The Reflector

06/01/2026

"Elizabeth Anne Dauw passed away peacefully on the morning of May 5, 2026, at the age of 66. She passed after a two-year fight with pancreatic cancer. Elizabeth was able to spend a final couple of days with some members of her family before passing.

Born and raised in Wallaceburg, Ontario, Canada, she graduated from New Mexico State University with a master’s degree in music, orchestral conducting and piano performance. She also obtained a bachelor of fine arts degree in music composition from York University.

Elizabeth’s life was filled with travel, adventure, music, artistic expression and a love for animals.

Her early adult years were spent traveling Canada as a professional musician. She played piano in many notable locations and for many notable personalities. She settled in Calgary, Canada, and spent many years playing local venues, including a yearly performance playing piano for the Christmas music program at the Banff Springs Hotel in Banff, Canada.

On one of her many musical adventures, she met her ex-husband in Sandpoint, Idaho, at a theatrical event. Michael Wise was a theatrical director for a local performance. They were soon married, and Liz was on to her next adventure as a theatrical music director and artist. For five years, Liz and Michael traveled the United States directing and performing in many venues. They were based out of Las Cruces, New Mexico. They traveled to Portland in the late 1990s, and Liz fell in love with the city."

  Elizabeth Anne Dauw passed away peacefully on the morning of May 5, 2026, at the age of 66. She passed after a two-year fight with pancreatic cancer. Elizabeth was able to spend a …

06/01/2026

City officials in Vancouver, Washington, are incensed that plans for bringing light rail service into town, near the local library, are getting put off indefinitely. They worry the end of the rail line could be a station perched high above freight train tracks near the city’s waterfront because there’s no timeline for designing the final leg of the long-promised route.

As it is, service on the initial stretch to the waterfront is at least a decade away and requires federal funding that isn’t locked in.

Overseers of the Interstate Bridge Replacement Program have sliced the $14.4 billion undertaking into critical pieces in response to ballooning costs. They say the first funded phase, which would be paid for with $6 billion in hand, consists of building the new span and highway connections to it, tolling infrastructure, transit design and removal of the existing bridge.

The future bridge would be built to accommodate an extension of light rail from Portland into Vancouver. Installing tracks and running trains, however, hinges on securing a billion-dollar federal grant. Whether that money can be secured won’t be known for a few years.

A ginormous cost increase to construct a new bridge linking Washington and Oregon is forcing state leaders and program managers to rightsize public expectations for the megaproject. And, some …

06/01/2026

The U.S. Department of Justice announced the lawsuits against Oregon, Washington, Maine and Massachusetts in a press release, framing the state’s decisions as unconstitutional and without merit. Federal attorneys seek to prevent the states from refusing to issue registrations and any license plates to federal agencies while providing them to similarly-situated state and local law enforcement, citing the U.S. constitution’s supremacy clause.

“By denying undercover license plates to DHS components, including ICE, while issuing them to their own state agencies, these governors are pursuing discriminatory and obstructionist policies against federal law enforcement,” Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement. “These actions undermine federal immigration enforcement, allow dangerous criminals to escape justice, and terrorize American communities.”

The lawsuits follow warnings from the Justice Department to each of the state’s top officials, including Democratic Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, this month. Oregon transportation officials had quietly halted the issuance of undercover license plates to federal agencies in mid-April, suggesting that providing them could open up the state to litigation alleging it is violating state sanctuary protections.

The Trump administration sued four Democratic-led states Wednesday over the states’ refusal to grant undercover license plates to federal agents, marking the latest escalation between state …

06/01/2026

No state agency was responsible for inspecting the 900,000-gallon chemical storage tank that burst at a mill in southwest Washington this week, leaving 11 people presumed dead.

Unlike underground storage tanks that are inspected at least every three years by the Department of Ecology due to groundwater contamination risks, ensuring the safety of above-ground tanks is largely left to site operators.

“There’s no one agency or regulatory body that would be responsible for inspecting any single (above-ground) tank,” said Marissa Baker, industrial hygiene program director at the University of Washington.

“Ultimately, the responsibility falls on the mill owner and operator,” Baker said. “Part of maintaining a safe and healthy work site is ensuring the structural integrity of their tanks that store extremely hazardous chemicals.”

The tank at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging plant in Longview contained a caustic substance known as white liquor. The chemical, used in paper manufacturing, is highly corrosive and can cause severe burns upon contact with skin.

No state agency was responsible for inspecting the 900,000-gallon chemical storage tank that burst at a mill in southwest Washington this week, leaving 11 people presumed dead.  Unlike …

05/30/2026

UPDATE - Silver Alert - Stambaugh - Ione, WA
*THIS POST IS NOT MONITORED. IF SEEN PLEASE CALL 911*

05/29/2026

In a formal letter sent to Washington Attorney General Nick Brown on May 12, Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate warned that the states are unlawfully discriminating against the federal government while simultaneously issuing undercover plates to their own state and local police forces without restriction.

"As the Supreme Court has long held, the Supremacy Clause incorporates principles of intergovernmental immunity," Shumate wrote, citing United States v. Washington. "A state law or policy is invalid if it regulates the United States directly or discriminates against the Federal Government."

Similar letters were sent to officials in the other three states.

The DOJ's court filings assert that the four states are attempting to "obstruct the Federal Government’s immigration enforcement efforts, even though control over immigration and the nation’s borders is an exclusive federal power."

The U.S. Department of Justice filed separate federal lawsuits Wednesday against Washington, Oregon, Maine and Massachusetts, escalating a clash between the Trump administration and Democratic-led …

05/29/2026

The data, taken from SNAP income verification forms, shows that tens of thousands of employees of major national and multinational corporations — and some government agencies, public schools and colleges — rely on the public assistance program for low-income Americans to cover their food costs.

The Capital Chronicle requested data showing the number of times companies were listed on SNAP income verification forms between January 2025 and December 2025, for any company listed at least 25 times. The list included 1,000 companies collectively listed more than 100,000 times.

One in five of those most commonly listed employers was a major grocer and retailer, with Safeway and its parent company Albertsons the most listed, followed by Walmart and online retail giant Amazon.

The top listed companies financially benefitted in the billions from President Donald Trump’s 2017 corporate and income tax cuts that were recently renewed in a massive tax and spending cut law congressional Republicans passed and Trump signed last summer. The 2025 law also included new corporate tax subsidies, allowing businesses to deduct upfront from their taxes 100% of the costs of new equipment, real estate and research and development.

Because of those cuts, Walmart’s effective income tax rate is about half of what it was ten years ago, according to the left-leaning think tank Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. And Amazon in 2025 paid an effective federal income tax rate of less than 1.5% on its U.S. income, avoiding about $17.5 billion of federal taxes it would have otherwise had to pay, according to the institute.

Oregonians who received federal aid to pay for their groceries last year frequently reported working for the nation’s largest grocery and retail corporations, according to a Capital Chronicle …

05/29/2026

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05/29/2026

"The United States of America was not founded as a Christian nation. The Founders were quite clear about that. In the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli, ratified unanimously by the Senate just a decade after the Constitution went into effect, U.S. leaders said “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion” and has “no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of” Muslims. They went on to say that “no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the U.S. and Tripoli.

Recently, some have said that the words of this treaty were a lie – a creation of the Founders who wanted to placate the Muslims of Tripoli so the new government could enter a favorable trade agreement. This thinking ignores a plethora of other writings and sayings by the Founders.

Thomas Jefferson, the key author of the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison of Virginia, the key thinker behind the Constitution, wrote explicitly about the importance of keeping the government separate from religion. Jefferson wrote that “religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship.” “[T]he legitimate powers of government reach actions only,” he wrote, “[and] not [religious] opinions.”

In 1785, Madison explained that what was at stake in keeping the state and religion separate was not just religion, but also representative government itself. The establishment of one religion over others attacked a fundamental human right—an unalienable right—of conscience."

The United States of America was not founded as a Christian nation. The Founders were quite clear about that. In the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli, ratified unanimously by the Senate just a decade after the …

05/29/2026

An imperiled newt only found in and around southern Oregon’s Crater Lake may soon be protected under the Endangered Species Act following a three-year legal battle.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed in a recent settlement with the nonprofit conservation group Center for Biological Diversity to decide by October whether to list the Crater Lake newt, also known as the Mazama newt, on the federal endangered list and to invest in its survival.

The Center first petitioned the agency to list the species in 2023, and agency officials in response agreed the newts might qualify for protections. But the agency missed the legal deadline to undertake research and make a decision by November 2024, leading the Center to sue.

“It’s extremely frustrating that in the midst of a global extinction crisis it still takes a lawsuit to get animals like the Crater Lake newt the help they need,” said Chelsea Stewart-Fusek, an endangered species attorney at the Center.

An imperiled newt only found in and around southern Oregon’s Crater Lake may soon be protected under the Endangered Species Act following a three-year legal battle. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife …