Truce: Israel and Hamas have agreed to pause fighting for four days in a deal mediated by Qatar. They haven't announced a start time, but we should find out in the next 24 hours. During the truce, Hamas will release 50 civilian women and children from the 237 captives abducted since its Oct 7 attack, and Israel will release 150 prisoners. Israel has arrested 3,000 in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem since the fighting began, including 145 children, 95 women, and 37 journalists.

Israel said it would extend the truce one day for every additional 10 hostages Hamas released, but it is unclear if Israel would release any more prisoners in exchange. During the pause, the country will not withdraw the troops from its ground offensive. In the last six weeks, fighting and Israel’s aerial bombardment of Gaza has killed 14,000 and displaced 1.7 million Palestinians, the vast majority of people living there. According to Politico, Biden officials were concerned that journalists having broader access to Gaza to illuminate the devastation could turn public opinion on Israel.

Seattle City Council approves supplemental budget 8-1: It doesn’t change much of the two-year plan Council passed last fall or solve the $218 million revenue shortfall projected every year for the next six years. But hey, we get a reportedly faulty gunshot detection technology the Council rejected last year, a pilot for substance abuse treatment, and two oversight positions to the City’s Offices of Police Accountability and the Inspector General. As always, Kshama Sawant voted "no." She didn't like the low city employee pay and the use of JumpStart to pay for stuff that the council didn't intend when it set up the payroll tax in the first place. 

What we talk about when we talk about Enumclaw: Let’s say it together, “Getting rawed by a horse until you die, we know.” But there’s also Enumclaw, the rock band from Tacoma, and Charles wrote about it in the first installment of a three-part series about the city. I’d never heard of the band, and they're really good. You shouldn’t look up the horse, though.

The ferry is going to be fucking crazy, officials say: Not in exactly those words, but it will be chaotic. The already overburdened state ferry service expects 30,000 passengers between today and Sunday. The state department of transportation is advising passengers to include boatloads of extra time and prepare themselves for last-minute schedule changes. The busiest travel times are toward the islands today and tomorrow, and Friday and Saturday back east toward Seattle. If you don’t need your car, going without could help congestion. You also may want to consider a super-early or late-night trip. 

Crypto leader will plead guilty for laundering money: Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance (Bisexual Finance?) reached a settlement with US law enforcement and regulators that allows it to operate–at a price. For his crimes, Zhao will pay $50 million and Binance will shell out $4.3 billion, one of the biggest corporate fines in US history. For its part, the company said it wasn’t perfect (yeah, we know). Last month, a jury found FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried guilty of fraud and money laundering.

China cracking down on mosques: Authorities have forcibly closed mosques in the Gansu province and the Ningxia region, where the country’s Hui Muslims worship, and they have removed architectural features that don’t look Chinese enough for President Xi Jingping. He first called for the “Sinicization,” or cultural repression, of Chinese Muslims in 2016, which included building a network of extrajudicial internment camps for 1 million Uyghurs, Huis, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz. The United Nations said the camps may constitute crimes against humanity.

Iowa Evangelical Leader Endorses Ron DeSantis: Bob Vander Plaats is the latest prominent Iowa conservative to endorse the Florida Governor. It's not surprising. He'd been openly critical of leading candidate and former President Donald Trump, and on paper he and DeSantis make fast friends. Vander Plaats’s The Family Leader is a group that pushes for “biblical values” like abortion restrictions and transgender health care bans. He’s an influential Christian, but he's no bellwether–the last three Republicans Vander Plaats supported did not win the party nomination.

Conservatives want the planet to burn: Let’s Go Washington and its founder, Redmond hedge fund manager Brian Heywood, say they’ve got the number of signatures needed to put on the ballot a repeal of the state Climate Commitment Act (CCA). The CCA establishes a carbon market that forces businesses to buy a slowly diminishing supply of credits at auction to "offset" their emissions. The state uses that money to fund a whole host of things, including subsidies for green energy projects, bike/ped stuff, and habitat restoration. Heywood and friends say the burden shouldn't be on the polluters, who pass costs down to consumers. Democrats and climate activists say repealing the tax would risk climate gains that haven't even gone far enough anyway.

Climate groups protest: The pro-pollution team announced their signature collection victory at a gas station in Kent, but climate advocate groups like Climate Solutions and Washington Conservation Action (WCA) showed up to protest. WCA Vice President of Campaigns Lennon Bronsema said, “This initiative is bad for Washington. If they qualify, vote no! In Washington, polluters pay for the destruction they have and continue causing to our health and our environment. This initiative would take all of the money away that is building healthier communities project by project and job by job."

Speaking of climate: Thanksgiving weekend is going to be totally dry. The National Weather Service in Seattle said that’s only happened three times in the past 50 years–2002, 2007, 2015 and now maybe 2023. We’ll see showers this morning, though.