Those Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer: The air quality sucks, the sun looks like the fireball it actually is, and the summer breeze feels like soup. Seattle has smoke from at least six wildfires hanging over us right now, and the experts say we should take the usual precautions: close your windows, run an air purifier (if you have one), and avoid physical activity outdoors. It sucks, but it’s not for long. Showers should help clear the smoke over the weekend. Happy Fire Season!
New Pigskin: Seeing the Seahawks at Lumen Field? Your seatmate could be an undercover cop. The Seahawks announced on Thursday that cops will be wearing opposing teams’ jerseys in the crowd during home games this season to try to catch fans violating the stadium’s code of conduct. Turns out, though, this was just a friendly reminder. The Seahawks have had undercover cops in the crowd since 2012. Don’t get wasted and throw a dildo on the field and you should be fine.
Hate Crime in Capitol Hill: According to Capitol Hill Seattle Blog, SPD is investigating a hate crime on the Hill that happened on Tuesday night on 11th and Union. Witnesses reported that five or six young men assaulted a group, yelling anti-trans slurs. Fortunately, the victims’ injuries were minor, but cops say they don’t have much to go on to ID the assailants.
In Case You Didn’t Know What the Pentagon Does: Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Friday changing the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War. “Words matter. Titles matter. Cultures matter. And George Washington founded the War Department,” said television personality and future Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. (The same man who renamed a ship because it sounded too gay. Because words matter.) As usual, it’s not clear if Trump actually has the authority to do this. It’s probably Congress’ job.
Showing His War Face: Unfortunately, this is more than just Trump wanting to feel like a Big Boy. We stopped calling it the Department of War as the threat of nuclear war escalated. According to David E. Sanger from the New York Times, it’s “more than just a throwback, a restoration of tough-guy nomenclature. At a moment when deterrence is more critical than ever…Mr. Trump argues that the answer is to go back to the good old days.” Of looming nuclear war. The good old days of looming nuclear war.
Diplomacy at Its Finest: Just one week after Trump hosted the South Korean president and got him to pledge to invest $150 billion into the US, immigration agents arrested 475 mostly South Korean people at a construction site for a Hyundai lithium ion battery plant in Georgia on Friday morning. The battery manufacturer, LG Energy Solution, co-owns the plant with Hyundai and told the New York Times that employees of both companies, including executives, had been taken into custody.
Bad News for Needlephobes, Good News for Needlephiles: While Washingtonians were trying to figure out who they had to lie to for their next COVID vaccine this fall, the Washington State Health Department decided to do us a solid. According to a standing order signed by the State Health Officer, anyone in our state can get vaccinated without consulting their doctor. The order provides legal cover to pharmacists after RFK Jr.’s Department of Health and Human Services riskily restricted access for anyone who isn’t deemed “high risk.” If you’re worried your local pharmacy will deny you a shot, the state health department suggests bringing along a physical, printed copy of the order to your appointment.
Meanwhile, in DC: RFK Jr. tried to defend his wildly dangerous decisions to reduce access to the COVID vaccine and fire the head of the CDC in a three hour Senate hearing. He continued to spew anti-vax pseudo-science, and claim that masking was harmful to our children. But my personal favorite moment was when Sen. Maria Cantwell looked him in the eye and said, “Sir, you’re a charlatan.” (If you’re wondering, she voted against his confirmation.)
Eat the Rich: Tesla just proposed a compensation package that could make Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. I don’t want to talk about it.
2A for All? On Thursday, the DOJ announced that their senior officials are considering limiting transgender Americans’ Second Amendment rights because a person who identified as transgender at one time shot up a Catholic school in Minneapolis last week, killing two kids and injuring 21 people. We asked the NRA if it plans to defend trans people’s right to bear arms as voraciously as they’ve defended our access to assault weapons, or the right to buy a gun from a dude in a garage without getting a background check. They haven’t replied to our email.
The Whistleblower Blues: The former head of our state’s juvenile detention system claims she was fired in retaliation for repeatedly warning that state’s youth prisons were overcrowded, and she’s filed a multimillion dollar lawsuit saying just that. For five years, Felice Upton oversaw the state’s two youth jails, Green Hill School in Chehalis and Echo Glen Children’s Center in Snoqualmie, until April, when she says she was fired without explanation. During those years, state law changed, and the Department of Children, Youth and Family Services started placing young adults up to 25-years-old in youth detention. The population in the detention centers, unsurprisingly, ballooned. And Upton says that she was fired for saying as much. The state denies it. Meanwhile, just last week, a Washington appeals court ruled that conditions at Green Hill violated state law because kids were being forced to pee in jugs and go weeks without mental health counseling.
Grief Is a Hell of a Drug: Joseph Emerson, the off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot who tried to cut the engines in a passenger flight in 2023, reached a plea deal with prosecutors on Thursday. Emerson told police he was coping with a friend’s recent death and had taken shrooms two days before the flight. He then didn’t sleep for over 40 hours and got on that plane. When he tried to cut the engines, he believed he was dreaming, and was trying to wake himself up by grabbing two red handles that cut off fuel to its engines.
Fall Arts Is Here! The Stranger’s fall arts issue is finally out in the world. You can read about Fantasy A’s newest film project, an artist making free-range neon, a new and exciting jazz scene, and so much more. You can read more about it online, but I think you should pick it up out in the world. Who doesn’t want to hold 90 pages of Seattle arts in their hands?
If you were at Bumbershoot last weekend, you might have gotten to see the dazzling Janelle Monae on stage, but she didn’t play this groove and a half from Dirty Computer, so let’s enjoy it here.
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Interesting. You know our resident middle-aged MAGA man-child who has all this free time to spam us with his daily pronouncements of what he believes MAGA wants us to hear? Apparently he had to go crawling away with his tail between his legs yesterday.
From yesterday’s Slog AM.
BabyGotBack @16:
there was no language in the Treasury Act explicitly preventing or allowing the President to remove the Comptroller of the Currency. Absent said language, one defaults to the Constitution and the vesting of all executive authority in the President. Got another example bro?
https://www.thestranger.com/slog-am/2025/09/04/80226514/slog-am-florida-wants-to-end-vaccine-mandates-washington-firefighters-say-leaders-sent-them-into-immigration-trap-judge-lifts-spd-consent/comments/16
boatgeek @30:
@16 Alas, you’re misinformed again. No shock, it’s your stock in trade. Sure, there wasn’t anything in the Treasury Act about removing the Comptroller. Unfortunately for your argument, the Comptroller is currently governed by the National Currency Act of 1863. You don’t have to read very far in that (only to Line 10-15!) to find
“He [the Comptroller of the Currency] … shall hold his office for the term of five years unless sooner removed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.”
Oops. The act of Congress establishing the current off of the Comptroller of the Currency does require the President to get Senate approval for firing the Comptroller. Alas for your argument. Wrong again.
https://www.thestranger.com/slog-am/2025/09/04/80226514/slog-am-florida-wants-to-end-vaccine-mandates-washington-firefighters-say-leaders-sent-them-into-immigration-trap-judge-lifts-spd-consent/comments/30
No response after that. I believe the correct MAGA response should be something like this:
So what about your silly, little National Currency Act of 1863? Those are just words on a piece of paper. We won this election. We control the Supreme Court. The president can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, and there ain’t nothin’ you can do about it. All hail Caesar!
I like the name change. Department of Defense is an euphemism.
I’m a little surprised the Stranger isn’t defending RFK Jr.
After all there’s no act so heinous that a local drug addict can commit that the Stranger won’t excuse and apologize for.
RFK Jr. is just another worthless drug addict. Why not defend and excuse him?
DoD does a lot more than fight wars and the name change diminishes the department’s mission but it certainly tracks with this administration’s profound insecurities.
They should rename it the Ministry of Peace.
I think changing the DoD to the War Department makes sense. Reminds the American people exactly what they are there for.
Great job ICE – 475 deportees at a single job site in Georgia and as many as another 75 at an Energy Bar manufacturer in New York State. This is exactly what I voted for. And don’t tell me for one second that American citizens do not want these construction and manufacturing jobs. Of course they do.
So many sheep desperate for their clot shot. Goddamn this is not the State I grew up in.
Masking was harmful to our children. Every single speech language pathologist will confirm it. Mentally harmful as well, giving the impression that everybody else is just out to infect you. And pointless, masking did nothing to stop the spread.
I wouldn’t limit firearm access to transgender individuals per se, but we probably should restrict access to individuals with severe mental health concerns. I thought the Stranger agreed with that once upon a time.
Putting 25 year olds in jail with children, what could go wrong? (Can’t believe we even have to wonder about that question.)
While Washingtonians were trying to figure out who they had to lie to for their next COVID vaccine this fall, I hope they were wearing their N95 respirators. Or maybe two or three of them, 24/7! Just to be safe.
8: Good advice for the sick, immune compromised, and elderly — otherwise it’s wokey fashion statement along with nose rings and pronoun pins.
@8 Speaking of people with severe mental health disorders… acting like you care about children when you literally voted for a nazi child molester is so on brand.
@2 – thanks for thinking about me. Sorry I didn’t reply yesterday, I ended up having to pack up and head to central Washington where we are building a new ER. Talk about smoke in the air! Anyway, boatgeeks reply wasn’t relevant as the last founding father had passed away long before the Currency Act was passed into law (unconstitutional as it may have been.) RIP, James Madison. Again, thank God for our Constitutional Supreme Court. Righting wrongs from decades and centuries ago!
@7 and as we see in this administration, ignorance is strength
all Trump is capable of now, is this inane renaming of anything, since his brain is so addled. DOD makes sense, since we are best defending ourselves (Pearl Harbor), instead on starting silly wars (Iraq).
And by the way, why throw away a perfectly good dildo? How environmentally insensitive!
Trump is neither a Nazi or a child molester and the hyperbole really turns off the normies.
BrokeBackBaby @11, I know you need to put up the macho pose, but it’s never too late to admit to yourself that you’re being taken for a sucker by a bunch of billionaires and hostile foreign actors and join the rest of us in the reality-based world where we don’t have to shroud ourselves in a cloud of lies and obfuscation to find our place in the world.
@13 All the women and children he’s raped and molested disagree with you.
@13. You are a clown because the privileges and behavior you enable for Trump you would never grant for any Democratic president, but the irony is that by normalizing all of his power grabs you are giving any future executive who you disagree with nigh unlimited power. If you can’t hold the opposition to the same standard then you have grasp of the rule of law.
@15. Edit: “then you have NO grasp of the rule of law.
@15 – someday it might occur to you that some of us are overzealous in our defense of Trump simply because some of you are overzealous in your hatred for Trump.
Trust me, I don’t love every single thing about the man. I wanted DeSantis as our next President. But I feel compelled to defend Trump’s good and bad sides, as I’m sure not willing to concede an inch to the Party who brought us mask and vaccine mandates, open borders, defund the police and transing the children. Not one inch.
Moderate your positions and I’ll moderate mine.
So the centrists are getting their panties in a bunch about “Department of War”? Are they really that unaware that ~99% of the DoD’s activities fail to fall under the semantic range traditionally applied to the word “defense?” (answer: yes) I can already see Michelle Obama going on TV during the next election cycle to claim that we’d still have a peace-loving “Dept of Defense” instead of a savage “Dept of War” if it hadn’t been for Jill Stein voters. But from where I sit, this is just a case of a broken clock (Trump’s brain) being right twice a day.
You could rename it The Enforcement Department for Transnational Capitalist Entities – that would be even more accurate, and even more infuriating to all of the DNC-voting genocide cucks.
@14 It’s probably hard to balance all of this while also trying to prove that the world is flat and that we faked the moon landing and that 9/11 was an inside job. It’s a lot of stuff to juggle.
Remember how Donald was in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s? He was the same as he is now. Talked about how the US was being taken advantage of. But he has always been celebrity stricken. Loved to appear on late night talk shows, TV ads, cameo appearances.
In 2016 he ran as a publicity stunt, but reality backfired on him. in 2024 he’d rather not be president, but loves the power, pomp, and attention.
Still, I think that if Donald of the 80’s was able to look into a crystal ball and see how cruel and dark as a president he is today he’d be appalled at himself – or maybe just a little.
I just feel like having principles is an easier and more fulfilling way to go through life than reflexively defending whatever person in power is telling you what you want to hear, but these people seem to be enjoying the moment so let them have it. Oh, you’re not getting a vaccine you say? You think war is good now? Sure, ok. Whatever you say, today at least. We’ll check back in with you tomorrow to see what’s changed.
@19 – I know the world isn’t flat (I understand what the horizon implies) and I certainly don’t think we faked the moon landing. As for 9/11 (my birthday!) there are definitely some unanswered questions but you won’t hear me talking conspiracy theory.
re: 14: Well, well, listen to the reformed alcoholic.
Sorry. I can’t talk about conspiracy theories right now. I’m too busy “transing children”…
Good god you’re a fucking idiot.
@17: You have freedom speech. You’re allowed to say that you voted for Trump because he endorses your racism and homo-/transphobia. You don’t have to make shit up.
@25 I’m neither homophobic nor racist. But I absolutely do not believe someone can change their sex nor should we endulge efforts (hormones / surgery) to do so. However I am not opposed to anybody adopting a new name, style of dress or hobbies / interests that have been stereotypically associated with the opposite sex. To each his (or her) own.
@7, “If you want peace, prepare for war.” – Vegetius
@21, If one principle is as good as another, then no principle is better than any other.
Where do these principles, binding on all (or that should be), come from? Or is principle purely in the eye of the beholder?
You may not self-identify as racist or homophobic but we don’t need you to because we can judge that by the policies you support. Self-reporting is notoriously unreliable anyway.
Honestly owning it would be more dignified than being a grown adult claiming to choose your values and political positions to annoy people. This is how teenagers behave when they’re trying to upset their parents. I would tell you to grow up but what’s the point. You wouldn’t be like this if you had the choice.
@29, By what moral absolute, binding on all people in all cultures, is being racist or homophobic wrong or bad? In a world without absolute moral principles, racism and homophobia are no better, worse, right, or wrong, then their opposites?
Are you suggesting there are moral absolutes? What is there source? Got a link? Who created them?
@1 & 3: Hi Vawoli, it looks like you’re back to using profanity again, but under your new female moniker. Such a foul-mouthed sissy!
I’m not racist because “race” is but a few out of several billion base pairs of our DNA. Being “racist” makes about as much sense as being “brown-hairist”.
And I’m not homophobic because being scared of two men or two women having sex is ridiculous. How does that affect me? (Admittedly, I am ultra-turned off by public displays of homosexuality, AKA pride parades or drunken bar kissing or whatever.)
I don’t believe in transexualism (now transgenderism) because it’s physically impossible for humans (or other mammals) to change their sex.
I honestly don’t know why this is so damn hard for people to understand. I embrace reality and I reject fantasy.
re: 30: Thank god – a timely reminder that the Holocaust had its good points, too. And, hey – Hitler probably wasn’t as bad as Stalin, amirite? At least Hitler thought he was doing something beneficial for his country – isn’t that what the Seattle Times op-ed writer tweeted before the woke mob harassed him out of his job, the poor thing?
32 lol this is genuinely pathetic but none of this matters bc we’re judging you based on your stated opinions and policy preferences
@33.
Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.
@32 – what policies have I advocated for that are homophob or racist? Please show your work.
And don’t say “because you want to deport Brown people.” Because for the record, I want to deport every illegal immigrant, including lily white Brits, Aussies, Canadians, New Zealanders, etc.
@36: Just moments ago, you claimed you had to hold these views because the libs were too extreme. Now you’re claiming that you don’t have them.
To repeat: just admit you have them – feel free and easy about your real beliefs, for a change. You’re allowed to have them, so why so defensive?
@33, You get it. @35 gets it. Without moral absolutes binding on humanity, there is no way to condemn the Holocaust, racism, sexism, or anything else. The Holocaust was just someone’s chosen moral preference. The Nuremberg Trials were just someone else’s moral preference, imposed by the might of the Allied Armies.
What icecream flavor do you prefer? If there aren’t moral absolutes, then there are just moral preferences with no more authority than your icecream preference.
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/why-hamas-refuses-to-give-up-fighting-analysis/
Cdizzle, boatgeek, thirteen12, kristo
@37 – are you smoking crack? When I did I say I hold racist or homophobic views to oppose the libs? I said I am reflexively defensive of Trump, but Trump doesn’t hold racist or homophobic views either.
For the record, I am not afraid of homosexuality, I do not want to ban homosexuality, I don’t believe homosexuality is a mental health condition and I support gay marriage. Likewise, I have no problem with legal immigrants of any race. In fact, I celebrate legal immigrants for their determinatiom and work ethic, and often find them to be more patriotic and more conservative than many natural born American citizens.
32: “I don’t believe in transexualism (now transgenderism) because it’s physically impossible for humans (or other mammals) to change their sex.”
The physical impossibility argument is a red herring. Trans is close enough facsimile to the opposite sex and it provides those with gender dysphoria a happier life. No doubt about that.
I just take issue with gender ideology and gender affirming care for minors.
@41 – right, trans is a close enough facsimile to the opposite sex that gay men must find women (who believe they are men) attractive and as potential sex partners. Now who’s spouting some anti-gay bullshit?
@37, Exactly. In one breath we’re being told he reflexively supports trump to own the libs and of course he comes here daily to run through a check list of all the things daddy did that make him happy but when you tell him you’re judging his character based on these statements he gets pissy.
If you’re defending a president who is actively trying to take rights away from lgbtq people, stripping our military and our national institutions of references to gay and black people, and trying to whitewash our nation’s history, you’re defending racism and homophobia. Doing this to offend people who are against racism and homophobia doesn’t change anything.
What does it say about someone’s character if they are too ashamed to own their values or the social consequences of having them. If you’re proud to support trump you’re telling people everything they need to know about you, whether or not you have the courage or integrity to own it. Wouldn’t expect it of anyone who likes trump anyway.
I’ve got enough integrity to know where I stand. I’ve been entirely logically consistent. And you aren’t going to make me feel guilty for my opinions. I treat gay people well and wish them the best. Same for legal immigrants (or natural born citizens of any race.)
I know I communicate well in writing so clearly you are dumb or willfully obtuse.
Also, Barth, there are no social consequences for my viewpoints on say illegal immigration or transgenderism. The majority of public opinion is on my side of those issues.
@44, I don’t care how you feel. You do not get to control how other people see or judge you, you can only reveal yourself to others through your words and actions and leave it up to them to decide, and we are all judging you for the pride you take in your hateful, anti-american values that you come here to share here daily, and your cowardly refusal to own it. Enjoy your weekend.
Plz reread your own comments – you did indeed say you struck those positions to spite the libs. And no, I wasn’t smoking crack, but I did bother to read your comments (I usu. ignore you), which is perhaps close enough, from a risk-to-brain perspective.
@42: Don’t conflate the G with the T. Gay men/women are fine with their gender and attracted to their own sex.
@47 – yet another failure of our public education system. I am sorry you didn’t obtain the reading comprehension skills that every person needs to be competitive in our society. But with hard work, you can improve. Millions of Americans have shown it’s possible.
@48 – I was just following your logic to it’s final conclusion. If men can become women (or a close enough facsimile) then gay men must be attracted to “trans men”. And certainly we’ve seen enough “trans men and women” complaining on TikTok that gay men or gay women don’t find them attractive or as viable sex partners.