Good Morning! If you, like me, were surprised by how much you like our little taste of autumn this weekend, you’re in luck. Today should be a lot of the same. But if it left you panicked, scrambling for your SAD lamp, tomorrow’s your day: Highs in the mid-80s, without a cloud in the sky. It might not be our last day of summer weather, but why chance it? Watch the sunset at a street-end park, smell some Puget Sound air, touch grass.
But until then, let’s do the news.
Charlie Kirk Update: Utah Governor Cox and FBI Director Kash Patel both gave extended media interviews this weekend: Cox to Meet the Press, and Patel to Fox and Friends. Patel spent most of his interview talking about how good he is at being the head of the FBI, and touted his “investigatory experience,” of which he has [checks notes] none. Cox said that the suspect in custody, Tyler Robinson, is not cooperating with authorities, but most of his friends and family are. Based on those interviews, he said that Robinson has a “leftist ideology,” but didn’t elaborate on what those views might be, just that he was influenced by the “deep, dark internet.” He also said that Robinson’s “roommate” is actually his partner, and said that that partner is trans. If that’s true, he then went on to repeatedly misgender Robinson’s partner. “It sounds like we’re really stretching to find a way to tie this in to the trans community,” Jacey Thornton, executive director of Project Rainbow Utah, told the New York Times. Charges will likely be filed on Tuesday.
Making a Martyr: It’s not surprising that conservative talk show hosts and Christian nationalist preachers are trying to turn Kirk’s death into a galvanizing moment for the far-right. But it’s more striking to see the federal government throwing its weight behind it. VP JD Vance escorted Kirk’s casket home on Air Force Two. A Republican congresswoman literally called for him to be allowed to lie in rest in the Capitol. And several Trump administration officials have said they’re tracking people who make negative statements about Kirk, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau.
Conservatives Are Scared: Trump informed Congress that an additional $58 million will go to the US Marshal Service to provide more security for the Supreme Court, and urged the legislative branch to throw more resources at the Capitol Police.
Thoughts and Prayers: Parents filed a complaint against a principal in the North Shore School District in Bothell after he reposted a Charlie Kirk memorial image with the text: “Thoughts and prayers. Too bad gun control would have been far far more effective (he’d still be alive). Maybe thoughts and prayers will work…oops – nope.”
The Mariners, They’re Just Like Us: They also can’t stand the megaphone preachers outside T-Mobile Stadium. “The men — and they are almost always men — who carry billboards and megaphones and exhort the baseball-watching masses to repent, before it’s too late,” writes the Seattle Times. “They are, like it or not, the soundtrack of the Mariners pregame experience. And the Mariners, it turns out, do not like it.” The team has asked the city to limit loudspeakers before and after games. “We are not trying to weigh in on what is being said, we are trying to weigh in on the volume of what is being said,” a Mariner’s spokesperson said. I’m sure they’ll see it that way.
Crash in the C-ID: A man was killed on Sunday morning when he was hit by a semitruck in Little Saigon, at the intersection of 12th Avenue South and South King Street, according to SPD. Officers evaluated the driver of the semitruck and determined that impairment was not a factor in the collision, and the driver was not arrested. But they did make sure to emphasize that the city’s surveillance system caught the crash on camera.
Area Orca Threatens Region’s Mental Health: Look, I’m really, really sorry to tell you this. I know we’re all hanging onto our sanity by a thread here. But Alki, a female orca in the J Pod, was spotted near the San Juan Islands pushing her dead calf through the water. “She doesn’t have arms to hold it, so she has to keep carrying it, keeping it with her as close as possible,” Deborah Giles, a killer whale scientist with the SeaDoc Society, told the Seattle Times. Alki is 26 years old, and she’s had several miscarriages. She also lost her 2-year-old calf, Sonic, back in 2017. This is what grief looks like in our endangered orca pod. Pour one out for Alki today.
Okay to Make Up for That: Here’s your annual reminder that Fat Bear Week is coming up at the end of the month, and you can already meet the bears.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul Reads the Room: Over the weekend, Governor Hochul announced her endorsement of Zohran Mamdani. “I didn’t leave my conversations with Mr. Mamdani aligned with him on every issue,” she wrote in an OpEd in the New York Times. “But I am confident that he has the courage, urgency and optimism New York City needs to lead it through the challenges of this moment.” Lookin’ at you, Governor Ferguson.
Katie Wilson’s Getting Ready for the Debates: In response to the repeated comparisons to Mamdani, Wilson posted a video this weekend. “As we all know, Zohran is charismatic, telegenic, and stylish,” she said to the camera. “I, on the other hand, am deeply awkward, not going to win any beauty pageants, and honestly, I’ve spent my whole adult life looking really dumpy.” She laughs off camera. “I don’t know, is that too much?” She then goes to Goodwill, and gets Queer Eyed by a campaign volunteer so she has some new looks from the mayoral debates. It’s adorable, it’s awkward, it’s true to her. It’s everything we love about Katie Wilson. (And if you’re not sold, it looks like she was also on stage at SketchFest Seattle this weekend.)
Busy Week in City Hall: Council will start voting on the more than 100 amendments to the Seattle Comprehensive Plan on Wednesday. If they stay on schedule, we’ll know what our 20-year development plan for the city looks like by the end of the week.
The Emmys Happened! Even as democracy crumbles, we get a little TV, as a treat. The Pitt beat out Severance for best drama, The Studio won best comedy, and Hannah Einbinder ended her speech with: “Go Birds, Fuck ICE, Free Palestine.”
What ever happened to not judging a book by its cover? Do we know everything about someone and all they stand for just because of how they look? The discourse and common sense of decency we have Americans is really circling the drain as madness and stupidity take center stage. Be better than this.
Here is the link to the Josh Kemp kid that is telling everyone the roommate is trans. He did the interview with the Sun. The Sun is the UK equivalent of the National Enquirer. You’re all getting your news from a literal tabloid lol. Maybe his roommate was Bat Boy too?
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/36693693/charlie-kirk-shooter-tyler-robinson-transgender-partner/
@48 – Tyler Robinson is alleged by the FBI to have written messages on the casings of bullets linked to the crime.
On a fired casing: “Notices, bulges, OwO what’s this?” (a meme referencing furry role-play and online slang).
On an unfired casing: “Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao” (lyrics from the Italian anti-fascist folk song “Bella Ciao”).
Another unfired casing: “Hey fascist! Catch!” (a direct anti-fascist taunt).
A fourth: “If you read this, you are gay LMAO” (a mocking, trolling phrase).
Since you obviously know so much more about the situation, you should do your civic duty as an upstanding citizen of the USA and contact the FBI and Governor Cox of Utah, and tell them everything you know. Straighten them out! Don’t let them get away with these lies!!!! LOL
It’s not mental gymnastics, just entry level media literacy.
I will gladly accept that a trans woman is working with the feds to bring charlie kirk’s murderer to justice if it’s confirmed to be true. I have nothing at stake here and frankly not even sure what’s in it for you but i don’t believe everything i’m told without any proof and i don’t think that’s too much to ask.
@51 – I’m getting my news from the FBI and the Governor of Utah. I almost never look at The Sun at all.
You should contact the FBI and Governor Cox of Utah IMMEDIATELY and TELL THEM WHY THEY ARE WRONG!!!
51: But it’s okay if it’s true, right?
@39 kristofarian: Thank you, kris. Yes, the scroll bar is a blessing in bypassing the usual trolling gang of idiots. Amen to that. Methinks ol’ Bioopsy is the new Vaseline, Babybarf, or combination of the two.
It amazes me how many shamefully ignorant, uneducated, dateless trolls will say and do anything for cheap beer, misinformation, and stale Twinkies. And be so blindly AI-programmed by Felon Mu$k’s Mein Trumpf, marching in Schadenfreude lovin’ lockstep.
@46 Yeah, Cox was also the one that read the casing that said “Catch this, fascist” and instantly declared that it was “clearly leftist idealogy”, only for it to actually be a quote from a satirical video game where you kill fascist bugs to help “spread democracy”…
So uh yeah… he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The kid is a groyper. Even the groypers are admitting it on their servers and Nick Fuentes basically made a post telling them not to kill anyone else. These right wing maga nutjobs on here will do anything to make it about trans people.
@52 The casings are as follows: “Catch this, fascist” is from Helldivers 2. It’s a satirical game where you “deliver democracy” to fascist bugs.
“”Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao” is found on the soundtrack of Hearts of Iron 4 where you get to play as nazis and found in a very popular Call of Duty meme
” “If you read this, you are gay LMAO” (a mocking, trolling phrase).” Leftists don’t use the word gay to mock people and haven’t done so since the late 90s. That’s a right wing thing. So yeah… you’re a fucking idiot. The FBI knows all this. It’s literally all over the internet. You might wanna read something besides Fox news.
“Notices, bulges, OwO what’s this?”” is MAKING FUN OF FURRIES AND GAY PEOPLE… not simply referencing them.
Google Groypers and Nick Fuentes and the pic of the kid as Pepe The Frog (where the Groypers got their name from). You look like a fucking tool bag right now. Congrats as always.
@55 If it’s true he has a “secret trans partner” it still doesn’t prove he’s a leftist. The most famous trans person IN THE ENTIRE WORLD is MAGA, dumb dumb.
@59 – Dylan Mulvaney is MAGA? Wow I didn’t expect that.
@60 Dylan Mulvaney has 1.5 million Instagram followers… Caitlin Jenner has 15 million. Do you see the little decimal place? Hopefully you know how those work better than you understand memes or newspapers.
Oh I forgot Caitlin Jenner even existed and/or was still alive
Thanks for the correction
so
bippie
CAN learn
it’s
Almost
as ‘smart’ as ai!
@10 – People still think that elections are going to matter going forward? Still? Kirk’s death will probably make it easier than ever, but we’re not seeing Democrats “win” anything major in any of our lifetimes.
I feel less bad for constantly getting into it with tensorna over Gaza now I see you guys engaging with this deeply unserious cretin Biped
@62 Now maybe stop being a sheep and deep dive into the Nick Fuentes Groyper stuff or your opinion is going to be even irrelevant on this topic because you clearly have zero grasp of what is happening right now and it’s pretty embarrassing for you to still be spouting shit from Fox news from 5 days ago when the entire tide turned and people pinpointed exactly what and who this kid is over the weekend. You could actually inform yourself right now and learn something.
But you won’t …because you still the same person that voted for someone who said they want to fuck their own daughter and made fun of a handcapped person and said he likes to grab women by the pussy and doing the right thing just simply isn’t something any of you are capable of and I’m in fact that stupid one who keeps forgetting that.
Have a good one.
@63b
if the “D”NC
has Anything atall
so say about it then
why, fuck Yes.
I’m noting everyone eager to claim Robinson is a member of the “other side” without any real conclusive evidence (His family is Christian! But he’s dating a trans girl! But he used a Pepe frog online! But that isn’t always right wing! But he knew how to use guns! But he engraved them with sort of leftist-seeming sentiments! But those are also subject to interpretation! But…) Personally, I’m leaning toward him probably being on the left, but ultimately it doesn’t seem like incomprehensible Gen Z internet politics are even at the core of understanding this. You’ll note, like Thomas Crooks, who also had unknowable and contradictory politics, that there was no manifesto here. You might look more to atomization and anomie as the ultimate driver of acts like this.
@30 Well, yes, I’ve seen some trans women who pass, but my point with “presenting” is that this individual appears to be still using a male name and male clothing, unless the announcement of transitioning was made extremely recently (which might point to a possible motive).
59: You’re so pathetically desperate to make some contorted connection to Nick Fuentes that you’re going after Caitlyn Jenner, you nasty transphobe you.
Anyone and everyone who has ever been called a transphobe is off the hook now, until the radical left gets their act together and gathers their thoughts.
@67 I didn’t say anything negative about Caitlyn Jenner. I was just making sure you remembered that not all trans people are on the left so knowing/dating/being friends with a trans person doesn’t automatically associate you with a specific party. Speaking of which… here’s another very famous trans person… who dated a MAGA cop. What’s that prove exactly?
https://www.them.us/story/laverne-cox-relationship-instagram-videos-ex-boyfriend
@68. Quit trying to talk like a fascist, it’s pathetic.
@70 There are very few things sadder than a gay republican. The majority of Nicks followers would happily kill Coolidge and not blink twice. They hated Charlie enough to kill him and he was straight and had kids… imagine what they’d do to a gay republican? lol.
@28 – “still going by the name Lance”
Dylan Mulvaney would like a word with you
69: Of course I knew that not all trans people read are on the left. That God for Blair White!
@39 “Lawd knows we’re
at a Tipping Point”
Yes we are at a tipping point its just not the one you think it is. All recent headlines in the news
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/renting-in-seattle-area-to-get-harder-as-supply-of-new-apartments-drop/
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/washington-state-hits-highest-gas-prices-in-the-country-surpassing-california/ar-AA1MwYyA
https://mynorthwest.com/mynorthwest-politics/seattle-budget-shortfall/4119447
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/seattle-has-the-nations-most-expensive-uber-rides/
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/climate-lab/why-trumps-one-big-beautiful-bill-likely-to-raise-wa-energy-costs/
All of these things are happening for various reasons of course but there is an underlying thread here and that is many of the policies and taxes imposed by the state and city over the last few years is finally catching up to us. As I have noted previously, if Wilson wins she will take office facing a massive budget shortfall and very limited ability to correct it. The state is in a similar situation coming off a record $9B tax increase last year. If she thinks she is going to solve all of this by raising more taxes she is not dealing in reality.
71: But they have better sex and better bodies than wimpy gay dems. That seems sadder.
The evidence is even more convoluted than I thought–the supposed Pepe connection is Robinson doing a Slavic squat in a tracksuit for Halloween, which is I guess similar to a meme of Pepe doing that but…the Slavic squat with tracksuit thing is also just pretty well known online and he could’ve easily just been going as a gopnik for Halloween? And the only other “frog” which I guess he was using as an avatar online somewhere was Kermit sipping tea? Also Fuentes fans use Groyper more often than Pepe, which is a similar frog but not the same and….Jesus Christ, who wants to follow all this? I’m not saying he wasn’t a Nick Fuentes fan (wouldn’t be surprised at all, in fact!) but you can easily see how the rabbit hole of Gen Z online irony politics doesn’t lend itself to easy interpretation.
The conclusive statements lend themselves to the similar media environment that led to tbass’s mistake in @65, the story about Trump making fun of a handicapped man. I also believed this one for a while, but what actually happened is Trump has done a weird up and down thing with his hands and a mocking voice in speeches where he mocks someone (you can watch compilations of it), and someone just screenshotted it frozen there and acted like he was doing an impression of an arm issue the guy has.
It’s almost supernaturally dishonest, and a lot of Trump stories unfortunately follow this pattern (The very next line after “very fine people on both sides” is “except the Nazis and white supremacists”–how many people do you know who fell for that one? Did you?) and it distracts from actual issues with Trump. The only conclusion I can draw from this is you need to be taking in news from multiple sources, even from ideologies you don’t agree with, or you’re essentially living in filter bubble fantasy land.
@76 all we really know at this point was the kid was extremely online, which is not conducive to stable mental health regardless of the person’s politics
@Slog Staff!
Now’s the time to fix the problem with comments rendering after 100!
And fix the busted profile picture upload system too while you’re at it! One of the worst remnants of the dark Rich Smith era…
@76,
Yeah, Trump denied mocking the disabled reporter because of course he did, and it was the politically expedient move. Independent fact checking organizations that investigated the claims in light of his denials found plenty of evidence to dismiss them (his denials) as merely opportunistic, and corroborated the original reports that suggest he mocked the reporter.
He (and by extension, his supporters) are trash humans.
https://www.denver7.com/news/politics/politifact-check-pro-clinton-super-pac-says-donald-trump-mocked-disabled-reporter
https://www.snopes.com/news/2016/07/28/donald-trump-criticized-for-mocking-disabled-reporter/
@80 See, this is exactly what I’m talking about. Trump did the exact same movements and voice over and over and over before he mocked this guy, and you can go and see video compilations yourself! Trump’s claims on the subject aren’t even relevant! But instead of trying to figure out the truth of this yourself, you went to Confirm My Biases And Tell Me Stuff I Already Agree With Dot Com.
From everything I’ve heard and read so far, it seems to me the accused is neither seriously left-wing nor right-wing but rather just one more embodiment of what Philip Roth (problematically) termed the Indigenous American Berserk. This species would cause far less carnage on the whole if only we could put politics aside and do something to make guns much harder for unbalanced, impulsive people like him to get ahold of. But I have yet to hear the subject even mentioned in the aftermath of this latest terrible shooting. I daresay, if you’re not serious about getting a handle on our insanely out-of control gun problem, then you couldn’t care less about Charlie Kirk’s life (or, for that matter, Donald Trump’s) no matter how fervently you eulogize him. Shut up and go away.
Ed. note: Kirk definitely will not be “lying in rest” — he is dead as a racist door nail. Some may wish him to rest in peace and the Drumpfists apparently want him to lie in state, but combining the two for a dead person doesn’t work.
I guess you can find all of these video clips of trump mocking non-disabled people with all the non-white supremacists attending the white supremacy rally on the white supremacy side
“Drumpfists”??!?! Oh no how will they ever recover from that devastating insult lol
@81,
Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re a stupid, credulous idiot.
70: Yes, same applies to calling people fascist. You do it all the time. We’re supposed to tone down the rhetoric, or didn’t you get the memo?
Coolie @87…
If you talk like a fascist, we will call you a fascist.
Go fold that memo until it’s all sharp corners, and well, I think you know where you can go shove it.
The insult brigade are gearing up for a fight!
@89 – I’m still reeling from the devastating impact of “Drumpfists”! Imagine how much more of a crippling blow it would have been if @83 had written “bLoNaLd bLuMpfHiStS” instead! I don’t think I could have recovered.
@88 & 89
your
skins’re
much Thicker
than your Ideology
might imply. is there some
Magical Creme you apply pre-Bedtime?
b. is that how you
Achieved your
Rosey Hues?