Episode Seven of the podcast “Concrete Mama” includes an eye-opening summary of new programs enthusiastically embraced by inmates, staff, and administrators at the Washington State Penitentiary.
Walla Walla County Democrats

Rosalia Manuel had worked for McDonald’s for more than 20 years when she was suddenly fired in 2022. Until then, she had been considered “the best employee,” she said, and had worked her way up to shift manager at a location in Saratoga, California. It was a role she took seriously.
Bryce Covert, The Nation

If you eat, you should understand how your food is grown, processed, transported, and marketed. You may be shocked by the impact the foods you eat have on our environment.

Two films are now available on Amazon Prime that will help you understand this important topic: Kiss the Ground and Common Ground.
Walla Walla County Democrats

The emergency is here. The crisis is now. It is not six months away. It is not another Supreme Court ruling away from happening. It’s happening now. Perhaps not to you, not yet. But to others. Real people. We know their names. We know their stories.

The president of the United States is disappearing people to a Salvadoran prison for terrorists. A prison known by its initials — CECOT. A prison built for disappearance.
Ezra Klein, The New York Times

Jo Ellen Grzyb, a member of this Substack community, noted in response to one of my posts that she’s seeing a lot of the phrase “courage is contagious.” She mentioned Bernie, AOC, Cory Booker, Tim Walz, Jasmine Crockett, and Elizabeth Warren. She’s right. And in these darkening times, this contagion is critically important.
Robert Reich, Substack

Last week I posted Part I of a primer on financial crises. Although the post was motivated by the wild market action after Donald Trump unveiled his Rose Garden tariffs, it was getting too long, so I promised to address current events today. To be honest, I was also hoping that the situation would become clearer after a week.
Paul Krugman, Substack

Our Policy Briefing presenter, Nancy Hirsh, knows energy. She heads the NW Energy Coalition. To level the playing field, Nancy will brief us on climate change and Washington’s staged phase out of fossil fuels.
Don Schwerin, Ag & Rural Caucus

America has periodically faced great national tests. The Civil War and Reconstruction. The Great Depression. McCarthyism and the Red Scare. Jim Crow and the civil rights movement. And now we face another great test — of our Constitution, our institutions, our citizens — as President Trump ignores courts and sabotages universities and his officers grab people off the street.
Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times

Last week was a scary time in U.S. financial markets, and the danger may not be over.

I’m not talking about stocks, whose fluctuations often tell us nothing at all. What had me and others rattled were developments in bond and currency markets. And the dollar went down against other currencies even though interest rates went up.
Paul Krugman, Substack

The Trump regime is on the cusp of a showdown with the Supreme Court. Depending on what the Court does and how the regime responds, it could openly become a dictatorship two ways
Robert Reich, Substack

“Democracy is not a spectator sport.”
That truism has been repeated by notables from Gen. Jim Mattis to Barack Obama to George Shultz, Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state. But it’s fitting that the person credited with first saying it was a private citizen whom nobody particularly remembers.
Timothy Noah, The New Republic

Let’s talk about the moment Donald Trump blinked. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t a tweetstorm or a rally rant. When the tariff threats that had the world on edge—125% on China, 25% on Canada’s autos, a global trade war in the making—suddenly softened. And the reason?
Dean Blundell, Substack

Chris Murphy, the junior senator from Connecticut, has tirelessly argued that unless the Democratic Party broadens its coalition with a primarily populist economic message and takes risks to oppose the destruction of democratic institutions, it will fail to mobilize popular support, continue to lose elections, and squander (as in Hungary, Turkey, and beyond) democracy itself.
David Remnick, The New Yorker

Last week, we glimpsed regenerative grazing on the bottom ground made lush by grazing management. This week, we shift from pasture management to cattle management and wildlife.
Don Schwerin, chair, Ag & Rural Caucus

Last month in Washington D.C., Seattle’s U.S. House representatives, Pramila Jayapal and Adam Smith, sat down for a frank talk. The subject: Smith’s loud criticisms of the far-left wing of the Democratic Party, which he casts as largely to blame for Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
Jim Brunner and Daniel Beekman, Seattle Times

We’re building a community that is going to be part of a broader solidarity movement. And all of the pieces of this movement need to be supported. In the coming months everyone will be forced to choose a side, like it or not. Stand with the Bulwark community. We want you with us.
Jonathan V Last, The Bulwark

Politicians and government agencies routinely put up signs to advertise who gets the credit for public works projects. Variations on “your tax dollars at work” have been in use for a century.

But there may be no more audacious signs than the two that went up recently down in Seattle’s Sodo neighborhood. These big MAGA-red boards welcome passersby to a completely alternate reality.
Danny Westneat, Seattle Times

Allan Savory moved managed grazing into popular view in his 2013 TED talk on “how to green the desert.” With quiet passion, Savory argued from his experience in Africa that livestock grazing could reverse desertification. And even more, livestock could slow climate change. The secret in the sauce was rotational grazing and holistic management.
Don Schwerin, Ag & Rural Caucus, Washington State Democrats