Good morning! We’ve got a day of soft weather ahead of us: a rainy morning, a cloudy afternoon, and highs in the low 50s. Go outside, get a little mist on your face, touch some moss.
It’s Day 31 of the Trump administration, and in those 31 days, the New York Times has tallied 260 “major moves” in the administration. That’s 8.3 major moves a day. Even if you’re paying attention to half of that, you should be exhausted. Let’s try to cut through some of it. I’ll be quick.
Another Power Grab: Last night, Trump signed an executive order that tries to extend his authority over regulatory agencies that Congress has intentionally made independent from direct White House control—agencies like the SEC and the FCC. The order requires them to accept the president’s and the Justice Department’s interpretation of the law, and to send any regulation changes through the White House. Unlike a lot of his orders in the last few weeks, experts say this one feels well thought out. “This one reads like it was under preparation for a long time,” Deborah Pearlstein, a constitutional scholar at Princeton University, told the WaPo. “It is deliberately teeing up a major question of constitutional law that will go to the Supreme Court for review.”
The Floor Is in Hell: Yesterday, the White House posted a video of people being deported, in chains, from Boeing Field with the caption “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight.” The Seattle Times called it “gleeful.”
RFK Lied: In the leadup to his confirmation, RFK Jr. told a key Republican holdout (Sen. Bill Cassidy, MD) that he wouldn’t make any changes to the childhood vaccine schedule, which includes inoculations for things like measles, polio, diphtheria, RSV, and hepatitis. But yesterday, addressing the whole HHS staff for the first time, he announced his plan to investigate the schedule. “Nothing is going to be off limits,” he said. In addition, he announced that pesticides, food additives, microplastics, antidepressants and the electromagnetic waves emitted by cellphones and microwaves also would be studied. We’re not surprised that anyone in this administration lies. But we do wish Senator Cassidy had realized that a few days earlier.
Speaking of RFK: Want to do a deep dive with The Stranger’s Vivian McCall? Yesterday, she helped break down why the guy with worms in his brain and a dead bear carcass isn’t a joke—he’s genuinely dangerous. In the era of “medical freedom,” medical truth and safety are on us, now.
Muskdate: Woof, I won’t attempt another Elon pun again, I promise. Musk has celebrated his Department of Government Efficiency as “maximally transparent,” which is a totally normal thing to say when you’re acting transparently. The reality is that it’s been near impossible to get clear information about DOGE, even for government employees who stand to lose their jobs while Elon’s teenagers sweep through the federal government. Multiple court cases are providing a small window into the department, though. They’re some of the only firsthand accounts of what’s happening inside DOGE, and, as NYT reported: “they paint a picture of a tightly managed process in which small groups of government employees have swept in and out of agencies, grabbing up data in apparent pursuit of larger political projects.” In one filing, the government attempted to protect Musk by claiming that he’s not legally the head of DOGE, nor is he one of its employees.
Local Companies Cater to Trump: After a February 5 executive order that told the US attorney general’s office to investigate private companies, universities and nonprofits using “discriminatory DEI” practices, local companies are hopping on the Trump train. According to the Seattle Times, Amazon scrubbed sections on their website titled “Equity for Black people” and LGBTQ+ rights.” Starbucks scrapped the words “inclusion and diversity.” “The organizations that stick by their values—if it is their values and it’s not just window dressing—they are going to see the real win here,” UW business professor Elizabeth Umphress told the Seattle Times. “Employees are watching and paying attention to these subtle and not-so-subtle actions of their leaders.”
Wanna think about literally anything else? We’re in the season of great TV again. Severance is back. The White Lotus is back. And for a little local color, Yellowjackets Season Three started last weekend. I’m stoked. So’s Megan Burbank, who gave us a rundown of the last two seasons, since we haven’t been out in the woods with those cannibal queens since 2023.
One More Palate Cleanser: A baby seal got lost on the mean streets of New Haven, Connecticut, more than 1,000 feet from the nearest river. Police scooped him up, gave him a little smooch (unconfirmed), and brought him to a local aquarium. “We assumed he was here to try the clam pizza but I can’t confirm that, we’re just happy he’s safe,” wrote a police spokesperson.
State of the City: Yesterday, Mayor Bruce Harrell gave his annual State of the State address at Benaroya Hall. In his speech, he patted himself on the back for a banner 2024: crime rates down, parks restored, downtown bustling; but carefully avoided mentioning his humiliating loss at the ballot box earlier this month. Wouldn’t want people thinking he’s vulnerable this November. Stay tuned, Stranger contributor Tobias Coughlin-Bogue will have more on it later today.
The Great Vanishing DMs: Turns out, since 2021, Washington State agencies have allowed their Microsoft Teams messages to disappear after seven days. What’s the big deal? It probably violates the state’s Public Records Act. In January, the State paid out a $225,000 settlement for this policy in the Department of Children, Youth and Families, and now Governor Ferguson has decided to wise up and change the policy for the whole State government. The willful destruction of public records is a Class C felony in Washington, and while felonies don’t disqualify you from governing these days, it’s not the felony we’d choose.
The Race for D2 Is on: Yesterday, Eddie Lin threw his hat into the ring for the District 2 city council seat. The seat is currently occupied by Mark Solomon, who was appointed by city council in January after losing (badly) to Tammy Morales in 2019. But that seat opens back up in the November election, and the games have begun. Lin is an assistant city attorney, primarily working with the Office of Housing. According to Stranger contributor Nathalie Graham, he’s a champion of affordable housing, progressive revenue, and creating a city where, as he put it, “artists and bike messengers and baristas and educators can all afford to live here.” Read more of his campaign-launching interview with us here.
As a Treat: Cynthia Erivo is going to be Jesus in a short run of Jesus Christ Superstar in LA, because sometimes we get to have nice things. Here’s a little reminder of what we’re in for, but ya know, even gayer:
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Hey, you missed the trump-ism that Zelensky is a dictator and Putin is just an innocent victim unfairly attacked by Ukraine… guess even that doesn’t make it to the Slog these days.
It’s incredible to think RFK believes scientists have been waiting for HHS to give them permission to study the health effects of common exposures that many people believe might be harmful to humans. The obvious explanation is that studies with negative findings rarely make the news, but if you’re the head of HHS you should probably know more about, you know, health and human services than someone who only gets this information from the tv.
From the ST article about the deportation flights:
“In 2019, King County Executive Dow Constantine signed an order seeking to ban such flights, and the aviation companies servicing the charter flights backed out of doing so.
But President Biden’s Justice Department continued a Trump administration lawsuit to overturn the order and won in court.”
Never forget that national Dems had the opportunity to make things better but chose not to.
JFC, it’s only been a month!?! So we’ve got roughly 47 more of these to endure? I think I’m gonna start sniffing glue.
Yale Admissions: SYHg2506 -admit!
Oh wait, no more DEI, he will have to go back to Connecticut College
@1 The Stranger has always leaned to the “surrender!…for peace” idiocy folks like Code Pink and Jayapal have advocated. They simply don’t care much.
@4
tomorrow’ll
be 4 weeks.
only 204*
more~c
u @ the
Gulag!
*have you
considered
huffing gasoline?
there’s Gas
Tanks Everywhere!
(I’d recommend
the unleaded
for Health
reasons)
I have in fact spent a bit of time in the woods (in reality it’s an old paintball park) with the “cannibal queens” and am happy to report they’re all actually very nice and I was not chewed on even once.
@4 Break it in chunks: think midterm elections so you have to consider the next 21 months That is assuming Democrats finally adopt an agenda that truly breaks away from neoliberalism, which is less than guaranteed considering their tendency to blame voters for the loss.
“RFK Lied: In the leadup to his confirmation, RFK Jr. told a key Republican holdout (Sen. Bill Cassidy, MD) that he wouldn’t make any changes to the childhood vaccine schedule,”
While RFK Jr may make changes to the schedule when whatever his investigations are concluded. He has not yet lied to Sen. Cassidy. It strikes me as disingenuous to say that he has lied.
Oh FFS, even the linked to Newsweek article says as much, “Kennedy has not directly called for a clear change to childhood vaccination schedules.”
I’m with @1 on this one. Zalensky is a dictator AND Ukraine started the war? WTF. W.T.F.? Is Drumpf going to parrot that Ukraine is full of nazis? Hey Phoebe… maybe we should send you to Ukraine so Drumpf can be one person closer to Ukraine being full of nazis.
10, it you say you’re not going to do a thing and later you say you are considering doing the thing you already said you won’t do, you lied about your intentions
Funny, as often as I’ve read the constitution I still don’t see any mention of this 4th branch of government that doesn’t answer to the President (SEC, FCC, etc). Hopefully SCOTUS kills these “independent agencies”, preferably on the emergency docket.
And yes, it was pretty gleeful watching those foreign invaders being removed from our country in leg irons. Hopefully an image we’ll see repeated daily for the next four years.
@12
While RFK Jr is a schmuck out of central casting, he has not in fact lied as yet. At least he is not making kneejerk decisions like Musk and team DOGE.
@1, and Trump decreed that the Russian invasion was all Ukraine’s fault, presumably because it dressed too provocatively.
13, You may have read the constitution but you sure as shit don’t understand it. It doesn’t create federal agencies, but it does give congress control over the federal purse strings. The president is the head of a co-equal branch of the government. He not an autocrat. He is supposed to be a loyal defender of the constitution and he is violating his duty to this entire country by overstepping his role.
Even though you don’t care about the constitution, you should at least be a little concerned about the economic impact of 200K Americans losing their job in a single month. Even more so when you consider these jobs make the country run and eliminating such roles will come at a much higher cost than the pittance we save on their salaries. We are headed for a deep recession and the government will be unable to do much to correct course when it’s been rendered obsolete by a bunch of unelected techies so the billionaire masters they serve can reap the rewards when the economy craters. This is disaster capitalism at its most blatant and obscene and you are an absolute moron if you think they’re doing any of this for your benefit.
“Willful destruction of public records is a Class C felony.”
Operative word is “willful”. Not “known,” or “should have known”.
You have to prove that someone intended to destroy the records, not mere that there act or omission allowed one to be destroyed.
You need a smoking gun like an e-mail that says something like, “Set the software this way so that these records are not preserved,” or “delete these records,” or “shread these records.”
We went through this before with Chief Best and Mayor Durkan. They never came up with the legally required smoking gun.
14, you said yourself he told congress he wasn’t going to touch the vaccine schedule, which is mutually exclusive from considering touching the vaccine schedule. If modifying the vaccine schedule is on the table, saying it isn’t was a lie.
@16 – clearly you don’t understand. I didn’t say fuck about funding, of course that is a congressional perogative. I am upset by the idea the President can’t fire the SEC or FCC chairs when they are executive branch agencies and the President is the head of the executive branch.
But no, I have exactly zero sympathy for the 200,000 who were fired. 200,000 fewer entrenched bureaucrats wasting our tax dollars.
@19, Who gives a fuck about the chair of the FEC. The president is violating the constitution by usurping congress’s role and you are happy about it.
I don’t expect you to have sympathy for anyone who lost their jobs because “fuck you i’ve got mine” is the default mindset for conservatives. The problem with this thinking is that everyone suffers when the economy collapses from the shock and chaos Trump and Elon have created, except of course for the billionaires who are poised to gain from it. You are the definition of a useful idiot.
@19: They just fired 1000 park employees at Yellowstone, most of whom were maintenance and facilites. But surrrrrre the people tasked with cleaning restrooms and clearing trails are eNtReNcHeD BuReAuCRaTs wAStiNG oUr TAX DoLLaRs. I hope you fall while hiking and die alone and cold waiting for an “entrenched bureaucrat” that neve comes to find you. Or, barring that, from polio. Kiss kiss!
owning the Libs
means taking utter
Delight in their sorrows
even if it happens to inflict
our neonazis and it surely will
they’ll Still say
it was totally
Worth it
like the
Wormtongue
says, it’s All about
the Cruelty: 😘😍😉*
*see those
Happy mocking
faces? they mean:
just kidding!
gawd help me
I miss🛴🔨
Barth, if you want to go with the past tense of lied for something that hasn’t happend yet, that’s fine. I think its a bit of a streatch until he actually does something.
RFK Jr. “Nothing is going to be off limits. Whatever belief or suspicion I have expressed in the past, I’m willing to subject them all to the scrutiny of unbiased science. That is going to be our template. That’s something that will make us all proud of this agency, and of our role in restoring American health.'”
That is the general statement being used to suppport the specific claim that he lied to Sen Cassidy, I just can’t make that reach.
@21 WRONG: There were not 1,000 people fired at Yellowstone.
This is what the numbers actually are:
“Late last week, the Trump administration laid off roughly 1,000 workers in the National Park Service, or about 5 percent of its workforce.”
However, I do appreciate your misguided histrionics.
@23, “ Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s pick for health secretary, moved closer to securing the top health job on Tuesday after winning a senior Republican senator’s backing with pledges to protect existing vaccination programs.
“Kennedy made the pledges to Senator Bill Cassidy, a member of the Republican-led Senate Finance Committee that voted on Tuesday to advance Kennedy’s nomination to a full Senate vote as soon as this week.“
If your answer goes from a definitive no to a maybe, the no was a lie.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/senate-panel-backs-trump-health-secretary-nominee-robert-f-kennedy-jr-2025-02-04/
@13, 19 You are doing a good job of convincing us that after Trump is deposed, we will need to confine you MAGAts in re-education camps.
@15!!!!! Slaaaaaaaay!!!!!
And that dog that was in the secret service that took that guy down at the white house trying to get Obama. Yeah that cute black dog, died recently. So I mourn the dog that protected Obama. May the next task for this little critter in the afterlife be to stand guard at the pearly gates to lock his jowls onto drumpfs mug and drag his ass to hell.
@11: Nazi? Where did that come from. If everyone is a Nazi, no-one’s a Nazi. I’m more horrified of Trump’s actions than you could ever be – you impertinent, uneducated, silly, twerp.
@24: Thank you for the update! Perhaps you can explain how these fired employees are entrenched bureaucrats.
https://dailyinterlake.com/news/2025/feb/19/trumps-firing-of-1000-national-park-workers-raises-concerns-about-maintenance-and-operating-hours/