Seattle's mayor race update: Katie Wilson's lead grows to 1,346 votes over and incumbent corporate-Democrat Bruce Harrell. Kate Wilson won 61.23% of the 6,121 ballots counted today. Overall total: Katie Wilson 50.08% 137,217 Bruce Harrell 49.59% 135,871 Write-in 0.33% 908

Wilson now leads in the Seattle mayoral race by 91 votes. Prior to today, Harrell had been leading by 4,300 votes, but this latest vote batch netted Wilson 4,391 votes.

There's still a lot of curable ballots from Seattle (about 1,800). Most are unsigned or signature mismatches, and most skew younger.

HOLY SHIT crazy news for Spokane progressives. Dixit closed the gap even more in the most recent ballot drop to less than 70. And there’s still 24k total ballots left to count in the county. City turnout is looking wildly high for an off year election

I talked with @kuow.org yesterday about the story of Alex Kuhnhausen, a 25-year-old WA prisoner who died last year from an infection that prison medical staff failed to treat and corrections officials kept hidden from his wife. www.kuow.org/stories/help...

Early results have just started coming in Washington.

Spokane food banks are seeing ‘COVID levels’ of stress on services, impacting 83,000 Spokanites. With the future of SNAP in jeopardy, here’s how our region is impacted and who is stepping up to help:

NOAA cancels funding for data collection crucial to tsunami warning systems

If you see any business owners belittling SNAP recipients for accepting government money to get through tough times, maybe look them up on @propublica.org's PPP Loan Tracker to see if they got any of the $793B in bailout money (96% of which was forgiven) projects.propublica.org/coronavirus/...

BREAKING: Two Spokane Police officers resigned this year amid an investigation into allegations they were seducing victims of domestic violence, hundreds of documents show. MORE: www.spokesman.com/stories/2025...

Crosscut is dead. Long live Crosscut. Today’s the official last day for me and my Cascade PBS newsroom colleagues. We did good work over the decades and it is supremely sad to see it shut down.

Happy last day of work to me and my colleagues at @cascadepbsnewsroom.bsky.social. 🎃

Harrell Campaign Paid a Consultant $5,000 a Week for “Outreach and Engagement,” Won’t Say Why The payments, for "community outreach and engagement," are more than four times what Harrell pays his chief political consultant every month. publicola.com/2025/10/30/h...

Alex Kuhnhausen developed a bacterial infection while in solitary confinement. The repeated failures that followed offer a rare look at how decisions made by prison officials can turn treatable ailments deadly, @brandonblock.bsky.social reports. www.investigatewest.org/how-a-wa-pri...

All across the West, lawmakers are skipping over the will of voters and yanking fluoride from municipal water systems. My latest story for @highcountrynews.org takes a deep dive into the fight over fluoride in the age of MAHA. www.hcn.org/issues/57-11...

In Lewiston, Idaho, the Lewiston Tribune emphasizes the patriotic nature of the protests:

Idaho’s health insurance exchange is the first in the nation to start open enrollment. But if Congress doesn’t extend premium tax credits, 25,000 Idahoans will cancel their plans and 1,100 Idaho jobs will be lost.

From youth labor violations to housing abuses to pandemic aid fraud, Cascade PBS investigative reporters cast light into undercovered corners of Washington. Our final Impact Report and a thread of some of the team's best work: www.cascadepbs.org/impact-repor...

The government does not track how often immigration agents grab citizens. So ProPublica did. Our tally — almost certainly incomplete — includes people who were held for days without a lawyer. And nearly 20 children, two of whom have cancer. @nicolefoy.bsky.social

From youth labor violations to housing abuses to pandemic aid fraud, Cascade PBS investigative reporters cast light into undercovered corners of Washington. Our final Impact Report and a thread of some of the team's best work: www.cascadepbs.org/impact-repor...

Idaho incarcerates women more often than any other state. Once thrown behind bars, many of those women are sexually abused by guards shielded from consequences — while victims are blamed. Read the latest in our "Guarded by Predators" series www.investigatewest.org/in-idaho-wom...

As Cascade PBS sunsets its digital-first news operation, we take a look back at some of the stories that exemplify its impact on the region over the past 18 years, first as Crosscut and later as the Cascade PBS newsroom.

KENNEWICK — The Hanford tank farm contractor notified the Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council that it is looking to temporarily lay off 733 union workers because of the federal government shutdown.

From @cascadiadaily.com: Whatcom County Council introduced an amendment to close a legal loophole that left them in the dark about a $225K payout to an employee who accused her manager of sexual harassment and retaliation. The Council said it knew nothing until Cascade PBS broke the story in 2024.

By December, Seattle taxpayers were paying a hefty $4,200 a month per empty room — at a time when thousands of Seattleites were without a roof over their heads.

I was on @kuow.org yesterday talking about why Thurston County leaders never pursued a property management company that Auditors suspected of running a $940,000 pandemic aid fraud scheme. www.kuow.org/stories/what...

The Whatcom County Council introduced an amendment last week to close a legal loophole that left them in the dark about a $225,000 sexual harassment payout they first learned about from a Cascade PBS investigation in 2024: www.cascadepbs.org/all/2025/10/...

Newly uncovered audit findings allege a South Sound property manager fraudulently obtained nearly $1 million in pandemic rent assistance money, in a scheme that led Thurston County to shut down emergency aid for months. By @brandonblock.bsky.social: www.cascadepbs.org/investigatio...

Whatcom County Council has now introduced legislation to increase oversight of lawsuit payouts in continued fallout from my reporting on the favorable treatment of a former public works director accused of sexual harassment.

County council commissioned a consulting group in February to review policies and procedures for workplace harassment.

Newly uncovered audit findings allege a South Sound property manager fraudulently obtained nearly $1 million in pandemic rent assistance money, in a scheme that led Thurston County to shut down emergency aid for months. By @brandonblock.bsky.social: www.cascadepbs.org/investigatio...

Newly uncovered audit findings allege a South Sound property manager fraudulently obtained nearly $1 million in pandemic rent assistance money, in a scheme that led Thurston County to shut down emergency aid for months.

New investigation: Auditors flagged dozens of payments to Lance Benson’s property management company as suspected fraud. But county leaders chose to go after the nonprofit aid distributor instead. www.cascadepbs.org/investigatio...

The last story I edited before Monday's news was @laureldemkovich.bsky.social's excellent examination of Bob Ferguson's first 8 months as governor, a tenure marked by low public approval, decisions baffling to Dems and Republicans, and reduced press availability. www.cascadepbs.org/politics/202...

It’s difficult to find the words to express how our unit is feeling right now, but we’ll take a stab at it: shocked, disappointed, angry, gutted. @cascadepbs.bsky.social’s choice to eliminate long-form written reporting is a massive loss for our community in a critical moment. tinyurl.com/LayoffFund

Last words: What Washington is losing with the demise of Crosscut. As a nearly two-decade venture in nonprofit news comes undone, it underscores the precariousness of public service journalism. My latest column for the Washington State Standard: washingtonstatestandard.com/2025/09/24/l...

I’ll be talking about my reporting on government AI use on MuckRock’s FOIA Friday podcast this week, and on a panel at @ire.org AccessFest conference next month. This investigation wouldn’t have been possible without support from the editors + news team who Cascade PBS decided to lay off this week

From me: The former acting U.S. Attorney for Eastern WA resigned in July due to concerns about Justice Dept. leadership inside the Trump Administration, he told me exclusively last week. www.spokesman.com/stories/2025...

Great public records story here: KNKX Public Radio and Cascade PBS obtained thousands of pages of ChatGPT logs from city officials in Washington state (h/t @muckrock.com) www.knkx.org/government/2...

Leaders of Washington’s energy permitting council advanced a plan on Wednesday that would cut by one third the size of the state’s largest proposed wind and solar energy plant. By @brandonblock.bsky.social: www.cascadepbs.org/news/briefs/...

I talked with @poynterinstitute.bsky.social about how to get copies of government officials' ChatGPT histories. FOIA around and find out: www.poynter.org/reporting-ed...

NEW: Delegates from the MLK Labor Council voted Wednesday evening to endorse both Mayor Bruce Harrell and challenger Katie Wilson in Seattle’s mayoral election. Before the primary, MLK Labor had given Harrell a sole endorsement in this year’s race.

The Seattle Police Department has informed me that they will not follow the policy they agreed to in a settlement with the Seattle Times on public disclosure when dealing with my records requests. Instead, they are "grouping" all of my requests and responding to them, in full, one at a time.

A group of fired workers from the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which oversees anti-discrimination enforcement for the Department of Homeland Security, submitted a whistle-blower letter to Congress.

There are some challenges that can make requesting text messages more difficult than other public records. This guide will help you prepare for these challenges and navigate them. www.muckrock.com/news/archive...

¿Cómo se puede encontrar a alguien que está detenido por ICE? ¿Quién tiene derecho a una audiencia de inmigración? Abogados y defensores de los migrantes contestan preguntas frecuentes. www.cascadepbs.org/investigatio...

NEW: The U.S. Forest Service announced that wildfire fighters can now voluntarily mask up against smoke, reversing a decades-long policy banning respirators. The Forest Service will provide N95 respirators in the standard set of equipment. Prior to that, the agency had approved only bandanas.

#OnThisDay in 1852, The Columbian, Washington's first newspaper, was published in Olympia. historylink.org/File/20433

How do you locate someone in ICE custody? Who has the right to an immigration hearing? Attorneys and advocates answer common questions. By @farahe.bsky.social: www.cascadepbs.org/investigatio...

Immigration court is and can be complex. To help you make sense of the system, Cascade PBS spoke with immigration attorneys and advocates in Washington to answer questions regarding recent federal changes and our region’s unique challenges.