City Council Votes Yes on Surveillance State: I begin today’s news not with the weather, which is omnipresent, but with Seattle’s surveillance state, which also feels omnipresent, especially after our current city council voted 7-2 to expand SPD’s surveillance cameras. News Editor Vivian McCall will have more later today. Stay tuned.

Trump Wants to Watch Us, Too: The US Department of Justice sent a letter to Secretary of State Steve Hobbs “asking” Washington to hand over its voter database, including full names, addresses, birthdates, and driver’s license or partial Social Security numbers. Washington has 14 days to comply. The letter says the information must be sent via encrypted email to voting.section@usdoj.gov and also states, “Should further clarification be required, please contact Maureen Riordan at maureen.riordan2@usdoj.gov.” I have some questions, Maureen! For one, why do you hate democracy? Let’s all email Maureen with our questions!

May They Never Know Peace: Last night, protestors crashed Trump’s fancy steak dinner at a DC restaurant by yelling “Free DC! Free Palestine! Trump is the Hitler of our time!” I personally would’ve loved to hear them go a little harder on the Epstein material—after all, in his whackadoo rotted brain, comparisons to Hitler are complimentary—but maybe next time.

Trump confronted by protestors in a DC restaurant…

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— The Tennessee Holler  (@thetnholler.bsky.social) September 9, 2025 at 5:43 PM

Now You’ve Pissed Off Poland: NATO shot down Russian drones that reportedly entered Poland’s airspace early this morning. The verdict’s still out on whether it was intentional or some kind of whoopsie on Russia’s part, but Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk said Poland is at its “closest to open conflict since World War Two.” FUN! 

Don’t Worry, Trump’s on It: 

it took the president more than 12 hours to come up with this

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) September 10, 2025 at 8:19 AM

Speaking of Trump: His emergency order in DC expires tonight after Congress failed to extend it, but don’t get too excited. The National Guard and all those feds who are gardening and picking up litter will stay put for now, and AP says, “it’s not clear when that might end.”

That’s a WayNO From Me, Dog: lol I’m hilarious. Anyway, Waymo, the driverless car service, has arrived in the Pacific Northwest. Right now, the cars are not driverless—there are humans inside “making sure Waymo cars can adapt to area roadways, including in wet weather and across hilly terrain.” Waymo has not announced when they will fully launch the service, and, as GeekWire points out, “it will depend on when Washington state establishes regulations permitting such operations.” 

Did a Bottle of Booze Write This? Yesterday, the Seattle Times published an op-ed that criticized the Washington Traffic Safety Commission’s new proposals to crack down on impaired driving. One idea being floated: Lowering the BAC limit from 0.08 to 0.05. It’s not a bad idea! We did a very scientific test! More importantly, after lowering the BAC in Utah, Utah reported a 20% decline in fatal crashes. But the Times’ op-ed worries that the new limit would penalize “moderate social drinkers while delivering only modest safety gains.” Whatever you say, bottle of Skyy Vodka.

We’re Goin’ to the Playoffs! The Storm beat the Golden State Valkyries and secured a spot in the WNBA playoffs! LFG!!!!! The first round starts Sunday. 

In Other Exciting Sports News: Rough & Tumble announced they’re opening a second location! The women’s sports bar, founded by Jen Barnes, is set to take over the former Columbia City Ale House space in October. MORE KNIGHT’S CHEESE CURDS FOR THE PEOPLE!

OMG OMG OMG: Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star Frankie Taylor Paul is the next Bachelorette??? This is the perfect distracting disaster, and I can’t fucking wait.

And With That: I will leave you with a neighborhood crow update. Those birds are still biting my dog’s butt!!!

 

Megan Seling is The Stranger's managing editor. She mostly writes about hockey, snacks, and music. And sometimes her dog, Johnny Waffles.

89 replies on “Slog AM: Trump Gets Booed at Dinner, City Council Votes Yes on More Surveillance, and the Storm Make the Playoffs”

  1. I get so confused. It’s so hard to keep track of how our MAGA minions want us to react to what’s going on in the world. For some reason I thought the senseless slaughter of innocent Ukrainians was something that was of no concern to us–or even something to savagely cheer on.

    Now suddenly the murder of one Ukrainian refugee in North Carolina is cause for a national reckoning. If only we could have mustered the same outrage for the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian civilians and freedom fighters that have been killed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. I guess the difference is that the responsible party for the former murder is a crazy black guy, and the responsible party for the latter mass murder is Donald Trump’s handler and hero Vladimir Putin. What’s that quote that’s attributed to Mao or Lenin? “One death is a tragedy. A milion deaths is a statistic.”

    Now someone might argue that the murder in NC is the only tragedy we should care about because that’s what’s happening here in our country. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact that Vladimir Putin controls Donald Trump and by extension one of our two major political parties should be reason enough to see that Putin is just as grave a threat to us as all the violent crazies wandering our streets. Of course, that would require having a serious discussion with the MAGA MOFOs, and good luck with that.

    P.S. Congrats to the Storm and Rough & Tumble.

  2. What, nothing about Katie Wilson and her fake endorsments (Claude Burfect) along with her Photoshoping job implying his support? Oh… that’s right she’s the stranger’s darling candidate. Maybe next time.

  3. @1- yes, and yes!

    I wanna see the kompromat! Let the pee tapes begin! The trolls will deny it, which of course means it exists

    And Rough and Tumble in Columbia City (with light rail access) Excellent!

  4. @2 Maybe there’s nothing about the Claude Burfect issue because the Wilson campaign released emails showing that Burfect did, in fact, endorse her. Burfect and Wilson had a phone conversation. Burfect sent her a photo for the website, Wilson said she was honored to have his support and maybe this other photo would be good for the endorsements page, Burfect said “Perfect.”

    https://mynorthwest.com/kiro-opinion/katie-wilson-endorsement/4129925

    It’s a nothingburger. But nice try.

  5. @1: Outrage doesn’t work that way. Outrage occurs when humans empathize with the suffering of other humans over specific events observed in a shared reality where the event is one that everyone can see in a video or photographs.

  6. @1: Tsar Vlad’s drones now kill Ukrainian farmers, and may have set fire to fields of food crops there, but around here it’s just the usual from both the Stranger and trolls. The former remains All Gaza All The Time, and the latter just chases whatever shiny trinket Fox News (or whomever) threw past them today.

    @2: Make Harrell the (un?)endorsed, and the Stranger would spend at least several posts on it.

    @3: Downtown Columbia City is a nice looooooong walk from the light-rail stop, so please enjoy some exercise before and after your sports-bar food.

  7. @6 The Columbia City Ale House is less than half a mile away from the Columbia City Light Rail Station so if you think half a mile is a “looooooong walk” I honestly don’t know what to tell ya.

  10. Utah had one year of declines in fatal crashes followed by multiple years of increases including a recent all time high. Their experience more demonstrates that lowering the BAC to 0.05 is not effective. Besides, anyone affected by alcohol can already be tried and convicted of DUI, so the Times is (I hate to admit) correct this will only widen the carceral net.

  11. From the Times article about the Council expanding the local surveillance state:

    “The council endorsed two measures that add surveillance cameras to three new neighborhoods, incorporates hundreds of Seattle Department of Transportation cameras and expands the reach of the Seattle Police Department’s new Real Time Crime Center. Both pieces of legislation are part of a pilot program begun last year and expanded Tuesday before their efficacy could be measured.”

    So they started a pilot, didn’t bother to learn whether it was working at all, and went ahead and expanded it. So much for “good governance.”

  15. After watching last nights city council hearing I can only say our CMs are the soft underbelly of this country’s sanctuary city program. They are under the trall of the SPD, they are clustering these cameras in areas people congregate for political gatherings, they are absolutely planning to assist ICE in raiding our city.

  16. @12

    “If you

    Don’t Drink

    Don’t Drive.”

    –@it’s GOOD

    when you Own the

    Means of Communication.

    “Get

    Drunk,

    Responsibly.”

    –@Big Booze: are you

    Hooked, Yet? it’s 5

    o’clock, Some-

    where.

  17. “… the SPD,

    they are clustering

    these cameras in areas people

    congregate for political gatherings… “

    and ICE

    won’t soon

    be Content

    w/ off-Whites &

    Other Foreigner-types

    they’ll

    Soon be

    Coming for

    Your Ass. bud.

    WATCH WHAT YOU SAY.

  18. Y’all won’t see me around for awhile. Sad, I know. My brilliant and insightful commentary will be missed. But I was listening to Rogan last night and he was talking about the stupidity of wasting any of our lives arguing with Strangers you will never meet, on the internet. So I’m going to take his words to heart and give up commenting. I wanted to say goodbye, not so much because you care for me, but simply because I didn’t want you thinking I had abandoned my voracious support for Trump and his administration. Hope y’all have a wonderful future.

  19. @18

    with

    that Sumbitch

    Bonespurs in the Whitest

    of Houses only the most Dedicated

    of MAGAts, Filthy Rich & psycophants’ll

    have any ‘Future’ At All.

    other than Gulaggy.

    & even Then.

    don’t let the Door

    hitchyur Arse on

    the Way Out.

  20. @18: Best wishes to you and thank you for contributing your viewpoint as Slog welcomes all! Those who were never welcoming (like @19) have poor attitudes but at least it gets them thinking about how to respond to adversarial views.

  22. @7: I was merely warning that it’s not like, say, Capitol Hill Station, where you exit into the middle of that neighborhood, or the UW Station, where you exit directly onto the campus.

    (Also, it’s a rather dull walk, which makes it seem longer. Especially after bar food and drinks.)

  24. @11: ‘So they started a pilot, didn’t bother to learn whether it was working at all, and went ahead and expanded it. So much for “good governance.”’

    Compare this with Seattle’s Progressive Council, which simply assumed their legislation always delivered spectacularly great results with absolutely no downsides. Once that got shown to be not merely false, but obviously false, the Stranger would then state that any problems arose solely from the legislation not having been Progressive enough.

  25. @23, would you prefer that WereBackBaby stick around and “debate” morons like you? You hate him, but you can’t let him go?

    Also, if Joe Rogan said “get plenty of sleep, exercise, and drink plenty of water” would you do the opposite out of spite?

  28. “Progressive” will soon become a slur, just like “SJW” (Social Justice Warrior) and “Woke” have. All those terms were originally created by Woke Progressive SJWs as badges of honor.

    LOL

  33. WA-HOOOOOO!!! Go, Storm, GO!!! Kick serious WNBA ass in the playoffs! 🙂

    @19 kristofarian, re @18: Felon Mu$k’s Mein Trumpf’s one of many programmed sock puppets, Babybarf, is leaving?? YESSSSSSssss!!!! Did he develop a diaper rash? Good riddance! He was drooling too much in his senseless babbling, anyway. He probably just needs a fresh bib, a can of cheap, skunky beer, and a burp to go with his daddy’s red tie.

    Honestly, I’ve usually just scrolled past that MAGA fool’s idiotic posts whenever I saw his screen name.

    It’s no great loss.

    @26 barth: I sense your sarcasm re @18, but…..sssshhh—as Max Solomon and others suggest—don’t feed the troll. Let’s just celebrate his departure.

  35. @20 Phoebe in Wallingford: Phoebe dear, there are opposing views and then there are mindless idiots parroting willful MAGA fueled misinformation. Don’t applaud the latter or you’re only part of the problem.

  38. @34,

    Pointing out the sheer stupidity of prayer as any sort of meaningful act in the face of tragedy says nothing about a person’s personal character. You’re obviously welcome to indulge if it somehow makes you feel better, though I hope you’re also aware that it’s a ridiculous and utterly pointless act beyond that.

  40. @34. Forgive me if I don’t give a fuck what you think. I am just admiring the guy for putting his money where his mouth is, since he can so callously dismiss the mass shooting of innocent children as worth it. But yeah, it’s my humanitarian integrity at stake here. Go fly a kite, bozo.

  41. And he’s an anti-vaxxer as well, double trouble! Because if there’s anything more powerful than vaccinating your kids, it’s praying away their disease.

    Yeah, he needs praying for alright, for his immortal soul for all the harm he has caused to innocents.

  42. @18

    Good luck to you. I hope for a USA where we can respect each other.

    And just maybe, the Mariners can make the playoffs. The Seahawks were underwhelming last weekend.

  45. @39: Prayer helps the living cope with the vicissitudes of life. It comforts the victim when they pray and it’s comforting to know that others have you in their hearts. But that’s it. Prayer does fuck all for the dead and fuck all practically speaking. Prayer hasn’t prevented a single shooting death. Not this one and not any of the thousands and thousands we have had in this country over the years.

    In the US anyone can get a gun, and anyone can be the victim of a gun. That’s just the reality of this country, and Kirk himself is on record declaring that a certain number of gun deaths are both acceptable and inevitable and that empathy is a made up word and woke to boot.

    He was an awful man who died on an altar of his own making, but he is also a victim in a loooooong line of victims. And like all the other victims before him, his death and all the thoughts and prayers won’t change a thing.

  46. @42

    I always appreciate your posts because when you do post it means that we aren’t up Slog creek without a pat L.

    What’s good for Charlie Kirk has got to be even better for the Mariners!

    “Steven Blackburn of Lake Stevens joked on social media that he had hired a witch on Etsy to lift a curse on the team.

    He said he never expected anything to come of it, but the Mariners went on to score 28 runs in just two days after his request.”

    https://www.kiro7.com/sports/mlb/seattle-mariners/mariners-32-run-3-win-streak-sparks-talk-fans-curse-lifting-with-an-etsy-witch/RIFJB3O66JD7HO7PZZMGBQECMQ/

  47. @43: Pardon me. I should have wrapped by comment within the context of the present day media political landscape and optics, considering there’s always a scholarly anthropological view.

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