Rainy, but then sunny: Grateful this morning for a little cat purring in my lap and keeping me cozy. It’s supposed to be rainy and cold today before 3 pm, but then the weather should turn and the sun should return if you want to take a slightly chilly afternoon walk. High of 53 degrees.

Governor Jay Inslee signs the Strippers’ Bill of Rights: Washington’s Strippers’ Bill of Rights has become state law. That means no raids for lewd conduct in gay bars, alcohol coming back to strip clubs, and a promise for more protections and limited house fees for dancers. Inslee called dancers “working folks” who deserve safe workplaces. Exciting to watch Washington zip from the 1920s to 2024 with a single signature.

More details on two teens found shot along I-5: Law enforcement officers continue to investigate the deaths of 16-year-old boys left on the side of the interstate. People who knew one of the kids, a Nathan Hale High School student named Jahaz Phillips, said he had a way of “making people smile and feel good,” according to KOMO. The whole story seems tragic. At the Mayor’s public safety forum earlier this month, City Council Member Joy Hollingsworth talked about gun violence deaths among Seattle’s youth and about how she wants to see “in-school mentorship… after-school programs… [and] people getting fed.” She stressed the importance of the preventive work the City needs to do to pull kids away from their phones and put them back into community centers and parks. We hope to see it.

Maybe with help from future City Council Member Alexis Mercedes Rinck: Rinck told Hannah she plans to challenge appointed City Council Member Tanya Woo for a seat on the Seattle City Council. Rinck called herself a “living testament” to the importance of investing in young people. Born to two teenage parents who met in a gang, Rinck promises to be a voice for the “life-saving services” that helped her and that could have helped her parents.

Remembering Eucy: About 25 protesters gathered outside the Foundation Group Real Estate offices Monday to protest rent-based evictions and to remember Eucytus, aka Eucy, a tenant who died by suicide during an eviction in March 2023. Eucy and King County Sheriff’s Office deputies exchanged gunfire during the eviction, leaving one deputy injured. Eucy was later found dead in her apartment. The Foundation Group owns the apartment complex where the shooting took place.

Seattle Somali Student Association calls for solidarity: The Washington chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-WA) sent out a release Monday to speak out against a piece of hate mail reportedly received by the University of Washington Seattle Somali Student Association (SSA). The letter told members of the group to go back to “whatever shithole” they came from. The group has reported the letter to police, and they plan to hold a demonstration at noon Thursday, March 28 on the UW Quad. CAIR-WA called the incident another in a series of Islamophobic incidents, including one in February where someone stole a woman’s hijab at knifepoint.

Cargo ship crashes into Baltimore’s Key Bridge: Rescue workers continued to search for several people who fell into the Patapsco River on Tuesday after a cargo ship hit Baltimore’s Key Bridge, causing at least five vehicles to fall into the water, according to CNN. At least eight people were on the bridge at the time, and rescuers had saved just two of them at the time of this writing. The ship apparently lost power before the crash. 

Supreme Court hears arguments on abortion pill access: The US Supreme Court is hearing from attorneys today on the issue of whether the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) can make a medical abortion pill, mifepristone, widely available to the general public. The FDA has made the pill more accessible in recent years by allowing doctors to prescribe it through telehealth appointments and for the prescription to be filled by mail. Anti-abortion rights activists have challenged the FDA’s authority to relax those rules. 

Israel mad at the US: Israel canceled a meeting in Washington DC after the United States declined to veto a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, according to the BBC. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the US of “abandoning” its previous support for the country.

A Bright Future: Sometimes my Slog mornings turn from stressful to tranquil on the pick of my music suggest. As always, grateful to my friend Kevin for his excellent taste in music. Adrianne Lenker’s album Bright Future is slow, soft, and a little sad, but my entire heart filled with every note. Highly recommend. 

Ashley Nerbovig is a staff writer at The Stranger covering policing, incarceration and courts. She is like other girls.

14 replies on “Slog AM: Governor Signs Strippers’ Bill of Rights, Baltimore’s Key Bridge Collapses, SCOTUS Hears Abortion Pill Case”

  1. Another pin in the “Most Moral Army in the World” ™ balloon. A review of Israel’s actions on reducing civilian casualties by an expert who has worked extensively with the US armed forces finds Israel’s actions lacking. The closing quote:

    “Civilians in Gaza and Israeli citizens deserve more from their government and their forces than rhetoric about being the gold standard. They deserve the commitment of a government and professional military to do what they can—and to ask for support—to genuinely protect civilians in war.”

    And that by one measure of civilian deaths, Israel’s actions in Gaza are killing civilians at a pace at least eight times worse than the US-assisted capture of Raqqa, Syria. And that’s not a good thing. The US commissioned a review of their attempts to reduce civilian casualties in Raqqa because they were so concerned about the numbers of civilians they’d killed.

    A couple more instructive quotes:

    “Just as miners in California could see the appearance of iron pyrite—fool’s gold—and think they had struck the real thing, it is possible to look at the IDF’s precautionary measures and at first glance think they are practicing civilian harm mitigation. But whether evaluating the IDF’s performance on its process or its results, it fails to qualify as a gold standard.”

    “U.S. officials who met with Israeli counterparts to discuss the IDF process for calculating how many civilians are considered acceptable collateral damage, ‘said that Israel’s bar is far higher than the United States’ would be.'”

    https://www.justsecurity.org/93105/israeli-civilian-harm-mitigation-in-gaza-gold-standard-or-fools-gold/

  3. ‘received by the University of Washington Seattle Somali Student Association (SSA). The letter told members of the group to go back to “whatever shithole” they came from…’

    While the hate is bad, the stupidity is really really amusing. Can’t pinpoint the origin of the Somali Student Associaton members? I guess without the trailing a, it is really hard. Don’t bet on these people to win at Jeopardy.

    I’m guessing it was tensora.

  5. @5: “I’m guessing it was tensora.”

    I’m not worried. Not only are you completely wrong per usual, but I’m confident you won’t be able to pinpoint my origin. 😉

  8. “City needs to do to pull kids away from their phones and put them back into community centers and parks. We hope to see it”

    The gun violence is gang related – and unless the community does something about gang violence, the community centers and parks aren’t great alternatives (as we’ve had homicides at both sites recently with little support from the community to resolve these crimes).

    I don’t know why gangs are the new Voldemort (can’t use the word for some strange reason).

  9. @6 — some Gaseous giant

    or other Seems to be

    Thee most likely

    Uranus?

    it’s hard to be Precise

    but the Side where

    the Sun don’t 😉

    Never shine?

    “A huge victory for workers,

    fought for by workers.

    Don’t ever let people

    tell you that we can’t

    win when we fight.”

    –@mikestabile

    ‘you can fight; Fight

    without EVER Winning but

    never Ever win; Win WITHOUT a Fight.’

    –@Rush; ‘Resist’

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SewAjLJB-Q

  11. @3 They were bad kids. At least posing on Instagram with multiple guns with huge clips and auto sears makes them bad in my book. Fuck around and find out. It’s a tragedy for their families, for sure, but perhaps a wake up call? We’ll see… Sadly these execution style killings is just going to ramp up the Seattle vs Tacoma/South end gang wars all that much more. And if nobody ‘snitches’ there’s not much the WSP/SPD/TPD can do. And if we don’t drop this stupid cloaking of what’s going actually going on in the name of progressiveness and equality nothing will happen either. My son goes to Garfield and is in no way associated with gangs, but the kids there know what’s happening (for example who the target was in the 23rd drive by that injured the girl). Our best advice: don’t stand anywhere in the vicinity of that dude!!

  12. @15 So civilians are getting killed at a pace of more than a hundred per day in Gaza. Every day. But conflicts where most days have zero civilian casualties* are “at a pace and number that make Gaza look positively humane”? Got it. So zero is worse than a hundred? My, you either have a deeply warped world view or you’ve just admitted you’re full of shit. You should get your programming checked.

    I dare you to find a conflict in the last year where US airstrikes have killed more than a hundred civilians on any day, let alone on the regular.

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