"dramatically restrict gender-affirming care for anyone under 19."

No, it's about keeping irreversible medicalization an exclusively adult decision.

“allegedly surrounded a vehicle driven by an ICE officer, preventing it from entering the facility.”

This is the problem with protests at ICE facilities. If the protesters actually are preventing vehicles from entering or exiting, and if local law enforcement can’t stop them, Trump can use that as an excuse to invoke the insurrection act.

@1 Maybe don't hop an 8 foot fence to climb it.

@3 Don't worry... they always say "allegedly" whenever one of you crazy white people goes into a school and kills a bunch of kids too...

@5 I know that harm reduction is a dirty term among some people, but removing the ladders and catwalks is a pretty easy way to reduce risk with little or no impact on the structure.

@3

It’s been standard journalistic practice for close to a century to use alleged until an actual conviction or plea in court.

That whole innocent until proven guilty thing.

@1: Everyone involved in the Gas Works Park story is doing exactly what they're supposed to.

The Landmarks Preservation Board wants the cool, old architecture to be preserved. Thumpus agrees, it should be! 😃

Seattle Parks and Recreation put up a tall fence around the structure so people don't climb it. Thumpus agrees, they shouldn't! 😄

Graffiti crews constantly climb the structure because tagging it is awesome. Thumpus agrees, it is! 😁

Hand-wringing busybodies (see @1) are screeching for someone to please think of the children. Thumpus agrees, someone should! 😂

The parents of one of the taggers feel angry and sad that their child died. Thumpus agrees, it's sad! 😔

The finder of fact will likely rule against the parents in their lawsuit on the grounds that this child's death was the fault of the child, not the city. Thumpus agrees, it was! 😅

So the fairest and best possible ending for this little play would be: we keep the structure as is, with a big old fence around it, which writers constantly climb, and occasionally one of them dies, and the ensuing lawsuits are decided in favor of the city, and the hand-wringing busybodies receive a respectful hearing and are ultimately ignored. Conveniently, that's exactly the status quo! 😂 We don't need to change anything to deliver the outcome that every actor deserves! 🤣 I love it when that happens! 😝

Somewhere in Israel, a hollow voice says "Plugh".

@8 The ladders and catwalks are a significant part of those structures. Remove them and you'll have a couple of rusty old tanks.

@4 respectfully, when protestors try to prevent racist federal government overreach, and Trump uses that to enact even more draconian federal government overreach, that's a problem with Trump not the protestors.

Mattheis Johnson was only 15 years old. It is well established that the Prefrontal Cortex, the part of the brain that is responsible for decision making and impulse control does not fully develop until around the age of 25.

So he couldn’t be expected to understand the long term implications of his decision to climb around on the old industrial site.

So I suppose protecting youths from making decisions with life altering consequences is a valid government function?

thirteen12 @13: "@4 respectfully, when protestors try to prevent racist federal government overreach, and Trump uses that to enact even more draconian federal government overreach, that's a problem with Trump not the protestors."

Rest assured, the only protesters thirteen12 here has a problem with are the likes of No Kings and OPERATION INFLATION who have gone to extraordinary--dare I say, cartoonish--lengths to avoid violent confrontation with the authorities.

Hey thirteen12, you're welcome to give Ezra Levin some bad-faith advice on how we can more effectively stand up to Trump and MAGA. It's just a shame MLK Jr. and Gandhi didn't have the benefit of your wisdom back in the day.

https://www.nokings.org/
https://www.operationinflation.com/

@14 Your parallel is obviously stupid, because it would've required the permission of the suing parents for Matthew to climb atop the gasworks.

@12 Like I said in 1, that's everything that's wrong with historical preservation. "We gotta preserve some catwalks and ladders! Who cares if a few kids die?!"

If the Historic Preservation Board came back and said they should limit removals to ladders and catwalks below (say) 20' above ground level, I could understand. But going to nothing but cameras? Not going to do a damn thing.

@17 That's not what you said.

@18 That just shows a willingness to negotiate. If it's supremely important to you and the historic preservation board that the catwalks as possible be preserved, then let's talk about how we can maximize preservation while also making it far harder to climb the structure. I stand by my statement that just putting cameras there isn't a solution.

@15 MLK and Gandhi were both arrested by the governments they protested. Both of them broke laws and faced reprisals. Were you somehow not aware of this?

"But it’s unclear how enforceable these mask bans actually are.""
The only solution I see (so far and into the future) is the one the French people used in 1789....and it ends in a basket.

@10, "The parents of one of the taggers feel angry and sad that their child died. Thumpus agrees, it's sad!"
And you'll forgive those of us who have consciously decided not to have children, because we realize we couldn't be adequately responsible for them. We who feel that, though it's sad, we are as sick of these kind of angry parents as we are of parents who let their toddlers run around the restaurant screaming.

@14, Isn't that exactly what parents are for?

@16, No, it would simply have required his parents to do what mine did: Never let me get away with anything. And constantly hammer me with concepts like 'Think before you act.' and 'There's a reason they put up that fence.' I was still a stupid teen, but at least I survived with only some minor incarcerations.

@15 and for that matter Trump already threatened to send the National Guard after Operation Inflation so even your ideal protesters are as we speak being used "as an excuse to invoke the insurrection act" so really you should be agreeing with me.

"Two people were arrested by ICE in Issaquah last week"
Has it occurred to anyone else that the way ICE targets groups, even as small as one or two people, is by following tips phoned in by people who are sick of BOTH corporations holding down wages by using undocumented workers AND people taking jobs that legal residents would love to have?

In other depressing news, WSU will credential the anti-trans hate group SEGM to teach medical providers: https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/washington-state-university-credentials

Also note: According to the Washington State University 2026 Fiscal Year budget document ( https://budget.wsu.edu/documents/2025/09/fy26-budget-document.pdf/ ), WSU will receive $340.2 million (that’s one third of a billion dollars) from Washington state appropriations for FY2026.

In other words, we're all collectively paying for this shit via our WA taxes.

thirteen12 @22, don't be disingenuous (although I guess that's your thing as a progressive concern troll). If Trump is as all-powerful and immune to the laws of political gravity as you say, what's the point even in protesting? The fact is, Trump threatens all kinds of crazy shit all the time, but if he orders a violent crackdown against a bunch of grandmas and inflatable unicorns, that's going to backfire seriously on him.

The No Kings people and the OPERATION INFLATION people know that. I'm sure you know that as well, which begs the question, what is your true motive for egging on any sort of incitement?

@25 where did I egg on any sort of incitement? Seems like in your rush to disagree with me you got out over your skis, best to just chalk this up to a loss.

There we go Micah! Woke Halloween sensitivity - an old chestnut by now. Back in the Clinton days while doing post grad work on Islamist movements in South Asia, I costumed up as my favorite person of interest at the time - Osama bin Laden. Had full Pathan tribal garb, and sported a paper towel tube painted up as a Hellfire missile hovering above me with coat hanger wire. Most people didn't know who he was at the time, but not a single cultural appropriation glare. Ah, the good old days! I'd wear it again except that dressing up as an Islamist militant is so commonplace nowadays that folks don't even wait for Halloween.

Jeeeeeezzzzzzzz..........to whoever is censoring this thread: The comment I made about Poppy & friends looking to knock over a few banks & armored cars to pay for Rosenberg's defense........Poppy & friends ARE CHICKENS!!!!!!!!!!! IT WAS A JOKE!!!!!!!!!!! CHICKENS AS IN THE COLONEL SANDERS FRIED VARIETY!!!!!!!!!!!

You delete posts about barnyard fowl robbing banks but leave posts about letting teenagers die by falling from 5 stories up??? Real straight priorities here.

thirteen12 @26, you might want to read what thirteen12 had to say @13, the one where you defended protesters encircling cars, which of course is a form of physical confrontation. That's why you went out of your way to endorse it--because you know it's escalatory and self-defeating.

But I'll confess I may have missed all those comments of yours praising No Kings' and OPERATION INFLATION's peaceful tactics. Please do share!

The one thing I enjoy about cressona’s posts is his longstanding belief that thirteen13 casts progressive ideas in such a catastrophically unappealing light that thirteen12 must actually be a right-wing saboteur in disguise! 😂😂😂

Here Kat Abughazaleh asks for funds to help with her defense:
https://youtu.be/EPlDZajxr3Y?si=5h7weUmKzxhKY_PH

From the transcript:
And the Department of Justice
0:04
is charging six people, including
0:06
myself, with federal crimes, for
0:09
exercising our First Amendment rights
0:11
near ISIS's Broadview Processing Center.

Kat Abughazaleh wasn't arrested for her speech, she was arrested for her civil disobedience act of trying to stop the ICE vehicles and that is where First Amendment protections stop and become civil disobedience. I find it disingenuous of her to frame what she was arrested for as First Amendment rights. The chicken liberator has more integrity than Kat. If you're going to do civil disobedience, own up to it, don't obfuscate it. Particularly when trying to drum up funds.

"Cressona"s pronouns are "she/her." "Tensorna" let that slip one day.

@19 Seattle Parks performed selective removal of climbable features on the south towers in 2019 - they also replaced the fence surrounding the towers and hired a landscape contractor to remove any vegetation and trees to get rid of any potential access points in 2023. A leaning support element was removed from the Cracking Tower area in 2024.

Every step to reduce access so far has been for naught - what makes anyone think making even further changes to discourage trespassing will work this time (hint, it won’t). Stupid people will continue to do stupid things - let’s stop wasting money on something that folks refuse to leave alone.

@32: lol no I didn’t! 😂

thumpfncressorna

yeah
that'll do

@19 I agree that cameras aren't the solution. We simply disagree on the problem.

@34: If you're Tensorna, then yes, you did.🥱

@36 It's totally worth a few kids dying if we can preserve those catwalks and ladders!

@33 Which tower did the kid fall from in July? If it wasn't from the south towers, then the removals there didn't make a difference.

Also, the City's plans for removals note that City landscape crews don't typically work under the catwalks because of the risk of falling metal parts. So it's not just Catwalks > Kid's lives, it's Catwalks that are already falling down > Kid's lives. Lord knows it would be the end of the world if the city removed the catwalks before they fell down all on their own.

@39: srsly you should go stand guard, there i solved your problem 🤣

@29 blocking vehicles actively kidnapping members of our community, like occupying segregated lunch counters or illegally producing salt, is transgressive but not "incitement" except to authoritarians like Trump. I mean, do you think the Tiananmen Square Tank Man was "escalatory and self-defeating" and a covert CCP agitator?

Operation Inflation are part of the protests you are denouncing. No Kings on the other hand is an astroturf voter targeting op by a Democrat-affiliated organization, which is about as effective as everyone involved making an anti-Trump Bluesky post, but it does seem like a lot of fun for participants.

@38 Comparing this to gun violence is pretty fucked up.

thirteen12 @41, I'm not about to weigh in on what was the best strategy for the democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square. For these ICE protests, there is a line as to what constitutes physical confrontation. You and I can argue for our own lines, and maybe you're right that just standing there and blocking vehicles is not literally physical confrontation. Ultimately that line is decided by public sentiment.

Here's where I can agree with you. I do recall cases where there were so many people out on the street protesting an ICE operation that ICE skedaddled. Good for those folks, and the trick was, they were getting in ICE's face, but they were remaining non-violent.

“We say Israel needs to revisit the definition of ceasefire.”

That would be Hamas which needs to understand ’ceasefire’ means ‘no shooting.’ Here’s the Prime Minister of Qatar (Qatar being one of Hamas’ largest financial backers) blaming the ceasefire violations on “a Palestinian group,” (he is a diplomat, but we all know which ‘Palestinian group’ is the armed one) then saying the U.S., Egypt, Türkiye, and Qatar continue supporting the ceasefire and peace process.

(https://m.youtube.com/shorts/xEX9H-695Zg)

The Stranger’s desire to return to the good old days, when it blamed all of the violence and death in Gaza upon Israel and only upon Israel, does not mean the Stranger can indeed return to those days if it just ignores Hamas hard enough. The rest of the world understands that lasting peace requires Hamas to disarm and quit governance, and the Stranger’s refusal to admit this simply places the Stranger in opposition to the peace deal, and thus on the wrong side of history as well.

Regarding gasworks, maybe look it up or go there. The main structure area is enclosed in a fence but there are also other tall structure and pipelines not within that fenced off area.

That being said it clear states not to climb on these so anyone who does is doing so at their own risk - which might result in serious bodily injury or death

@44

"The rest
of the world
understands that
lasting peace requires
Hamas to disarm and quit governance... "

Hamas need to Vacate Gaza.
we all know this. good
luck convincing
Hamas

& when Hamas Refuses
bibi claims that gives Him
the Right to Kill Every Last Hamas.

and
in the
Process
eliminate~

some
call it
Genocide

~Gazans from
their Homeland.

bibi's Claim
is Illegitimate &
90% of the World
Knows this to be True

Many
will Blame
ALL Jews -- Wrongly,
of Course -- for what bibi's
doing in Palestine. how is that

so Hard to see? bibi cannot see it
because to do so means his
Prime Ministership is
likely Over and
Prosecution

Awaits.

@42 I didn’t compare it to gun violence. Young people have died falling off the (already falling down) catwalks. More likely will if they aren’t removed. I wasn’t even thinking about guns when I wrote it.

It’s not my fault that your “Nobody would die if everyone acted responsibly” argument is functionally the same as the gun nuts’. If you think that’s fucked up, then maybe you should take a hard look at your own stance.

@47: lol, no. Gun nuts need to be regulated because they put other people in danger. Catwalk climbers put only themselves in danger.

Wait till Boatgeek finds out about skiing, mountain-climbing, offshore sailing, and hang-gliding. So many dangerous and unproductive activities! We need the government to swoop in right away, PEOPLE ARE DYING! 😂

@gasworks: Either the city finally admits the rusted hulk of the Gas Works has outlived its usefulness, or it can accept the inevitable bodily harm, including deaths, which will continue to happen there. Everything else is just talk so useless, it finds itself right at home in the Slog comments. ;-)

@32: I didn't "let it slip," boy-not-genius, I provided you personally with a bespoke explanation, https://www.thestranger.com/slog-am/2025/08/28/80215644/slog-am-feds-arrest-firefighters-fighting-bear-gulch-fire-ice-was-using-wa-department-of-licensing-data-trump-ousts-cdc-director/comments/59

speaking of sockpuppets
siksockbotts, war and Peace:

@49 -- and here's that comment that
spurred our dear ol' wormmy On
(it Def Bears Repeating):

re: 54 [@thumpfncressornas*]:
I've already trumped you with regard
to this objection (not that that's never stopped you before).

"You"
only started
"arguing" with
"Cressona" after I
started calling you out
for being the same person.

Before that?
Multiple - I say
MULTIPLE, son - mult-
iples times I observed Cres-
sona respond on your behalf when
"you" were critiqued, and vice versa.

And you "both" have your head"s"
in the same ideological public privy -
your views are the same, your shared
oleaginous authorial voice is all too often
unmistakeable, very often the same verbatim

rears its Karenish head.
That's not even the end of
the coincidences (?) I've observed.

I guess if you
go back in time,
before I started hectoring
"you," and find public spats between
"yourself" and "Cressona" taking place
before that time, I MIGHT believe you. But
your "shared" views with "her" (and just how
did you know their gender?), propensity to speak
on one another's behalf, and similar mode of expression,
then have to be explained. And I think that would be even less pretty.

--@Libretto68 on August 28, 2025 at 6:20 PM

bravissimo, Libertto68.
calling Out @tS's
Biggest Troll is
Yeoman's
Work

kudos.

*ALL
of 'em?
Hopefully.

@50~correction:

bravissimo, Libertto68.
calling Out @tS's
Biggest Troll(s)'s
Yeoman's
Work

kudos.

Following up on this story: "Israel announced its ceasefire is back on—right after carrying out devastating airstrikes in Gaza that killed 104 people and wounded 253, making this the deadliest strike since the ceasefire began October 10."

Those Hamas fighters were among those trapped in tunnels below Gaza. The IDF sealed off the tunnels right before the cease-fire, then left without clearing them of Hamas:

"The situation is the result of Israeli efforts that began in May to flush out militants and destroy Hamas’s extensive tunnel system where the group has hidden fighters, hostages and weapons throughout the conflict. The strategy was to cut off sections of the underground web from one another. But Israel’s partial withdrawal under the U.S.-brokered cease-fire last month has left militants who remain behind the line trapped underground with no means of escape and dwindling supplies."

[...]

"Israeli and Arab officials estimate there are anywhere between 200 to 300 men underground. Hamas told mediators the number is closer to 100. Some may have already died from starvation, Arab officials say, as food supplies have dwindled."

Poor babies! But they're still willing to violate the ceasefire, when they get the chance:

"In total, those fighters have killed three Israeli troops and injured several others, incidents that sparked waves of airstrikes that left over 145 Gazans dead, Palestinian health authorities said, without specifying how many were combatants."

Hence the deaths the Stranger decries -- without, of course, recognizing the source is Hamas' dead-enders who just won't stop killing. So, what happens next? Hamas wants its trapped fighters repatriated, whilst the Israelis want them dead:

"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu switched Israel’s position and said the fighters wouldn’t be granted safe passage after an outcry by lawmakers from across the political spectrum who demanded militants involved with attacks on soldiers be either detained or killed."

Luckily, this is a self-solving problem. Just let the terrorists die of starvation.

(https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hundreds-of-hamas-fighters-are-stuck-in-tunnels-in-israeli-controlled-gaza-1ea8a2cd?mod=hp_lead_pos8)