Being a parent is nonstop hard work, making it challenging to stay on top of news that impacts families in Washington state. Below are highlights and commentary on key policy updates and headlines from the week of Dec. 15-21.
Sunday, Dec. 21: Community-minded, stress-reducing, longest night of the year event
In these dark times — literally, when sunset comes mid-afternoon and figuratively, as so many families struggle to stay safe and meet their kids’ needs — coming together as a community can help raise spirits and strengthen connections. That is why families, particularly those with kids aged 10 and up, are invited to bundle up tonight, December 21, and head to King Street Station for the city’s Winter Solstice celebration. The free LONGEST NIGHT event presented by ARTS at King Street Station is open until 9 p.m. and includes an herbal bathing workshop, curated tours of exhibitions Welcome to Paradise: ¡Viva Puerto Rico Libre! and Living & Loving Under the Carceral State, a “Body Love Ritual,” movement practice, an ambient soundspace for contemplation and rest, a sound bath and and ideo art projection. The mix of scheduled and drop-in activities aims to ground, connect, and center Seattlelites.
“This time of year can be challenging for many of us in Seattle,” said Gülgün Kayim, director of the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, in a release. “We’re keeping our doors open late to give people a chance to be in community, and beat back the Big Dark.” RSVP before you go so they know how many to expect.
- Take action: Missed the celebration this year? The Office of Arts & Culture offers a number of events each year. Next December, be sure to look for a 2026 all-ages Winter Solstice event on the office’s events page.
Some Good News: We are givers
I’m usually skeptical of studies produced by companies with the word “credit” in their name. Still, this one from online lender NetCredit caught my attention.
NetCredit analyzed GoFundMe campaigns to answer a straightforward question: When a regular person — not a professional fundraiser — starts a campaign, how much money do they typically raise?
The study uses the median, or middle, amount raised, a better measure of what’s typical than an average skewed by a few viral successes or ineffective campaigns. By that measure, Seattle comes out on top. The typical volunteer fundraiser here raises $2,540, more than in any other major U.S. city.
That doesn’t mean Seattle has the most fundraisers. In fact, the city ranks 11th nationally in terms of the number of GoFundMe campaigns. But when Seattleites do ask for help, their friends, family, and broader network of connections respond.
Washington also gives quite generously compared with other states. The median volunteer fundraiser raises $2,145, earning the state a 7th-place national ranking.
The takeaway: Seattle may not ask most often — but when it does, the community shows up!
- Take action: Join the trend! Teach your kids to consider the needs of others by going to the Seattle-area GoFundMe page to review the many campaigns for people in need in this community. Decide on a total amount you want to give and choose together which campaigns to support and with how much. Even $1 makes a difference.
Flood Families with Support
Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs is calling on public employees, state retirees, and Washington families — especially those in non-impacted areas like Seattle — to step up and help victims of the devastating floods that rolled through Western Washington on an atmospheric river last week.
After activating the state’s Disaster Relief Center last week, Hobbs launched the Washington State Combined Fund Drive, a special fundraising campaign to benefit response and recovery efforts.
“Whenever disaster strikes, Washington’s residents and state employees have always stepped up to offer support when needed most. This time, it is for our own neighbors and communities,” Hobbs said in a release. “The Combined Fund Drive is an option to support fellow Washingtonians in their time of need, in a reliable and secure way.”
Although the rains have receded for now, thousands of families in King, Whatcom, Skagit, Snohomish, Pierce, Lewis, Thurston, Grays Harbor, and Clark counties were displaced by a level 4 atmospheric river that pushed rivers to near-record flood stages.
- Take action: If you are a state employee or state retiree, make a one-time donation or monthly payroll deduction through the Combined Fund Drive and use the charity code to designate the donation toward a charity assisting in the family support. Families and non-state employees can donate through the campaign’s public donation page.
- Impacted by flooding? Check out King County’s flood recovery page which includes locations to drop off flood debris.
- How are language barriers and fear of targeting by Immigration police complicating flood response? Check out this story in The Seattle Times.
Aid Applications Up, Enrollment Down at Public Colleges
A record number of high schoolers – 52% — filled out financial aid applications this year, according to the Washington Student Achievement Council. At the same time, applications from students in low-income households rose to 44%, up from 38% in 2024.
Those numbers may soon help counter the news that five of the state’s six public four-year colleges remain 9% below their pre-pandemic undergraduate enrollment levels. According to The Seattle Times, only one school is experiencing an enrollment boom: the University of Washington now has 46,000 undergraduates across three campuses, a 6% increase since 2023. Of course, it helps that UW is located in a city with the highest percentage of residents holding bachelor’s degrees (or higher). Nearly 70% of those age 25 or older have a degree – a fun fact that the state department of commerce is using to lure new residents to Washington.
Governor Bob Ferguson’s executive order this year establishing the Washington Completes FAFSA campaign is likely responsible for some of the increase. The initiative launched a coordinated effort to increase the number of students who complete and submit the financial aid application.
- Take action: Is there a high school student in your house who’s eager for college but sitting on the fence due to your family’s financial situation? Learn about all the aid available and how to apply for it on the Washington Student Achievement Council website . It won’t hurt their chances for a college degree and it could make all the difference for their future.
High School Financial Literacy Bill Returns
Last year (and the year before), we shared Seattle student Natalie So’s opinion on making financial literacy education a requirement of high school graduation in Washington state.
So, a volunteer for the Korean Adoptee Family Foundation and League of Education Voters made this argument: “Financial literacy curriculum would provide all students, regardless of socio-economic background, with the financial tools they need to succeed. By making financial education mandatory, the state would level the playing field and bridge the knowledge gap for all students.”
State Treasurer Mike Pellicciotti and Sen. Adrian Cortes (D-Battle Ground) agree. Last week, they vowed to push legislation through the 2026 session of the Washington State Legislature, adding financial literacy education to the list of graduation requirements.
The bill, Senate Bill 5849, was pre-filed in Olympia by Cortes and now awaits committee referral for consideration during the upcoming session, which begins on January 12.
“Financial literacy is an essential skill that can help individuals seize economic opportunities, plan for their futures, and weather financial hardships,” said Pellicciotti, who is part of a broad coalition working toward passage of the proposal. Other members include the Financial Education Public Private Partnership (FEPPP), the Washington Council for Economic and Financial Education, the GoWest Credit Union Association, educators, and other advocates.
“As I’ve met with community organizations, small business owners, elected officials, and educators around the state, the necessity of equipping Washingtonians with basic financial skills in today’s increasingly complex world is one of those rare issues which finds nearly universal consensus,” said Pellicciotti, announcing the effort.
- Take action: Have an opinion about requiring high school students to take financial literacy courses? Make your voice heard: Contact members of the Washington State House of Representatives and Washington State Senate.
OP-ED
‘Are We Still in America?’
This week’s Danny Westneat column in the Seattle Times made me both laugh and cry, for its sharp honesty and the Donald Trump ego it decried. Westneat takes on Trump’s recent decision to put his mug on the National Parks America the Beautiful entrance card, rather than the winning photo from the National Parks Foundation’s annual photo contest. At the same time, Westneat addresses the new immigration Trump Gold Card that allows rich immigrants to buy their way into America.
The column left me wondering, when will the president finally pull out all the stops and announce he’s changing the name of the United States of America to Trumpistan? Along with the parks and immigration cards, the former Kennedy Center is now the Trump-Kennedy Center — as if John F. Kennedy, a Democrat whose ideals ran in the opposite direction of the current president’s, wouldn’t roll in his grave at the thought.
There’s a lesson for kids here, parents. It may be time to sit down with yours and have a long talk about the dangers of an outsized ego and a solely self-focused mindset; about how these two things can so easily demean and dismiss deserving others, or, in some cases, work against their basic human needs. What kids need to hear in the face of so much Trump stamping is this:
You don’t need your name on everything – from crypto, to gold sneakers, to a card for parks whose budget you’ve gutted, to already-named federal buildings – to be important. Maybe invite them to write a letter to POTUS about his obsession with seeing his own name and how unhealthy it is.
Westneat’s column is a great read and a sad indictment of one man’s ferocious ego. If my kids were younger — say, ages 10 and up — I’d read this column out loud, stopping frequently to discuss. As it was, my 30-year-old daughter texted it to me: “Geeze,” she wrote. “Do we still live in America?”
— Cheryl Murfin
OP-ED
Trump moves to end gender-affirming care for youth
This week, the administration of President Donald Trump acted to erase what he called “a stain on our Nation’s history” by establishing new rules that effectively ban gender-affirming care for minors in the United States. To ensure doctors comply, the administration says it will refuse or pull back federal funding from hospitals that offer such treatment. At a time when hospitals are trying to figure out how to keep doors open in the face of current Medicaid cuts (and those coming down the pike), few are likely to challenge Trump’s no-funding hammer.
The proposed new U.S. Department of Health and Human Services rules were announced a day after Republicans in the House of Representatives approved legislation making it a crime (punishable by a fine or up to 10 years in prison) to provide transgender minors with gender-affirming care. That proposal needs Senate approval.
Both of my children identify and align with the sex assigned to them at birth. I have not had to grapple with the pain of a child in a body that does not fit how they identify themselves. Still, as a parent and as a former birth professional — as a human — I am angered by this administration’s all-out attack on trans youth. As Azeen Ghorayshi, Amy Harmon, and Reed Abelson wrote in The New York Times last week: “The administration’s action is not just a regulatory shift but the latest signal that the federal government does not recognize even the existence of people whose gender identity does not align with their sex at birth.”
They Exist
But they do. They exist in every state, every county, every city, every school in the country. They exist in my neighborhood, in my circles of family friends, and in my kids’ friend circles.
One of my former clients has a 14-year-old son who was labeled female at birth. By the age of five, he had definitively identified as male. His parents were careful, questioned experts, and listened attentively to him as he grew. He never wavered. He is currently taking hormone blockers and, with a whole lot of counseling and support from his community, family, therapists, and medical providers, wants to make a full transition by age 18. I don’t know where the blockers are coming from or what the process might have been before this new move by the administration.
There is another side: Some kids really suffer from body dysphoria, which is not the same as having a gender identity different from that assigned at birth, and could be harmed by body-altering care. Some have undiagnosed mental health conditions that would not be served by such care, and, for some, gender identity distress may stem from something else that hasn’t been addressed. For others, medical contraindications exist that must override body-altering care.
I do know the right care depends on readiness, safety, understanding, and timing — just like any other serious medical treatment for young people. And I know that a wealth of therapeutic thinking on the subject agrees that body-altering care should not be provided to a child before puberty. And that before any gender-affirming care is provided, a young person must fully understand the risks, limits, or permanence of care and feel no external pressure driving the decision. Gender-affirming medical care should not be automatic.
‘A Target’
That said, my client’s child and their family have gone through every step of decision-making carefully, with provider input. And rather than uplifted by that support, this teen feels like the government has put a target on his back. His mom has been watching for signs of suicidal ideation since Trump’s January executive order attempt to stop gender-affirming care. Minors’ suicide risks increase by as much as 72% in the years following anti-trans laws and rules, according to The Trevor Project.
You can’t rule and order trans youth out of existence.
We Allow
They should have the right to seek the medical care they need to align their inner and outer selves. The care-banning acts are made under the banner of protecting kids. Yet they will surely harm or kill some. As my client shares her experience, I worry her son will be one of those.
We allow, and Medicaid pays for, plastic surgery on severely burned children to help their outsides reflect who they are inside.
We allow, and Medicaid pays for, growth hormone treatment for children with certain conditions, not to save their lives, but to spare them social stigma, bullying, and lifelong barriers.
We allow, and Medicaid pays for, reconstructive surgery for children born with cleft lips or palates — not because it’s medically urgent in every case, but because how you move through the world, speak, and are seen matters, and it may reduce isolation and suffering.
We allow, and Medicaid pays for, mental health care for children experiencing depression or anxiety — because internal pain is real pain.
We allow, and Medicaid pays for, intervention therapies for autistic children, not to “change who they are,” but to help them communicate, feel safer, and thrive. And, because quality of life matters, not just survival.
All medical providers and hospitals should be allowed to provide treatment that helps children live safely, comfortably, and authentically in their bodies. Gender-affirming care fits squarely within that tradition.
— Cheryl Murfin
