Washington State is in a serious money crisis that is only going to get worse. The cost of everything like schools, roads and healthcare keeps going up, but the way the state collects money hasn’t kept up. Lawmakers in Olympia, the people elected to run the state, refuse to fix the root of the problem instead protecting a tax system that helps the rich and puts more of the burden on regular working people.
Tom Schmerer

This week’s conversation is a three way with two people who know a lot about elections — which I don’t. I do know that Democrats have been outperforming in special elections, but don’t feel remotely competent to tell you what that implies. So here’s a discussion with guys who have studied these things.
Paul Krugman

Regenerative ag is the theme of the day, or decade, actually. It means everything thought to be good about farming and soil management. It comes down to four recommended practices: 1) reduce tillage, 2) integrate livestock with cropping, 3) rotate crops, and 4) utilize cover cropping. (We have already talked about #2, holistic livestock management, along with virtual fencing.)

This month, we will discuss cover cropping. The idea is to keep a crop on the ground. Around here, this does not happen much in summer, fallow between wheat crops, or in spring crops following wheat harvest.
Don Schwerin, Ag & Rural Caucus

The immigration arrests this past week in Spokane, in retrospect, seem almost perfectly designed to provoke backlash.

The young migrants who got detained came into the country legally and had filed all the proper paperwork for asylum. So they weren’t skirting the law. They weren’t living in the shadows, either. They had work permits and jobs at Walmart.

One also has a judge-appointed legal guardian — who happens to be past president of the Spokane City Council.
Danny Westneat, Seattle Times

The man who launched an attempted coup on the United States in 2020 and instigated an insurrection at the Capitol that resulted in five deaths now claims that people in Los Angeles are launching an insurrection. They’re not.

Yesterday, the Pentagon activated 700 Marines out of the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, California, to join the 4,000 federalized National Guard’s military occupation of parts of Los Angeles.

Trump doesn’t give a damn whether the troops are necessary. Nor does he care how many people are injured or even killed in his raid on Los Angeles. The show of military force is the point. It gives him the appearance of power.
Robert Reich

There are two disastrously wrong ways to read the news from Los Angeles right now, and the rest of America over the next few days. The first is to believe that there is actually anything resembling an insurrection underway. The second is to believe that the Trump administration’s response to the nonexistent insurrection is simply cynical politics, an attempt to gain Donald Trump a few points in the polls.
Paul Krugman

Earlier this month, journalist Scott Pelley delivered what should have been a fairly standard commencement address at Wake Forest University. The 60 Minutes correspondent spoke about seeking truth, defending democracy, and the importance of courage in difficult times—the kind of boilerplate inspiration you’d expect from a veteran journalist addressing graduates.
The New Republic and Parker Malloy

In a democracy, the balance of power is essential—but what happens when the scales begin to tip? In this PBS special, How Much Executive Power Is Too Much?, we explore one of the most pressing questions in American government today: how much authority should be concentrated in the hands of a single individual?
Public Broadcasting System

Ezra Klein delves into the profound implications of former President Donald Trump’s proposed domestic policy package. Klein characterizes the bill as “the cruelest and most irresponsible piece of domestic legislation to be seriously proposed in my lifetime,” emphasizing its potential to exacerbate fiscal instability and undermine the social safety net.
Ezra Klein Show

Standing beneath towering shelves of kegs in the back of Vancouver’s Loowit Brewing, U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez has just given a thank-you talk to her supporters after squeaking through another tight election. As she wraps up her remarks in that December gathering and pauses for questions, a man in the crowd speaks up: “I’d like to see you expand the Blue Dog Coalition … I think that’s exactly what we need at the broader level.”
Joseph O’Sullivan, Cascade PBS

Patty Murray is pleading her case. Except she’s pleading it to better angels that have long since left the building.

Multiple times per day now, when the U.S. Senate is in session, Murray, the senior senator from Washington, troops to a microphone at the Capitol to say that something the Donald Trump administration has done is abnormal, unethical, indefensible or downright illegal.
Danny Westneat, Seattle Times

Legal residents of the United States sent to foreign prisons without due process. Students detained after voicing their opinions. Federal judges threatened with impeachment for ruling against the administration’s priorities.

In the Opinion video above, Marci Shore, Timothy Snyder and Jason Stanley, all professors at Yale and experts in authoritarianism, explain why America is especially vulnerable to a democratic backsliding — and why they are leaving the United States to take up positions at the University of Toronto.

The "Concrete Mama" podcast that originated inside the walls of the Washington State Penitentiary serves as a looking glass through which the free world can see inside the prison and into the humanity of those who reside there. 
Editorial Board, Walla Walla Union-Bulletin

You likely know that House Republicans passed their dreadful bill out of an important committee last night. There’s a Rules Committee vote next, late on Wednesday night, and then it’ll go to the floor for a full vote immediately after that. Republican leadership is itching to pass it quickly but—and notably—Johnson still doesn’t have the votes sewn up. House Republicans are still, in fact, hammering out provisions as they go.
Jessica Craven; Chop Wood, Carry Water

Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump regime cannot deport a group of Venezuelans while the matter is being litigated in the courts. The regime can’t merely allege that they’re members of a violent gang; it must give them sufficient time to challenge their deportations. Score a big one for the rule of law.
Robert Reich

Trump just cut tariffs on China from 145 to 30 percent. What just happened? Four points.
1. A 30 percent tariff is still really, really high.
2. This wasn’t a case of both sides backing down.
3. The prohibitive tariff has been paused, not canceled.
4. This retreat probably hasn’t come soon enough to avoid high prices and empty shelves.
Paul Krugman

I’ve reprinted below an email I received on May 7th from the office of U.S. Representative Michael Baumgartner (R-CD5, eastern Washington). If your only window on the goings on in Congress were Rep. Baumgartner’s email you would be sadly misinformed. Most politicians are pretty good at “tooting their own horn”, but, on the basis of this newsletter, Mr. Baumgartner should be offering tutorials.
Jerry Claire, Indivisible - The High Ground

Today, on the second day of the papal conclave, the cardinal electors—133 members of the College of Cardinals who were under the age of 80 when Pope Francis died on April 21—elected a new pope. They chose 69-year-old Cardinal Robert Prevost, who was born in Chicago, thus making him the first pope chosen from the United States. But he spent much of his ministry in Peru and became a citizen of Peru in 2015, making him the first pope from Peru, as well.
Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American