By DANIEL WALTERS/InvestigateWest

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — The first time Denys’s children heard fireworks go off in Spokane, Washington, they were terrified. His kids had grown up about 20 miles from the Russian border, in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, and they knew too well the booms of Russian missile attacks and screeching sounds of Ukrainian air defenses.

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In 2023, after Russians attacked the hospital where his youngest daughter, Olivia, had recently been born, Denys knew he needed a way out, and fast.

That’s when a former neighbor, living in an American city on the other side of the world, offered him an escape:

“He called me and said, ‘We have a nice program — Uniting for Ukraine,’” Denys recalled. “If you want to come, grab your family and move.”

Denys, who asked his last name not be used, leapt at the opportunity. He’s stayed in Spokane for the past three years, getting used to a place where explosions are simply celebrations of freedom. He’d spent a half year learning English, and then drawing on his Ukrainian experience making boilers, he swiftly got a job welding construction beams at Metals Fabrication Co.

Like so many of the 240,000 Ukrainians who have immigrated to this country through the Uniting for Ukraine program, his future here is precarious.

Launched by former President Joe Biden in 2022, Uniting for Ukraine is a “humanitarian parole” program. It allowed Ukrainian immigrants to temporarily stay and work in America, two years at a time, so long as they found an American sponsor willing to help support them.

In June, however, Denys lost his job — not because he did anything wrong, but because the federal government failed to reauthorize his right to work. Under Donald Trump’s administration, which is targeting humanitarian parole programs affecting nearly 1.8 million migrants, renewals have ground to a halt.

“I’m very worried about my family,” Denys said. “I need to buy food. I have three kids.”

Along with freezing the Biden-era parole programs for Ukrainian refugees, the administration completely withdrew parole protections for more than 530,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, and over 9,000 from Afghanistan.

Many Ukrainians are taking notice of what’s happening to other refugees. In Spokane, two Venezuelan immigrants who had come here legally through humanitarian parole programs were jailed and slated for deportation, despite applying for asylum. When they showed up for a scheduled meeting in June with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they were arrested by ICE and carted off to Tacoma’s immigration detention center. A mass protest resulted in 30 arrests, federal charges for nine demonstrators, and national media attention.

Unlike Latin American, Haitian and Afghan immigrants, most Ukrainians don’t have to worry about racial profiling. They haven’t been tarred with wild falsehoods about eating pets from the presidential debate stage. But while Ukrainians were never the primary target of the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle Biden’s immigration legacy, they’ve been caught in the crossfire. At the mercy of a rapidly changing and dysfunctional federal bureaucracy, many are paralyzed by the uncertainty — faced with a choice of waiting for a government response, working illegally, surviving on charity, or leaving America entirely.

“There’s this no man’s land,” said Spokane immigration attorney Sam Smith. “There’s this in-between that they’re stuck in. There’s no good solution for them.”

Frozen in place

Whether because of its climate or its people, Spokane, a mid-sized Washington city on the Idaho border, has been a hub for Ukrainian immigration since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine brought a new surge of nearly 3,000 Ukrainians, many who quickly got to work establishing their new lives.

At a coffee stop started by another Ukrainian immigrant, Maksym Bedenko proudly hands InvestigateWest the business card for The Old Preacher, a small barbershop business he started in 2023. He was lucky enough to re-enroll in the Uniting for Ukraine program in August of last year, when it was still easy to get re-approval. But he knows a slew of other people, including Amazon workers, factory workers and caregivers, who have all lost their jobs.

The second Trump administration had launched with a salvo against nearly every aspect of the immigration system. Executive orders banned new refugees, severed contracts with refugee resettlement organizations and put any renewals of those with programs like Uniting for Ukraine on hold.

During the campaign, Trump had demonized Biden’s humanitarian parole programs, which had resulted in a surge of immigrants into some cities. On his first day back in office, Trump issued an executive order to “terminate all categorical parole programs” that were contrary to his policies.

Three days later, a freeze order went out from the acting director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: Stop processing all Uniting for Ukraine applications, including from those trying to renew their parole status. No parole status, no new rights to work.

Spokane Slavic Association Vice President Zhanna Oberemok, who immigrated to Spokane shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, said drivers for her husband’s trucking company recently started seeing some of their workers lose their commercial driver’s licenses as their work authorizations expired.

“Within the next week or so, we’re going to be losing about seven drivers because their driver license just became inactive,” Oberemok said.

Employers were frustrated to have to let perfectly good workers go.

Sara Weaver-Lundberg, vice president for Metals Fabrication Co., said by email that Denys had been a “gilded unicorn,” the rare, impossible-to-find experienced worker, and losing him “put a strain on our production.”

He was dependable, she said, always willing to work overtime when they needed it. She reached out to her corporate attorney and contacted her congressman to find help for Denys, but so far, neither route has been effective.

“I cannot imagine having to leave my country because it was no longer safe for me and my family,” Weaver-Lundberg said. “Denys did just that — he left Ukraine and entered this country legally. … Now, because of a pause in the program or backlog, he is living in this country with no job.”

Every two weeks, Denys had been sending money to his mother — still in Ukraine, where the prices of groceries and utilities have skyrocketed because of the war. He had been hoping to bring her to the United States through Uniting for Ukraine. Now, that’s out of the question, too.

Without a job, he’s been relying on the generosity of his sponsor — his former neighbor — to pay for food and rent for himself, his wife and his three kids. He’s waiting for a phone call from the state government to see if he’s eligible for unemployment benefits. He noted how he’d been turned from someone contributing to tax revenue through his work into someone costing the government money.

At a table at the Spokane refugee resettlement nonprofit Thrive International, Denys speaks through a translator, a woman who herself came here through the Uniting for Ukraine program.

“I know some families, they got mortgages,” Denys said. “They have loans for their cars. They have huge bills every single month.”

They’re left with an ugly decision: Provide for their family or follow the law. It’s a choice Denys hasn’t made and doesn’t want to.

“I should probably find some job and work under the table, but I don’t want to do that,” Denys said. “But it’s like the government pushes us to do that. We don’t want to do that. We want to work legally and follow the law.”

Pushing back

Elsewhere in Spokane, a local doctor has been fighting for months for a remedy in federal court. In February, Kyle Varner, an activist who spent a month along the Ukrainian border caring for refugees and who’d sponsored nearly 50 Venezuelan immigrants, joined a lawsuit to challenge the new policies, writing that he feels “that there is something fundamentally and morally wrong with treating people differently and giving them fewer rights simply because they were not born in this country.”

Along with immigrants from Ukraine, Nicaragua, Haiti and Afghanistan, he asked the court to force the Trump administration to start processing humanitarian parole applications again.

So far, the verdict has been mixed: New parole applications remain frozen, and in May, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to order a half-million Latin American immigrants to leave the country, a decision that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned could lead to “social and economic chaos.”

But thanks to a lower court ruling, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services sent out a memo on June 9, officially lifting the freeze on processing parole renewals. In theory, Ukrainian immigrants like Denys would begin to see their right to work restored. So far, few have.

“We’ve seen some cases denied. And some cases be asked for additional evidence,” said Matthew Soerens, the policy director for World Relief, a national refugee resettlement organization. “But at least the folks that we’re helping, we are not aware of cases being approved for humanitarian parole renewal from Ukraine.”

Smith, the local immigration attorney, says the parole system remains functionally frozen. He suspects it’s a matter of priorities, that the Trump administration is dumping more resources into enforcement and kicking people out instead of helping people to stay.

“It’s pretty clear what the administration thinks about … immigrants and immigration generally,” Smith said.

Alternate routes

Many Ukrainian immigrants have lit upon another strategy, one that uses the glacial pace of the federal immigration bureaucracy to their advantage. Some are filing for asylum — arguing they have a well-founded fear of political, racial or religious persecution from their home country.

And while an asylum application can sometimes take five to 10 years to process, immigrants can get work authorization while they wait.

There’s just one big hitch: It still takes six months, once you apply for asylum, to get work permits. Even if Denys applied today, he wouldn’t be able to get the right to work again until March.

Even then, Smith, the attorney, hesitates to offer any kind of certainty. Lately, federal policy has been chaotic enough that it’s hard to provide long-term assurances.

Often, the government hasn’t formally communicated at all about changes in policy, and when it has, it’s sometimes been a mistake. In April, according to The Washington Post, the Department of Homeland Security had emailed many Ukrainians across the country telling them that their humanitarian parole had been canceled, and threatening that if they didn’t leave the United States, “the federal government will find you.” The message was an error, but it was sent out so broadly that even Smith — an attorney, not an immigrant — got the email.

“There’s a lack of clarity all throughout the system, which makes an already difficult system to navigate even more difficult and perilous,” Smith said. “It paralyzes the system, but it also paralyzes people.”

Appealing to Trump

In Congress, there have been a handful of stabs at trying to make things easier for Ukrainian immigrants — a Senate bill proposes letting Ukrainians on humanitarian parole continue to work, while a bill in the U.S. House would give the Ukrainian parolees a way to become permanent residents. But while both bills have bipartisan supporters, neither has gotten much traction. The Republican Party has been starkly divided on Ukraine, the traditional anti-Russian wing in conflict with a growing isolationist wing.

Spokane’s Republican congressman, U.S. Rep. Michael Baumgartner, embodies that tension. In February, after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was booted from the White House following a combative meeting with Trump, Baumgartner called for Zelenskyy’s resignation.

But in April, he also co-authored a bipartisan letter calling for the Trump administration to continue to offer Ukrainian immigrants protection.

“Many of them have found employment, pay taxes, have their children enrolled in school, and are positively contributing to their new communities,” the letter states. “Revoking their protections and sending them back to a war-torn country before peace is secured would be devastating for both them and their families.”

Baumgartner said he did not get a response from the administration.

Still, he stressed to InvestigateWest that “the Ukrainian population have really been model immigrants. They’re hard-working folks, they are entrepreneurs, small business owners.” He was hopeful that Trump could use his tough-on-immigration reputation as a way to bring about reform of a broken system.

In a dark way, Oberemok with the Spokane Slavic Association finds a reason for optimism in the recent news about the stabbing of a young Ukrainian refugee woman in North Carolina. Trump, in his social media post calling for the death penalty for the “animal” who murdered her, had characterized her as a “beautiful young lady from Ukraine, who came to America searching for peace and safety.”

“It’s already giving us hope that he’s not planning on sending us back home,” Oberemok said.

So far, Trump has shown little sign of making it easier for immigrants. In an interview this month, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow declared that the administration plans to make it even harder, and more expensive, for immigrants to get work authorization. He accused the Biden administration of using work permits as a magnet to attract droves of foreigners to the United States.

“To the extent that we can shut off work authorization once we terminate these paroles, we’ve done that,” Edlow said. “You may be eligible for a work permit, but that doesn’t mean anymore that that’s going to result in you being able to remain in this country.”

For now, Ukrainian immigrants continue living under what Mariia Chava, Denys’s sponsor and former neighbor, calls “the big question mark.”

“What will be tomorrow?” she said. “Nobody knows.”

Denys knows he can’t return to Ukraine, where war is still raging and where many see those who left as traitors.

He loves the beauty of nature in Spokane, driving on America’s wide open roads. But he can’t live in a place where he has to fear deportation, where he’s not allowed to provide for his family without breaking the law, where he has no clear path to becoming legal.

“I love this country,” Denys said. “Just give me a chance to work.”

This story was originally published in InvestigateWest and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.

There’s a certain irony in the fact that President Donald Trump announced his silly $15 billion defamation suit against The New York Times scant days after a federal appellate court dismissed a similar claim against Fox News. That lawsuit was filed by Nina Jankowicz, the former head of the Biden administration’s short-lived Disinformation Governance Board.

The lawsuits suffer from a common defect: They seek to turn hyperbolic criticism of a government official into grounds for civil damages. The court was right in tossing Jankowicz’s suit; Trump’s should meet a similar fate — and quickly. It should be exceptionally difficult for those who serve in government to sue their critics; for presidents, it should be hardest of all.

The Trump lawsuit is leading the news, and it’s easy to see why. He seeks $15 billion in damages for a litany of grievances against the Times, which, in his telling, has been “spreading false and defamatory content” about him, during both his terms and in between. Yet on even a quick reading of the lengthy complaint, nearly everything cited is either fair comment, opinion, or for other reasons not actionable.

To understand the problem with Trump’s suit, it might be helpful to turn first to last Friday’s opinion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which affirmed the dismissal of Jankowicz’s claim that she’d been defamed by Fox News. The Disinformation Governance Board — could one imagine a more Orwellian name? — was an advisory committee to the Department of Homeland Security, announced with fanfare in April 2022, and then, in the wake of fierce criticism, was “paused” the following month and dismantled that August.

Jankowicz, who headed the board for all of three weeks, was targeted early and often by critics who warned that censorship of American citizens would not be far behind. In her suit, she alleged that Fox News, both while she led the board and after she left, broadcast commentary that defamed her.

The trial court dismissed Jankowicz’s action, and on appeal the Third Circuit was unsympathetic. The panel noted first that criticism of a government agency isn’t defamatory and explained that to punish a news outlet for its choice to make a particular official the face of that criticism is an “attack on core free expression rights.” In short, much of what Fox News said about Janowicz wasn’t actually about her. The rest, the court wrote, consisted mostly of predictions, speculation, or opinion — or was substantially true. All of those are traditional grounds for rejecting defamation claims. In the case of speech aimed at government officials, they should be interpreted as broadly as possible. To do less is to cast a shadow over the most fundamental right of a free people: the right to criticize those who govern.

Which brings us back to Trump’s lawsuit. The defendants are not just the Times, but also several of its reporters, along with Penguin Random House, publisher of a recent best-selling book by those reporters about Trump and his businesses, based largely on articles published in the Times.

The complaint, although heavy on words, is light on substance. It begins with 20-odd pages of pointless but quotable commentary — a familiar if unfortunate device these days as lawyers try to get headlines. The next 20-odd pages boast of Trump’s achievements throughout his career. Most of this is in service to a narrative that we might paraphrase this way: The Times so dislikes Trump that it published false statements in an effort to deny him reelection.

Clearly, the Times cannot be punished either for disliking him or for trying to defeat him. That leaves only the claim that he was defamed. Because Trump is a public figure — arguably the most public figure in the world — he must show that the alleged falsehoods were published by the Times and Penguin Random House either with knowledge that they were false, or with reckless disregard for the truth.

It’s hard to see how he can do that. Here, as in Janowicz’s complaint, almost everything Trump alleges is either opinion, prediction, or speculation. For example, when the Times and the book questioned Trump’s business acumen, the complaint responded by pointing to investments that turned a tidy profit. But the fact that the purchase of Mar-a-Lago has multiplied its value many times over doesn’t make the opinion “false.”

To see the court’s logic, imagine that I were to write, “President Trump seems to sue people just to get back at them.” That’s clearly a statement of my opinion, fully protected under the First Amendment. It would not be rendered “false” simply because he won or settled a few lawsuits.

Similarly, the complaint disputes the reporters’ assertions about how Trump became famous, who was responsible for his success, and whether he paid adequate attention to the financial details of his businesses. (The lawsuit also charges the Times and Penguin with implying that Trump’s father Fred, in preparing to transfer his fortune to his son, jiggered the numbers. Even if this statement were defamatory (and I’m not saying it is), this does not appear to be a statement about his son Donald and therefore is not actionable.) All of these would seem clearly to be statements of speculation or opinion.

Another example: Trump alleges that the Times editorial board, in endorsing Kamala Harris, “asserted hypocritically and without evidence that President Trump would ‘defy the norms and dismantle the institutions that have made our country strong.’” That sort of allegation, too, arose in Jankowicz’s case, where the complaint argued that Fox News had predicted that she would “surveil” and “censor” Americans. The Third Circuit concluded that “the vast majority” of the statements made about the plaintiff personally were not actionable because they represented “speculation and conjecture about Jankowicz’s motives, goals, and future actions, of which the truth or falsity were not readily verifiable.” When speculation is “laced with hyperbole” — which is essentially what Trump alleges here — the case for dismissal is even stronger.

The short of it is that government has no business trying to regulate speech about itself — and that includes lawsuits by public officials who dislike what the news media says about them. I’m not saying that anybody needs to grow a thicker skin; rather, public servants must recognize that our ability to say cruel, even nasty things about them is part of what is meant by freedom.

I’m no fan of the mockery and vituperation that so often passes for public dialogue. But I’m even less of a fan of punishing those who engage in it. As the Supreme Court wrote some 84 years ago, “it is a prized American privilege to speak one’s mind, although not always with perfect good taste, on all public institutions.”

And, as the courts might now add, about the people who run them.

Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of law at Yale University and author of “Invisible: The Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster.”

 

‘In my opinion …’

In light of the horrid assassination of Charlie Kirk, and, unfortunately, similar murders in the past few years, the after cry is always “tone down the rhetoric.” Easier said than done, but perhaps not if we go to a speech pattern used by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

So often President Eisenhower prefaced his remarks with “in my opinion.” As a young person I used to wonder why he would weaken his argument in this way, but as I grew older and knew a little bit more about life, I began to realize that phrase was absolute genius on his part.

He was commander of the Allied Forces and he had to work with some very large egos, DeGaulle and Montgomery come to mind. When you say “in my opinion.” the idea is right where it belongs, with you, and it opens a respectful dialogue.

I suggest we all go to our mirrors and repeat 10 times a day until it becomes a habit, “in my opinion.” Likewise on social media, it should be a default prefix on all posts. Sometimes making little changes can lead to big results.

Rhea Sherburne Nyquist, West St. Paul

 

A model for civil discourse

One lesson left behind by Charlie Kirk that Americans of all political beliefs should duplicate and embrace are the open-house dialogue and debate sessions that he held on college campuses across the country.

Anyone can watch these debate sessions on YouTube and see how courteous and respectful these debates were. Charlie had a big sign at these gatherings that read “prove me wrong,” and he encouraged students with opposing views to debate him.

I hope that our young people follow this open-dialogue model for civil discourse instead of the shouting and disrespectful antics seen on TV and created by their parents’ generation.

Corby Pelto, Minneapolis

 

Anger only incites more anger

I am writing about a recent column written by Thomas Friedman, “A plea for President Trump with a fragile country on the edge.”

I could not agree more with the premise that all top leaders of both parties must come together, not as Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives; but as Americans, to stop the political violence rocking this country.

Enough of the labeling and blaming “far left” because the violence comes from both sides. Anger and blame from top leadership only incites more anger, violence and divisions.

Nancy Nichols, Oak Park Heights

 

Encouraging dissent

Those who say Charlie Kirk was a Fascist and a Nazi show their intolerant ignorance. Fascists and Nazis abhor dissent. Charlie Kirk was just the opposite — he encouraged and welcomed dissent. Shame on those who find joy in his death.

Donald Theissen, Woodbury

 

Blame on the political scoreboard

In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, his friend, Vice President JD Vance, claims he wants “unity,” yet in the same breath warns of the rise in “leftist” violence. The Hortmans were assassinated by a right-wing conservative earlier this summer. JD Vance does not want unity; he wants blame to be prominently displayed on a political scoreboard. Couldn’t he just warn of the rise in political violence if he wanted to bring unity?

Ryan McCabe, St. Paul

 

A long line of needless tragedies

The assassination of Charlie Kirk was a brutal and savage act but is just one chapter in a long line of needless tragedies and a symptom of a much greater loss. That loss is the compound loss of widely held values of civility, of human decency, of respect for the opinions of others, of Judeo-Christian morality, of the sanctity of human life, of public decorum and love for our country. Charlie’s “sin” was to fight vigorously, with the weapon of his words, to save and restore these values, and for that “sin” a courageous and noble man was slain. And we all died a bit with Charlie, lowering us ever deeper into a depraved and debased culture, ever closer to the threat voiced by Ben Franklin, who, when asked after the Constitutional Convention “what form of government has been created?”, stated “a republic, if you can keep it”.

It is, and has been, disgusting to hear many prominent senators and representatives, political candidates and entertainment personalities speak publicly, with an obviously coordinated political strategy employing the foulest and most vulgar language possible on multiple occasions, to express their hatred for President Trump. We hear politicians urging us to “fight harder”, to “get in their face”, to “be more aggressive”, to “harass them in restaurants and other public places”. One washed-up entertainer spoke of “blowing up the White House” when George Bush was president, another of cutting out Bush’s heart, and of course we have had attempts on the life of President Trump. We even heard a call for silent prayer for Charlie and his family loudly shouted down in the U.S. House chamber. We hear ad-hominem attacks on those who dare to hold opposing views, but seldom do we hear cordial and meaningful debate on controversial issues, as we routinely heard from Charlie. Let’s debate the merits of socialism and capitalism, open borders, abortion, transgender rights and therapies, of deficit spending, of tariffs and taxes, and do so civilly. We can learn from each other only when we share information and opinion.

Yes, there has been inexcusable violence from right wing extremists as well as from the left, and there has been uncivil mockery of left wing policies as there was of President Biden, but what you haven’t heard from the right is direct calls for violence as we hear routinely from the leaders on the left (and let me be clear that it is the leaders fomenting this hatred of the opposition. I am confident that rank-and-file liberals truly want what is best the country and for all of us).

In conclusion, there is fault on both sides, and both sides have spoken often of the “threat to democracy” posed by the other party. I ask what could be a greater threat to democracy than the murder of those with whom we disagree?

Charlie Kirk knew the answers to those problems noted above, as did the French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, who said “Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.” Let us heed those words, all of us together, with the courage and spirit of Charlie Kirk.

Richard Powell, Owatonna

 

An oasis of oaks and fond memories

I happened by Newell Park recently, and it rekindled fond memories.

There, in the1950s, a small St. Paul business named Lincoln Equipment, now gone, held its annual company picnic in late August for workers and their families.  Within earshot of the Minnesota State Fair, I remember hearing screams from the midway and roaring race cars, now gone, circling inside the Grandstand.  All acoustic ambience enhancing our gunnysack races, tug-of-war, unlimited hotdogs, etc. that day.

I remember the coldness of repeatedly dipping my hands into the huge trough of ice water until I found an ever-precious bottle of grape pop.

I remember the men, Bob (my dad), Vern, Ray, Don, Ken, Fran and more, now gone, and how they patiently allowed me to join in their softball game.

And the treasure hunt amidst the gently rolling hills adorned with green grass and acorns from the many ornate oak trees, now with enormous ankle-drooping limbs. And how the majesty of this gnarled art shaded those below at the famous horseshoe pits, now gone, site of the climactic event – the men’s horseshoe tournament. The women seemed to enjoy this as much as the men, based on their cheers and playful heckling.  No one seemed to mind the attention toward the men, perhaps because a decade earlier these same men battled as boys in World War II.

Anyway, thank you, St. Paul Parks and Recreation, for preserving Newell Park, a true oasis of oaks – not gone!

James R. Carey, Little Canada

Former Guns N’ Roses drummer Steven Adler will headline a fundraiser this weekend for the Yellow Ribbon Alliance of the Lower St. Croix Valley.

Drummer Steven Adler waves during an April 15, 2012, performance after Guns N’ Roses’ induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak, File)

“Field of Bands” will be held noon to 8 p.m. Saturday at the Washington County Fairgrounds in Baytown Township. Also playing: Arch Allies, Wayward Boyz Klub and GNO (Girls Night Out). Adler and his band, who perform Guns N’ Roses classics, are scheduled to play from 6:30 to 8:15 p.m.

The fundraiser helps the Yellow Ribbon Alliance Lower St. Croix Valley provide scholarships for local graduating seniors; donate to organizations like Operation 23 to Zero, Patriot Assistance Dogs, and Homes For Our Troops; and host a Veterans’ Dinner each November, said Cindie Reiter, a member of the alliance.

The alliance also helps cover medical needs for a local family with a young child battling cancer; provides transportation for local Veterans needing medical care; carpentry and construction for families’ homes including plumbing/roofing, and has assisted a family clearing debris after a house fire, Reiter said.

Tickets are $31.80 in advance and $42.40 on the day of show; children 12 and under are free. Food trucks, wine and beer will be available at the event; no coolers will be allowed.

Attendees are asked to use the south entrance of the Washington County Fairgrounds on 40th Street and to bring their own chairs; limited picnic table seating is available. Parking is free.

New this year: No guns or weapons. A metal-detector wand will be used on all who enter.

For more information, go to 5cityyellowribbon.com.

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