What’s on tap for this week’s weather? Check our local weather coverage.
In case you missed them, here are some of the top stories of the weekend:
U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler knew the question about Donald Trump was next.
Go ahead and ask, she told a reporter on primary night earlier this month.
With high-profile Republicans making headlines by disavowing the presidential candidate, how local GOP elected officials plan to cast their vote in November is serving as a litmus test for voters.
Normally, it’s assumed partisan officials will vote for their party’s presidential candidate, according to Jim Moore, a political science professor and director of the Tom McCall Center for Policy Innovation at Pacific University in Oregon. If a candidate is unpopular, which most often happens with incumbents, officials simply won’t ask for an endorsement or visit, he said.
“This time, for the first time since 1968, we have a large number of local office holders going public with whether or not they will simply vote for the party’s presidential candidate,” Moore wrote in an email. “In 1968 this was an issue among Democratic office holders with a pro-Vietnam War Hubert Humphrey at the top of the ticket.”
Read the full story about local GOP officials discussing Trump.
Games and business have one big thing in common — competition. And when you’re in the business of gaming, the ante goes even higher.
It comes as no surprise, then, that the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde — which operates the Spirit Mountain Casino 60 miles south of Portland — is attempting to take its case against the Cowlitz Tribe and its planned casino to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde plans to appeal to the Supreme Court following a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling on Friday, July 29, that will allow the Cowlitz Tribe to keep its 152-acre reservation and continue building a casino 15 miles north of the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area,” the tribal government announced earlier this month.
This time, though, the Grand Ronde might be going it alone.
Official opposition to the long-planned casino has faded as the Ilani Resort and Casino, scheduled for an April opening, has rapidly risen along Interstate 5 north of Ridgefield and west of La Center.
The city of Vancouver has dropped out of the lawsuit against the tribe, and Clark County may end its involvement as well. That leaves the casino opposition group, Citizens Against Reservation Shopping, and a group of La Center cardrooms that will invariably be affected by the new competitor down the road.
Read the full story about the Grand Ronde challenge to the Ilani Resort Casino.
Fort Vancouver is a story of discovery.
Actually, several discoveries. You can go back more than two centuries to HMS Discovery and the Corps of Discovery. The men commanded by Capt. George Vancouver and members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition set the stage for two waves of Fort Vancouver’s occupants.
Those occupants — British Hudson’s Bay Company employees and then U.S. Army soldiers — made discoveries of their own as they traveled throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Now jump forward to a particularly significant discovery in 1947. It answered a question some local people had been asking for decades: Where was Fort Vancouver?
(Which begs another question: How do you lose a fort?)
Louis Caywood, a National Park Service archaeologist, did the groundwork that established what now is Fort Vancouver National Historic Site. Along with more than 400 other locations, the historic site is observing this week’s National Park Service centennial.
Read the full story about Fort Vancouver’s history and the park service’s centennial.
About 100 Evergreen Public Schools teachers gathered at two busy intersections along Southeast Mill Plain Boulevard on Friday morning, holding picket signs and waving at passing drivers. Several drivers honked in support.
With less than two weeks before school begins Aug. 31, the district’s 1,830 teachers do not have a new contract. Evergreen Education Association representatives and district officials have been meeting since March to hammer out a new contract. But time is running out.
Thursday was the first time a state-appointed mediator joined the bargaining sessions. Four more mediated bargaining sessions are planned for next week. At the union’s general membership meeting Aug. 30, members will either vote to ratify a new contract or vote to strike.
“There hasn’t been any significant movement,” said Rob Lutz, union president. “The district continues to nibble around the edges. They have a desire to hoard money so they can put a computer in front of every student. They are prioritizing computers over professionals. It’s really disappointing.”
Read the full story about Evergreen teachers picketing amid contract talks.
