the owner of Arlene's Flowers, violated the state's anti-discrimination law by refusing to provide the arrangements. State justices rejected Stutzman's argument that providing flowers for a gay wedding would violate her First Amendment rights.

She appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has now vacated the Washington State Supreme Court's ruling without reviewing the specifics. The case has been sent back to the State Supreme Court for review in light of the high court's ruling on a similar case out of Colorado earlier this year.

The Colorado case involves a baker who refused to make a custom cake for a gay couple's wedding. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in favor of the baker, though it did not answer the critical question of whether requiring him to bake a cake violates his First Amendment right to free speech and freedom of religion.

Rather, the majority decision turned on an unreasonable level of hostility toward the baker from a Colorado civil rights commission, which initially ruled against him.

It is in light of that narrow decision that Washington state justices will review the Arlene's Flowers case.

Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who brought the case against Stutzman, said in a statement that he is "confident [the State Supreme Court] will come to the same conclusion they did in their previous, unanimous ruling upholding the civil rights of same-sex couples in our state."

In a statement released Monday, the senior vice president for the Alliance Defending Freedom, who has argued on behalf of Stutzman and the Colorado baker, Jack Phillips, says the state attorney general has shown hostility toward Stutzman, similar to the Colorado commission.

"Barronelle, like Jack, serves all customers but declines to create custom art that expresses messages or celebrates events in conflict with her deeply held religious beliefs," Alliance Defending Freedom senior Vice President Kristen Waggoner said in a statement. "The Washington attorney general's efforts to punish her because he dislikes her beliefs about marriage are as impermissible as Colorado's attempt to punish Jack."

If State Supreme Court justices reach the same conclusion as they did in 2017, Stutzman can again appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, a spokesperson for the attorney general's office said.

ON INLANDER.COM

ARTS & CULTURE: Cedric the Entertainer and his openers put on a hilarious show in North Idaho last week, drawing laughs from the most racially-diverse audience Dan Nailen has ever seen in the Inland Northwest.

FOOD/FOR FUN!: Need somewhere to take the doggo during the dog days of summer? Here's a list of some pup-friendly places where you both can relax and grab a drink or bite to eat.

MUSIC: Here's why downtown Spokane is bound to be filled with Juggalos on Aug. 14. 
NEWS: Foster families around Spokane have become the new homes for two dozen unaccompanied refugee minors and youth who've received asylum from Central American conflicts. But while there is likely the support to house more here, the numbers of refugees being admitted to the country has slowed dramatically in recent months.

IN OTHER NEWS

Liberal D.C. is swiping left on young Trump employees
In its current issue, Politico Magazine dives into the world of dating (or, trying to) for young people who've worked for the Trump administration. From all caps messages asking why they're racists after a match Googles their name, to figuring out just the right way to hide their affiliation until they can reveal it in hopes the other person has seen they aren't a total monster, the millennial Trump crowd has had to get creative in a city that only gave him 4 percent of its vote. (Politico)

Casualties of a trade war
Harley Davidson announced it will have to start making more motorcycles outside the U.S. to avoid steep price increases from recently announced European Union tariffs of 31 percent, which in themselves were a response to U.S. tariffs announced earlier this year.  (New York Times)

Florist case bounced back to Washington
For now, the Supreme Court has declined to hear a Washington case involving a florist who refused to provide flowers for a gay wedding, asking that the state review the case for anti-religious bias that the court recently ruled was an issue in a similar Colorado case. (Associated Press)

Another record for WSU
This fall, a record-high number of freshmen will take to Washington State University's Pullman campus. (KXLY)

Connecting rural communities with whatever they need
From digging graves to setting up broadband, rural telecom companies provide a variety of services for the small populations they serve in Washington. (Seattle Times)