Diaz is out: Ashley reports that Seattle Police Department Chief Adrian Diaz will no longer lead the department, according to a source. Sources told Fox 13 station that he cleaned out his desk last night, and that Mayor Bruce Harrell re-assigned him to special projects. The City will reportedly hold a press conference around 1 pm today. Ashley will have more on this developing story later.

Library cyber attack: Someone hit the Seattle Public Library system with a ransomware attack over the holiday weekend. It shut down several online services Tuesday. The attack affected staff and public computers, library loaning, access to the online catalog, e-books, e-audiobooks and the main website, which is now back online. Buildings remained open, allowing people to check out regular-ass books with old-school paper forms, which, if anything, should bolster your stalwart faith in our greatest public amenity.

Shame on you: City Council Member Maritza Rivera introduced a last-minute amendment to pull funding for a City initiative that empowers BIPOC-led community groups to build capital projects, and BIPOC-led organizations shamed her for about three embarrassing hours. They called Rivera, her amendment to pull funding, and her supportive colleagues racist, and a lot of other adjectives Hannah reported here. The council voted 6-3 to delay a vote on the amendment until next week.

Why are there so many migrants in Tukwila? Spoiler, it’s not because Tukwila is (or isn’t!) awesome. According to the Seattle Times, it all started with a 911 call about six Venezuelan migrants on Jackson Street in the summer of 2022, who were the first of more than a dozen referrals to Riverton Park United Methodist Church, an institution that actually has provided a response to clear community needs. Seattle, meanwhile, has taken no ownership of a crisis it helped start.

Brouwer’s Café is closing after 19 years: The Fremont bar’s general manager told the Seattle Times that the rising costs of food, beer, labor, and shortages of servers and low foot traffic led to its demise. It opened in 2005 as a marvel, with West Coast beer dorks coming from as far as California to ogle its 64-tap, 400-bottle selection. The lights go out for good on June 29.

Air Force awarded Boeing $7.5 billion guided bomb contract: Under the contract, Boeing will build kits that convert “dumb” bombs into “smart” guided bombs known as Joint Direct Attack Munitions. The company will also provide spares, repairs, and technical assistance to the US government until February 2030. The US sends JDAM-equipped bombs to Taiwan, Ukraine, and Israel.

BUI: As Ashley wrote yesterday, a woman fell off a boat into Lake Washington Monday night. Seattle Police have since impounded the boat and arrested the 46-year-old man who owns it, who they suspect of boating under the influence. The woman is feared dead. The US Coast Guard stopped searching yesterday, but the Seattle Police Department’s Harbor Patrol Unit is still looking. 

Israel intensifies attacks on Rafah in Gaza: Israeli tanks are advancing further into Rafah in a ground invasion that is drawing widespread international condemnation. Israel shelled a tent camp in the “safe zone” west of the city, killing at least 21 Palestinian civilians. Over the weekend, another Israeli bombing on the outskirts of Rafah killed 45 and injured 200 in an ensuing fire, most of them women and children. Al Jazeera reports Israeli air raids and artillery have killed 15 people today. The UN says only 170 trucks have made it to Palestinians in the last three weeks, when 500 are needed daily. There’s no indication that the Rafah crossing will open to allow more aid any time soon. President Joe Biden says Israel has still not crossed a “red line,” which he defines as a mass troop invasion. 

Jury deliberations begin in Trump trial: In the seventh week of Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial, prosecutors spoke to the jury a final time, urging them to convict the former president for allegedly falsifying 34 business records to cover up his former lawyer Michael Cohen’s hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels. The defense called Cohen a liar and said the payment was just business, not a crime. As the jury deliberates, the wait for a verdict now begins.

RFK Jr. doesn’t stop lyinggg: First he claims a worm ate part of his brain, and now he’s out with a pretty fake story about indigenous Peruvians ambushing him with bows drawn while on a whitewater rafting trip in the 1970s. Kennedy told the story in a 1984 book, claiming that he and his cousin Christian Kennedy Lawford fought back with a stick of dynamite. His cousin told a more realistic version in his 2005 memoir: drunk villagers once shot an arrow from the shore in their general direction. Kennedy’s campaign did not respond to Huff Post’s request for comment.

Not a slay, Francis: Earlier this month, Pope Francis and a few bishops were yakking it up about whether or not to admit gay men into Catholic seminaries in preparation for the priesthood. Francis wasn’t into it and said that there was already enough “frociaggine” going on there, the Italian equivalent to faggotness or faggotry. He apologized.

I can’t get a bead on his Holiness and gay stuff, and neither can queer Catholics. This year, he said that “sex change” surgery and “gender theory” were grave threats to human dignity, but he’s also said that trans people can be baptized and serve as Godparents. Last year, he told priests they should bless people in gay relationships but not the relationship.

World’s longest-serving flight attendant dies: Bette Nash died at 88 after serving as a flight attendant for 67 years. Nash started her job at the now-defunct Eastern Airlines in 1957, when airlines treated women terribly. Some companies still put age caps on the “stewardesses” they advertised as would-be brides for horny executives. She must have had an iron will; I can only hope she did it for love of the game and not an inability to retire.

Say cheese or die: People are filming—or pretending to film—Chipotle workers because they think the restaurant is directing employees to skimp out on portions. Chipotle denies this. Delish asks, “genius” or “greedy;” I ask, “What the fuck is wrong with you psychopaths?” Making workers’ lives even worse for one extra spoonful of wet slop meat is certifiable. You’re not sticking up to a corporation. You’re ruining a teenager’s afternoon.

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.

22 replies on “Slog AM: Adrian Diaz Out as SPD Chief, Library Cyber Attack, Israel Intensifies Rafah Strikes”

  1. Hey Stranger, you endorsed a slate of school board candidates that are rolling out austerity and shuttering 20 elementary schools. Would be nice to see some coverage. There was a pretty spicy public forum at Roosevelt High School last night, with more in-person events to come. FYI.

  2. {President Joe Biden says Israel has still not crossed a “red line,”]

    Continuing complicity in genocide while Biden’s approval rating is stuck at dismal and he (we) desperately need the youth and progressive vote to prevent another Trump presidency. Don’t come complaining about 3rd party voters, when Biden shows he can lose the elections all by himself.

  3. Why is a “mass troop invasion” a red line? You’d think that would get it over faster. Faster than dropping bombs on 2 or 3 fighters at a time when Sinwar is in a deep tunnel.

  4. An accurate characterization I heard:

    Biden: Israel may not attack Rafah. That’s a “red line” for us.

    Netanyahu: Fuck Biden’s “red lines.” We’ll invade Rafah how and when we want.

    Biden: OK, sorry. How much more money should we send you?

  5. @3 Biden will say anything to continue supporting Israel while occasionally paying lip service to the wishes of the large majority of Democrats who want him to stop supporting unconditionally the murder of Palestinian civilians

  6. @4: Israel’s lost about 700 soldiers, Hamas has lost >15,000 (by the IDF’s estimates). They aren’t getting their ass handed to them, exactly.

  8. @8 that’s why the protestors are asking the US government to take punitive action, like they and other Western countries did to Russia.

  9. @6: Biden doesn’t have much of a choice. US law requires American policy to help maintain Israel’s “qualitative military edge” in the region. Amongst American registered voters, support remains high for Israel’s operation in Rafah.

    @9: Protesters have also consistently called for elimination of Israel, hence their total lack of getting taken seriously.

  10. All you have to do at Chipotle is ask nicely for a little more wet slop meat (or anything you want, except maybe guac). Always works for me. Even the youngest employees there likely know that Chipotle was once famous for its ridiculously huge portions and that at least a few customers still expect to get them.

    It’s obvious Netanyahu is never going to declare an end to this war, no matter how many times he insists that victory is “weeks, not months, away.” (He might as well add, “Free beer tomorrow!”) Therefore no “day-after” planning is needed because there isn’t going to be one, at least not on his watch. Of course Biden could try to force his hand by pulling financial support but I don’t think he has it in him to do anything more than draw meaningless “red lines” that he will never enforce. And as BN is well aware, Trump won’t even do that much.

  11. @8 as if being identified as a rogue nation by world opinion or even the friend of a rogue nation was tenable, remember South Africa. I suspect it won’t be long before the boycott movement really kicks in.

    @10 wrong on all counts. US law says no US weapons can be used to commit war crimes, and protestors didn’t [consistently call for the “elimination of Israel”]. Quit making shit up.

  13. @13: After 10/7, the Stranger’s first story on a Pro-Palestinian rally in Seattle reported the chant, “We don’t want two states; we want 1948.” Columbia University kicked the protesters off campus after a day of them chanting, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Arab.” Students for Justice in Palestine openly celebrated the 10/7 attacks. All just isolated incidents, eh?

    @14: Propublica is entitled to their opinion. American military aid to Israel is the law.

  14. @9

    The protesters are even more useless than the UN. And how effective have those punitive actions against Russia been? Last I checked, the war in Ukraine is still going.

    Biden isn’t going to get too heavy handed with Israel. He might ramp it up the tough talk a bit as the election gets closer in order to placate the folks who voted uncommitted in the primaries, but I doubt he’ll do anything substantial.

  16. @13: The United States Congress enacted an anti-apartheid sanctions law in 1986. That finally broke apartheid South Africa. Nobody with any power or influence is even talking about isolating Israel’s economy from that of the US, so I rather doubt Israelis care.

    @15: “It is the policy of the United States … to help the Government of Israel preserve it’s qualitative military edge…”

    (https://www.congress.gov/112/statute/STATUTE-126/STATUTE-126-Pg1146.pdf)

  18. @19: He didn’t cite the Leahy Law; he gave a url to an opinion at propublica.

    @19, @20: If you ever do actually read the law at the url I provided @18, you might see Section 5. It contains the legislation extending various forms of aid to Israel. (You know, to assure Israel’s “qualitative military edge.”)

  19. Not even going to mention the preposterous school closure meeting at Roosevelt last night? Other media were there, but it’s your candidates (along with the private school parent entourage they had with them last night) who are teeing up this wrecking ball.

  20. “Seattle, meanwhile, has taken no ownership of a crisis it helped start.”

    Is there any context for this? I know the Stranger has recently taken the position that the City of Seattle should somehow fund migrant assistance programs in other jurisdictions, but I have no idea why this is the case.

  21. @24 I think the issue is that SPD and/or other Seattle agencies directed the first refugees to the Tukwila church since there weren’t any services available in Seattle. The encampment at the church snowballed from there. But yes, more context would be nice.

  22. Of course RFK, Jr was ambushed with bows drawn while on a whitewater rafting trip in the 1970s. How do you think he got the worm?

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