Daily digest: ICE's war on Cascadia + tariffs to cost Nike $1 billion + saving the arts
ICE ramps up assault in Cascadia
The Portland Mercury notes that ICE is using email alerts to asylum seekers to ramp of detentions at immigration facilities in Portland, including a trans woman known as OJM who fears threats to her life if returned to Mexico. Meanwhile, in response to aggressive ICE activity in Spokane, the city council is considering a bill prohibiting ICE warrantless arrests in "nonpublic" city properties, writes RANGE Media. Meanwhile, Charles Mudede correctly observes that it isn't NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani who's extreme, but the Trump administration, using ICE and the federal government in an active assault on the open, multicultural, queer-friendly vision of North America's cities. Mudede has a sharp insight, which is that the US political system, as it's currently structured, gives power to a right-wing minority, that would be seen as fringe if the US was anything close to a true democracy.
And so, this is where things presently stand, Seattle. Los Angeles is coming our way, and it will definitely be a time of trouble, a time when our values are bombarded daily, when America’s white nationalist minority oppresses its multicultural majority. – Charles Mudede
Plan to sell off public lands scuttled
As Congress ponders a budget that will boost ICE by billions of dollars, slash Medicaid, and deepen income inequality in US, there is one faint silver lining: Utah Senator Mike Lee's plan to force the sell-off of millions of acre of Bureau of Land Management lands in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington has been stripped from the Big Billionaire's Bill. I wrote for Columbia Insight about how original plan could have sold off up to 3.2 million acres of Forest Service and BLM land across the West.
I'm going to keep saying it: as things continue to get more authoritarian and bleak in the US, and when the federal government ignores the needs of the Cascadia bioregion, which pays $37 billion more in federal taxes each year than it receives back in funding, it's time to seriously consider what an independent Cascadia could do differently.
Andrew Engelson
Tariffs to cost Nike $1 billion
OPB reports that executives of the Oregon-based sportswear company Nike expect Trump's tariffs to cost the company $1 billion and expects to pass those costs on to consumers in the form of higher prices. In related news, Trump's tariff kerfuffle with Canada has caused US tourism to Indigenous-run travel companies in Canada to plummet. CBC notes that First Nations-run guided fishing trips in the Fraser River valley, for instance, have been hit hard. In defiance of Trump's stupid border dispute across the 49th parallel, Congressional leaders in Washington and Oregon are seeking $200 million in federal funds to move forward on connecting the cities of Cascadia with high speed rail. Sorry, guys, news flash: we can't depend on the US government anymore to do what's needed in the Pacific Northwest.
Invasive crabs threaten eel grass
Cascadia Daily News looks at an effort in Padila Bay, in the central Salish Sea, to stop the spread of invasive green crabs – which uproot and destroy eel grass beds. Eel grass is a critical part of the Salish Sea ecosystem, providing nutrients and habitat to a wide variety of sea creatures and filtering out pollutants.
Vancouver Art Gallery cuts staff
The Vancouver Sun reports that the Vancouver Art Gallery, facing a $2.8 million budget deficit, plans to lay off about a third of its staff. Meanwhile, Trump's cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts is hitting Oregon and Washington arts organizations hard. How to respond? It's a little step, but Portland, even with a city budget crunch, boosted grants to local arts organizations by $170,000. We're going to need to do a lot more than that to keep the arts in Cascadia resilient.
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