Last Month This Month is a recap of all the previous month's news, featuring headlines from Slog AM. Find it in every issue of The Stranger! Subscribe to our daily Slog AM newsletter here. This story originally appeared in our Primary Endorsements Issue on July 2, 2025.
June was full of ups and downs. Donald Trump threw a $45 million birthday party; no one came to Donald Trump’s $45 million birthday party. Greta Thunberg went to Gaza; Greta Thunberg was detained in Gaza. A war between Israel and Iran began; a war between Israel and Iran ended. Here’s what else happened last month:
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The Navy, which isn’t gay at all, started the month by announcing plans to take gay civil rights hero Harvey Milk’s name off a ship. The Pentagon said in a statement that all Department of Defense names should reflect three things: Trump’s priorities, US history, and the “warrior ethos.” So butch. The Navy is also considering new names for the USNS Thurgood Marshall (too Black), the USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg (too woman), the USNS Harriet Tubman (too Black and too woman), who literally fought in the US Civil War.
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The same week that the Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee law that bans puberty blockers, hormones and (the rare) surgery for minors, the Trump Administration announced they would be cutting the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline’s LGBTQ Youth Specialized Service, effective July 17. As Abe Asher wrote in our Queer Issue in June, the Trevor Project saw a “700-percent increase in young people reaching out to crisis services” the day after November’s election. How nice of the feds to take our calls through Pride Month. The Trevor Project will continue to offer 24/7 help 365 days a year to folks 24 and younger, via text, phone, and online chat, and the Trans Lifeline is also available by calling 877-565-8860 or visiting translifeline.org. If you want to really piss Trump and RFK Jr. off, you can also donate to both organizations online. Fuck your conditional federal funding, assholes.
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In other wrinkly old dickbag news, Amsterdam’s national Rijksmuseum is displaying what is believed to be the world’s oldest condom. Historians say it was fashioned from a sheep’s appendix sometime around 1830, which hits so right for Shepherd/Flock play. The 200-year-old prophylactic even has a kinky little illustration showing a nun with her habit hiked up (with no underwear in sight) and three clergymen who’ve lifted their robes to present three rock-hard erections, in case its use wasn’t clear. Unrelated, remember when people used to draw dicks in text like this? 8==D
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The Seattle City Council almost voted to toss our ethics code in the wastebasket. If their “reform” passed, it would have allowed councilmembers to vote on issues that benefited them, so long as they disclosed conflicts to the public. After weeks of protests and thousands of emails and public comments opposing the change, Councilmember Cathy Moore withdrew the bill before the vote could happen. The people were heard! Immediately afterwards, Moore also announced she would be stepping down just a year and a half into her four-year term, citing health issues. Moore is the second councilmember to leave her position early this year—Tammy Morales vacated her seat in January. Confidential to all CMs we endorse in this month’s issue: If you win, DON’T FUCKING QUIT.
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While Moore’s quitting, Rob Saka’s yelling at clouds curbs. Again. In a 2,100-word email newsletter, Saka lost his ever-loving mind about the people who opposed his pet curb project. He accused the people who opposed removing an eight-inch curb that blocks illegal left turns into his kids’ preschool of, somehow, simultaneously: supporting Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, being part of the “Defund the Police” movement, and partaking in “White Saviorism” (capitalization his). Someone take his computer away and give him a paper bag to breathe into.
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When they weren’t quitting or screaming at concrete, the Seattle City Council was productive. Some good moves, some bad. In the bad column: they voted 8-1 to approve SPD’s use of StarChase’s GPS launcher and passed a bill to install privately owned 8-foot-tall digital advertising kiosks throughout the city. In the good column, they voted unanimously to pass a ban on rent-setting software like RealPage.
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There were No Kings protests in all 50 states, and the ACLU estimates that at least 5 million people hit the streets. They were largely peaceful rallies, with the exception of Salt Lake City’s. There, according to police, 24-year-old Arturo Gamboa had an AR-15-style rifle in his backpack. Two armed, non-police “peacekeepers” saw Gamboa lift the gun as if to shoot it, and one of them shot him, also accidentally shooting and killing a fashion designer named Arthur “Afa” Folasa Ah Loo in the process. Everyone involved is in custody, and everyone would be better off if we had better gun-control laws.
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The US has detained a record-breaking number of immigrants. By the end of June, more than 56,000 people were locked up in ICE facilities, and, according to one Syracuse professor, more than a third have zero criminal records. This is fucked. The ICE arrests are so rampant that organizers cancelled this year’s Duwamish River Festival because participants are concerned about being targeted by immigration enforcement. A glimmer of good in the nightmare: Lewelyn Dixon, a Filipino green-card holder who worked at the University of Washington, was able to go home after a judge ruled she doesn’t qualify for deportation.
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Leopards are eating faces over there in Redmond. Microsoft is planning to lay off thousands of employees in July as it funnels spending into artificial intelligence (John Connor, where are you?). This news comes after the company already axed 6,000 jobs in May. Washington State University also announced layoffs—the school plans to cut “a little over 4 percent (more than $17 million)” from its budget. And SIFF’s struggling, too; the org laid off nine full-time workers across multiple departments. SIFF Executive Director Tom Mara wrote the 21-percent reduction in administrative staff was “necessary” during a “financially challenging time for SIFF and for arts nonprofits across the country.” Oh, and Din Tai Fung did wage theft and everyone who works at the Louvre fucking hates the Mona Lisa.
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Too on the nose? On June 18, while Trump weighed the pros and cons of getting involved in the Israel–Iran conflict (which he eventually did, without talking to Congress, which is illegal), an unmanned SpaceX spaceship blew the fuck up. This is not supposed to happen in rocket science, we’re told.
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Jeffrey Bezos and his alive girl Lauren Sanchez are finally tying the knot. They are doing so by—checks notes—renting out the entire island of Venice? Protesters chased the billionaires from their original venue by threatening to fill the canals with inflatable crocodiles. (Or was it alligators? None of us are from Florida and we do not know the difference.) Too bad the foam party on Bezos’s $500 million superyacht off the coast of Europe couldn’t be stopped. Those grainy images of a shirtless, foamy Bezos in a bucket hat need to be scrubbed from our minds.
