War Tax Resistance Grows, Legal Protection for Polyamory, and Your Hiking Trails in Jeopardy

This is CityCast Seattle. I'm Jane Ceehoo, and here's what Seattle's talking about. The Trump administration is closing the Pacific Northwest branch of the U.S. Forest Service, leaving the future of the agency and the fate of its workers and projects up in the air. And we'll be talking about the state of polyamorous rights in our region. But first, tax day is nigh. Have you filed your taxes yet? Guyoran, independent journalist behind the newsletter gossip guy. Have you gotten them in? No, I've been on vacation, but we'll have to do it this week. What about you? Andy Engelson, journalist and founder of Cascadia Journal. He is back with us. Have you filed your taxes yet, Andy? I have not. I'm an eternal procrastinator. So, Andy, last time you were on this show, we talked about some broader... big-picture tax efforts, not individual taxes, but there were efforts in Oregon and Washington to potentially freeze tax payments to the federal government until the federal government refunds payments that it froze to states. Ultimately, did either of those pass? They did not. One of them died in committee, the other did get a little bit further, but didn't pass in the Oregon legislature. Well, now it seems like some people are trying to take up that mantle on an individual level. So people across the country are considering a tax strike. I've seen a lot of talk about this. Andy, I know you wrote about it recently. What does that mean? It means not paying some or all of your federal taxes. I talked to Christina Thompson, who is the leader of the national tax strike. And it's a movement that sort of grew out of the anti-war movement. And they were basically in 2025, we're like, well, can we use this to oppose Trump's fascism and the sort of increasing, you know. funding for ICE and just all the bad stuff that's happening in U.S. And yeah, she advises that you should still file a return, but some of these people are refusing to pay their taxes or they're filing like a peace tax return, which is like, says, you know, in protest of where some of this funding is going.

Wait, yeah, what is on a peace tax return? It's just basically it kind of looks like a tax form, and you can sort of fill in your opposition to where the money is being spent, and you can say, hey, I want, you know, X percentage of my dollars to not go to U.S. military spending or spending on ice. Not that they're going to follow that, but it's just a statement of protest. A way to register your complaint in some official fashion. Wait, so like, I'm thinking about a paper 1040, which is a very rigid looking form where it's like, you know, if this, then pour it over this number to box eight and whatever. Is a peace tax return? It's just like a different document that has like different formatting? Or what does this look like is what I'm trying to envision? Yeah, it's submitted with your tax form. So in addition to filing your 1040, you file this other form that just basically says, hey, you know, I'm doing the process here, but I am doing it in protest. And one of the things that the tax strike is also suggesting is you can include like paper checks and make things difficult, even if you're not paying your taxes, you can like, you know, include like 100. $110 paper checks and it will slow down the process and gum up the works. You know, I am a little embarrassed to admit that, yeah, I've been sending in check since the beginning because I didn't want to connect my bank account and go through the whole convoluted online system. So, hey, already contributing in that way. Guy, have you thought about doing this? Like, have you heard about tax strike? And is this something you've considered? I mean, I've seen this pop up more and more this year compared to previous years, especially with the war tax resistance. I think it depends really on everyone's circumstances. It does seem like it is a form of protest that it certainly annoys the government, enough that they have gone after some of these longtime tax resistors. Yeah, it's interesting to see, like, will this make a dent this year compared to previous years? Like, are we going to see a larger number of people, either refusing some of their taxes or at least making some noise about this issue? Yeah, Andy, in talking with the coordinator from the National Tax Strike, is there any indication that we're going to see higher numbers of people participating this year? Are they tracking that in any meaningful way? She didn't give me numbers, but, you know, anecdotally, I'm seeing it all over the place. And, you know, she's seen a rise. And she does make it clear that there can be repercussions. I mean, you know, we know that this is illegal. You're most likely not going to have, you know, a lien placed on your house or have, you know, agents and fedoras knocking on your door. The fedoras, not the fedoras. They can issue fines, they can garnish wages, they can prevent you from applying for Social Security. If you owe money back money to the IRS, they can prevent you from getting a new passport. There are real implications, so there are risk. But it's a civil disobedience measure. And as Chris...

Dina described, you know, this is like during the civil rights movement. It's of that moral importance. It's financial, but it's also a moral statement. It says that we do not agree to these wars or we do not agree to $140 billion being spent on ice and concentration camps and border patrol. Yeah, what are the reasons we're seeing people citing? Or I guess also what are the reasons you all would be considering participating in the tax strike? The war against Iran is definitely a big one, as well as ICE and the federal government. One other thing I wanted to point out was that we have seen successful tax resistance movements around the world, like, you know, the poll tax resistance in the 1990s in England, which basically was so successful, it ended Margaret Thatcher's career. So it's not like these things are impossible, even though it does feel like pretty early in the works right now. Yeah, I mean, I would resist it because of this proposed one point. 0.5 trillion dollar military budget. It's a 43% increase. You know, we can't afford health care in this country, and yet we're dumping trillions of dollars into useless wars and a bloated military. No, I don't want that money going there. Am I going to do it? I will cite the fifth and refuse to comment on whether I'll pay my taxes or not. I was going to ask you that, Andy, but that's fair. I mean, yeah, I'm thinking about a sign that I saw in my neighbor's yard that said too much rage to fit on one sign. And I think there are many reasons that people are upset right now and don't necessarily want their hard-earned money going towards funding things that they don't believe in. I do think, though, that... Isn't this on some level always the case? I mean, and we're talking about the fact that this is not a new concept, right? Like, this has been around for a long, long time. What is the calculus here on continuing to do your civic duty and paying taxes to support continuing? hopefully what is a continually functioning government versus your personal beliefs getting involved. I feel like it's a tough balance to be like, when is enough enough to decide that you really want to pull out your funding? Yeah, I mean, it's... It's about priorities. I mean, Christina said she's not opposed to paying taxes, as I'm sure all of us are. We want those things spent on health care and SNAP benefits, education. And I think, yeah, you have to calculate, though, the risks and decide what steps are right for you. It's not for everyone. But I also think as a greater number as a national movement.

occurs, it's going to be harder and harder. The IRS budget has been cut by like 25%. They don't have as much staff. If there are millions and millions of people not paying taxes, that creates a buffer. I mean, a lot of times with these questions, we have this collective action problem. come up where it's like until you have a pivotal mass, it feels hopeless sometimes. But I would say we could come back in a year and it could be like everyone's talking about it. And so a lot of times these movements take a while, you know, to build up. Once it becomes normalized, then we could be in a whole different conversation. Yeah, I feel like this is potentially the beginning of this coming back as a thing. Andy, I know you had mentioned that you... Express your opposition to the Gulf War in 1991 on your 1040. Now you're showing how old I am. Yeah, no, back in, yeah, that first Gulf War, I was at protest in Seattle. I remember a big rally in front of Seattle Central College. And yeah, on the top of my tax forum, I wrote, I am filing this in protest against military spending on this war. They never got back to me. They didn't send agents and fedores to my door, luckily. I always. I've never met an IRS person in person, but. They must be wearing a fedora, yes. Well, let's hope that they can't send those fedora-clad folks to everyone's door for all of those folks participating in the tax strike. And I will be very curious to see how many people go through with filing but not paying. Let's take a break. And when we come back, let's talk about polyamory.

So this might not be a sentence that has been uttered often in the English language, but taxes got me thinking about polyamory. So hear me out on this link. Tax filings are set up in a pretty rigid way, as you all have probably encountered. So you can say on the form that you're single, that you're married filing jointly. that you're married filing individually. I feel like the implication of, I mean, our whole social structure, but especially our taxes, is very much defined by a family or a household being two adults and then dependents. And it's really not set up for other structures. But obviously, there are other structures. And I know Seattle City Council for a while was considering introducing a proposal to protect discrimination against polyamorous people, which is currently... legal to do in all 50 states, like there aren't any specific protections for polyamorous families. So, Andy, I know you've written about this before. And I'm wondering if you can just start at the beginning if folks are not super familiar with what polyamory is and what kinds of discrimination polyamorous households are facing. Yeah, polyamory and consensual non-monogamy describe basically where people have more than one romantic or intimate partner and are open about it. It's all, you know, it's not cheating. It's all out in the open. And I personally have been doing it for 16 years and it's worked great for me. If you get denied housing or employment because you announce that, let's say you're a teacher and, you know, some parents, you know, start circulating the word that you have two partners, the school district can fire you. And there's no recourse almost anywhere in the United States. You know, you can, you can sue for gender discrimination or racial discrimination or your sexual identity, but if you have a different relationship structure, yeah, you can be fired, you can be denied housing. So there was a bill that sort of accidentally recognized domestic partnerships of more than two people in Somerville, Massachusetts. This is a few years back. And what activists found, they were really excited about this, but what they found is that domestic partnership recognition was useless if you could still be fired or you could lose your housing. And so that's how this movement grew. And bills were passed in Massachusetts, in the Bay Area, in California, and now here in the Northwest. Wait, so... accidentally? How is this accidentally put in there? I think someone in the city council meeting, they were just going over their domestic partnership legislation, and someone just sort of threw out, well, this just mentions two people. Why don't we, why don't we include more than that? I think they literally were just like, you know, it seems like a good idea. And everyone was like, okay, sure. And then suddenly polyamorous activists were like, oh my God. This is the first bill in the nation that actually recognizes this.

Huh. Okay. Yeah. Like, someone accidentally thought of us. This makes me think about other arrangements that fall outside of the traditional, you know, two parents and children structure, like just multifamily households, people who are maybe raising kids with friends or other partners who are not necessarily. you know, romantic partners even. Does this kind of extend to them as well? Yeah, the bills recognize diverse family and relationship structures. So that all of that stuff is included. And the movement for rights for polyamorous and non-monongous people has been very smart about this. And they recognize that, you know, very few families are actually the, you know. to different gendered parents and kids. Like you might have a sister who's helping you raise a child. You might have the, maybe even the biological father. You say you have, you know, a lesbian partnership. And some of those folks are actually like in a platonic partnership with the biological father. And those aren't recognized. They aren't acknowledged. And there's just so many of those types of relationships. And people shouldn't be denied housing or get fired from their job because they do those things. Yeah. So, okay, I won't tiptoe around this for much longer. I feel like polyamory has also been in the discourse because Seattle author Lindy West in her new book, Adult Braces, talks about the origins of her relationship, shows she's on a polyamorous relationship. What has the discourse around this brought to mind for you all about polyamory in popular culture? Like, do you feel like attitudes towards polyamory have changed in recent years? Or do you feel like people are... you know, bringing misconceptions to the table and this conversation that has been happening. I'll let you go first guy because I got a lot to say. Yeah. I mean, I feel like personally I've seen more discourse about polyamoring in the last couple years, last 10 years than previously. And I think it has to do in part with, um, you know, the queer community being accepted more and more. The two are interlinked in some ways. Like, I think a lot of times queer people are more open to, like, non-monogamy just because they don't have the same heteronormative expectations on them. So I honestly, like, I feel like the Pacific Northwest is like, maybe like the best place to start looking at these laws. We have led before on discrimination protections like against caste, you know, especially in South Asian communities here in Seattle. So it would make sense to prohibit discrimination. I feel like also often ordinances in law really try and enshrine some kind of social norm as well, right? Like I think it really sends a message of like, Okay, legally you can't do this, but also in a, like, more indirect way, this is just an acceptable thing to do. We acknowledge that this exists, and we want to grant people protections for doing this. So, Andy, I know you said you have a lot of thoughts on how polyamory has showed up in...

culture lately, lay it on us. I mean, I've not read Lindy's book. In general, polyamory coverage in the press tends to be sensational. They focus on, you know, throuples that, you know, there's like, you know, these very hot-looking people, or they focus on the drama or they include that, those stock photos of the, like, the six feet in the bed, you know, like, you know, like, and I just like, no, we'll stop. I mean, the truth is a lot of polyamory is actually kind of boring, right? It's, you know, you're working out relationships with your partners, and yes, there might be drama, and there's going to have to be a lot of communication and a lot of boundary setting. And, you know, no one is going to publish a memoir about how polyamory is going just perfectly, and all your metamores get along, and you go out to dinner and go to movies and go to shows. Like, they're going to want to see where there's some struggle. And, you know, a memoir is about that. Her memoir certainly has that. And it's hard. It's hard to transition from monogamy to non-monogamy. I did it, and it requires lots of communication, lots of boundaries, lots of therapy and self-work. Everyone gets to make... their non-monogamy or their polyamory the way they want to. That's the thing that's amazing about is you get to set your own rules and you get to say, you know, this is how I'm going to live this. If people are starting to feel pressured to go into that or they're reluctant to go into it, it's a bad sign generally. Non-monogamy and polyamory is not a way to fix a dysfunctional relationship. I've seen it happen a lot and it doesn't work. And yeah. I saw that a few weeks ago, the stranger published a roundup of Dan Savage letters about what he calls PUD, polyamory under duress. That kind of speaks to what you are saying, you know, like when even one partner is not completely on board in the beginning, that can be really tough. And I know that that's obviously been the center of a lot of the discourse. So I'm wondering one question I have is like, I think. There's a lot of, you know, traditionally like conservative communities that have practiced, you know, like polyamry, like specifically polygamy. And like, does this mean that like we got to just stop judging each other? Like, is some of it kosher and some of it not? Some of us in Seattle here come from a very secular, liberal, you know, bias. So. Yeah, I read an interesting study a while back that said that I think the estimate is about 5% of people in the United States identify some sort of polyamory or non-monogamy. And they found that across the board, that number... crossed racial lines, across class lines, political lines even. So you have, like, you know, people who identify as MAGA Republicans who have some sort of relationship structure like this. You know, the traditional swinger culture, you know, which is, you know, you're a married person, married couple, generally heterosexual couple, and you just play together with other couples like that. That exists, and it's existed for a long time. So I think these bills are recognizing that we get to define our relationships and our family structures however we want to.

Yeah. I mean, I think also one thing to consider about whatever relationship arrangement there is, is that regardless of what the overall structure is, there are always good and bad relationships and good and bad or healthy or unhealthy relationship dynamics in terms of who has power and whose needs are being met. And... I'll maybe leave it there. So to bring it back around to my original thought pattern here with wondering about taxes and polyamory, how do taxes work for a polyamorous household, Andy? Oh, you file individually. I mean, we're all, you know, we're all, you know, I mean, we're all relationship anarchists when it comes to the IRS. We're all on our own. I mean, no, I mean, actually, that's not true. I actually, I was married for a while and I did file jointly, but I was dating people who either were, you know, they chose on their own how they wanted to file. Okay, interesting. Question answered. Thank you. All right. Let's take a break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about these recent cuts to the U.S. Forest Service.

You know, something actually similar happened during the first Trump presidency when they moved the headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management to Grand Junction. And similarly, employees were not sure for a while who was going to get moved, what was going to happen with their positions. And functionally, that means that a lot of people lost their jobs or decided to take some kind of early retirement or... just decided to leave altogether because they didn't want to uproot their lives and move elsewhere. As soon as Trump took office for the second time, his administration also began gutting these environmental protections, as you both were alluding to here, slashing funding. They're making it harder for these agencies to do their jobs. And they say that they're expecting local and regional organizations like the Washington Trails Association to do that maintenance, especially now that we're seeing that. huge cut in trail maintenance funding. What effect does that have on those organizations? Yeah, those organizations are stretched thin already. I mean, volunteer groups are great. And what Washington Trails Association does is fabulous. But they also need help from the Forest Service to log out those places, get, you know, bigger equipment in to help with trails, fix the roads that get to those trails. And volunteers can't fix those at all.

Again, it's indicative of the government trying to do to slash these agencies. The Forest Service also cut a ton of its research facilities, which these are important. research centers that study the effects of climate change, endangered species, forest health, and those are all being cut because what really they want to do is clear cut. Yeah, and we love our trails in the Pacific Northwest. I love to hike, and it's just going to make it harder and harder to get up there and to get to those beautiful places. Yeah, last year I actually edited a piece for High Country News, which talked about the impacts on the enchantments from those U.S. Forest Service layoffs. And at that time, Trump had also gutted the equine stock program, which I think is one of those really niche things a lot of people don't think about, right? But essentially this means that there were no more mules that could carry supplies into the backcountry to do trail work that people needed to do to maintain those trails. And the writer of this piece, She and Kim, who's a wonderful journalist, wrote that the business of trail work is like dominoes. When one tile falls, the next one lurches, and the effects cascade downstream. The Forest Service authorizes projects and provides much of the funding, logistical support, and institutional knowledge needed to complete them. while trail associations like the WTA contribute crucial labor and technical expertise. So, yeah, when you're getting out there to do some volunteer trail work with the Washington Trails Association, someone has got to coordinate all that. And like you said, Andy, there's a lot of setup that needs to happen and infrastructure that needs to be maintained for people to even access those trails in the first place. And I mean, I think we've talked. basically every summer for the last maybe five years about how underfunded lots of parts of the Washington outdoors are, especially the enchantments, which has seen a dramatic, like hundreds of percent's increase in visitors as people have found out about it through social media and seeing all the gorgeous photos of the core zone. And we just need people to be working on those trails since they're getting such heavy impact in all of the poop.

that people are putting in those toilets, which is kind of one of those unsexy things. Right, that's the unsexy thing. You need, you know, Rangers to do those things and process those, you know, the permits and enforce the permits. And it's already underfunded. And, you know, we, every year we buy our trail passes. Unfortunately, the National Parks and National Force once now has Trump's face on it, which I've heard actually you can't even stick her over. Really? Yeah. But yeah, we pay all this money and we're getting nothing back from it. That's the thing that's really frustrating. It's the Instagram effect. These are beautiful places. People see them and they want to go up and you have to help prevent them from being loved to death. And that requires Rangers and it requires, you know, people working in these areas to enforce that. Yeah. You know, considering how popular these sites have become, it is quite mystifying to see. these cuts. And I think one other thing, you know, the idea of like moving the headquarters to Salt Lake City, you know, it sounds good on paper and I think... You know, decentralizing some of these resources kind of makes sense. But, you know, I think it's a way to sell actually the gutting of the agency. It's actually going to hurt a lot of states. In the long term, the economies are going to suffer because of, you know, the natural environment being desecrated. Yeah, I know one other major project of the Trump administration has been trying to repeal the roadless rule. Basically, I mean, have either of you been following that? And can you say a little bit about what that proposes? Yeah, I've been watching it. It goes back a long ways, and it basically sets aside there are wilderness areas where you can't bring any vehicles in. And those are just foot or, as you say, mule or horse traffic. And then there are all these areas that are still critically important ecosystems that they're limiting any new roads in, limiting any resource extraction. And these are really critical buffers. So these are the places. where, you know, they're headwaters of streams that affect, you know, Chinook salmon. They're places that are really critical habitat. And they need to be protected. And the Trump administration is just like, well, let's just put some new roads in. And new roads actually increase fire danger. There's evidence for that. So these are really important, important buffer areas. And they want to just pave them over. Yeah, so the roadless rule has been in place for the last 25 years, and it protects roughly 58 million acres of U.S. land from having new roads built on them. And, yeah, huge impacts in so many directions. And it was huge news last summer when the Trump administration first announced their intent to repeal this rule. And, you know, because...

federal government moves at a glacial pace in some ways, at least in terms of repealing federal protections, it's still ongoing. But it does seem like that's going to go forward. And also, of course, by building those roads, the idea is that it will make it much easier to... log those areas instead of having them just be wilderness areas. So, Andy, I know you've written saying that you think the lands should now be returned to states. So this federal land, which is held by the U.S. Forest Service, I know you didn't used to think this, and you've changed your mind on this recently. Very recently. Why? You know, there's been a long movement, an old movement, to shift federal land control to the states. Unfortunately, that movement is led by the sagebrush rebellion. It's a bunch of Westerners who want to increase grazing rights. They want to increase mining. They want to increase timber production. And so I was always opposed to it. And I, you know, I still support. I think the federal government is well funded and it's got, you know, built-in protections. But if the federal government is gutting and destroying the Forest Service, if they're intent on logging out, they want to log out 4 billion board feet before 2028. If they're intent on doing that, then I think our states, Washington and Oregon, should encourage Congress to hand it over, hand over control, because I think we can manage it better. I recognize that that's going to be bad news for places like Idaho and Utah where the states want to just. destroy those forests. But the Trump administration already wants to do that. And so why don't we here in Washington state take local control and put those protections in place. Don't log old growth. Make sure that we're protecting endangered salmon and all those things. Guy, what do you think? I would say I'm generally skeptical of states' rights. Historically, it's been usually the reactionary position on a lot of things. I would say, you know, if we can support upholding treaty rights. Most of the land in the West, what is the Western U.S. is covered by different treaties, you know, the right to maintain fishing and hunting. You know, that has to be stewarded and upheld for many generations in the future. And that implies, you know, a preservation and reforestation in some cases and better land management. So I think you could make a constitutional argument that. all the forests in the Western U.S. are protected by treaty rights. And so that is how I would push, but I do think the state should play a bigger role, like if it can be a constructive player. But yeah, I think the bureaucracy of the federal government is probably still the lesser evil. in my opinion. Yeah, as long as the bureaucracy is still in place, I mean, and they're dismantling it pretty quickly. And a guy, I totally agree about involving tribes. I think that's critical. And tribes have been managing these forests since time immemorial. They know how they work and have wisdom about that. And I know there's some state programs that are, you know, incorporating indigenous burn practices. And yeah, if there was a transition, there's no reason that tribes shouldn't be a critical.

part of that. You know, as this news has just landed, it seems like there are still a lot of details to be worked out about what exactly this means and who exactly is even affected by this big move. But heading into peak use time of the year for Forest Service land in terms of recreation, I think it is quite possible we're going to see some direct impacts in coming months here. All right, well, that's all for today here at CityCast, Seattle. Andy Ankelson, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having you. And Gaya Run, great to see you again. Thank you. I'm your host, Jane See Who, and listeners, we want to hear from you. Particularly, I would love to hear from people who have been affected by this U.S. Forest Service decision. If you work for the Forest Service or work for an organization that is going to be affected by this decision, I would love to feature... what your job is and how it's going to change as a result of these cuts. You can always send us an email at Seattle at citycast.fm. You can also text us or leave us a voicemail on the citycast hotline at 206-8803931. Until next time, see ya, Seattle.