“America’s holiday travel quagmire is a reminder that we are a global laggard when it comes to high-speed rail,” writes Ray LaHood.
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A disaster the size of multiple Katrinas is building off Washington’s coast
“The Coast Guard is the first line of defense against a massive tsunami. Will it also be an early victim?” Freelance writer Eric Scigliano attempted to answer that question for Politico.
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Watch the unveiling of NPI’s initial August 2022 Bellevue housing research findings
Eastside For All’s Debbie Lacy, Complete Streets Bellevue’s Chris Randels, and the Housing Development Consortium’s Patience Malaba joined NPI’s Andrew Villeneuve on Monday, September 12th to unveil the initial findings of the August 2022 Bellevue housing poll commissioned by NPI and the Bellevue Housing Research Coalition.
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Watch the unveiling of NPI’s June 2022 assault weapons ban poll finding
With Attorney General Bob Ferguson, State Senator Manka Dhingra, State Representative Jamila Taylor, State Senator Patty Kuderer, and Emily Cantrell of the Alliance for Gun Responsibility.
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Chris Murphy confronts Republicans on gun safety inaction: “What are we doing?”
Senator Chris Murphy, who represents Newtown in the United States Senate along with Richard Blumenthal, delivered a speech on the floor of the Senate demanding that his Republican colleagues stop blocking gun safety bills from reaching the President’s desk.
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U.S. Representative Kim Schrier lauds federal funding for improved water treatment in Sammamish and Issaquah
Watch Kim Schrier’s April 11th press conference in Issaquah celebrating the appropriation of funds for the Sammamish Plateau Water District, which plans to upgrade its water treatment facilities to protect Washingtonians in its jurisdiction from toxic PFAS chemicals.
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How Comcast and other telecoms scuttle rural WA broadband efforts
“The state Public Works Board is considering changes after private internet companies successfully objected to local government initiatives,” Crosscut’s Brandon Block reports.
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We can’t fix distracted driving, but we can fix street design
“Once we’re inside our cars, we enter our own little bubbles and anything that prevents us from getting to where we want to go in the rushed time we need to get there becomes an inconvenience,” writes D.C.-based freelance writer Matthew Koehler.
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The 2020 U.S. Census data is out, and here’s what it says about fast-growing Idaho
“Idaho’s population has reached about 1.8 million and rose 17.3% in the past decade, according to new U.S. Census Bureau data. That spike makes it the second-fastest-growing state in the U.S., trailing only a neighbor to the south, Utah,” Hayat Norimine reports.
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Cori Bush steers progressives to win on eviction crisis
“Bush has led a one-woman protest on the Capitol steps over the last several days that forced the eviction crisis to the top of the nation’s agenda even after the House left town without taking action on the issue,” Politico notes.
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Enormous Bootleg Fire sends smoke entire length of Oregon
Via CBS: “There were about eighty active large fires and complexes of multiple blazes in the U.S., the National Interagency Fire Center tweeted late Sunday. The U.S. Forest Service said at least sixteen major fires were burning in the Pacific Northwest alone.”
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Why the projected path for hurricanes and tropical storms doesn’t always tell the full story
“What the forecast path does not show is that significant impacts from a tropical storm or hurricane, including flooding rainfall, storm surge, strong winds and tornadoes, can occur well outside of where this so-called cone is plotted on a map,” The Weather Channel’s Chris Dolce explains.
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The Beltway isn’t used to the left setting the agenda on Capitol Hill
“That’s why they freaked out over Democrats linking two separate infrastructure bills,” David Dayen writes. “But to succeed, the left must also erase privatization from the agenda.”
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This is a map of America’s broadband problem
Check out this a county-by-county visualization of the exact percentage of households connected at broadband speed in the United States of America, based on anonymized data made available from Microsoft.
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Biden administration proposes record $6.9 billion budget for NOAA
Climate research would get a massive boost if Congress agrees with the administration’s proposal to significantly bolster the agency’s funding. NOAA is one of America’s most important scientific agencies.
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Far-right groups are behind most U.S. terrorist attacks, report finds
“White supremacist groups have carried out a majority of ‘terrorist plots and attacks’ this year, according to a report by a think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies,” the New York Times reports.
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Federal intelligence sent to Oregon and Portland indicates right-wing extremists pose biggest lethal threat
Via The Oregonian, confirmation of what we already knew: “Racially motivated extremists and ad-hoc citizen militias appear to present the most pronounced threat of violence to human life, according to a Joint Intelligence Bulletin circulated to law enforcement in June by the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and National Counterterrorism Center.”
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Trump’s racism won’t win the suburbs… but it may diversify them
Donald Trump’s recent comments “could serve to nudge more passive supporters of discriminatory housing policy toward a ‘come to density’ moment,” Eric Levitz argues.
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Coronavirus order saves $1 billion from fewer car crashes
Via The Los Angeles Times: “California’s stay-at-home order reduced vehicle collisions on roadways by a little more than half, saving taxpayers an estimated $1 billion since the order went into effect, according to a UC Davis survey that estimated the impact of the order on traffic.”
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Robert Kuttner: We need a WWII-size mobilization to stop COVID-19 from destroying the economy
“The need for a Green New Deal can rendezvous with the imperative of anti-depression public investment. Much of this sweeping proposal is on the drawing boards and has not been done for lack of funding. Some of it will take some advance planning. The time to start is now.”
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“It will go away”: A timeline of Trump playing down the coronavirus threat
“Trump gambled very early and very often on the idea that the coronavirus wouldn’t turn out to be nearly as severe as some health officials have warned it could get,” Aaron Blake writes.
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