Federal Government

WASHINGTON – Before senators and House members left the Capitol on Thursday with funding for the Department of Homeland Security guaranteed to lapse at week’s end, Northwest lawmakers illustrated just how tough it could be to bridge the gap between the parties over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics.

WASHINGTON – The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to overturn President Donald Trump’s tariffs on goods from Canada, as a Washington state Republican broke with GOP leaders to help pass the largely symbolic resolution.

WASHINGTON – The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to pass a bill that would require proof of U.S. citizenship to vote, after Northwest GOP lawmakers acknowledged that implementing such a requirement may disenfranchise Americans.

WASHINGTON – Near the end of a four-hour hearing on Wednesday that focused largely on the Justice Department’s handling of its investigation of the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Rep. Michael Baumgartner credited the agency with a sharp decrease in violent crime over the past year.

A 10-year-old Spokane girl and her father detained by Border Patrol last month have been freed from a federal immigration detention center in Texas.

CHICAGO – Sitting in the rectory of Holy Name Cathedral, Cardinal Blase Cupich recalled how he started celebrating mass in an unfamiliar setting after he arrived in Spokane as the city’s new bishop in 2010: in the fields and orchards of Eastern Washington, where farmworkers labored on Sundays.

Handing control over elections to the federal government would be unthinkable to former Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed.

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump campaigned in 2024 on a promise to crack down on illegal border crossings and conduct a “mass deportation” of unauthorized immigrants unlike anything the United States had seen before.

WASHINGTON – The Senate passed a sweeping government funding package on Friday that includes two provisions that could make up to $70 million available to the Spokane Aerospace Tech Hub, a consortium of nearly 50 companies, agencies and schools working to make the Inland Northwest a global leader in manufacturing advanced composite materials.

Border Patrol officials say they detained a Guatemalan father and daughter in Spokane earlier this month because he missed multiple required immigration check-ins as he sought asylum in the United States.

In the rush to comment about the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Alex Pretti on Saturday in Minneapolis, members of the Trump administration have riled some their own supporters by suggesting that the slain intensive care nurse should not have been carrying a gun to a protest. 

Employees at Spokane’s veterans’ hospital observed a moment of silence on Monday morning, and some affixed photos of Alex Pretti to their own ID badges in a show of solidarity with the VA nurse shot dead by Customs and Border Protection agents while being restrained in Minneapolis two days earlier.

WASHINGTON – Less than a week after Sen. Patty Murray negotiated a bipartisan bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security while reining in its aggressive immigration crackdown, the Washington state Democrat vowed to block that legislation after Saturday’s fatal shooting of a Minneapolis man by the department’s agents.

In the wake of the most recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement shooting Saturday in Minneapolis, Republican House Rep. Michael Baumgartner has called for Congress to investigate the immigration enforcement agency.

WASHINGTON – After being paid not to work for nine months, employees at a federal office in Spokane dedicated to workplace safety were reinstated on Jan. 13, but their research faces challenges and uncertainty after many left during the long layoff period.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) restored about $5 billion in public health grants to states just hours after it sent notices pausing such ‌grants, Bloomberg News reported on Saturday.

WASHINGTON – The Department of Homeland Security’s immigration enforcement agents face new accountability measures and a modest cut to their deportation budget in a bipartisan funding package unveiled Tuesday by Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state and her fellow negotiators in Congress.

Universities in Washington will get a boost from the package of spending bills the U.S. Senate passed on Thursday.