The Virginia Inn Isn’t Closing This Sunday: The oldest restaurant in Pike Place received a last minute eviction reprieve from the Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority (PDA) and will resume “business as usual,” the Inn posted on Facebook. The PDA told King 5 that the current tenant will operate the restaurant until September while working with the PDA to find someone to take over.
ICE Arrested Kennewick Food Truck Operator Married to US Citizen: According to Gabby Cerdio, ICE took her husband Sergio Cerdio Gomez into custody during an interview about his pending citizenship application. Shortly after marrying in 2022, the couple filed a I-130 petition, which allows US citizens to ask that their loved ones can stay in the country while pursuing a green card (and then citizenship). Together, Cerdio and Gomez have three children and own a hibachi food truck in Kennewick. Gomez has not yet appeared before a judge, according to the Tri-City Herald.
Irish Woman with Green Card Held by ICE in Tacoma: ICE first detained Cliona Ward, 53, at the San Francisco airport. She’d just returned from Ireland, where she and her stepmother had visited her sick father. They questioned her about a 2007 drug conviction for simple possession of methamphetamine and then released her to collect proof that it had been expunged. But at an administrative meeting, she was detained and sent to the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center. “When she got off the plane in Tacoma, officers handcuffed, shackled her, and escorted her through the airport like a hardened criminal,” her sister wrote in a GoFundMe. “She was mortified, shamed, and demoralized.”
Deadly crash blocked I-5 in both directions this morning: The semi-truck crashed into a barrier in Tacoma, rolled over and burst into flames. The driver died, according to the Washington State Patrol. The Washington State Department of Transportation did not say when lanes would reopen.
Trump Tracker: Sen. Patty Murray and Connecticut Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro released a new tracker showing the $430 billion in federal funds that President Donald Trump has frozen, cancelled, illegally impounded and “slow-walked” in the last 100 days.
Trump Signs Three Executive Orders on Immigration and Policing: One directs Attorney General Pam Bondi and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to publish a list of sanctuary cities that aren’t cooperating with his deportation plan and pursue “all necessary legal remedies and enforcement measures” against them. A second directs his administration to provide legal resources to police officers accused of wrongdoing, take restraints off law enforcement like federal consent decrees, further militarize police departments, and throw the book against local officials “unlawfully prohibiting law enforcement officers from doing their duty.” A third order would require commercial truck drivers to pass English literacy tests.Â
Liberals Win in Canadian Elections: Mark Carney is still Prime Minister and his rival, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, lost his seat in rural Ottawa. While the Liberals won, it’s still not clear if they’ll hold an outright majority in Parliament. Just a few months ago, the conservatives were 27 percentage points ahead. Then Trump started talking tariffs and annexation and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stepped down.
Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt holds a propaganda briefing exclusively for “new media,” or a bunch of pro-Trump influencers who asked nice questions and clapped like children at the end. When America First Policy Institute ambassador Kambree Nelson asked Leavitt what she should cover, Leavitt thanked her for being an independent voice.
The EPA Says It Will Limit “Forever Chemicals”: At least PFAS (aka per- and polyfluoroalkyl) chemicals are bad. They make our things stain resistant and non-stick, but unfortunately may give us cancer and in all of our blood (a sticky and stain-y thing). What this ban means materially no one knows. This administration never spoils a good surprise, especially on policy. Environmental groups want to know if the administration will enforce a Biden-era regulation tasking utilities with removing PFAS our water. It seems to give more of a shit about chemicals in straws than the water they’re sitting in, but we’ll see! Last week, the New York Times reported on Trump admin plans to cancel tens of millions in grants to scientists studying environmental hazards to children in rural America, including the buildup on PFAS in our food.
Taking the Just Out of Justice: Civil rights lawyers are running in a screaming mass from the Justice Department’s civil rights division, which was created specifically to protect civil rights and has pivoted hard from the concept (too woke). The deadline for federal workers to resign and get paid through September ended late last night, and resignations came flying in. We know about this exodus partly because the division’s new leader Harmeet K. Dhillon told Glenn Beck on his podcast this weekend. Dhillon, a Republican activist, has pivoted away from silly things like racial discrimination to focus on what’s important: anti-Christian bias, transgender athletes, and ridding this world of DEI (can’t spell Devil without it). The department’s civil rights division always swings when another party takes over, but this shakeup has been more “extreme” than usual if you can believe that.
Am I so out of touch? No, it’s the pollsters who are wrong. Everything sucks, so President Donald Trump’s approval rating is sliding like an unattended, drunk baby down a black diamond slope. It must be “election fraud,” says Trump. Polls from the The New York Times, ABC News, and The Washington Post were the work of “negative criminals” suffering from “Trump derangement syndrome” who ought to be investigated for lying to their readers when anyone can see he’s winning so tremendously bigly. “THEY ARE SICK, almost only write negative stories about me no matter how well I am doing.”
Trump Admin Releases “Fact Sheet” About its Work Outlawing Gender-Affirming Care for Youth: It declares that all evidence for trans healthcare is bunk and that agencies should cull all references to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s standards of care. The report also notes that Health and Human Services will publish an “evidence-based” review of the literature (that will certainly be top-notch science) and that Attorney General Pam Bondi has already prepared guidance to prosecute doctors who treat trans kids.Â
I’m Hearing Yakety Sax: On April 22, rescue workers airlifted a 27-year-old man with altitude sickness from the top of Japan’s Mount Fuji. Four days later, he went back to get his phone and got so sick he had to be rescued from the mountain AGAIN, this time carried down. It’s not a crime to hike in the off-season, but people on social media in Japan are calling for this guy’s head. I hope he does a very funny thing.