After being removed from his position as president of the Federal Way City Council on Feb. 10, Martin Moore shared an extensive statement the next day on social media.

The council’s controversial 4-3 vote stemmed from concerns about “conflicts of interest” as well as a Facebook post in which Moore had expressed support for Federal Way students who were protesting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“When students shared their concerns, the conservative Council — along with Mayor Jim Ferrell — failed to validate or meaningfully acknowledge those fears. Instead, they dismissed them and insisted that Federal Way should not even be discussing ICE,” Moore said.

He thanked the community members who spoke up at the city council meeting in his defense, saying that “your willingness to show up, speak up, and engage meant a great deal to me. Your voices mattered. Unfortunately, the four conservative council members chose to move forward anyway — pretending to listen while acting on their own, without authentically engaging with the overwhelming feedback they received from the public.”

Moore continued, calling the request for the special meeting by Councilmember Linda Kochmar an act of “pure retaliation” due to her loss of the council president seat in January, describing it as “a defeat she chose to revisit not through collaboration, communication, or good-faith leadership, but through an unnecessary and divisive power play that represented politics at its absolute worst.”

“She seized on this moment by feigning outrage that I stood with our city’s students and affirmed their constitutional right to freedom of speech. I was proud then, and I remain proud now, of the Federal Way High School Black Student Union and Latinx Club for organizing, mobilizing, and speaking out on issues important to them,” Moore said.

The choice to remove him over that support “has consequences,” Moore said.

“It affects this Council. It affects public trust. And it affects the young people who looked to their City to support their voices, their rights, and their beliefs — only to be reminded that out-of-touch politicians, decades removed from their lived experience, would rather see them disengaged than civically active.”

Susan Honda is sworn in as the council president after the vote at the special election on Feb. 10, 2026. Photo by Keelin Everly-Lang / the Mirror

New FW City Council President Honda

New council president Susan Honda has not shared any of her reasons for changing her tie-breaking vote between the initial council vote one month ago in favor of Moore being council president, and the council vote on Feb. 10 to rescind it.

During the council meeting on Feb. 10, Honda thanked the public for sharing their comments, but did not clarify her new position.

In a followup email exchange with the Mirror, where she was asked to share the reasons for her vote, she stated that “I changed my vote because I felt it was best for the City Council. It was not because of his support of the student walkouts and ICE.”

When Honda ran for mayor in 2025, her campaign focused on transparency and trust. In a Q&A, she told the Mirror that one of her main motivations for running is “the importance of open accountable government” and that “too often decisions have lacked openness” from city leadership.

Honda also said that “this was not my idea,” and “I certainly wasn’t expecting to serve in this role again,” but that she looks forward to serving as council president.

Honda has six years of experience in the role of either deputy mayor or council president for the city.

Other council members did share their reasons for voting Moore out of the position, while others said they were not even notified or asked of their opinion before the special meeting was called.

Council members “blindsided”

“For the record, I was not approached or included in this conversation. And I was totally surprised and caught off-guard when I received the email invitation to this meeting. I don’t know who else was blindsided as I was,” Councilmember Lydia Assefa-Dawson said at the Feb. 10 meeting.

“As a fellow council member, I find it deeply concerning that we escalated to this level without first engaging in direct dialogue,” Assefa-Dawson continued. “If we remove a council president for supporting peaceful civic engagement, we risk chilling speech instead of modeling civic discourse.”

Councilmember Les Sessoms was clear that he did not support the premise of the meeting or share the other council members’ concerns, stating that Moore “continues to demonstrate sound judgment, leadership ability, and moral character. Disagreement with his stance is not grounds for punishment.”

Sessoms added that “undermining a capable leader for amplifying community concerns sets a dangerous precedent and it does not serve the public interest,” adding that Moore should be retained as council president.

Many public commenters echoed concerns around the broad ramifications of the council president’s removal.

Paddie Ballester said: “How you respond under pressure shows who you’re willing to protect. If there’s anything leaders here should be concerned about, it’s not a Facebook post. It’s the growing number of regular people like me who are paying attention, who can’t stay in our comfortable little bubbles while fear is used to excuse inaction or cruelty, and who are now willing to show up when their leadership fails them. I really hope that this council will stand behind the president and choose the kind of leadership that makes people feel protected instead of dismissed.”

Martin Moore is sworn in as a new member of the Federal Way City Council on Jan. 6. However, the council voted Feb. 10 to rescind his title as council president. Photo by Keelin Everly-Lang / the Mirror

Stated reasons for removal

Councilmembers Melissa Hamilton, Linda Kochmar and Jack Walsh expressed several reasons for their vote to remove Councilmember Moore.

Walsh explained his concerns are around “leadership, lack of judgment, and injecting party politics and his personal political agenda in a nonpartisan council.”

“I definitely support the First Amendment rights of young people, whether it’s of speech or to assemble … they have concerns and I support their right to voice those concerns. However, a person in a responsible position of leadership should not be encouraging minors to violate state law by being truant from school,” Walsh said.

Hamilton said that “our council president has repeatedly used the council president platform rather than his personal or campaign channels to advance personal and political causes without council authorization, despite being asked to stop. He has also struggled to separate his outside political and board membership roles from his responsibilities to the city. Multiple conflicts of interest exist and the line between those roles has become very blurred.”

Moore is the board secretary of the Multi-Service Center (MSC), the chair of the 30th District Democrats, the vice president of the Citizens for Federal Way Schools and a board member of FUSION.

Section 4 of the Federal Way City Council Code of Ethics describes how to respond to a potential conflict of interest and does not prohibit council members from retaining positions of leadership in local organizations.

The Code of Ethics states that elected officials should disclose potential conflicts of interest and recuse themselves from voting on issues that may come up related to those roles.

In terms of social media, Moore did include a disclaimer (as outlined by the council rules in section 14), saying that “views expressed are my own as one member of the City Council and do not represent the full Council.”

Local examples

Utilizing an official social media page to share support for students and immigrant communities in a nonpartisan elected position is not unusual in the region.

In nearby Auburn, Mayor Nancy Backus also responded with support to a student protest on Facebook.

On Jan. 31, Backus posted from her mayoral Facebook page: “Peaceful civic engagement is an important part of our democracy. I’m proud of how these students showed up, looked out for one another, and engaged in a meaningful way. Their voices matter, and I look forward to continuing conversations with our youth.”

In addition to Auburn, Kent, Tukwila, Renton and Burien leaders have all shared public statements in support of immigrant communities at various points over the past year.

The Burien City Council even approved a resolution on Feb. 9, showing support for the protection of immigrants and refugees in their community.

About 15 of the 67 total public commenters at the Feb. 10 meeting of the Federal Way City Council supported the removal of Moore as council president

“The council president is supposed to lead meetings and participate fully in council business. When someone holds multiple leadership roles in organizations that receive city funding or involved in active political campaigns, repeated recusals become unavoidable. The council president should serve as a neutral facilitator for the entire city regardless of political affiliation. When the president of the council serves as the party chair and focuses council attention on highly partisan issues, it creates the appearance that the office is being used to advance a political agenda rather than city governance,” Geoffrey Tancredi stated.

Moore’s opponent in the fall election, Nathan Orth, also spoke at public comment, and said that the community voted for Moore specifically because of his values, and that it would be a disservice to the public to abandon those once elected.

“I know for a fact that Martin’s status as an immigrant and his support for immigrant communities were central to his candidacy. That means that they were already heavily considered by the voters in November,” Orth said. “To work to undermine his position on immigration through any guise is to work to undermine the electorate and democracy itself…As a leader in the city, being supportive of civic engagement from the youth in our city deserves to be commended.”

First Amendment rights of students

Students’ rights to free speech were affirmed in the Tinker v. Des Moines 1969 Supreme Court decision, which clarifies that neither students nor teachers “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate” and that school officials cannot prohibit First Amendment speech rights on the basis that it might disrupt the learning environment.

Federal Way students from the Latinx Club at Federal Way High School shared in a group comment that Moore “is being wrongfully accused of supporting the student-led walkout, which was in practice of our First Amendment rights. He never encouraged us to do so,” saying that the students’ actions including the walkout “were strictly student and community-led. We students want you to acknowledge that we are here at at 8:09 on a school night. Us students should be worried about our grades and not our safety.”

The students explained that they had reached out to Moore to ask him about their rights and about how to make their voices heard in a safe way.

“Other speakers stated they were concerned about safety,” the students said, but said Moore was the one who “came in specifically to make sure that we were safe and answered our questions on how to do that. If you want to talk about safety, we can talk about all the people who have died at the hands of ICE. He was simply doing his job as a president of the council of Federal Way, one of the most diverse cities in King County. He acknowledged our pain and our feelings in a time where many people in power do not.”

Community fears

While ICE enforcement in South King County has not reached the level it has in other parts of the country, public commenters noted that this doesn’t mean it can’t happen here.

Amy Johnson, a reverend and 40-year resident of Federal Way, shared that she was among 650 clergy who joined with interfaith leaders in Minnesota a few weeks ago to witness the “violent and inhumane treatment of people happening on the ground there by ICE and CBP [U.S. Customs and Border Protection].”

“Let me share with you a firsthand account from a 48 hour visit. A hundred clergy were arrested at the airport while singing and praying. Some in our group witnessed an attempted ICE abduction of a legal resident, a pregnant woman with small children in her car at the time,” Rev. Johnson told the Federal Way City Council. “A person, a legal citizen using their legal right to observe from their car had their car window smashed and was injured by ICE.”

“The students who walked out last week are not overreacting. City leadership stating that schools have nothing to fear from ICE is not true. … I urge you to use your power to listen to our young people and the people who have spoken tonight about local incidents, the right to free speech and peaceful protest. Keep your attention focused on what matters most, keeping our neighbors and our children safe, not silencing those who support them,” Johnson said.