About 75 people protested along with No Tech for Apartheid here in Seattle. Credit: STREETPHOTOJOURNALISM

Pro-Palestine Google employees protest the company: Workers led sit-ins in Seattle and in other cities on Tuesday to stop Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian and Google CEO Sundar Pichai from providing technology to Israel. Demands included dropping a $1 billion cloud and AI contract with the Israeli military called Project Nimbus, and ceasing alleged intimidation, harassment, and retaliation against Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim employees who speak out. Protesters claim numerous workers have quit Google because their mental health has suffered as a result of the company’s relationship with Israel.

All Alaska Airline flights grounded: In a press release, the company said it ran into a snag “while performing an upgrade to the system that calculates our weight and balance,” the Seattle Times reports. Update: The planes are back in the air. 

SeaTac city attorney charges 46 pro-Palestine protesters with misdemeanors: On Monday, police arrested protesters for stopping rush hour traffic on the Airport Expressway. Thirty demonstrators were booked into the South Correctional Entity (SCORE Jail) in Des Moines, while the other 16 were booked into King County Jail. All were released after making $500 bail. Protesters were demanding an end to the war in Gaza, and they cited SeaTac-based Alaska Airlines’ partnerships with EL AL Israel Airlines and with Boeing, which supplies planes and weapons to the IDF, as the reason for stopping cars at the airport. Across the country, protesters blocked a terminal at O’Hare in Chicago and shut down the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco as part of the same global action.

Hundreds of student academic employees at UW will rally today: Organizers wrote in a release that their rally and practice picket will be a taste of what the university’s administration can expect if they don’t get a fair contract before April 30. At the end of last month, roughly 1,000 academic student employees rallied on campus to voice their frustration with the pace of bargaining. The administration’s latest compensation offer was below projected rates of inflation. They also want to remove a 220-hour quarterly maximum, which raised concerns about overwork.

Dave Reichert’s anti-gay, anti-trans speech: If elected, Reichert would be Washington’s first Republican governor since 1985–with the opinions to match. As Rich wrote in The Stranger yesterday, Reichert told a group of Pierce County Republicans that he believed “marriage is between a man and a woman” during a rant about “transgender men” playing sports against women and girls. Opponent Bob Ferguson hit Reichert hard on the marriage comments, but initially ignored the transphobic part.

Semi Bird’s previously unreported financial crime: The Republican gubernatorial candidate told the Seattle Times there’s “no excuse” for his 1993 misdemeanor conviction for bank larceny. At 30, he pled guilty to lying on a credit application by using his father’s name and Social Security number. The military veteran and former Richland School Board member said the crime came at a difficult time in his life, which included debts and other legal problems.

Drought! The state Department of Ecology declared a drought emergency for most of Washington Tuesday (excluding Everett, Seattle, SeaTac, and Tacoma) because of a meager snowpack and anticipated warm, dry spring and summer seasons. The department declares a drought for an area when it has three-quarters of its typical water supply, which brings a risk of “undue hardship.” The Department expects “serious impacts for water users” (who is not a water user?) over the next few months. Some areas may see their lowest levels of streamflow on record, threatening fish populations.

Seven jurors seated for Donald Trump’s hush-money trial: They included a salesman originally from Ireland, an oncology nurse with a fiancé, an unmarried corporate lawyer, an older Puerto Rican man who said his hobby was family (aw), a young Black woman who teaches English at a charter school, a software engineer, a recent college grad with three roommates in Chelsea, and a civil litigator who lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The former President was seen flipping through the jury questionnaire and leaning back in his chair. Court is out of session today, but jury selection will resume Thursday and will continue until five more jurors and six alternates are chosen. 

The few who used the IRS’s direct file software loved it: This tax season, people in 12 states including Washington could try the IRS’s new free-to-file alternative to commercial tax prep services. It worked pretty much the same as something like Turbotax, with a question-and-answer format that makes filing easy (I took a look myself and it was miles better than Turbotax and didn’t cost a thing). Despite rave reviews from tech reporters and others, only 100,000 people tried Direct File, a fact that tax company shills are exploiting to push a narrative that the free software is unpopular and unnecessary. Want to know what’s even more unnecessary? Paying those people every year.

USC canceled a Muslim valedictorian’s speech because pro-Zionist groups complained: In a campus-wide letter, University of Southern California provost Andrew T. Guzman claimed that threats to disrupt the commencement ceremony began pouring in shortly after it published Asna Tabassum’s name and biography. On- and off-campus groups, including We Are Tov, the Hebrew word for “good,” targeted her pro-Palestinian views, Instagram likes, and opposition to genocide. USC has never prevented valedictorian from speaking before.

Republicans are beating Democrats at state-level fundraising: Local and state elections matter more than national elections in determining how a community functions day-to-day, from the seemingly boring machinations of government to matters of personal freedom like reproductive and voting rights. So fundraising for those races is important, and Democrats are lagging far behind their conservative counterparts. This year, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the primary group getting Dems elected to statehouses nationwide, set a personal best in quarterly fundraising: $6.9 million. Not bad, but reporting from Mother Jones shows the Republican State Leadership Committee and its affiliate, the State Government Leadership Foundation, raised $12 million. Consider the total raised for the 2024 election cycle, and conservatives are eclipsing liberals by $19 million.

US congressional committee claims China is subsidizing the fentanyl crisis: An investigative report found that China provides value-added tax rebates to companies that manufacture fentanyl analogues and other synthetic opioids as long as they’re sold outside of China. Some of the substances have no known legal use worldwide, according to the report. The Chinese embassy in Washington said the US blaming China for its fentanyl problem won’t solve it. In January, China and the US launched a joint counter-narcotics group after Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping agreed to restrict the production and export of fentanyl.

Dept. of Interior rejects mining road plan in Alaska: The Biden administration is expected to side with environmentalists and reject Ambler Metals’ proposed 211-mile long industrial road to a massive copper deposit in the Alaskan wilderness that’s worth $7.5 billion. The Ambler Access Project would cross through ecologically sensitive land, threatening both wildlife and Indigenous tribes who depend on hunting and fishing. Caribou and salmon in the region are struggling already, and the road would deepen their troubles, ecologists say. Ambler claims the untapped copper deposit is crucial for the construction of wind turbines and photovoltaic cells needed for renewable energy production.

Vivian McCall is The Stranger's interim Editor-in-Chief. In her private life, she is a musician and Wii U apologist. If you’re reading this, you either love her or hate her.

33 replies on “Slog AM: Alaska Airlines Grounded All of Its Flights for an Hour, SeaTac Charges Pro-Palestine Protesters, State Declares Drought in Most of Washington”

  1. I signed up to use Direct File to do my taxes, but it turned out if you have retirement income—such as an IRA distribution— or investment income, you are not eligible. ??? What is a retired person supposed to do about that? That has to change. A lot of retired people would like to use this free option!

  2. @1 There’s an entire section on the USC valedictorian and a linked video, you must have missed it.

    The protestors should consider themselves fortunate those are the only charges they’re facing, airports generally aren’t good places to play f*ck around and find out given the ability of feds to step in depending on the circumstances.

    In had a 1099-MISC this year and was forced to pay $55 through H&R Block to handle this extra special income type that is one figure in one box on a form. The sooner free to file options are expanded, the better.

  3. I’m glad all of the airport protesters got arrested. I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if you think shutting down the ingress of a busy airport 1) will get you any kind of support from anyone or 2) won’t get you arrested and thrown in jail, you’re delusional and need to sit life out. People don’t travel on planes just for fun – the majority of air travel is business-related or for non-leisure related reasons. So good job blocking transplant teams, medical patients headed out for treatment, people trying to go visit dying family or attend funerals, and people literally just trying to do their jobs. Protests like that do nothing except make people incredibly angry at the protesters themselves. Not one single person thought, “oh yeah, go Palestine! Totally fine to make me miss my flight and pay hundreds of dollars to switch to a different flight/miss a very important life event.

  4. @5 Indeed, in some ways they probably should be grateful there was such a large police response, the slew of angry people walking past with luggage may not have been as restrained with them had there now been a couple dozen cops present. I understand they planned it as a “tax day” protest to emphasize U.S. money sent to Israel, but the timing being the Monday after the first ever large scale direct Iranian attack against Israel also undermined their point and gave an even greater sense of tone deafness to the protest.

  5. Does anybody remember how happy certain progressive news outlets were when James Damore was fired from Google for airing some bad opinions (after management prompted workers for their opinions?) Good times. Why bring this up now? No reason.

  9. 5 “So good job blocking transplant teams, medical patients headed out for treatment, people trying to go visit dying family or attend funerals,”

    and a good job to you for the histrionics. sure it inconvenienced a lot of people but, like, really? air travel is a gamble regardless of dumb protests. this isn’t TV, the viability of organ transplants don’t come down to the second in real life.

    if you missed a funeral, well, not to worry, they’ll still be dead when you get there

  10. 5 “So good job blocking transplant teams, medical patients headed out for treatment, people trying to go visit dying family or attend funerals,”

    and a good job to you for the histrionics. sure it inconvenienced a lot of people but, like, really? air travel is a gamble regardless of dumb protests. this isn’t TV, the viability of organ transplants doesn’t come down to the second in real life.

    if you missed a funeral, well, not to worry, they’ll still be dead when you get there

  11. @8: I’ve been using the free tillable forms for a number of years. It can be a little daunting at first for self-filers (I used to be a volunteer tax prepare, so I’ve got quite a bit of experience), but it does let you know when you’ve made mistakes and how I’ll also do all the math calculations and fill in figures between different forms.

    Handy tip: you can use one of the online tax apps to do some of the heavier lifting, then transfer the results to the IRS forms without paying their fees.

    And y s, the ground stop notification was a bit of a surprise this morning, as it came when I was almost to SeaTac in LINK. But, everything seems to be back on-track with about an hour’s delay, depending on your departure time.

    As for the protest, we’ll, guess what, snowflakes? They’re SUPPOSED to be disruptive; if they were the polite, non-disruptive actions all you keyboard commandos seem to think they should be, no one would pay any attention to them. Y’all wold have complained about how insensitive those marchers were in Selma in 1965 when they blocked traffic on the Edmund Pettus Bridge – which did absolutely nothing to sway public opinion towards their cause, amiright?

  12. @ 13, the Edmund Pettis bridge was a two lane local road in a backwater Alabama town. They didn’t gain support from blocking traffic, they got support because they were black folks on a civil rights march who were violently tear gassed and had attack dogs released on them. They were not shutting down access to a 50 million passenger a year major transit hub. These people aren’t changing opinions on the Israeli – Hamas conflict by shutting down an airport 6800 miles away and doing it in a way that purposefully costs everyday people time and money right after one of the largest military attacks on Israel in years probably just made more people think they were radical instead of winning any converts to their cause.

  13. @11, @12: And good job to you, sir! After reading your response, how could there possibly be any doubt that each and every one of the persons inconvenienced by the protests now happily sings, “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free!”

  14. @13 as I commented yesterday when you made this comparison, people supporting an authoritarian regime who weaponized rape while murdering innocent people as “resistance” is nothing like the civil rights marches and to compare the two is insulting.

  16. In San Francisco, of all places, the city is considering more serious charges to the “Dances with Hamas” crowd – conspiracy and false imprisonment. Though the latter most certainly would be a stretch, applying real consequences are the only way these disruptions will stop.

  17. @15 it definitely didn’t change any minds but I’m also not going to lose any sleep for people stuck in a traffic jam because as a grievance it doesn’t really stack up with wholesale slaughter of an entire ethnic group

  18. @19: The protests will continue to have absolutely no effect upon events in the Middle East, or upon American policy towards the Middle East. That connection exists only in your mind, and in the minds of the protesters. As many other commenters have noted, if these protests have any effect at all, it will be to create unsympathetic attitudes in persons who might otherwise sympathize with the Palestinians.

  19. @17, Although wars suck, and civilian deaths in wars are and have long been a tragedy, a 0.2% casualty rate among Palestinians resulting from a war that the Gazan Palestinian government started is not a “wholesale slaughter of an entire ethnic group,” before you even consider that 10-33% of the Palestinian casualties are amongst Hamas combatants and not civilians. 15% of Russians were killed and 35% of the global Jewish population were killed in WWII. The Rwandan genocide resulted in a whopping ~77% of Tutsis wiped out. Civilian deaths in the Israeli-Hamas war are tragic, Israel needs to step up tremendously to avoid them, but any such conflict was going to be bloody given the fact a war is being raged in a 141 square mile densely populated area and the reluctance of Egypt to open a humanitarian corridor and it is nowhere close to a “wholesale ethnic slaughter.”

  20. “Protesters claim numerous workers have quit Google because their mental health has suffered as a result of the company’s relationship with Israel.”

    Soon to be an “I, Anonymous” post near you!

  21. “[…] to matters of personal freedom like reproductive and voting rights”, both of which, perhaps ironically, are state and local issues, due to insufficient engagement in national politics and the resulting Supreme Court.

    As a quick aside, while it’s the term commonly associated with the “Party of Lincoln” (and Reconstruction for that matter), I don’t think there is anything “conservative” (or perhaps any unified political philosophy) remaining in the Republican Party at this point. All that to say, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the related organizations that are not direct funnels into the Trump grift are doing well this cycle.

  22. @2 They made clear this pilot was just for people with very simple taxes. They will have to roll out complicated ones bit by bit.

    And the reality is that folks with investments and other complications will likely always end up having to pay accountants/tax specialists. As long as we complicate tax codes there will always be a benefit to gaming those complications.

  23. @22 A couple of hour traffic jam with ways around it is worse than 30,000 people dying? You might want to take your moral compass in for recalibration.

  24. I think the mistake made with this old-timey protest approach is most people have no idea what the protest is about. Most Americans can’t find Isreal, let alone Gaza, on a map and may have only the vaguest knowledge of what’s going on based. Their reference points for the region are based on old Sunday School stories, so the protest is sort of pointless, just like when they blocked the interstate, just like when they took over the Christmas tree lighting. Instead of being the people with a point, these protesters are the dreary moral scolds.

    Blockades worked in the Civil Rights/Vietnam protests because just about everyone in the country knew about what was going on in the south and everyone in the country knew that we were in a controversial war in Asia – and a lot of people had a lot on the line in both cases (most notably the draft). Most Americans don’t see the Israel/Palestine fight as anything that affects them.

    People can be educated, but that takes time, effort, and the willingness/ability to engage with people, which is nowhere near as fun as blocking a highway and feeling the rush of self-righteousness that comes with it.

    I’ve said it yesterday, I’ll say it today: Young people have to find their own way, not rely on baby boomer tactics.

  26. @28 As far as it goes, there was a strong synergy between “provoking” the violence inherent in the system in ways that highlighted the disproportionality, capriciousness and unfairness, and the message against all that. Conversely, while something like “children shouldn’t be shot, starved or abused” is a clear and simple message, how that gets filtered through American bigotry and interests, or how any of that gets applied to a complicated middle east and the levers of power we have on it… Perhaps having valedictorian speeches canceled is “best”, although even that ends up incredibly fraught.

    Changing gears, perhaps not having a backdrop of recent violent efforts (bombings, bank robberies, etc.) also hurts the effectiveness of using non-violent methods nowadays. If the issue is simply getting one’s message out, I hear serial killer podcasts are hot now.

  27. I’m actually kind of shocked that there are not one but two lawyers that made it on the Trump jury. I wonder if his team is planning some sort of procedural / “loophole” defense they think a trained attorney might be receptive to.

  28. @28 the issue with your solution is the protestors are the ones who need education. People who are educated realize Hamas is an evil, authoritarian regime that finally went too far and now needs to be dismantled. The images of these protestors around the country waving Hezbelloh flags, chanting death to America, honoring khomeni while chanting things like from the river to the sea or infitada revolution shows just how completely ignorant and lost they are. They are left with terrorizing people and creating chaos for the precise reason they can not win over a rational mind.

  29. Education or advocacy – call it what you will, refugee dear. My point is that if you have a population that largely has no idea what you are talking about, and all you do is antagonize instead of enlighten, you aren’t going to get far.

  30. “State RepubliKKKans are outfunding state Democrats” Jesus WEPT!

    What to do when one is low income, possibly facing future economic displacement while forever getting hit with cries for cash donations daily online and in the US mail—usually involving “surveys”—from nearly every charity non-profit organization, campaign fund, and transient on the streets when one honestly hasn’t a dime to spare right now, and the price of EVERYTHING is only going UP?

    Reportedly Washington State has ~ 39,000 complete idiots who have no clue how to vote wisely, and who are in similar financial situations to mine (i.e.: retirees on fixed budgets, those barely getting by on minimum wage, etc.). Yet they keep foolishly sending money to pay off the Orange Turd’s LAWYERS! DJT is laughing its fat, privileged white neofascist ass off!

    Vivian, perchance do you and Hannah actually have any GOOD, reassuring news to report, that isn’t so fucking depressing?

    @33 Catalina Vel-DuRay: Thank you for giving me food for thought. That seems to be my problem, too, lately.

  31. @33 Catalina Vel-DuRay: I’m not saying I’m entirely in agreement with District13refugee @32.

    I have been feeling overwhelmed lately with everything that is going on and feel socially disconnected.

    It’s like I can’t relate anymore. I believe the Tech Age is going to be the end of us all. ALI (Artificial Lack of Intelligence to me, anyway) should be a warning sign. Why is it being pushed so aggressively and without sufficient testing prior to marketing? Technology like this no matter how many consider it a cultural advancement could prove disastrous if put in the wrong hands. Do we really need additional resources for identity theft?

    It’s times like these when I really miss what was good about the 20th Century, like a functioning democracy.

    Just saying.

  32. @31 98102CH: I was wondering about that, too. If DJT’s lawyers succeed it’s only further proof that we have no justice in this country, anymore. Aileen Cannon needs to be ousted from ANYTHING having to do with the Orange Turd STAT.

  33. @4 speaking

    of “pro-Hamas”

    my favorite reader’s

    comment on

    the nyt’s:

    The Israeli

    Censorship Regime

    Is Growing. That Needs to Stop.

    the comment:

    Israel

    and its

    proponents

    have been caught

    by surprise at the global

    condemnation to its campaign of retribution.

    The savagery of

    Hamas on October 7 was

    bestial, ruthless and appalling.

    But it was also very successful. Hamas

    knows it cannot destroy Israel on its own,

    but it can goad Israel into doing it for them.

    Israel under the reactionary regime of Netanyahu

    has attacked an unarmed civilian population

    with absolutely no consideration of mass

    casualties, Geneva Convention rules,

    guilt or even humanity.

    [speaking of dehumanizing]

    Netanyahu in particular is fighting

    for his political life and personal freedom,

    and no number of piles of dead Palestinian children

    or acres of stolen Palestinian property in the West Bank

    will instill an iota of compassion or even common sense in him.

    Israel’s genocidal fury

    is unjustifiable, dispro-

    portionate and horrifying.

    It is also serving to separate Israel

    from the protection of the West

    which it has taken for granted.

    This

    is precisely

    what Hamas was

    striving to achieve, and will

    leave Israel alone and vulnerable.

    The response has been

    to try to shut down

    all criticism.

    Israel will not permit journalists in Gaza be

    -cause they do not want facts recorded

    nor Palestinians presented favorably.

    The various pro-Israel groups in the West,

    particularly in the US, target free speech

    that demands Israeli accountability.

    Shutting down speech will destroy Israel, not protect it.

    –Shar; Atlanta

    more:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/opinion/gaza-journalists-censorship-israel.html#commentsContainer

    [formatting mine]

    ‘Israel’s genocidal fury

    is unjustifiable, disprop-

    ortionate and horrifying.

    It is also serving to separate Israel

    from the protection of the West

    which it has taken for granted.

    This

    is precisely

    what Hamas was

    striving to achieve, and will

    leave Israel alone and vulnerable.’

    Leaving Jews

    PLANET-Wide Vul-

    nerable. Dump Bibi

    Before it’s Too Fucking Late*

    Oh and END

    The GENOCIDE

    *if it Ain’t

    Already

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