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WASHINGTON — Having all but tamed inflation, the Federal Reserve is poised to do something Wednesday it hasn’t done in more than four years: Cut its benchmark interest rate, a step that should lead to lower borrowing costs for consumers and businesses just weeks before the presidential election.

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Despite Washington’s progressive reputation, migrants held at Tacoma’s Northwest ICE Processing Center are less likely to receive relief from detention and deportation compared to the national average.

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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The U.S. Department of Energy announced Tuesday that it is teaming up with yet another energy company as part of a mission to transform portions of government-owned property once used for the nation’s nuclear weapons program into prime real estate for renewable energy endeavors.

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WASHINGTON — The FBI has disrupted a group of Chinese hackers who were working at the direction of the Chinese government to infiltrate critical infrastructure in the U.S. and other countries and to spy on and steal data from universities, government agencies and others, Director Chris Wray said Wednesday.

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WASHINGTON — It's not easy to get elected to statewide office as a Republican in Washington state. When voters don't know your name, it's just about impossible.

That's the problem Raul Garcia, an emergency physician from Yakima, faced when he ran for governor in 2020 and finished fifth out of 36 primary candidates.

"A lot of people knew me as the doctor from Eastern Washington who was running for governor," Garcia said in an interview Wednesday. But when they saw the crowded ballot, he wasn't sure they recognized his name.

So before running for Senate against incumbent Maria Cantwell in 2024, the doctor came up with an outside-the-box solution: He legally changed his name to "Dr Raul," so his professional prefix would appear on the ballot. The downside, Garcia joked, is that when his wife wants to give him a hard time, now she just calls him "Durr."

This year, Garcia made it to the general election, but that may have less to do with his name than his decision to leave the gubernatorial race in 2023 and secure the state GOP's endorsement to challenge Cantwell, a Democrat who has represented Washington in Congress since 2001. With Garcia's message focused on health care and tackling the fentanyl crisis — some of the same issues Cantwell has prioritized — the race offers voters a chance to compare different approaches to some of the state's most pressing policy challenges.

The August primary — when Cantwell took about 57% of votes and Garcia 22%, splitting the GOP vote with other candidates — suggested the race isn't particularly close. In a poll conducted in July by SurveyUSA for Seattle's KING-TV, the Seattle Times and the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, 58% of voters said they planned to vote for Cantwell in November and 37% for Garcia, with just 5% saying they were undecided.

Cantwell also has a large fundraising advantage, having raised $11.7 million and spent less than half that amount as of July 17, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Meanwhile, Garcia reported raising about $597,000 and spending $428,000.

Despite not facing a serious threat to her re-election, Cantwell has received more campaign donations than any other senator has from the airline and telecommunications industries — both of which she oversees as chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation — according to the campaign finance tracker OpenSecrets.

Cantwell, a native of Indiana who worked as an executive at the Seattle-based tech company RealNetworks after a single term representing northwestern Washington in the House ended in 1995, has pitched herself to voters as a pragmatic Democrat who is willing to work with Republicans to tackle policy challenges. As head of the Commerce Committee, she has played a major role in crafting the Biden administration's signature legislation aimed at upgrading the nation's infrastructure, creating more manufacturing jobs and speeding the transition to renewable energy sources.

Knowing he can't compete with Cantwell's spending or rely on GOP votes in a state where no Republican holds statewide elected office, Garcia has taken an unconventional approach to reaching voters with his message, which pairs traditionally conservative views on taxes, guns and policing with relatively liberal positions on abortion, immigration and health care.

In July, Garcia walked more than 150 miles in triple-digit heat from Astria Hospital in Toppenish, where he works as the medical director, to Seattle in an effort to call attention to the scourge of fentanyl. To reach more voters in the state's biggest urban center, he said, he temporarily moved on Labor Day from his home in Yakima to Seattle's Belltown neighborhood, where the city's homelessness and addiction crisis is on display next to upscale restaurants and luxury condos.

A political moderate who idolizes the late Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, for whom he interned after fleeing Cuba with his family as a child, Garcia is not the typical GOP candidate in 2024. In a moment when the party is largely defined by loyalty to its presidential nominee, Donald Trump, Garcia won't say how he plans to vote in the race for the White House, which he called "the most divisive thing in America today."

His opponent, however, is not exactly an avatar of the divisiveness that pervades so much of American politics today. In contrast to Sen. Patty Murray, her fellow Washington Democrat and a prominent critic of Trump and the GOP, Cantwell's recent news releases tout bipartisan bills and federal funding for things like job training, cancer research and airport upgrades.

The result, at least so far, has been an unusually civil Senate race based more on policies than personalities. With health care playing an outsize role in the race to represent Washington, here's where the candidates stand on three key issues.

Fentanyl and other opioids

Addiction to heroin and other opioid drugs isn't a new problem in the United States, but a surge in the availability of fentanyl — a synthetic opioid that is far cheaper and up to 50 times stronger than heroin — has driven a sharp increase in overdose deaths in the past decade.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fentanyl and other synthetic opioids killed roughly 75,000 Americans in each of the last two years. While drug overdose deaths decreased nationwide between April 2023 and April 2024, according to CDC data, Washington state saw the opposite, with an increase of nearly 14% during that period.

Cantwell has made fentanyl a major priority in recent years, convening a series of 10 listening sessions across Washington in 2023 and 2024, directing federal funding to the state and co-sponsoring several bipartisan bills aimed at combating the crisis. Much of that legislation aims to stem the flow of fentanyl into the country, which comes primarily from China and Mexico, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency.

In April, the Senate passed the FEND Off Fentanyl Act, Cantwell-backed legislation that uses sanctions to punish fentanyl traffickers and cut off the supply of the chemicals used to make the drug. In August, Cantwell and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, introduced a bill aimed at cracking down on counterfeit pills made with fentanyl by requiring pill presses to be engraved with a serial number.

Cantwell spokeswoman Ansley Lacitis said the senator will soon introduce another bipartisan bill intended to improve the information available to first responders by establishing grants for states, tribes, cities and law enforcement task forces to implement overdose data collection programs. The legislation would encourage grantees to adopt a free application, which isn't currently used in Washington state, to monitor and map overdoses.

"Sen. Cantwell has already passed legislation to expand sanctions on fentanyl traffickers and creators of precursor chemicals, give law enforcement more tools to disrupt fentanyl-related money laundering, and deploy advanced screening technology at our border crossings," Lacitis said in a statement, referring to the FEND Off Fentanyl Act and the annual government funding package Congress passed in March, which included about $1.7 billion for various programs designed to intercept fentanyl from entering the country.

In May, Cantwell and Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., introduced the Fatal Overdose Reduction Act, which would expand a program that was developed and piloted in Washington state based on "health engagement hubs," a sort of one-stop-shop where people addicted to opioids can quickly access buprenorphine, a medication used to treat opioid use disorder. A University of Washington study estimated that the six pilot sites reduced fatal overdoses by 68% in a year.

The opioid crisis is personal for Garcia. As an emergency physician, he said he sees overdoses in virtually every shift at his hospital on the Yakama Reservation, which has been hit especially hard by fentanyl. As the stepfather of a son whose opioid addiction left him homeless, Garcia said he wants to tackle the fentanyl crisis by mandating long-term, comprehensive rehab programs for addicts while imposing federal felony charges on drug dealers.

"I believe a lot in lived experience. And hearing him talk about his time in the streets, the free accessibility of the drugs, we have to understand something really important with fentanyl," Garcia said. He went on to explain that the abundance and low cost of fentanyl means that an addiction that would cost perhaps $100 a day for heroin now costs $5 a day for fentanyl, making it even easier for people to be trapped by the synthetic drug.

He acknowledged that many addicts also sell drugs and said his plan, which he calls the Americans Against Fentanyl Act, would apply those federal felony charges only to "the purposeful and conniving dealers that are doing this to make a profit and knowing that they're killing people."

"I strongly feel that we need to be harsh in that part of the problem," Garcia said, referring to drug dealers. "And then open up our hearts and arms to the addiction world and say, 'OK, we need to make tough decisions here as well.' "

He opposes the "harm reduction" approach used by some drug treatment programs, which can include providing clean needles, arguing that it enables drug use. Instead of the housing-first model that has become popular in recent years, Garcia proposes involuntary rehab programs lasting several months that include medication-assisted therapy, counseling and other mental health treatment before placing people in housing.

Abortion and reproductive health care

After three Trump-appointed justices allowed the Supreme Court to overturn nationwide protections for abortion in 2022, some Republicans in Congress introduced a bill to ban terminating a pregnancy after 15 weeks, which would require 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster. But Garcia said he would vote against any federal restrictions on abortion, because they would limit doctors' ability to treat miscarriages and other potential fatal conditions.

"I have seen it with my own eyes," he said. "With ectopic pregnancies, with fetal demise, with complications from pregnancy that warrant the medical profession to do what they do to save that woman's life. And so, no, I will never be one of the 60 senators that are needed to put any restrictions on abortion nationwide."

Americans have complicated views on abortion, with Pew Research Center polls showing most want the procedure neither banned outright nor legal in all circumstances. That nuance is seldom seen in Congress, but Garcia said he believes Republicans and Democrats can come together on abortion because they all want it to be rare.

The solution, he said, is to keep abortion legal,  bolster the foster care system and make adoption easier and less expensive while giving "resources, education and support to women that are pregnant and in crisis." He told the Seattle Times in June that he would vote in favor of restoring nationwide abortion rights previously protected by the Roe v. Wade decision that was overturned in 2022.

"I will explain it to my Republican Party," he said in an interview with The Spokesman-Review. "And I think that they will be more open to hearing that from me than to hearing that from a Democrat."

Another pillar of Garcia's platform is keeping OB-GYN clinics open in rural areas, informed by the experience of his own hospital being forced to close its maternity center at the beginning of 2023, citing rising costs, a staff shortage and reduced Medicaid reimbursement rates.

In June, Cantwell and other Senate Democrats released draft legislation that would increase Medicaid payment rates for rural and other high-need hospitals' labor and delivery services. In a news release announcing the bill, Cantwell cited Garcia's hospital to illustrate the need to pass it.

Since the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade ruling's protections for abortion, Cantwell has put a spotlight on the decision's fallout. In a series of reports, her office highlighted how women from Idaho and other states that have restricted abortion have strained the resources of Washington state clinics and hospitals. Cantwell's staff also led a nationwide report, released in July, that found "allowing states to ban or restrict abortion is causing an unprecedented flow of pregnant patients across state borders, at times endangering their lives and financial security."

With many of her fellow Democrats, Cantwell has introduced numerous bills in response to the high court's decision, including legislation to codify the abortion protections removed by the Supreme Court, to undo a ban on federal funding for abortions, to increase access to contraception and to prohibit anti-abortion state governments from restricting women from traveling to other states to get abortions or from making it illegal for other people to help them. None of those bills have passed, and they would require Democratic control of the House, Senate and White House and a majority of senators willing to undo the filibuster rule, which requires a 60-vote supermajority to pass most legislation.

Health care access and costs

Washington state has fewer hospital beds per capita than any other state, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation. On average, Americans spend nearly twice as much on health care as citizens of other wealthy countries but have worse health outcomes than nearly all of those countries, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group that includes the United States and 37 other advanced economies.

That problem has long vexed federal lawmakers, with some calling for dramatic changes to a U.S. health care system built largely on profit-driven insurance companies and hospital systems. Like other Democrats, Cantwell has worked to defend and bolster the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration's signature health care reform law that expanded coverage by both private insurance plans and taxpayer-funded Medicaid programs.

During the Trump administration, Cantwell was a vocal champion of the law, urging the Justice Department to defend it against legal challenges and inviting a Spokane high schooler with type 1 diabetes to the State of the Union address in 2020 to highlight the high cost of insulin. She was also one of the architects of the Inflation Reduction Act, a broad package of legislation Democrats passed in 2022 that capped insulin prices at $35 a month.

Since the law often called "Obamacare" took effect in 2010, Democrats — and some Republicans — have staved off GOP efforts to repeal it. Garcia said he would vote against repealing the law, adding that its requirement that insurance plans cover patients with preexisting health conditions is especially important, but he thinks Congress should do more to lower health care costs.

"I have been in it for 26 years, so this is my wheelhouse, and certainly have had my frustrations as a physician to be able to deliver care to my patients," Garcia said. "I feel that we are in a situation now where insurance companies have a lot to say on our health care every day, instead of having that power be in the hands of patients and physicians, and I will do everything possible to balance that out."

Garcia said that although he sees supporting free enterprise as a key tenet of being a Republican, he has "conflicting thoughts" about health insurance companies being publicly traded firms whose profit motive is at odds with providing the best health care to Americans.

"I would have discussions about insurance companies not having the option to have a public offering in Wall Street," he said. "Because as a physician, I could tell you that you are now satisfying investors instead of approving an MRI for my patient. And to me that's just conflicting, when at the end of it all, we're human and we want the best for our people."

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     (c)2024 The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Wash.)

     Visit The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Wash.) at www.spokesman.com

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The trial in Washington state's first-in-the-nation lawsuit against the proposed Kroger-Albertsons merger got underway Monday, with each side presenting starkly different scenarios of how the $25 billion deal would affect Washingtonians.

In the state's telling, merging two of the nation's biggest grocery retailers, would "extinguish" the "intense, head-to-head competition" that now helps lower prices.

A merger would have massive implications for Washington, where Kroger — which owns QFC and Fred Meyer — and Albertsons  — which owns Safeway and Haggen — collectively account for around half of all supermarket sales.

Offering opening statements Monday, lawyers for the state also said plans by Kroger and Albertsons to preserve competition by selling hundreds of stores, including 124 in Washington, to a third company, C&S Wholesale Grocers, could result in many of those locations being resold or even shuttered.

"Selling and closing stores is on the table," Glenn Pomerantz warned a packed King County Superior Court courtroom. Pomerantz is an attorney with Los Angeles-based Munger Tolles, which was hired last year by the state Attorney General's Office to help with the suit.

For lawyers representing Kroger and Albertsons, the merger itself is what could prevent store closures.

A combined Kroger and Albertsons will have the scale and efficiency to cut prices and fend off competitors like Walmart, Costco and Amazon, which are disrupting the grocery market.

Absent that scale, Albertsons in particular would eventually have to consider "fundamentally" changing its structure, potentially via "layoffs and store closings and ... exiting certain markets altogether," said Enu Mainigi, an attorney with Williams & Connolly, which is representing Albertsons.

Washington's suit against the merger, filed Jan. 15, was the first by any government seeking to block the deal. Since then, separate suits have been filed by Colorado and by the Federal Trade Commission, whose Feb. 26 action was joined by nine states, but not Washington.

The lawsuits have led to overlapping trials and colliding schedules.

This week, the FTC, Kroger and Albertsons will wrap up a hearing in federal court in Portland to decide whether the merger should be temporarily blocked until the federal agency can evaluate whether the deal violates federal laws.

Many of the attorneys for Kroger and Albertson in Seattle Monday had traveled from Portland for opening arguments in Washington's case, and were returning to Portland for closing arguments in the federal case on Tuesday.

Both trials have potentially massive implications for Washington. The state has a disproportionate share of Kroger and Albertsons locations, many of them in close proximity, and would also see the largest number of sales, or "divestitures", to C&S, of any state.

As the state trial broke for noon recess, Attorney General Bob Ferguson, the Democratic candidate for governor, joined a nearby rally of around 100 members of United Food & Commercial Workers 3000, which also opposes the merger.

As in the federal case, much of the state trial will likely hinge on the meaning of competition in the rapidly evolving grocery businesses.

Attorneys for the state contend that Kroger and Albertsons are each other's main competitors in many Washington communities — and in some cases are the only full-service grocery stores in town — meaning that the merger will leave Kroger with too much "market concentration" in many communities.

But Kroger and Albertsons say the modern grocery market is no longer dominated by traditional "one-stop" grocery retailers like themselves, but increasingly by a welter of non-traditional players, ranging from Walmart and Costco, to Amazon and Trader Joe's, and to newcomers like Aldi.

"Consumers ... are now making multiple trips a week and buying food from stores in all different formats," Kroger attorney Mark Perry, with Weil, Gotshal & Manges, told King County Superior Court Judge Marshall Ferguson.

Much of the case will turn on the question of perceived competence of C&S Wholesale.

State lawyers say the New Hampshire-based company is primarily a wholesaler and lacks the capability to run hundreds of divested Kroger and Albertsons stores effectively.

The state also contends that proposed divestiture includes underperforming stores and a "weak" store brand — QFC, according to opening arguments and court filings.

"Kroger is keeping the best assets for itself, saddling C&S with a mix-and-match package that will require it to take on multiple monumental transitions to stand up this new business," the state argues in court filings.

But attorneys for Kroger and Albertsons said the divestiture is sound in part because C&S has substantial financial resources and will also acquire operating expertise along the stores, including Susan Morris, currently Albertsons chief operating officer.

Under the proposed Kroger-Albertsons merger, "C&S is getting a robust, dynamic package of resources, assets and talents that will allow it to stand up a competitive divestiture."

Kroger has stated it "will ensure that no stores close as a result of the merger, that all store-level associates remain employed, that all collective bargaining agreements are assumed, and that associates continue to receive industry-leading wages and benefits," according to filings.

Kroger and Albertsons have also vowed to make $1 billion in investments to lower prices, though state lawyers have called such "price investment" promises "unenforceable, impossible to verify, and temporary."

Although the state is asking the court to permanently block the merger as currently proposed, lawyers for the state left open the possibility of some kind of merger. Kroger and Albertsons "could go back to the drawing board and come up with a new deal that doesn't violate the laws of this state," Pomerantz told the court.

Certainly, some shoppers and workers have expressed skepticism in assurances by Kroger and Albertsons.

The state's efforts to block the suit have been popular among Washington consumers. Some store workers also want to merger blocked.

Yasmin Ashur, an Albertson's employee from Port Orchard who has worked for the chain for 25 years, said she's not comforted much by assurances that no stores will close.

Ashur, who spoke at the midday rally Monday, also worries that the merger will make it harder for union members to bargain for higher wages.

"They make us fight for every penny that we earn," Ashur said of the current situation.

The trial is scheduled to last three weeks, though that could change depending on the outcome of the federal trial in Portland.

Some experts think that if the federal judge blocks the merger even temporarily, Kroger and Albertsons may abandon the deal rather than wait for the FTC's review, which could last many months.

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     (c)2024 The Seattle Times

     Visit The Seattle Times at www.seattletimes.com

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