As we celebrate the completion of our first year implementing the Scattered Site Shelter Model at Jewels Helping Hands, we are filled with gratitude for the unwavering support that has made this work possible.
I’ve written extensively about how taxes pay for the services that improve our neighborhoods – from parks to public transportation to roads and bridges. State tax dollars are also critical to help address the kinds of challenges that communities in eastern Washington and across the state are facing, like lack of affordable housing and underfunded schools.
As a fourth-year medical student at the Idaho WWAMI/University of Washington program, I’m compelled to address a major issue affecting the health of Idahoans: the proposed defunding of the Idaho WWAMI program being considered by the Idaho Legislature in House Bill176.
As a family medicine physician in rural Idaho, I have had the privilege of caring for Idaho families for more than three decades. I have celebrated their milestones and stood by them during some of the most difficult days of their lives, helping them navigate challenging times. Many of these hardships have been directly tied to health issues, often triggered or worsened by poverty.
Though time is said to heal all wounds, the scars from the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns remain fresh as the nation experienced executive overreach at the federal and state levels. It is important going forward for a proper check and balance to exist. The legislative branch must remain firmly in control of policy, even during times of an emergency.
Our world is an increasingly noisy, busy and concerning place. For a moment, let’s set aside the really difficult challenges that our state and country are facing. The world continues to spin, after all.
We have worked in health care and grocery stores for more than 24 years serving the people of Spokane. We are both union women who have been active in winning improved contracts with higher wages and better benefits for ourselves and our co-workers. When we improve our hospital, and our grocery store, it helps out everyone in the community. And while there is certainly a long way to go to get the respect, pay and staffing levels that we and our co-workers deserve, the situation is far better because we are in a union. That difference of having a union is the difference of having a voice.
The League of Women Voters of Washington strongly endorses Senate Bill 5400 in support of local journalism. This measure seeks to defend democracy in communities that have been hard hit by a changing news landscape. There is amazing access to information in our times; however, this information does not necessarily include what is going on in local communities. This puts democracy at risk.
The destruction from the Los Angeles wildfires is heartbreaking. Lives lost and homes destroyed at a scale we’ve never seen. These fires burning involve tens of thousands of acres, tiny in comparison to wildfires we have fought but massive in the level of loss.
After congratulating my wife and me on one of our 20-something wedding anniversaries, a bachelor friend noted that he had been married almost that long, only to three different women. Wife No. 1, the mother of his children, had lasted the longest, nearly 15 years. With Wife No. 2, whom he affectionately called the Black Widow, things were rocky after about six months.
In many respects, 2024 was the unfortunate year of the owl – the barred owl, long protected across the nation under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act – that ended up in the crosshairs of our own federal government.
As the president of the Idaho Academy of Family Physicians, I’m compelled to address a pressing issue that impacts the health and safety of mothers in our state: the urgent need for a health exception to Idaho’s abortion bans.