Dan Chasan

Birthright Citizenship: Can Trump Really Reinterpret the Constitution?

Donald Trump is trying to re-interpret the 14th Amendment.  It says  â€“ right up front in Section 1—that “ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject...

How to Save Orcas? A Report Says “Old Fish”

A new report features fixes that have largely been off-limits for discussion by government groups reluctant to enrage commercial fishers, recreational fishers, or tribes.

Trump’s Capricious Tariff Tantrums are Chaotic. But They’re Also Illegal (Probably)

The uncertainty about tariffs will continue indefinitely. The whole episode is a farce.

Saw, Baby, Saw? Trump’s Emergency Threat to our Forests

Pruning regulation and felling trees on the scale that the Trump orders contemplate won’t be a slam-dunk. The path to more logging runs through a tangled thicket of laws and regulations.

Threepeat: Donald Trump for President? Again?

Barely one month into his second term, Donald Trump is already signaling that he may run for a third term, even though the US Constitution forbids it.

Project 2025’s Scary Plans for Hanford’s Nuclear Waste

My friend Kenneth Young, a University of Washington physicist now deceased, invited me in 1973 to join him for lunch at a U District cafe with the Nobel Prize-winning...

Threats Multiply to our Free Press

We’ve entered fraught days for the future of public discourse in the United States. Consider some of the news in the three months or so before Trump’s inauguration.

The Year in Verse: A Little bit Louder, A Tiny bit Worse?

Go take a walk from Pike to shore, right where the viaduct’s no more, gaze out at ferries on the Sound.

Sigh: We Did Tariffs and Deportations Before in America. It Didn’t Go Well

Some historians think the ensuing trade war triggered the Great Depression.  Others think that it at least made the Depression a good deal worse. 

New DNR Chief Will Have More State Forests to Tend

Rural economies and surviving mill towns have struggled economically for decades.  No one has come up with a credible plan to reverse their economic slide.

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