Letters for Jan. 9, 2026

Some context regarding Washington’s eviction moratorium

I found Tom Clouse’s Jan. 1 article on the eviction moratorium lawsuit to be welcome and informative. However, it seems to me there’s an omission that deprives unfamiliar readers of a fuller understanding of the complaint.

Jay Inslee’s eviction moratorium and its amendments made no requirement that tenants demonstrate financial impact due to COVID (a key feature that fundamentally distinguished it from policies in other states). As such, the moratorium enabled abuse of the system by tenants who could but wouldn’t pay rent, which needlessly jeopardized some landlords (and perhaps more egregiously) their more responsible tenant neighbors.

The Washington Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that the obligation to pay rent was never waived – only delayed. I’m guessing that argument rang hollow with landlords who in the interim lost good standing with their creditors and/or ownership of their properties, or indeed with their conscientious rent-paying tenants that were nonetheless displaced from those properties that were sold or foreclosed.

In an imaginary experiment following their own logic, I’ve wondered how agreeable the majority opinion justices would have been (in a gesture of solidarity) to have their own incomes “delayed” for the corresponding time-period while still being subject to their typical costs of living (in lieu of landlords’ nondelayed costs of doing business). I suspect that after much deliberation, their honors’ considerations of self-interest would have prevailed, and they would have declined such a gesture in a 5-0 decision.

Ron Devonport

Spokane

Baumgartner’s gotta go

It comes as no surprise that Congressman Michael Baumgartner – consistent in displaying a shameful lack of integrity and capacity for original thought – has jumped on the far-right bandwagon to reframe the president’s illegal and unconstitutional imperialist intervention Saturday in Venezuela as “bold leadership in advancing U.S. security interests in our own backyard.”

The interns listening to constituent voicemails might not be old enough to remember the last time our government lied to us to start an illegal war for oil, but I do. Let me be clear, for Mr. Baumgartner’s sake: His constituents do not take kindly to liars, and we do not want to send our loved ones to die in another rich man’s war.

Maybe bombing a foreign country with our tax dollars – but without congressional approval – was meant to distract the American people from the fact that Trump, a convicted felon who has also been found liable for sexual abuse, is all over the Epstein files. Or maybe Trump was just continuing to engage in the same corruption that has been his bread and butter for decades – doing a favor for the oil executives who donated $500 million to his campaign.

While we can only speculate on the motives of a man who previously sought to violently overturn the results of an American election, it would behoove Baumgartner to spend at least as much time fighting to make sure the people of Eastern Washington have access to living wage jobs and affordable housing, health care and child care as he does licking Trump’s boots.

Elise Martinez

Cheney