Northwest Reports

What’s at Stake in the Seattle City Council Races

With 45 candidates vying for a district seat, a lot could shift this fall. Crosscut reporter Josh Cohen talks it through.
Today, at the launch of Seattle’s 2023 campaign season, we examine some of the biggest issues our city faces. Crosscut city reporter Josh Cohen recently spoke with campaign consultants, pollsters, pundits, and representatives of big business and labor to get a sense of what’s at stake in this election and what voters might want.
Complicating these issues, and the search for solutions, is that the Seattle City Council could face a seismic shift: Four incumbents have announced they will not seek re-election, and a fifth, Teresa Mosqueda, is running for King County Council; if she wins, that will leave her seat open too.
For this episode of Crosscut Reports, host Sara Bernard talks with Cohen about what exactly voters might choose in November. While the Council has almost always been left-of-center, and is likely to remain so, the possibility of change leaves plenty of room for speculation.
Read our full report on the Seattle election and the issues likely to be at the center of it here. 
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Credits
Host/Producer: Sara Bernard
Reporter: Josh Cohen
Executive producer: Mark Baumgarten
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If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to supporting our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle’s PBS station, KCTS 9.

How Bikes Became Instruments of Police Enforcement

Seattle was an early adopter of the use of bicycles in law enforcement — especially as a form of crowd control. The SPD first put cops on bikes in 1987, but the “Battle of Seattle” WTO protests in 1999 began an era of more aggressive tactics.
In recent years, bike cops have routinely anchored crowd-control efforts at events or demonstrations. Now, the use of bikes, and the crowd-control methods Seattle cops developed, have spread across the country.
This kind of bike policing seems to be here to stay, but there are questions about its use. Freelance investigative reporters James Stout and Jordan Gass-Pooré asked some of those questions in a joint project with Crosscut and Type Investigations. Among other things, the reporters examined the history of SPD bike usage as well as dozens of use-of-force complaints involving Seattle police officers and their bicycles filed during the social justice protests of 2020.
For this episode of Crosscut Reports, host Sara Bernard talks with Stout and Gass-Pooré about their findings, and about how SPD might deal with the problem: The latest report from Seattle’s Office of Inspector General on the SPD response to the 2020 protests has called for an overall apology and a reevaluation of bike-policing tactics.
Read our full report on the use of bikes in police enforcement here.
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Credits
Host/Producer: Sara Bernard
Reporters: James Stout, Jordan Gass-Pooré
Executive producer: Mark Baumgarten
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If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to supporting our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle’s PBS station, KCTS 9.

The Assault Weapons Ban and More From the WA Legislative Session

Crosscut politics reporter Joseph O’Sullivan and Axios reporter Melissa Santos break down the biggest developments from the 2023 legislative session.
It was a busy legislative session in Olympia. By the time lawmakers adjourned on April 23, a slate of new bills affecting gun ownership, abortion, gender-affirming care and housing were on their way to Governor Inslee’s desk to become law.
Host Sara Bernard examines it all in this special episode of Crosscut Reports, recorded live during the virtual portion of the Crosscut Ideas Festival on May 4, 2023.
Crosscut state politics reporter Joseph O’Sullivan and Melissa Santos, a reporter with Axios Seattle, joined Bernard to discuss these new laws, how the Democrats in the majority were able to pass them and the political and cultural impact they may have on the state and national level.
The guests also chatted about Gov. Jay Inslee’s recent announcement not to run for a fourth term and the Legislature’s last-minute failure to find a fix for the state’s temporary drug possession law – a failure that Gov. Jay Inslee sought to remedy by requesting a special legislative session to settle the matter.
Read all of Crosscut's legislative coverage here.
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Credits
Host/Producer: Sara Bernard
Reporters: Joseph O'Sullivan, Melissa Santos
Executive producer: Mark Baumgarten
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If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to supporting our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle’s PBS station, KCTS 9.

Why Pandemic Relief Set Off a Fraud Frenzy

Emergency actions put money in the hands of struggling small businesses — and opened the door for some scammers. 
Three years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the relief efforts enacted by the U.S. government to shore up small businesses are still headline news. But the stories aren’t about recovery; they’re about fraud.
Crosscut investigative reporter Brandon Block recently examined how the crime spree that has hit every corner of America played out in our state, revealing how easy it was for individuals and businesses to scam federal pandemic relief programs out of thousands – or even tens of millions – of dollars.
Federal prosecutors working on these cases say that the 1,500-plus charges already brought across the country for such crimes are just a drop in the bucket. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Eastern Washington, for instance, has charged 14 people and one business so far with charges including wire fraud, bank fraud and identity theft on counts involving a total of over $20 million.
Pandemic funding did help millions of people and businesses stay afloat in a critical time, but for this episode of Crosscut Reports, host Sara Bernard talks with Block about whether prosecutors will ever get to the bottom of the fraud that came with it.
Read our full report on efforts to track down pandemic-relief fraud here.
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Credits
Host/Producer: Sara Bernard
Reporter: Brandon Block
Executive producer: Mark Baumgarten
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If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to supporting our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle’s PBS station, KCTS 9.

What WA Voters Think of the Supreme Court

We asked Washington voters their opinions on the court and their thoughts on current cases. Pollster Stuart Elway shares his takeaways.
It has been a tumultuous year for the U. S. Supreme Court. Last June the Court, with an expanded conservative majority, handed down a decision that ended federal protection for abortion and set off political shockwaves.
Now the Court's nine justices are considering a number of other cases that could reshape the country's relationship to race, technology and even democracy itself — and that's not even the half of it. 
We wanted to know what people in Washington state think about the federal Court, so we pulled registered voters from throughout the state and asked whether they approve of the Court, how they would change it and what they think of this new slate of cases.  
For this episode of Crosscut Reports, guest host Mark Baumgarten speaks with Crosscut pollster Stuart Elway about the surprising results, which show an electorate uncertain about the Court and maybe not quite as partisan as recent history might suggest.
Read more about the Crosscut/Elway Poll on the Supreme Court here. 
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Credits
Host/executive producer: Mark Baumgarten
Guest: Stuart Elway
Producer: Seth Halleran
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If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to supporting our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle’s PBS station, KCTS 9.

How UW Does Diversity Without Affirmative Action

Reporter Andrew Engelson discusses WA's 1998 ban of the practice, and what UW has done since to increase racial equity on campus.
The U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to strike down affirmative action across the nation, but if it does, little will change in Washington state. Washington has banned the practice since 1998, the year a ballot initiative altered state law to prohibit considering race as a factor in college admissions and in other public settings. 
After the ban was passed, enrollment of students of color at the University of Washington plunged, but numbers have crept back up over the years due to efforts such as outreach to high schools with high minority populations.
Colleges and universities across the country, now facing a similar affirmative action ban, have few other models to follow as they ponder how to promote racial diversity on their campuses. So freelance journalist Andrew Engelson asked: Since 1998, has UW met its racial-diversity goals, and if so, how?
For this episode of Crosscut Reports, host Sara Bernard talks with Engelson about how the end of affirmative action affected who goes to college; what UW has done since the 1998 ban to work toward campus racial diversity; and the implications of UW’s challenges and outcomes for higher education across the country.
Read our full report on affirmative action in higher education here.
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Credits
Host/Producer: Sara Bernard
Producer: Seth Halleran
Reporter: Andrew Engelson
Executive producer: Mark Baumgarten
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If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to supporting our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle’s PBS station, KCTS 9.

Who Should Care for Street Trees?

Reporter Hannah Weinberger discusses the Seattle policy that many homeowners didn't even know existed.
“Street trees” are the ones that line a city’s medians, roads and sidewalks. They beautify and provide wildlife habitat, of course, but they also help mitigate climate change.  That’s part of why the health of Seattle’s street trees is so vital to the city’s goal of increasing its diminishing tree canopy. 
But while they’re technically on public land, maintaining street trees is not the city’s responsibility; their upkeep is the financial responsibility of the adjacent homeowner.
Crosscut science and environment reporter Hannah Weinberger found that out after exploring just how complicated caring for this part of the urban canopy really is. It’s expensive, and often people don’t know that street-tree care is up to them until they run into something major like a sidewalk uplift. It’s a common situation in many other cities, too.
For this episode of the Crosscut Reports podcast, host Sara Bernard talks with Hannah about the problem of street trees. As Hannah puts it, she wanted to get “people to think about, how does our city handle the maintenance sharing for public goods? And whose responsibility really should it be to do that care?” Figuring this out could go a long way toward making Seattle greener, healthier and more resilient.
Read our full report on street trees here.
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Credits
Host/Producer: Sara Bernard
Producer: Seth Halleran
Reporter: Hannah Weinberger
Executive producer: Mark Baumgarten
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If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to supporting our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle’s PBS station, KCTS 9.

The Effort to End a Tribal Housing Crisis

The Suquamish Tribe is using federal dollars to create more affordable housing. Crosscut reporter Luna Reyna discusses the roots of the problem and the solution.
For many years the Suquamish Tribe and its citizens owned less than half of the land on their reservation in Washington, and many of those citizens have long struggled to afford housing there.
This reality is based in large part on the forced federal assimilation policies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It’s also because of what the 21st-century U.S. government has called “Broken Promises.”
But recently the tribe has been getting its ancestral land back and building affordable housing for its citizens. 
For this episode of the Crosscut Reports podcast, Indigenous affairs reporter Luna Reyna talks to host Sara Bernard about the new effort, the federal funding that is making it possible and the troubling history that has made it necessary.
Read our full report on the Suquamish effort here. 
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Credits
Host/Producer: Sara Bernard
Reporter: Luna Reyna
Executive producer: Mark Baumgarten
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If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to supporting our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle’s PBS station, KCTS 9.

The Future of Downtown Seattle

Reporter Josh Cohen discusses the city's plans — and readers' moonshot dreams — to improve the central business core.
Just as technology was making working-from-home more convenient, the pandemic, and the social-distancing requirements that came with it, accelerated the process. Remote work is probably here to stay, so it’s unlikely offices in Downtown Seattle will ever be filled to capacity again – and the decreased daily worker traffic will impact, perhaps permanently, the businesses that depended on their presence.
Crosscut city reporter Josh Cohen has been speaking with city leaders, urban planners, real estate professionals, business owners, workers and even Crosscut readers to take stock of a post-pandemic Downtown: not only what the impact of these past few years has been, but what the central business district’s future could look like.
For this episode of Crosscut Reports, host Sara Bernard talks with Cohen about Downtown’s future: Given that things are not going back to the way they were, what could the city envision instead?
Read our report on the future of downtown Seattle here. 
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Credits
Host/Producer: Sara Bernard
Reporter: Josh Cohen
Executive producer: Mark Baumgarten
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If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to supporting our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle’s PBS station, KCTS 9.

Providing Afghans With Refuge After War

Director Thanh Tan explains how her experience as a child of refugees led her to help those displaced after the fall of Kabul and make a Crosscut docu-series about their plight. 
When Thanh Tan learned that the United States military had withdrawn from Afghanistan and left the capital, Kabul, in the hands of the Taliban, she felt she needed to do something.  
She saw striking similarities between the plight of Afghans fleeing their country in the wake of the withdrawal and the plight of her parents and others who had fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1975.
One way she responded was to create a mutual aid project to help Afghan refugees arriving in Washington to find housing and other resources. Another was to pick up her video camera. 
For this episode of the Crosscut Reports podcast, host Sara Bernard talks with Tan about her new Crosscut docu-series Refuge After War, which draws on her personal experience to explore the parallels between the two refugee experiences, and tells how she believes we can prevent repeating the difficult history her family experienced.
Watch Refuge After War here. 
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Credits
Host/Producer: Sara Bernard
Reporter: Thanh Tan
Executive producer: Mark Baumgarten
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If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to supporting our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle’s PBS station, KCTS 9.