State Department Firings Today: Today the State Department is firing more than 1,300 employees, according to the AP. Layoff notices are going out to “1,107 civil servants and 246 foreign service officers with domestic assignments in the United States.” Back in May, the State Department said they’d be cutting 18 percent of jobs to, as the Trump administration wrote in a memo obtained by the AP, “reshape American diplomacy and scale back the size of the federal government.”
Still Talking Tariffs: Trump is still obsessed with tariffs, like a toddler who just learned a new word. This week, the administration threatened to raise several rates to absolutely bonkers levels if the countries didn’t fall in line and accept his initial tariff rates proposed in April. (Remember that big dumb sign he had made? What an idiot.) He says he’s going to impose a 25 percent tariff on Japan and South Korea, a 35 percent tariff on all Canadian goods, and a 50 percent tariff on products from Brazil. That last one is because he’s mad about the “witch-hunt” trial against former president Jair Bolsonaro, btw. (Remember when they said women were “too emotional” to be in office? Sigh.) The Guardian has a handy explainer if you want to feel like you’re punching yourself in the brain over and over and over again with a fistful of nails.
Suspended Secret Service: Six Secret Service agents have been suspended without pay for a range of 10 to 42 days after an “official disciplinary review process” of the shooting at Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The Biden-ordered independent review of the shooting found that Secret Service personnel at the event demonstrated “a troubling lack of critical thinking.” It’s contagious.
Trump’s Going to Texas: I wonder if he’ll look at all the catastrophic flood damage, in which more than 100 people died and 150 people are still missing, and boast about his plans to “phase out” FEMA.
Potential Mass Overdose in Baltimore: At least 25 people were hospitalized in Baltimore, in serious or critical condition, after a suspected mass overdose. All the incidents happened near the same road intersection, and officials haven’t yet named any suspected substances. Please carry Naloxone or Narcan! The People’s Harm Reduction Alliance will send you some for free! The Washington State Health Department has info on where to find it locally, too.
Get ‘Em, Mahmoud: Now that Mahmoud Khalil has been released from 104 DAYS in ICE detention, he has filed a $20 million claim against the Trump administration, claiming he was “falsely imprisoned, maliciously prosecuted and smeared as an antisemite as the government sought to deport him over his prominent role in campus protests.” Gonna be hard to prove it didn’t happen since the whole world watched it play out!
John Wilson’s Out: John Wilson has suspended his campaign for King County Executive. “FUCKING FINALLY,” The Stranger’s newsroom cheered upon hearing the news. For months, Wilson has been accused of stalking and harassing his ex, and he was arrested last week outside his ex-fiancée’s home for allegedly violating a restraining order. Last month the King County Council voted unanimously to call for him to step down.
We Got an Electric(ish) Ferry! Washington’s first hybrid-electric ferry, the Wenatchee, set sail yesterday. It’s been out of commission for the past two years, having its two diesel engines replaced with “two new engine-driven generators, 864 batteries capable of 5.7 megawatt-hours of energy storage.” That sounds like a lot! I don’t know anything about batteries! But at this point, there are no charging facilities at our ferry docks, so the ferry is gonna run like a hybrid car, on diesel fuel until 2029. It should reenter service next week.
Save Little Red Hen! Green Lake bar Little Red Hen—which is 92 years old!!!—may have to close at the end of the month. Property owner Ruoxi Zhang sent a notice to the bar’s owner, Dominic Shim, demanding that the Hen “vacate and surrender the premises to landlord on or before July 31, 2025.” We love the Little Red Hen! In our city guide—101 Things to Do in Seattle—Nathalie Graham says it’s the best place to “line dance your pants off.” Shim is fighting to stay. Visit savethehen.com to see how you can help.
In Better Small Business News: Pitch the Baby, Seattle’s newest women’s sports bar, (soft) opens today!
Say Their Names, Say Their Names: Six Seattle cops who participated in the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally are still fighting to keep their names hidden after a Seattle resident, Sam Sueoka, requested their names in a 2021 public disclosure request. Now Sueoka’s lawyer, Neil Fox, is asking the judge to “hold the four officers in contempt and levy daily financial sanctions against them” until they identify themselves in court documents. (In 2021, DivestSPD, a grassroots police watchdog group, found the officers’ names, and the Urbanist reported on it here. Two of the six, married couple Alexander Everett and Caitlin Rochelle Everett, were named after they were fired for their actions on January 6.) Only cowards don’t put their name on their shit.
Happy 7/11 Day! Don’t forget to get your free Slurpee.
In the Khalil case Trump and DHS, as they say, fucked around and now they’re gonna find out. I hope he gets every penny if not more
RIP to PNW music legend Baby Gramps.
It sounds like the guy who owns the Little Red Hen told the building’s owner to fuck off, or something, in an angry, drunken email and she responded by saying your month to month lease isn’t being renewed.
“Please carry Naloxone or Narcan!”
It would like to see if there is a study that documents what percentage of people revived with Narcan eventually go on to get treatment that largely keeps them in sobriety for the rest of their lives, and what percentage later die of drug overdose or drug addiction related disease and complication anyway.
Is Narcan a gateway to sobriety, or does it just delay the inevitable, and by how long?
“Say Their Names, Say Their Names:”
Let’s make a requirement of public employment, for all public employees, to have to identify any rally they attend on their own time, even if they are never found to have done anything unlawful at the rally, or done anything that violates the policy of their public employer.
The public has a right to know what 1st Amendment activity and causes public employees participate in on their own time.
@4 everyone is going to die eventually so why waste time with any medical interventions? Great point as usual.
@4. Maybe that is something you could research yourself and post your results here? Just saying…
@5 How would that be enforced? Does a rave count as a rally? What about a concert by an artist with a political bent?
Also, I’m pretty sure there would be 1st Amendment issues with such a requirement.
@4 You’re even worse than WereBackBaby because at least he doesn’t even try to pretend to be smart …or not a piece of shit. Congrats.
Do hope Taco has a truckload of paper towels to placate survivors of recent Texas floods
@6, Shouldn’t we know the efficacy of a medical intervention, or some combination of medical interventions?
If, and IDK if this is true or false, Narcan isn’t a pathway to sobriety, shouldn’t we study what additional interventions we can pair with it, so it becomes that? We do that with all kinds of other medical treatments. Why not this one? Or do drug addicts deserve to be consigned to increased risks of being unemployed, homeless, etc., until the die anyway from exposure on some dark rainy night under a bridge? If so, that’s not humane or treating them with human dignity, is it?
Narcan at the moment isn’t one of these, but some interventions are bankrupting healthcare. Provenge costs $93,000 to treat a particularly deadly mutation of prostate cancer. It’s the only game in town for that mutation. Medicare is required to pay for it because it extends life, but doesn’t cure people, by 4.1 months. So instead of dying in 10 months, they die in 14.
The legal threshold for requiring public health insurance programs to pay for something is whether it demonstrates ANY efficacy. So, assuming they could measure this outside of the margin of error of a study, if Provenge added 14 minutes to life, not 4 months, Medicare and Medicaid would have to cover it under existing law.
IDK where we draw that line, but raining down money on a bio-pharma company or a surgeon because they can add 4 months to a 78 year average lifespan, with some five or six figure intervention, seems like too low of a threshold to be able to tap the public treasury. It means a hell of a lot less money for other procedures that could help a hell of a lot more people, live a hell of a lot longer and healthier, like weight loss drugs, nutritional education, and gym memberships. Obesity, and we are the most obese industrialized country, is a major risk factor for heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and hypertension. Guess what the biggest payouts are for Medicare? Heart disease, stroke, cancer …
Why not apply your phd in google to find the data for yourself instead of reminding everyone how depraved you are.
I’ve got a moderately high IQ but I guess being “smart” is subjective, so I’ll give y’all that one. But I am objectively not a piece of shit. So I guess we are tied.
I have some of the same thoughts about Narcan as NotMyopic has. It does seem to just delay the inevitable, especially when the people who are revived are not even required to go to a hospital for a cursory examination.
But it’s also fairly cheap, not dangerous, doesn’t create litter or theft problems and some percentage of the people revived will go on to long term recovery. So I don’t oppose Narcan as public policy.
I am surprised the Hen owner was on a month to month lease but thought he had a lease through 2030? That demonstrates catastrophically poor business management skills. Anyhoo, it’s private property so he got to git.
@10 Fucking myopic. YOU ARE A FASCIST PIG. Go take some yoga classes, bend yourself over & place your lips around your asshole. Then I will epoxy them together. No real reason to do it, it’s just what you deserve. *Oh and make sure you take plenty of metamucil and chili con carne before they are stuck together. I’m sure you get my point.
@4: All your arguments are hypothetical and statistical postulations juxtaposed with a life or death event. Obviously the ethics of handling the event comes first, as everything else is tangential if not orthogonal.
Good luck being be able to quench your thirst for a political “gotcha” here in the Slog comments for Narcan, gun control, automobile accidents, or any of permutations you chose to delve into. That’s because the things you extrapolate to make points on are already ambiguous, unquantifiable, or have been knowable unknowns for a long time.
@11, Why would it be depraved to want to know the effectiveness, or lack of effectiveness of a medical intervention? Seems like good public health, good science, and good public policy.
Good for Khalil. I hope he wins.
Of course by the time we get any resolution to the case we will be well into the next President’s term, or perhaps the President’s term after that one.
Welcome to civil litigation, particularly if your opponent is well resourced and willing to use every possible legal procedure to delay, delay, delay, in hopes of running out the clock.
“Please carry Naloxone or Narcan!”
No.
“Six Seattle cops who participated in the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally are still fighting to keep their names hidden after a Seattle resident, Sam Sueoka, requested their names in a 2021 public disclosure request.”
Were those six police officers accused of committing any crimes, and if so, were they convicted? NO??? THEN SHUT THE FUCK UP
@10: You forgot to consider the medical examiner’s workload at the county morgue and the morale of the staff. Why pile on? Give Quincy and Sam a break.
@15, You are asking whether a drug with a two-figure price tag and a >90% success rate at saving lives is worth it. If you need any more information than that and don’t understand why so many people are appalled by your comments you’re beyond help, but we knew that already.
@20, How do you measure success? Being revived to die of the same condition in a week or a month? Years? If they still die from a drug overdose or drug related complication, was it successful? If not, what additional intervention, voluntary or involuntary should it be paired with to create efficacy?
We do those kinds of studies all the time. “X” intervention alone had a success rate of “Z”. “X” intervention immediately paired with “Y” intervention had a success rate of “Z” plus 50%.
If Narcan and related generics just revive somebody today, just so they can die tomorrow, or next month from exposure or malnutrition, is that a success? We need to define what we mean by success. It seems to me that we are aiming too low.
You measure success by preventing someone from dying for $12 a pop. If you want to know about long term outcomes for people with opiate addiction you can look it up though i can’t guarantee you will understand anything you read because that’s a constant struggle for you but you can at least satisfy your curiosity without announcing to the world that you aren’t sure if someone’s life is worth less than the cost of a fast food meal.
@18 Sure gets his panties in a twist easily. Must be easy when your dick is that small.
NotMyOpic update: BLAT BLAT BLAT poor people are scum BLAT BLAT BLAT suffering people deserve to suffer BLAT BLAT BLAT only people like me deserve to live BLAT BLAT BLAT obey authority BLAT BLAT BLAT beat up the homeless BLAT BLAT BLAT worship power BLAT BLAT BLAT kill the poor BLAT BLAT BLAT let them die BLAT BLAT BLAT….
A note on the as-yet unnamed SPD officers who attended J6: “SPD Manual Standards and Duties: The Seattle Police Manual prohibits employees from engaging in behavior that undermines public trust in the department, regardless of duty status.” (from google ai).
They should have been fired, of course. If they’re going to remain, it’s time to demand their names for accountability’s sake.
@21,
What hayduke @13 said. You’re colossally fucking stupid and that stupid shit you were posting yesterday, accusing Nathalie of plagiarism despite very clearly and demonstratively having no clue what plagiarism even is would have to rank among the stupider fucking things you’ve said here in recent times, though it’s hard to keep track given that you’re stupid as fucking shit and everything you say here reflects that abject stupidity.
tl;dr You’re stupid as fucking shit.
Vawoli blows goats. I have proof.
13: That’s some real imaginative rage there
27: It’s best to stop bestiality instead of taking pictures of it.
@29. The proof is in the pudding.
I don’t have any photos, the goats just told me he’s baaaaaaaaaaaaad.
Potential Mass Overdose in Baltimore: Evolution In Action.
@2, it was a false unfounded rumor that spread without any verification. I can’t share screenshots here but his partner/caretaker says that Baby Gramps’ death is news to Baby Gramps and please stop spreading the rumor.
@18 Nobody gives a shit what you think, snowflake.
@23 – muh dik hurrr dhurrr
@34 – and yet, you obviously do give a shit
@27 – CDizzle rapes babies to death, I have proof.
@37
Here’s your second Mike Myers reference of the day, sphincter boy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uJhZZ9ee4k
@38 – I don’t watch stupid movies for plebs
@39. That’s because you are a cultureless neanderthal.
@40 – LOL write some more funny shit
@notmyoptic, saving a life is saving a life. Your judgement and statistics don’t matter. Rot in hell you piece of shit. These are people.
Ok, didn’t want to get into the whole Narcan issue, but…
@Not Myopic @WBB. This may not be the best analogy, but I’ll try.
Imagine a newbie surfer who can’t swim, hits some rough waves and nearly drowns and has to be rescued. Are y’all saying that the lifeguard or anyone else around are thinking “What’s the point? That kid will do it again next week, let him drown now”?
Maybe the kid will do just that and drown next week. Or maybe the kid will learn to swim. You would never know if the kid drowned.
There is nothing wrong and everything right with trying to save a life.
(If it turns out you were wrong, you can always get’em later.)
That last line was a joke.
It seems that you two would be happy to stand by and watch people die, just for the ‘gotcha’ moment. I hear ICE is hiring.
“Gonna be hard to prove it didn’t happen since the whole world watched it play out!”
Trump claims holders of permanent resident alien status are barred by federal law from advocating changes in US foreign policy. I hope that claim becomes focus of any legal action by Trump in this case, so we can get a ruling on whether that claim has any basis in law — and is constitutional if it does.
@1: Meanwhile, the actions agains Khalil seem far from proportional — he’s a legal permanent resident, he lives in New York with his wife, and they have a child. It’s not like he’s a flight risk who required detention. I too hope he kicks Trump’s ass in the civil case. (Just another way we Americans will pay for Trump, literally this time… yay Abandon Harris, etc.)
@33 thanks for setting me straight! And cheers to Baby Gramps for being alive.