Good morning! And welcome to the last full day of winter. Tomorrow is the Spring Equinox, which means we get 12 hours of daylight, and the promise of 9 p.m. sunsets in our future. But for today it’s still winter, and we get the same weather as yesterday: highs in the low 50s, a little rainy. The usual Winter Special.

Welcome Party: Yesterday, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams came back to Earth. After a botched test flight left them stuck in the International Space Station for more than nine months, their capsule splashed down in the Gulf of America Mexico, off the coast of Tallahassee. According to the AP, Wilmore and Williams spent 286 days in space—278 days longer than anticipated. They circled Earth 4,576 times and traveled 121 million miles. When they landed, the astronauts were greeted by a pod of dolphins—which almost makes up for the fact that they had to come back to…all the rest of this.

Seen Any Burning Teslas Lately? After protesters lit the EVs on fire at dealerships around the country, Attorney General Pam Bondi released a statement saying her office will treat these incidents as “domestic terrorism.” There’s no one law that defines and punishes domestic terrorism, so this is more of a Big Feeling than anything else. But domestic terror aside, burning EVs creates super toxic smoke. Can we find another way to vandalize Elon’s stuff?

Protect the Chickens: RFK’s newest idea to combat bird flu is to let the virus run through infected flocks, and then identify the surviving birds as “immune” to H5N1. Sound idiotic to you? That’s because it shows a basic lack of understanding of what we’re up against here. The biggest concern with the virus right now is mutation—every new infection represents a chance for the virus to mutate into something that’s more easily transmissible to and between humans. Encouraging more infections within a flock will do exactly that. RFK doesn’t have any authority over our country’s farms, but the agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, has said she’s willing to try this. “It’s a recipe for disaster,” one veterinarian told the New York Times. 

Trans Military Ban Halted: U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes blocked the Trump administration from enacting an order that would ban trans people from serving openly in the military. The administration claims that allowing trans people to serve impacts their combat readiness, which Reyes called “totally, grossly misleading.” “The law does not demand that the Court rubber-stamp illogical judgments based on conjecture,” she wrote.

Close but Not Quite: A different U.S. District judge ruled yesterday that the Trump administration wasn’t acting in contempt of court when it cancelled an NIH grant to Seattle Children’s Hospital to develop an online tool for health education for trans kids. “Research programs based on gender identity are often unscientific, have little identifiable return on investment, and do nothing to enhance the health of many Americans,” wrote an NIH. “Many such studies ignore, rather than seriously examine, biological realities. It is the policy of NIH not to prioritize these research programs.” On top of being wildly factually inaccurate, AG Nick Brown argued that it violated the injunction on the ban on funding for gender-affirming care. While the judge found the National Institutes of Health’s interpretation of her orders “unreasonable and self-serving,” she said there isn’t enough evidence to hold the Trump administration in contempt.

Who Said Impeachment? All of these injunctions are starting to piss Trump off. Yesterday, after a judge paused his efforts to deport 200 people to El Salvador, Trump went on an all-caps rant on Truth Social, calling the judge a “radical left lunatic” and calling for him to be impeached. The unhinged claims inspired Chief Justice Roberts to make a rare exception, and make a public statement. “For more than two centuries,” the chief justice said, “it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.” I know the chief justice on the Supreme Court can’t just call the president an idiot, but wouldn’t it be fun?

FYI: It’s day 59 of the Trump administration. We have 1,403 days to go. But who’s counting?

Trouble in Oly: It’s been a rough start to Governor Ferguson’s term. First, after an inauguration speech that felt like a love letter to state Republicans and Danny Westneat, House Democrats rewrote a long-standing rule allowing the Governor’s aides easy access to their chambers. (Dems said it wasn’t connected to that stinker of a speech, but they kinda have to say that.) Then, last week, two of Ferguson’s aides resigned—his legislative director, Joyce Bruce, and her deputy. And yesterday, Sen. Yasmin Trudeau (D-Tacoma) told the Seattle Times that his chief strategy officer, Mike Webb, may have been the reason. Trudeau said she heard from “current executive staff and former campaign staff about a hostile and toxic workplace culture,” and she went to a senior staff member in the governor’s office to report her concerns. Ferguson denies receiving any complaints, but this morning, Webb resigned. 

Revenue Woes Just Got Worse: Outside of his staffing chaos, Ferguson’s biggest issue right now is the state’s budget. Going into his term, the state was already looking at a massive budget shortfall (some $15 billion), and in a report released yesterday, the Office of Financial Management found that the state should expect to bring in $845 million less in the next four years than it estimated in November. Ferguson appears to be willing to propose anything but taxing the wealthiest in our state, including proposing a massive $4 billion in cuts over the next four years, which would require two years of monthly furloughs for state employees.

Who Wants to Live in SoDo? Soon, you might be able to. Last night, City Council voted to allow almost 1,000 new apartments on the edges of our main industrial district. Like the gig worker wage bill last year, this bill was one of Sara Nelson’s pet projects—maybe to expand our housing stock, maybe to help out billionaire hedge fund manager Chris Hansen. Stranger contributor Tobias Coughlin-Bogue gets into it here. 

ICYMI: After a brief flirtation with running for the open City Council seat for District 2, Tanya Woo appears to have taken her hat out of the ring. We were this close to making a punch card for her. Lose three elections and the fourth one’s free!

Block Party Is Growing Up: At least, the crowd is. Capitol Hill Block Party announced its two-day lineup for the 27th annual music festival yesterday (shaving a day off its usual three-day run.) And for the first time, the festival is going to be 21+. The festival’s producers say it’s to “optimize the festival layout, providing a better customer, fan, and neighborhood experience.” The whole event is a bit scaled back, which Stranger Arts Editor Emily Nokes says “seems fine given the pink-and-rhinestone beating the Pike/Pine corridor took from the glorious Chappell Roan show that dominated last year’s CHBP; a beating I personally loved, but I was um, having a psychedelic experience and didn’t have to work there, or clean anything up afterwards!”

Looking for Something to Do Tonight? Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby, will be at Town Hall tonight to talk about her new book Stag Dance. Read about the book here before you go!

Some Parker Posey for Your Wednesday: Her voice has been stuck in my head for days, and I hope it stays there.

Hannah is The Stranger's former Editor-in-Chief. 

30 replies on “Slog AM: RFK Wants to Let Bird Flu Run Wild, Burning Teslas Is Domestic Terrorism Now, and Dolphins Greeted Astronauts in the Gulf of Mexico”

  1. Thank you Elon Musk and SpaceX for rescuing our American astronauts who Joe Biden had abandoned in space for 9 months. You are a hero Elon!

    Did the NIH seriously write “Research programs on gender identity are often unscientific”? If so, what a difference a President makes, eh? That sounds like a scientific institution I can get behind.

    I despised Fergie as AG but damn now the man is acting like he wants my vote. Hold strong against new taxation, Fergie. It just drives the rich out of our state and will harm future revenue collection.

  4. The application of the Survival of the Fittest reasoning to bird flu — basically “the turkeys that didn’t die must be the ones with some sort of natural immunity, so they should be the breeding stock” — has more to do with the industrial poultry producers hoping to salvage some of their birds than it does with any sound epidemiological principle. They would very much like to be able to sell the birds that don’t die from the flu.

  5. Better yet, exchange your Tesla to offset these dumbass tarrifs. Cash for clunkers. Elon is yesterday’s news. Get outta town, clown. You dishonor Nicola Tesla with your mindless profiteering over purpose.

  8. @4, I suppose some farmers may be wishful/ignorant enough to believe some of their birds would be salvageable but I would wager most of them are knowledgeable about the risks and know it’s better to cull their flocks than let the flu take them out, that there is nothing to be gained from survivors because immunity isn’t a genetic trait that can be passed on to its offspring, and those birds will be fucked up after fighting a deadly infection. Surviving H5N1 is not good enough. These animals need to be healthy, productive and/or fit for human consumption.

  9. “Ferguson appears to be willing to propose anything but taxing the wealthiest in our state,”

    A couple of footnote about the budget.

    Ferguson doesn’t control the budget. The legislature does. He can certainly veto it or negotiate with the legislature but this is their main role in the government. They own it.

    You can not tax the wealthy in this state to the tune of $15B over 4 years. The math simply does not math. If that is the route the legislature chooses to go then you will absolutely see tax increases across the board that impact everyone. This does not include the so called fix for local governments to enable them to further raise property taxes because they are in a similar bind so you should expect to be hit a few times by tax increases.

    The reason the state revenue forecast is down further is due to declining sales tax and B&O taxes from business. So what is one of the things the legislature is proposing to do? Yes, raise sales and B&O taxes. Does anyone see the disconnect there? By the way increasing the B&O tax will most certainly impact consumers via inflation.

    Inslee’s proposed budget increased the deficit even further because it contained increased spending for new programs that don’t exist today.

    The legislature is set to receive a 16% raise while the gov and atty general will get 14%. The rest of state employees will receive 5% over two years. Keep that in mind when you hear them cry about the lack of money.

    We’ll see next week when both the house and senate are set to release the first versions of their budgets but I fully expect the progressives to get their wish and we’ll see massive tax increases across the board. They’ll still howl that the wealthy need to pay more because let’s be honest its never enough but for the rest of us 2025 will most certainly be a year when we see our income decline because these tax increases will most definitely be more than any wage adjustments coming from employers.

  10. I’m about to go vegan and consume only the food I grow. This administration is insane.

    And check this out: Almost 70,000 South Africans interested in US asylum Close to 70,000 South Africans have expressed interest in moving to the US following Washington’s offer to resettle people from the country’s Afrikaner community, a business group has said.

    The South African Chamber of Commerce in the USA (Saccusa) said its website received tens of thousands of registrations from those seeking more information.

    In a February executive order, President Donald Trump said Afrikaners – descendants of mainly Dutch settlers who arrived in the 17th Century – could be admitted as refugees as they were “victims of unjust racial discrimination”.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjevg2vlwk4o

    I’m thinking drumpf should send one of his ICE planes to go pick them up and then a DEI ATC hire can misdirect the plane into the Whiteyhouse.

    And hells yeah!!!!! keep on torching those teslas!!! Toxic smoke? whatever… Musk is toxicity worse than any tesla burn toxic smoke.

  11. @3: Both the BYD and Tesla have clumsy computer screens sticking out overtaking the experience. Compare them to screens more integrated into the dashboard design like Mercedes and Cadillac makes one wonder why.

  12. @9. The wealth tax that most progressives are proposing will affect only the richest in our state. If they put a 1% tax on the people whose wealth exceeds 100 million dollars that could generate 10.3 billion dollars over the next four years. That is why they call it a wealth tax, it is to even out the burden of how much of everyone’s stack of cash gets taxed. The wealthiest DO NOT PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE!!!

    And fuck you. To say state workers get a 5% raise and that they don’t deserve it, that is horse shit. If the gov gets his way and furloughs are enacted, then that raise goes away that those state workers worked their asses off for. And state workers are not wealthy asshole, they typically make less than the private sector comparable jobs, and they pay dues to their unions to fight for those raises. With inflation and all the tariff bull shit, essential state workers that keep this state working will need that money to keep up and provide for their families and lives. Go after people that can afford it dick head, like the wealthy. And I say let them leave if they don’t like it. I’m sick of sharing this amazing place with ass holes like greedy self centered rich ass holes. And state workers don’t cry about the lack of money, they are concerned for their jobs. They fight, they advocate, they rally and they give a lot of their personal time to get those raises that they need and deserve. RRRRR you are such a fucking prick.

    And I can guarantee that the legislators that are hip to a wealth are smart, informed and willing to tax only the people that can afford it. It will not create a tax for everyone. It’s tricky to do, they need to make sure they follow state law and can survive the guranteed lawsuits from rich people lawyers. But they are trying to do it right, and it will work.

  13. @12 even Nick Hanauer the progressive bigwig around here doesn’t support a wealth tax. The whole proposal is DOA so I don’t look at that has even been in the real possibility. I won’t even discuss the fact that wealth taxes are ineffective wherever they have been tried.

    I don’t begrudge the state workers their 5% raises. My point was the legislature and the governor are giving themselves double digit raises while crying poor. Meanwhile, the state workers and the rest of us are going to see our overall income go down because of all these tax increases.

  14. @12 it’s a wealth tax dummy. The taxes they are proposing don’t affect the lower income brackets.

    Go here: balanceourtaxcode.com

    enlighten yourself. taxes work.

  15. @14 wealth taxes have not worked anywhere they have been attempted. The administrative cost to manage them is burdensome and many high worth individuals leave. You’ll collect a little but not anywhere near what you think. Just look at what Bezos did when the capital gains tax was instituted. If you honestly think high worth people are going to willingly give the state billions of dollars for no reason you are delusional.

  16. If that drives rich assholes out of the state, then it is still a win IMHO. And it’s worth a try. And I don’t agree that it will be expensive to maintain, not to the tune of billions of dollars. lol you’re a silly one. Now go back to your bridge and scare some billy goats.

  18. Also — and I ask this serious question in a humorous tone — is the Stranger actually (cyber) stalking Tanya Woo? Seriously? It feels like they fired the Meanest of their Mean Girls, and now everyone else here desperately wants to take their places. At this point, I almost hope she runs again, for no other reason than to witness the lengthy torrent of blistering, hate-filled rage which would explode from the Stranger like raw sewage from a busted main line.

  19. @16 if wealth taxes drive rich people out of state you are collecting nothing so how is that helpful? You’ll also lose whatever capital gains you were collecting as well. This honestly sounds more like you’re just a typical member of Workers Strike Back hoping for a revolution to get all the rich guys. There are plenty of studies on wealth taxes and their issues so I suggest you read one. Regardless the wealth tax is not happening for reasons noted above so prepare to get soaked either directly or indirectly via a pass through from businesses that will get taxed.

  20. @11. I drove one recently and had a great experience. And the interface was fine and customizable. They sell fully functional fast charging and well engineered electric cars at like 15k msrp. Of course with tarrifs that is increased due to higher steel and manufacturing costs, but even so it’s over half the cost of an entry level Tesla which is as excessive and gauche as blasting one into orbit.

  22. ah

    wormmy

    your mad

    Projections’re

    in the Finest of forms:

    “At this point, I almost hope she runs again, for no other reason than to witness the lengthy torrent of blistering, hate-filled rage which would explode from the Stranger like raw sewage from a busted main line.”

    .. and

    Out you

    of All peeps

    pop. now That’s

    Entertaintment!

    thnx for the

    Laff!

  23. If money is speech and corporations are people, show Musk the power and consequences of capitalism and democracy by speaking with your pocketbook.

  29. @22: Whatevs, dude. I’m not the one monitoring Tanya Woo’s public moves, and making bitterly snarky comments about every little one.

    Let’s recall the Stranger did NOT tell us about the very personal liaison between their favorite City Council candidate and the News Editor at the Stranger, who directed the Stranger’s (fawning) coverage of her. Then, instead of telling the truth, the writers here went in the completely opposite direction, orchestrating a coverup to keep it hidden. The Stranger can’t now seriously claim to be reporting on Woo because they want to keep the public informed about potential City Council candidates.

  30. a couple briefies:

    “The usual Winter Special.”

    –@HMW hmmm.

    “Can we find another way to vandalize Elon’s stuff?”

    Vandalize the Vandal?

    Sure why Not

    “While the judge found the National Institutes of Health’s interpretation of her orders ‘unreasonable and self-serving,’ she said there isn’t enough evidence to hold the Trump administration in contempt.”

    so Utterly Contemptable

    this Maladministration

    is.

    “I know the chief justice on the Supreme Court can’t just call the president an idiot, but wouldn’t it be fun?”

    i, djt — it’s All right There.

    “I’m not the one monitoring Tanya Woo’s public moves, and making bitterly snarky comments about every little one.”

    –@29.

    nope.

    True! just

    here to knock

    some Sense into

    tS. & how’s that Battle

    coming Along for ya, so far?

    seattle’s

    biggest Troll

    commuing-by-wire.

Comments are closed.