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washington state
'I Am Simply Outraged': Despite 8-Day Notice, Jayapal Blocked From Oversight Visit at ICE Detention Center
"This only makes me more certain that DHS and these private for-profit contractors have a lot to hide."
Feb 20, 2026
Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Thursday expressed fury at the Trump administration after she was prohibited from conducting oversight at a immigration detention center in Tacoma, Washington despite giving the facility the required eight days notice prior to her visit.
In a statement posted on social media, Jayapal (D-Wash.) said that officials at the the Northwest Detention Center blocked her from meeting with people being held at the facility, even in cases where she had obtained privacy release forms.
Jayapal said that she refused to leave the facility until she could meet with "one of the individuals for whom I had a privacy waver... and whose attorney was there waiting for me to meet with them."
The Washington Democrat was told that she could meet with this person, but only in a public visitation area instead of a private attorney room.
After agreeing to the detention center's terms, Jayapal got to meet with the detainee, whom she described as "the sole caregiver for his 8-year-old US citizen daughter" who also has "serious medical issues himself."
"He has been hospitalized in the emergency room three times since being detained on January 11," Jayapal continued, "and is still experiencing serious pain and medical issues for his condition which are not yet resolved."
Jayapal said that she spoke with several immigration attorneys who were at the facility, who told her that they were often made to wait up to five hours to see their clients, as there are just seven attorney rooms available for a detention center that holds roughly 1,300 people.
Jayapal said she also heard complaints from people at the facility about "inadequate medical treatment, overcrowding, and inedible food," and then lashed out at the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for impeding members of Congress from conducting proper oversight of its detention centers.
"I am simply outraged that [Homeland Security Secretary] Kristi Noem's DHS continues to try and block me and other members of Congress from speaking with detained people and conducting meaningful oversight," she said. "This only makes me more certain that DHS and these private for-profit contractors have a lot to hide as they incarcerate around 70,000 people every night."
DHS has consistently denied congressional Democrats access to immigration detention centers since Trump returned to the White House last year, even though federal laws such as Section 527 of the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act state that members of the legislative branch are allowed to conduct "robust and effective oversight" of such facilities.
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Washington Homeowners Sue Big Oil Over Soaring Insurance Costs
"Big Oil took its playbook directly from the minds of Big Tobacco and think they can get away with the same deliberate disinformation campaign, coercing the public to pay for the very harms they suffer."
Nov 26, 2025
Efforts to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for the climate emergency continued in Washington state this week as homeowners sued oil giants and a trade association over their decades of lies and rising insurance premium rates.
"As natural disasters become more costly, homeowners foot the bill," explains the complaint, filed on Tuesday in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington against the American Petroleum Institute, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell and its subsidiary Equilon Enterprises.
"In 2023, a significant number of natural catastrophes... impacted the United States, at an estimated cost of $114 billion, of which approximately $80 billion was insured," the filing notes. "In the state of Washington alone, homeowners' rates have increased by a total of 51% over the past six years. But climate change has driven insurance premium increases throughout the country because insurance generally operates by pooling risks."
There are two named plaintiffs in the proposed class action suit. Margaret Hazard lives in Carson, an "area that is very dry and prone to forest fires." Since she began paying for home insurance in 2017, her premiums have doubled, and she recently had to switch to a policy with less coverage. Richard Kennedy of Normandy Park has also paid for homeowner's insurance since then; his premiums have gone from $1,012.10 to $2,149.18, an increase of nearly 113%.
"This case is about holding the fossil fuel defendants accountable for the increased homeowners' insurance premiums that their coordinated and deliberate scheme to hide the truth about climate change and the effects of burning fossil fuels has brought about and for their conduct contributing to climate change; a cost the highly profitable trillion-dollar industry can easily afford, and one that it should not be permitted to simply pass along to the everyday people who are presently bearing the burden of these increased premiums," the complaint states.
The document highlights that "defendants have known since at least the 1960s, based on their own internal scientific research, that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas pollution caused by the unchecked sales of its highly profitable petroleum products would inevitably lead to 'catastrophic' weather-related consequences with 'considerable significance to civilization' and that only a narrow window of time existed in which to act before severe consequences would result."
Big Oil "took this internal calculus seriously," the filing details, but "rather than inform the public, or... undertake meaningful remedial steps, defendants chose instead to protect their profits by engaging in a massive, deliberate, decadeslong misinformation campaign intended to sow doubt in the minds of the media [and] business leaders, and deceive the public and consumers about the conclusions they themselves had reached about the substantial consequences that the sale of their products would have."
As journalists and academic researchers have revealed what fossil fuel companies knew, and when, over the past decade—while extreme weather, from rapidly intensifying hurricanes to historic wildfires, ravaged US communities—various climate liability lawsuits have been filed across the country by states, municipalities, tribes, and individuals.
According to the Center for Climate Integrity's national tracker, in Washington state alone, there are at least three other cases: two brought by tribes in December 2023 and a wrongful death suit filed in May by the daughter of Juliana Leon, who died during the extreme heatwave that plagued the Pacific Northwest in 2021.
The cases have often drawn comparisons to the tobacco industry's deception, and the one filed this week is no exception. In fact, the plaintiffs for the new federal suit in Washington are represented by the law firm Hagens Berman, whose managing partner and cofounder, Steve Berman, served as special assistant attorney general for 13 states against Big Tobacco.
"Big Oil took its playbook directly from the minds of Big Tobacco and think they can get away with the same deliberate disinformation campaign, coercing the public to pay for the very harms they suffer," Berman said in a statement. "We see a direct correlation between Big Oil's lies and the alarming increase of homeowners insurance due to the rising threat of natural disasters."
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Boeing Union Wins 25% Raise in Tentative Contract, But Possible Strike Still Looms
Unionized machinists are set to vote on the contract on Thursday.
Sep 08, 2024
A tentative deal made early Sunday morning between aerospace giant Boeing and the union that represents more than 33,000 of its workers was a testament to the "collective voice" of the employees, said the union's bargaining committee—but members signaled they may reject the offer and vote to strike.
The company and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) District 751 reached an agreement that if approved by members in a scheduled Thursday vote, would narrowly avoid a strike that was widely expected just day ago, when Boeing and the bargaining committee were still far apart in talks over wages, health coverage, and other crucial issues for unionized workers.
The negotiations went on for six months and resulted on Sunday in an agreement on 25% general wage increases over the tentative contract's four years, a reduction in healthcare costs for workers, an increase in the amount Boeing would contribute to retirement plans, and a commitment to building the company's next aircraft in Washington state. The union had come to the table with a demand for a 40% raise over the life of the contract.
"Members will now have only one set of progression steps in a career, and vacation will be available for use as you earn it," negotiating team leaders Jon Holden and Brandon Bryant told members. "We were able to secure upgrades for certain job codes and improved overtime limits, and we now have a seat at the table regarding the safety and quality of the production system."
Jordan Zakarin of the pro-labor media organization More Perfect Union reported that feedback he'd received from members indicated "a strike may still be on the cards," and hundreds of members of the IAM District 751 Facebook group replied, "Strike!" on a post regarding the tentative deal.
The potential contract comes as Boeing faces federal investigations, including a criminal probe by the Department of Justice, into a blowout of a portion of the fuselage on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 jetliner that took place when the plane was mid-flight in January.
The Federal Aviation Administration has placed a limit on the number of 737 MAX planes Boeing can produce until it meets certain safety and manufacturing standards.
As The Seattle Times reported on Friday, while Boeing has claimed it is slowing down production and emphasizing safety inspections in order to ensure quality, mechanics at the company's plant in Everett, Washington have observed a "chaotic workplace" ahead of the potential strike, with managers "pushing partially assembled 777 jets through the assembly line, leaving tens of thousands of unfinished jobs due to defects and parts shortages to be completed out of sequence on each airplane."
Holden and Bryant said Sunday that "the company finds itself in a tough position due to many self-inflicted missteps."
"It is IAM members who will bring this company back on track," they said. "As has been said many times, there is no Boeing without the IAM."
Without 33,000 IAM members to assemble and inspect planes, a strike would put Boeing in an even worse position as it works to meet manufacturing benchmarks.
On Thursday, members will vote on whether or not to accept Boeing's offer and on reaffirming a nearly unanimous strike vote that happened over the summer.
If a majority of members reject the deal and at least two-thirds reaffirm the strike vote, a strike would be called.
If approved, the new deal would be the first entirely new contract for Boeing workers since 2008. Boeing negotiated with the IAM over the last contract twice in 2011 and 2013, in talks that resulted in higher healthcare costs for employees and an end to their traditional pension program.
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