Trump Tells Tehran to Evacuate: On Monday, Israel struck an Iranian state TV station, and Iran leveled a pre-dawn airstrike against Israel, killing eight people. Later, Donald Trump of all people issued an evacuation order on Truth Social for all of Tehran, Iran’s capital city that has a population of over 9 million people and a metropolitan area with a population of over 16 million people. Trump wrote, “IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again! Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!”
Peacing Out of G7: Trump made that post while attending the G7 Summit. After making that evacuation post, Trump dipped out of G7 and went back home. He said, “they [Iran] want to make a deal, and as soon as I leave here, we’re going to be doing something. But I have to leave here.”
Sad News for Selig: Nothing gold can stay. Martin Selig, Seattle’s real estate developer kingpin, is finding that out first hand. Over the last year, Selig’s given up 19 of the 30 downtown office buildings he owns after pandemic vacancies left him with more than $850 million in loans. Recently, Selig defaulted on a on a $378 million debt and had to transfer nine of his buildings to a “custodial receiver.” A month earlier, he lost a different building due to a loan trouble. Martin! How are you going to shell out big bucks to sway a Seattle election when you can’t even pay to keep your real estate empire intact?
The Weather: Beautiful, sunny, and 70s today. Later this week? Probably kind of shitty and wet-ish.
Health Data Snitching: The Washington State Health Care Authority (HCA) said it reported Medicaid data to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which is a requirement under federal law. After receiving that data, CMS turned around and gave it to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the freak at the helm of the U.S. Health and Human Services, ordered this transfer of health information as part of a push to trim federal spending by identifying and removing undocumented immigrants from Medicaid rolls. So, now Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has access to Washingtonian’s health data.
No Captain Allears Here: The guy Donald Trump picked to lead the Federal Aviation Administration, Bryan Bedford, said he was certified to fly aircraft commercially—he even wrote it in his biography at Regional Airlines where he’s been CEO since 1999. Politico found out that was a farce. While he is a licensed private pilot, he does not have any commercial credentials. He’s at least been saying this lie say since 2010, according to the archival versions of the Regional Airlines website. The Department of Transportation said: “Bryan never misrepresented his credential; it was an administrative error that was immediately corrected.”
Domed Up at the Capitol: Washington state legislators haven’t been able to get dome since the 1990s. I mean, uh, get up to the dome of the Capitol building. That could change! A provision in the new capital budget requires that 10 legislators get a guided tour of the dome during the fiscal year. Another 10 will get a tour the following year. Let the legislators up into the dome! That’s something we can all believe in.
Rest in Hell: The Whole Foods on Broadway in that gray area that’s kind of Capitol Hill and kind of First Hill is dying. The company cited “performance and growth potential” as the reason for the closure. The store’s last day is on June 20th.
New Bill Could Privatize Public Lands: The text of the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee budget reconciliation bill “forces the arbitrary sale of at least 2 million acres of Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands in 11 Western states over the next five years,” according to the Wilderness Society. The bill highlights over 250 million acres of land that could be eligible for this sale. You can take a look at this interactive map and see how it could fuck up your favorite public lands.
New Approval Ratings Are Here: Personally, I’d expect far more disapproval for this president, but maybe not everyone hates fascism.
New @gelliottmorris.com poll has:
– Trump at 42%-56% (-14) approval
– Ds up in generic ballot, 45%-37% (+8)
– Trump underwater on the big issues
This Trump thing ain’t going well 👇
www.gelliottmorris.com/p/trump-appr…— Simon Rosenberg (@simonwdc.bsky.social) June 16, 2025 at 6:22 AM
Minnesota Gunman Did the Rounds: Vance Boelter, the man arrested and charged with two counts of murder using a firearm, visited two other homes belonging to Democratic Minnesota representatives that night he injured Democratic Sen. John Hoffman and his wife and killed Democratic Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband. At one home, the representative was on vacation. At the other house, the presence of a police officer dispatched to check on the representative scared Boelter away.
At the Hoffman House: Boelter shot Sen. John Hoffman nine times. He shot Hoffman’s wife, Yvette Hoffman, eight times. Yvette threw herself on her adult daughter, Hope, to shield her from the bullets. Once the gunman left, Hope, unscathed, called for help. Miraculously, the Hoffman’s survived.
Mona Lisa’s Frown: Staff at Paris’ Louvre museum walked off the job with no notice on Monday. They were striking because of bad work conditions. The Louvre is filled with “water leaks, dangerous temperature swings, outdated infrastructure, and foot traffic far beyond what the museum can handle,” according to the Associated Press, and workers are sick of it. The Mona Lisa—can I call the Mona Lisa a frigid bitch or is that not cool?—is central to this problem. Everyone wants to see the fucking Mona Lisa because it’s a piece of art they’ve heard of. Twenty thousand of these philistines crowd into the Salle des États where Miss Mona lives to snap a pic of her. This is hell for the staff. French President Emmanuel Macron announced renovations to spruce up the Louvre and improve the Mona Lisa Problem, but staff says it’s too little too late.
You Can Have a Little Cancer-Causing Asbestos as a Treat: For decades, health advocates have been trying to kill the use of all asbestos in the United States since, you know, it causes cancer. Now, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency is trying to halt the enforcement of the ban and reconsider a ruling on prohibiting “white” asbestos—the last type of asbestos still in use in our country, which is banned in 50 other countries. “White” asbestos causes lung cancer and mesothelioma and is bad.
A song for your Tuesday: This song… it’s too catchy. Forgive me.
Americans don’t want war with Iran and they didn’t vote for war with Iran, but unfortunately Israel has hijacked our foreign policy as much as they did under the Biden admin.
Of course the only asbestos they want to keep is white the kind. They’re nothing if not consistent. Hope WereBackBaby rubs some of it all over his face while he masturbates to pictures of Trump at his sad lonely parade later.
Why so hostile —“Rest in Hell” ? Brick and mortar grocery stores closing down is a BAD thing even if it’s owned by a corporate powerhouse. It’s not like some small business or even union owned enterprise will open in its place. ‘Hood will be one step closer to a food desert. They’ll be lucky to get a new vape shop that sells corn nuts and and Oberto pepperoni “as a treat,” as the staff here likes to write.
I think “As soon as I leave here / We’re going to be doing something / But I have to leave here” is a Tracy Chapman lyric.
@3 Fuck Bezos.
@5 You are correct, sir.
“Miraculously, the Hoffman’s survived.”
Nothing miraculous about it. 75% of people shot with handguns live.
In terms of a weapon where you don’t have to get within arms reach of your target, that can be readily carried, they are the best alternative for defense; however, they aren’t as effective as pop culture and news reporting falsely lead us to believe they are at stopping a determined attacker.
The “miracle” is that the POS didn’t use a long gun, like a rifle or shotgun. Then we would likely be talking about a 100% death rate from this murderous attack rather than a 50% death rate.
@3, With grocery store delivery there are no food desserts in cities and suburbs. In rural areas, certainly.
Thanks to the universal service, at least for now, of the U.S. Mail, there are no pharmacy desserts either.
Consumers are changing how they acquire goods. It no longer requires a car to a trip out. Humans are constantly adapting technology to change how we do things.
Go figure!
Iran and Israel are doing this because they know that the US has a weak leader.
@8 What? There are plenty of food desserts in cities and suburbs. I had a delicious piece of carrot cake in Pioneer Square last weekend.
DOUG. @10: “There are plenty of food desserts in cities and suburbs. I had a delicious piece of carrot cake in Pioneer Square last weekend.”
So I guess what you’re saying is that Pioneer Square is not a dessert desert.
P.S. Just to see what DOUG. was responding to, I went back and read the comment @8. And what I find amusing is that this commenter uses the word “dessert” in place of “desert” even after the correct word had been used previously.
P.P.S.Am I not putting my liberal elitism on full display by being such a spelling Nazi? How dare I tell my fellow Americans how they can spell the American language? And we wonder why Democrats keep losing elections! Sheesh.
“Miraculously, the Hoffman’s survived.”
The Hoffman’s WHAT survived? The Hoffman’s toy poodle? The Hoffman’s Ficus plant?
@10, Touche!
I’m a hard no on selling any of that BLM/USFS land, but there’s no way to stop a Reconciliation Bill. It’s indefensible and massively fucked up.
Go look at what would be up for sale in WA state alone. Half of Badger Mountain? Nope. Leave empty places be.
Please strike my comment @11 from the record. It looks like I’m the idiot here. I actually missed DOUG.’s joke.
You need to get out of your urban elitist bubble if you think there aren’t parts of this country where people can’t just hop on instacart and have their pantry stocked. Even if you bastardize the definition of “food desert” to exclude areas where people can theoretically pay someone to shop for them, there are entire swaths of this country where that is not an option.
@7 Do you just immediately run off to google worthless facts so that you can argue completely meaningless points with reporters who are literally never going to even read your comments? It’s pretty wild.
@12, “Sen. John Hoffman nine times. He shot Hoffman’s wife, Yvette Hoffman, eight times.” Both of them are alive.
The fact that 50% of the people shot with a handgun by the POS are alive, and after 9 rounds in one of the survivors, and 8 in the other, shows the reality that handguns aren’t as effective at stopping someone as the news media, including The Stranger, and pop culture, lead us to believe.
And no I am not discounting that both of them will probably be maimed for life, and even if that isn’t physically the case, they, and their daughter will suffer PTSD and other mental anguish for the rest of their lives.
However, had the Hoffman’s been suspects, not victims, and the person who shot them defending themselves, you can see how even with 9 bullets in one of them, and 8 in the other, they were still alive and possibly functional enough to still be a threat.
So enough with The Stranger’s, and their commenters, baseless criticism of how many handgun rounds non-cop, or cop, defensive shooters fire in the face of imminent threat of serious physical injury. The training for defensive handgun use recommends not firing a specific number of times, but firing until the threat stops. The law allows a defensive shooter to fire until the threat stops.
@18: JFC you need a new hobby. righteous indignation over gunner minutiae only works when a Dem is president.
@18 You think maybe it has to do with the fact that their daughter was there to help them and could call for help immediately after it happened and not what kind of gun they were shot with, dumb dumb?
17 he has these stats at the ready because he spends all of his free time fantasizing about killing people
@21 He’s one of the few people whose autism absolutely leaks through the screen with every single post he makes. I’m just surprised he doesn’t start every single post wth “Well, actually…”
@18:
This is one – among many – reasons why handguns aren’t particularly good for home defense. Why have to try to hit a moving target with multiple rounds when a single shotgun blast would be far more effective at close range? Granted, it’s a bit of a challenge stashing a Remington 870 under your pillow, but OTOH you don’t even need to be a particularly good shot to effectively take down an intruder, AND you don’t have the additional worry of having stray rounds go through interior walls and possibly accidentally hitting someone in an adjoining room.
@19, It’s important for when the public evaluates cases of defensive gun use, which often happens here, in the wake of a police, or other, legally justified defensive shooting.
It’s the answer to the question of why did the defensive shooter fire so many defensive rounds and why is both prudent for the defensive shooter, and legally justified.
We have democratically enacted norms by democratically elected legislatures, which makes them societal norms with the full force of law.
Let’s use those agreed norms, and understand the reasoning behind them, please.
If we are going to change those societal norms, enacted into laws, that’s fine, but until them let’s use the norms democratically agreed to when evaluating any police or other defensive shooting.
This case was not a defensive shooting, but the graphic detail of this incident, which The Stranger wrote today, demonstrates why it is necessary to fire so many handgun rounds in defensive, lawful, handgun use. Handgun rounds aren’t reliablya effective in stopping a threat, or in this case, completing an assassination.
@23 A myth, unfortunately — shotgun pellets will penetrate a wall as much as 9mm does.
@22: “He’s one of the few people whose autism absolutely leaks through the screen with every single post he makes.”
Really? Mocking autism, and using it as a put-down, is now a thing? Showing some true colors, aren’t you?
ok @26 has to be another raindrop/phoebe sockpuppet lol
@26 I didn’t say anything negative about autism… just that he clearly has it based on his complete lack of social awareness and his constant posting of percentages and “facts”
He’s also the one that consistently makes fun of stories where people die in plane crashes and such on here, if I remember correctly, so don’t jump on that sword too quickly now.
Almost every unarmed black man that’s been murdered by police has been murdered with a hand gun so… they seem to work damn pretty well. Especially on people that are running away.
@2 – thank you for wishing lung cancer on me. It’s always nice when you are in other people’s thoughts.
I will not be pleased if Trump makes any aggressive moves toward Iran. I think their nuclear capabilities need to be destroyed and if that means Israelis on the ground, so be it. If it means US bombing then that’s a big hell no. We do not need to be involved in yet another endless middle east war. It would cost Trump my support and the support of millions of MAGA faithful.
That being said, way to go Israel. You are doing the lords work.
@30 I’d happily wish you had heart or brain cancer but you clearly don’t have either of those things… so lungs will have to do.
@29, How many of there are those? List the names of the black victims and the dates there murder was convicted.
George Floyd was murdered by police. They didn’t use a handgun.
His murders are all in prison, just like other people convicted of murder.
@21, Killing anyone, for ANY REASON, is an unqualified nightmare that haunts someone for life. Even if legally justified, it is something to be avoided if at all possible.
The singular consolation prize from killing someone legally, is it beats the alternative of being seriously injured or killed.
@Nat (or an editor) it appears you used the wrong link – it’s a story on bees, not the dome.
https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2025/06/15/commercial-bee-colony-collapse-threatens-washington-apple-berry-agriculture/
Assuming you wanted to use this link – https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2025/06/16/rebuffed-for-years-washington-lawmakers-regain-capitol-dome-access/
@8, requiring someone to pay for food delivery, drive to another neighborhood, or forego access altogether when there is an emergency is not a good outcome for the consumer. All this other chatter about rural areas or how to spell desert is goofy diversionary tactic.
@32 I read recently that Sarah McLachlan is penning a song for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Logic, to be played over images of the tortured victims in your comments.
@29, whoa buddy, let’s not get carried away with all this hyperbole. Sometimes they kneel on their neck or inject them with a lethal dose of horse tranquilizers.
@32 I’m not the one that goes on google to look up stats here lol. But are you seriously denying that there’s been a ton of black men shot by cops?
But if you wanna do this… off the top of my head… Dante Wright, Andre Hill, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Philando Castille… how about Sonya Massy, the old lady the cop shot in the head when she went to grab a pot of water? Remember that one? Cops carry handguns. So every shooting you’ve ever heard of from a regular uniformed policeman probably involved a simple hand gun.
What about non-cops? Trayvon Martin was killed with a handgun. So were Martin Luther King and John Lennon.
You gave stats about how a certain percentage of people survive handguns but conveniently left off the fact that 45 percent of all homicides are specifically from HAND GUNS. Ya silly goose.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/195325/murder-victims-in-the-us-by-weapon-used/
@2 Agreed.
1984 Speak: “Bryan never misrepresented his credential; it was an administrative error that was immediately corrected.”
Translation: At Bryan’s directive his people lied for him. The definition of ‘immediate’ is ‘sometime this decade’.
@1, And this is why Trump is such a piece of shit president……..He doesn’t control ANYTHING. Not the government, not his own people, not his children, not his wife…….not even his own dick, judging by which head leads him around.
Trump screamed the election was stolen from him by Biden when he (Trump) was president. So does that mean that when Trump was president, Biden was in control of the US election infrastructure?
There’s a dozen or more things Trump claims were stolen from him, his administration, or his supporters while he was president. While he was president, Trump claimed the US Justice Dept was abusing him. But Trump was president and ostensibly in control of ALL these things.
There has never been, nor likely will be a more incompetent piece of shit president than Donald Rump.
@31 – you can wish me dead from fire ant bites too if you like. However you prefer I suffer, I’m just glad I can live rent free in your head. Thanks bud!
@7 Really? 75% of the people that are shot nine times and eight times, respectively, survive?
You are a complete dumbass and literally too stupid to insult.
@35, People were going to have to drive anyway. We have never had grocery stores within walking distance of most residences.
The average cost of owning a car is $12,300 per year according to AAA. You can buy a lot of delivery and uber for $1,000 a month.
@38, All Americans are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. They weren’t murdered until a court says they were murdered.
The people you list comes out to 1/2 dozen over a decade, out of population of 46 million. More blacks than that get murdered in a weekend in Chicago by non-cops. Non-cops aren’t the only ones that carry guns. And by murdered.
I mean as determined by how elected legislatures have defined murder for all of us, on behalf of the voters that put them in office, as interpreted by state judges elected by us, after being charged by District attorney’s elected by us, and found guilty by a 12 member subsection of us. It couldn’t get more democratic.
My concern with these cases is that we judge them by the democratic standard for murder written into law, not by some standard that has not been democratically enacted.
If we don’t like the result of that, then we need to elect different people to rewrite the standard that is put into law and elect different judges to interpret the law. Until we do, we can’t punish people for doing what the law says is permitted.
@9, “…..the US has a weak leader.” Weak? You’re feeling very generous today. The aroma…..uh, the Force is strong with the Orange One today.
@11, let me explain to you what an asshole really is: In the 1990s I lived in a rooming house with one of the biggest assholes I’ve ever known. After I’d been there for several months, the asshole threw a fit one day because I’d washed the dishes & one of the forks wasn’t perfectly clean. Now, I’d been washing the dishes for months, & this was the first fault he found. If he was a human being, he’d have re washed the fork & let it go. Everyone makes a mistake now and then. If their overall performance has been good, you just let it go. But if you’re an asshole, you lay in wait just hoping to find someone make a tiny mistake so you can make a big deal out of it. That’s because your puny, shitty life is so bleak the only joy you have is in mersilessly running doun someone elze.
@18, Yet the real problem is that relatively few people should be anywhere near firearms because they are clueless about them. The reason people survive being struck with so many bullets is that placement is far more important than power. Most people buy a gun and never take a course, rarely if ever shoot it at the range, and never consider the realities of firing a weapon at another person, much less inquire into the laws governing deadly force. If number of shots mattered, snipers would use automatic weapons rather than bolt actions. And the only reason snipers use such hugely powerful, large caliber weapons, is they shoot at ungodly distant targets. And, depending on the load & other factors, most shotgun rounds will go through a wall easily.
@23, 1 round of Double Ought, or 00 buckshot, 12ga contains 8 .38inch individual pieces of spherical shot. Triple Ought contains 9. That would be like getting shot 8 or 9 times with a 38cal……a 38, a 38 Special, or a .357mag. And it’s STILL not going to do you any good if you can’t hit the vital area of what you’re shooting at. Again, it’s not the power or the caliber……it’s the placement. You have to know and be practiced at what you’re doing. Which, again, is the REAL reason, most people have no business handling firearms.
@24, “Handgun rounds aren’t reliablya effective in stopping a threat, or in this case, completing an assassination.”
One of the most under powered handgun rounds is the .380. That’s the small semi auto pistol you see in the movies. But you can kill an elephant with a .380. You just have to hit it in the right place. I wouldn’t recommend trying. But you can do it.
@38, Actually, white men get shot & killed by police at a higher rate (larger percentage killed than their percent of the general population) than black men. Go on Youtube and search for “The Civil Rights Lawyer’s Opinion on the Chauvin Verdict”. He’s a civil rights lawyer who goes after crooked cops and the long and short of what he says on this video is what I’ve said all along: We really don’t have an honest verdict in the trials of the Floyd police because the jury pool was so tainted and the police hireups threw them so hard under the bus. I don’t know if The Stranger allows links in the comments so I’ll put it in a separate comment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEo47deGfYw&t=1013s “The Civil Rights Lawyer’s Opinion on the Chauvin Verdict”.
@45 “They weren’t murdered until a court says they were murdered. The people you list comes out to 1/2 dozen over a decade, out of population of 46 million. More blacks than that get murdered in a weekend in Chicago by non-cops.”
Well, ackshully (pushes glasses up on nose) that would require >3 murders a day just of Black Chicagoans. Last year Chicago had 573 total homicides. However, the clearance rate was just 56%, and some number of people arrested were likely not convicted of murder. So by your standard, and because police are fairly incompetent, at most just under 2 Black Chicagoans are murdered per weekend on average.
@3, @16: Nothing to get upset about, the Stranger was just getting its hate on Amazon. It’s been doing that for years, and, despite your implications, the Stranger will not let anything get in the way of getting its hate on Amazon. For example, as we see here, not even reducing the quality of life for Capitol Hill’s residents will prevent the Stranger from getting its hate on Amazon. The Stranger simply values its hate on Amazon more than it does anything else, including the quality of life on Capitol Hill.
@38 MLK was…not shot by a handgun. It was a rifle.