FirstCircle

Federal agents on Tuesday morning arrested and searched the homes of multiple people who took part in a June 11 mass protest against immigration enforcement in Spokane.

Among those arrested is former Spokane City Council President Ben Stuckart, who was indicted by a federal grand jury and is expected to be charged with conspiracy to interfere with law enforcement, according to local attorney Jeffry Finer.

Stuckart sparked the protest that swelled to hundreds of people that day by posting a call to action on Facebook after Immigration Customs and Enforcement agents detained two young men who had appeared at ICE offices for a check-in.

The two were legal immigrants residing in the United States through a humanitarian parole program and were going through the asylum process.

Also arrested Tuesday morning was Bajun Mavalwalla as he and his girlfriend were moving out of their shared home into another house Tuesday when the FBI knocked on their door at 6 a.m., said Mavalwalla’s father, Bajun Mavalwalla Sr.

“I demanded a warrant, they refused and wouldn’t show it until everyone left the home. My son was protesting on June 11, they said he assaulted officers,” Mavalwalla Sr. said. “My son worked in cybersecurity and was deployed to Afghanistan. He has no problems with the law.”

Mavalwalla Sr. said to his knowledge, officers never read his son his rights at the time of his arrest.

The arrests were condemned by Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown.

“This politically motivated action is a perversion of our justice system,” she said in a statement Tuesday morning. “The Trump Administration’s weaponization of ICE and the DOJ is trampling on the U.S. Constitution and creating widespread fear across our community.”

Also arrested was Justice Forral, an organizer for Spokane County Against Racism. Forral faces local felony charges of unlawful imprisonment and third-degree assault on an officer stemming from the protest.

I went to one of my fave thrift stores today - The Habitat Store (Habitat for Humanity) and poked around. They have so much crap - always great fun. I wasn't looking for anything in particular but sometimes will be inspired to buy something anyway. It was one of those days - they had a Microsoft "Ergonomic" 4000 v1 keyboard that looked almost pristine for $3. Probably 20 years old. USB. I already have a MSFT "natural" keyboard - the original from the mid-90s and it's still going strong. I didn't need another keyboard but hell, $3!

Got it home, wiped it down, plugged it in, and it seems to work fine. Test driving right now. Seems like the key spacing is a little greater than the original Natural and the keypress force needed is greater as well. I'm not sure if I'm going to get used to those things, touch-typer that I am. The force needed for the space key is particularly great. I might keep using the Natural and put this 4000 in a closet in case the former breaks.

After I got home I did a quick web search on the board and saw remarks about how M$ is no longer making these and how prices have spiked on used ones. I checked ebay and yep, they're all listed for $30+ and usually with absurdly high shipping charges. Looks like I got quite the keyboard bargain though I don't plan on flipping it so that doesn't really matter.

After that I went to the local food co-op and got a great deal on my favorite yogurt, Brown Bear chocolate, 5 for $5. I've seen these in regular markets for as much as $1.80/ea.

This is a local story, but then again it isn't. The same thing is playing out across WA state and no doubt across the country too. Weird how they (the people interviewed from the org) are tippy-toeing around the fact that Trump's and fElon's cuts are at the bottom of all this.

“United Way of Spokane County will be concluding its operations following a thoughtful evaluation by our board of directors,” she said as part of the statement. “This decision reflects the combined impact of ongoing economic challenges, affecting campaigns, donor giving and grant support, alongside an unexpected leadership transition.”

In April, AmeriCorps announced cuts to about 41% of its grant funding and placed 85% of its staff on leave. All told, Washington state officials expected to lose out on $21.6 million in program funding.

Included in that figure was a $50,000 grant to United Way of Spokane, which served as an intermediary agency for Volunteers in Service to America, or VISTA.

other United Way agencies in Washington also have decided to shutter, although they declined to say where.

One of the most popular recent programs was the Dolly Parton Imagination Library.

“We relied on state grants for that program,” Bluff said. “VISTA from AmeriCorps is going away. That was another big program. We just kept losing funding.”

United Way also supported Spokane Immigrants Rights, YWCA, YMCA, American Indian Community Center, Girl Scouts, SNAP Financial and Feast World Kitchen to name a few.

Ah, there you have it, the United Way was trying to help poor and darker-skinned people among other things. Naturally the Regime had to strangle them.

On DVD of course. Fans of Rutger Hauer seem to think it's one of his best, and no, it's not that SciFi one (which is one of my favorite films of all time). I got it on inter-library loan from a library on the other side of the state. Now I have three weeks to watch it, though I could of course rip it and just watch whenever.

Today I got a bunch of laundry and food shopping done. At the grocery store I asked for cash back and the magnitude of the ask seemed to surprise the cashier a little. I got two $50s, which doesn't seem like a big deal to me, so maybe it was just having to handle currency that caused her a momentary bout of confusion?

A few days ago I took a long drive to a small city (a college town) where I recalled there being a cool used bookstore. I turned out it was still there though the Main St. as I recall it (from several years ago) had changed quite a bit - small indie coffee shops taken over by big chains &etc. Things were very quiet in the summer off-season. I browsed for maybe an hour, chatted with the elderly shopkeeper, and scored three deals on books, one a hefty hardcover (with perfect dust-jacket) by a famous Soviet-era writer that would easily sell, on eBay, for 5x what I paid.

I asked the shopkeeper for one of their bookmarks and I received one. Nice, but it's of lower quality than their earlier versions - this one is flimsy and made of uncoated paper and only about 5" long - not of the necessary bookmark length for large hardcover tomes. It was free though.

Today I also mowed the lawn with the battery-powered mower. I say "lawn", but there's been little rain so it's just a smattering of tall, resilient weeds that got mowed. I'm still impressed by how much the mower can do on a single charge with just one battery.

A construction contractor declined to bid on my house re-siding job because I wouldn't accept a "time & materials" so-called "bid" and wouldn't pay $anything in advance of the work being done. These guys are all snakes. I may just have to paint over the crummy siding or learn how to do the work myself which would honestly be a good thing (for me - learning) though that's probably too interesting to talk about here.

The home, which was run by an order of Catholic nuns and closed in 1961, was one of many such institutions that housed tens of thousands of orphans and unmarried pregnant women who were forced to give up their children throughout much of the 20th century.

In 2014, historian Catherine Corless tracked down death certificates for nearly 800 children who died at the home in Tuam between the 1920s and 1961 — but could only find a burial record for one child.

Mayor Lisa Brown issued a 9:30 p.m. curfew, the first such measure since protestors in 2020 marched to support George Floyd.

“Everyone must abide by this curfew. Limited exceptions apply, including law enforcement, emergency personnel, media, people leaving the soccer game at the Podium, residents living in the area, and people going to and from work,” Brown’s directive read.

She made the call in response to hundreds of demonstrators blocked federal agents in Spokane Wednesday evening from leaving a downtown immigration office reportedly with refugees who were detained at court hearings earlier in the day.

The protestors, including former Spokane City Council President Ben Stuckart, gathered outside the facility on West Cataldo Avenue in the afternoon just north of Riverfront Park to prevent a bus with the young men from departing to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma.

A second protest at Riverfront Park broke out hours after the Stuckart-led event and riot-clad officers began shooting tear gas and making arrests.

Protestors in the park were joined by City Councilman Paul Dillon as officers began deploying gas and pushing against the participants.

At the earlier protest on Cataldo, some protesters deflated the bus’s tires and blocked law enforcement from leaving in patrol cars on the opposite side of the building.

A Spokane Police Department officer spoke over the regional SWAT car speaker system at 7:13 p.m. and ordered everyone present to disperse. The officer gave the demonstrators five minutes to do so. Few left the scene when police warned at 7:22 p.m. that they would use force if the crowd did not leave.

The fracas is arguably the most extreme local showing of resistance, among others in Los Angeles and across the country, to President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdowns since he took office for the second time in January.

The Cataldo crowd included several prominent politicians, activists and community leaders, including Spokane County Democratic Party Chair Naida Spencer; state Rep. Timm Orsmby; Spokane City Council candidate Sarah Dixit; union advocate and a former Democratic candidate for local, state and federal offices Ted Cummings; Thrive International Director Mark Finney and Latinos en Spokane Director Jennyfer Mesa.

Washington Sen. Patty Murray grilled Collins about a lack of transparency under his leadership, including a new policy that prevented her from meeting with veterans and health care providers at the Seattle VA hospital in April. She also questioned his goal of cutting 15% of the department’s workforce while accelerating the rollout of the electronic health record system that has hamstrung Spokane’s Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center since it became the testing ground at the end of the first Trump administration.

“As you know, fixing EHR and getting it right for our veterans is about patient safety,” Murray said, using the acronym for the system. “Did you ask these VA clinicians and hospitals about how those cuts would affect future EHR deployments?”

Collins replied that the planned layoffs and the computer system’s accelerated rollout “are separate,” brushing aside concerns about cutting staff and terminating support contracts while more aggressively deploying a system that has contributed to thousands of cases of patient harm, according to the VA’s own internal data.

Ken Kizer, who ran the Veterans Health Administration during the 1990s and oversaw the last major overhaul of VA health care, has said it would be “lunacy” to ramp up the system’s rollout while conducting mass layoffs.

Some twenty armed federal agents busted into an Oklahoma City home and seized the laptops, phones, and life savings of the family living there, even though their names did not match those of the suspects listed on the officers’ search warrant; and ICE agents raided the house of an Irvine, California, couple whose son has been accused of doxxing agents, but had moved to New York months ago.

a man who had been rescued from Mount Fuji after suffering from altitude sickness was rescued a second time after returning to the mountain in search of his phone;

the U.S. president posted an AI-generated photo of himself as the pope.

The head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told Americans it was their “patriotic duty” to save on medical costs by not getting sick

the U.S. Naval Academy canceled a philosopher’s lecture about wisdom after he refused to refrain from discussing the 381 books the school banned from their library

in Mississippi, the Commission on School Accreditation voted to remove a requirement that graduating students pass a United States history test

A man driving in Indonesia followed Google Maps directions off an unfinished bridge

It will soon be illegal in Spokane for an employer to ask a prospective employee if they’re homeless or reject their application solely because they do not have a permanent address.

The Spokane City Council voted 6-1 Monday in favor of the law, titled “Ban the Address” as a riff on “Ban the box” laws that prohibit inquiries about an applicant’s prior convictions. Councilman Jonathan Bingle was the sole vote against.

City officials believe Spokane is the first in the nation to pass such a law.

“Housing status should never define someone’s potential,” Councilman Paul Dillon said. “Employment really is a critical way we have to reduce homelessness and help people get back on their feet.”

“They can assume that everybody is armed,” Seth Stoke, chairman of the St. Maries School Board said in an interview Monday night after the board voted 4-0 to finalize a policy that will allow permitted staff to carry concealed firearms inside the district’s public schools.

The board developed the policy during the last school year in response to decades of school shootings across the nation, Stoke said.

Parents also won’t be allowed to appeal if they have specific concerns about a specific staff member’s decision to arm themselves in the classroom.

“The whole idea is not knowing who is carrying,” Stoke said, adding that parents always have the right to remove their child from the school.

Staff members who are approved to bring a gun to their school job must have an Idaho concealed carry license, which requires a national background check. Employees must use their personal firearms; guns will not be provided by the school district.