Today's headlines:
- SPR's Audrey Nelson talked to supporters and opponents of Washington’s Initiative 638, which would ban transgender athletes from girls’ school sports.
- Bar associations have traditionally rated judicial candidates on their qualifications. But many state Supreme Court candidates declined to seek ratings this year.
- SPR’s Ember Braun explains how a new U.S. Customs and Border Protection rule could change the way some Americans get their prescriptions.
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Washington’s Initiative 638 would block transgender athletes from competing in girls’ school sports. It would require students to verify their birth sex before joining a girls’ team.
Dori Whitford coaches girls’ high school track and cross country in Spokane. She sees I-638 as a way to keep women’s sports fair.
DORI WHITFORD: “Even the slower girls, who really don’t care about running, they feel like they don’t matter. That they’re expendable. Why are adults not defending them?”
If the initiative passes, a female athlete’s doctor would have to give schools a consent form. That form would "verify the student’s biological sex" via their genitals, genes or testosterone levels.
Luis Manriquez is the director of community health equity at Washington State University’s Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine. He says these exams could backfire, creating more barriers for girls in sports.
LUIS MANRIQUEZ: “There are some Olympic-level athletes who have XX chromosomes, who have always been looked at as female, have always spoken of themselves as female, but they have more testosterone than I might have. And so that testosterone level, if you make it based on that, is going to disqualify some people arbitrarily.”
The Washington Association of Family Physicians and other medical care providers oppose the initiative.
Election Day is November 3.
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Bar associations have traditionally rated judicial candidates on their qualifications. But KUOW’s Amy Radil reports that this year, many candidates for state Supreme Court declined to seek ratings.
There are five state Supreme Court races on the ballot this fall.
Attorney Diego Rondón Ichikawa helps oversee judicial evaluations for the state’s Latino Bar Association.
RONDÓN ICHIKAWA: "They’re not looking at a candidate’s political stance. They look at their temperament."
Candidates agree to be interviewed and have their references checked. Then the bar votes on a rating.
RI: “So judicial ratings give voters a kind of vetted signal about the qualifications of a candidate.”
Four of the ten candidates for state Supreme Court sought a rating from the Latino Bar. Only one candidate sought a rating from the King County Bar Association, a big decline from years past. Some candidates say they don’t trust the ratings process. Advocates say it’s an important data point for voters.
I’m Amy Radil, reporting.
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Ahead of the November 3 election, the U.S. Justice Department has issued about 60 subpoenas for individual Washington voter records.
That’s according to Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs.
Hobbs was on TVW’s “Inside Olympia” program this week.
Hobbs: “I think they’re probably looking for noncitizens perhaps…to see if they’re on our rolls and if they are voting.”
Hobbs says he’s complying with the subpoenas for individual voter records, but his office recently won a legal fight that prevented turning over the state’s entire voting record to the Justice Department.
The Secretary of State says it’s rare that non-citizens vote in Washington.
He says his staff are instead concentrating resources on preventing things like late postmarks.
That led to thousands of ballots being rejected in the August primary.
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A U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) rule that would change procedures for certain international mail shipments, including prescription drugs, has been delayed.
It was supposed to go into effect October 22, but now it won't until January 20 of next year.
Ken Hunter is the executive director of the Campaign for Personal Prescription Importation. He says millions of Americans rely on Canadian pharmacies to get medications at lower prices.
SPR’s Ember Braun called Hunter to learn more.
EMBER BRAUN: So what does this mean for people living in the Northwest?
KEN HUNTER: In the Northwest, people are going to be cut off from their ability to get personal prescriptions from licensed pharmacies in other countries, you know, namely Canada, which is where most Americans that get their drugs from a foreign country get them from.
They have a very similar health care system to ours, they have oversight through Health Canada, their version of the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration]. So Americans are able to get the same drugs that Canadians get from the same manufacturers.
EB: Okay, and who's most likely to be affected by this change, this new rule?
KH: The people most likely to be affected are senior citizens and also people with high deductible health insurance plans or uninsured. And the reason for that is senior citizens are on very fixed incomes. They might get perhaps $2,000 a month that is really parceled out to the penny of what they are able to afford, what they're going to spend money on, et cetera. So when drugs, which are absolutely required by that population, go up in price significantly, now they're faced with making cuts or choices or they'll be totally priced out of the market, which — the latter is the more frequent situation.
EB: The extension is meant to give the importers and providers more time to update processes on their end. Do you think this is going to give them time to find a new path for Americans to get their prescriptions internationally?
KH: We're really hoping that the 90-day extension does give an opportunity for Customs and Border Protection to rethink this rule.
Part of this rule involves prescription medication, but that's just one slice of it. This will affect everything that gets sent through the U.S. Postal Service from other countries. It doesn't matter if it's a prom dress or a stuffed animal or your personal medication.
But with a prom dress, you have other options where you can buy it and be able to afford it, [whereas] with drugs, you do not have options. Your choice for many of these people is going to be either getting them from Canada or another country that [has a] much lower price, or maybe go without. And if they're really lucky, maybe they can afford the added costs. But they're going to put the drugs out of reach of most of the people that are ordering them now.
EB: And I guess I'm curious if you could talk about the background of that a little bit. How did this start? Why can some prescriptions in Canada or internationally be cheaper than here in the U.S. domestically?
KH: Other countries will have price controls based on their negotiations with a pharmaceutical company. So, for instance, in Canada, the government might go and tell a drug company, ‘If you want access to our citizens to be able to sell your drug, here is the ceiling that you'd be able to charge for drug X, drug Y, drug Z.’ We don't have that in the United States. It's more of an open market without those price controls.
People that lived on the border, for instance, people in your area might be able to drive across to Canada, buy their drugs in, let's say, Vancouver and be able to come back across the border. They may be fine for the meantime. However, think of people that don't have the ability to do that, or it's going to be hours and hours to drive.
And plus, if they're a senior citizen, are they going to want to drive four or five hours each way across the border? But that's for your area. I mean, imagine what it would be like for retirees in Florida, Arizona, et cetera, who don't have that ability to go across the border personally.
EB: Yeah. And I know there [were] some Canadian pharmacies or just international pharmacies on both sides. Some were saying, ‘Make sure you stock up on your medications, because this is going to make changes’ and there were some other ones who were a little bit more prudent in their notifications to people, saying, ‘We don't know what this is going to look like exactly, but we'll give you updates.’ Can you talk a little bit about that?
KH: Early on, there was a fair amount of confusion with what it is that is exactly going to be happening. Is this just some little tiny customs thing? I think in the very beginning, there were some people that did not think that this was going to be that big of a deal.
But again, they know 90 days from now, we're going to be facing the same situation unless the CBP does something to change this rule. So it's still out there that the same exact rule without any alterations is what the CBP is planning to do. We're just trying to get them to be able to understand that rule is going to put people's lives in jeopardy and their health in a dire situation. So please do not do this.
That was Ken Hunter from the Campaign for Personal Prescription Importation. The new CBP rule goes into effect on January 20, 2027.
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SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting today was contributed by Ember Braun, Amy Radil, Anna Marie Yanney and Audrey Nelson, today's host and producer.
Web support is provided by Anna Gyure Havlek.
