NO: Robert Redford, the actor, director, and activist who gave us inimitable performances (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, The Sting), films (Ordinary People, Quiz Show) and Sundance Film Festival, died at his home in Provo early this morning. He was 89.
Homelessness in Washington Growing Slower—For Now: According to a “snapshot report” from the state, the number of people sleeping outside or in emergency shelters in Washington only rose 2.2 percent between January 2024 and January 2025. King County saw a larger 6.13 percent increase, according to data from the Department of Commerce. These numbers show progress, state officials say. In 2023, when one in 50 Washington renters faced eviction, homelessness jumped 9.5 percent statewide. In the last two year budget, Washington invested $1.8 billion toward housing and homelessness. Federal cuts might lead to more spikes. Read more at The Seattle Times.
Yoink: Seattle’s Cascadia Elementary won a Blue Ribbon Award this August, but they might never get it after the Trump administration killed the nation’s most prestigious education award in an effort to “return education to the states.” Third-grader Austin Allwine told KING 5 he didn’t “think it’s exactly fair that the government could just yank away the award right before we win it.”
Comcast Sues State: The cable company sued to block a state sales tax on advertising. Comcast says the statute violates federal law, which prevents “discriminatory” state taxes on e-commerce, arguing that the state is taxing almost all internet ads, and almost no ads that are off the internet. Striking the tax would cut revenue by $475 million over the next four years, KUOW reports.
Weather: A little smoke this morning, followed by sun and a high of 85. Later this week, we’ll drop into the 70s before rain and temperatures in the mid-60s this weekend.
Nelson, or Whatever: In a recording of a recent virtual meeting obtained by The Stranger, Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson laid out a plan to keep her seat, part of which was to “bump up my sort of anti-Trump rhetoric, or acknowledge that we’re under attack, or whatever.” Inspiring. As I reported yesterday, before Nelson said this, her political consultant explained that to win, Nelson had to get centrists to show up at the polls, convince the restless, Trump-averse liberal homeowners to vote for her, and emphasize that Nelson would “put up systems that are resilient to whatever is happening nationally.” Sort of like voting to expand police surveillance over more than 100 voices telling you not to, or whatever.
Threats to Democracy, or Whatever: The Trump administration wants to use the assassination of Charlie Kirk, a man they held up as a free speech warrior, as pretext to limit speech. The wrong speech, of course, that liberal speech and a supposed left-wing network that sponsors political violence even though the right-wing is responsible for the vast majority of political violence in this country. It’s unclear what the administration specifically plans to do.
Wisdom Is Knowing What You Don’t Know: While Utah Governor Spencer Cox claims shooter Tyler Robinson was “deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology,” there’s no hard evidence to support his claim. What little we do have suggests the messages inscribed on Robinson’s ammunition referenced far-right Groyper memes made by Nick Fuentes’ little fanboys. But even that isn’t enough evidence for any coherent ideology. As Joan Donovan, a Boston University Professor and founder of the The Critical Internet Studies Institute, told Time, ambiguity is the point.
So Shut Up! Robinson isn’t cooperating with law enforcement, so this country could do some good and stop speculating. While we wait for the facts to trickle in, we can all focus on government officials talking about stifling political dissent.
Israel Launches Land Invasion of Gaza City: Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 78 people since dawn, and rescuers are digging people out of the concrete rubble with their hands, Al Jazeera reports. At least three other Palestinians have starved to death.
Genocide: A new report from the United Nations’ Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory has found Israel’s genocide is genocide. “The Commission concludes that the Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” read the report, which held Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and President Isaac Herzog responsible. Last week, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled Israel had a legal duty to provide food it’s withholding from thousands of Palestinian prisoners.
US Kills Three in Boat Strike: The US military destroyed another boat off the coast of Venezuela, in an attempt to target alleged members of drug cartels. This comes two weeks after the US blew up a speedboat, killing 11 people. Trump claims he has the power to summarily kill these people under the laws of war. Legal specialists and retired military lawyers do not think Trump has the authority to treat suspected smugglers like they’re launching an armed invasion on the US. The Trump administration has not said how the boats were destroyed, or publicly verified who was on them and what they were allegedly carrying. Trump says he has proof and that cocaine and fentanyl were “splattered all over the ocean.”
Very Smart Diplomacy: This military operation risks war with Venezuela, which has called up its reservists to prepare for a US invasion. The Trump administration considers President Nicolás Maduro to be an illegitimate leader and says he is one of the largest drug traffickers in the world, a claim that does not hold water. Last month, Attorney General Pam Bondi doubled the award for information leading to Maduro’s arrest to $50 million.
Boat II: China’s Coast Guard is accusing a Philippine ship of intentionally ramming one of its vessels near Scarborough Shoal/Bajo de Masinloc, a territory in the South China Sea both countries claim as their own. The Philippines said China blasted its ship with water cannons, damaging the vessel and injuring a crewmember. The (boat battle? accident?) happened six days after China announced it would designate part of the area as a nature preserve. The Philippines filed a diplomatic protest, the AP reports.
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Ok. Sure! Lets all agree that we don’t know enough about Tyler Robinson to say whether he’s on the left or the right.
…now …describe the kid that did the school shooting in Colorado that same day.
waits
“The Trump administration wants to use the assassination of Charlie Kirk, a man they held up as a free speech warrior, as pretext to limit speech.”
Free speech is alive and well. Everyone is called a fascist, racist, and transphobe on daily basis these days.
A rather quick and get it over with Slog AM today, Vivian.
@2 You literally called me a transphobe yesterday…
4: That was sarcastic as it’s such a diluted term.
@Coolie…
Like I said yesterday, if you talk like a fascist, I’m going to call you a fascist. Own it.
@5 So are you saying that someone calling something sarcastically or ironically or satirically doesn’t necessarily associate them with a specific political party? Weird. What if it’s written on a shell casing?
@2. You were not called a fascist, you were told to quit talking like a fascist. Fascist sympathizers, apologists, and bona fide dyed in the wool proponents of fascism are what we currently face in our day and age, full stop. This is not business as usual for the Republican party. Their actions are fascist and autocratic. Your attempts to discredit that reality because Republican gay men are dubiously more fit and less wimpy is absurd and shameful. You should show more character and integrity than using the language peddled by Trump and Musk with this canard scapegoat of extreme leftists to blame for everything. Don’t be such a shallow minded doormat.
8: If you say to me”You were not called a fascist, you were told to quit talking like a fascist”, then you can say the same about Republicans, right? Or are they actually fascists?
Think long and hard before you answer. Your integrity depends on it.
@9 Not all republicans are in America are fascist but the all fascists in America are republican.
Like I said… tell me about the kid that shot up the school in Colorado. Go ahead. There’s absolutely nothing ambiguous about his political beliefs or what he’s into. Research it and then type the words out for me.
You won’t.
@9. If you are still a Reagan Republican, I wouldn’t call you a fascist, since back then the GOP actually stood for an ironclad policy platform. I am giving you the benefit of the doubt based on your comment history, but feel free to earn your moniker if you want to own that you have been radicalized into selling out the country to the weakest and smallest man ever elected to public office in US history.
losing
11: Points well taken. Republicans are not fascists by any stretch. Trump is an aberration who hijacked the GOP.
“Not cooperating with law enforcement” is such a bizarre way to describe a person exercising their 5th Amendment rights, I don’t understand why The Stranger keeps repeating the phrase.
@13 “hijacked the GOP” by repeatedly being nominated by their voters. Face it, this is exactly what the party you support wants.
@13 If you look up the definition of fascism its literally a checklist of everything Trump and the GOP has done and is currently doing. Like a step by step guide almost. So… uh yeah.
“even though the right-wing is responsible for the vast majority of political violence in this country”
Would love to know what this statement is based on because all evidence would indicate the far left has been behind the vast majority of political violence and unrest.
Lib narrative on Taylor Robinson totally destroyed!!! LOL
16: Could it be that the obsession over the word fascism is what’s going on instead of fascism itself? If that’s the case, there’s no need for such heated rhetoric in the first place.
Maybe we should stop negating the memory of those who perished at the hand of the Nazis in WWII.
“even though the right-wing is responsible for the vast majority of political violence in this country.”
You got that from the ADL. The ADL counts even a non-politically-motivated domestic violence incidents as cases of “right-wing violence” if they determine (accuse) that the perpetrator is “right-wing”.
“Trump claims he has the power to summarily kill these people under the laws of war.”
Thanks, Obama!
@17 “Would love to know what this statement is based on”
A report by none less than the Cato Institute, which found that setting aside 9/11 right wingers were responsible for 63% of politically motivated deaths since 1975.
https://www.cato.org/blog/politically-motivated-violence-rare-united-states
https://www.cato.org/blog/politically-motivated-violence-rare-united-states
@19 You’re in luck. The shooter in Colorado was wearing multiple nazi patches and his social media accounts and chat logs were full of neo nazi/white supremacist statements. But… keep ignoring facts that don’t fit your narrative. It’s the MAGA way.
24: “full of neo nazi/white supremacist statements.”
Like what, for example?
@24 – it’s nice that nobody in the Colorado school shooting died except the shooter (at his own hand). Also, thousands and thousands of people online didn’t celebrate the Colorado shooting, so there’s that… in fact I haven’t seen even one single example of anyone celebrating the Colorado school shooting.
bUt wHaT aBoUt tHe cOLoRaDo sChOoL sHoOTiNg
If you ventured outside of your silo, you’d see there are conservatives opposed to what Bondi is saying.
You won’t.
Condolences on the loss of your beloved drug traffickers.
As is usual with The Stranger, you can get to the truth of the matter by assuming cause and effect has been reversed, some key piece of info has been deliberately left out, etc. In this case, the indictment has fairly definitively proven that Robinson was motivated by Kirk “spreading hate”, and the extremely tenuous interpretation of the bullet carvings as “Groyper” messages was completely wrong. Believe me, I hate to post an NYT link, but check the indictment out here yourself & don’t trust the sources that confidently blustered about his ideology again:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/09/16/us/indictment-tyler-robinson-charges-kirk.html?unlocked_article_code=1.mU8.jooL.UUL_fH4KQcdy&smid=url-share
I’m not 100% positive about this, but if I recall correctly the issues with the “right wing more murders/violence” thing has to do with those particular stats counting prison gang violence, which I think most people would find a bit of a misleading metric. Not an expert though, so someone can feel free to look more into that if they want to look like a big smarty pants.
@22/23 Thank you. An interesting read but comes with some caveats. The author is only focusing on deaths and goes so far to say that “The number of deaths in politically motivated terrorist attacks is so tiny that any statistical analysis is extremely fragile”. It also states “The analysis above ignores injuries and property damage, which may skew the results”. The latter carve out is important because I think when you say violence most people would include the wide spread riots, attacks on public servants and burning/looting of businesses as examples of violence. I don’t know if there is another study on that somewhere but my suspicion is if you looked at the data in that context the far left by far has been the instigator of violence in this country over the last 10 years. Violence is a problem across the country but TS is wrong here to insinuate its solely a far right issue.
@29 that was a steep fall from “all evidence would indicate the far left has been behind the vast majority of political violence and unrest” to “my suspicion is if you looked at the data in that context the far left by far has been the instigator of violence in this country over the last 10 years”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362083228_A_comparison_of_political_violence_by_left-wing_right-wing_and_Islamist_extremists_in_the_United_States_and_the_world
@25 They don’t post the chat logs… I don’t know specifics. Just what literally every newspaper has said (isn’t that what you guys used to prove that the other kids boyfriend is trans yesterday?)…
Here’s a quote from a fox news article: “the teen’s social media accounts were “filled with white supremacist symbolism,” including certain terms in his username, wearing white supremacist patches and promoting Nazi-era symbols.” since you guys seem to believe everything they say without question.
@32 This is tiresome. Read the indictment (with provided texts), admit you were wrong, and apologize to the people you insulted who politely pointed out you didn’t know what you were talking about.
That kid who took out St Charley (blessed be his name) is a right-wing whack job. The trans girlfriend is just a distraction.
And I see where the Gaza planned community site preparation is going as grimly as I suspected. The Purity Voters must be so proud.
@33 nekrasova calling someone else tiresome. is like coolidge calling someone else gay.
@34 I don’t blame you for being misled by rush to assign ideology and the reporting on this issue, which has been terrible, but he was fairly definitively shown not to be right-wing in the indictment.
@35 I’m afraid your opinion counts for less since you’re doubling down after being wrong. What I’d recommend is reading more primary sources and less “reporting” on issues like these.
@34: Yes, uncomfortable details are a distraction.
@30 not really. I don’t have the time to put together a research paper but I don’t think it takes a research team to understand most of the violence in the last few years has been driven by the far left. The paper that is cited is very narrow as it admits so drawing a firm conclusion from it is foolhardy.
@34: Tyler Robinson’s mother said he was recently turning more left, pro gay, and pro trans. Just heard that on Nichole Wallace on MSNBC.
@39 ok so to recap you have no evidence at all to support your feelings that the left is to blame for most of the political violence, and we did have evidence to show it mostly comes from the right, but you still feel (still without evidence) it actually comes from the left. Good talk.
@39 you don’t need to put together your own research because someone else already did. This one isn’t just restricted to fatal attacks and has a large enough sample size to perform a statistical analysis.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362083228_A_comparison_of_political_violence_by_left-wing_right-wing_and_Islamist_extremists_in_the_United_States_and_the_world
With all due respect, what any individual thinks they know is biased by a number of factors that, by definition, we do not know we have. For example, people often forget about abortion and fertility clinic attacks because they’re so common they barely register nationally — like there was an ivf bombing just a few months ago that killed one person that i knew nothing about until i looked for it. Point being, you have no way of knowing what you don’t know until a research team does the work you think no one needs to do.
@42 You actually still don’t know much about the IVF clinic bombing–the person killed was the bomber, who was a leftist anti-natalist. There were also some interesting Washington connections–his best friend was the girl on Fox Island who convinced her boyfriend to kill her, and the explosives were provided by a guy from Kent. Always go deeper than the headlines!
43 that changes nothing about my point but i appreciate your attention to detail
@44 Well, I’d say it does chip away at the point a little, in that even if you read your Studies by Research Teams the actual narrative can be obscured. But I think we’ll get at truth together barth–me with my obsessive reading of primary sources, and you with your statistical analyses, even if you’re just seeking out ones you already agree with and need me to fill in the whole picture a little bit.
@43 IVF anti-natalist guy was not a “leftist” that’s social media misinformation
https://www.memri.org/dttm/guy-edward-bartkus-attacks-palm-springs-ivf-clinic-car-bomb-posts-anti-natalist-pro-mortalist
45, No it doesn’t. I didn’t say the ivf clinic bombing was right or left, i said clinic bombs don’t make big waves in the national media, because they don’t. Certainly not at the same scale as say, a george floyd protest or January 6, but most clinic bombings are committed by right wing groups, just like most acts of political violence in the US generally — by a factor of over 5 according to this research.
You’re free to search for more examples of analysis you like but i don’t think you’re going to be pleased with the results if these ones aren’t up to your standards because they’re pretty rigorous — the PNAS paper was peer reviewed and you can judge the methodology for yourself. These were just the top hits from my search and i figured the cato institute would be sufficient to quell concerns of bias since they are a libertarian think tank but of course there’s always a reason not to trust the results.
@46 Haha, as soon as I posted that I was thinking “I probably should have just said he was antinatalist”. Here’s what I’ll say. While I think you could more accurately put many of his views like animal rights and opposition to pro-lifers toward the left, anti-natalism and efilism doesn’t really map neatly onto either side, so if you wanted to just label him those it would be reasonable–but you definitely couldn’t call him right-wing, which is what we commonly assume when we hear about an IVF clinic bombing.
@47 You may not have specifically called it left or right (and I didn’t say you did) but if the overarching point is that “you won’t know about what you’re missing due to your biases if you’re not reading studies” in the context of right-wing violence then there is a certain irony if the example is one that wouldn’t fall under right-wing violence (it did widely make the national news and I think the Stranger too by the way).
Now as I said I haven’t looked into the “right vs left political violence” claim so I won’t make a definitive claim or tell you you’re wrong, but I would be curious if they’re counting skinhead prison violence.
Watching Slog’s naive libs still trying as hard as they can, even after everything that came out, to scramble as hard as they can to try to deny Tyler Robinson was left-wing, gives me a hearty chuckle. Please never change, goofy naive libs.
I don’t care if your everyday mom and pop Republican thinks they are a fascist or not. The ones they ELECTED and Trump’s cabinet and the entire ICE and border patrol has gone full fascist. We honor our WW2 vets by rightfully calling out fascism on its face and not getting caught up with semantics, thereby normalizing and enabling it as you are by splitting hairs. Fascism above all else is corporate rule of government over the rule of law, which is precisely what Doge was and Trump turning the federal government into an extension of private interests at public taxdollar expense in addition to the erosion of all constitutonal rights our war vets fought and died for centuries to preserve for us.