Category: Trump

City Council, Elections, Mayor Harrell, Police, Taxes, Trump

This Week on PubliCola: August 2, 2025
The city is already expanding its police camera surveillance program to three new areas, including a large swath of the Central District.

This week’s roundup, featuring a proposed camping ban, tons of election updates, and news about the city council, SPD, and the impact of Trump’s executive orders on Seattle.

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, July 28

Council Appoints Juarez to Serve Out Cathy Moore’s Term, Accusations Fly Over Democracy Voucher Collection

Two stories in Monday’s Afternoon Fizz: Former elected councilmember Debora Juarez, whose appointment to her old position was never truly in doubt, will serve out the term of Cathy Moore, who quit the council after just 18 months. And two candidates for the District 2 council seat accuse a third of illegally farming democracy voucher contributions.

Seattle Nice: Is Trump’s Executive Order the End of Housing First?

On the podcast this week, we spoke to Purpose Dignity Action co-director Lisa Daugaard about a Trump executive order slamming harm reduction and housing first. Unlike many advocates, Daugaard said the executive order will probably still allow most housing-first programs to continue, and doesn’t mandate arrests or involuntary commitment, despite its pugnacious language.

Tuesday, July 29

Initiative Would Criminalize Sleeping Outdoors in King County

A proposal from head tax opponent Saul Spady, whose grandfather founded Dick’s Burgers, would make it a misdemeanor to sleep outdoors in unincorporated King County. In addition to the “camping” ban, Spady’s group wants to impose mandatory minimum sentences for fentanyl and meth dealing, force people who overdose or get caught using drugs three times into mandatory six-month rehab, and open 3,000 shelter beds.

Council Finally Seats Renters Commission, New Council Rules Allow Longer Public Comments

Tuesday’s Afternoon Fizz features two stories: After Councilmembers Rob Saka and Sara Nelson shut down a committee meeting to consider appointments to the city’s long-unfilled Renters Commission, possibly at the behest of ex-councilmember Moore, the council seated the full commission this week without comment or dissent. And: New city council rules, proposed by Councilmember Dan Strauss, set parameters around public comment so council members can’t cut people off quite so arbitrarily.

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Wednesday, July 30

Business Tax Plan Moves Forward, Larded With New Exemptions and Spending Categories

A proposal to increase business and occupation taxes on the city’s highest-grossing businesses moved forward, now loaded up with tax exemptions that will cut annual revenues from the tax by more than $10 million and additional spending areas that could dilute the impact of the tax, which is supposed to go to housing and human services.

Thursday, July 31

Police Roll Out Expansion Plans for Surveillance Cameras

The council is preparing to approve an expansion of police surveillance cameras into three new areas, just two months after SPD installed dozens of CCTV cameras in three Seattle neighborhoods. The city has no data yet to justify the expansion of the new program, which supporters pitched as a solution to human trafficking and gun violence.

Friday, August 1

Who Is Common Purple Collective, Ann Davison’s Campaign Consultant?

It’s pretty unusual for a brand-new consultant to arrive on the scene in local Seattle politics. It’s even more unusual for that consultant to conceal their identity using an out-of-state LLC, proxy registrar, untraceable private mailbox, and a weird corporate name that yields exactly one search result. Whoever’s working for Ann Davison, Seattle’s Republican city attorney, doesn’t want to be known.

Ex-SPD Chief Drops Lawsuit Against Harrell, City Files Pre-Election Trump Lawsuit, Councilmembers Oppose Progressive Colleague’s Reelection

Three stories to round out the week: Former police chief Adrian Diaz mysteriously dropped Mayor Harrell from his lawsuit against the city, which relied heavily on claims that Harrell defamed Diaz and fired him unfairly. Harrell, who’s running for reelection, stood alongside Davison as they announced they’re suing the Trump Administration over two seven-month-old executive orders, less than a week before Election Day. And two councilmembers send a message to their colleague Alexis Mercedes Rinck: In case you were wondering, we don’t like you.

City Council, Elections, Mayor Harrell, Police, Trump

Ex-SPD Chief Drops Lawsuit Against Harrell, City Files Pre-Election Trump Lawsuit, Councilmembers Oppose Progressive Colleague’s Reelection

1. City Attorney Ann Davison and Mayor Bruce Harrell announced on Thursday—a date also known as Six Days Before the Primary Election—that they are suing the Trump Administration over two January 2025 executive orders threatening to withhold federal funding from jurisdictions that support diversity, equity, and inclusion or acknowledge the existence of trans and nonbinary people, a policy the Trump order refers to as “gender ideology.” (Harrell said there was nothing political about the timing. OK.)

The lawsuit isn’t the first in the nation to challenge the two executive orders, which seek to dismantle policies adopted by local jurisdictions by threatening the loss of critical federal funds. But it is the first such lawsuit initiated by the city of Seattle, which has also joined two other anti-Trump lawsuits filed by other jurisdictions.

The lawsuit argues that the Trump Administration has overstepped its authority by unilaterally imposing illegal conditions on federal contracts. By requiring the city to certify that it doesn’t have any programs that promote diversity or acknowledge genders other than “biological male and female,” the city argues the Trump Administration is subjecting it to “impossible choice when it accepts and spends federal grant money—either submit to the Administration’s policies through unlawful means or forgo vital funding for major infrastructure and safety initiatives.”

In a press conference Thursday, Davison avoided talking explicitly about gender diversity and DEI, limiting her comments to the legal aspects of the lawsuit. (Harrell, in contrast, talked about his own history of advocating for gender-affirming care to be included in the city’s health care plans and for the city’s Race and Social Justice Initiative.) “We should not have to forego our own local policies in order to obtain that money that has already been provided to us,” Davison said.

This year, Seattle has the authority to spend around $370 million in federal grant funds, much of that for transportation projects. According to the lawsuit, Trump’s executive orders put all that funding at risk.

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3. Late last month, former police chief Adrian Diaz quietly agreed to dismiss all claims against Mayor Bruce Harrell in his defamation lawsuit against the city of Seattle—a surprising turn for a legal claim that puts Harrell at the center of most of its allegations, claiming he helped spread false rumors that Diaz had an inappropriate affair with a subordinate, Jamie Tompkins, and that Diaz and Tompkins lied to investigators looking into the allegations.

Diaz’ complaint rehashes a number of his longstanding grievances, including his claim that a love letter, written in what an expert identified as Tompkins’ handwriting, was a “forgery.” (Four days after Diaz filed the lawsuit, the city released records and recordings from the investigation, which PubliCola covered at length.) But it also included many specific allegations against Harrell.

After Harrell “wrongfully” fired Diaz, the complaint says, he “escalated the injustice by making knowingly false and defamatory statements to the media and public, accusing Chief Diaz of dishonesty, lying, failing to disclose conflicts of interest, acting unprofessionally, and engaging in an improper personal relationship.”

Then, the complaint alleges, “in an effort to score political points in an upcoming election year, Mayor Harrell then engaged in a self-aggrandizing media tour during which he repeatedly and falsely proclaimed Chief Diaz had lied to him, statements that wrongfully labeled Chief Diaz as a dishonest cop who could not be trusted.”

Diaz is still suing the city—the other named defendant in his lawsuit. Asked about his removal from the lawsuit on Thursday, Harrell said tersely, “No reaction. No comment.”

3. Talk about performative: Two of Seattle Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck’s colleagues—Sara Nelson and Maritza Rivera—along with the council appointee Rinck handily defeated, Tanya Woo, recently endorsed Rinck’s opponent Ray Rogers, who’s one of four people running against the popular incumbent.

Rogers, a self-identified former gang member who supports community policing and opposes a “return to the radical council of the past,” has raised just $4,000 and is polling at about 2 percent. Like her other nominal opponents, he isn’t a threat to Rinck. By endorsing him, her colleagues (and Woo) are sending Rinck a message that they’d rather endorse a nonviable candidate than accept the fact that voters overwhelmingly support her.

Addiction, homelessness, podcasts, Trump

Seattle Nice: Is Trump’s Executive Order the End of Housing First?

By Erica C. Barnett

Freaked out about the Trump Administration’s latest executive order, which calls for “ending crime and disorder on America’s streets” by ending Housing First, arresting people with addiction and mental illness, and punishing people for sleeping outside?

Our guest on Seattle Nice this week, Lisa Daugaard, says people should read past the scary headlines and the tough-guy hyperbole of Trump’s press release and look at what the executive order actually does. Daugaard, the co-executive director of Purpose Dignity Action (formerly the Public Defender Association), is a longtime proponent of housing first—the theory that stable housing is a prerequisite for long-lasting recovery. After reading the order, she told us she believes it was written by people who knew what they were doing.

For one thing, the order doesn’t explicitly call for defunding anything, except (entirely theoretical—that is, nonexistent) federally funded programs whose purpose is “only [to] facilitate illegal drug use and its attendant harm.” Although the order does call for more civil commitment, it doesn’t change the law in places like Washington State, which already has laws allowing involuntary commitment in some circumstances. In some circumstances, Daugaard said, the order holds out the possibility of more funding for evidence-based programs.

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“They’re certainly trying to accomplish some turning of the ship, and I think in most respects … this is not terribly problematic, if maybe not problematic at all, and maybe holds out the prospect of increased resources in areas where we really need those,” Daugaard said. “So I think in general, people are responding to the politics and not to the language of the actual order, and that that’s understandable, but maybe not wise.”

I pushed back a bit on Daugaard’s apparent optimism—which, to be clear, does not apply to the entire Trump Administration and its policy apparatus—noting that even if smart people who care about health and human services wrote it with the intention of making it as harmless as possible, the Trump Administration is unpredictable and has a history of not following the law. Sandeep added that right-wing activists are already portraying the order as a devastating loss for “the homelessness industrial complex.”

Daugaard said left-leaning activists and leaders shouldn’t take the bait. “We need to define ourselves as largely aligned with the values that this order enunciates and lower the temperature by saying that’s the [what the order calls for is] the work we want to do,” she said. “We don’t want to leave people camping in public. We don’t want to foster lifelong drug use with a low ceiling on people’s recovery capacity. And we need additional resources to make that a reality.”

City Council, Courts, Elections, King County, Trump

Poll Tests Message that Katie Wilson is “Angry,” “Divisive,” and “Loud”; No Charges Yet for County Assessor Accused of Stalking
Screenshot from poll testing messages against mayoral candidate Katie Wilson.

And: Three City Councilmembers declined to sign on to an anti-Trump letter; guess which ones!

1. Two online polls that went out to voters via text this week tested messages for Mayor Bruce Harrell and against Transit Riders Union leader Katie Wilson, who’s challenging Harrell. While one of the polls included some messaging against another Harrell challenger, Joe Mallahan, the two surveys focused on anti-Wilson messaging. (Pollsters use messaging polls to see what kind of talking points voters find persuasive.)

Survey takers were asked to respond to each negative message by indicating whether it made them more or less likely to vote for Wilson, and how much each message moved voters away from Wilson. (The poll also included a handful of pro- and anti-Harrell messages).

The questions generally portrayed Wilson as an “angry and divisive,” Kshama Sawant-aligned socialist who wants to disband the Seattle Police Department and tax businesses and residents out of the city.

“Katie Wilson will raise taxes on working families and small businesses,” one test message said. “We can’t afford a self-described socialist who plans to raise taxes even higher when so many working families are struggling to make ends meet in our city.

“Katie Wilson is an advocate for the ‘defund the police’ movement that is out of touch with what our city needs,” another survey question said. “We can’t afford a mayor who thinks policing is unnecessary.”

One question asked respondents to weigh in on messaging about Wilson “supporting former city councilmember Khama [sic] Sawant” and “the politics of shouting, accusing, and undermining fellow Democrats.” Another message claimed Wilson is “more interested in being the loudest voice in the room and less interested in bringing Seattle together and actually solving our problems.”

If Harrell (or his independent expenditure campaign) decides to paint as Wilson loud, angry, and divisive, that will be news to anyone who’s ever met her. A soft-spoken, thoughtful policy nerd, Wilson’s chief political flaw is that she prefers long policy explanations to easy soundbites and is incapable of adopting the glad-handing, style-over-substance approach of lifelong politicians like Harrell.

2. The Snohomish County Prosecutor’s Office has declined so far to file charges against King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson, who was arrested last week for stalking and violating a protection order obtained by his ex-partner Lee Keller. The prosecutor is still weighing the evidence and could file charges in the future.

Wilson is running for King County Executive. The King County Prosecutor’s Office handed the case over to Snohomish County to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Keller went to King County District Court on Monday seeking an extension of a restraining order from May that prevents Wilson from contacting or coming within 1,000 feet of Keller. According to Keller, Wilson has repeatedly violated the restraining order by texting Keller and showing up at her house, church, and events where she is present.

However, a court commissioner denied that request and granted a 90-day continuance on the case, which leaves the restraining order in place for at least 90 days but offers no guarantee that Keller will remain protected after the court takes up the restraining order again.

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The Snohomish County prosecutor has not given any timeline for considering additional evidence, and can decline to press any charges against Wilson if they choose. Wilson was arrested when he returned to Keller’s home after showing up there earlier in the evening last Wednesday night; he stayed overnight in jail but was released the next day after paying bond on $50,000 bail.

3.  On Tuesday, City Councilmembers Sara Nelson, Maritza Rivera, and Bob Kettle declined to sign a letter denouncing the Trump budget, which will take health care, cash assistance, and food benefits away from millions of Americans while giving massive tax breaks to the rich and spiking the federal budget deficit to unprecedented levels. So far, the letter has been signed by 80 elected officials from across the Puget Sound region.

The letter, which progressive Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck distributed and sent to local media last week, also calls out “austerity measures” advanced by Governor Bob Ferguson and imposed by state legislators earlier this year. It calls on state and local leaders to “develop meaningful solutions to protect residents,” including progressive revenue measures like the “Seattle Shield” business and occupation tax increase Rinck and Harrell proposed last month.

Kettle said that as someone who has spoken about the need to preserve and de-politicize federal disaster relief, “I appreciate the intent of this,” but said he is “not one to sign on letters like this… just as a matter of fact of how I do business.”

Rivera echoed Kettle, saying that while “I agree with the spirit of the letter,” she was also choosing not to sign it. “I wanted to, for the record, state that I do not agree with this federal administration… it is just gross and disgusting,” Rivera said.

Nelson gave the most detailed explanation for her decision not to sign on to the letter: “I feel uncomfortable calling out the governor when he signed legislation that came from, obviously, the legislature,” she said. Nelson also said she wasn’t sure about putting the city of Seattle seal on the letter (alongside those of a dozen other cities) or about encouraging other governments to enact progressive revenue like the Seattle Shield proposal, which Nelson has raised skeptical questions about.

Like Kettle and Rivera, Nelson took pains to say that she doesn’t support the Trump budget either. “I’m not going to sign the letter, but I do want to express that I share in the spirit and the thoughts that are that I believe are motivating the expression of this outrage,” Nelson said.

homelessness, immigration, Trump

New Federal Homelessness Contracts Appear Designed to Exclude Undocumented Immigrants

By Erica C. Barnett

New federal contracts for homeless services include a requirement that providers deny benefits to undocumented immigrants, King County Regional Homelessness Authority deputy CEO Simon Foster told the King County Council this week. Foster warned that the new restrictions, which have not appeared in previous federal contracts, could result in people losing services they already access and avoiding homeless providers for fear of deportation.

“We know that citizenship verification requirements have a chilling effect that extends throughout the community, and even documented individuals are less likely to seek help if they are afraid of the repercussions to themselves, their friends and their family,” Foster said.

The new language showed up in the KCRHA’s first 2025 grant from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Continuum of Care program, which provides about 11 percent of KCRHA’s funding. In keeping with new, Trump-era boilerplate for other federal grants, the new language also says agencies must certify that they won’t use the funding in ways that “promote ‘gender ideology'” or violate several new executive orders, including one denying federal funds to “sanctuary cities.” A judge temporarily blocked the sanctuary city order on Thursday.

Under the terms of the contract, KCRHA would be required to “administer its grant in accordance with all applicable immigration restrictions and requirements, including the eligibility and verification requirements” from the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, better known as welfare reform. That law prohibits undocumented immigrants from receiving federally funded services, with some exceptions whose interpretation is entirely up to the “unreviewable” discretion of the attorney general, according to the law.

In 2016, then-attorney general Loretta Lynch issued guidance affirming that homeless service providers could spend federal funding on programs that provide shelter, transitional housing, rapid rehousing, and outreach to undocumented immigrants. Under Trump, that guidance has been removed from HUD’s website.

The new rules also say that KCRHA, or the nonprofit agencies that provide services and housing (the language is ambiguous), has to check the immigration status of every person seeking housing, shelter, or services in a massive federal database called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, or SAVE. According to the contract language, KCRHA “must use SAVE, or an equivalent verification system approved by the Federal government, to prevent any Federal public benefit from being provided to an ineligible alien who entered the United States illegally or is otherwise unlawfully present in the United States.”

KCRHA is currently considering its legal options, which could include suing the federal government. Earlier this month, the agency’s governing board held a lengthy, unscheduled executive session to discuss “federal funding impacts,” going into closed session under an exemption to the open meetings act that allows private conversations about litigation or potential litigation.

The agency, unlike the city or county governments, has a legal department of one—general counsel Edmund Witter. Although suing (or joining a larger lawsuit) creates legal risks, so would signing the grant agreement. If the KCRHA agreed to exclude undocumented immigrants from services and avoid funding “gender ideology,” it could open the agency up to legal liability from activist lawsuits. It’s easy to see, for instance, how providing shelter where queer and trans people feel safe would count as “gender ideology” under the new Trump administration’s rule.

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Alison Eisinger, director of the Seattle-King County Coalition on Homelessness, said SKCCH fully expects “to see attempts to insert irrelevant and odious requirements and restrictions on federal funds that keep people housed in our community” coming from the federal government.

“We have to make sure we can keep people safe, housed, sheltered, and helped regardless of where they were born, who is in their household, and how they pay their rent,” Eisinger said. “Local government and any philanthropic partners who concern themselves with housing and homelessness should be creating robust reserves to ensure that we are not at the mercy of the billionaire sociopaths.”

It’s unclear how any of this would work, in a purely practical sense. Searching SAVE to see if someone is in the country legally is expensive (the government charges for each search), and neither KCRHA nor nonprofit service providers currently have access to the database. Most service providers won’t want to be in charge of asking for people’s virtual papers as a condition of providing services, and the possibility of mixups—between people with the same name, for instance—raises major due process issues, according to a person familiar with the legal issues.

Seattle City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, a former director of subregional planning and equitable engagement at KCRHA, said immigrants, particularly new arrivals, were already apprehensive about accessing the homelessness system before Trump’s election, because of the fear of deportation and the stigma of being homeless.

“It’s a much more invisibilized homelessness experience,” Rinck said. “People naturally feel anxious about accessing any type of government services already,” she said, without having to prove their eligibility for a place to sleep at night. “I think the broad idea is that they’re just going to use any measure to prevent immigrants from tapping into any program or services.”

PubliCola has reached out to HUD’s regional office, as well as several organizations that could be impacted if the new restrictions go into effect, and will post an update if we hear back.

City Council, Elections, homelessness, Police, Trump

This Week on PubliCola: April 19, 2025
No, we didn’t remove any numbers from this graph—there aren’t any! (And, yes, it only goes through last October for some reason).

The City Council grapples with bleak budget news, PubliCola interviews candidates for City Council District 2, and much more.

Monday, April 14

New Council Committee Shines a Light on Bleak Impacts of Trump Funding Cuts

The city council isn’t merely facing a major revenue shortfall—it also has to decide how to respond to major federal cuts to programs that help give Seattle its progressive, welcoming reputation. We spoke to the chair of a new committee dedicated to responding to these issues (which, we’d argue, every council committee should also be focusing on) about how the federal changes are already impacting Seattle.

Seattle Nice: Is the City Ready for Trump 2.0? (Spoiler: Nope!)

On this week’s podcast, we discussed the upcoming city budget, which is the main venue for elected officials, including the council, to prioritize and support programs and services that benefit Seattle residents. So far, though, there’s little indication that the council is treating the one-two punch of local shortfalls and federal cuts as the emergency it is.

Tuesday, April 15

PubliCola Questions: District 2 City Council Candidate Jamie Fackler

Jamie Fackler, a building inspector for the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections and steward with one of the biggest unions representing city employees, is running for the Seattle City Council seat currently held by Mark Solomon, who replaced Tammy Morales after she stepped down earlier this year. Fackler says he’d work to improve public safety by investing in the social safety net.

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Wednesday, April 16

PubliCola Questions: Seattle City Council District 2 Candidate Eddie Lin

Second in our series of interviews with District 2 council candidates is assistant city attorney Eddie Lin. Lin, who represents the Office of Housing, told us he wants to see deep investments in youth gun violence prevention.

Thursday, April 17

Councilmember Saka Looks for the Bright Side in Grim Local Revenue Forecast

During a grim presentation on the city’s latest revenue forecast, City Councilmember Rob Saka pressed city budget staffers for good news—in the form of unanticipated revenues from the Club World Cup, tourism, and cruise ship traffic—but found little.

KCRHA Holds Closed Session on “Federal Funding Impacts,” Approves Loan to Address Deficit Spending

The regional homelessness authority’s governing board, currently made up entirely of elected politicians, went into executive session to talk about unspecified “federal funding issues” with the agency, but did not fill the public in on what those issues are. At the same meeting, the board approved a cash transfer from King County—a separate government that provides some of the agency’s funding—to improve the KCRHA’s persistent operational deficit.

Former Police Chief Inadvertently IDs New Top SPD Hire

Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes plans to hire his longtime associate Alex Ricketts as his chief of staff. Former police chief Carmen Best inadvertently spilled the news on Facebook last week in a post that included a photo of Ricketts and a caption referring to welcoming Barnes’ chief of staff. SPD’s last chief of staff, Jamie Tompkins, resigned last year after an investigation concluded she lied about her alleged affair with former SPD chief Adrian Diaz.