By Jake Goldstein-Street | Reporter
The race for Washington’s 3rd Congressional District is one of the most pivotal campaigns in the country, with the winner helping decide the balance of power in Congress. With that in mind, U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and state Senate Minority Leader John Braun met for a debate Wednesday night. They exchanged digs on the Iran war, policies of President Donald Trump, gas prices and threw in a couple at each other.
Also in today’s edition…
• Proposed data centers in Walla Walla and Klickitat counties.
• Ferguson requests more federal wildfire aid.
• And, research finds higher insurance costs for women in states with abortion bans.
News tips, feedback, questions? Email us: [email protected]
State Senate Republican Leader John Braun and Democratic U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez are dueling in southwest Washington's 3rd Congressional District. (Photos courtesy of campaigns)
By Jerry Cornfield
While Braun was unsurprisingly clear-eyed about his opposition to Washington’s new high-earners income tax, Gluesenkamp Perez was circumspect on her feelings.
“Okay, so there are basically two problems with politicians in Olympia. They spend money like a Connecticut horse girl, and working people are paying too much in taxes,” she said. “Adding another revenue stream isn’t fundamentally going to fix the problem.”
Roughly 40 people waved signs, chanted and marched during a Walla Walla demonstration demanding a data center moratorium on Sunday. (Photo by Aspen Ford/Washington State Standard)
By Aspen Ford
A $4.8 billion Amazon data center proposal is raising tension between protesters and public officials. Opponents are doing everything they can to stop the plan from moving forward.
The strategy is to “make this entire county unpalatable for Amazon,” said Ben Mattice, co-founder of the Walla Walla Anti-Data Center League. The group is doing “as many things as we can to put rocks in the gears to slow the thing down in hopes that either the bubble bursts and they don’t need it anymore or they go elsewhere.”
The Columbia River in Klickitat County, looking downstream from one of the sites of a proposed data center in the rural area. (Photo by Emma Renly)
By Emma Renly
Public records show that data center developers in Klickitat County have asked the Bonneville Power Administration and Klickitat Utility District for access to enough power for up to six million homes or about 15 cities the size of Seattle. Directly surrounding counties — Skamania, Benton, Yakima and Hood River — all unanimously approved data center moratoriums this year, but Klickitat County commissioners did not.
A growing petition in Klickitat County is circulating online, asking county commissioners to enact a moratorium.
Ferguson requests another $13M for wildfire aid
By Jake Goldstein-Street
Gov. Bob Ferguson on Wednesday asked the federal government for $13 million to help repair state infrastructure damaged by wildfires this summer in central and eastern Washington. This is on top of Ferguson’s earlier request for over $100 million in public assistance. The state now awaits a decision from President Donald Trump.
By Kelcie Moseley-Morris
New preliminary research from the University of Michigan shows women living in states with post-Dobbs abortion bans may be more likely to shoulder costs for employer-sponsored health insurance premiums. Federal data reflects a 5.4% increase in annual premium expenditures for those women after 2022, when most abortion bans went into effect.
ICYMI
Supreme Court candidates make their case as high-profile election nears | by Jake Goldstein-Street
Thanks for reading The Daily Standard. Did you know our weekend digest is also free? Sign up here. And if you enjoyed today’s edition, please forward to a friend. Increasing our readership helps us cover more news.