Good Morning! It’s going to be sunny and in the 80s today. What perfect weather to vote early in your local primary election. 

Let’s do the news. 

Who Will Rep District 5? This morning, City Council will appoint Council Member Cathy Moore’s replacement. 2025 has been at least a decade long, so if you’ve forgotten: Moore resigned earlier this year, citing health issues, and her last day on council was July 7. The heir apparent is former City Council President Debora Juarez (though the Seattle Times just came out against her appointment because she dared to side with the left every once in a while). Also on the short list to replace her are: James M. Bourey, a long time city manager and planning director; Katy Haima, a manager at the city Office of Planning & Community Development; Nilu Jenks, former D5 candidate who ran against Moore; Julie Kang, who has been a teacher, professor, and director at the University of Washington and Seattle University; and Amazon Guy Robert D. Wilson. 

Didn’t We Just Do This? Yep! Two city council members resigned in seven months. Which, as we all know, is a sign of a healthy government. And because Moore resigned after the filing deadline for this year’s elections, this appointee will serve until we have a special election in 2026. 

We’re Still Talking About Denny Blaine: Thanks to King County Superior Court Judge Samuel Chung. Earlier this year, a group of wealthy waterfront property owners sued the city for allowing the historically queer nude beach to become, as they claim, an “unwelcoming, unattractive and ultimately unsafe public place.” They claim that the park is overrun by sex pests masturbating in public, and asked the courts to shut down the park until their concerns could be addressed. Judge Chung didn’t shut the park down, but he did tell the city they had 14 days to provide an “abatement plan” for the “nudity as constituted” (which SPD Chief Shon Barnes has explicitly acknowledged is legal in Seattle) and public sex. That 14-day window ends today.  

Advocates Got Ahead of It: Friends of Denny Blaine, the group of community members and activists that formed to protect the park after wealthy neighbors started targeting it, provided the City with a suggested abatement plan. The proposal would add Seattle Park Rangers to the park, as well as new signage and a ban on “repeat offenders” who have violated public sex laws. The city should provide its own version today, so check back. We’ll have more on it this week. 

Awkward: Southern Washington “Blue Dog” centrist Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez wants to add a new requirement in the US Congress: cognitive standards. The new addition to the body said she’s concerned about the clear mental decline of some of her colleagues (though she didn’t name names) and proposed basic guidelines in Congress to ensure that members were able to do their jobs “unimpeded by significant irreversible cognitive impairment.” It was unanimously rejected. Gluesenkamp Perez is undeterred, though. She plans to bring it back to the table with more rallied support. “We have all of these rules about dumb stuff—hats—and not this more significant question of who is making decisions in the office,” she said. 

Drunk? Don’t Fucking Drive: On Friday in Rainier View, a 74-year-old man drank six beers and then decided to get behind the wheel of his giant RV. He hit several cars before hitting Susana Garcia-Perez, a 45-year-old housekeeper and the “backbone” of her family. She died on the scene, and the driver was arrested. 

Our Hometown Hall of Famer: Ichiro was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday. He joins Mariners Edgar Martinez and Ken Griffey Jr. in the club. "Thank you for welcoming me so warmly into your great team,” he said in his 20-minute speech. “I hope I can hold the values of the Hall of Fame. But, please, I am 51 years old now, so easy on the hazing."

The Majority of ICE’s Arrests Aren’t Criminals: In an unusual turn of events, the Seattle Times’ pearl-clutching correspondent Danny Westneat published a genuinely helpful column this weekend. He dug through the Deportation Data Project at the University of California and found that in Washington State, ICE isn’t arresting the “worst of the worst.” Sixty-nine percent of the ICE arrests in June were of people who have never been convicted of a crime, compared to June 2024, when only 35 percent of the people arrested by immigration had clean records. Obviously someone doesn’t have to have a criminal record to be deported, but Westneat found that only 53 of last month’s arrestees even had a deportation order. In 2024, it was 80 percent. So that feeling you have in your gut that ICE is just cuffing any immigrant they can find? Pretty spot on.

Hegseth Wants to See Your Junk: But no homo. He just wants to make sure you’re in the “right” bathroom. According to an 11-page memo from the Department of Defense to the White House obtained by 404 Media, the Pentagon detailed how it plans to enforce Trump’s anti-Trans “Defending Women” executive order. The Pentagon said that it won’t stop at simply changing the signs on bathroom doors to “reflect biological sex.” The best-funded military in the world will continue to “monitor intimate spaces to ensure ongoing compliance” and that it will “continuously evaluate and update intimate spaces as necessary.”   

Planned Parenthood 1, Trump 0: This morning, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to defund Planned Parenthood, ruling that Medicaid has to continue to reimburse the healthcare provider. “Patients are likely to suffer adverse health consequences where care is disrupted or unavailable,” Judge Indira Talwani wrote in the order. “In particular, restricting Members’ ability to provide healthcare services threatens an increase in unintended pregnancies and attendant complications because of reduced access to effective contraceptives, and an increase in undiagnosed and untreated STIs.” This won’t be the end of it, but it’s a huge win for now. 

Boeing’s No Good Very Bad Day: They seem to have a lot of them. On the runway in Denver on Saturday, passengers on a Boeing 737 MAX 8 heard a loud boom and the plane started to shake and drift to the left. After the captain bailed off the runway, video shows passengers evacuating a smoking plane using the inflatable slide. Everyone evacuated safely, and no one had to be hospitalized, but a few of them did eat it while going down the slide. 

 

Israel Bends, a Little Bit: After realizing that starving children is evil the optics of starving children isn’t good for them, Israel announced that it’s going to halt military operations for 10 hours a day in parts of Gaza, and create new aid corridors for Jordan and the United Arab Emirates to airdrop supplies. In their first airdrop in months, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates parachuted 25 tons of aid into Gaza on Sunday but airdrops are never as effective as land deliveries. Palestinian health officials in Gaza City said at least 10 people were injured by falling aid boxes. “This is progress, but vast amounts of aid are needed to stave off famine and a catastrophic health crisis,” said United Nations aid chief Tom Fletcher.

Reminder: We’re having an election. Right now. Today is the last day to register online if you haven’t yet (but you can register in person up to election day), and ballots are due NEXT TUESDAY. So find your ballot under that pile of junk mail on your counter. Here’s our voter guide for everyone who likes to read, and here’s the cheat sheet for everyone who doesn’t. Wondering if your local electeds are ready for this election season? They are.Â