Ten junior high school students and three adults from Nyuzen, Japan, Forest Grove's sister city, stopped at BJ's Coffee's pop-up inside Waltz Brewing on Friday morning, Oct. 30. Leading them is Kaori Okajima, who was hosted by then-Mayor Clifford Clark as a junior high school student when the exchange was young, said Nicole Nowlin, president of the Forest Grove Sister City Committee. Okajima is back in Forest Grove for the first time in more than 30 years, Nowlin said. "It kicked off technically in 1988, but was officially signed into being in 1989," Nowlin said. "Mayor Clark was the one who signed it into being, and we were lucky enough to have his son here with us for dinner last night." Clark's son brought photos of the original signing and newspaper articles, and he and Okajima talked about his parents and her experience, Nowlin said. Okajima is deputy director of the Town of Nyuzen's Marriage and Child-rearing Support Division. Her husband was hosted by committee volunteers around 2017, Nowlin said. "So these relationships very much can last for years, absolutely last for years," she said. "My high school had a sister school program, and I made my first Japanese friends when I was 14. We've been friends for 25 years." "And I have stayed with her family, I've surprised her mom in Japan, she surprised my parents at Disneyland," Nowlin said. Forest Grove and Nyuzen have been sister cities since 1988, according to the city of Forest Grove. It began as an exchange of ideas between two businesses half a world apart, Tektronix on the Forest Grove side and NEC on the Nyuzen side, the city's website said. Nyuzen is a town in Toyama Prefecture, northwest of Tokyo. Kohei Kamishima, a teacher at Kokuto Elementary School in Nyuzen, is one of the three adult chaperones. Two others work for the Town of Nyuzen, and the 10 students represent Nyuzen's junior high school students, he said. This is Kamishima's first trip to the United States, he said. Nowlin said this is year 37 of the exchange program. On Thursday, the students sat in on English, science and physical education classes at the Neil Armstrong Middle School, Kamishima said. The chaperones have also visited a nonprofit and SakeOne, the sake brewery in Forest Grove, where Kamishima tried the sake an employee recommended. "Very nice," he said. Asked what he wanted readers to know, Kamishima said the program is proof of the good relationship between the two cities, and that the visitors see a lot of Forest Grove and learn a lot. "And for Forest Grove, they also can know the Japanese feeling we think about," he said. "So this is a very nice opportunity to each other." Kohei Kamishima, a teacher at Kokuto Elementary School in Nyuzen, and junior high school students from Nyuzen at BJ's Coffee's pop-up inside Waltz Brewing on Oct. 30, 2026. Photos: Chas Hundley Members of the public can see the delegation off at 10 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 1, at the Community Auditorium, 1915 Main St., according to the committee. The committee always needs new host families, Nowlin said, and hosting is probably one of the easiest ways to have an exchange student in your home because the stay is only four or five nights. "It's pretty much always around Halloween. So we're happy to take applications all year long," she said. Nowlin said the committee would also love more volunteers, including a secretary for its board and people to handle social media. "There's lots of opportunities to help and to get involved even if you can't host," she said. Nowlin, a Pacific University graduate, joined the committee after earning her bachelor's degree, at the invitation of one of her Pacific teachers, Sandy Garcia. Garcia ran the committee for many years and died in 2020, Nowlin said. Nowlin is the committee's Japanese speaker. Within the next couple of months, the committee will know whether it is sending a delegation to Japan next year, Nowlin said. If it does, applications will open for community members. Information on hosting is on the Forest Grove/Cornelius Chamber of Commerce's sister cities page.

By Laura Nowlin • 4/5 stars

David Nowlin has voiced Sam across every single Telltale episode of Sam & Max and also tried his hands at cards in Poker Night 2. That's a lot of Sam! This m...

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The U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday denied the Trump administration's emergency request to implement a rule that would terminate gender-affirming care for transgender people incarcerated in federal priso...

2026年10月19日 TikTok、ドキュメンタリー映画「Musk」の広告アカウントを政治的内容を理由に永久停止。 イーロン・マスク氏を描く4時間のドキュメンタリー映画「Musk」（アカデミー賞受賞監督アレックス・ギブニー氏）の広告アカウントを、TikTokが停止した。The Hollywood Reporterによれば、配給会社Bleecker Streetは政治的内容を理由とする「永久停...

Attorneys representing transgender people in federal prisons urged the U.S. Supreme Court to preserve their access to gender-affirming care, including hormone therapy. In a 41-page brief filed October 8, attorney Li Nowlin-Sohl and other lawyers representing the prisoners argued that the justices should uphold an updated preliminary injunction issued this year by U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth. The order followed an injunction issued last year and blocked the Bureau of Prisons from enforcing a policy implementing President Donald Trump’s executive order denying gender-affirming care to transgender people in federal prisons. **Related** : Trump just rolled out a cruel anti-trans prison policy doctors are calling ‘dangerous’ “The district court issued a fact-bound, preliminary order based on its determination that BOP’s sudden reversal of its own longstanding policy of providing hormone therapy and social transition accommodations based on individual assessments of clinical need was arbitrary and capricious,” the attorneys wrote. The brief follows a request from the Trump administration last month to allow federal prisons to withdraw gender-affirming care from people in their custody. In an emergency application in the case _Trump v. Kingdom_ , administration attorneys asked the court to allow enforcement of a policy that would deny hormone therapy for gender dysphoria and require prison medical providers to taper patients off the treatment. Those policies implement an executive order Trump issued on the first day of his second term. In addition to directing that transgender people be housed in prisons according to their sex assigned at birth rather than their gender identity, a matter being fought in separate court battles, the order directs federal officials to “ensure that no Federal funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.” But the prisoners’ attorneys argue in the new brief that denying care is unreasonable and ignores the agency’s decades of experience providing it. **Related** : Trump begs Supreme Court to let feds withdraw medical care for trans prisoners: ‘A dangerous thing to do’ “For over three decades, BOP has treated people diagnosed with gender dysphoria with hormone therapy,” the brief reads. The brief traces the bureau’s policy of continuing hormone therapy for people already receiving it when they entered custody to at least 1992. In 2010, the bureau began allowing people to start hormone therapy in custody if an individual evaluation determined it was “medically indicated.” In 2017, the bureau released its Transgender Offender Manual, further formalizing those policies. The restrictions also extend beyond medical treatment, the brief noted, prohibiting requests for clothing that did not “align with an inmate’s biological sex.” The attorneys argued that the district court’s findings support keeping the injunction in place while the litigation proceeds. Allowing the policy to take effect, they warned, would put incarcerated people at risk. **Related** : The Federal Bureau of Prisons is running a conversion therapy program. We must not let it stand Dr. Carl Streed, a Boston primary care physician and transgender health researcher, previously told The Advocate that withdrawing hormone therapy could cause mood changes and difficulty concentrating, along with longer-term cardiovascular and bone health risks. He warned that patients whose bodies no longer produce sufficient hormones after surgery could be especially vulnerable. “One of our main tenets in medical ethics is non-maleficence — do no harm,” Streed said. “And this is going to have direct harm on people.” In their brief, the prisoners’ lawyers explained that, “The most concrete assertion that the government’s Application can muster from the administrative record is the statement that BOP staff have to spend time to protect incarcerated people ‘who appear more feminine, including due to hormones or social transition accommodations’ from sexual predators. **Related** : Why do inmates have access to gender-affirming care? Those Trump ads you keep seeing debunked “But, as BOP’s statement implicitly acknowledges, transgender women in BOP custody face a risk of being targeted regardless of whether they are receiving hormone therapy or social transition accommodations. The reality is that ‘transgender people are vulnerable to being targeted whether or not they are receiving gender-affirming care’; even before such care was consistently available, transgender people in BOP custody were subject to assault.”

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Lawyers for a group of transgender inmates in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons urged the Supreme Court on Thursday to leave in place an order by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., that bars the BOP from enforcing a new policy on healthcare for transgender inmates that would prevent such inmates from obtaining (among other things) hormone therapy and “social accommodations” (such as makeup, wigs, and padding). Li Nowlin-Sohl, representing the inmates, told the justices that the Trump administration is asking the justices “to overturn a three decades-long status quo.” The Trump administration adopted the policy earlier this year. It followed a policy adopted in February 2025 to implement an executive order signed by President Donald Trump shortly after his second inauguration. That order directed the attorney general to “ensure that no Federal funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.” When it adopted the February 2026 policy, which the BOP said that it did “independently of” Trump’s Feb. 2025 executive order, the BOP also included an extensive administrative record and a 43-page memorandum in which it attributed the change from its prior policy to, among other things, “the latest scientific information.” Specifically, it said, its earlier policies had relied on recommendations by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, but that group’s standards had been deemed “unreliable” and “unpersuasive” by prison administrators. Moreover, the BOP expressed concerns that providing access to procedures such as gender-transition surgeries could subject transgender prisoners to “attacks,” “raise fairness concerns,” and “breed resentment among other inmates.” Three transgender inmates went to federal court in Washington, D.C., seeking to file a class action lawsuit to block the enforcement of the policy. On Aug. 26, Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth issued his most recent order barring the BOP from implementing its 2026 policy, and on Sept. 18 a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected the government’s request to pause Lamberth’s order. The Trump administration then went to the Supreme Court on Sept. 28, asking the justices to step in and block Lamberth’s order. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the Supreme Court that the district court had “substitut[ed] its own policy judgment for that of the” BOP, “rel[ied] on evidence outside the administrative record, and fault[ed] the agency for following presidential directions.” Moreover, he added, the district court “also denied prison administrators the substantial deference they are due.” In their filing on Thursday, the inmates argued that the new policy fell short under the federal laws governing administrative agencies because the BOP had not provided a “reasoned explanation” for its decision. For example, Nowlin-Sohl wrote, the extensive record that the BOP had provided was “silent about BOP’s extensive experience providing” hormone therapy and social accommodations “and whether it supports” BOP’s conclusions that “this care is not medically necessary and poses security and administrative issues.” The record, the brief continued, is also “devoid of any evidence indicating whether BOP healthcare providers found this care effective, ineffective, or harmful to patients.” Moreover, the inmates said, the BOP had “cut off treatment that its healthcare providers had recommended for decades and replaced it with psychotherapy” and “psychotropic medications” – which “BOP’s Medical Director recognizes … treat co-existing conditions such as depression and anxiety, not gender dysphoria itself.” And the BOP’s failure to include “key evidence” in the record “make[s] it clear that the rationales were contrived to support the demand President Trump made in the EO.” Finally, the inmates told the justices that they will be permanently harmed if the district court’s order is paused. “Withdrawing care will cause significant changes to their bodies and put [them] and class members at serious risk of worsening gender dysphoria as well as other mental health symptoms including depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicidality.”

In Thursday’s (10/1) San Antonio Current (Texas), Sanford Nowlin writes, “Days before the public debut of the city’s newest orchestra, the Harmonium of Texas, the … San Antonio Philharmonic has sued the fledgling group in federal court, accusing its leader of fraud. Filed Tuesday, the lawsuit against the Harmonium of Texas and its founder, Jeffrey Kahane,... Read more »