Why the Fuck Would You Do That: What is it about cooking up a Halloween costume that makes people lose all critical thinking skills? Every year, some white guy will put on a Native American war bonnet, or some idiot decides it’s cool to dress as a serial killer. This year, former Vancouver City Councilmember Pat Jollota dressed as an ICE agent at the city’s popular Halloween gathering on October 18. Photos of her were posted to Facebook. People got mad, because of course they did. And Jollota eventually apologized at last week’s city council meeting. In a Facebook post of her own, she wrote that the costume was meant “as commentary, not endorsement,” and that her goal was to portray ICE as the horror that it is.
ICE to Go Mask-Off: Now for some real ICE news. With ICE sightings and whispers of a National Guard deployment to Seattle, Mayor Bruce Harrell proposed an ordinance banning law enforcement from using face coverings. This new legislation would prohibit any officer—including ICE agents—from wearing face coverings, and requires them to wear identification.
But it’s unclear how enforceable these mask bans actually are. Seattle would join other blue states and cities—in California, New York and Illinois—who have (or are trying to) pass similar legislation. But federal agents operate under federal authority, meaning state or local laws can’t always tell them what to do. The Trump administration has already said they won’t comply with Gov. Newsom’s legislation.
Speaking of Harrell proposals, Seattle City Council approved an ordinance on Tuesday banning non-competes for grocery stores and pharmacies. This means that a rival store can move onto a former chain’s lot. The ban, proposed by Harrell on October 1, comes in response to the wave of recent store closures in the Seattle area which have made food less accessible and turned Lake City into a food desert (and Katie Wilson’s campaign proposal to explore public grocery stores). And while the ordinance sounds impressive, it likely won’t have the effect we hope it will. Read my story about it here.
I Hate It Here: The Trump administration’s campaign against trans people continues. NPR got their hands on two proposed rules in the Department of Health and Human Services that would dramatically restrict gender-affirming care for anyone under 19. Both target medicaid reimbursements for trans care, but the second one takes it a step further, threatening to cut off all Medicaid and Medicare funding to hospitals that offer pediatric gender-affirming care—a step that hospitals have clearly been bracing for for months now. These are just proposals right now, and they will surely be challenged in the courts, but it’s another way Trump’s trying to make good on his day-one executive order stating the US will not help trans youth get care.
Ceasefire… Now? 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. Israel said it struck Gaza as payback for the shooting and killing of an Israeli soldier in Rafah. Hamas says they had no involvement in the shooting. We say Israel needs to revisit the definition of ceasefire.
Gas Works Death Lawsuit: The family of Mattheis Johnson, the 15-year-old who fell to his death off the Gas Works Park structures on July 10, has sued the city. The lawsuit alleges that Gas Works’ amalgamation of rusted tanks, pipes, and ladders pose a major threat to visitors, noting that Johnson was the third to die from falling off its structures since 2012. After Johnson’s death, Seattle Parks and Recreation declared an emergency and proposed removing all climbable surfaces. But the Landmarks and Preservation Board rejected the proposal this month, citing historical significance. The board wants to explore alternatives, like security cameras, which are famously effective at saving lives.
Putting the Free in Free-Range: A Northern California animal rights activist is facing jail time after she dressed up like a factory worker, snuck into a Perdue Farms plant, and liberated four chickens. Zoe Rosenberg, 23, was found guilty yesterday in Sonoma County Court for felony conspiracy, trespassing, and other charges, after saving Poppy, Ivy, Aster, and Azalea from the chopping block. Rosenberg said it was worth it. She and her lawyers argued that breaking into the plant wasn’t illegal because she was responding to criminal animal cruelty. She’s facing four and a half years in jail while Poppy and friends have flown the coup, but her lawyer plans to appeal the verdict.
Weather: Well, it was supposed to be mostly cloudy with some sun later on, per the National Weather Service and the Apple Weather app. But I’m sitting next to my window and the sun is pouring in. I don’t know what to believe. I guess we’ll see. High of 56 degrees. Nighttime will see more clouds with a low around 43.
The Storm Has a New Coach: The Seattle Storm just hired Sonia Raman, a former New York Liberty assistant coach and the first WNBA head coach of Indian descent. Her resume is unconventional: she has a law degree from Boston College, worked for the U.S. Department of Labor, turned MIT’s women’s basketball team into a Division III powerhouse, and coached for the Memphis Grizzlies and Liberty. The Seattle Times has the story.
ICE in Issaquah: Two people were arrested by ICE in Issaquah last week—one while dropping her kid off at preschool, another at a McDonald’s—and officials are reacting. Issaquah City Councilmember Kelly Jiang told KOMO she’s urged state legislators to pass protective laws, like requiring all law enforcement to show identification and be prohibited from wearing masks. Mayor Mary Lou Pauly recommended the council allocate $50,000 in the budget for immigration services.
Hurricane Melissa Leaves Dozens Dead: After wreaking havoc on Jamaica and Haiti, Hurricane Melissa set its sights on Cuba on Wednesday. Almost 30 have died from the storm—at least 25 in Haiti and four in Jamaica. Cuba hasn’t reported any deaths yet but 735,000 people were evacuated.
Indicted over ICE Protest: During a September protest outside an immigration building in a Chicago suburb, Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh and five others allegedly surrounded a vehicle driven by an ICE officer, preventing it from entering the facility. Now, she and those five people have been indicted with felony charges for conspiring to impede an officer.
Big Tech Flirts With Israel: Leaked documents revealed that Israel’s $1.2 billion “Project Nimbus” cloud deal with Google and Amazon came with a secret clause straight out of a spy novel. Under the so-called “winking mechanism,” the tech giants allegedly agreed to use a secret code through payments to the Israeli government whenever they were being forced by courts to hand over Israeli data. The whole system is based on country codes: they’d send 1,000 shekels if US courts were demanding data because our country code is +1; If Italy (+39) was digging around for data, they’d send 3,900. “It seems awfully cute and something that if the US government or, more to the point, a court were to understand, I don’t think they would be particularly sympathetic,” a former US government lawyer told The Guardian. The deal also forbids Google and Amazon from cutting off Israel’s military or surveillance access.
US-China Trade Is So Back: Trump met with China’s President Xi Jinping in South Korea yesterday for the first time since Trump retook office. The meeting went so well that Trump rated it a 12 out of 10, because that’s how math and the presidency works now. President Xi must have told him he’s very pretty, because he’s cutting tariffs on Chinese goods. In return, Xi agreed to lift China’s restrictions on exporting rare earth minerals.
The Gasworks thing is everything that’s wrong with historic preservation. I love the old infrastructure at Gasworks. I climbed all over the machinery in the big shed as a kid. Taking the ladders off to help keep people from doing stupid stuff and getting injured or killed is a no-brainer. Taking that stuff off doesn’t significantly change the outdoor tanks and machinery. Just do it.
“dramatically restrict gender-affirming care for anyone under 19.”
No, it’s about keeping irreversible medicalization an exclusively adult decision.
“that would dramatically restrict gender-affirming care for anyone under 19.”
Good
“but the second one takes it a step further, threatening to cut off all Medicaid and Medicare funding to hospitals that offer pediatric gender-affirming care”
Good
“Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh and five others allegedly surrounded a vehicle driven by an ICE officer, preventing it from entering the facility.”
“allegedly” LOL it is literally on video
“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…
@6 – if it’s on video, saying “allegedly” is stupid, crazy white person or not.
@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.