Bideens Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson met with lawmakers this week ahead of confirmation hearings set to begin March 21.
Biden's Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson met with lawmakers this week ahead of confirmation hearings set to begin March 21. Drew Angerer / Getty Images Staff

There’s been a report of tuberculosis at Aki Kurose Middle School. About 120 people are thought to have been exposed, and will be contacted for testing. TB is passed along though extended contact — it’s harder to transmit than most common colds — so as long as there’s proper testing and treatment (which takes several months), the risk to the community for now is relatively low.

Washington is planning to spend $1 billion to expand traffic jams and worsen the climate crisis. We’ve got a cool $1 billion set aside to widen the bridge into Portland — a project that is expected to cost several billion more. The plan is currently to expand the bridge into a ten-lane monster.

Build these homes please. It’s bullshit that we have to do this, but there’s a dumb design-review meeting Monday night that NIMBYs will use to try to block housing just a block from the new Roosevelt station. Currently a dilapidated auto shop, the project would create 241 new housing units. All you have to do is register to comment (the form won’t accept signups until two hours before the meeting, but you should still mark your calendar as a reminder) and tell them “the design looks good. Please approve.”

Looking for immigration help for Ukrainians? The city is hosting a webinar next week for Ukrainian nationals currently in the US or seeking to travel to the US. Topics of discussion: Refugee and asylum processes; Temporary Protected Status (TPS); tourist visas (B1/B2); and humanitarian parole.

Obviously, Seattle is dying. Here’s a nice long thread about all the new restaurants that have opened around the city in the last few months. There’s a bunch!

Please postpone coming down with any diseases until 2023. A public health clinic scheduled for October 2022 has been bumped from Climate Pledge Arena in favor of concerts by The Who and the Zac Brown Band. The arena says they still want to host the clinic next year, but the concerts came first. Guess it’s easier to postpone 3,000 medical checkups than whatever it is the Zac Brown Band does.

Lynnwood can have a little housing, as a treat. Snohomish County has unanimously passed a resolution allowing Accessory Dwelling Units (eg, attics, backyard cottages, additions) on rural lots. It’s not an instant cure for the housing crisis, but it’ll relieve a little pressure at least. Currently in Verlot, WA (to pick a Sno Co town at random) there is one single home for sale, a 640-square-foot 1-bedroom going for $460,000. The median home price in Granite Falls (to pick another at random) is about a half million dollars, up from around $200,000 five years ago.

Texas is putting trans kids and their families through absolute hell. Here’s an absolutely gutting account of what folks are up against there. Texas would rather bury trans kids with the gender on their birth certificate than let them live authentically. Meanwhile a bill to ban books that “normalize” LGBTQ+ “lifestyles” is advancing in Tennessee.

State legislators did more for housing fish than people this session. Look, I certainly am not opposed to SB 5619, which passed yesterday and will help restore kelp forests in Puget Sound. It’s a great bill. Very welcome news that it passed. It’s just … you know … sometimes I look at what passes for a victory in this state and I’m like “is that it?”

Lots of transit meetings coming up! Mark your calendars, train nerds. The next Sound Transit public meeting is March 15 and will be online, covering plans for light rail extensions to Interbay/Ballard. There’s also an in-person open house on Thursday March 17 about West Seattle and Ballard extensions. Plus online webinars on March 22 (for Downtown), March 24 (CID/SoDo), and March 30 (West Seattle/Delridge).

Apparently the new speed limit on Aurora Ave is Warp 9.9. After decades of stagnation, suddenly we’re moving at lightning speed to fix one of the worst traffic sewers WSDOT has ever foisted on Seattle. The new transpo budget calls for a redesign to be complete by September of 2023, with construction to follow sometime after that. Let’s gooooooo.

More drag creatures on skis, please. Hello!

This is Duke. He has some very specific ideas about where his bed should go.