Cascadia today: Trump declares war on cities + how conspiracies killed a wildfire map + support Cascadia humanities

Good morning, friends. Hope you had a good weekend. Thanks for supporting local media by reading Cascadia Journal. It's a difficult time for journalism here in the Pacific Northwest, with the elimination of funding for public broadcasting and the increasing decline of readership of local news publications. Thank you for reading and caring about the region you live in.

Trump activates national guard in DC, declaring war on cities

Today, in an attempt to distract from bipartisan calls to release files detailing the connection between himself and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump announced he was taking control of police in the nation's capitol and sending 800 national guard troops to the District of Columbia. The reason is completely fictional: violent crime is at it lowest point in Washington DC in thirty years, mirroring a trend in Seattle and Portland, where homicides have dropped in the past year.

But that's no matter, Trump's fascist administration is intent on using any excuse to wield power. Activists for those without shelter argue that Trump's recent, illegal executive order criminalizing homelessness will soon be used to incarcerate those who live on the streets and to justify sending in the National Guard to cities here in the Pacific Northwest. Despite issuing a brief statement last month, Seattle mayor Bruce Harrell has done little to prepare. Thankfully governor Bob Ferguson signed a bill earlier this year preventing outside national guard troops from entering the state. A federal court is now reviewing the legality of Trump activating the California national guard in June.

It's yet another alarming attempt to deny the sovereign right of cities and states to govern their own affairs without meddling. It's why I'm urging Washington and Oregon to start talking about what autonomy for Cascadia would look like.

It’s time for Washington and Oregon to work for an independent Cascadia

Sign up for the free Cascadia Journal e-newsletter by Andrew Engelson, Drew Alcosser, and Brandon Letsinger Earlier this month, there was a pivotal moment in Donald Trump’s four-month attack on democracy and the rule of law in the United States. When asked by Meet The Press interviewer Kristen Welker

Cascadia JournalAndrew Engelson

Hegseth loves Idaho white nationalist church

Over the weekend, according to PBS, US defense secretary Pete Hegseth reposted and praised a video interview with radical Idaho church leader Doug Wilson, who said he believes women shouldn't have the right to vote, implied that slaves had a good relationship with their masters, and that sodomy should be made illegal. Hegseth is an enthusiastic member of Wilson's Moscow, ID-based Christ Church, which has a history of encouraging spousal abuse and normalizing sexual assault, as VICE reported in an investigation in 2021.

How misinformation killed a wildfire mapping project in OR

ProPublica has a detailed investigation into how a project that intended to map wildfire risks to home in Oregon was killed based on misinformation, conspiracies, and a flawed roll-out of the map. Meanwhile, a wildfire on Vancouver Island continues to burn out of control and may send smoke to the Salish Sea region for months. Sadly, efforts to help rural populations in Cascadia impacted by wildfires, climate change, drought, and struggling economies are being hard hit by federal cuts – including a program designed to offset lost logging revenue that funds rural schools in Washington.

BC workers unionize at Amazon and Uber

Press Progress reports on two recent successful unionization campaigns in British Columbia: 500 Uber drivers in Victoria are now unionized, and in Delta, outside Vancouver, workers at an Amazon facility became only the third Amazon workplace in North America to unionize. The article notes that BC's "single-step certification" laws make it relatively easy to unionize, something Washington and Oregon should try to emulate.

Oregon humanities prevails on cuts in federal court

Oregon Arts Watch reports that a federal judge ruled that Trump's cuts to grants to the humanities in Oregon, which were previously approved by Congress, are unconstitutional.

“The executive branch is not at liberty to rewrite a statute or unilaterally refuse to spend appropriated funds as directed,” – US district judge Michael Simon

The Seattle Office of Arts and Culture has a good list of resources for arts organizations struggling to deal with federal cuts. What's clear is that the federal government no longer cares about arts and humanities and organizations such as Oregon Humanities need your support. Ultimately, Cascadia needs to free itself of obligations to a bloated federal military and massive expansion of ICE so it can dedicate our tax dollars to things at home that are important to us.

--Andrew Engelson