Raise the wage for the love of God: King County Council Member Girmay Zahilay will introduce a bill to raise the minimum wage for unincorporated King County to $18.99 an hour. As it stands, workers in those places, such as White Center and Skyway, only earn the state minimum wage, which is $15.74 an hour. That wage is appalling, considering the cheapest one-bedroom apartment I could find currently available in White Center costs more than $1,700. There goes 70% of your minimum wage paycheck! 

Good odds for minimum wage workers: It looks like Zahilay has a shot at getting this policy across the finish line. According to Real Change, Council Members Rod Dembowski, Joe McDermott and Jeanne Kohl-Welles also support the bill. That means they need to sway just one more of the five remaining council members, three of whom are Democrats–not that the party always stands with workers


Look! A cop disregarding the sanctity of human life: A Seattle cop told on himself to avoid bad press for the objectively fucked up thing he said while his bodycam was on. Earlier this year, the department sent Dan Auderer, a notoriously mouthy cop who also works as the vice president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG), to determine whether SPD Officer Kevin Dave was impaired when he hit and killed a pedestrian while driving more than 70 mph in a 25 mph speed zone. After Auderer made his assessment, he called SPOG president Mike Solan and made insensitive comments about the victim, saying she had “limited value.” In his Office of Police Accountability complaint, the cop claimed he didn’t mean that fucked up thing to sound so fucked up. He said he was just making big-brain commentary on how the heartless cop lawyers—the ones who defend his fellow officers and the department in court—bargain over tragedies when the families of victims rightly sue: “Yeah, just write a check
 $11,000. She was 26 anyways.” 

Saving face: According to MyNorthwest’s initial story, Auderer told on himself to avoid the negative press that the police department would have earned if someone heard the conversation in its full context without Jason Rantz spinning this into a heroic tale of one upstanding cop who performed an honor-suicide to keep meanie reporters from attacking his armed fraternity. We’ll learn more about how accurately the cop recalled his own wild words and intentions when the bodycam footage surfaces in the coming weeks. Who wants to bet it is worse than his complaint says it is?

Speaking of: After 11 years under federal oversight via the consent decree, federal Judge James Robart ruled that the Seattle Police Department is mostly compliant, but it will remain under the feds’ watchful eye for crowd control and police accountability. As Ashley and Rich wrote yesterday, the judge will share more information today.

What we know right now: Lifting part of the consent decree does not a good police force make—if you believe in that sort of thing. As Ashley and Rich said yesterday, SPD was four times more likely to pull over Black people than white people, per a statement from the ACLU this March. 

Peace be with you: Remember that Bremerton football coach who got fired for praying on the field with public school students? And how he fought to be reinstated for eight years in a case that made it to the Supreme Court? And how he won that case? Well, he returned to his old job this year, prayed before one game, and then resigned. This basically confirms that the case was never about getting back his low-paying side-gig. He literally just wanted to be the face of the right's completely imagined War on Christianity. Glad you got the attention you so desperately crave! Hope God picks you or whatever.  

Bottoms is so good and she is an icon for this:

You’re joking: Doctors at UW Medicine took a tumor out of a man’s bladder
 and then they lost it. As the Seattle Times reported, the patient accused the hospital of medical negligence in a lawsuit filed this summer. The doctors were supposed to conduct important testing on the tumor to help determine next steps for the patient's treatment. The whole ordeal has caused him so much trouble, and he says he just wants to make sure this kind of mistake never happens again. 

When he does the bare minimum 😍: In a candidate forum last night, infamously dodgy and vapid city council candidate Rob Saka finally announced his support for the not-good-enough comprehensive plan that everyone in the city already supports. That’s a big step for him, though. When I asked which comprehensive plan he supported back in June, he asked to “double click on that” and have me explain the most important decision the next council will make. 

If you want to hear more about council candidates’ zoning takes, I wrote about Council Member Dan Strauss’s nods to NIMBYs at the housing forum on Tuesday night.

Pedestrians only: Starting today and lasting through next Wednesday, you cannot drive, cycle, or electric scooter onto the Bainbridge-Seattle ferry. On top of that, the ferry will operate on a one-boat schedule, meaning it will come and go half as often as it usually does. The ferry’s all screwed up for good reason, according to the Washington State Department of Transportation. WSDOT will replace a wooden walkway with a concrete one that complies with the current seismic code. 

Oil: Yesterday, the Biden administration canceled all seven of the remaining Trump-era oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, the Associated Press reports.

Hurricane Lee:

Hunterrrrrr Biiiiiiidennnnn: Federal prosecutors want to get the President's adult son, Hunter Biden, indicted for allegedly lying about drug use on a gun background check. The prosecutors will push a grand jury to indict by Sept 29 to comply with the Speedy Trial Act. 

Huge win for Mexico: The Mexican Supreme Court became the latest in a wave of Latin American countries to overturn federal bans on abortion in a ruling yesterday. While this amounts to a major victory for Mexicans, abortion advocates will have to continue their fight to decriminalize the health care procedure in about 20 states. 

I have no taste: So I asked my friend and this is what he told me to show y’all this morning.