WHAT? WHAT DID YOU SAY? Sorry, I can’t hear you over the Blue Angels rattling the foundations of my apartment building. They’ll be gone after the weekend, but not before more ear-shattering, bone-shaking noise. You wanted the news? Okay, okay, we’ll get you the news. 

Little Fires Everywhere: Fire officials believe we have an arsonist in our midst. In the past week, four fires sparked in the Beacon Hill and Columbia City neighborhoods under suspicious circumstances. The fires occurred at a home under construction, the Columbia Funeral Home and Crematory, and a fence. Officials believe this firebug is the culprit. Another fire on Thursday seemed “suspicious.” They are offering $10,000 for any information about the suspect. 

Big News in Mariners Land: Third baseman Eugenio Suarez came home to T-Mobile Park after the Mariners made a good trade for him just before the trade deadline. Mercury must really be in retrograde because my sources (the disappointing history of the franchise) say this kind of thing never happens. The Ms won 6-0. Suarez doubled and scored a run.  

SPD Wants to Hear from You: If you were at Mayday USA, the far-right Christian Nationalist rally against trans and reproductive rights, and you got caught up in the Seattle Police Department’s “crowd control efforts,” SPD wants to hear from you! Why? Probably to save face. But the department says this community poll is part of a full review of the May protest and it will “help inform our work and ensure community perspectives are part of upcoming reviews and policy recommendations.” 

On the Subject of Christian Nationalists: SPD is investigating a shooting that killed one person outside of the Pursuit Northwest, a church in the University District. Leaders of Pursuit NW were also co-leaders of Mayday USA and instigated the “Rattle in Seattle” at City Hall following the Mayday USA event. 

Good Use of $200 million: Donald Trump just wants to be king. Part of that means adding a 90,000-square-foot event space to his castle. Er, uh, the White House, I mean. The money will come from Trump and unidentified donors. 

Trump announces that he’s having a 90,000 sq ft event space added to the White House

[image or embed]

— David S. Bernstein  (@dbernstein.bsky.social) July 31, 2025 at 12:40 PM

WHAT? WHAT SORRY THE PLANES ARE SO LOUD: Sorry, those damn fighter jets. What was that again? OH. The weather? You wanted to know about the weather. Well. High 70s. Cloudy. More humid than you’d expect. 

This Is Gonna Ruin the Tour: Justin Timberlake has Lyme disease

Seattle Sues Trump: Seven months after Trump announced executive orders eliminating gender identity and diversity, equity, and inclusion policies from local jurisdictions at the expense of already-allocated Congressional dollars, Seattle Attorney Ann Davison and Mayor Bruce Harrell are suing. Other cities and jurisdictions, including King County, already sued over this months ago. I guess better late than never, even if making the move less than a week before the primary election reeks of re-election bid antics.

Job Market Is Looking Weak: In July, the US only added 73,000 new jobs. That’s far weaker than previous months and indicates a weakening economy. However, it seems the job reports of May and June weren’t accurate and were actually much worse than originally reported. According to new reports, only 19,000 jobs were added in May and June—much lower than the 291,000 originally reported. Economists say the bad job report is a result of Trump’s new tariffs. 

Not only is today’s employment report uniquely bad, but revisions to the prior months show that, on average, we have seen 35k net new jobs created for the last 3 months: 

JAN: +111K
FEB: +102K
MAR: +120K
APR: +158K
MAY: +19K
JUN: +14K
JUL: +73K 

No way to put lipstick on this pig.

— Ali Velshi (@velshi.com) August 1, 2025 at 6:25 AM

The Stock Market Agrees: Stocks tumbled and the poor, poor dollar dropped as investors responded to the wave of tariffs. Trump pushed the start date on the new tariffs on 66 countries back until August 7. 

Let Britain’s Most Tattooed Man Jerk Off, Please! Last Friday, Britain implemented age checks on porn sites, requiring users to supply a credit card and a photo ID that matches a selfie. Unfortunately for King of Ink Land King Body Art the Extreme Ink-Ite, which I believe is this man’s name, the 1,600 hours he’s spent tattooing his entire body, including his face and maybe his irises, the porn sites think he’s wearing a mask and won’t let him get his dirty video fix. That is criminal! “It keeps asking me to remove my face,” he said. He’s considering using a VPN. 

Is This One of the Bible Plagues? I’m a secular heathen, so help me out here. Was “radioactive wasp nest” one of the 10 plagues in Egypt? No? Okay, well, maybe it’s not God they’re dealing with in South Carolina, but they are certainly dealing with a highly radioactive nest of wasps at a site that used to develop nuclear material. Though now the wasps are dead and considered radioactive waste. 

No Pierogis for Dershowitz: Alan Dershowitz, the attorney who defended O.J. Simpson, Donald Trump, and was on Jeffrey Epstein’s legal team in 2008, is suing a farmers’ market on Martha’s Vineyard for refusing to sell him pierogis. The worker at the booth refused to sell to Dershowitz because of his politics and who he’s represented. Dershowitz caused a whole scene. A third party told Dershowitz to use “they” to refer to the pierogi salesperson, to gender them correctly. The police told him to do the same when they showed up. Dershowitz, according to The Intelligencer, said, “That’s a matter between me and my grammarian — not anything the police should have anything to say over.”

A song for your Friday: Just because of the war planes. 

Nathalie Graham covers anything she finds fun, weird, or interesting. You can find a lot of that in her column, Play Date. Her work has also appeared around town in The Seattle Times, GeekWire, and the...

77 replies on “Slog AM: Seattle Arsonist Is Lighting Fires, Ann Davison Sues Trump, No Pierogis for Alan Dershowitz”

  1. I like the ballroom. Glad it kept neoclassical architecture. Love the high windows. The tables and chairs are not that great however.

    Now all the lefties will trash it even though they secretly like it but are not brave enough to say so here on Slog.

  2. The Blue Angels are accompanied by the twin sounds of freedom and patriotism. I absolutely adore them!

    Does SPD want to talk to the peaceful protesters who were exercising their constitutional rights, or do they only want to hear from the agitators and criminals that were present?

    Go ahead and sue the Trump administration. Meanwhile hospitals everywhere are abandoning gender affirming care for minors, sports leagues are prohibiting men from competing against women. Common sense is absolutely winning. Lawsuits might slow our progress but they will not derail this train.

    Mandatory age verification for pornography is the minimum acceptable standard for 1st world countries. Britain gets it. Well get it too, eventually. Also, everybody knows it’s dumb as hell to tat your face.

    Dershowitz is right of course. He should not be discriminated against in public accommodation simply because he refuses to bastardize the English language.

  3. Republicans are defunding healthcare and the economy is shrinking and inflation is increasing after declining for years but on the plus side the president won’t have to travel to florida to host his sex pest parties anymore. Will it be ready in time for ghillaine’s welcome home celebration? We can only hope.

  4. Note how Nathalie downplays “killed one person” to what really was a horrific gang shooting by antifa (?) of a musician (The Stranger likes musicians, right) – and steers the story, for the third time, to bashing “Christian Nationalists”.

    Did anyone die at Cal Anderson park at ‘Rattle in Seattle’ – no. Was anyone hurt? no. Was there any police brutality no.

    But does someone just get killed because of his religion beliefs and The Stranger doesn’t care? Yes.

    Here’s what The Stranger doesn’t want you to know:

    https://x.com/choeshow/status/1951306005129863349

  5. Today it’s radioactive wasps. Tomorrow it’s Godzilla. Godzilla wasps. 12′ high radioactive wasps.

    And the only way to battle them is to get stung, and turn into a 12′ vampire wasp.

    I don’t want to watch that Marvel movie.

  6. Wow, it was an antifa AND a gang shooting? Of a christian victim?? With any luck the shooter will be trans and we will have achieved the conservative trifecta. This murder will be the stuff of legend for decades to come! Where were you when you found out all these things the police don’t even know yet? Make a note because you will be telling your grandchildren.

  7. @5 direct quote from the Choe video you linked:

    “it’s unclear why Givuan was targeted, but church leaders say his rough past may have played a role”

    Why are the church leaders covering for the antifa supersoldier who committed this faith-based assassination? How deep does this go? Only Coolidge dollar can tell us!

  8. @5: Calm down Cooli! You need to stop making shit up to upset yourself, it’s not good for your blood pressure.

    @3: I too love the Blue Angels, but that’s because I love loud air planes and my brother was an Air Force fighter pilot

  9. There’s probably some missing context I’m not getting in the vendor selling Dershowitz a Pierogis in Martha’s Vineyard item (I don’t have subscription to NYMag) – but whether one gets misgendered or disapproves of the customer’s politics, the vendor should still complete the purchase.

    Seeing a delicious hot pierogis in the case and not being able to get one? That’s cruel!

  10. I’m always a few days behind on the news it seems…

    Why did Obama’s chief scientific officer for the Department of Energy recently author a report undermining the “consensus” view on climate change?

    Are we going to see the end of “gender affirming care” for minors AND climate change hysteria in the same year?

    It wasn’t just a slogan. Trump truly is Making America Great Again, everyday.

    What leftist dogma will fall tomorrow? Stay tuned!

  11. A couple hours ago I was going to post the following satirical comment:

    “A series of poor jobs reports, you say? Clearly, the ones who should be out of a job are the people over at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These people need to know there’s a new sheriff in town and this fact-y nonsense is not going to be tolerated anymore. Time to join the NOAA climate scientists on the unemployment line. BTW, if there’s any justice in the world, all the laid-off BLS and NOAA bureaucrats will not count in the unemployment numbers.”

    And then I decided not to post this, just because I felt kinda dirty wading into the cesspool of stupidity and inhuman depravity that is this morning’s comment thread. Well, whaddayaknow, I’m seeing now that Trump is indeed firing the head of BLS. You just can’t make this shit up.

  12. When I spotted TS mentioning Dershowitz, I thought there might be a blurb about his newest book, “The Preventative State,” a culmination of 60 years of his scholarship on legal theory.

    That TS would rather focus on a petty personal dust up is illustrative of the illiberal turn leftish politics has taken. Dershowitz is the kind of person liberals respected back in the day like the ACLU once upon a time, principled and serious defenders of the constitution who would take cases representing clients who were sometimes odious…AND receiving public plaudits for doing so. No more.

    Dershowitz was effectively canceled on MV after his assistance to Trump during impeachmemt. It was so bad he had to establish a new temple after being shunned by the one he was worshipping at.

    TS does not want you to explore the important questions regarding the delicate balance of civil rights vs the states efforts to protect the public. Too bad. Doing so might shine some light on topics they cover – from the Denny Blaine kerfuffle to homeless sweeps. Naa! Just know that some dude on the cancel list was refused pierogies and be smugly satisfied.

  13. Sounds like you are pretty happy about the church shooting, Nathalie. I’d say it could be an Antifa hit, but it was probably just some black guy as usual.

  14. @18: Anyone with a legitimate interest in legal scholarship looks for their info elsewhere than a right-wing authoritarian commercial paperback. “Dershowitz was effectively canceled on MV after his assistance to Trump during impeachmemt. It was so bad he had to establish a new temple after being shunned by the one he was worshipping at.” – oh, cry me a river. It’s about time that faith communities started cracking down on very un-religious antics of their more powerful and well-placed members.

  15. You mean to tell me public opinion about alan dershowitz has changed in response to his own life choices? Wow, i didn’t know that. You’re telling me now for the first time.

    You could say the same thing about his fellow travelers oj simpson or donald trump and you would sound no less stupid for doing so. You reap what you sow, even if you weren’t always known for being a murderer, dictator, or clout-chasing child sex enthusiast.

  16. @3 (Liberal confession)

    I don’t mind the Blue Angels at all.

    They are spectacular and incredibly skilled!

    It’s part of our summer ritual.

  17. Granpa Stinky’s Ballroom is going to have twice the square footage of the current White House. Just another thing to tear down when he leaves office.

    And complaining about The Blue Angels is tedious.

  18. And if anyone beleives that Granpa Stinky is going to pay for that ballroom, I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.

    Dear God, this country has a lot of suckers. Land of the feaful and home of the gullible.

  19. Hear ye, Here ye. We can now call someone’s free speech their “own life choices” for guilt-free discrimination and/or attacks against them.

  20. @27, you must be new here bc that’s always been true. Do you think free speech only applies to people who are criticized for doing awful things? Well have I got news for you, you don’t even need to wait for someone to defend a child sex trafficker or insurrectionist to say bad things about them! You can do it right now and no one can stop you.

  21. Coolidge dollar dear, you’re almost as charmingly naive as Our Dear Raindrop (RIP).

    If you think you can trust either trump or his spokesperson, KKKaroline Leavitt, you really need to be in a guardianship.

  22. People still going on about the Blue Angels?

    It’s one week out of the year. Suck it up.

    Wait…I think I just heard a gas powered leaf blower!

  23. 29: No, more like just saying “people are like assholes, everyone has one” and going about your day vs making a scene and being rude.

  24. @33, Are you under the impression that i personally refused to sell pierogis to alan dershowitz? Because I’m in column A, exercising my right to say bad things about him, and i don’t see what the problem is.

  25. 34: Not you personally, but that you have no issue with the person who refused to sell Alan Dershowitz the pirosgis – you can keep your wiggle room.

    Give him some slack, jeezus. Name me a great defense attorney who doesn’t have odious clients – like from Claus von Bülow to Donald Trump.

  26. Coolidge Dollar dear, it could just be that Stinky Granpa (The Pedophile’s Pal!) is talking about this to distract from the Epstein Child Rape scandal.

  27. Kindly show me where i said anything at all about the person refusing service? I am not a lawyer and for all i know they are legally required to sell to him. I may question the wisdom of buying food from people who hate you but I don’t care either way how this story ends, i just think alan dershowitz is an awful person as i have stated repeatedly now.

  28. And I love how the “conservatives” have stopped projecting their sexual desires for children onto everyone else in order to protect Granpa Stinky (The Pedophile’s Pal!)

    I certainly hope you don’t have unsupervised access to children, Vawoli dear. You people just can’t help yourselves.

  29. @40 again I ask you to please show me where i have given you any indication at all how i feel about this transaction because you keep getting offended by figments of your own imagination and asking me to answer for them

  30. From the link: “Seattle’s case is broader than most, targeting the executive orders themselves rather than specific grants.”

    “So far, despite frequent threats, the city has not lost significant money. Davison previously [June 2025] sued over the federal government’s withholding of anti-terrorism funding, some of which has since been released.”

    None of which can possibly stop the Stranger from taking cheap shots at their favorite targets, of course.

  31. Catalina, as always, for the win.

    We probably don’t agree 100% on every issue, but you consistently cut through the bullshit. In a world where nuance and details are thrown out the window in order just to be outraged and uninformed, you always bring a level-headed and pragmatic approach. All of us are better for reading your commentary.

    I wish you (or someone with your temperament and views) were running for Mayor.

  32. The Dershowitz freedumb team needs to google: Derschowitz, underpants, epstein & massage.

    Dude admits most everything, he is, after all, a professional.

  33. speaking_up dear, yes yes, Ed Murray.

    But that doesn’t distract – as hard as you may try – from the fact that Republicans have a lot of sex problems, include pedophilia. I blame their mothers. It’s not normal for a woman to be a Republican, and they shouldn’t be allowed to raise children. That’s what boarding schools are for.

  34. @48: That’s Catalina’s schtick, it’s cute, and we all laugh, but the truth is pedophilia cuts across all demographics and every parent needs to be protect their kids, even from another parent.

  35. Catalina’s “schtick,” if you will call it that, is that she’s a normal, grounded human being with some common sense who is not consumed by our online political warfare. I don’t know, maybe we can say that Mr. Rogers’s schtick was that he was a nice and empathetic person who was good with kids, i.e. that that’s not genuinely who he has. Hey, while we’re at it, maybe we can accuse Mr. Rogers of pedophilia!

    I feel sorry for Catalina because clearly she’s been sucked into a rabbit-hole back-and-forth with our MAGA troll army that will not end until our MAGA trolls have claimed complete victory. It’s like why you never want to get sucked into a conversation with a schizophrenic person on the bus–because they will never let you end the conversation.

  36. As to our MAGA minions thinking that bringing up Ed Murray or Bill Clinton are such snappy comebacks, so what? For those of us who are not in the MAGA cult, we don’t have a vested interest in who is or isn’t in the Epstein files. Let it all come out and let the chip fall where they may. We don’t have a vested interest in trying to make the claim that every non-MAGA politician in American history is pure as the driven snow (at which point anyway MAGA will just make shit up as they did with Obama, who was pure as the driven snow).

    The MAGA minions want to make the rest of us like them where we are defending the Democratic Party at all costs when really we are just trying to defend our discourse against the relentless lies, disingenuousness, and bad-faith arguments. It seems that a MAGA troll starts every conversation with the question, “What do I have to say to advance the domination of Donald Trump and our movement?”

    The rest of us start every conversation with, “What is reality? What is true?”

  37. Disclaimer. As much as it may disappoint our resident right-wing influencers who for some reason don’t like it when I push back against the MAGA movement, these will have to be my own last comments on this thread. I’ve just got too much to do this weekend, and I don’t want to get sucked into that conversation with the schizophrenic person on the bus.

  38. 47 did Clinton cry to the police like butt hurt Dershowitz? Won’t defend Clinton, but Dershowitz is a true POS.

    And what about whataboutism?

  39. cressona dear, I enjoy engaging with Our Resident Trolls. Not only is it amusing to point out their emotional fragility, it helps me towards my goal of 10,000 comments.

    But really, one shouldn’t confuse a pedophile (Ed Murray) with a Sexual Sleazeball (Bill Clinton). Monica Lewinsky knew what she was getting into. No one forced her. Indeed, if I had had a chance to give Bill Clinton a BJ back in the day, I probably would have gone for it. Her only mistake was letting that dreadful Linda Tripp into her confidence.

  40. Ed Murray, Bill Clinton, Jeffery Epstein, Alan Dershowitz, Bill Gates, Prince Andrew, et al are actually hebephiles, not pedophiles. In other words teenagers float their boat, not little kiddies.

  41. @57…

    That’s pretty much a distinction without difference.

    They were diddling with minors who by law cannot consent.

    And fuck you for bringing Clinton into this. All of his publicly known peccadillos were with adults. I never voted for him, but that’s bullshit. If he IS in the Epstein files, then show them all, then you can shit on him.

  42. It’s funny, the same people who are blindly allegiant to Granpa stInky (The Pedophile’s Pal!) at the time regard Bill Gates as evil incarnate, largely because of his philanthropy, something trump as never been known for.

    I have no opinion of Bill Gates, but you better believe I got a candle burning for Mary Gates up by St. James.

  43. “Hello, FBI? Could we get a hard drive check @57, please? He’s doing the hebephilia meme. Yes, I know, I know. Ok great. Thank you!”

  44. The story is that Representative Jordon merely covered up for the perverted team doctor, Coolidge_dollar dear, but people tell me otherwise. They say that Representative Jordan and Dr. Strauss were secret lovers. They say they’ve never seen anything like it.

    We’ll see what happens…..

  45. 63: Yes, it was the coach. Thanks for the correction.

    Both Grok and Gemini AI report no evidence or credible allegations suggesting that Jim Jordan and Richard Strauss were in a sexual or intimate relationship at Ohio State University.

  46. @56, @57, @58: Again, your swallowing the emissions of male convicts won’t lead to a positive outcome for anyone but them, and you have no need to provide them with the pleasure of doing it.

    There’s plenty of criminal sexual misconduct to prosecute already, in cases where actual evidence really exists, thus providing another reason not to swallow the emissions of male convicts. Let’s go after winnable court cases, not self-serving stories.

  47. tensorna dear, I don’t think you really understand the practice of oral sex For starters, you don’t have to swallow.

    And the closest I have ever come to any sort of sex with a convict was some guy with an ankle bracelet, but that wasn’t even home confinement.

  48. @70: Who said anything about oral sex? I described metaphorically how you came to your knowledge about Murray. Assertions made without evidence may be dismissed without evidence, and posturing as morally superior becomes tougher when one’s foolish choices get clearly described for what they are.

  49. Oh, that was about Ed Murray, Tensorna dear? I thought maybe you were talking about my assertion regarding Jim Jordon and Dr. Richard Strauss (which was actually a rather obscure send-up of trump) I forgot that Ed Murray was one of your burning issues. I amend my above statement @56 to say accused pedophile Ed Murray. Is that better?

    But I still think you need to get this whole oral sex thing figured out…..

  50. @73: Congratulations! You and @72 agree that metaphors are hard.

    “I forgot that Ed Murray was one of your burning issues.”

    Murray is long gone. I’m just having fun with the unsupported claims of deceitful greedy felons, still revered as Gospel Truth here. (Why the Stranger still gives credence to the old and slanderous lie about gays as sexual predators, I do not know, but obviously no one here has thought very much about the potential consequences of giving hateful bigots that justification.)

  51. speaking of trolls and

    Having The Last Word

    & Oldey yet still Goldy

    “@113 – tensor is the worst kind of commenter. Thinks he’s on a mission to introduce fact and reason to the Slog just because he read a report or two and can copy/paste a hyperlink, but he’s just a troll – when checked, his positions crumble in a dust of fallacy and false equivalence.

    I realize I have now sunk to his level, but I hope it helps him see himself for what he really is: one of the multitude of people who ruin fora like this for other users, especially when he presumes to tell people when they can/cannot comment or when they have or have not made a valid argument.

    He also dominates the end of every thread, as if he who comments last, wins. He who comments last needs to get a grip. I know I do! ”

    “@128, 129 – Your little arrows of logic bounce harmlessly off of tensor’s rationality-proof armor. Ting, ting, ta-ting! He found a quote – a beautiful, powerful quote! He clings to it, rides it on the choppy seas of irrelevancy to a lonely island where a faithful Wilson coos him to sleep: “You’re right, tensor. You’re always right.” “

    “@132 – In all seriousness (and I hope tensor is listening), what I really hope is that he starts making real arguments with actual substance and stops condescending to other people here.

    It is totally fair to argue, as he does (ad nauseum) that it isn’t healthy to have primitive encampments in a modern city, but 1.) as badly as he pretends he knows how to solve it, he has a rudimentary knowldge of the law and the structures serving the unsheltered population and 2.) he just seems like he’s still mad about getting a couple of bikes stolen.

    He’s indiscriminate when lobbing blanket accusations at the homeless, but then wants everyone to be very careful with an individual (who just happens to be a successful white male) who’s been accused very credibly of sexual assault. And god does he talk down to people here – lectures them on their logic, refuses to listen. He is like every toxic masculine trait personified.

    Does he want to be a troll, or challenge the collective views on Slog? If the latter, great – go for it; but after following his comments for way longer than is healthy, I have concluded he thinks he gets to tell everyone what’s what, and that makes him a garden-variety dick.”

    Edward Bernard Patrick Murray on August 1, 2018 at 7:44 AM

    https://www.thestranger.com/news/2018/07/20/29455773/when-friends-do-terrible-things/comments/191

  52. The funny thing is – my posts get praised. Yeah, the occasional fellow retrograde troll weighs in to agree with you, but no one ever says, “Oh, tenzor, you were hilarious.” People say that to me, under all 15 of my alter egos. You know why?

    Because I’m smart, I’m funny, and most importantly – I’m human. People know there’s a soul on the other end of that line. With you, they know that on the other end of that line is just the end of the line, a wind-up doll with a string and one line to disgorge each time you un-wind.

    Edward Bernard Patrick Murray on August 2, 2018

    Fuck me, there’s a page 3, which means sure as the sun will rise, tensor will sneak back in here to make his groundless claim that KUOW published something libelous. siiiiiigh I’ve slipped into the seventh circle of hell.

    Edward Bernard Patrick Murray on August 3, 2018 at 1:18 PM

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