Joel Connelly

David Suzuki is now 90 years old. The renowned geneticist, who studied the fruit fly, has grown increasingly pessimistic about the fate of the earth. He speaks to the climate extremes afflicting his country, and ours, and we need to hear him out.

The former state health director is facing loaded Trump surrogate Vivek Ramaswamy in a tight race that will determine whether Democrats can reclaim ground lost across the Buckeye State in recent cycles. Acton and her running mate David Pepper made a compelling pitch to donors at a fundraising stop in Seattle on the eve of No Kings III.

The NDP has just selected a new leader in a contrast to U.S. politics. It opted for a bold social democratic and environmental agenda, advocating for cross-country limits on rents, taxing the rich, and building an energy economy rooted in renewables.

The 47th president sacked AG Pam Bondi not because she displayed any independence, but because she was inept. She became the second member fired in perhaps the most klutz-driven Cabinet in American history. The Republic deserves better, but almost surely will be saddled will be saddled with a Trump toady.

If even total loyalty isn’t enough to survive, what remains of a Justice Department meant to serve the Constitution?

A very fat pet cat circled around Amy Acton as the Ohio gubernatorial candidate delivered her pitch at a Friday night Seattle fundraiser.

On a years-ago hiking trip in Kenya, I tuned in Nairobi TV: Its news broadcasts began with the inevitable nine words: “His excellency the president, Daniel Arap Moi said (or declared) today . . .,” Displays of the leader, and his visage, are the stuff of which dictators are made. As our democracy celebrates its 250th birthday, Donald Trump is thrusting himself at us. Our new Gilded Age is taking on indisputable tackiness.

The young civil rights lawyer from Seattle who ventured to Mississippi some 60 years ago is now 90 years of age.

Peltola is a proven winner, having served as the Last Frontier's at-large representative in the United States House of Representatives before and after the 2022 midterms. She was defeated in 2024 by Nick Begich and is now running for a six-year term against entrenched Republican Dan Sullivan.

Joel was a legendary journalist and columnist who helped build the Northwest Progressive Institute into the influential organization it is today. After many decades of employment with Hearst at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, he transitioned to writing for Post Alley and NPI’s Cascadia Advocate, contributing over three hundred columns to this publication in the span of nearly six years. He died peacefully on April 15th, 2026, at the age of seventy-eight, surrounded by his family, on Seattle’s First Hill.