Katie Wilson Is Likely Our Next Mayor: ICYMI, Wilson’s lead grew in yesterday afternoon’s ballot drop—she’s up 1,346 votes with 1,355 ballots left uncounted. Remember, if a candidate wins by less than half a percent or less than 2,000 votes, there will be an automatic machine recount. She hasn’t declared victory, and Bruce Harrell hasn’t conceded, but our week-long rollercoaster could come to an end after this afternoon’s ballot drop. In the meantime, make sure your ballot counted!
Speaking of Emotional Rollercoasters: The House is expected to vote today on the funding bill that would end the government shutdown. Are we fucked re: healthcare costs? Probably! But Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said that Dems will “seek to amend the bill reopening the federal government to also address expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies.” K. The vote is expected to begin around 5 p.m. EST. Will any local bars be showing it? We should be together at a time like this.
Washington Dems Are Pissed… Mostly: Murray, Jayapal, Cantwell, DelBene, Smith—most local Democrats have made it clear that they’re going to vote against this bill. One hasn’t, though: US Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who is up for re-election next year. Gluesenkamp Perez hasn’t said one way or the other as of last night, according to the Seattle Times. Here’s how to contact her office: (360) 695-6292, Instagram, Threads, online contact form.
Flights Are Still Fucked, Too: Already today, nearly 900 flights have been cancelled nationwide, including 34 at SeaTac, due to staffing shortages and interruptions caused by the shutdown. More than 700 flights have been delayed across the country. Even if the government votes to reopen this evening, issues may linger. “It’s gonna take a bit to unwind,” former FAA administrator Randy Babbitt told NPR.
“Trump Knew”: Dems may have caved in the shutdown, but they haven’t forgotten about the Epstein files. This morning House Dems released messages suggesting that Trump “knew about the girls” (Epstein’s words) and Trump spent hours at Epstein’s house with one of his victims. The New York Times points out that messages were released days after a whistleblower suggested Ghislaine Maxwell “was preparing to formally ask Mr. Trump to commute her federal prison sentence.”
I guess we know why Trump, Bondi, Patel and Mike Johnson have been covering up the Epstein files. I’m sure there is a whole lot more and a whole lot worse.
— Ron Filipkowski (@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social) November 12, 2025 at 6:26 AM
The Cruelty Is the Point: The U.S. Supreme Court extended an order blocking full SNAP payments for at least a couple more days, citing the possibility of the shutdown ending soon. (During this back and forth, Washington Governor Bob Ferguson confirmed that our state did send out on-time payments to all of our SNAP recipients, but not all states were that lucky.) If the shutdown ends, SNAP will resume payments nationwide, but how long that will take varies by state. And what if the shutdown doesn’t end? Why not let people have access to food even a day sooner? WTF, dickholes?
What the Flock: A Washington judge ruled Flock’s AI license-plate scanning images are part of public record and can be requested as a records request, despite the fact that cops very much wanted to keep the records for themselves. In September Seattle City Council voted to expand the use of police surveillance cameras in Capitol Hill, SoDo, and Garfield High School despite concerns about privacy, bad policing, and federal incursion. No good can come from any of this. Redmond knows.
Into Haunted Puppets? Don’t miss Manual Cinema’s The 4th Witch tonight at the Moore Theater! Seattle’s Most Beloved Goth Bess Lovejoy says, “the show feels like magic, just as in the phantasmagorias of old.” Read her fascinating interview with Manual Cinema’s co-artistic director Drew Dir here.
An Upsetting Must Read: The Guardian has an interview with José Bertin Cruz-Estrada, one of the men who was detained by ICE while fighting the Bear Gulch fire in August. Cruz-Estrada was locked up in an ICE facility until the end of October, when he was deported to Mexico and separated from his family, including his 14-year-old son, in Oregon. Cruz-Estrada had lived in the US since he was 12 years old. His mother was a wildland firefighter, too. Now he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be allowed to reunite with his family the US.
You Thought Seattle’s Spider Season Was Bad: Do not read this story about the largest ever colonial spiderweb with more than 111,000 arachnids if you do not like spiders.
Rest in Pennies: The last penny will be minted today in Philadelphia. It costs nearly four times its worth to mint. “The penny outlived its sibling, the half-penny, by 168 years,” CNN writes. “It’s survived by the nickel, dime, quarter, and rarely seen half-dollar and dollar coins.” But don’t throw them away! They’re still legal tender. For now.
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@47 Lots of cool shit does, indeed! Lived there for 25 years. But, nobody’s ever tried to boost my car in Bellevue.
@49: What sexual assault and child rape? By who on who? Trump? Clinton? Gates? Which vicim? Where? Palm Beach the Island, or New Mexico? Be specific of shut the F up.
@49: What you see as trivializing is simply an open mind until all the facts are known. Please make a note of it!
@47: Not any more. Broadway on Capitol Hill is like 3rd Ave downtown. Store after store – closed. Litter, trash, tagging, everywhere with so many lost souls petrified in the infamous Fentanyl stoop. Really fucking sad how Seattle has deteriorated, and it’s only going to get worse with our “progressive” new mayor.
51 it doesn’t matter if the assaults happened or not, it’s the part where you keep minimizing the alleged child sexual abuse as dalliances and kiss and cuddles. You’re fucking gross, dude.
@54: Call it creative license. False accusations are what’s fucking gross, dudette.
@43: “Hail Mary” itself is a term not found in the rulebook! Hopeful you weren’t too confused! 😉
No thanks, i’ll stick to calling you a sick fuck who thinks it’s nbd to fuck teenagers. You’ve made potentially false accusations against clinton and gates multiple times in this thread so obviously you don’t even believe that’s bad either. You’re just whatabouting for trump.
@56 Yeah, no shit. Maybe get your face out of the rule book and watch a game or two.
@57: Your positively unraveled, aren’t you? My goodness.
@59!No i just think you need to have your hard drive inspected by the fbi
@56,
The rule book is wholly irrelevant to your comment @34. In the universally understood parlance of football fans and commentary, no player in the entire history of the NFL has ever “pitched” a Hail Mary. Take the L, post a smiley face and try out a different metaphor dude, yeesh.
@12 I guess you can keep chasing the high of “new revelations” in a story that just never quite materializes – Trump is so bad he HAD to be a pedophile too, we just NEED to believe this, and you can keep losing elections forever and imagining I’m uncomfortable…
mike blob @61, I’m sure that our preeminent NFL expert thumpus imagines that it is the pitcher who is pitching the football on the football pitch. It was all very cheeky of him.
nekrasova @62: “and you can keep losing elections forever and imagining I’m uncomfortable…”
Shouldn’t that be “WE can keep losing elections”? Wasn’t that your whole disgruntled Democrat concern troll schtick? Or was “you” an inadvertent tell on your part?
Anyway, this has been a surprisingly good comment thread. I tend to agree with Ross’s assessment of the shutdown @1, as unsatisfying as that can be. It seems like the Senate Democrats stumbled their way into a high-stakes exercise in game theory that worked out better than they could have imagined. And even then, I appreciate DOUG.’s pushback @7.
@58: lol, look out it’s the football police! 😂😂😂
The pundit and political class have tended to downplay the Epstein Files because they believe it’s too salacious and not serious enough to drive government policy and decision-making. Except, they are doing just that. Dismissing the importance of the Files ignores who Trump is and who he has always been.
Trump is the guy in the Access Hollywood tape. He is the man who paid off a porn star to conceal an affair. He is the person accused of and found liable for sexual assault. He is, as Spy Magazine called him decades ago, a “short fingered vulgarian.”
The government closure may be behind us. Health care costs are still a crisis for tens of millions of Americans. Affordability in general plagues even more.
But for the guy in the White House — and his GOP sycophants — all of that pales in comparison to concern over the Epstein Files. It is what is driving their thinking and, most importantly, his actions.
For Democrats and others in the pro-democracy movement, it’s time for us to center this issue.
While it is true that Trump is motivated in his pursuit of power, it is also true that he is driven to conceal the thing that threatens that power: whatever is hidden in the Epstein Files.
We cannot be above talking about this issue — it influences Trump’s choices on cabinet picks, the economy, and free and fair elections. It is the one thing that alienates Trump from his base — and he knows that. We need to talk about it.
[Call it creative license.
False accusations are what’s fucking
gross, dudette. –@Coolidge dollar,* @55]
And now, we need to take this opportunity to look forward and think about what happens next. Congresswoman Grijalva has officially been sworn in. This will provide the final signature needed to compel a vote to release the Epstein Files. If all goes as expected, Trump and Speaker Johnson will lose that vote.
Whatever is in the files has kept the government closed, captivated the Department of Justice and kept Donald Trump awake at night. When we finally see what is inside the case file, we need to make sure he is held accountable.
By Marc Elias; November 12, 2025
oodles:
https://www.democracydocket.com/opinion/it-was-the-epstein-shutdown-all-along
trumpf slippery, like Eel
how you Grab eel,
anyways?
A. By the balls.
if ya can fuck-
ing Find ’em
*paid troll or
merely pro
fucking
bono?
title for @65:
It Was the Epstein Shutdown All Along
By Marc Elias; November 12, 2025
I wonder if the dems can craft an impeachment of high crimes and misdemeanors on sexual impropriety more successfully than they did on trying to overturn an election or on that Ukrainian mess.
I highly doubt it. Innuendos in old gmail threads is all they have to work with.
@67 The president of the united states, that you voted for twice, is a child molester and rapist. Full stop. Keep defending him all you want. We all know it to be true and soon everyone else will too.
@67: No, I voted for Mrs. Clinton in 2016, sleepy Joe in 2020, and I left the president blank in 2024 as I couldn’t stomach voting for that dreadful Mrs. Emhoff.
68 he’s defending trump because he’s a child abuser, not because he actually likes him, allegedly
@70: You’re always getting me wrong. I like the Donald, he just doesn’t make a good president.
No i get you perfectly. You never speak from any consistent set of principles, you just say whatever you think will weasel you or trump out of what you’re being called out for in the moment, even if it contradicts things you’ve said previously, as you have done repeatedly throughout this thread.
You like the con artist whose best friend was the most notorious sex trafficker in us history as a person, not as a president? ok sure i guess but why didn’t you just say this up top instead of making it about allegations or minimizing felony child sex abuse?
tbass1981 is a child molester and rapist. Full stop.
See, anyone on the internet can just write whatever bullshit they want and claim it is true.
@barthy boy: The indisputable silver linings of the Trump presidency is putting the brakes on “gender-affirming” of chopping off tits and penises of pre-adolescents and teenagers and also squashing men from invading women sports. And securing our southern border was good too!
@73: Yeah, as if “full stop” add any credence whatsoever to their demented babble.
Donald Trump is working hard every day to stop the nationwide child abuse practice of grooming kids into permanent lifelong medicalization and sterilization.
74 if nothing else this thread has made clear why you’re so obsessed with teenagers genitals but these are reasons to like him as a president, not as a person. If you always speak honestly from your principles you won’t keep contradicting yourself like this.
77: The fact that you don’t take issue with that comment (@74) is that you agree with it. Are you honest about your principles as well?
What are you talking about. Your comment about chopping off genitals is a conservative conspiracy theory and idgaf about the southern border. I didn’t mention this because i was addressing your self-contradictory statements and weird obsession with kids’ private parts.
@80: &nbps;
@79:
Now who’s positively unraveled? Jfc you can’t even type. Time to log off and take a nap, grandpa.
@82: Yes, an html typo for a non-breaking space is all the feedback you deserve. Have a good day.
Ok
@63 You’re remembering incorrectly – I never claimed to be a Democrat, just an Independent, and I didn’t vote for Trump. I consider his opponents “your” candidates in this sense, hence pleading that you quit falling for every silly tabloid story about Trump, as every Big New Revelation for Epstein has just confirmed that he only trafficked girls for himself.
nekrasova @85, thanks for the belated response. I can appreciate that concern trolls are always very sensitive about their back stories, so please forgive me for not getting that quite right.
Let me give my own belated response. I can only speak for myself when I say that I have no problem if the Epstein files turn out to be a nothingburger (even if I don’t see how they’ll see the light of day unless the bill can overcome a presidential veto). It’s obvious that Trump knew what Epstein was up to. What’s not obvious is if Trump was a participant. I mean, wouldn’t some Epstein victims have come forward by now to implicate Trump the way all those other women have come forward to accuse him of sexual misconduct?
What I don’t quite understand is why you got all bent out of shape over the possibility that the Epstein files are NOT a nothingburger, to use a double negative.