Week in Review: April 26, 2024 - with Robert Cruickshank

Nick Brown Discusses Key Issues in Washington State Attorney General Race from Hacks & Wonks

“MAGA Republican Semi Bird endorsed by Washington GOP for governor” by Scott Greenstone for KUOW

“The WA GOP put it in writing that they’re not into democracy” by Danny Westneat from The Seattle Times

“Corporate backers of Mark Mullet launch an independent expenditure to boost his flagging campaign” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate

“Nelson Bill Would Eliminate Minimum Wage for "Gig" Drivers—and Slash Workers' Rights” by Erica Barnett from PubliCola

“Seattle hospitality giant buys into City Council member’s Fremont Brewing” by Paul Roberts from The Seattle Times

“Mayor's Office Removed All New Anti-Displacement Proposals from Draft "Anti-Displacement Framework"” by Erica Barnett from PubliCola

“Planners Proposed Bigger Upzones Before Harrell’s Team Intervened, Records Show” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist

Discover the 2 Line | Sound Transit

“How will your life change when Bellevue's light rail opens?” by Joshua McNichols from KUOW

@cruickshank on Twitter/X: “The Seattle Chamber of Commerce is out with a new campaign to Save South Lake Union. From what? you may ask. From a subway station that would be at the center of the neighborhood and serve more riders than their inferior “couplet” plan.”

Email Sound Transit Board of Directors at emailtheboard@soundtransit.org

“Seattle hospital won't turn over gender-affirming care records in lawsuit settlement with Texas” from The Associated Press

“Medical provider leaving Texas over AG investigation into gender affirming care for minors” by S.E. Jenkins from CBS News Texas

Find stories that Crystal is reading here

Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here

[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local policy and politics in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and Friday we can review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes.

If you missed our Tuesday topical show, Nick Brown joined me for an in-depth interview to discuss his campaign for Attorney General and plans to address Washington's most pressing issues. Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows, where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long-time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank. Hey!

[00:01:25] Robert Cruickshank: It's great to be back on, Crystal. Thanks for having me again.

[00:01:28] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you back on. And we have a number of things to cover today, including some wild developments in the governor's race here in our state, with the GOP looking like it is officially the party of Trump and moving in a different direction than it looks like a lot of people covering the GOP over the past several years may have been expecting. What's been happening?

[00:01:54] Robert Cruickshank: This has been coming for a while - the Washington state Republican Party is not really fundamentally different from Republican parties around the country. Although there are some less extreme members of that party in the legislature, who think they represent - tell the media they represent - the whole party, they don't. And what we've seen over the weekend at their convention in Spokane was an example of this, that - no, the party really is now captured by Trump and his supporters. And the governor's race is the most high-profile example of this. Polling had shown that Dave Reichert, former member of Congress, was the leading Republican in the race for governor - for the open seat, with Inslee retiring. But he's got a strong challenge from a guy named Semi Bird, who was on the Richland school board in the Tri-Cities area until he was recalled last year after having pushed back against state masking mandates. And even voters in Richland said - Nah, we're tired of you - and recalled him. And you don't see successful recalls in the state very often - certainly not in central Washington of a Republican. Well, now Bird is running for governor and he has the support of the MAGA core, and he won the endorsement of the state Republican Party pretty easily over the weekend, but not after a lot of fighting on the floor in a really messy, ugly way. Reichert's supporters tried to have Bird thrown out of being considered for endorsement because 30 years ago he had a felony judgment against him for financial fraud. But the ruling at the convention got overturned and Bird was eligible. Once it became clear Bird was indeed eligible for endorsement, Dave Reichert said - Well, I don't want to be any part of this weird, chaotic process - which is what you say when you know you're going to lose. And rather than compete for the endorsement anyway and lose, Reichert just walked away. He was going to lose that endorsement vote anyway.

What all this shows is that Reichert, who is a very right-wing Republican - anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, anti-gay marriages, we learned last week, and voted with Trump 95% of the time in Congress - is himself not extreme enough for the MAGA base of the party. And I think now there's a real question of who will the Republicans support for governor. Reichert had been doing well in the polls, but I think that's also partly because he had much higher name recognition than Semi Bird did. I think the biggest open question is - will Donald Trump come in and endorse Bird? Trump - North Carolina being one example - has come in state after state and endorsed people like Bird, these hardcore MAGA people who are darlings of the grassroots, but not really part of the Republican establishment. And they win primary after primary and are becoming the Republican candidates in these governor's races and other statewide races. Reichert's worst nightmare right now has to be that Trump will endorse Bird - and if that happens, I don't see Reichert's campaign recovering.

[00:04:38] Crystal Fincher: Definitely don't see it recovering. And I wonder - just at the outset - how Reichert thought this would play out. It's been apparent for some time now, as you said, that the Republican Party of today is not what it was 20 years ago in Washington state. And certainly right now, there seems to be a major disconnect and a big gulf between the Republican grassroots in the state - a lot of those were at that convention and very passionate about Bird - and Republican mega-donors. It's not to say that those mega-donors are moderates, but they seem to be motivated a little bit differently than the grassroots and they don't quite see eye-to-eye. Looks like after years of messaging and the donors' goals of basically friendlier tax policies for them - which in essence is no tax policies for them, basically - that they encouraged and cultivated the grassroots of today and basically handed over a lot of power. And now they don't have control and they don't have an understanding of who they are, so it is creating chaos in this Republican race. I think a big question is - where does that leave Mark Mullet, conservative Democratic candidate for governor, in this whole race? And it looks like there's even a new development on that front.

[00:06:02] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, and you set it up really well - the right-wing alliance between big corporations and the social conservatives is coming apart because the social conservatives, they're saying - We're in control, actually, and you're going to do things our way. What do the big corporations do? Well, what they do is they go recruit Mark Mullet, who's Washington state's version of Joe Manchin, who systematically undermines Democratic priorities in Olympia. They recruit him to go run for governor. And like Semi Bird, Mullet has been trailing in the polls so far. Bob Ferguson has a big, big lead over Mullet in terms of who Democrats are supporting for governor. And not just a big lead in terms of polls - Ferguson has out-raised Mullet significantly, $6 million to about a million dollars. But, Mullet has a plan. And in fact, Mullet has a super PAC. And what has begun this week is big corporations and wealthy donors on Mullet's side are now spending money to run ads on TV and mailers to try to boost Mullet's campaign for governor. They want Mullet because he's a very corporate-friendly Democrat - he opposed the capital gains tax, he's not very friendly to labor unions, unions are lining up behind Ferguson. And these big corporations know that it's going to be increasingly difficult for them to ally with Republicans to get their low-tax, anti-worker policies done, so they turn to someone like Mullet.

And Mullet really needed two things to go his way to have even a shot at this. First, he needed that super PAC to come through for him - and now it looks like they're going to spend at least a couple million dollars to try to boost him. The other thing Mullet needed was division on the Republican side and that is happening as well - the fight between Semi Bird and Dave Reichert. Now, what may happen, of course, is the Republicans may just wind up coalescing behind Semi Bird, especially if Trump were to come through and endorse Bird. If that happens, I think Reichert's candidacy fades, and you're looking at a very likely top-two between Ferguson and Bird. But Mullet and his backers are hoping that Mullet somehow sneaks his way over a divided Republican vote into a narrow second place and have a Mullet versus Ferguson runoff - that the corporations can then try to spend their way to victory. Now, I don't know that that works. Even then, what you've seen in places like California - where it's two Democrats in the runoff - is Republicans don't vote for the more conservative Democrat. Republicans just skip that race entirely. Mullet is trying to pass himself off as somehow being pro-abortion, even though Planned Parenthood has endorsed Ferguson, even though Mullet undermined the Keep Our Care Act in the legislature this session - Mullet's record on these things is not as good as Mullet will tell you it is. Point being - the MAGA base is not going to vote for Mark Mullet over Bob Ferguson. I don't see Mullet having a shot at actually winning this election, but he's got two things lining up his direction right now in terms of the divisions on the right and a corporate super PAC backing him. So it's all up to Bob Ferguson now to respond to this and get his campaign really into a high gear - he's been doing well so far. He's got a poll lead, but he's going to need to step it up as well as we get into the heart of the primary.

[00:08:58] Crystal Fincher: We will continue to follow the gubernatorial saga and the issues that are really impacting the state and where the candidates stand as this continues to play out. I want to talk about some corporate influence on a local level now, and that is Councilmember Sara Nelson's attack on gig driver rights and wages that is being pushed by these gig app companies, delivery app companies. What's happening here?

[00:09:27] Robert Cruickshank: I feel like, honestly, for today's show - as we look back at this week, it's going to be a regular theme of big corporations wanting to either buy elections or buy policy. In this case, we're talking about buying policy. This is where Sara Nelson coming into office and wanting to repay some of her backers - in this case, the gig companies, Uber, DoorDash - which don't want to have to pay their workers well. It's notorious that these drivers don't usually get paid very well when it's just simply left up to the whim of the company. And so Seattle has an Office of Labor Standards, Seattle also adopted a gig worker minimum wage. These companies are very upset about this, and they've gone to Sara Nelson demanding change. Nelson pledged in council meetings in recent months that she would try to respond favorably to what they want. And Erica Barnett at PubliCola just reported yesterday exactly what that response will look like. Nelson wants to eliminate the minimum wage for drivers, she wants to cut their base mile per payment in half, she wants to eliminate a minimum $5 payment for each delivery driver, she wants to eliminate penalties that would be imposed on companies that fail to pay their drivers. She wants to deny their workers a right to file lawsuits against delivery companies that withhold wages. She also wants to make it more difficult for the city to enforce laws and regulations on these companies - doing things like giving these app companies 30 days to correct violations before taking enforcement action, barring the Office of Labor Standards from imposing additional requirements at all, and making it impossible for the Office of Labor Standards to actually get information from these companies about how they're treating and paying workers. It is a really shocking attack on the rights of workers - some of the lowest paid and least consistently paid workers in our city - where there's a history of these companies either underpaying or stealing wages. And Sara Nelson is ready to give these companies everything they want. What we'll have to see is whether the city council goes along with this. I can't imagine it is popular with the people of Seattle to slash the minimum wage of low-paid workers. Nelson's betting it is, but I'm betting that there's actually a much bigger fight coming on this.

[00:11:34] Crystal Fincher: I agree with you that it does look like there's a much bigger fight coming on this. One element of this that I do wonder about is the proposition, we've seen stories covered that say - Well, restaurants are suffering under this system now and it's too expensive for the restaurants, the volume of orders is decreasing because it's so expensive because of all the fees, and obviously the fees are because we're giving workers more money and not because of any profit taking from the corporations. And so a hope that the frustration over the level of fees creates support for repealing this legislation and repealing these provisions. Do you see that being successful or having any validity?

[00:12:19] Robert Cruickshank: Well, I certainly don't see it as having validity. I know the last few years, our memories get blurry with lockdown and pandemic, but I certainly remember 2020 when lockdowns happened and many local restaurants pleading with people to not go through these app companies and to order directly from the restaurant, to go have it picked up directly from the restaurant, or to have the restaurant's own drivers bring it to you - because these restaurants weren't getting paid very well for the services that they were providing. They weren't getting good reimbursements. It was costing the restaurant more money to use DoorDash and Uber Eats and things like that. So I think that these restaurants are being used by the big companies as a excuse, but in reality, talk to local restaurants and they were never fans of these delivery services to begin with. And I think the other question - would it be actually politically successful? I mean, this has been the dream of businesses in Seattle and Washington state for the last 10 years - ever since the $15 an hour minimum wage effort took off here. It started here obviously in SeaTac in 2013 and took the country by storm after that. These businesses have always been hoping that at some point they can convince the public to turn against a higher minimum wage, and it has never ever succeeded anywhere it's been tried, even in red states - where places like Arkansas, voters approve higher minimum wages with regularity. I don't know that that succeeds here either. It's going to take, however, labor - I know Working Washington is working very hard on this - to try to protect the minimum wage and the rights and protections for these workers. That work is going to have to continue and the public's going to have to get mobilized to stop Sara Nelson because I think - not only do you want to protect the minimum wage for the gig worker drivers. If Nelson succeeds, if these companies succeed in rolling back a minimum wage for the gig workers, they won't stop there. They will now come after the $15 an hour minimum wage itself - which is now above $15 here in Seattle - and try to have all sorts of carve-outs and loopholes, which they always wanted from the very beginning, and they couldn't get because they knew the public wouldn't stand for it. So this isn't just a battle over how much you're going to pay the DoorDash driver. This is also ultimately a battle over the minimum wage itself for all workers in the city.

[00:14:28] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And another dimension that we learned about recently was Sara Nelson, who owns Fremont Brewing, just sold a majority share of her firm to a firm that owns dozens of restaurants that deliver through DoorDash - and that potentially impacting the sale, the price. Is this being looked into?

[00:14:51] Robert Cruickshank: So the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission says it is reviewing this, but I think the public needs to push a lot harder. I think there needs to be a very detailed, thorough review of not just the conditions of the sale, but what communications were happening between Nelson, Nelson's other business partners at Fremont Brewing, and the Seattle Hospitality Group, which has now purchased a stake in Fremont Brewing. Howard Wright is a major figure in Seattle Hospitality Group. Howard Wright is also a major political figure, a major donor, very active civically. What conversations were happening before the sale? What conversations were happening before the 2023 election? I think this needs to be looked at very, very closely. Seattle thinks that it's a city that doesn't have the type of corruption that you might see in other places. And I think Seattleites might be very surprised to understand what sometimes can happen behind closed doors. And I think this is a very clear example where those doors need to be opened. We need to see exactly what has happened here because there's a lot about this deal that financially benefits Sara Nelson that needs to be looked at very, very closely to make sure that nothing improper happened. And if anything improper did happen, there are consequences for it.

[00:16:03] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. There needs to be an examination of how this came to be, especially with the timing. And now that it's happening, Sara Nelson has an obligation to recuse herself from this ordinance. People have different roles and positions, and we anticipate that when someone is elected, it's possible that they'll have some personal conflicts of interest with issues that arise. We don't keep people from being able to hold office because there might be a conflict, but we do require that they recuse themselves when one does arise. It's why we require personal financial disclosures from every person who holds office in the state. By recusing herself when there is a conflict, she would be acknowledging the conflict and taking steps to ensure that her personal interests don't interfere with her public duties. This is what helps maintain public trust in the council's decisions, upholds the principles of transparency, accountability, and good governance. This is standard. This is just what happens. A financial conflict of interest is when an individual has a financial stake in the outcome of a decision that they're responsible for making. Seattle Hospitality Group, which operates several DoorDash restaurants, just bought a majority stake in Sara Nelson's business. There's no question Sara Nelson has a significant personal financial interest - from several different angles - in this legislation. This is a textbook example of financial conflict. When a councilmember recuses himself, it means that they don't participate in the discussion or voting for legislation that has the conflict. Given that, I find it odd - knowing that this is undergoing an ethics review - that the council would even allow continued discussion of this issue with Councilmember Nelson present. That means that the legislation would be shaped by someone with a direct financial stake in it, which is why recusal exists - to make sure that even that doesn't happen. So aside from the vote, she shouldn't be participating in conversation, she shouldn't be negotiating and formulating this legislation with stakeholders. Recusal exists to make sure that doesn't happen. So if this continues, and certainly if this comes to a vote and Councilmember Sara Nelson is involved with it, it would certainly be a scandal.

I want to turn to talking about the Comprehensive Plan and news that the mayor's office removed anti-displacement proposals from the draft anti-displacement framework in that plan. What happened here?

[00:18:37] Robert Cruickshank: This is part of the bigger questions about this draft Comprehensive Plan - which overall, the draft does not really address affordable housing, it does not prevent displacement. In fact, the draft as a whole will make displacement worse because it doesn't provide the ability to construct enough housing to meet the needs of people living here, and the people moving here, and the people growing up who were kids here who want to maybe stay in Seattle. But one particular piece of this that was reported again by Erica Barnett of PubliCola this week is that there were elements in the draft that would have talked more about new strategies that can be undertaken in order to try to prevent displacement. Things like social housing, which voters approved last year - the creation of a social housing authority. This year voters will be asked to approve funding to help get that up and running and start building social housing. Things like land banking, which is where you buy land that's affordable now for future use, whether through the city or through a nonprofit. And then right of first refusal laws in which community-based organizations or even tenants would have the right to buy buildings that are currently housing low-income tenants when they go up for sale. There are a lot of buildings, especially Southeast Seattle, Lake City area, other parts of the city that are still somewhat affordable where low-income tenants live. Some families maybe own the building for a couple of decades, it goes up for sale - that's the moment right there where when that sale is concluded, the new owner may and often does raise the rent significantly and price out the low-income tenants who have been there for a long time. And so you want to provide the opportunity for people to buy that and keep the tenants who are there, there. All those new ideas were scrapped by the mayor's office before the draft Comp Plan went to the public. And instead, the mayor's office is saying - Oh, well, we'll just point to things we're already doing and call that good enough for anti-displacement efforts. And it's clearly not, because you're seeing displacement happen with regularity across the city - primarily because we have not kept pace with the demand for housing. And as more and more people move here, or as more and more people are born here, the competition for an increasingly scarce number of homes drives costs up and makes displacement worse. So this is just another example of how the mayor's office has really undermined this Comprehensive Plan and how City Hall, the council need to step up and restore a lot of these things and pass a Comprehensive Plan that will allow for quite a lot more homes to be built. Otherwise, Seattle becomes San Francisco again, with even less affordability and even more displacement.

[00:21:08] Crystal Fincher: I think what a lot of people are finding particularly challenging with this is that it's been obvious that Bruce Harrell allies have not been big fans of allowing more housing within more neighborhoods within Seattle. That concern and that position has been justified oftentimes by people saying - Well, if we just allow unfettered development and allow new housing, that's going to create a greater risk of displacement. And we're really concerned about displacement, so we need to be very cautious about growth and make sure that we have anti-displacement policies in place and that we do more to ensure that people aren't pushed out. That's a concern that I think a lot of people can sympathize with. However, we see that that doesn't seem to be a concern here and there doesn't seem to be a legitimate interest in any new strategies. So where does that leave us in terms of where the mayor stands and what's likely to happen if it's left up to that office?

[00:22:14] Robert Cruickshank: If it's left up to the mayor's office and we stay on the current course that this draft Comprehensive Plan is on, we are on the road to becoming San Francisco - where there's a movie that came out a few years ago about the last Black residents of San Francisco, how the Black community has been pushed out of San Francisco because of affordability problems. The best thing to do to stop displacement is to make it easier to build apartments in the parts of the city where a lot of people want to live. And that is especially north of the Ship Canal - places like Northeast Seattle, Ravenna, Wedgwood, Northwest Seattle, Ballard, Greenwood, Wallingford, Fremont, all these places. And there is construction happening in Ballard, but the rest of North Seattle - especially between the Ship Canal and 85th, which is where a lot of the amenities are, where a lot of people want to live - you need to upzone that area. You need to make it easier for people to live there. What that does, among other things, is relieve pressure on low-income renters in Lake City, in Southeast Seattle, and in the other areas of affordability that still remain. So one of your best anti-displacement strategies is - move the growth somewhere else where it's mostly upper income white homeowners, which of course, once you look at that, you understand why the mayor's office hasn't done that. This is a very political calculation by the mayor's office - that his political base would erupt in anger at him ahead of his reelect next year if he proposes to make it easier to build apartments in their neighborhoods. But that is what you need to do as an anti-displacement strategy. The other things that were mentioned, of course - social housing, land banking, right of first refusal - are really straightforward things that aren't going to alienate anyone, so it's even more surprising that they're not considering that. But ultimately, even upzoning North Seattle - these things are super popular with the public - people want them, except maybe key elements of Harrell's base. So he's making a political calculation about his reelect in 2025, but it may have the impact of making the city even less affordable and creating even more displacement for many years to come.

[00:24:14] Crystal Fincher: I want to turn to some brighter news here for a bit, and news of the new light rail line between Bellevue and Redmond opening up soon. When is it going to open and what kind of impact will this have?

[00:24:28] Robert Cruickshank: Saturday. By the time people are listening to this, it'll be tomorrow when that opens. So it will open from South Bellevue up to the Redmond Technology Center station, which is Microsoft's big headquarters there, and many stops in between, including downtown Bellevue. This is a huge deal. Finally, after years - almost 30 years since the first Sound Transit initiative passed, you're finally going to see trains running on the Eastside. The only downside is they're not crossing the bridge yet to downtown Seattle because of problems with construction on that bridge - they had to redo a lot of the concrete pilings that were not done properly in 2019 and 2020 - that should open next year, the final completion of the line into downtown Seattle. But this is still a huge win. And this is a win not just for riders who are going to now be able to experience genuine mass transit on the Eastside. I think it's a win for Claudia Balducci of the King County Council, who made this happen. Knowing that there were delays in getting the whole line open across the lake, she said - Well, can we open just a starter line? And Sound Transit took a look and said - Yeah, actually, we can do that. I think it was the right call. If you look at BART in the Bay Area, it opened very similarly - a starter line in the East Bay before the Transbay Tube opened in the early 1970s. This is a good example - get people used to it, show people who are going to commute between Bellevue and Redmond or even who just want to visit downtown Bellevue, go to Bellevue Square, or who want to go up and are working at Microsoft or want to check out the new bridge across the freeway. This is going to be really great to show, I think, Eastside residents what mass transit can be and give them a little taste and get them even more fired up for when it opens across the lake next year.

[00:26:04] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And we're even seeing that happening in Tacoma, with the light rail line opening within Tacoma before the connection to the rest of the line in Pierce and King County happens. But certainly very exciting - a lot of residents there very eager to be able to have another option to commute and to travel around their city.

Now, along with this and the overall light rail effort, we just saw the Chamber launch a Save SLU effort. What are they trying to save South Lake Union from?

[00:26:40] Robert Cruickshank: You may see this on social media, you may wind up seeing it even in ads elsewhere. Save South Lake Union is a new campaign by the Seattle Chamber of Commerce and you should ask yourself - what are you saving it from? You're saving it from a subway station at the heart of South Lake Union at the intersection of Denny and Westlake on the line out to Ballard, which is still being planned nearly eight years after we approved it. And Amazon is throwing a fit. Amazon does not want this station to be located there because they're concerned about the disruption to car traffic during the construction process. Even though Sound Transit's own research shows that a station at Denny and Westlake will have much higher ridership than their [Amazon's] preferred option, which is to move the station off to the north and to the west closer to Aurora and further away from the heart of the neighborhood, further away from offices, further away from homes, further away from shops. And Amazon has now enlisted the Chamber of Commerce's help in this - trying to lobby the mayor, trying to lobby the Sound Transit Board to move the station. Moving the station is going to cause more delay in the process to get this line built - and again, it's been eight years since we approved ST3. It's appalling and I think unacceptable that it's taken this long to get the planning process complete and construction started. The longer you wait to start construction, the more expensive it becomes. And now, what the Chamber and Amazon want is a station that's going to be less useful and carry less riders, which is problematic from the rider perspective, as well as problematic from a climate perspective. But the Chamber, in another example of our theme of today's show - big companies trying to buy elections and buy policy - is now going to spend a lot of money to try to convince the public and convince the Sound Transit Board that they should move this station. And this comes on top of the decision in the Chinatown neighborhood last year that another deep-pocketed person, developer Greg Smith, was able to get the Sound Transit Board - with Dow Constantine's help - to move the station out of the heart of Chinatown, even over the bitter objections of many people in Chinatown who wanted the station to stay there. So this is becoming an example where deep pockets believe they can just move stations around as they want - to get it out of their way or to help get what they want, even if it means a worse experience for riders and undermining the overall transit system. So it's really frustrating to see this.

[00:28:59] Crystal Fincher: What can people do to make their own voices heard in this process?

[00:29:04] Robert Cruickshank: Well, I think it's sending a message to the mayor - Bruce Harrell is on the Sound Transit Board, so is Councilmember Dan Strauss - telling them to keep the station at Denny and Westlake, keep it useful for riders, and no more delays in the planning process, we need to get this underway. And sending a message to other members of the Sound Transit Board - you can send a message to the whole board and tell them - keep the station where it is, no more delays, no more moving the stations around, let's get this thing under construction already.

[00:29:32] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I want to close today by talking about news - really national news - made by a local hospital here. And that Seattle Children's Hospital, in a settlement with Texas, won't turn over gender-affirming care records in a lawsuit with the state. How did this lawsuit come about?

[00:29:53] Robert Cruickshank: The state of Texas, and particularly their Attorney General Ken Paxton, have been going around trying to undermine gender-affirming care, especially for young people - starting in Texas, but they're trying to use, as they do, their leverage to undermine that care around the country. And so they had sent a request to Seattle Children's Hospital demanding that they hand over records regarding gender-affirming treatment potentially given to children from Texas. This is part of their overall effort, similar with what these red states are doing with abortion - eliminate the right to abortion in their state and eliminate the ability to go out of state for that service. They tried to do the same thing with gender-affirming care - prevent it from happening in Texas and prevent kids from Texas from going elsewhere. And Seattle Children's has a nationally-known and nationally-regarded services for kids who need gender-affirming care. And so Texas, in an effort to harass families who are seeking that, sought records. And to their immense credit, Seattle Children's said - No way. We are not turning this over - and in fact, Children's Hospital sued the Attorney General of Texas to block this. This week, news is that there's a settlement, especially after a judge had dismissed the suit. And so the settlement is that Seattle Children's doesn't have to turn anything over, so they have won that battle. In return, Seattle Children's says they will not conduct any operations in the state of Texas - the extent of their operations in the state of Texas, where they had maybe a couple people doing remote clerical work from Texas. So the status quo remains. People from around the country can come to Seattle, can come to Seattle Children's Hospital and get gender-affirming care. And those records aren't going to be turned over to right-wing bullies back in their home state. So it's a big win. And kudos to Seattle Children's Hospital for taking that stand.

[00:31:38] Crystal Fincher: Certainly kudos for taking that stand, for fighting, and securing this victory. And I think just another warning to the general public that - one, these states are aggressively pursuing the cessation of health care for the trans community, overall, certainly they're using children as their initial foothold. But they - in a variety of legislation in a variety of states - made it clear that they're targeting the entire trans community and beyond to the greater LGBTQ community. Also how important it is to make sure that we have data protections and that we address when and how it is appropriate to collect data and share it. And I know there have been attempts that have fallen short and some attempts currently in process in state legislatures across the country, certainly in ours. But I think it is just a reminder that we have to pay attention to this - we have to be very proactive about safeguarding this data. Organizations need to be very careful and examine what they're collecting and why, because we're seeing this data weaponized by states in these situations against members of our community. So important update and occurrence, and certainly hope we see more hospitals and healthcare providers taking these stands.

And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, April 26th, 2024. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long-time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank. You can find Robert on Twitter at @cruickshank. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. You can find me at @finchfrii, with two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full text transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.

Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.