Early Saturday morning a tree toppled onto a power line in our neighborhood, causing a power outage to start the weekend.

The fine crew workers at Seattle City Light were doing great work on a Saturday night (Hey, that rhymes!), to get power restored for the entire neighborhood.

Much appreciation for all the utility workers who have helped thousands across the region this past week.

Released on Monday, the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) 2022 results also show Washington’s state schools rank at or below the national average for the first time since 8th graders started taking the test in 1998 and 4th graders began sitting for the exam in 2003.

Results of the NAEP exams given between January and March 2022 were similar around the country, according to Chalkbeat, a non-profit news organization covering education. “Unprecedented declines” were “broad-based,” .

The weak results parallel others tracked by at least two other widely used standardized tests given in Washington state, according to Washington Policy Center’s education center director Liv Finne. In a piece Finne posted Monday, she wrote that math and English scores for the state’s public-school students are also down in the national American College Test (ACT) and Washington’s own Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA).

SBA results from 2021 – the first statewide exam students took since Gov. Jay Inslee’s COVID lockdown mandate took effect in March 2020 — show 52% of public school students did not meet basic English testing standards; 70% failed to meet basic math testing standards.

In a July interview with Washington’s Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal on The Dori Monson Show, the OSPI chief put less importance on the state’s testing but praised Washington’s “top 10 in math and English language arts” ranking on the NAEP because “it is the only that we take across the country in common.”

Now, it appears, Washington has sunk in those rankings.

Students’ test scores tied for 27th with three other states for 4th-grade math scores and tied for 19th with three other states for 8th-graders’ math results, according to the NAEP’s .

Among our state’s 8th graders, 28% were math “proficient,” while 38% scored below “basic.” For English, Washington’s 8th graders were tied with five other states for 15th in reading and tied for 19th in math with three other states.

While some officials have called the learning fallout from COVID-related school closures a “generational disaster,” Finne believes there is money in state coffers to begin getting students back on track.

“Today, Washington public schools have on hand about $1.6 billion in unspent federal COVID money,” Finne wrote. “That’s enough to provide every family $1,500 to pay for tutoring, extra lessons, or other resources without touching a penny of existing district budgets.”

State school leaders, meanwhile, would prefer to keep that money in the schools instead of allowing families to make their own choices about how it could best be used for their student, Finne said.

Listen to Dori Monson weekday afternoons from noon – 3 p.m. on ����Xվ Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the��podcast here.

The new three-year contract will tack an additional $228 million to the school district’s current $1.14 billion operating budget – without any certain way to cover these costs, Washington Policy Center’s education director Liv Finne told The Dori Monson Show on Friday.

“This is money they do not have,” Finne said. She detailed her findings in a published this week at .

Seattle school leaders are “No longer stewarding and protecting the public’s purse,” Finne told Dori’s listeners. “We pay these administrators … to live within their means, but they have given up on that.”

“They know that in four months, there will be a new session of the state Legislature and they’ll run down to Olympia and claim they don’t have enough money even though they have had a huge increase in funding,” Finne continued.

“They have done this in the past successfully,” Finne said.

Figures show Seattle was spending about $14,000 per student in 2016. Now, with the new contract, Finne said, that is up to $22,000 per student in six years.

And yet, she added, only 47% of the nearly 7,000 employees on SPS’ payroll are classroom teachers. That, Finne believes, is evidence that “Seattle Public Schools’ administration is bloated and top-heavy.”

Even worse, she adds, is that it comes at a time when “state test scores are plummeting.”

“It’s corrupt. They’re going after the taxpayer while the taxpayer gets left holding the bag.”

Listen to Dori’s entire interview with Washington Policy Center’s Liv Finne about Seattle Schools’ inability to cover costs of new teachers’ contract

Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from noon – 3 p.m. on ����Xվ Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

is the highly publicized, biologically male University of Pennsylvania swimmer whose current transgender status now allows them to compete – and win – against biologically female swimmers.

According to several parents who recently attended a Puget Sound-area school cross country meet, a sophomore runner who competed as a male last season won the girls race last weekend.

I’m choosing not to name the student or the high school. I have nothing against the kid, and I don’t wish to bring grief on the high school. It’s not the school’s choice whether to allow this student to run as a girl.

My beef is with state and national lawmakers who are increasingly favoring biological boys over girls in female sports.

In this local case involving last weekend’s race, the sophomore runner finished the 5K event 3 seconds faster than the first biological girl to cross the finish line. Last season, according to what appears to be the student/athlete’s self-created college online recruiting profile, the runner identified as a male and listed a best time/personal record that would not have even placed them in the top 500 male runners statewide.

Now, in this girl’s race, the biologically male runner is taking home the first-place medal. That means that a biological girl who has worked hard for her performance in that race did not medal at all.

This has been coming for a while. Six years ago, five transgender people won world championships in women’s events. Within the past 3.5 years, 30 transgender athletes have done so. It was only a matter of time for it to reach high school athletics.

Dori: Port Townsend Woman, 80, banned from pool after dispute with biological male in women’s shower

We reached out to the runner’s high school. They say they are simply following the rules set forth by the Washington Interscholastic Athletic Association (WIAA) – the governing body for high school athletics and activities in this state. Boys can complete as girls if boys say they are girls. It’s that simple.

What’s more, President Joe Biden has proposed several changes to Title IX – the now 50-year-old life-changing federal civil rights act that assured greater fairness and parity for women in sports and education. Title IX created a gigantic participation expansion among girls in sports. As a result, girls who participate in sports and other activities – music and drama included – experience higher high school graduation rates, lower teen pregnancy rates, and eventual higher college acceptance rates and higher average income.

If you stop taking away the aspirations and even scholarships that go with being a top female athletic performer, it will take away all the wonder that goes with competing in sports that so many girls have enjoyed.

I disagree with this policy, but I have no animosity toward the runner or their high school. But I do believe this policy is disastrous and will bring about the ruin of girls’ and women’s sports in America that have so many wondrous benefits.

Listen to Dori’s take on the effects of biological boys and men competing in girls and women’s sporting events

Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from noon – 3 p.m. on ����Xվ Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

“More money is not the solution to this problem,” Dunn told Dori Monson Show listeners Tuesday. “We need some ‘tough love’ strategies to hold people accountable. We’ve got to stop the out-of-flow homeless population. We have a moral obligation to take care of our own homeless folks but not a moral obligation to take care of people being bused from Detroit or Miami or Texas.”

Already, Dori noted, King County has been receiving about $120 million a year from local taxpayers. The $90 million increase sought by KCRHA would amount to a 75% increase.

What’s driving the request for more money? A dramatic increase in the so-called “one-night count,” which attempts to tally the number of people living on the streets and tapping into homeless resources throughout King County. When Marc Dones was hired as chief executive officer of the KCRHA in 2021, he cited the need for an accurate count as vital to “understand the scope and scale of the problem in order to design solutions to meet the need.”

But Dunn – a self-described “budget hawk” – questions the disparity in numbers that are being reported by KCRHA and other homeless agencies. One count shows 13,368 in 2021, while another points to 40,800. Both are higher than 2020 tallies.

Number of homeless people in King County is up nearly 14% since 2020, 57% remain unsheltered��

“We’re seeing dramatic increases in the one-night count population . . . and there has not been an audit of the authority,” Dunn told Dori. “It’s kind of a perfect storm: when you allow drugs and you don’t enforce laws and you don’t have a mechanism to keep people from coming in from out-of-state and benefiting from the subsidies paid for by King County taxpayers, it’s going to keep getting worse until we change our policies.”

In comparison, Dunn points out, Los Angeles County – with an overall population five times that of King County – spends $400 million on its homeless issues. That, Dunn says, means L.A. is addressing the related problems with about “half our funding. More money is not the solution to this problem.”

Since King County enacted a “well-intentioned 10-year Plan to End Homelessness” in 2004, nearly $1 billion has been spent on those who tap into homeless services, Dori said. And yet, he added, the numbers have grown. One report shows that between King County, Seattle, and federal budgets, more than $195 million was spent on local homelessness in 2017 alone.

“Money is creating the problem,” Dunn said. “The more free stuff you give out in Free-attle, the more subsidized and free housing, the more you’re doing to draw more people from outside the community in. That’s one of the reasons we think we need to do something about accountability to the taxpayer.”

Listen to Dori Monson weekday afternoons from noon – 3 p.m. on ����Xվ Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the��podcast here.

“I’m not surprised that Angel shot and killed someone,” Soraya Cervantez told Friday’s Dori Monson Show listeners. “In my opinion, it was a matter of when it was going to happen and who it was going to be.”

Cervantez reached out to Dori after learning about her former husband Angel Valderrama’s role in the July 21 incident.

The shooting left Bob Jensen, 68, dead, while he was on his way for a routine mid-morning coffee at the Costco near the 4400 block of Fourth Avenue South.

Dori: ‘Senseless’ Seattle road-rage incident leads to deadly shooting while victim’s friends grieve – MyNorthwest.com

Though Valderrama, 38, told police he fired in self-defense, witnesses and surveillance images contradict his version of events, King County prosecutors say. Valderrama has since been charged with second-degree murder and remains in jail in lieu of $2 million bail. His arraignment is scheduled for Sept. 1.

Meanwhile, Cervantez told Dori, prosecutors “are accurate about their suspicions.”

“This is a man who has been fascinated with firearms for as long as I can remember,” Cervantez told Dori, adding that she reached out to his show because she felt it was important for her to publicly “send sincere condolences to Robert Jensen’s family, friends and colleagues.”

She went on to describe a volatile marriage, divorce and Valderrama’s “long track record” of gun-related threats of violence. Cervantez shared several police investigation case numbers, including two in Kirkland involving her ex-husband. In one case, he was investigated for threatening people attending a political candidate rally. In another, Valderrama was arrested in 2020 for threatening a delivery driver.

Before their marriage ended, Cervantez said she suffered “violent experiences and his road rage, being a (vehicle) passenger, provoking drivers out of their vehicles.”

Since then, she said, she has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder “from my time being with him due to his violent outrages.”

Somehow, according to Cervantez, Valderrama was able to obtain firearms “even after petitions to the court,” including temporary protection orders and welfare checks involving their now six-year-old child.

“This has been the experience for my family and I every time we exchange our daughter: every time we exchange our daughter at public transfer places, Angel always makes sure his handgun is in our line of sight,” she told Dori. “He parks in a way where we can see him opening his truck arranging and rearranging his rifles and assault rifles. At a very young age, our child knew what an AR (assault rifle) was.”

In another incident, Cervantez said, Normandy Park police responded to “an altercation with the daycare director” where their daughter attended. The director “was threatened with her life,” she told Dori. “This was another situation where there was no follow-up from the court system nor the police department so these violent acts that I have recorded and documented have been ignored for years.”

It wasn’t until Valderrama’s arrest several weeks after the road-rage shooting involving Jensen that Cervantez felt anyone acted on her concerns. For that, she said, she considers Jensen her “hero.”

“I was reading how Cowboy Bob, how he was a very giving man . . . how he helped his neighbors,” she said. “I admired him helping his mom until her passing. His hydroplane community, his friends from grade school, Mark Fasano, Buddy Green . . . I just wanted to tell them Bob’s death wasn’t in vain.”

“The moment he (Bob) hunched over in his truck and took his last breath, he was helping two strangers – and that was my daughter and I – because we didn’t have enough outcry about his (Valderrama’s) violent acts. No one has heard us. Although Bob has passed, he passed in honor and he passed as my hero,” Cervantez continued.

“So you truly believe that if Angel is convicted of this murder, Bob’s death saved the lives of your and your daughter?” Dori asked.

“Without a shadow of a doubt,” she responded. “Without a shadow of a doubt.”

Listen to Dori’s entire interview with the former wife of an alleged South Seattle road-rage shooter who calls her ex-husband’s victim “her hero.”

The case is connected to a recent change that Democratic state senators and Gov. Jay Inslee made with Senate Bill 1564 – now Washington state law – that reclassified and reduced some felonies. As a result, some “Three Strikes” felons now have only two strikes. That makes them eligible for parole.

“Marie” – who used a pseudonym on Thursday’s Dori Monson Show – heard about this change from a victims’ rights advocate, who told her that her rapist, Harry Carrier, was on a list of felons who could be released.

Soon after this call, Marie heard Dori interview Sophie Johnson, the grandmother of Vancouver, Wash., teen Chelsea Harrison, whose killer is no longer considered a “Three Strikes” felon. At the time of his original conviction, the judge in that case called the girl’s killer a “poster boy” for habitual crime.

Dori: New WA state law allows release of killer dubbed ‘poster boy’ for habitual crime – MyNorthwest.com

According to The (Vancouver) Columbian, the lawmakers’ decision means there are more than 100 incarcerated felons with “Three Strikes” sentences who could be off the hook for life in prison.

Despite her fear, Marie reached out to Dori because she thinks people need to know what this new law means.

“I don’t understand why they (lawmakers) would do something like that,” Marie said. “What does this do to victims? I’m sorry. I’m overcome with emotion. It’s unbelievable. They just aren’t thinking about what this does to us.”

In an interview with Jim Senescu, the Clark County attorney who successfully prosecuted Chelsea Harrison’s killer in 2005, the lawyer blamed eight Democratic lawmakers behind the bill.

“We can thank Washington state Senators (Jeannie) Darneille (Tacoma); (Mona) Das (Kent); (Patty) Kuderer (Bellevue); (Bob) Hasegawa (Seattle); (Marko) Liias (Lynnwood); (Rebecca) Saldaña (Seattle); (Jesse) Salomon (Shoreline) and (Claire) Wilson (Auburn) for sponsoring Senate 5164,” Senescu said.

Now, Marie told Dori’s listeners, she has relocated out of fear of her rapist.

“He threatened me repeatedly, so many times. The first time he got out of prison, he actually stalked me a bit, just to show me he knew where I was,” she continued.

Is it possible, Dori asked, that her attacker has been rehabilitated after several decades in prison?

“I really don’t think so,” Marie responded. “He absolutely will attack more women. There is no doubt in my mind.”

Her plea to state legislators regarding the new law?

“Just repeal it.”

Listen to survivor Marie tell Dori about her fear of her ‘Three-Strikes, You’re Out” rapist being released from prison:

“This is total pandering before the mid-terms to try and get out the youth vote,” Walker told Dori Monson Show listeners. Walker, who is now the president of the conservative group , blasted the move as a “scam” that could “actually drive up inflation.”

The debt forgiveness proposal is less than what other Democrats were seeking but could affect tens of millions of Americans who have not yet paid off their student loans. Biden’s plan would cancel up to $10,000 in student loan debt for those earning less than $125,000 a year. Another $10,000 in relief would be available for low-income students who received Pell grants. It does not apply to private loans.

In Washington state, this could affect more than 760,000 people, according to a state Attorney General’s office 2017 report.

Because of likely legal challenges, there is no timeline for when potential student debt relief could actually occur.

“This is raw political pandering,” criticized Walker. He pointed to a 2016 report by President Barack Obama’s administration, citing that “over an entire career, someone who gets a college degree makes as much as $1 million more than someone who didn’t go to college.”

The result of Biden’s plan, Walker explained, is that “those who don’t have a college degree are being asked to pay for the folks” who do.

“Everybody else gets screwed, to put it bluntly. People who paid their own way by taking odd jobs, people who had student loans and paid them off; or the third group – like my brother and sister-in-law — who should be the most ticked off,” Walker said. “They didn’t go to school. They have a car loan. They have a mortgage. And they are being asked to pay taxes for someone who racked up four, five, six years of college. Now they get to pay this off and add $300 million to the national debt.

“It’s a total scam,” Walker continued. “For all the talk about fairness, how is it fair that other people who didn’t take on this debt are now being asked to pay for it?”

Walker, a Republican who was Wisconsin governor from 2011-2019, is no stranger to facing education-related battles. He survived a 2012 recall election following a contentious public-union collective-bargaining rights battle in his state, creating a furor among teachers’ union leaders. In November 2018, the leader of the state teacher’s union defeated Walker in their gubernatorial race.

With the possibility of local teachers in Kent School District threatening to strike and refusing to return to the classroom when school reopens this fall, what message does Walker have for parents, Dori asked.

“There are plenty of good teachers,” Walker responded. “It’s the union bosses who are the ones driving this. . . They don’t care in Washington, they don’t care in Wisconsin, they don’t care across America.”

“This is what’s happening when you have a governor and politicians who are completely in bed with union bosses. It’s outrageous.”

Listen to Dori Monson weekday afternoons from noon – 3 p.m. on ����Xվ Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the��podcast here.

Two days after the charismatic and much-publicized Chief Investment Officer of Gravity Payments, Dan Price, resigned from the Seattle-based company, NYT technology reporter Katie Weise over the past seven years alleged against the man some called “America’s Top Boss.”

Most recently, one woman filed a police report claiming Price raped her in spring 2021 while she was sleeping and drugged in Palm Springs, Calif. Earlier this year, Seattle-area prosecutors charged Price with assault in a separate incident. Once co-workers learned of these claims, reports of other alleged assaults involving other women started rolling in.

Price, 38, gained notoriety in 2015 when he announced that he would cut his own $1.1 million annual salary to make sure everyone at his 121-person company made at least $70,000 a year. Some in the media introduced the theory that Price was trying to devalue Gravity as a way of getting back at his brother and business partner, who had filed a lawsuit against him.

On Wednesday, Price tweeted that he was resigning from the company because he didn’t want to be a “distraction.”

Much of the focus of Weise’s NYT report centers around Price’s strategy-like approach to creating positive news about himself on social media – primarily Twitter – to bury otherwise negative information.

“ ‘Social allows him to control the narrative,’ ” an employee told Weise for her story.

In other words, the good online news that Price created about himself literally eliminated any questions about his business and personal behaviors.

“Mr. Price found an antidote to obscurity: Social media. Tweet by tweet, his online persona grew back,” Weise wrote in her NYT article. “The bad news faded into the background. It was the opposite of being canceled. Just as social media can ruin someone, so too can it — through time, persistence, and audacity — bury a troubled past.”

Gravity Payments CEO Dan Price charged with sexual assault amid ongoing felony rape investigation

How did he pull it off?

According to Weise, he hired a former Seattle Times housing-beat reporter, Mike Rosenberg, who resigned from the newspaper in 2019 after it was discovered he was sending crude sexual and unwanted tweets to a female reporter in Brooklyn.

Price also convinced his marketing staff to create events casting him in a glowing light. In one case, Weise revealed, Gravity’s marketing team arranged for a 21-year-old female staffer to claim she rallied her coworkers to buy a new Tesla for Price as their way of showing their adulation for him. The woman now claims she did not initiate the “gift” and the two men involved in that promotion shared with Weise that the whole ploy was Price’s idea.

Meanwhile, the positive Twitter and LinkedIn posts were working. Daytime talk show host Kelly Clarkson called Price “the country’s best boss.” Larry King interviewed Price before the TV talk show host died several years ago. Locally, TV reports and podcasters praised him and his progressive socialism.

On the other hand, Weise questioned all of this adulation because of earlier allegations.

Warning signs for the NYT reporter popped when Price’s former wife, Kristie Colón, presented a TEDx talk in 2015 at the University of Kentucky. In it, Colón details the abuse she claims she suffered at the hands of Price, based on journals she kept during their marriage.

When Price learned of the potentially explosive public revelations, Weise wrote, he had it quashed.

Despite all of this, Price continued to be lauded as a hero. Esquire magazine did a cover story where a cover photo had him appearing to walk on water.

Weise deserves credit for her dogged seven-year investigation into Price. His alleged victims deserve respect for their courage in the face of a powerful media darling.

And yet, this report surfaced through The New York Times. Not local media, where this was happening right under their nose. Even in Wednesday’s Seattle Times story about Price’s resignation, the newspaper denied readers a chance to comment.

Why?

The reason is because of a media cult which supports anybody who does things on the left. Price’s self-aggrandizing, self-promoting socialist/progressive behavior was lauded by like-minded media. But it is outrageous and it’s excessive and it’s dangerous.

Local news consumers – especially women – deserved better than fawning coverage with little investigative digging. We all do.

Listen to Dori Monson weekday afternoons from noon – 3 p.m. on ����Xվ Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the��podcast here.

And I have taken it like a man after learning that a shortage of chili peppers is creating a hot sauce. Darn you, Mexican drought!

But now – after receiving an alert from our pet food supplier, , that my dog’s monthly order of Purina One Beef Formula (he prefers the small nuggets and loves the beefy flavor) has been – I am not sure how I am going to break the news to him.

I know that the nationwide baby formula shortage is a far more pressing issue for many families and squalling, hungry newborns – but President Joe Biden tells us he’s fixing that. Since he’s doing a yeoman’s job at everything else in the economy, who am I to question that? I rely on younger parents to tell me if that’s really happening.

But how does anyone explain to their beloved pet that supply-chain issues have caught up to their go-to breakfast and dinner? Poor Buddy! His favorite comfort food (and just about the only food) he has known since we adopted him from a Texas-to-Edmonds canine rescue program six years ago, is not available for 31-pound bag delivery. “Yum,” he used to tell me each time I filled his bowl. “How does this happen?” his puppy-dog eyes will ask me if I cut him off.

And it’s not just dogs. Apparently, cats – of which I have none, but apparently many of the Dori Monson Show listeners do (including producer Nicole)– are struggling with a variety of factors contributing to pet food shortages. That means their owners are, too.

What started with toilet paper and hand sanitizer more than two years ago has expanded to other nationwide scarcities. Now, it seems, the shortfalls catch us by surprise.

Sure, it starts with tampons (materials needed are “costly and highly volatile”) and the next thing you know, it’s dinner delights for dogs and kitty cuisine. Why the shortfalls? The pet food industry tells us that all pet food started seeing supply-chain challenges shortly after COVID-19 when lockdowns prompted a significant uptick in pet adoptions.

After that? A backlog at ports and a shortage of truckers, according to sources. A shortage of animal fat supplies used to create the delectable palate-pleasers our pets have come to know and crave. And supply chain disruptions: aluminum (for canned foods), cardboard (for shipping), and paper (for the consumer-friendly mega-bags many consumers prefer to itty-bitty bags they have to buy over and over again).

Fortunately, Dori Monson Show listeners chimed in when we aired this issue and recommended new dog food blends and new online sources for finding Buddy’s No. 1 yums.

End result: Buddy won’t starve and our family won’t break the bank feeding him. Thank you, wonderful listeners.

For many tampon users, hot-sauce eaters, and pet owners, it’s not that easy.

Before November’s general elections roll around, is your vote toward greater economic efficiency going to make a difference?

Listen Thursday for Dori’s interview with the attorney who successfully argued in favor of killer’s Three Strikes conviction – and his reaction to lawmakers’ soft-on-crime actions

But now, Russell, 60, appears to have beaten his sentence for life in prison without the possibility of release – for a second time. The result? He could be freed in less than four years.

This outcome “is unimaginable,” murder victim Chelsea Harrison’s grandmother, Sophie Johnson, told The Dori Monson Show Wednesday.

“I really found it hard to even believe the very idea of releasing someone who has had three strikes several times – and has been smart enough to find a little loophole that he could get out,” Johnson told Dori’s listeners.

“Anyone who can murder another person deserves to be punished more than you can believe,” Johnson said.

Even before killing Johnson’s granddaughter – a crime Russell now admits to – the multi-time felon was first sentenced under Washington state’s “Three Strikes You’re Out Act” in 1998, Dori explained. It involved Russell’s arson conviction for setting his former girlfriend’s Vancouver apartment on fire. Prosecutors tacked this case on to Russell’s 1979 robbery and 1982 kidnapping convictions in Arizona to put him behind bars here for life.

However, the Washington State Court of Appeals vacated Russell’s first “Three Strikes” sentence when the judges decided that his Arizona kidnapping felony conviction didn’t correspond to the same charge here. When the appeals court translated the charge, the kidnapping felony didn’t qualify as a strike offense – so Russell was released from prison in June 2001.

Four years later, with two of his earlier three felony convictions still eligible for “Three Strikes,” Russell hosted a party at his Vancouver home. It was there, court records show, that when other guests left, Russell made sexual advances toward Chelsea. Prosecutors claimed that when the high school freshman resisted, Russell suffocated her.

Jurors agreed. In January 2006, he was convicted of second-degree murder, second-degree felony murder, and first-degree manslaughter in the teen’s death.

Again, Russell was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release under the “Three Strikes” act.

But in 2019, the Legislature removed second-degree robbery from the state’s list of most-serious offenses. And in 2021, lawmakers made the change retroactive. The result: Russell has avoided “Three Strikes” for the second time and is now eligible for release in about four years.

He’s not alone. According to The (Vancouver) Columbian, lawmakers’ decision means there are more than 100 others in state prisons whose “Three Strikes” sentences could be off the hook for life in prison because second-degree robbery doesn’t carry as heavy a conviction.

Meanwhile, Johnson told Dori, Chelsea’s murder “ripped through our family.” Even after 17 years and a move to California, “It’s not something you can just push aside,” she said.

Her granddaughter “was really an old soul. . . who loved horses and wanted to be a trainer someday.”

Chelsea had already earned a variety of blue and red ribbons for horse racing events, Johnson recalled to Dori, adding “She’d be 30 years old, but her dreams were cut out of what she was going to do. She was robbed of that.”

“It sounds ridiculous, but they just used to take people who did this out and shoot them. I’m not recommending that by any means. I certainly endorse rehabilitation, but there are people out there among us who cannot be rehabilitated, and Mr. Russell has proved that more than one time to the public.”

And what does Johnson think of local lawmakers who are ready to let Chelsea’s killer out of prison? Dori asked.

“I can’t imagine so-called educated humans letting him on the streets again,” Johnson said. “The citizens of the state need to really wake up and look at who they’re voting for. This is an election year and I hope and pray that the citizens of Washington will take the time to consider what they’re doing when they cast their vote. People who are put into these positions need to do what is right.”

Listen to Dori’s entire interview with teen murder victim’s grandmother about new state law that could allow twice-sentenced “Three Strikes You’re Out” killer to go free

Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from noon – 3 p.m. on ����Xվ Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

Despite the deadly drug seizure, a judicial system that allowed the pair of suspected drug mules to go free should outrage innocent people, Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux told The Dori Monson Show on Friday.

“People need to rise up and say ‘enough is enough,’” the sheriff said.

Investigators believe the two men – Jose Zendejas, 25, and Benito Madrigal, 19 – “made this trip multiple times.” While some of the stash may have been intended for drops between Los Angeles and San Francisco, “the majority of those fentanyl pills were going to land in Washington state,” Boudreaux told Dori.

How big was the Tulare seizure? Dori asked.

“Huge,” Boudreaux responded. “Not only just here in our county, but anywhere across the country. It’s 151,000 potential deadly doses . . . Every eight minutes, in the United States, someone dies of fentanyl poisoning overdose, so you can imagine that (seizing) 150,000 basically saved 150,000 American lives.”

The confiscated pills were worth at least $750,000 on the street, Boudreaux said. Two kilos of cocaine were also found hidden in the suspects’ vehicle.

It comes at a time, Dori told listeners, that 400 people in King County have already died this year from fentanyl poisoning or overdose. Fentanyl use is now the No. 1 killer of those 18 to 45 years old in America, he added.

While Zendejas and Madrigal were each booked into jail on $1 million bail, a Tulare County Superior Court judge released the men late on a Friday night without notifying Boudreaux’s office.

Boudreaux blames California’s “risk assessment” program which allows judges to review suspects’ cases and release them prior to arraignment, based on various factors – including whether they are likely to return for their court case.

“I would bet a year’s wages that they would not show up – and they did not,” the sheriff said.

Both suspects have an address in Washington, so California authorities are now working with local Drug Enforcement Agency officials to track the alleged drug mules.

Despite their Washington connections, Dori asked, do authorities believe the men are now in Mexico?

“We believe they are,” Boudreaux said. “Quite frankly, they’re not the head (of the drug-running ring). The cartel is completely involved. Our borders need to be secured. (Drugs) are opening coming through, impacting every city across the United States.”

Even with this seizure, the California sheriff said, there doesn’t appear to be any slow-down in drugs coming over the border.

“Kids are ordering fentanyl in candy form, in Pez-style candy,” he said. “If that doesn’t shock the senses of parents all across this country, it should.”

Listen to Dori’s entire interview with Tulare County, Calif., Sheriff Mike Boudreaux describe seizing fentanyl headed for Washington state – and the suspected carriers who were released:

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The high court’s ruling on Monday was 6-3 in his favor, which caps a case involving Kennedy’s practice of praying at the 50-yard line at the end of his team’s games. The case grew when players would join him in prayer. Bremerton School District asked Kennedy to stop out of fear that the district could be sued for violating students’ religious rights. Kennedy told Dori he agreed to stop the gatherings, but the district fired him as a coach anyway.

“[Bremerton schools] didn’t want this fight to begin with,” Kennedy explained. “It had to do with their lawyers and their risk aversion. It just spiraled out of control.”

That’s when , a Christian legal group, filed suit against the school district, claiming Kennedy’s religious and free speech rights had been violated.

By Kennedy’s side throughout the lawsuit: his wife – the school district’s human resources director, and his two children who have since graduated from Bremerton High School.

“That’s all I asked for from the beginning: just to be able to be a football coach and to thank God afterward,” Kennedy told Dori’s listeners. The former coach called his prayers a “personal thing” with players who “happened” to join me.

“When the school district said to ‘stop,’ I immediately stopped. But I wasn’t doing anything wrong, and the court has ruled in my favor: you can be a coach and it’s okay for you to pray alone,” Kennedy continued.

“Seven years is a long time to do any battle,” Kennedy said. “It’s been a rough road, but absolutely 100 percent worth it.”

If post-game prayer was so important, Dori wondered, why coach in a public school?

“Why not go to a private school where the expectation is that there is going to be faith at the center of everything they do?” Dori asked Kennedy.

“That’s the whole point of everything,” Kennedy answered. ‘There’s nothing wrong with religion. That’s one of your freedoms. It doesn’t have to be removed from any of the public.”

And has he received an invitation to return to his old job? Not yet, the former coach said.

“I was expecting a call from the school district. I reached out to the superintendent and said ‘let’s have a drink together and celebrate that this is finally over,’” Kennedy told Dori. “I’m just waiting to hear from them and have my lawyers and their lawyers work it all out.”

Even with the high court victory, Dori asked, “why coach in Bremerton?”

Kennedy told Dori it’s because his loyalty runs deep.

“I graduated from there. All my kids graduated from there. All my family still lives there – my mom, my dad, my grandkids. That’s my home. That’s where I live and grew up. I will never turn my back on Bremerton. Those are my guys.”

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“I ask everyone I talk to, ‘Are you better off than you were two years ago?’” Smiley (R-Pasco) told Dori Monson Show listeners Monday. “They always say ‘no – we’re worse and there’s no end in sight.’”

Smiley explained what voters tell her.

“They just want common sense,” the former Tri-Cities-area nurse and current veterans’ programs advocate continued. “No. 1 is crime – not just in Seattle, but it’s in Bellingham, it’s in Spokane, it’s reaching out to the Yakima Valley. We have fentanyl coming across the southern border, coming into our schools killing 4.0 [GPA} students and basketball players.”

Voters are also complaining about “inflation – from the grocery store to the gas pump. These are issues that are affecting Washington families every single day.”

As crime rates and inflation continue to grow, Smiley said, Washingtonians are growing disillusioned with Democrats in leadership.

It’s likely part of the reason that Murray (D-Seattle) has started running attack ads in a race that is still six months away from the election, Smiley continued.

“It’s because we have a real grassroots movement,” Smiley told Dori. The former Tri-Cities-area nurse said she is “individually funded by the people of Washington state to the tune of nearly $6 million.”

Murray’s backing, Smiley said one newspaper writer told her, “has changed. It’s all D.C. and special interests. She’s lost touch with the people.”

As last week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding Roe v. Wade becomes another issue facing candidates – and consequently voters – Dori asked Smiley if she expects to spar with Murray in a scheduled debate.

“I certainly hope so,” Smiley said. “We haven’t heard back [from her campaign team] yet. She owes the voters of Washington state an explanation.”

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Hospitalized after the Friday morning ordeal in Parkland, Phillips described to The Dori Monson Show listeners how he continued to protect his daughter even after one of two suspects in the incident shot him in the mouth, leaving pieces of a bullet lodged in his tongue.

It started, he said, after loading his daughter into his vehicle on their way to daycare.

“I had just barely turned the corner when I was greeted by a man with a rifle,” Phillips told Dori. “He started yelling at me `I want the truck. I want the wallet. Give me everything.’

“He keeps saying `I’m homeless. Nobody’s going to help me,’” the Parkland dad continued. “I kept saying `my daughter’s in the car. This is not a good idea.’”

Despite the gun, Phillips knew he had a size advantage.

“I’m 5’ 11” and almost 300 pounds,” Phillips described. His attacker? “Very young. He looked like he may have been on drugs. . . He’s 5’5”, maybe 120 pounds.”

In the split seconds that the rifle-armed suspect reached over Phillips to grab his wallet, Phillips reacted.

“My dad was ex-military; my dad showed me some things,” he described. Able to overtake the suspect’s rifle, and drop it on the passenger seat, Phillips threw his pickup into reverse to escape. Moments later, the 20-year-old would-be carjacker pulled out a second weapon – a pistol – and fired three shots at Phillips. One bullet hit the truck’s window and then its dash before striking him in the mouth.

“They pulled the whole bullet out of my tongue,” the defensive dad described. “It left a chunk out of there, and I have missing teeth and a piece of my lip to go with it.

“Most of all, I had to make sure 3-year-old daughter was safe, that she was going to be okay and that he was not able to take off with the truck no matter what happened to me,” Phillips told Dori. The suspect “did run up to the vehicle to finish it off.”

With blood pouring from his mouth, Phillips emerged from his pickup to struggle with the suspect and pin him to the ground.

In what Dori compared to a horror movie scene that just won’t end, the attack took on another frightening twist.

“A 17-year-old girl came out of nowhere, got into passenger side and grabbed the rifle,” Phillips continued. “I’ve got him pinned to the ground and she’s yelling `get off of him.’”

That’s when Kevin – a neighbor he had never met before – managed to get the rifle away from the girl, the Parkland dad explained.

“The whole time, she had the pistol in her sweatshirt pocket. She was holding it and any time she could have shot me,” Phillips told Dori. “He (the would-be carjacker) was telling her to shoot me. That’s when police arrived. . . She pointed the gun at the police officer.”

Deputies managed to talk the girl into dropping the weapon before both suspects were arrested.

“I’m very thankful for the Pierce County Sheriff’s department,” said Phillips.

Now that the rush is over, Dori asked, what are you feeling?

“It hit me all at once,” Phillips answered. “I’m thankful that I’m here. The biggest thing is that my daughter’s okay. That’s the one thing I cared about. That’s all that mattered.”

And how did Phillips celebrate Father’s Day with his preschooler?

“We hung out and snuggled all day,” he said. “She didn’t leave my side.”

Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from noon – 3 p.m. on ����Xվ Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

Stephanie Kerns, co-owner of West Coast Armory North (and ����Xվ Newsradio advertising sponsor), told Dori’s Thursday listeners that her Everett business is “busy as all get out” as the debate over gun control and firearms violence grows across the country.

Kerns and other retailers attribute some of the increased interest in this state to a new law that will go into effect July 1.

The law – approved by state lawmakers before last month’s Uvalde, TX school shooting rampage – prohibits the manufacture, distribution, and sale of firearm magazines with more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

“We knew that there was going to be an uptick in gun sales in June because of the high-capacity ban,” Kerns said. “After July 1, we – in the state of Washington as a gun store – cannot sell anything and you can’t buy anything over 10 rounds.

“That doesn’t mean you can’t continue to have the guns and the magazines that you already have,” she added.

“Obviously, we have background checks to do,” Kerns continued. “Now that it’s getting down to the wire, we are seeing a huge run … Then you put into the mix all the talk and legislation about gun control, and that instigates a bit of a buying rush.”

Even before state lawmakers approved the latest gun legislation, Kerns said, “we in the state of Washington have some of the strictest gun laws already in the nation.”

In 2019, the state approved “” requiring all guns to be locked up when not in use to prevent theft or potentially dangerous access. Years ago, the state also raised the age for purchase of high-capacity magazines including controversial AR-15s, like the one used by the Uvalde shooter, from 18 to 21 years.

Additionally, in 2016, Washington state passed the Extreme Risk Protection Order – its version of the so-called “red flag law” making it the fourth in the country to do so. Such gun control measures police, family members, coworkers and, in some cases, others to petition a state court to remove firearms from someone they may be dangerous to themselves or others.

“We already have all of those, plus background checks in the state of Washington,” Kern explained.

Meanwhile, she told Dori, there are shortages coming from distributors and manufacturers across the country, so securing legal firearms products is increasingly difficult.

Add to that, Kern said, the human nature effect: “if something is going to be taken away, we want it even more.”

Listen to Dori’s entire interview with Everett gun shop co-owner about brisk firearms sales

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That’s why he and other Whatcom County parents are upset with the Bellingham School District for featuring two titles about transgenderism involving young children.

Morris told The Dori Monson Show that when he reached out to district officials regarding making the books available to pre-kindergartners, he was shut down.

“They conflate parental concern with their ugly interpretation of what we’re asking for,” Morris explained. “The problem in our schools isn’t necessarily ‘inclusion’ because I think most of us agree with inclusion, but it’s ‘promotion.’ That’s what really concerns parents. It’s not inclusion; it’s promotion. That’s what gender ideology is receiving.”

One of the books in question is told by its 12-year-old co-author who is undergoing gender transition. The other is about a boy who – after playing with his mom’s clothes and makeup – decides he likes his new appearance. Consequently, the character decides, he must be a girl.

For some parents, raising questions about the age-appropriateness of these topics for preschoolers and elementary-aged children “automatically labels someone as transphobic,” Morris said.

Morris, the father of a 2nd-grade son, said he discovered this in February during Black History Month, too.

“Instead of focusing on Black history heroes,” he said, schools chose to introduce a curriculum that included “transgender ally-ism.”

Morris said that when he asked the school principal about this, “what they came back with is that I must have a problem with Black History Month.”

He’s also upset that one of Bellingham’s school board members decided to host an open mic event at the all-ages sex shop she owns. When parents protested the event because “they didn’t think that children belonged in sex shops,” the protestors were painted as “homophobes and transphobes” in the local media, Morris said.

It’s why Morris had opted to enroll his son in The Bellingham Family Partnership Program. BFPP partners with families of kindergarten-8th graders who prefer to homeschool their children.

“Really, we just have been preserving some amount of innocence for our 8-year-old little boy,” said Morris.

“Why can’t they just let kids be kids without an agenda that pushes sexuality and inappropriate subjects on kids younger and younger?”

Listen to Dori’s interview with a dad upset by transgender books in a Bellingham School District preschool

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At a time when the number of police officers on Seattle streets keeps dropping and crime is rising, response times to the most life-threatening cases citywide continue to climb, a .

The Kitsap County teen told weekend attendees at the annual Lincoln Day Dinner in Bremerton that it’s the price she pays for being a conservative Christian in a public school.

She told Monday’s Dori Monson Show listeners, that classmates “look at me as an opinion. They don’t get to know the real me.”

As a youth ambassador for Turning Point USA, KellyAnna writes and speaks about the group’s mission: to “promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government.” Her viewpoints often rub those with more liberal perspectives the wrong way.

What kind of criticism is thrown at you? Dori asked.

Strangers, she said, have “made hate pages about me,” she told Dori. “I was physically harassed on the second day of school and got called a racist in front of the whole school at a basketball game.”

Some classmates call her a homophobe, KellyAnna said, but she pushes back: “I don’t have any issue if an individual wants to be gay or identify as LGBTQ or as a character in a book; I’m completely fine with that. But if there is something to do with the way that people want to describe their sexuality in a sexual, creepy, groomer way that’s absolutely not okay.”

When she first started getting hate messages about her political positions, KellyAnna told Dori, she soon realized “people who are saying these things about me don’t really know me.” Instead, she says, she relies on friends and family when she feels pressure.

And even in the face of what she calls “hatefulness,” she has advice for her peers:

“Definitely go to school board meetings and get involved,” the teen encouraged. “It can feel very overwhelming. . . Eventually, they will have to listen to you. Sometimes those conversations will be really scary, but you have to have the courage to be this way.”

Listen to Dori’s entire interview with conservative Christian Kitsap-area teen about politics

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That, he told The Dori Monson Show, is because his district invests in armed school security staff – and select administrators carry guns on campus.

“Definitely, I know my schools are safer,” he told Dori Monday. “I know for a fact they are safer than in Seattle. I’ve walked the schools on the west side (of the Cascades). They don’t have a police presence or a security presence.”

In the wake of the Uvalde school shooting in Texas two weeks ago, debates continue on the ways schools and communities can improve school security.

Toppenish, meanwhile, has held steadfast to its Critical Incidence Response Team since 2014. That is when – under Cerna’s leadership – the district began allowing select, trained, and anonymous administrators to voluntarily carry guns on campus. Currently, there are 17 administrative staff ready to protect the district’s nearly 4,500 students in case of an attack.

“What do you say to people who say that makes a school a more dangerous place?” Dori asked.

“I get no pushback from the parents or the kids,” Cerna responded. “They feel safe.”

“I’ve got a lot more people supporting what we’re doing,” Cerna told Dori. Any opposition he hears comes from people who “don’t live in Toppenish.”

Even so, firearms are not the first line of defense, said Cerna. It starts with practices that are as “simple as locking the doors, making sure your teachers (and) building personnel are trained” in active shooter response, he says.

At the same time, the district spends $250,000 each year on school security personnel while gun-carrying administrators volunteer for their role. Currently, there are no trained teachers who volunteer for this role; union regulations require teachers to be paid for such a task.

Cerna has, however, received a variety of offers from people in his community “willing to volunteer” as campus security, but “we’re not taking any volunteers at this time. They have to be people who work for the district.”

“Why not just let police handle something this dangerous?” Dori asked.

“National school shooting statistics show local police response takes 12 to 14 minutes,” was Cerna’s response.

In active school shootings, “we know the carnage is done within 5 to 10 minutes,” Cerna continued. In Toppenish, “my people will be the first responders. That’s just the way it works. . . I hope it never happens, but if it does, I know my people will go in. They will not wait.”

Listen to Dori Monson weekday afternoons from noon – 3 p.m. on ����Xվ Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the��podcast here.