Soundside

$395 million -- that is one judge’s estimate of how much the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community should receive in a trespassing case. The judgment is not only a monetary victory for the tribe, but points to the legal leverage Tribal governments have when it comes to protecting their sovereignty. Guests: Isabella Breda, environment reporter at the Seattle Times Relevant Links: Seattle Times: Judge orders BNSF to pay WA tribe $400M for oil train trespass  Seattle Times: A WA tribe will get paid by a railroad that trespassed. The question is how much  KUOW: BNSF Railway ordered to pay $395 million after years of trespassing on Swinomish land See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

To make room for the new Sageview High School, Pasco school board members needed to make a decision: which students would go to the shiny new school, and which would stay at one of the older schools: Pasco High School, or Chiawana High?  This isn’t the first time Pasco’s school board has had to make a decision like this. When Chiawana High opened in 2009, the district began busing some students across the city to attend the new school, instead of the nearby, much older, Pasco High.The school boundaries they drew back then were aimed at evening out the share of lower income students at Pasco schools. To create economic diversity at the schools.  This time, the Pasco school board has taken a different approach - listening to parents value proximity over economic diversity. That's raising bigger questions about how demographics like race and income affect student learning and school performance. Guests: Eric Rosane: civic accountability reporter for the Tri-City Herald Saba Bireda: Co-Founder of Brown's Promise, an organization that works to end racial and economic segregation in K-12 schools. Related Links: Tri-City Herald:  https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/education/article289202959.html Tri-City Herald:  https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/education/article288980625.html  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the WTO protests in Seattle, a raucous action by 50,000 protesters who descended on the city in the fall of 1999. Their aim? shutting down a conference of top decision makers at the World Trade Organization. When this coalition of activists succeeded in stopping the WTO’s opening ceremonies, the “Battle of Seattle” became an inflection point in a growing struggle between advocates for free trade and groups fighting for the rights of labor, farmers, the environment and more. Comprising over 100 interviews, author DW Gibson’s new book, “One Week to Change the World,” tells a new oral history of the protest through the eyes of people who participated.  Guests: DW Gibson, journalist based in New York and author of "One Week to Change the World." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The U.S. Coast guard says it is still investigating the cause of a catastrophic implosion that destroyed the Titan submersible on a dive in the North Atlantic, killing all five passengers onboard. Titan was built and operated by Everett-based OceanGate. The company was a player in the nascent deep sea tourism industry, shuttling people to the site of the Titanic wreck at a cost of $250,000 a ticket.  A new article in WIRED magazine details that, for years before Titan disappeared, engineers and experts in the submersible industry had warned OceanGate, and its CEO Stockton Rush, that Titan had potentially fatal design problems. Guests: Mark Harris, investigative tech journalist Related Links: Wired: The Titan Submersible Disaster Shocked the World. The Exclusive Inside Story Is More Disturbing Than Anyone Imagined See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Since the Supreme Court struck down the right to an abortion in 2022, Idaho has enacted some of the strictest abortion laws in the country. For Idaho medical students at the University of Washington, the near total abortion ban creates uncertainty about whether they will go back home to practice. Guests: Dr. Sarah Villarreal, associate professor at the University of Washington and practicing OB/GYN Emina Gulbis, 4th year Idaho WWAMI medical student Related Links: Cascade PBS Medical residents are avoiding abortion-ban states, survey finds KUOW Post-Roe, WA is a health care ‘sanctuary’ — for both patients and providers Boise State Public Radio 'Idaho will suffer for this:' Doctors worry about attracting medical residents due to abortion bans  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It’s been a tumultuous few years for rental laws in Washington state.  When the pandemic caused widespread job and income losses, state, county, and city governments passed a series of protections to keep tenants housed. That included funds for back-paying rent and moratoriums on evictions.  But many of those protections have ended, and over the last year, eviction cases have spiked in the state. In King County’s court system specifically, that massive demand is leading to delays ranging from six months to a year.  Some see this bottleneck as a frustrating bureaucratic mess; but others see it as growing pains in a system that's shifting from favoring landlords to more equally representing tenants.  Soundside host Libby Denkmann spoke with Philippe Knab from the Office of Civil Legal Aid and Sean Flynn of the Rental Housing Association of Washington. Guests: Philippe Knab, eviction defense and re-entry program manager at the Washington State Office of Civil Legal Aid Sean Flynn, executive director of the Rental Housing Association of Washington Related links: Seattle Times: King County aims to speed up some eviction cases See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Microsoft continues to face tough questions about its security protocols and commitment to safety after a whistleblower says he warned the company about a serious vulnerability involving third party software years ahead of it being exploited in the infamous SolarWinds attack. Experts believe that it was in September of 2019 that Russian hackers gained access to SolarWinds - a network infrastructure monitoring software relied on by hundreds of thousands of computer systems across the country. By inserting malware in a SolarWinds update, hackers got a backdoor to those systems, including Microsoft and its customers: the largest of which is the U.S. government. They gained access to sensitive federal agencies, like the departments of Energy and Treasury.  When the hack was discovered 14 months later –  it brought home the threat of cyber warfare and the ability of malicious foreign actors to find tiny weaknesses in computer code to cause major damage. Now, new reporting by ProPublica sheds light on what Microsoft knew about the SolarWinds vulnerability before the attack – and the extent of the hackers’ access.  including breaching the agency that maintains America’s nuclear weapons stockpile.   Guests: Renee Dudley, a tech reporter at ProPublica   Related Links: ProPublica: https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-solarwinds-golden-saml-data-breach-russian-hackers  ProPublica: https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-solarwinds-cybersecurity-house-homeland-security-hearing  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At a time when many voters are deciding which candidate to support in the August primary, voters are also witnessing very public conflicts between Democratic candidates. Ethics and finance complaints filed by gubernatorial candidate Mark Mullet against front runner Bob Ferguson point to the gulf between moderates and progressives. Guests: Scott Greenstone, KUOW politics reporter Related Links: KUOW: Bob Ferguson's campaign funds under fire from rival Democrat in governor's race KUOW: Will the real Bob Ferguson please stand up? Name doppelgangers rattle Washington governor’s race Seattle Times: AG Bob Ferguson faces ethics complaint in ‘three Bobs’ saga See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Seattle Police say they have stepped up their presence today on the Garfield High School campus in the Central District. Interim Police Chief Sue Rahr told King 5 that Seattle Public Schools reached out to ask for the support – following the shooting of 17-year old Amarr Murphy-Paine on campus last week. Parents, teachers, and students gathered at Garfield on Tuesday to talk about what safety and security needs to look like at the school.   There have been at least six shootings in and around Garfield over the past year, either on campus or within a few blocks of the school.     And one Garfield parent says she’s tired of seeing the same response from the district, over and over. Guests: Carol Rava is the parent of both a current and former Garfield student. She’s also a one-time Seattle Public Schools employee, and wrote an op-ed for the Seattle Times on school safety, published this week.  Related Links: https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/stop-the-bleeding-sps-needs-to-do-better-to-keep-students-safe/  https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/seattle-police-presence-garfield-high-school/281-2594b875-e5b1-4a30-af2d-1fd58618ed00 https://www.kuow.org/stories/mapped-shootings-around-seattle-s-garfield-high-school-this-year  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

An estimated 45% of riders paid to get on the light rail in Seattle according to Sound Transit estimates from 2023. When you tap your Orca card at one of those yellow stands, or maybe you don’t, you’re making a difference to Sound Transit’s bottom line because the organization has been hoping to rely on that revenue to make up 40% of light rail’s operating budget. Last year, only 14% of the budget was covered by fares. It’s an ambitious goal, one that Sound Transit has had since the agency formed in the 90s. Sound Transit’s board says that goal is probably too ambitious. It’s time to revise expectations downwards to reflect the reality of lowered ridership, increasing costs, and rampant fare evasion. Guest(s): Ryan Packer, contributing editor at The Urbanist. Related Links: The Urbanist: Sound Transit Lowers Farebox Recovery Goals, Opens Door to Fare Capping, Is Sound Transit Closing In on Fare Gates for Link and Sounder?  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.