This Government Really Is The Worst: Late Saturday night, Trump’s U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a memo ordering states to give back any Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits it issued last week. According to KING5, “Washington state has already distributed full benefits to approximately 250,000 households.” The Trump administration is threatening states with financial liability if they don’t “immediately undo” these “unauthorized” payments to low-income families. States only issued those funds because a federal judge ruled the Trump administration could not withhold them during the government shutdown. But the heartless devils on the Supreme Court paused that judge’s order, casting SNAP into purgatory.
What the hell is going to happen? A federal appeals court blocked the Supreme Court’s order, so presumably benefits should flow again, but who knows?
Flight Cancellations Climb at SeaTac: Friday saw 28 cancellations, Saturday had 39, and Sunday hit 70. Last week, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered airlines to reduce flights during the government shutdown. Across the country, 2,200 flights were cancelled Sunday. Will it keep getting worse?
To Answer Both Those Hypothetical Questions: Cowardly Democrats might be buckling and about to end the shutdown. These moderate idiots indicated they’re going to reach a deal with Republicans without a guaranteed extension of healthcare benefits. Instead, these chumps are going to fund the government and trust Republicans as they pinky swear they’ll hold a vote to fund Affordable Care Act subsidies in mid-December. Part of the deal includes reinstating federal workers fired during the shutdown and giving backpay to furloughed workers—something that had never been in doubt before. Eight Democratic senators broke rank with their party to reach this bad deal. So far, they’ve only done a test vote. Sen. Bernie Sanders said giving up the fight was a “horrific mistake.”
Essentially:
DONALD TRUMP: [asleep, drooling on long red tie]
SENATE DEMOCRATS: fine, we give in
— born miserable (@bornmiserable.bsky.social) November 9, 2025 at 6:37 PM
In Case You Want to Yell at Them: Here are the names of those Senators: Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania (duh, right?), Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada. None are up for reelection next year. Some are retiring at the end of this term. They are all spineless and dumb.
Don’t Make Me Eat My Words: The Supreme Court isn’t entirely depraved, I suppose. This morning, the Court announced it would not hear the case to challenge same-sex marriage. Former Kentucky county clerk and three-time divorcee Kim Davis brought the case after she was jailed and ordered to pay thousands of dollars in fines for not doing her job when she refused to issue any marriage licenses because she opposed same-sex marriage.
Lenny Wilkens Is Dead: Basketball legend, three-time hall of fame inductee, and SuperSonics coach Lenny Wilkens is dead at 88. He will now only do slam dunks in heaven.
North Seattle Stabbing, Then Standoff: In Greenwood on Friday, police arrested a 51-year-old man after a stabbing in a group home. This guy did not come easily. He barricaded himself inside. It took five hours, a SWAT team, and hostage negotiators to get him to come out. His victim, a man in his 70s, died at the scene.
Girmay Zahilay Makes History: Zahilay has officially been elected as King County Executive. He will become the first immigrant and first refugee to ever hold the position. In a national political climate so hostile to America’s founding ethos as a nation of immigrants, Zahilay’s assumption of King County’s biggest seat of power is a statement. Since he’s filling Dow Constantine’s shoes after the 16-year incumbent bowed out early to become Sound Transit CEO, Zahilay will start his new role quickly—on Nov. 25. (Fear not, King County has not been captainless, appointee Shannon Braddock has been the interim executive.)
Stay Tuned: This afternoon could reveal who our next mayor is. Monday afternoon’s ballot drop might indicate a clear winner between Katie Wilson and incumbent Bruce Harrell. Experts are calling it a “coin flip.” We on the SECB did not plan on celebrating no nut November. Will we get our sweet release, or a ruined orgasm? Study up on our takeaways from Friday’s ballot drop.
The Weather: Cloudy, not too cold. Rain could come, too. These are the days in which you must always assume a chance of rain. The sky is always full of possibility.
No Doubt about Rain in the Philippines: Super Typhoon Fung-wong battered the Philippines’ northern coast on Sunday. At least two people died and more than a million people fled to escape “flash floods, landslide, and tidal surges.”
Super Typhoon Fung-wong made landfall in the Philippines on Sunday. At least two deaths have been reported and over a million people were pre-emptively evacuated from their homes. nyti.ms/4hMp3TC
[image or embed]
— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) November 9, 2025 at 11:00 PM
Shark Killers: Great white sharks started washing up dead in South Africa in 2017. In Gansbaai on the Western Cape, great whites used to flourish. But they soon disappeared. Something was killing them. What was it? Scientists eventually figured it out. Killer whales, aka orcas. Not a sneaky name. The orcas were precisely biting the sharks between their pectoral fins and sucking out their livers. Rumor has it they do a good Anthony Hopkins impression, too.
The sharks have fled the area. Now, their usual prey—such as the cape fur seal and the bronze whaler shark—are flourishing, which is fucking up the food chain and disrupting the ecosystem. It’s a mess. Thanks for nothing, blood-thirsty orcas. But, if we really want a culprit for shark deaths we should look to ourselves. Overfishing is a far bigger killer of shark populations. Speaking of sharks, I watched a crazy movie this weekend about sharks killing people in Japanese hot springs.
A Good Sign? Trump became the first sitting president since Jimmy Carter to attend an NFL football game when he watched the Washington Commanders lose to the Detroit Lions on Sunday. The fans booed him. UPDATE: I have been informed that Trump attended the Super Bowl this year (a game I technically watched, so should have remembered), so this is the first regular season NFL game a sitting president has attended since Carter.
Big Day for Criminals: Trump issued pardons for people like Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Mark Meadows for their role in trying to steal the 2020 presidential election. In total, 77 people received pardons. However, they’re only good for a get-out-of-jail card in the federal justice system. People like Giuliani and Meadows who face legal trouble in state courts will still need to deal with all of that. Many of those pardoned are in hot water in “numerous states that Biden won, including Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada,” according to The Guardian.
Big Foot on Vacation: Pennsylvanians may have spotted Washington’s favorite cryptid in October. According to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, they received a very credible report from a a retired civil engineer and Air Force veteran who say a tall, shadowy, humanoid creature cross—no, glide across—a highway and easily step over (or, hurdle—he wasn’t sure) a guardrail. Two other people reported seeing something (“I don’t know WHAT I saw. I’m an avid hunter with +50 years in the woods. This was not a bear.”) in the area that day as well.
A Song for Your Monday: Local band, Pansy, which is led by our very own Vivian McCall released its sophomore EPon Friday. Look, I may be biased but its bangers only on here. Don’t believe me? Then believe Paste Magazine. Here’s one song off the new album:
“This afternoon could reveal who our next mayor is.”
We want the Bruce, the whole Bruce, and nothing but the Bruce! 😁
Democrats are pathetic
“Democrats are pathetic”
The strategy wasn’t working. It would have been even more pathetic to continue the strategy with people not get paid and getting very hungry.
Now all the congress has to vote on health care. They just might do something. Let’s hope. God bless.
“Will we get our sweet release, or a ruined orgasm?”
Sweet release as Katie Wilson is fucked.
RIP Lenny Wilkens. Saw him in the QFC in Bellevue a few times. Legend. Not much of a dunker though — 6’1″ guard known for assists.
@1 You’ve been giving real MAGA energy with your dedication to Bruce recently. It’s super gross and dumb and weird.
Natalie, none of your news items has a link to the source! No links at all!
@3 Aren’t you the dummy who doesn’t understand how the ACA works?
The Chicken @5: “Not much of a dunker though — 6’1″ guard known for assists.”
I guess you could say like his fellow statue honoree Sue Bird. Unlike Lenny, though, I don’t see Sue ever going into coaching, even though I’m sure she’d make a great coach. I’m not sure how I feel about statues outside arenas and stadia for sports figures (better them than Confederate generals I guess–especially outside an arena), but it’s great that Lenny lived to see his statue unveiled and got to bask in that appreciation.
As for the shutdown ending, my thoughts are too complicated to express here, but I can say the comments @2 and @3 are nothing if not predictable for those two commenters. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Dick Durbin and his capitulating colleagues just voted for the biggest middle class tax increase in American history.
@8: No
@5 @9 Glad there are some basketball knowers here re: a dunking Wilkens. I didn’t grow up watching Lenny but appreciate all that he means to Seattle and the community. The more I read about him the more he seems like one of the great ones, far beyond his basketball skills. I actually stopped by his statue at Climate Pledge. There was a flower on it that had blown away so I put it back.
Tensorama wrote over the weekend:
“Even if only “the company” ever gets punished by the government for dumping pollutants, that doesn’t mean individual employees of the company are free to run around dumping pollutants willy-nilly. It’s just that the company has to be the ones to stop the employees rather than the government. Make sense?”
That works well when you have something objective you can measure. Either the employee, under the control of their company or government agency, added a measurable pollutant to the water or they didn’t.
It doesn’t work well when we are talking about subjective conduct. It’s why it is so difficult to discipline teachers for being demeaning to kids, principals for harassing staff and being dismissive to parents, cops when they are assholes, or more seriously, violate civil rights, ferry workers when they let a drunk driver off the ferry to kill, or college maintenance workers when they disregard a carbon monoxide alarm and someone dies. At what point does that conduct rise to the point that they are ineffective in what they are hired to do? At what point is the government legitimately disciplining to achieve a public purpose, and at what point are they denying a citizen, employed by the government, 5A, 14A, and other civil rights by using the coercion of a paycheck?
If something personally costs one little, you get a lot of the conduct that has low-cost for the employee. If it costs a lot, and more importantly is readily watched for and detected, you get less of the conduct.
That is where the private sector, which is “at will” shines. A private employer can arbitrarily, within the limits of civil rights laws, let someone go because the employee’s conduct gives them a bad vibe. It is also where the private sector fails, because that subjective “at will” call masks unconscious or conscious bias, or even malevolent discrimination.
A lot of the legitimate disgust expressed here about government employees killing or maiming people within the scope of their employment, and taxpayers paying out millions, is from private sector employed commenters who get the sense they would be fired had they done the same thing. What they don’t recognize is that public employment is not “at will”, and can’t be “at will” because the employees are not just employees, but citizens, in the same sense that the privately employed commenter is.
@9: “my thoughts are too complicated to express here”
Oh how original. That was line from Dorothy on The Golden Girls!
“Fear not, King County has not been captainless”
Imagine actually writing and publishing something as stupid as that.
The grievance journalism at The Stranger over gun violence is apparently dead. There was a time when they would have bemoaned two people getting shot by a citizen trying to keep from getting carjacked. Under Noisy Creek, radio silence:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/would-be-carjacking-victim-shoots-2-in-self-defense-seattle-police-say/
@6: lol what’s “gross and dumb and weird” is mistaking Bruce Harrell for “MAGA” 🤪
@11 Yes.
https://www.thestranger.com/slog-am/2025/11/07/80314474/slog-am-faa-cuts-flights-pelosi-will-retire-sandwich-guy-is-free/comments/12
“I must say I never knew that Obamacare subsidies affected private insurance rates.”
@16 – Nathalie did cover the stabbing (not “gun violence”, I know), but the near-daily onslaught of violent crimes committed by “teens of color” just doesn’t fit The Stranger’s “progressive narrative”. I was surprised to see Nathalie mention the fatal stabbing, she’s usually the most saccharine twee hipster at Slog.
@1. Yes! Or like my father used to say, “a Bruce in the hand is worth two Katies in the bush.”
@18: This is no time for impertinence.
@20 – when I called Nathalie “the most saccharine twee hipster at Slog”, it was actually a compliment, not impertinence.
@21 – Sorry Biped, I meant 18.a
@17 I’m not saying Bruce Harrell is MAGA. I’m saying that repeating shit like “Brucetown!” over and over and over again is weird MAGA like behavior.
@23 He’s only doing it because he knows Bruce is toast.
@23 24 @et all
sell,
Sumbuddy’s
gotta Pwn them
Damn communiss! Libs
it may
as well be
bipps “Buggers” bippie.
@23: You can’t hide from the Bruce! The Bruce hurts because the Bruce is all there is! 😂
@24: The vote didn’t swing hard enough for Katie on Thursday and Friday. Subsequent drops will still favor Katie but not by as wide a margin on the Thursday and Friday drops. She needed to make up just a little more ground than she did. 😃 Oh well, she can always back to Balliol to finish that degree, mom invested so much into tuition already! 😆
@3 “The strategy wasn’t working. It would have been even more pathetic to continue the strategy with people not get paid and getting very hungry.”
More people continued to blame Trump and the GOP for the shutdown. Trump was spiraling and demanding the filibuster be killed, bringing him into direct conflict with Congressional Republicans. The REPUBLICAN strategy wasn’t working and if the Dems had just held on a little longer there was a great chance they’d win. Instead, per usual, a critical mass of them were too weak to see the job through. So instead poor people and federal employees just suffered for 40+ days for absolutely nothing at all. Like I wrote: pathetic.
I’m happy we’ll know today (unless Katie takes the lead today, it’s over).
As for Viv’s band, meh – it’s no Tacocat
@27 – “More people continued to blame Trump and the GOP for the shutdown.”
Yes, because those people are stupid and naive.
Sickening. Literally, physically, sickening. The Democrats absolutely were winning the shutdown standoff — as consistent polling numbers, Trump’s tanking approval rating, and Tuesday’s election results made abundantly clear. They were making a well-articulated demand that people understood and agreed with. It was breaking through to low-engagement voters to an extent that’s unusual in off-election years. So WTF just happened???
One of two things happened: Schumer either privately assented to (or perhaps even encouraged) the “moderate” Senators’ virtually unconditional surrender — thus prizing his donors, especially the airlines and big retail, above his constituents once again — or else he’s lost all meaningful control of his caucus. It’s one or the other and I don’t particularly care which. Either way it’s time for him to step down from leadership. And if there’s a silver lining to this toxic cloud, I now think there’s a real possibility he’ll have to.
@20 You know what, I mostly ignore you, but kindly fuck off. Today I was pretty much guaranteed a 2026 tax hike of $6600. I am not poor and I am not rich. I am middle-aged and self-employed. No time for impertinence? Just fuck off. You are truly dumb.
@30: But what makes you think the Republicans would have acquiesced had the stalemate kept going?
@30: After 25 years in the Senate, I suspect Chuck Schumer has forgotten more about politics than any of us will ever know! 😁 Schumer got what he could from the shutdown—a favorable turn for Democrats nationwide in the off-year elections we just held—but he was never going to be able to dictate policy from the minority.
He is also wise enough not to interrupt the enemy when he is making a mistake. If the Republicans don’t vote to extend ACA subsidies, it will spike health insurance premiums in 2026, a congressional election year. If the Democrats can take back the House and the Class II Senate seats on the strength of the premiums issue, then they can fund whatever subsidies they want, and moreover fund on a more durable basis than trying to claw subsidies inch-by-inch out of a Republican congress.
As they say in tournament chess, “Never forget that your opponent is also playing chess!” 😛
@32 Because (aside from the whole ACA mishegoss) we are heading into the year’s biggest holiday travel and food-buying period and the constituent pressure on Republicans to make a deal with Democrats that keeps the planes flying and the SNAP flowing would have become impossible for them to continue resisting. (Remember, Democrats have been openly calling for a negotiated agreement this entire time, it’s only Republicans who took a my-way-or-the-highway stance — and now their intransigence has paid off. Like I said, sickening.)
@33 Of course Schumer can’t “dictate policy from the minority.” But he certainly could have forced Republicans to negotiate a deal and gotten something tangible for his constituents. (Republicans really, really, really don’t want to nuke the filibuster no matter how hard Trump pushes them to do it. It not only prevents a future Democratic legislative tsunami, but it also protects them from having to vote on politically risky things their base would immediately start demanding, e.g., a nationwide abortion ban. Not to mention the even riskier things Trump would start demanding.) But as long as Democrats held firm, there was no other way out for them. Surely Schumer recognized this, but I suspect his big donors (esp. the airlines and grocery barons) were screaming at him even louder than they were at Republicans. Time for him to go.
@33 the only thing Schumer earned today was a primary challenge from AOC. This and the Mandami win last week pretty much guarantees she will run against him.
@26 It would help your case if your own math showed that was true. But alas you’re too attached to Bruceing to see what you wrote down yourself. If you’re going to pretend to do serious analysis, you kind of need to actually, you know, look at the results of that analysis.
Go on and be a Bruce fanboy if you want, but don’t pretend that the math supports your position.
PS Is Seattle still Brucetown if he wins by 0.1%?
@34: Donald Trump and Mike Johnson would have been still oblivious to all the intense pain going into Christmas and beyond with 10% air travel and no SNAP. They’re the only two that could have made a difference with all the congressional Republicans in lock-step obedience and they would have held firm.
How bad is Washington that even Bigfoot bailed?
The most noteworthy thing about the new King County Exec is that he’s an immigrant. I’m sure he’ll do a bang up job.
I hope your progressive mayoral candidate wins. It will be fun to watch you blame republicans in two years when nothing changes.
@36: lol, you’re making the classic mistake of assuming that trendlines can be extrapolated linearly into the future! 😂 You’re correct that if the upcoming drops contain the same percentages as the Friday drop, Katie is likely on track to win (depending on how vote-curing turns out, a variable for which we have no data). Your mistake lies in your failure to question the assumption that upcoming drops will mirror the Friday drop. 😉
I think it’s unlikely that the upcoming drops will exactly mirror the Friday drop. I think it’s more likely that the upcoming drops, while still favoring Katie more than Bruce, will favor Katie to a less significant degree than the Friday drop did. That’s bad news for Katie, because she needs the upcoming drops to maintain a consistent average of ca. 54.4 percent or higher in her favor. The Friday drop was just 54.85 percent, so her breathing space is quite narrow. If the upcoming drops fall off even a little bit, she’ll lose.
In 2021, the last mayoral election in which Bruce was on the ballot, the post-Friday drops did, indeed, fall off. The chief factor in the fall-off seems to have been mail-in ballots (which favor Bruce) that were mailed on or close to election day. Arriving late in the counting process, the final tranches of mail-in ballots blunted the anti-Bruce wave which crested on Friday. 😃
One more time for the slower learners: I’m not saying that the post-Friday drops post more votes for Bruce than for Katie, I’m saying the pro-Katie bias in the post-Friday drops falls off a little bit compared to its Friday high, which is just what Bruce needs. 😃
I could hedge a little bit by conceding that the post-Friday, pro-Bruce mail-in tranches may be smaller this year than in 2021 because a lot of people were spooked by news about same-day postmarking, or maybe something-something hand-wave vote-curing. But rather than hedge, I’m just gonna tell you what’s up, which is that we all live in BRUCETOWN! 🤣
@33 “If the Republicans don’t vote to extend ACA subsidies, it will spike health insurance premiums in 2026, a congressional election year.”
Setting aside that it’s abhorrent to let people lose health care as an electoral strategy, do you honestly think that Dems would NOT have gotten an equal (or better) electoral bump by being seen to go toe to toe with Trump and the GOP and winning? You think people will be more supportive of them capitulating (again) resulting in further harm to the public? That’s some real 4D chess you think they’re playing.
Also Schumer voted no.
@40: “Setting aside that it’s abhorrent to let people lose health care as an electoral strategy,”
I love how constantly hectoring the Democrats to be Tough Guys suddenly comes with some caveats. Republicans have neither decency nor shame, and will use those traits against everyone who does have them.
Getting the promise of a vote was the best the Democrats could do. They also showed they can sic Trump on the Congressional Republicans, which could prove very useful next year.
@35: Good. Nothing like a Brooklyn v. Queens cage match. Anyone who believes AOC’s appeal extends beyond her district’s narrow boundaries may get a nasty surprise.
@41 She’s literally one of the most famously liked politicians in the country. She was literally the first person in the world to hit a million followers on Bluesky and she has 9 million followers on instagram. How many people live in her district exactly? 700k?
It’s all a popularity contest. If you don’t think these numbers matter, you’re an idiot. We have a reality tv host as president for a reason. https://today.yougov.com/ratings/politics/popularity/politicians/all
You’re all SO old.
It’s not MAGA to want Bruce Harrell for Seattle mayor, but it doesn’t fit in with our Bellevue-first sentiments. Bellevue: where your property is safe and all the kids are above average.
“Anyone
who believes
AOC’s appeal extends
beyond her district’s narrow
boundaries may get a nasty surprise.”
Wormtongue thumpfnsorna on November 10, 2025 at 2:02 PM
tell me Again?
WHY we give
This Guy a single
Ounce of “Credibility”?
and mr infallible
Fallibles yet
again
another nasty surprise?
@40: “That’s some real 4D chess you think they’re playing.”
lol, just regular politics actually. 😁 The Democrats played a weak hand well, which is the best you can hope to do with a weak hand. And they stopped before they overplayed their hand, a common trap. 😃 And they’ve set themselves up to rack some bigger wins in the future, because politics does not have an end date. 😃 Overall, I award the Democrats a full five thumpus emoji for their handling of the shutdown. 😛
Fully funding Obamacare from the minority was maybe an option for Senator Magicwand but it wasn’t an option for Senator Schumer. 😉 If you’re sore about it, then console yourself that the Obamacare funding fight is not over, and future rounds will be fought from more favorable terrain. 😃
It’s over.
Katie Wilson 133,469 49.83%
Bruce Harrell 133,378 49.79%
Congrats to Wilson – the next 4 years should be interesting
@46: It’s not over! Brucetown is never over! I demand a recount! 😄
@48 The first step to healing is to admit that you lost.