Cascadia today: OR readies for Trump invasion + BC mining company to merge + Seattle supports Muslim girl skaters
Oregon to oppose Trump invasion as ICE ramps up
Oregon Capital Chronicle reports that Oregon's governor and attorney general are preparing to file court challenges in the event Donald Trump acts on a remark he made recently about sending National Guard troops to Portland. The article notes that attorney general Dan Rayfield is prepared to quickly take the administration to court, cognizant of a recent federal ruling that said Trump's deployment of the Guard in California was illegal. Meanwhile, thanks to federal travel bans and immigration enforcement, international enrollment at community colleges in the Puget Sound area is down significantly, KUOW reports. And KUOW also reports on two hundred advocates packing an immigration courtroom in Seattle in support of an immigrant from Laos who is seen as a pillar of the community in West Seattle who is facing deportation after being in the US for more than forty years.
Toxic Vancouver mining firm Teck agrees to merger
CBC reports that Vancouver-based mining firm Teck has agreed to a merger with the British company Anglo American to create a massive multinational mining corporation known as Anglo Teck. Teck has been involved in multiple environmental disasters and billions of dollars of pollution impacts from its operations across Cascadia. Children have tested positive for lead in their bloodstream for decades in Trail, BC, near a Teck lead smelter, CBC reports. Teck poisoned the Elk Valley watershed in BC with selenium, a disaster that could cost $6.8 billion to fix. Teck was fined $16 million for polluting Kootenay waterways in 2023. And for nearly a century, Teck and its parent companies dumped toxic pollutants into the Columbia at its smelters in Trail, and in September a federal judge ruled in favor of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in central Washington which is seeking to force Teck to clean up the Columbia.
Conservative twit collecting signatures in WA
Washington State Standard reports that conservative hedge fund manager Brian Heywood, who has sponsored failed conservative ballot initiatives in Washington, is at it again, trying to collect signatures to rework the state's rules for parental access to medical records, and a bill that would ban transgender girls from competing in girls sports. That's all part of the the Trump administration's war on trans people, fueled by a administration support for extremist right-wing churches like Doug Wilson's Idaho-based Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, which believes women shouldn't have the right to vote and that gay marriage should be eliminated.
Seattle group supports Muslim girl skaters
The South Seattle Emerald has a great photo essay and feature about Hijabi Skaters, an informal group that supports Muslim girls in Seattle who like to skateboard. The group supports local girls, many of whose parents are immigrants, encouraging them to "drop in" at a skate park near the Space Needle.
"When I would go skateboarding, I was the only Muslim girl with a hijab skating, and as much as I made a lot of friends who understood me and everything, I just thought it would be cool to see more Muslim girls out there." --Asmaa Bah
