By Bill Lucia | Editor
Attorney General Nick Brown last week urged the conservative U.S. Supreme Court to take up a challenge against Washington’s district maps for the state Legislature, and to send it back to a lower court for further consideration. In an interview with the Standard, he explains his rationale.
Also in today’s edition…
The state seeks out invasive pests.
A sharp decline in gray whales.
And, a big unionization push by the AFL-CIO.
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Attorney General Nick Brown, right, is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to accept a challenge against Washington’s district maps for the state Legislature. Gov. Bob Ferguson, left, was attorney general when the case began. (Photo by Jerry Cornfield/Washington State Standard)
By Jerry Cornfield
In short, Brown wants the high court to accept the redistricting case because of its April decision in Louisiana v. Callais, the ruling that significantly curtailed how race can be used in drawing political maps. The redrawn district map that’s now in effect was approved by a federal district judge here in 2024 and upheld by a federal appeals court.
Brown described Callais as “a horrible decision” that “undermines the voting power of black and brown communities all across this country, including in Washington state.” But he added: “To ignore or try to pretend that Callais was not issued would not really be a good faith argument on behalf of the people of the state of Washington … That’s the law of the land, and we will follow the law of the land.”
By Aspen Ford
The state’s annual search for invasive insects, weeds and plant pathogens is underway. State Department of Agriculture employees are traveling across Washington to set traps for species such as spongy moths, Japanese beetles and apple maggots. A top priority is eradicating Japanese beetles, which can skeletonize leaves and damage flowers and fruit. The species established itself in the eastern U.S. and has become a pest for both residents and the agricultural industry.
A gray whale and her healthy calf swim in the Pacific waters off Washington. (Image courtesy of NOAA Fisheries/Alaska Fisheries Science Center)
By Hal Bernton
More than 900 eastern North Pacific gray whales have been found dead along the shorelines of Mexico, Canada and the United States since 2019, and more have died at sea. As of the end of May, 25 of the whales had washed ashore in Washington during their spring migration. Most had poor body condition.
Malnourishment has been a factor as the whales’ estimated population has dropped from around 27,000 in 2016 to 13,000 last year. Last year’s estimated birth count for the whales was the lowest recorded since a federal survey began in 1994.
“What has changed. The obvious answer is the climate,” Joshua Stewart, an assistant professor at Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute, wrote with co-authors in an article last year in the Journal of Marine Science.
A favored food source for gray whales is amphipods, a small crustacean once found in abundance in the Chirikov Basin, a swath of the northern Bering Sea between Russia and Alaska. But research shows that the amphipod population in that area has collapsed as the Arctic has warmed and winter ice thins.
By Max Nesterak
After being reelected by representatives for dozens of unions Sunday, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler pledged to unionize at least 2 million workers over the next 5 years. Shuler says union organizers have proved it’s possible. In 2022, she set a goal to organize 1 million workers in a decade, which unions did in just three years.
“We have shown people all over this country there is a way to fight back, and it’s called the labor movement,” said Shuler, who made her remarks on the first day of the labor federation’s national convention in downtown Minneapolis.
Shuler, who ran unopposed for a second full term, became the first woman president of the AFL-CIO in 2021 after serving as the secretary-treasurer. She began her career in Portland, Oregon, as an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers organizer.
The Service Employees International Union, which represents 2 million workers, rejoined the AFL-CIO on the eve of President Donald Trump’s inauguration after breaking away in 2005 in a split over competing visions for the labor movement. SEIU President April Verrett seconded Shuler’s nomination for president.
ICYMI
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