He’s not wrong. I still call things cool or awesome without any irony. I often wear ankle socks (which the internet says makes me old). I’ve never downloaded TikTok and I still don’t understand  Skibidi Toilet on YouTube.

But here’s the thing … I’m also not upset about it.

I bring this up because I think it’s a surface-level feeling we all experience as we age. I bet right now you are thinking about some of the things you still say, do, or like, probably make you sus too.

Mayfield: Washington lawmakers must fix broken school funding system

Now though, I’m going to admit something that is tougher to talk about … sometimes modern discussions about evolving ethics, morals and viewpoints also make me feel uncool.

I have always considered myself open-minded and willing to listen to other points of view. I have fought for acceptance and equality. I have tried to teach our kids the value of equity and diversity.

And yet, sometimes, if I am honest, I still struggle to understand. I can even feel discomfort or confusion around some social justice topics like gender and race. My initial reaction in my mind, unspoken, isn’t always a good one. Sometimes I have to stop myself from reacting to a news story, an online campaign or even an email from our kids’ well-meaning school.

Sound familiar?

Yet, I would argue, it’s what happens next that is key.

Too much of our world today is built on instant response, instant reaction and instant outrage. Right now, it’s impossible to have a balanced discussion around the war in Gaza without being buried under an avalanche of vitriol. You can’t bring up pros or cons around gender-affirming care without being swamped with outrage. And of course, good luck even saying the names of the current or former president without a firestorm of tribal rage.

Other news: Judge tosses lawsuit aimed at removing state’s gender-affirming care for youth

We live in a nuanced world where nothing is ever clear or direct. Every person has a different lived experience. We need to do a better job of listening to each other and then being brave enough to confront our own discomfort. Maybe we can find our hearts are fully changed. Maybe we can find a way to meet in the middle. Or maybe we do indeed remain unconvinced, but we can remain that way while still respecting and even, dare I say, loving others who differ.

Do we check our initial reaction and then listen even harder to what’s being discussed? Do we consider what others are authentically thinking, feeling and sharing? Do we check in after we have given ourselves time to digest and consider or reconsider?

Let’s remember we are all uncool in our own ways and it is how we choose to proceed that will determine how sus we truly are.

Travis Mayfield is a Seattle-based media personality and a fill-in host on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here.

The district has a massive budget shortfall it needs to make up because COVID-19 funds that had been covering the looming funding cliff ran out.

At the same time Seattle is also closing all its advanced learning schools.

More in the city: Seattle Public Schools’ budget in disarray, could close 20 elementary schools

The district says it has no choice because it has lost thousands of students in the last five years. And since that’s how the state funds schools, the district is out of money.

The problem to any parent is clear: Closing elementary schools means much bigger class sizes. Returning highly capable kids to regular classrooms and expecting teachers to do more work with no extra help burns those teachers out and short changes all the kids.

PTAs will now be expected to raise even more money from families to try and keep things like art, music and PE classes, something many PTAs are already doing.

At some point the formula no longer makes sense to families. Those with means pull their kids out and go to private schools. Now with more than 20 elementary schools closing families with potential incoming students won’t even consider public schools but opt right into private and religious schools and those kids won’t come back.

And guess what happens next? The district loses tens of thousands more students and they must again cut and maybe close more schools. And on goes the cycle until what?

That takes us to the state capital

Which leads us to Olympia where truly the blame for all this should rest. Lawmakers say they fixed school funding when the State Supreme Court ordered them to do so under the McCleary ruling. What lawmakers really did was make things worse. They capped levies so bigger districts get less money. They changed the definition of basic education to exclude even things as crucial as nurses. They said the state should no longer help pay for veteran teachers leaving those costs to districts.

Funding problem fixed!

Wrong. Things are worse than ever and school districts big and small are now just left to watch as students, family and funding leaves.

Democrats, you control the House, Senate and governor’s mansion. If you want that to continue, you must announce a clear, concrete and actionable legislative plan to make this right and it must happen next legislative session or public schools as we know them in this state will be left circling the drain.

Travis Mayfield is a Seattle-based media personality and a fill-in host on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here.

Twenty-four hours later, we would make the most impossible decision to remove him from life support, holding him in our arms and singing to him until his tiny heart stopped beating.

My heart broke that day. My life burned to the ground. Everything I thought I knew about the world shattered into a billion pieces. Our family has spent every moment since that day trying to rebuild a life that makes any kind of sense.

Today, I can say to you without hesitation that we have done just that I can say we live a life of meaning, purpose and joy. I can look at my husband and our two living children and know we all share that kind of love. We do it for Tommy and with Tommy still.

More from Travis Mayfield: Including LGBTQ+ people in curriculum benefits all students

Some who hear me mark the death of Tommy will know exactly what it is to feel this kind of loss. To those who know, I hope you hear me today, reminding you that you are not alone. I hope you know I hold you and your loss in my heart too. I hope you understand that in saying our Tommy’s name aloud, we say your loved ones name as well.

Others will hear me and you may ask, “Why share this grief so publicly, still, after all this time?”

For you, I say that I am glad you do not know the loss that we feel. I wouldn’t wish it on another living person. And, yet, I also know you cannot escape this life without your own losses.

Today, you may not understand, but tomorrow you will. Today, you don’t need a light illuminating your path forward. But tomorrow, you will.

I hope, in your darkness, that some day you can remember that it is possible to put one foot in front of the other and to live again. I hope you can remember that in Tommy’s name.

Some people say grief is just love with no place to go. But I say love always has a place to go, and it is our job to share it with as many others as we can, as often as we can.

Editors’ note: This commentary was delivered on KIRO Newsradio’s “Seattle’s Morning News” on Friday, April 12, 2024.

Travis Mayfield is a Seattle-based media personality and a fill-in host on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here.

A local public radio host predicated an entire show recently on how the newly elected councilors had already broken campaign promises because they haven’t filled the city budget hole yet. An independent liberal journalist recently called out the council for asking too many questions. A former left-wing candidate for city-wide office used social media to rebuke the council as “dark.”

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I listened to, read and thought about all these criticisms. I often agree with many of the ideas and arguments put forward by the progressive movement in this region, but I am also willing to listen to the pragmatic — and god-forbid even the conservative — voices among us when they have rational and logical policy arguments to make.

Which is why I find this attempt to delegitimize the new city council — barely three months into its new term — troubling. The left wing had its council for a decade and it did bring us many great advances like worker protections, wages and fairer taxation, but it also didn’t solve many of our systemic issues like crime, addiction and housing the unhoused.

Elections have consequences and voters resoundingly said they wanted a change. That change means new voices and new ideas. Yet, out of power, the chattering classes are still preaching dogmatic rhetoric and purity tests ever more feverishly.

More from KIRO opinions: Are we killing car culture? Or is car culture killing the US?

The new city council is not a failure … yet. Give them time to actually work and then judge them on that work. It’s possible they will fail. It’s also possible they may succeed. Either way, right now might be a great time for less chattering and more listening on all sides.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

That bill was so lopsided in its passage, just 65 members of the house voted against it. That’s a level of bipartisanship we just don’t see in American politics today.

And yet, that bill, which President Joe Biden has said he would sign if it gets to his desk, has an uncertain future in the Senate.

Why?

Washington Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell.

It’s not a party loyalty thing. Republicans and Democrats in the Senate support the bill. Just ask Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida. Both support the bill along with Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton and Connecticut Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal. And minds are shifting on the issue as well. Hawaii Democrat Sen. Brian Schatz attended a classified intelligence briefing Wednesday on the risks Chinese owned social media app poses to American security and, according to The Washington Post, is no longer undecided and that, “We need to go through with this.”

More from Travis Mayfield: Including LGBTQ+ people in curriculum benefits all students

So where is Washington’s junior senator in all this? Cantwell chairs the Commerce Committee, the committee this bill would fall under the purvey of and her support remains unclear. In fact, traditional beltway wisdom says any such bill referred to her committee has historically been dead on arrival.

Punchbowl News reported that the president’s commerce secretary made a person phone call to Cantwell earlier this week to push her on this bill. We know Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, is mulling whether its possible to bypass Cantwell’s committee at all.

For her part, Cantwell is now saying next steps need to be “something more public” according to The Washington Post. That could mean a joint hearing with the Senate Intelligence Committee. But one thing it doesn’t mean is action immediately. What it could mean is process and discussion and grandstanding and muddy waters until the issue loses momentum and quietly dies out of the headlines.

So what’s going on here? Is Liberal Cantwell really lining up on the side of former President Donald Trump – who has come out against the current bill – or is something else going on here?

Look deeper and you’ll see that the former deputy chief of staff and acting legislative director for Cantwell has gone to work as a lobbyist. One of her top clients? TikTok.

Now, when asked by Politico, Cantwell said she had no idea about the connection. But one does have to wonder about who has been talking to whom and back channeling where. If we take Cantwell’s denial at face value and just believe her, that still doesn’t preclude her former top trusted aid from talking to every other person in her former office, many of whom have daily face time with the senator and help shape her policy positions.

I’m not arguing for or against this particular bill, but I am asking that it get a fair debate in the U.S. Senate. Let’s not slow this process down or kill it via a thousand paper cuts. With the kind of bipartisan and landslide support it has right now, it deserves the Senate’s full focus. Then it deserves a full Senate vote.

Do you like democracy or not? The choice couldn’t be more stark, Mayfield writes.

If that doesn’t happen because the bill never makes it out of one Washington senator’s committee, that’s a problem. It’s a problem not just for this bill, but for the credibility of one of just two Senators who represent you and me in all matters of federal lawmaking.

Travis Mayfield is a longtime Seattle media personality and a fill-in host for KIRO Newsradio.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5-9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

When you are the only face of color in a neighborhood, seeing other faces of color on the shows you watch or in the books you read can help you feel more connected.

When you are the only person of faith in your workplace, seeing other people of faith in small groups or on social media can enrich your understanding of what you believe.

When you are the only person who identifies as LGBTQ+ in your school, seeing others who identify as you do in the lessons you learn can help you feel less alone.

That is why Washington lawmakers just moved to include LGBTQ+ histories, perspectives and contributions to teaching requirements in our state. (Readers can learn more about SB 5462 here and view a PDF of the bill that passed in the Washington State Legislature here.)

This isn’t some new state-level mandate handed down from Olympia. This is a new way for each school district in Washington to look into its own history and its own community and celebrate LGBTQ+ people and students. Local school boards and administrators can find all kinds of ways to infuse current curriculum with more diversity.

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In Eastern Washington, that might include a civics classroom visited by a gay identified man who served on a city council. Perhaps, in Central Washington, it’s a language arts classroom discussion about what it means to be two-spirited in indigenous cultures. In Western Washington, it may be an art class assignment documenting the lives of lesbian sports icons like Megan Rapinoe or Sue Bird.

This goes beyond just rainbow flags, pride weeks or LGBTQ+ student clubs. This is about opening the aperture of what we teach and intentionally looking to include more voices.

‘I always knew I was different’

As a kid, I always knew I was different. In my teen years I started connecting that to what I was hearing about people who were gay. I remember struggling to see examples of what gay could look like. Would it be possible for me to have a career that I wanted? A partner who loved me? A family with kids? At that time in the 1980s and 90s in small town America there weren’t a ton of examples, but I did find them occasionally and each one gave me hope. Sometimes, it was just a glimmer I could hold on to and not only feel less alone … but also see a possible path forward for being me.

For kids who don’t identify as LGBTQ+, seeing those perspectives and hearing those voices as a natural part of formal educational discussions can only enhance their empathy and enlarge their world view. I may not be a person of color, a woman or a trans person, but I know I learn so much when I seek out their authentic perspectives and understand their contributions to this life. The same can be true for cis and straight students learning about LGBTQ+ people in their world.

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I applaud state lawmakers for moving our schools forward a little bit with this new law. I encourage those who weren’t supportive of the effort to reexamine how it can make things better for all our kids in all our classrooms. The key is always listening and hearing each other as we share our authentic lived experiences. At its very essence that’s exactly what this law will do.

Travis Mayfield is a longtime Seattle media personality and a fill-in host for KIRO Newsradio.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5-9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

Our democracy is facing a 5-alarm inferno. We have an avowed arsonist with a stockpile of gasoline and flamethrowers telling us explicitly each day what he’s going to burn. If this were a Fahrenheit 451 remake, critics would be howling that it was too over-the-top frightening and real.

Yet what are seemingly otherwise rational groups and institutions doing? They are aiming their fire hoses at the house across that street that isn’t on fire.

Let’s start with Democrats who cannot stop hating the current firefighter already on the scene who has a track record of putting out this fire before. Poll after poll shows Democrats moaning about his age or daydreaming about another candidate.

You know who had many different candidates and still picked the one nearly as old as the sitting President?! The team that’s cheering the fascism flames.

And then there are the Democrats who are now actively campaigning against President Biden.

“Hey, Democrats, you’re losing and can’t afford to be uncommitted,” reads Danny Westneat’s Seattle Times column earlier this week.

Thousands of Democratic primary voters now apparently think that unless President Biden can fix a crisis that has been going on for thousands of years in the next week, they aren’t voting for him.

You know who for sure won’t fix the crisis in Gaza? The guy who wants to be a day-one dictator and who just said Israel needs to “finish the problem.” You get one guess who he thinks that problem here is?

More Mayfield: Why centering more women’s voices matter this month and every month 

Can we also talk for a minute about the runaways? We literally have a former Democratic congressman from Seattle who is now hiding out in France. Jim McDermott was a liberal lion around here and in DC for a long time. Now he’s watching his neighbor’s chickens and writing strongly worded emails from the European countryside. Thanks, Dude. Big help.

As for our trusted institutions? The Supreme Court doesn’t even count these days. Congress can’t agree that we should protect IVF for people wanting to start families.  And the media? Well the New York Times is going on week three now with its wall-to-wall coverage of Biden’s age. And when it did run a story profiling Biden supporters this week the paper of record in this country called them lonely and bewildered.

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Finally, can we talk about the American public as a whole? Have you seen these new polls saying people have forgotten most of the racist, misogynistic and vile things the last guy said and did during his 4 years in the White House? Republicans remember only that the stock market went up, and Democrats vaguely recall being outraged a lot by what they can’t recall. As for swing voters, honestly, I’m confused about how they can “swing” between the two options anyway: do you like democracy or not?

So, here we are, eight months away from an election that will determine the future of this Republic, and we are all actively playing with fire.

Travis Mayfield is a fill-in host and commentator on KIRO Newsradio.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

But women make history every single day. This week alone, we have headlines about Coach Dora Davis of Muckleshoot Tribal School leading her high school boy’s basketball team to the state tournament. Or Audrey Jimenez, who just competed in and won Arizona’s boy’s state high school wrestling championship.

In Seattle, we have a woman who leads the city council. In the state legislature, we have a woman who is the Speaker of the House. In Washington, D.C., both our senators are women.

A few years ago, I made a choice to start reading books authored by people of color, by women and by LGBTQ+ people.

I started looking beyond the books placed in front of me culturally as a white cis man and looked for stories centered on and told by folks different than me. I didn’t give up my favorite authors or turn away from reading other books, I just looked harder for more voices.

More from Mayfield: New president deserves space to help SPU find way forward

In the following years, I have found so many incredible stories told by incredible people. I have had my eyes opened in ways I didn’t realize possible simply by hearing new voices tell new stories. It was such a change for me that I decided to expand it and do the same in considering movie directors and TV showrunners.

We can and should celebrate all these voices, but we can go further in concrete ways that push our society to a more equitable place.

We can intentionally bring that kind of centering and listening into our everyday lives. We can stop ourselves from standing only in our usual echo chambers, hearing the same voices repeat the same thoughts.

Instead, we can look for people directly impacted by political issues. We can read and truly hear the words of those with lived experience.

What is it actually like for an unsheltered mother to live in Seattle today? How is life different when a woman of color seeks a leadership position in traditional institutions? Why is affirming care so crucial for a trans woman? We need to listen to women who have chosen to have an abortion and women who have chosen not to.  We need to hear women of devout faith, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, atheist and agnostic.

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These women are making history today and every day, whether we see them or not. But we can better ourselves and push for a more inclusive world by helping to make more space for their stories and then genuinely working to understand what they say when they tell them.

May we all do more this Women’s History Month, not just for history but for our collective future as well.

Travis Mayfield is a guest commentator and fill-in host for KIRO Newsradio.

Yet, Deana Porterfield said she is ready to face all of it. Today, she will officially become the first woman to lead Seattle Pacific University (SPU) as president in the school’s 130-year history.

SPU has been in turmoil for years now over the Board of Trustees’ continued decision to ban the hiring of staff in same-sex relationships.

Over 80% of faculty support a change in hiring policy. Students have campaigned for years to overturn the ban. The school has faced lawsuits and now that investigation by the State Attorney General.

At the same time — and no doubt in part thanks to – this hiring ban, the school has seen a huge enrollment drop. The Seattle Times reports the number of students has dropped by 38% since 2013. That, in turn, has sparked deep budget cuts. Last summer, SPU started a three-year plan to cut staffing by 40%.

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When asked about all of this by The Seattle Times, Porterfield was clear-eyed and transparent. Of the hiring rules, she simply says the board has made the decision. As for the other challenges SPU faces, she clearly believes she is up to the challenge. Portfield told The Seattle Times she believes the school needs to be clear on who it is: “A Christian university, located in Seattle, that is in covenant relationship with the Free Methodist Church.”

She said they will focus on recruiting from outside Seattle and from Christian high schools across the region. Faculty so far seems open to Porterfield and her new spirit of directness. Students, too, seem ready to listen to what she has to say.

So, what should we make of Porterfield and SPU today? I am a man married to another man. I firmly believe in marriage equality and equity for LGBTQ+ people.

But I also believe in listening to others and supporting their right to carve out spaces for pursuits different from my own. We divide ourselves in this country each time we choose not to truly hear what others are saying. Conservatives certainly do it to liberals, but liberals do it to conservatives as well. We hear the other only as we wait for them to pause so we can jump in and start talking ourselves. When what we really need is to listen to the words, ideas and feelings the others are expressing.

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SPU may be a place that wouldn’t hire me. It may be a place that I would prefer my children not attend. It may even be a place that I hope someday might have a board of trustees that changes its mind about who to hire and why. Yet, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve space to exist and perhaps even thrive.

Porterfield sounds like a president who understands this and may lead SPU in a direction where it can be its own space while also listening to others internally and externally as well.

The truth is that we can live in conflict and tension with each other, but that doesn’t need to divide us. We can find more intellectual freedom and honesty if we allow ideas different from our own to exist. The key is respecting each other as humans with intrinsic rights to freedom, love, and equality. My hope is that Porterfield can listen to both her Board of Trustees and her faculty and students and help both to exist in honest and intellectual dialogue.

Our community is better for having SPU at its heart. We become less as SPU itself becomes less.

So, let’s all take a moment today to congratulate the new incoming president of Seattle Pacific University and listen as she speaks about how her institution may find its way forward in our shared community today.

Travis Mayfield is a fill-in host and guest commentator for KIRO Newsradio.

The thing that absolutely blows my mind is that my daughter isn’t unique.  Hundreds of kids across dozens of schools in Seattle have been reading these books as well.  None of them assigned by a single teacher or required for a single class.

So how on earth are these 10 and 11 year olds so motivated to read with such depth and cultural relevance?

The Seattle Public Library.

Each year since 1995 the library in our city has been organizing something called the Global Reading Challenge.  Students in 4^th and 5^th grades are offered a selection of 8 books carefully selected by librarians.  The students are challenged to read the books and then form teams of 6 or 7 students.  Those teams meet for roughly 6 weeks and discuss the books, quiz each other on the contents and encourage one another to keep reading.

This week librarians fanned out across the city and held game-show style competitions between the teams at each school.  3 rounds with 8 questions in each round.  Points were awarded and at the end a tiebreaker was offered if needed…until one team was declared the winner.  Now each school’s winning team will gather next month to complete in the semi-finals and ultimately a final competition.

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Are you with me through all this?  Remember these kids are doing this all because they want to and not as homework or for any kind of school credit.

I volunteered to help at our school and the excitement and passion for these books was palpable across all the usual strata seperating of student life.  I won’t reveal the individual stories of the students I know because those are their stories to tell, but what I saw absolutely blew my mind…and this is happening in small groups across the entire city of Seattle…and has been each winter since 1995…leaves me nearly speechless.

But of course, I talk for a living so I do have some final words and they are simple words of appreciation.

In a world increasingly focused on tearing things up and burning things down, it feels important to deliberately look for examples of building and nurturing.  The Seattle Public Library and the librarians who work there deserve our praise for this remarkable program and the generations of kids whose lives it has enhanced.

Travis Mayfield is a guest host on Seattle’s Morning News.

It’s hard to imagine this scenario happening in 2024.  Not with sexual harassment training so widespread.  Not with security at nearly every venue these days.

And yet, if we change one word in the above scenario, it becomes all too common in our state. Dancers say this, and worse, it happens to them routinely.  What’s the word?

Strike “ballet” from the description.

Now, shift the picture in your mind to a club where dancers have removed most of their clothing.

It’s a strip club.  Does your empathy and outrage for the dancer in danger change?

It shouldn’t.

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Stripping in this state is a completely legal performance.  It’s a completely legal job.  You may not consider it high art in the same way that many consider ballet such art, but that doesn’t mean both jobs don’t deserve safety and dignity.

Yet, in our laws, we treat these two performers differently.

In Washington, strippers are generally only able to work as independent contractors.  In most situations, they are required to pay rent to the club owners each day they work.  A dancer performs for hours and pays the club $150 for the ability to do that.  The stripper, in turn, makes only the tips they are given.  If a patron refuses to pay, security is not required to help.  If a patron tries to touch or harass a dancer the other club employees are not required to be trained to stop it.

Whether you personally want to visit strip clubs or even approve of them at all, they do legally exist and fellow humans work there.  Those fellow humans deserve the same protections offered at other jobs and venues.

In turn, the club owners deserve the opportunity to run a profitable business.  Today, those clubs cannot serve alcohol.  That means the main revenue source is the dancers.  This leads us back to the rent each dancer must pay.  That’s how owners can make any money.  Under this system, owners often feel they have no choice but to charge dancers each time they work or otherwise. How can those owners keep the lights on and hope to make any money?  It certainly isn’t in selling energy drinks or diet sodas.

And how can those dancers truly be ensured of making any money if they rely only on tips?  Give the club its rent and keep what’s left?  What about nights where they get less money in tips than they must pay the club?  They work and still owe someone money for it?

It’s a broken system on every level.  It needs reform.  It needs modern regulation and modern protections.  It needs equity for club owners and for dancers.

It is why the Washington State Senate just passed SB 6105, the so-called Strippers Bill of Rights.  It offers needed protections for dancers while also allowing club owners to obtain liquor licenses…and make a fair living themselves by selling alcohol in the same way a dance club or a college bar can.

It’s not a perfect bill, but it’s a genuine start.  The bill’s future, though, remains in the hands of the House and the governor.  It’s unclear whether there will be enough political courage to stand up for such a maligned group and industry, yet I hope there will be.  I hope there can be.

If we can all still agree on anything in this divided state, I hope that it is that other humans deserve some level of basic safety and some ability to make a legal living.  If our government isn’t doing what it can to support those two things for its residents, then this system is even more broken than I thought.

Travis Mayfield often fills in as host of Seattle’s Morning News.

And still, former President Donald Trump couldn’t simply say no, he wasn’t planning to be an authoritarian dictator if he becomes president again.

Trump’s rhetoric has grown increasingly dark. His calls for retribution and revenge have escalated sharply. He has surrounded himself with smart people laser-focused on expanding his own power exponentially. Non-partisan federal agencies, the Justice Department and even the military. He plans to force full fealty or else.

More from Travis Mayfield: Eastern Wash. city council tries yet another book ban

Journalists have taken notice and have written about it.

Former Republican Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney, earlier this week, bluntly said the nation is sleepwalking into dictatorship.

Trump’s campaign has been quietly whispering to surrogates and allies to publicly push back against that narrative and to deny that’s really what the former president is doing. It even accused his Democratic rival of being anti-democratic instead.

So, a town hall event Tuesday hosted by Fox News host Sean Hannity seemed like an easy and public way to simply have Trump say bluntly he didn’t want to be a dictator.

And yet, when Hannity asked, “Do you in any way have any plans whatsoever if reelected president to abuse power, to break the law, to use the government to go after people?” and instead, Trump complained about the 91 criminal charges against him and didn’t say now.

Hannity tried again later in the town hall, asking, “Under no circumstances, you are promising American tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?”

And Trump still didn’t say no. In fact, he said he would on Day 1, and then he launched into his goal of closing the border and opening up more drilling.

At one point, things got so dystopian the former president called gangster Al Capone one of the greatest of all time and then implied that because Trump had been indicted more times, he was even greater.

Honestly, I try not to talk a lot about the former president these days. I try not to read a lot of the specifics about his campaign. I certainly try not to write many commentaries about him because I don’t know who is listening anymore. Opponents have been at outrage Level 11 since 2016, and Trump’s base only believes him.

I guess that is the only reason I felt I could say all this today with even a tiny hope it might be heard because it literally is what the former president is saying. It was a simple question. It was posed twice. The person posing the question was a friend and ally. It all happened in front of a fawning crowd of true believers.

And still, former President Trump couldn’t simply say no he wasn’t planning to be an authoritarian dictator if he became president again.

His fans believe him, and so should the rest of us.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5-9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

This time, it’s happening in Liberty Lake. That’s a Spokane suburb, and this time, according to KREM 2 in Spokane and RANGE Media, it’s the city council that thinks it should tell the library what books to shelve and which to trash.

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If you are scratching your head about why a city council would involve itself in what’s happening at the public library, so am I.

Especially when that library already has a board of trustees that includes members of the community and library professionals. But, apparently, some members of the Liberty Lake City Council think only they know best.

The same council voted to do this in May, but the mayor vetoed the plan. So what’s going on now?

Well, the anti-book folks lost their majority during November’s election, but the new council isn’t seated until January. So, those who think they know best still have a few weeks to run the council, and they are going to try once more.

The vote is scheduled for Tuesday night, and supporters say it has nothing to do with banning books. Instead, they say they want more local control in the hands of elected officials, i.e., themselves, instead of librarians.

How did we get to a place where librarians can’t run libraries? How did we get to a place where elected leaders think we should ban books?

Turns out the answer is simple: Some people still don’t think LGBTQ+ folks should have a voice.

In Liberty Lake, this all started last year with a resident demanding a book called “Gender Queer” be banned from the library. The library board said “no.” So, the resident went to the city council.

What I have never understood about those pushing book bans is how about just not reading the book you find offensive. There are other people who do want to read it, so why police what they read? It seems so juvenile and anti-American, but I guess that’s much of our political discourse these days.

Travis Mayfield column: The Washington ferry system needs to be saved

There are books written by a former reality show host president, for example, or any number of disgraced Fox News hosts that I don’t want to read or want my kids to read. Yet, I think they should still be in the public library.

So, just stop already. Stop trying to ban books. Stop trying to control what people read and let us decide for ourselves.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5-9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

I mean, even I am feeling slighted this morning.

More from Travis Mayfield: The Washington state ferry system needs to be saved

Let’s start in Major League Baseball. What the actual heck?

Lou Piniella was one vote short of earning a spot in the Professional Baseball Hall of Fame. Come on?! All he needed was 12 votes from the 16-person committee, and he got 11. And this was the second time he’s fallen one vote short.

This was supposed to be his year. I mean, he’s 80, and he has had some health scares, including a mini-stroke and cancer.

Lou, sweet Lou, spent 23 years as an MLB manager leading the Reds to a World Series Championship in 1990 and then ten seasons here in Seattle, where he got the Mariners to four postseason appearances.

He is the all-time winningest manager in club history. I could go on and on, but you know. We all know he belongs in the Hall of Fame, but apparently, just one person on one committee still hasn’t gotten the memo, or maybe the fax from 1995?!

The second sports story that hurts my non-sports-loving heart is the Huskies not playing in the Rose Bowl.

I mean, I understand all the rules and the rankings, and then blah blah blah. And yet they did it and this is the end of the Pac-12 couldn’t someone somewhere just see that for a second?

I could get all riled up about East Coast media bias and all that, but instead, I’ll try to wind myself down.

I’ll just say I am thrilled about that amazing victory over the Ducks and still genuinely sad that UW won’t get to do the Rose Bowl as a Pac-12 team one last time.

Yes, sure, the demise of the Pac was sown on Montlake Boulevard, so should Dawg fans really complain? Well, I’m not even a Huskey; I am a Zag, and I still feel the pang of regret of what’s lost.

I don’t know a thing about sports, but this morning I don’t care, this morning I’m just wistful that Lou Piniella isn’t going into the Hall of Fame yet and the Huskies’s road the the championship won’t go through Pasadena.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

This is slowly strangling our island community, according to Amy Dreier with the Islanders for Ferry Action on Vashon Island via Micki Gamez. In short, for our islands and the Kitsap and Olympic Peninsula, ferries are our highways. Those highways used to have a few potholes and maybe a blocked exit ramp occasionally, but today, they are unmaintained and washed out like service roads deep in the wilderness.

More from Travis Mayfield: Public schools are good but you wouldn’t hear it from them

They are on the map, but good luck using them. Lawmakers who represent us in Olympia and in Washington D.C. must take immediate action.

We had Bremerton State Senator Emily Randall (D) on Seattle’s Morning News this week. She’s a Democrat, and she’s running for Congress. We asked her bluntly, what’s her plan?

“I think we definitely need federal funding to help support new construction of vessels. We’ve poured a ton of money in Washington state. We need federal investments to allow us to build faster,” Randall said.

Federal funding equals federal investment. Senator Randall is right. Why isn’t every single member of the Washington delegation lined up outside Pete Buttigieg’s Secretary of Transportation office, sleeping on the floor as if they are waiting to get Taylor Swift tickets?

Buttigieg is out there. He’s touring the U.S. He’s handing out these giant checks. I’ve seen him on Instagram. He looks like Publishers Clearing House showing up in neighborhoods.

Patty Murray, Maria Cantwell, Derek Kilmer — get your Sharpie out. Write some more zeros on some of those checks and force Pete’s hand.

Olympia, you’re not off the hook either. Get over your trepidation and immediately open up ferry bidding construction maintenance to all bidders around the globe.

More ferry news: ‘It’s ferry Tetris’: Washington ferry issues leave passengers stranded overnight

I know, you want to protect Washington jobs. That’s admirable. But look, the truth is the local shipyard doesn’t even really want our business. They like the fat military contracts it gets in near-record numbers. They build good boats fast and they can make them electric in a lot of places outside the U.S.

And while we’re focused on Olympia — Democrats, I’m sorry, but you got to stand up to the Public Service unions and make it easier to get a job on ferries. Too many of our actual boats — the few of them that are running — don’t have enough crew.

Overhaul that system, recruit nationally with salaries and benefits, get training programs at community and tech colleges. Make it happen in high school if you need to. Train them now, get them working with pay immediately. This on-call for months before you even get hired full-time garbage has got to go.

And I’m not saying all of this solves everything overnight. But you know what? It does eventually make a difference and it’s faster than what we’re doing now.

Finally, we don’t need to invent all of this out of whole cloth. British Columbia has an enviable ferry system. Governor Inslee, pick up your phone, call Victoria, and take some notes. I’m tired of this mess.

One of the largest public ferry services in the entire world is sinking. And our friends and neighbors are drowning. This is no longer a drill. Save them.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

I’m mostly a stay-at-home dad these days. So I volunteered in class each week, I helped with all the PTA stuff. We also donate to the fall fundraiser, the spring auction and everything in between.

More from Travis Mayfield: Giving Tuesday is your chance to make a real difference

In short, she is exactly the kid and we are exactly the family any school should want. Yet, it feels like I am begging our zoned public middle school to even notice we might be interested. Just this fall, we’ve been to open house tours and pep rallies for a number of private schools. UPrep and SAAS are going all out.

And we are very interested. It’s hard not to be impressed.

Our public school? Well, I just sat on a Zoom call organized not by the school but by the parents of incoming elementary school kids begging for information.

Parents of current and former students joined the call and said great things about teachers, administrators, activities, and academics, yet why isn’t the district talking, too? While on the call, I searched online for future open house tours at our public school. The calendar had none.

Look, let’s be frank: gone are the heady days of exponential student population growth for public schools. Since the pandemic, public schools have seen kids and families flee to private schools, charter schools, and homeschool options. In Seattle, the district superintendent is already projecting school closures and consolidations in two years.

In the meantime, there have been more cuts to staff, programs and academics. The Seattle Times just reported earlier this week that grades are up and test scores are way down, which means artificial grade inflation. That’s not great.

Seattle Public Schools considers cuts: ‘We need to make changes’

And if you haven’t noticed, there is a concerted political effort afoot in this country to demonize public schools. Opponents are well-funded, powerful, and growing in influence. They are loud, and in many ways, they are winning. And yet, parents on that Zoom call praise our public school option in every way.

It heartened me to hear them all saying these amazing things. It’s what I wanted to hear. My husband and I are both public school kids, my sister and childhood best friend both teach in the public school system. We consider public schools a public good and a part of our value system. Our kid wants to go to the zoned public middle school.

Still, the school district doesn’t seem to even notice.

So here’s some free advice for the district. Do the work, start recruiting, and tell your amazing school’s stories. You are so focused in the district office on declining enrollment and falling budgets that you seem to have forgotten. You do have many amazing teachers and programs and opportunities.

If you don’t sell them, people will go elsewhere. They don’t know about the benefits, and then you’ll only see more declining enrollment and further falling budgets, and the cycle will repeat. Public school superintendents, school board members, and administrators, it only gets worse unless you start to fight to make it better.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.