Slog AM: Los Angeles Is on Fire, Trump Says We Could Take Canada, Seattle Law to Protect Drivers Now in Effect

Weather: Happy new year! Good to be back on Slog to tell you the bad bad news. Today looks sunny with a high of 49. Tonight the clouds roll in and temps drop to the high- to mid-30s. Expect the sun to return Thursday. Pack an umbrella Friday to brave the 40-percent chance of rain. I know we’re too cool for those, but mild cold is much more dangerous when you’re wet. I came home from a walk the other night with purple lips and frost on my hat. I started shivering only when I warmed up, so be careful!

Hello, Apple: The tech company signed a new lease to take over 193,000-ish square feet of office space at Arbor Blocks West in South Lake Union, previously occupied by Meta. It’s the largest new lease in Seattle since before COVID, when Qualtrics scooped up 275,000 square feet downtown in 2019.

Goodbye, commercial net-pen fish farming: The state board of Natural Resources banned the industry with a new rule yesterday. Supporters said the ban would support salmon, orcas, and the hundreds of millions of dollars we’ve already spent on aquatic species recovery. Jeremy Wilbur, chair of the Swinomish Tribe, said salmon had enough challenges without “aquatic feed lots.” The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe said the practice was an important economic resource as fishing continues to decline, reports the Seattle Times. More than 80% of public comments before the hearing were in support of the ban. Net-pen aquaculture existed in Washington for decades. In 2018, a net off Cypress Island negligently operated by Cooke Aquaculture, which operates Salish Fish with the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe, failed and 250,000 non-native Atlantic salmon slipped into the wild waters of Puget Sound. This is not a groundbreaking policy. California and Alaska had already banned commercial net-pen aquaculture, Oregon doesn’t have net-pens, and British Columbia is phasing them out by 2029.

Seattle’s driver deactivation law goes into effect: The law makes companies like Instacart, Uber, and Postmates provide at least two weeks notice and reasonable justification when kicking drivers off their platforms, and giving those drivers opportunity to understand and appeal what had been, without oversight, opaque final decisions. The law, a relic of a more progressive city council, passed in 2023 but was blocked in court by a suit from—guess who?—Uber. It’s meant to keep drivers safe from arbitrary decisions based on things like turning down too many rides or falling below a minimum average customer rating after an unfair review. It’s unclear if the current Council will do anything to roll this back.

ICYMI: Ashley’s first Bad Apples column of the year has the Seattle Police Department firing the fast-driving officer who hit and killed college student Jaahnavi Kandula in a crosswalk, the SPD officer who pulled over a King County Metro bus driver, and two more cops who beat a man suspected of arson. Charming. Read about it here.

NEW: Latest Bad Apples column. This month we look forward to some of the Seattle police misconduct cases we expect to resolve in 2025.

🍎 Jaahnavi Kandula’s killer fired

🍎 Det. who pulled over that Metro bus

🍎 That Sgt. who repeatedly hit that guyhttps://t.co/oodAQHDIKa

— Ashley Nerbovig (@AshleyNerbovig) January 7, 2025

Do you know this wolf? The Center for Biological Diversity and the US Fish and Wildlife Service are offering a combined $20,000 reward for help catching the person or persons killing endangered grey wolves in Washington State. Three are now dead. These animals need protection. The killings threaten the survival of this species. And it’s a great way to pay off those student loans President Joe Biden couldn’t cancel. Hop to it, gumshoe.

most federal agencies: if we work hard, we can solve this in just 75 years

us fish and wildlife: to save this owl, we must bring slaughter upon his brothers. one thousand gold pieces for the hides of those who slew the noble wolf, king among dogs, in his arboreal domain

— Vivian McCall (@vivmccall) October 30, 2024

LA is on fire: Wildfires in Los Angeles County spread on a Tuesday windstorm, destroying homes and forcing thousands to flee for safety. Some escaping a fire in the wealthy Pacific Palisades neighborhood abandoned cars and ran when a traffic jam clogged the road. Officials haven’t said how many buildings the fire has destroyed so far, but estimates 13,000 structures were threatened. The evacuation area included 30,000 people. CNN reports the Palisades fire is burning through five football fields a minute. Two other fires are raging north: The 500-acre Hurst fire north of San Fernando, and the 1,000-acre Eaton fire in Altadena. The Associated Press reports winds could continue for days, producing 100-mph gusts in day mountains and foothills that haven’t seen rain in months.

The wind is really fucking nuts right now. They expect the fire to spread through the night, into the morning and possibly through the next few days. https://t.co/ahCiXj5ab6 pic.twitter.com/JVFoejeRsO

— People’s City Council – Los Angeles (@PplsCityCouncil) January 8, 2025

Sorry, Canada: President-elect Donald Trump told reporters in a news conference he wouldn’t take Canada by military force, but he would economically subjugate our sovereign neighbor and ally to do away with the “artificially drawn line” separating our countries. That’s fucking insane, what the fuck is he even talking about? It’s not normal that the US would acquire another country full of people with no desire to be American—well … that is definitely on brand for us. Canadians feared this jingoist bullshit from the US before we got ourselves into the American Civil War. (For more on that, I’d suggest Alan Taylor’s “American Civil Wars: A Continental History, 1850-1873,” one of the best books I read last year). 

Also: Trump suggested he’d use military force and economic coercion to wrangle the Panama Canal from Panama, for shipping, and Greenland from Denmark, presumably for the rare earth minerals used in battery production and geopolitical dominance over China and Russia. Expansionist threats are dangerous and unjustifiable. Fuck this man.

Clearing the way for mass deportations: The House passed the Laken Riley Act yesterday, which directs the feds to detain and possibly deport immigrants charged with nonviolent crimes like theft, burglary, larceny, and shoplifting. This law scapegoating desperate immigrants passed the House with the help of 48 Democrats, and could likely pass the Senate with some Democratic support on Friday. Here’s the roll call.

• Democratic no votes in Washington state: Representatives Pramila Jayapal, Suzan DelBene, Derek Kilmer, Rick Larsen, Adam Smith, Marilyn Strickland, Emily Randall. 

• Democratic yes votes in Washington state: Representatives Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Kim Schrier.

A really sad story: JetBlue found two bodies in the landing gear compartment of a plane that flew to South Florida from John F. Kennedy airport in New York City Monday night. The airline says it doesn’t know who the people are or how they got there, but both are “believed” to be men. Details are scant, but detectives are on the case. As the Associated Press points out, it’s strange that they got in there. Airports are supposed to be secure. It seems preventable.

Idaho *cough cough* No implication here, people are coughing. The largest medical group in the state is tracking an explosion of 525 flu cases in the first week of the year. It’s also reporting a test positivity rate of 50% at its clinics, meaning half of those tested for flu tested positive. (An outbreak is under control if that rate is close to 5%). Flu cases are spiking here in Washington, too, where the state department of health cases have quadrupled between late November and late December. Get your flu, COVID, and RSV vaccinations. If you’re good, the nice man or lady or they/them will give you a lollipop. Flu might not be risky to you, but it can and does kill (mostly older) people every year.

Rights for jerks: As you learned in Slog AM yesterday, Meta changed up its harassment policy to meet this meaner, dumber political era. The ramifications of that are it now allows billions on its global platforms Facebook, Instagram, and the Metaverse to say women are household objects, gay and trans people are mentally ill, Chinese people are responsible for COVID, and so on, all subjects the company says are in mainstream political discourse. This rules if your hobby is being an asshole to strangers on the internet and sucks for everyone who hates reading comments from those who sadly never got hooked on phonics. Companies are not our friends. They exist to make money and their apparent political values are an illusion.

What’s your sexy secret? As Ashley reminded you yesterday, we’ve got a sex survey cooking! Tell all, little pigs.

If you have a dumb job/hate meetings: Last week, my former bandmate Andrew H. Smith released this funny, catchy pop song called “Your Dumb Office Job,” which reminds me of every bad job and coworker I’ve ever hated. I love it. So does commenter @cursedsnail who says, I FUCKING HATE THE JIMMY JOHN’S I WORK AT THANK YOU ANDREW!!!