Good Morning: Yesterday’s weird heat wave is over, and today’s high is a balmy 74 degrees.
Alleged Charlie Kirk Shooter Charged: Yesterday, prosecutors charged 22-year-old Utah resident Tyler Robinson with aggravated murder for allegedly shooting far-right propagandist Charlie Kirk last week. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Kash Patel said the FBI has DNA evidence linking Robinson to the shooting, and they also acquired text messages in which Robinson allegedly confesses. The text messages read like weird ChatGPT fan fic, and not even Trump BFF Steve Bannon buys it, but go off, Patel.
The Right Is Desperate: MAGA morons are so desperate to blame the left for Kirk’s killing, and somehow link it to the factually incorrect notion that trans people are carrying out more mass shootings in the US, that some people falsely accused a local trans woman of killing Kirk despite the fact she WASN’T EVEN IN UTAH THAT DAY. “It is making us so much more unsafe,” she told the Seattle Times. “It seems like more and more people are starting to believe it every day, and I don’t know what to do to stop that.”
Unrelated to the Constant Onslaught of Transphobic Bullshit, I’m Sure: Four teens allegedly attacked a trans woman near the Renton Transit Center on Monday, “savagely beating her” while making homophobic comments. Two of the boys have been arrested, and police are looking for two others.
By the Way, How’s Kash Patel’s Oversight Hearing Going? Not well! He got into MULTIPLE shouting matches, including one standoff with Senator Cory Booker, who told him, “I believe you have made our country weaker and less safe.” The hearing continues today, and it’s already gotten ugly. Twenty bucks says Patel will be out by Halloween.
Read the Room, Davison: Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison filed about $40,000 in civil penalties against three local taggers. “My message is simple: if you vandalize the Emerald City, you will pay,” said Davison. Here’s the thing: I’m gonna go out on a limb and say these dudes don’t have an extra $40,000 lying around. The city won’t get any money. Davison knows that. It’s performative bullshit, and it’s pretty fucking embarrassing that this is Davison’s focus right now. This is why you’re gonna lose your job in November, Ann.
In Other Local News: The City Council’s Comp Plan committee will be voting on the massive stack of amendments to Seattle’s 20-year development plan. And even though CM Joy Hollingsworth, who is the comp plan committee chair, was expected to limit last-minute amendments, she just introduced a bunch. Sigh. JOY. We’ll be watching all day today—stay tuned for updates!
The whole thing with having Joy Hollingsworth as Comprehensive Plan committee chair was that she was going to put her foot down on last minute amendments… and then proposed a bunch herself.
— Ryan Packer (@typewriteralley.bsky.social) September 16, 2025 at 9:45 PM
Must Read: Former Washington Post opinion columnist Karen Attiah was fired after she posted a thread on Bluesky about America’s gun obsession after Charlie Kirk was killed, and there was a school shooting in Colorado that very same day. She wrote about what happened on her Substack, the Golden Hour: “I was the last remaining Black full-time opinion columnist at the Post, in one of the nation’s most diverse regions. … What happened to me is part of a broader purge of Black voices from academia, business, government, and media — a historical pattern as dangerous as it is shameful — and tragic.” Read the whole thing here.
If You’re Keeping Track: Dozens of people have reportedly lost their jobs, been suspended, or lost work or partnerships for commenting about Charlie Kirk and, in some cases, Kirk-adjacent subjects (gun control, free speech hypocrisy, the fact that Donald Trump straight up shrugged off an actual political assassination just three months ago). Axios has a running list here.
This Isn’t Something to Brag About: Marco Rubio told media that the State Department “has ‘most certainly been denying visas’ to people ‘celebrating’ the murder of Charlie Kirk.”
But Trump Loves Free Speech! On January 20, 2025, aka Inauguration Day, Trump posted a Presidential Action titled “RESTORING FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND ENDING FEDERAL CENSORSHIP” to recommit America to the First Amendment. (Like when a Real Housewives couple renew their vows, I guess?) In it, he wrote that it is the United States’ duty to “secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech” and “ensure that no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen,” among other things. Can we print that out and send it to him or wheatpaste it on walls or write it on a paper airplane and throw it through a White House window or something? Maybe he forgot.
Totally Unrelated, Of Course: Five exiled members of Pussy Riot were sentenced in absentia to up to 13 years in prison for “spreading ‘false information’ about the Russian military” in a 2022 anti-war music video and committing “obscene acts” during a 2024 performance. (LOL, one of ‘em allegedly peed on a picture of Putin.) Pussy Riot’s Diana Burkot, who was sentenced to eight years in prison, said in a statement that the Russian government is “the worst kind of abuser: a tyrant, a narcissist, a gaslighter, a toxic manipulator who lives off the destruction of others’ will. … Activism now is needed like daily practice, because only together can we resist and overcome the crisis of democracy.”
I Know It Looks Suspicious: But don’t you dare draw any correlations in any of the above blurbs and start to think that what’s happening in America right now, especially in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death, where Attorney General Pam Bondi is threatening to file charges against an Office Depot employee who declined to print fliers for a Charlie Kirk’s vigil, is anything like Russia’s dangerous and authoritarian dictatorship. It’s definitely not the same thing! We’re definitely not living in a fascist state!
Free Speech and All That, But Also: Shut the fuck up, Chris Pratt. (I can say that because I went to high school with him.)
Important Snack Updates: On Monday, a tractor-trailer full of boxes full of packets of Peanut M&Ms crashed on a New Jersey highway and scattered candy all over the road. I would’ve made snow angels—candy angels?—in the mess before gobbling them all up. Also in the snack headlines, Jerry of Ben & Jerry’s has QUIT!
Some Good News: The Storm won last night! They’re tied 1-1 in their Round 1 series with the Las Vegas Aces.
Dreams Come True: Anyone else VERY EXCITED for the PUP/Jeff Rosenstock tour? At the Showbox SODO October 7! Let’s go!
@50
“anonymous raving lunatic”?
ah, wormmy, your daily
projections get more
and more Accurate
with each & every
posting. kudos
@40 — $5/line?
Not including spaces?
what a Cheapskate
were you Half
the ‘Patriot’ you
mistakenly believe
yourself to be your
Donation$ to AIPACIsrael’d
fund Israel’s Socialized Medicine
for the next twenty Years. be like Palestinians
and Give till it Hurts. and then Keep Giving. till the Well runs Dry.
and
then
Keep
it up till bibi’s
Israel and Trumpftopia
are building Resorts on your grave.
Hey, that’s MISTER Anonymous Raving Lunatic to you, buddy!
@41: “Well, he is facing the death penalty, so…”
All the more reason to disallow political philosophy as evidence in the trial. That’ll just turn it into a circus. You can’t get Robinson any deader than what the firing squad will do for plain old vanilla first degree murder.
@50: “This is classic “blame the rape victim for dressing provocatively” rhetoric.”
What is the rhetoric? But that’s a good point. You can’t say Kirk deserved what he got any more than “My, that skirt is pretty short.” Same logic applies. Political/religious ideology isn’t needed to justify a charge of assault on another person. Or modify the terms of that charge.
“Holmes and thekossack, I hope you won’t resent me too much for my assessment of your judgment.”
No resentment. Your logic doesn’t even parse.
Holmes, I wasn’t aware that I–or anyone else on these threads–had been out there saying that Charlie Kirk deserved to die. But nice try at the what-aboutism and changing the subject.
‘Chuckles”
the Kirk certainly sel-
dom failed to recommend Death
for his political opposition’s members
perhaps
his Wish was
to Become a Martyr
if so he
Succeeded
remarkably Well
@46: “What matters to me right now is the outrageous jubilation of his demise being openly expressed.”
So I’ll ask you, yet again: do you believe you are seeing that here, in the Stranger’s comments, now? Because you’ve made that claim here repeatedly in the past week, and, IIRC, produced nothing but some incoherent paraphrases of barth, which barth promptly debunked.
Look, give your money to whomever you want; this is capitalism, where the private sector constantly wastes far larger chunks of capital. In your own little way, you’ve joined them; congratulations. If you want to pretend your wastage had some connection to some principle somewhere, that’s fine too. Your citation of “…the Western Judeo-Christian tradition,” shows you really don’t know (or maybe you do, and don’t care) how hard the Christians tried to keep humanity mired in an eternal dark age, succeeding for a thousand years, until the literal re-birth of the very same Western culture they’d tried to kill forever.
@54: I don’t see where anyone has been making the accusation you claim. However, I do see a lot of people defending ‘First Amendment rights’ of anyone inciting violence. Or suggesting that the First Amendment even protects such rights.
As to the what-about-ism, I’ll say it again: Your statements don’t parse very well.