The debate over how to address homelessness in Spokane continues to simmer after a decision this month from Washington’s Supreme Court.

The ruling struck down Proposition 1, a camping ban introduced by a citizen-led initiative that was overwhelmingly passed by Spokane voters in 2023. 

The court’s decision wasn’t based on the merits of the camping ban, but rather on whether the citizens of Spokane had the power to take such action in the first place. 

Now, the legal ripples of this decision are stirring up fierce emotions over regulating homelessness in Spokane, and are raising questions over how much say citizens can have in local policy at large.

Guests:

• Emry Dinman, city hall reporter for the Spokesman Review. 

Related Links: 

• Homeless camping ban struck down by state Supreme Court
• Spokane City Council declines to reinstate Prop 1 after state Supreme Court strikes it down

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Companies have increasingly shifted the responsibility of saving for  retirement onto workers. Pension plans have mostly disappeared from the private sector, in favor of 401k style plans.

For example, the Boeing Machinist union tried unsuccessfully get their pension plan reinstated during last year’s strike.

For most public employees, including Washington state workers, though, Pensions are still an option.

But not all public pensions are created equal. Some allow workers to potentially increase their pension checks by logging a lot of overtime in their highest paid years.

The result is a big ongoing cost to the state of Washington. 

Seattle Times data reporter Manuel Villa combed through 20 years of payroll data on this practice by City of Seattle workers: specifically police and firefighters. 

GUEST: Manuel Villa - Seattle Times data reporter on the investigations team

RELATED LINKS:

• Inflated Seattle public pensions for retirees cost tens of millions
• How WA public pensions work: retirement funding, risks, ‘spiking’
• Try our WA public pension ‘spiking’ calculator | The Seattle Times

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Do you ever wonder why you turn to Google so often to search for a recipe or a news article or how to properly use a semicolon? 

If you ask Alphabet, Google’s parent company, they’ll tell you it’s because they just have the best results. 

The Department of Justice has a different take: it filed an antitrust case against the company in 2020 accusing Google of using its power as the pre eminent online search engine to stifle competition. 

The government won last year, when a federal judge ruled against Google. This week, both the company and the D-O-J have returned to court to argue for what they believe the remedy should be for these monopolistic practices. 

Depending on what’s decided in a D.C. courthouse, there could be big changes in store for one of tech’s biggest juggernauts. 

Guest: 

Douglas Ross, professor of law at the University of Washington

Relevant Links:

New York Times: U.S. Asks Judge to Break Up Google

Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/soundsidenotes

Soundside is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network.

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Have you been outside this week? It’s GORGEOUS. 

If you need a few more excuses to go out & do things, then you’re in luck.

We’ve got Soundside Producer Jason Megatron Burrows here with one or two or three more reasons to leave your house

LINKS:

• Seattle/King County Clinic - Seattle Center
• Crescendo: A Symphonic Celebration of Washington Landscapes
• Seattle Independent Bookstore Day
• Jet City Roller Derby vs RCRD's Grave Danger
• PBR Unleash the Beast | Tacoma Dome
• Run Like the Wind Running Festival
• Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
• Washington State Apple Blossom Festival

Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/soundsidenotes

Soundside is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Vauhini Vara’s new essay collection opens with a heart to heart with ChatGPT. 

In her prompt, she asks the program to give her feedback on a few chapters of her upcoming book. 

“I’m nervous,” she tells it. 

“That’s completely understandable,” it responds with a cheery exclamation point. “Sharing your writing can feel really personal, but I’m here to provide a supportive and constructive perspective. Take your time, and whenever you’re ready, I’ll be here to discuss it with you.” 

So begins a high tech odyssey through old Google searches, Amazon product reviews, social media profiles and experiments with artificial intelligence. Along the way, Vara explores the technology that came of age alongside her, including her teenage years on Mercer Island and college experience at Stanford, and how her relationship with it has changed over time. 

The book is part-memoir, part critique of how tech companies have positioned their products as “collaborators,” or even companions, in our lives.

Every couple chapters, Vara invites the large language model to respond to her writing. It’s just one of the ways she breaks form in the book. 

It’s called “SEARCHES: Selfhood in the Digital Age.” Vara will be speaking about the book with the University of Washington's Emily M. Bender at The Elliot Bay Book Company on Wed. April 23 at 7pm. 

Guests:

• Vauhini Vara, author

Related Links: 

• Elliott Bay Book Company | Events 45368
• Vauhini Vara

Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/soundsidenotes

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On Monday, the Department of Education announced that it will resume collections on defaulted loans on May 5th. That’s after a five year pause started in the midst of the covid pandemic.

More than 42 million people in the United States have student loans through the federal government. 

And, according to the Department of Education, five million have not made a payment in the last year.

Experts warn that this push for repayment will put loan holders in difficult financial situations and could have a big impact on an already unstable economy.

GUEST: Stacy Cowley, business reporter for the New York Times

RELATED LINKS:

• Millions of Student Loan Borrowers Are Behind on Payments
• Education Department Will Resume Collections on Student Loan Debt
• Trump administration to resume collections on student loan borrowers in default

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Soundside is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"Our world is changing. It's changing rapidly. Like, we can see climate changing our world as we speak, but also, we're losing nature at unprecedented rates, and there's an equity crisis as well."

That was University of Washington professor Phil Levin two years ago. At the time, he’d just been tapped by the Biden Administration for a one of a kind mission: writing the most all encompassing review ever of nature throughout the entirety of the United States. 

“The National Nature Assessment,” as it was called, was to be a wide ranging report on the state of and potential threats to the U.S.’s varied ecosystems. 

"Now is the time to break down the silos between climate, nature, and equity and bring them together... and I can't think of anything else I would want to do and anything else that would be more meaningful to me in my life and more valuable I think for the country."

Over two years, Levin worked at the White House and coordinated a massive team of authors and federal agencies. The team was ready to submit their first draft of the assessment in February this year, before they heard from the Trump administration that the whole project was being shut down. 

Since then, the scientists involved in the National Nature Assessment have pushed forward to complete their work – with or without the White House’s blessing.

Guests:

• Phil Levin, professor in the University of Washington College of the Environment

Related Links:

• KUOW - Seattle area scientist leads U.S. efforts toward 'holistic picture' of the climate crisis
• Opinion | We Found a Work Around to Trump Defunding Science - The New York Times
• Trump Killed a Major Report on Nature. They’re Trying to Publish It Anyway. - The New York Times

Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/soundsidenotes

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The Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments over an executive order ending birthright citizenship. 

President Trump signed that order in his first days in office. A federal judge in Seattle temporarily blocked the Trump administration from enforcing the order nationwide. And two other legal challenges – in federal courts in Massachusetts and Maryland – also prompted injunctions. 

Now the Supreme Court will decide whether a 125 year old constitutional right to citizenship for people born in the United States to non-citizen parents is guaranteed.

Guest:

Luis Cortes Romero, immigration lawyer and partner at Novo Legal

Relevant Links: 

SCOTUS Blog: Justices will hear arguments on Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship

NYT: Supreme Court to Hear Arguments on Trump Plan to End Birthright Citizenship

Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/soundsidenotes

Soundside is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network.

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The Pentagon is roiling over yet another Signal group chat.

No, not that one with the Trump Administration national security team that accidentally included an editor at the Atlantic. This is… another Signal group chat scandal. 

The New York Times reports that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth shared operational details for a March 15th U.S. strike on the Houthis in Yemen with a group of 13 people. 

They allegedly included his personal lawyer, brother, and wife. 

This comes while Hegseth’s team is dealing with staffing turmoil: Three staffers were recently fired over allegations they leaked to the press. 

Another former senior staffer wrote in Politico that there is a “full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon.” 

GUEST: Adam Smith represents Washington’s 9th congressional district. It includes parts of Seattle, Bellevue, Renton, Kent and Federal Way. He’s also the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.

RELATED LINKS: 

• Hegseth Said to Have Shared Attack Details in Second Signal Chat
• Pete Hegseth Faces Heat After New Signal Chat Emerges and Claim of Pentagon ‘Chaos’
• Former Top Pentagon Spokesperson Details ‘Month From Hell’ Inside the Agency

• The White House is looking to replace Pete Hegseth as defense secretary - NPR

Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/soundsidenotes

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An old faded rice cooker. A blue two piece suit. A vial of water from the Ganges River.

For the past four years, Poet Shin Yu Pai’s podcast, Ten Thousand Things, has explored how objects – from the extraordinary to the mundane, the literal to the figurative – communicate stories of Asian American meaning, identity, and culture.

As of last month, the stories in the series have broken out of podcast players and become a new exhibit in Seattle’s Wing Luke Museum.

The exhibit includes objects that will be familiar to listeners of the series – as well as some new items that will be featured in upcoming episodes.

Soundside’s Alec Cowan joined Shin Yu Pai at the Wing Luke Museum to talk about the exhibit.

Guests:

• Shin Yu Pai, writer, curator, and host of Ten Thousand Things.

Related Links:

• EXHIBIT: Ten Thousand Things — Wing Luke Museum
• KUOW - Ten Thousand Things with Shin Yu Pai

Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/soundsidenotes

Soundside is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network.

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