Tuesday Evening Headlines

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Good afternoon from the KUW Newsroom.

This is Seattle Now, I'm Paige Browning with a roundup of today's top stories.

It's Tuesday, March 17th.

A Washingtonians making national news.

President Donald Trump is pushing back against claims by Washingtonian Joe Kent about the

motivations for the Iran War.

Kent announced today he's resigning as director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Kent says Iran posed no imminent threat to the U.S. and claims the U.S. started the

war due to pressure from Israel.

Trump in response says Iran is a tremendous threat and referred to Kent as, quote, weak

on security.

Kent's a former Washington state political candidate with connections to right wing extremists.

Seattle police have arrested a suspect who allegedly shot and killed two Rainier Beach

high school students in January.

More from KNKX reporter Freddie Minarez.

Seattle police arrested a juvenile male in connection to the killing of 18-year-old Ty John

Stewart and 17-year-old Trevay Hoffmews.

The shooting happened at a bus stop near the high school.

Chief Sean Barnes said the suspect is not a student at Rainier Beach high school.

While this arrest cannot bring back the lives that were taken, it represents an important

step toward accountability and toward providing these families and our community some measure

of closure.

Barnes made the announcement in front of family members of the victims.

At least one community member, RC Demings criticized Seattle police for not keeping

a stronger presence in the area.

It's been a lot of pain, it's been a lot of hurt.

Things that were promised have not been lived up to.

Barnes says a mobile precinct was removed from the area due to mechanical issues and

extra patrol officers have occasionally been pulled to handle other calls.

In Seattle, I'm Freddie Monadas.

The U.S. Senate opened debate today on a controversial voting bill that's being pushed

by President Trump.

It would require people to show proof of citizenship in person to register to vote.

Washington Senator Maria Cantwell is speaking out against it.

The hallmark of a democracy is free and fair elections.

And when you start to undermine that and you start to question whether you have free

and fair elections, you are truly undermining our power as a democracy.

The Trump administration says it would make elections more secure.

They would also require people who vote by mail to include a photocopy of their ID when

they mail back their ballot.

In environment and energy news, coal could fire up again.

The federal government has ordered a coal burning power plant in Centralia to stay

open another 90 days.

This is the second time the Trump administration has ordered the trans-alpha plant to stay

open.

It is Washington's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and mercury.

State law required it to shut down in December.

If it does resume burning coal, it would have to pay sales taxes and buy expensive carbon

permits like other big polluters in Washington do.

Now that the Washington state legislature adjourned its session, Governor Bob Ferguson

is in full swing signing bills into law.

State government reporter Sarah Meises Tan says the governor has signed many that are intended

to counter federal actions.

He's already signed a bill that requires insurers to cover vaccines recommended by the

state.

That was one of the big measures passed that lawmakers point to as a response to the Trump administration.

Other measures responding to Trump that Ferguson has signed or will be signing in the next

coming weeks.

He's barring law enforcement officers from wearing masks.

He's protecting the privacy of people who've changed their sex designation for their

ID.

He's limiting inspections of worker records by immigration agents and a number of bills

to protect voter data.

The budget awaiting Ferguson signature includes tens of millions of dollars in new state spending

on food assistance and health care after Congress made cuts.

We'll have a lot more from Sarah Meises Tan on tomorrow morning's episode of Seattle

now.

RSV vaccines for infants have gotten an extension in Washington state.

The state Department of Health says it's making them available through April 30.

They are typically available from October to March, but the state says the disease remains

active across the state and more people need time to protect babies from the disease.

Also on the governor's mind today, the replacement of the Interstate 5 bridge between Washington

and Oregon has a new price tag.

As OPB's Eric Newman reports, the full project is now expected to cost 140 percent more than

the last estimate.

The cost to build a new interstate bridge has gone up from a past estimate of about $6

billion to $14.4 billion along the project's full five mile corridor.

Washington state governor Bob Ferguson was in Vancouver on Tuesday, surrounded by local

lawmakers, transit officials, and labor leaders.

He said the project would get done, going forward, officials will focus on the core elements

of the project, replacing the bridge spans, connecting them to I-5, and extending light rail

from North Portland to downtown Vancouver.

Those parts are expected to cost about $7.5 billion.

Patients said the remaining portions of the project will be completed in phases as funding

becomes available.

I'm Eric Newman reporting.

Passengers at CTAC Airport will not have to watch a video blooming Democrats for longer

wait times as they stand there in the security line.

Port of Seattle spokesperson Perry Cooper says a new Department of Homeland Security

video is, quote, political in nature.

The Seattle Times reports that CTAC and other airports are declining to show it because

of federal law that bans certain political activity by federal workers.

Well, Kels Irish pub wraps up 12 straight days of festivities with the final party tonight

for St. Patrick's Day.

But no party at bumpies in Puyallup, the bar is closed today in an effort to prevent

driving under the influence.

To Coma News Tribune reports, the bumpies owners wrote on Facebook, they learned Puyallup

consistently has some of the highest DUI numbers in the state.

Now our feature story today, three mysterious orcas have been cruising Puget Sound over

the past week.

Researchers were baffled.

These three whales, a female and two younger males, had never been observed in the Northwest

before.

And Ryan's here to shed some light on the mystery.

He spoke with KUWs, Kim Malcolm.

John, hello.

Hi, Kim.

So, John, most of the orcas that whale watchers see around here, they're really well known.

They've got individual names like Granny and Princess Angeline and they've got numbers

attached to their family pod.

They are well researched.

But not these three.

What have you learned about them?

Yeah, they were first spotted in very busy Vancouver Harbor up in British Columbia.

About a week ago.

And this is an industrial area, big highway bridges, lots of cargo ships, and eventually

folks got photos that revealed that these were a type of orcas called bigs or transient

orcas.

These are the kind that eat mammals like seals and sea lions and they're more common

than the Northwest's very endangered salmon eating orcas.

But researchers have photographic catalogs of all the Northwest orcas and they can use

them to tell who's who, just from a photograph.

But these three individuals didn't match any of the hundreds of orcas ever documented

in Washington or British Columbia.

Yeah, I can only imagine they're surprised when they saw this.

So these unknown orcas though had some very unusual markings on them that helped offer

some more clues, I understand.

Yeah, each of the whales had these little circular scars about the size of a big tasty chocolate

chip cookie.

And it turns out that these scars are from an animal called cookie cutter shark.

So this is a crazy shark I'd never heard of before this.

But they're about this maybe half the size of a baseball bat.

They're kind of cigar shaped.

And how they feed is they latch onto a much bigger prey like an orca.

Once they're latched on, they kind of spin their body sideways so they kind of pull out

a plug like the shape of a chocolate chip cookie, a flesh to eat.

So the kind of micro predators, like maybe like a horse fly on land might be the closest

equivalent.

And they're deep water fish.

They're often more than 3,000 feet underwater in the very deep, very open ocean far offshore.

And their undersides glow in the dark.

They glow bright green to attract their prey.

It's pretty amazing.

Wow.

That is amazing.

I'd never heard of those either.

So they had these markings after having a bite taken out of them.

How were researchers able to finally ID who these whales were?

Word of these unusual orcas with the cookie scars eventually reached a whale researcher

up in Alaska named Emma Luck.

She recognized them as the mystery whales that she had spotted once and only once in Alaska

a year ago.

So now we still don't know if this trio is part of any known population of orcas, but

we do know they are well traveled.

So they've been spotted in Alaska and they've got these scars that come from these tropical

or subtropical cookie cutter sharks that are really warm water animals.

So they've traveled a great distance somehow and reached our waters nearby.

Every Sutton is a whale researcher with a nonprofit called OceanWise up in Vancouver.

It was almost a year ago these animals were seen up in the biggest city in Alaska and

the next time they were seen was the biggest city in British Columbia.

Of course, followed up by the biggest city in Washington State.

So these guys are on a little city slicker tour.

And this this trio they followed the really the urban side of Puget Sound, the eastern

side from Seattle.

They even went up in the industrial Duwamish waterway past the port of Seattle and all the

container cranes for some reason.

And then they continued south to Tacoma and Olympia where they were spotted hunting seals.

John, do we know why these whales that are from very far away would come to check out

these very busy ports on Puget Sound?

We do not.

I mean, there is certainly food for them here, lots of seals and sea lions.

But why go to these busy urban ports when there are lots of seals and sea lions all over

the Washington coast?

That population is booming really.

This trio they were spotted over the weekend in Puget Sound.

And at one point they were spotted interacting with some of the local bigs mammal eating orcas.

They were heard overnight Saturday night out near Port Townsend where they've gone since

then and why they came here in the first place.

Those questions really remain anyone's guess.

Environment reporter John Ryan speaking with K-O-W's Kim Malcolm.

One time on Seattle now, the 2026 Washington State legislative session is over.

Lawmakers passed 267 bills in just 60 days, including the all-important millionaires tax.

It's a ground-shifting change for Washington and Washington's tax structures, so we obviously

saw that play out in the legislature.

Here more about what else made the cut Wednesday morning.

That's all for today from the K-U-W Newsroom in Seattle.

Our producers Andy Hurst and I'm Paige Browning.

The interview in today's episode was produced by John O'Brien.

Seattle now and K-O-W are members of the NPR Network.

See you tomorrow!

We all remember this song.

It made it all seem so simple and turns out it's not.

Who writes, influences and kills, bills it gets messy.

I'm Scott Greenstone.

And I'm Libby Dankman on Sound Politics, we tell that story.

The inside track on how policy gets made in this Washington and the other one.

And how it impacts you.

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