It’s Really Almost Over: We’ve got one more day of this heatwave, and then tomorrow we’re back to our perfect, mid-70s Seattle summer. In the meantime, make like a vampire: close the blinds, pull the curtains, find the nearest working AC, and wait for the sun to go down.
And while you’re sitting there, let’s do the news.
The FBI Is Still Looking for Travis Decker: Almost three months into this manhunt, 100 federal agents are bushwhacking through Eastern Washington to try to find one former Army ranger. They started an intensive two-day search on Monday for Travis Decker, the sole suspect in the June 2 suffocations of his three young daughters near a Leavenworth campground. Agents emphasized they still have no idea where he is, or if he’s even still alive. “You can’t be too thorough in a search like this,” the FBI’s Peter Orth said. “It is such incredibly dense vegetation that anybody who walks down one of these trails could walk 10 meters off the trail and no one would ever know they’re there.” US Marshals are offering a $20,000 reward for information that leads to his capture.
Trump Is Obsessed with Us: Trump is threatening to withhold more than $10 million in federal funding to Washington State if we don’t comply with his racist demand that truck drivers pass an English proficiency test that he himself probably can’t pass. The thing is, though, according to the fed’s investigation, we actually are enforcing his obviously racist policy: of the 6,000 safety violations Washington State’s Department of Transportation found since the new language rules were instated in June, four drivers have been taken off the road for their lack of English proficiency. He’s just throwing a fit because we haven’t screwed enough people over with his racist rule.
UberEats Eats Crow: Remember when City Council tried to undermine laws that protect delivery drivers? Well this morning, thousands of them are probably grateful that they couldn’t stick the landing. The food delivery app has agreed to pay more than $15 million to 16,120 Seattle drivers over (alleged) violations of the city’s pay transparency law. It’s less than $1,000 per driver, but it’s the largest ever reached by Seattle’s Office of Labor Standards.
Introducing the SS Good Boy: Seattle has way more dogs than it has kids, and Washington State Ferries finally got the message. Starting today, passengers can bring their leashed dogs into any of the passenger areas of the ferry (except the galley, they don’t serve kibbles, or bits). Because all dogs deserve to munch on a warm pretzel while taking in the views of the Sound without being blown in by the sea breeze. Just remember that it’s still your responsibility to clean up after them and do keep reactive dogs in their own little corner. This is just a pilot program through February, but if all our pups are Good Boys, they might get to be permanent indoor passengers.
Some Housekeeping News! The Stranger has a new sibling: the famous Chicago Reader. Our parent company, Noisy Creek, has acquired the Reader, the country’s oldest and longest-running alt weekly, and we’re so excited to welcome them into the family. If you’re not familiar with the Reader‘s work, you’re missing out: here’s their recent feature about trans guys getting acquainted with their new dicks, their investigation into a lab that misled courts on cannabis DUI cases, or if you want to go back in time, their award-winning 1992 feature, “A Simple Game,” which is some of the best writing you’ll ever find about high school basketball. And you can read more about this news here!
Israel Strikes Hospital Twice, Calls It a “Tragic Mishap”: At least 20 people were killed, including five journalists, members of the medical staff, rescue workers and patients. Dozens more were injured. Netanyahu’s office tried to frame the attack—two strikes on a hospital—as a mistake. “Israel deeply regrets the tragic mishap that occurred today at the Nasser Hospital,” the office said in a statement. It went on to lie that “Israel values the work of journalists, medical staff and all civilians.” At least 192 journalists have been killed in Gaza. Over 1,000 healthcare workers have been killed. And by Israel’s own estimate, more than 80 percent of everyone killed in their ongoing siege of Gaza have been civilians.
Microsoft Struggles to Understand How Consequences Work: The Redmond-based company, and the world’s largest software maker, has provided Israel with technology to surveil Palestinians throughout the genocide in Gaza, and now they’re really bummed that they keep dealing with pro-Palestinian protests at their conferences and on their campuses. It hurt their feelings enough that they asked for the FBI’s help tracking the protests. (Microsoft has announced that their investigating how Israel is using their tech.) They’ve also worked with local authorities to try and prevent them, fired employees staging disruptive events, flagged internal emails containing keywords like “Gaza” and deleted some internal posts about the protests, according to Bloomberg’s reporting. I know an easier way to get these protests to stop.
Utah Republicans Try to Steal Some Congressional Seats, Fails (for Now): A district court judge (respectfully) told the Utah legislature where to put their gerrymandered congressional map on Monday. The current map, which the Republican-run legislature adopted in 2021, divides Salt Lake County—Utah’s Democratic stronghold—between the state’s four congressional districts, all of which have since elected Republicans by wide margins. Who could have expected such an outcome? The judge ordered the state legislature to redraw the maps by November, because they had circumvented the independent commission that’s meant to keep the state legislature from doing, well, exactly this. With a slim margin in the US House, Republicans’ only chance of holding onto all of Utah’s seats is to appeal this decision to death, in the hopes of delaying it until the 2028 elections.
Meet the Pygmy Seahorse: They’re an inch long. They have a stubby nose like a pug. They’ve evolved to look like the poisonous coral they live in, either pink or yellow. The males carry the fertilized eggs until they mature. “All seahorses do that,” you say? Sure, but these guys one upped them: They tuck them into their lil quasi-uteruses, and give birth to them out of a little slit. Chinese and German scientists wanted to understand how these little guys evolved, so they sequenced their genome, and found out that they diverged from average-sized seahorses 18 million years ago, when our continents were still drifting toward their current positions and Africa and Eurasia were starting to crash together. “But most striking was how much DNA had gone missing from the pygmy sea horse’s genome,” the New York Times wrote. “Pygmy sea horses had lost 438 entire genes that are found in other sea horses. Another 635 genes have lost enough DNA that they no longer work, and 5,135 genes have lost nearby genetic switches, so that they no longer turn on in response to certain signals.”
Pygmy Seahorse 🩷
super macro photography
📷: Álvaro Herrero
— america.is.not.free (@antifapatriot.bsky.social) August 23, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Bumbershoot is almost upon us, and we’re giving you previews of the artists we’re stoked about throughout the week (don’t sleep on Stranger Arts Editor Emily Nokes’s interview with Fleetwood Snack). But consider this your essential reminder that Janelle Monae will be performing this weekend. I’m going to assume Dirty Computer is still recent enough in your memory (if it’s not, allow me to direct you to “Django Jane” and” Make Me Feel,” you heathen), so for your song this morning, let’s go back to 2010, for “Tightrope.” I saw Monae live the year this came out (back when she was opening for Of Montreal), and it was easily one of the best shows I’ve ever been to. Don’t miss it.
What exactly is “racist” about an English proficiency rule?
A huge populist wave has been sweeping across the western style democracies for a decade or longer and it’s being driven by concerns about immigration.
Meloni, LePen, and Trump all owe their electoral success to concerns over immigration.
Progressives refuse to acknowledge and understand this at their peril.
MEANwhilst
our wanabee
Dictator’s rounding
them up and deciding
Who’s Next — Dems or Gypsies,
the Educated or the nearly-White
so Many to Choose
from, so Little
Time:
there’s
Workkamps
to be Built — the
Woke won’t remain
quiet for fucking Ever
@1, it negatively affects drivers who are non-english speaking (mostly from mexico and central america) but has no bearing on driver safety or any other valid reason for the rule
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/is-english-proficiency-enforcement-the-right-focus-for-safer-roads
@4 I did not know that non-English speaking was considered a race.
@5 it’s not but it doesn’t need to be for the rule to disproportionately target people of a particular race for reasons that should be obvious to anyone with an above room temperature iq
@1 I think you meant to say “What, exactly, is considered ‘racist’ about an English proficiency rule?”
Since we are discussing English proficiency:
“(Microsoft has announced that their [sic] investigating how Israel is using their tech.)”
IT’S “THEY’RE” AS IN “THEY ARE”!!! For fucksake
@5 it appears you may yourself identify as non-English speaking, or at least differently abled English speaking
Microsoft cares about these protests as much as it cares about how Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are now engaged.
Double taps are SOP for the IDF.
“And by Israel’s own estimate, more than 80 percent of everyone killed in their ongoing siege of Gaza have been civilians.”
That is pretty typical of all wars.
Combatants pulverize each other with artillery and bombs (75% of all combat casualties). Non-combatants have limited ability to get out of the way.
If we are serious about the limiting the carnage among non-combatants, the answer is fewer conflicts, and when there are conflicts, making one side or both suffers the overwhelming violence that will quickly destroy their ability to will to fight.
But folks like thirteen12, kristo, barth, boatgeek, et. al. aren’t serious about the welfare of Gazan, or any other, non-combatants. They want more rules for how the combatants fight and international bodies with no authority other than to write up rulings, without giving those international bodies the means to use force of their own to enforce their edicts.
Since War is, by definition, is the rejection of voluntary compliance with rules, in favor of coercive force, to achieve an outcome at all costs (fuck the rules), more rules observed on the honor system has never worked, and won’t work. That is what the historical and current events record shows.
So much for being evidence-based. But by all means keep shedding those crocodile tears thirteen12, et. al.
If just one truck driver who can’t read English causes an accident that’s still a safety issue and has nothing to do with racism. Not only that, it’s racist to say these truck drivers can’t learn passible understanding of the language of the country they’re operating in.
@13, It’s been studied and found to not be an issue. That same research found other safety issues that are not being addressed and incidentally do not disproportionately impact people of a race the present administration wants to remove from our country.
Weaponizing the regulatory system to target people of an “undesirable” race under the pretense of safety while having no impact on safety is textbook racism. None of this reasoning assumes drivers from latin america cannot learn English, only acknowledging that people from non-english-speaking countries are more likely to not speak english.
@14: “It’s been studied and found to not be an issue.”
Okay, I’d be interested in such a study if you happen to have a link to it. I suppose it’s a matter of degree. Admittedly, don’t you think, not understanding “Road Closed”, “Construction Ahead”, and “No U Turn” is a safety issue?
Truck drivers have been required to be proficient in English since 1937.
This isn’t a Trump thing, he’s just directing agencies to enforce it. As they should have been doing all along.
But hey what’s the worst that could happen with a 40 ton tractor & trailer being driven by someone who can’t read the road signs?
That heatwave you’re crying about isn’t a heatwave. It’s just summer in the PNW. Not even a particularly hot summer at that.
Stop being such wienies.
¿Qué significa “Stop”? ¡Nunca había visto un cartel con esa forma!
Sorry @11 for leaving you out on @12.
I can’t wait (and neither can probably Dan Savage) till a pit bull is tossed overboard from a Washington State Ferry!!!
@15 see comment 4
@16 also see comment 4. So many questions and concerns already addressed in comment 4.
@12 “And by Israel’s own estimate, more than 80 percent of everyone killed in their ongoing siege of Gaza have been civilians.”
That is pretty typical of all wars.”
Really because in the current Ukraine conflict military deaths outpace civilian deaths by around twenty to one, per best estimates. Do you think the Russians have just been extraordinarily careful to preserve civilian life or what?
https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-battlefield-woes-ukraine
https://ukraine.ohchr.org/en/Number-of-civilians-killed-and-injured-in-Ukraine-reaches-three-year-monthly-high-in-July-2025-UN-human-rights-monitors-say
@12: “That is pretty typical of all wars.” (80% civilian deaths)
Even if that’s the case, how does not make the case that this is not a genocide going on with people starving?
Any time the corporation that employs you starts describing themselves as a “family,” start updating your resume.
I think the other non-engrish speaking countries should forbid USA tourists from getting to drive until they can read their language. Funny story: I was in Germany and my friend had just picked me up from the airport. They had me so fooled, they told me “Ausfahrt” was a funny name for a town. I finally fell for it after I expressed my amazement how big a town it was too, I think I said something like, “Yeah if I were Germany I would change such a big cities name to something other than ‘Ausfahrt’.” Good stuff.
@13 Do you not think that these truck drivers have to take driving tests and attend truck driving school and pass a written driving test? That covers all of the safety stuff you’re so worried about. They don’t just hand these licenses out to random people. Good lord.
If trucking companies are hiring people who haven’t passed their truck driving tests.. that’s an issue with the trucking companies and they get in trouble. But they won’t… because white people who run big corporations don’t get in trouble for anything.
@ the naive virtue-signaling white-guilt Seattle liberal, tbass1981, at comment #13:
Harjinder Singh, the truck driver involved in the fatal Florida Turnpike crash on August 12, 2025, obtained a commercial driver’s license (CDL) in California, and later in Washington, despite entering the U.S. illegally in 2018. To obtain a CDL in the U.S., federal and state regulations generally require completing a training program at a truck driving school and passing both a written knowledge test and a practical skills test. California and Washington, like all states, mandate these steps for CDL issuance, including tests on general trucking knowledge, vehicle operation, and road signs, often with an English proficiency requirement.
However, specific details about Singh’s training history are not fully clear from available information. Reports indicate he failed an English proficiency test and a road sign identification test administered by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) after the crash, answering only 2 of 12 verbal questions correctly and identifying just 1 of 4 highway signs. Despite these failures, he had been issued a full-term CDL in Washington in July 2023 and a limited-term/non-domiciled CDL in California in 2024. This suggests he likely completed some form of truck driving training and passed the required written and skills tests at the time of licensure, as these are standard prerequisites. California’s policy, enabled by a 2013 law, allows driver’s licenses, including CDLs, to be issued regardless of immigration status, which likely facilitated Singh’s ability to obtain his license.
The FMCSA does not issue CDLs directly but sets federal guidelines, while states handle the actual licensing process. Singh’s ability to secure a CDL despite later failing post-crash assessments raises questions about the rigor of the initial testing or potential lapses in enforcement, though no definitive evidence confirms he bypassed required training or tests. The investigation into his licensing and the crash is ongoing, with the U.S. Department of Transportation examining the carrier he worked for and the circumstances of the incident.
Sources:
https://www.foxnews.com/us/illegal-immigrant-trucker-accused-killing-three-people-failed-english-road-sign-tests-dot
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/harjinder-singh-indian-truck-driver-uturn-accident-minivan-in-florida-3-killed-donald-trump-administration-criticised-california-governor-gavin-newsom/articleshow/123377891.cms
https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/truck-driver-accused-in-fatal-crash-returned-to-florida-rubio-suspends-visas-for-commercial-drivers/
Oops I meant at comment # 25
haha
@25 that’s literally the reason this has become a story. Our state issued a guy who can not understand English a CDL and he went out and killed 3 innocent people when he illegally made a turn in the middle of the highway. The big question is how did this guy get a license from WA when he can’t pass the basic test. It’s a failure by the state, that violates federal law, and will no doubt result in WA paying millions of dollars when the family files a lawsuit. It’s amazing that barth is on here pretending this isn’t a big deal or TS proclaiming this as racist when it has been the law of the land for years.
@17. Oh Lord, what is I gon do.
They should really invent pictograph road signs so ability to interpret them isn’t based on language proficiency. If only there was some way to display “no u-turns” without writing it in English this never would have happened!
29, if you can only find one example out of millions of truck driving trips then it’s not a big deal, and his lack of proficiency did not cause the accident anyway so it’s entirely beside the point. When you have research showing other issues are much bigger problems that are going unaddressed, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s going on, given everything else we know about trump’s attitudes towards immigrants.
Trump has never even driven a car. Man of the people.
@29
My money is on someone took the test for him.
@32 it has been the law since 1937. They don’t even have to speak English per se, just be proficient. Saying its racist is intellectually lazy. I really don’t think you want to go down the statistically significant rabbit hole. There are lots of issues critical to progressives that when looked at are statistically insignificant. That doesn’t mean they aren’t important and there is a good reason for doing something about it.
Here’s a different study that found proficiency is necessary when driving: https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/9462/dot_9462_DS1.pdf
Here’s the summary:
“The broad and varied use of language in CMV operations has important safety implications.
In addition to its safety benefits, ease of communication aids drivers, inspectors, passengers,
and facility operators. While the analyses focused on the importance of language
comprehension, several tasks presented in the tables highlight the need for English
proficiency for CMV operations in the United States.
• In particular, the driver’s ability to read, understand, and respond to road signs in a
timely manner is critical. Lack of English proficiency may lead to a failure to respond
to nonstandard signage, such as VMS or custom signs at facilities, thus posing a safety
hazard.
• Emergencies occur infrequently, but when they do, it is important that the driver be
able to interact effectively with enforcement and emergency personnel as well as with
the public. These interactions can be quite complex and can require a certain level of
language proficiency.
• Drivers should have sufficient language comprehension in order to be able to update
and complete their logbooks. This task is required by FMCSA regulations, and while
it may not have a direct impact on safety, the logbook provides the inspector with
information on driver fitness and compliance with HOS regulations.
Finally, the observations highlight the need for drivers to be able to communicate effectively
with inspectors. Inspectors performing vehicle inspections subject themselves to potentially
dangerous conditions, and it is important that drivers understand what inspectors are doing so
that mishaps can be prevented. “
@31 see above. Not everything can be communicated via pictures.
@32: “… and his lack of proficiency did not cause the accident anyway so it’s entirely beside the point.”
Well, that’s good to know.
Um, how do you know it?
Also, how did he pass the test to get the CDL?
“… if you can only find one example out of millions of truck driving trips then it’s not a big deal,”
Yeah, and the persons who died violently were probably all racists anyway, so who cares about them?
If anyone thinks this is helping us oppose Trump, kindly raise your hand…
@35 not everything can be communicated via pictures but “no u-turns” can and is, so the Florida driver’s alleged inability to speak English in no way caused that crash, which you yourself have highlighted as “literally the reason this has become a story.” The proposed solution would have had no impact on the identified problem, which makes it reasonable to believe there might be some other motivation at play, especially when the current administration is notoriously hostile to immigrants.
I have to say, I never expected such vile racism to come from Slog commenters, saying a truck driver should be proficient in reading road signs, construction advisories, etc, and they even have the temerity to point out several recent deaths caused by a driver who had a CDL from our state who couldn’t read road signs, had earlier destroyed a bridge, etc. When racism like this is tolerated, it makes you wonder how far we’ve really come…
auntie grizelda will give @38 an FTW
D13, Coolidge and nekro: should you have to pass an English test to own a gun in America?
@40 Well, owning a gun in America is a right, not a privilege, unlike driving.
But you’ve raised an interesting solution—what if all road signs and traffic advisories in the country were simply replaced with easy-to-understand pictograms? And in the meantime before that quick and efficient solution were carried out, any safety risks would be a necessary sacrifice given that proposed and existing rules could be motivated by racism.
The law isn’t inherently racist but the trump administration sure is. You’re welcome to give these people all the excuses in the world if it suits you but don’t get mad at people for putting 2 and 2 together and calling it 4.
@42 nice pivot. No one is arguing whether there is a racist component to the administration. When you try to use things that are legitimately necessary as examples however the only thing you do is diminish your overall argument. As @36 points out do you think this is actually helping you pushback on other policies that are problematic? As Sun Tzu says “He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight”. This is the wrong hill.
@40 Nice try. If you’re going to go down that road I guess you would support an English test for voting as well.
@43, I don’t think capitulating on any given issue helps advance others, no. I don’t believe that generally, but with this administration in particular you would have to be exceptionally dim to make that argument because they are going to do whatever they want knowing the courts and congress will do nothing to stop them.
But regarding my comment, i’m not pivoting on anything. My entire point from my first comment on this topic was that they are choosing to enforce this law specifically because it fits into their overall strategy of scapegoating immigrants and minorities. The law doesn’t have to be inherently racist to be used by racists for racist ends.
24: Analogy failure: American tourists are not driving commercial rigs across Europe.
@44: No one here has argued the Trump Administration has acted in good faith or honesty or anything like that. No one here expects the Trump crowd to prosecute corporate polluters (or, more to the point, sleazy real-estate developers) at all, let alone with the same zeal as with this case.
But there’s no “capitulating” in noting the facts here: three persons died horribly and needlessly because the federal government, and Washington state’s government, didn’t enforce their own laws. Quibbling over the driver’s English proficiency, or noting the Trump crowd are likely racist AF, doesn’t change or help anything or anyone. It just wastes time and energy we could spend on opposing other Trump-delivered injustices, including undeniably racist ones.
@43 quoted Sun Tzu; I’ll quote Frederick the Great (and Gay): “He who defends everything, defends nothing.” Pick your battles.
@45, If the issue is being able to read signs it doesn’t matter what kind of vehicle you drive, just like it doesn’t matter if you can’t read a nonexistent sign telling you not to make a u-turn on the freeway because that is something a driver is expected to know before getting on the road regardless of their language proficiency
@44 No, you said the law “has no bearing on driver safety or any other valid reason for the rule”. This is wrong. As I have pointed out there are valid reasons for the law and it absolutely does have a bearing on driver safety. If you want to retract that statement and instead say “The administration is choosing to enforce this law more forcefully because they want to target immigrants driving rigs” that is fine. That does change the fact however that people who are not proficient in English should not be driving 20,000 pound vehicles. Saying that is racist is every bit as dumb as claiming jaywalking laws are racist because more POC get jaywalking tickets (thanks Lorena for that one). If previous administrations were shirking their duty on enforcement that is wrong. WA state is going to pay out a lot of money because of ineptitude or ideology and 3 people are dead because of it.
48, Ok fair enough, i was basing that statement on research showing it’s not that i linked in my comment. My point is that there are other long haul driver issues that are extreme threats to public safety that are completely ignored while this one is being prioritized for reasons that have little to do with safety. Meanwhile driver fatigue causes hundreds of fatalities a year but we don’t hear about it because they can’t blame immigrants for it.
@43 “If you’re going to go down that road I guess you would support an English test for voting as well.”
I’m the one who’s against English tests remember? You took a step down that road and I wanted to see how far you’d be willing to travel it. It’s also an interesting thought experiment for conservatives: which do you hate more, restrictions on the 2nd Amendment or brown people?