The UCLA Bruins lost running back T.J. Harden to the transfer portal this week but already have their sights set on their next potential tailback.
Washington State freshman Wayshawn Parker entered the transfer portal this week after a breakout season with the Cougars. Parker rushed for 735 yards and four touchdowns in 2024, averaging an impressive 5.4 yards per carry.
According to Pete Nakos of On3 (subscription required), the former Washington State tailback is set to visit UCLA, USC, and Utah.
In 2024, the Bruins averaged a Big Ten-worst 86.6 yards per game behind a questionable offensive line. With lots of room for improvement and a wide-open depth chart, UCLA offers a lot of playing potential for a running back like Parker.
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Under new offensive coordinator Tino Sunseri, who helped the Indiana Hoosiers rush for over 2,000 yards and a whopping 37 rushing touchdowns this season, the Bruins should see a massive improvement in the running game, with Parker potentially playing a big role if he transfers to Westwood.
Workers at the university’s Vancouver campus fear mass layoffs after the approval of a $6 million budget reduction this week.
Washington State University Vancouver will feel the brunt of the university system’s budget cuts. In this undated, provided photo a student sits on the grounds of the Southwest Washington campus.
Courtesy Washington State University Vancouver
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Faculty and staff at Washington State University’s Vancouver campus say they are on pins and needles, as they wait to hear who will be impacted by the university system’s budget cuts.
In May, WSU’s Board of Regents announced the university would need to trim nearly $12 million from its core operating funds to run a balanced budget next fiscal year. Washington’s public universities are required to operate a balanced budget by state law.
The institution’s Vancouver campus will feel the brunt of the reductions soon. It was given a mandate to slash 15% from its budget. At just over $6 million in cuts, that’s close to half of the targeted cuts for the entire university system, which includes five campuses across Washington.
Amid Portland State budget cuts, a new plan for growth emerges
University leaders approved cuts to Vancouver’s budget on Wednesday. WSU spokesperson Brenda Alling said the university will not be releasing details of the plan.
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“What seems really problematic is this exceptional requirement that Vancouver get a significantly higher cut than any other campus in the whole state,” said WSUV Liberal Arts and History professor Sue Peabody.
Peabody is a tenured professor who has been teaching at the satellite campus since 1996. She said WSUV has weathered cuts in the past, including a 10% budget reduction just last year, but it has so far avoided layoffs.
“This time [WSU] is asking for very, very deep cuts that can only be met with personnel,” Peabody said. “There’s no other way to meet the 15% than eliminating employees.”
WSU is Washington’s land-grant university and it’s the second largest public university system in the state, with more than 25,000 students enrolled in 2025. The Vancouver campus is the institution’s second largest physical campus, enrolling close to 2,700 students.
Amid warnings of future cuts, University of Oregon trustees approve next year’s budget
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WSU is facing a multitude of financial headwinds, as are colleges and universities in Oregon and across the nation.
Washington State’s budget woes are primarily driven by decreasing state funds, anticipated losses in federal research grants, declining student enrollment and increasing personnel costs.
At a packed town hall-style meeting on Monday, university administrators acknowledged that the impending cuts are causing stress among the campus community.
“This is a time of incredibly high anxiety for us all,” Sandra Haynes, WSU executive vice president for statewide campuses, said at the June 15 meeting. “It’s hard not knowing what our futures will be. It’s hard not knowing how we’re going to take these cuts.”
In this provided photo Washington State University Vancouver faculty and staff filled a budget town hall hosted by university administrators on Monday, June 15, 2026.
Susan Lavender
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Administrators also attempted to clear up why the Vancouver campus is taking a disproportionate cut compared to the university’s other campuses and colleges.
According to Damien Sinnott, WSU senior vice president for finance and operations, Vancouver’s 15% cut reflects an effort to align per-student state funding across the WSU system.
“When you look at the Vancouver, Tri-Cities and Everett campuses, Vancouver receives substantially more state funding per student — about $2,500 more per student,” Sinnott explained to faculty last week. “So I think the board used that metric as a sign that Vancouver could withstand a larger budget reduction.”
Linfield University considers controversial program cuts to close budget deficit
Both Sinnott and Haynes said the approved budget cuts seek to minimize impacts to students, jobs and research at the campus. They said they would not be adopting a “do more with less” attitude in the coming fiscal year.
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But those statements are doing little to calm the frustration and fears that some faculty and staff are feeling over the mandated reductions.
“Those cuts will be felt by the students. Those cuts will diminish the quality of instruction at WSU Vancouver,” said WSU English professor Desiree Hellegers. “What we’re really seeing is a divestment from Southwest Washington.”
Hellegers has taught at the Vancouver campus for 33 years. She plans to retire this fall, partly to help shield some of her colleagues from layoffs.
“I know there’s a lot of young professors who may be on the chopping block,” Hellegers said. “To me, it’s kind of a question of, ‘What are administrators willing to sacrifice, themselves, in order to avert the worst of the damage?’”
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My grandmother met Harold Washington once. I was young when she told me the story, so I don’t remember every detail. What I remember is what she kept: a mug he gave her, which she held onto until the day she died.
I grew up on South Shore Drive, sold the Sun-Times for a quarter at a paper stand at 75th and Stony Island, right in front of the KFC, and graduated from Hyde Park Academy. I did not know then that I would spend my career studying the civil rights terrain Washington had walked. But I understood, even as a child, what it meant that he was there.
I am thinking about him now.
Harold Washington served barely two terms in Congress before becoming Chicago’s first Black mayor in 1983. In that brief time on Capitol Hill, he did something that does not get remembered often enough. From the House Judiciary Committee in 1982, he helped lead the extension of key sections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, including protections requiring jurisdictions with documented histories of racial discrimination to obtain federal approval before changing their voting rules.
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The Congressional Black Caucus chose Washington to manage that bill on the House floor, where he spent seven weeks in hearings fighting to keep the enforcement mechanisms that protected Black voters from states that would prefer to be rid of them.
He won that fight.
Now, more than four decades later, we are fighting it again.
I am recalling Mayor Washington because of the efforts by President Donald Trump and many Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act, a proposed federal election law that would make it much tougher for many citizens to vote and is currently stalled in the U.S. Senate.
States curtail voting rights
Republican governors in Florida, Mississippi, Utah and South Dakota have already signed bills requiring documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration or citizenship checks, with similar legislation passed in Tennessee. Five states, Arizona, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming, will have show-your-papers requirements in place for the 2026 midterms.
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In New Hampshire, the law has already produced its intended effect: In 2025 town elections, married women who did not have their marriage license on hand could not register, with at least one woman required to come back three times.
The infrastructure of exclusion does not require a federal law to take effect. It requires the threat of one, and the states that were waiting have already moved.
Washington would have recognized this immediately. The Voting Rights Act extension he managed in 1982 was not a symbolic gesture. It was a structural intervention, closing the door on states that wanted to escape accountability for their documented histories of discrimination.
The SAVE Act opens that door again, not with a return to literacy tests or poll taxes as such, but with a documentary requirement that functions identically: neutral on its face, devastating in its application and concentrated in its harm on the communities Washington spent his life trying to bring into the democratic process.
Washington’s 1983 mayoral campaign brought together Black voters on the South and West sides, Latino voters long excluded from the machine’s benefits and progressive white voters who believed Chicago could be something other than what it had always been.
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His campaign was powered by a voter registration drive that added nearly 100,000 new voters to the rolls before the primary. He understood, instinctively and strategically, that expanding access to the ballot was not a prelude to political power. It was political power.
The SAVE Act would dismantle the registration infrastructure Black and Brown turnout campaigns depend on. Only 6% of voters register in person at an elections office. Washington’s coalition was built on the other 94%.
What Washington’s record demands of us
Washington deserves a reckoning, not a commemoration. He knew that formal equality was not enough, that the machinery of democratic participation had to be actively maintained against those who would narrow the circle.
His mug sat on my grandmother’s shelf for decades. She was not a politician. She was a Black woman on the South Side of Chicago who met a man running for mayor and felt, maybe for the first time, that he was talking to her. He gave her a mug. She kept it her whole life.
That is what is at stake. Not abstractions. People. The kind of people who keep a mug for decades because a politician made them feel like they mattered.
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Harold Washington fought this battle once, from the Judiciary Committee floor, in seven weeks of hearings most people have forgotten. We are fighting it again, this time against a bill that would quietly push millions back out of the process, with six states already implementing versions of it before Congress even acts. The least we can do is remember who showed us how.
Donathan L. Brown, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Northeastern University, a former U.S. Fulbright professor, and the author of five books on civil rights and voting rights. A native of the South Side, he graduated from Hyde Park Academy.
Washington state is currently experiencing an early-season flare-up of wildfire activity, particularly in the southeastern and central parts of the state, as well as the Upriver Fire, a fast-moving incident East of Spokane.
A combination of an ongoing statewide drought emergency and critical fire weather—including a strong, dry cold front with high wind gusts—has caused several fires to grow rapidly over the last few days.
The most significant other current active blazes include:
Omak Lake Road Fire: Things are moving fast up there right now. As of this afternoon (Wednesday, June 17), the Omak Lake Road Fire has officially merged with the nearby Kartar Fire, creating a massive blaze that has already burned roughly 6,500 acres on Colville Reservation land. Tule Fire (Yakima Region): Ignited on June 14 south of Toppenish, this is currently the largest wildfire in the state, having ballooned to approximately 20,665 acres with 0% containment. It is burning primarily in dry grass and brush and has been producing a massive smoke plume that is impacting air quality throughout the Columbia River Gorge. Juniper Dunes Fire (Franklin County): This fire has burned over 10,577 acres and is 10% contained. It has pushed into the challenging, roadless terrain of the Juniper Dunes Wilderness area, making ground access difficult for crews. A Red Flag Warning remains in effect across much of Eastern Washington due to sustained high winds and low relative humidity, meaning any ongoing fires face an extreme risk of rapid spread, and new starts can ignite easily.
Is smoke from around the state forecasted to arrive in NCW?
Right now, North Central Washington is in the clear. The active wildfire smoke is staying well away from the Wenatchee Valley and surrounding areas, and local air quality remains firmly in the “Good” category. The main reason for this breaks down to wind direction and fire locations: Westerly Winds are Our Friend: Strong winds blowing from the west across the Cascades are actively dispersing air over NCW and pushing regional smoke eastward.
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Where the Smoke is Heading Instead:
South: Earlier this week, massive plumes from the Tule Fire down in Yakima drifted west/southwest into the Columbia River Gorge and Portland-Vancouver metro. East: With the current wind shift, smoke from the large fires in the Columbia Basin (like Tule and Juniper Dunes) is now being carried east toward the Tri-Cities, Walla Walla, and the Palouse. North/Northeast: Up north, the Kartar and Omak Lake fires east of Omak are causing localized downwind smoke impacts, but the smoke is drifting east toward Nespelem and the Coulee Dam rather than dropping south into Chelan or Douglas counties. Because these breezy, dry conditions are expected to persist through the rest of the week, weather and air quality officials note that intermittent smoke impacts will mostly be a concern for communities situated directly downwind (east) of the active blazes.
Wildfire smoke (on file via Canva)Wildfire smoke (on file via Canva)
Where can I look online to see where wildfire smoke is coming from?
A few years ago, I discovered a Canadian website that not only shows you where wildfire smoke is coming from, but also how the smoke forecast will affect you in the coming days. It comes from the BC Wildfire Service. Click on this helpful wildfire smoke map and bookmark it. A couple of things to know about this BC Wildfire Service website. 1) When you first find the smoke map, select the Smoke Forecast button.
The map will come to life, showing where current wind conditions are directing wildfire smoke and where it is forecast to travel in the coming days. 2) Since it’s a service of the BC Wildfire Service, it doesn’t provide any information on fires here in the US, but it does show where smoke is forecast to come from any wildfires north and south of the border.
Where can I find updated information about wildfires in Washington?
The Watch Duty app for any device. The Washington DNR fire dashboard is active throughout the fire season and shows up-to-date information on wildfires affecting Washington state. View a full-screen version of the DNR fire dashboard with this link.
Oregon Coast Getaway Photos
Oregon Coast Getaway Photos
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Gallery Credit: KEVIN MILLER
LOOK: These Photos Show Why ’70s Cars Were Something Special (and Obviously Better)
Big, bold, and built different — these ’70s cars looked and felt like nothing on the road today. Take a ride back and see them in their prime. [And we did our best to identify the models and dates, so if we got it wrong, gearheads, don’t come after us!]
