Wonder if any of the new CMs have the audacity to still claim to be offended about being called corporate shills after these moves

So, are they legislating according to the way their constituents vote? Horrors! How dare we have a system that...reflects the will of the voters who elected them?

Geez, Biden Admin, actually getting shit done without showboating about it.

That leaves 5 Americans still in Russian jails, including 2 dual-nationals.

Oh, they got the dual-nationals out, too. Even better.

That might be a new racist low for Trump, which is pretty astonishing.

Calling the biracial candidate a traitor to both of her identities sounds like a winning strategy in 2024. No one wants to hear about policy anyway. We want to hear an old white guy’s thoughts on what it means to be authentically black or Indian. Two whole races! So much to talk about.

@5: https://x.com/liberalease/status/1818846272603689459

Did anyone really expect Donald to have an epiphany of humility and redemption in discussing race?

The Russians got 6 Slow Horses, and a couple of hackers, in exchange for 18 Western and Russian hostages. That's what I call the Art of the Deal.

Just wondering, why do we need an Office of Housing and a newly created social housing agency? Almost like they want to waste money on bureaucracy.

@8: I think there may be a few who though he'd know to reign it in, but that was foolish. he knows nothing else but the double-down. he even used a Birther-Conspiracy line: "i think someone should look into that".

Irredeemable. Worst Person in America.

@10: the Seattle Social Housing Developer PDA was created by Initiative 135. So blame the voters.

Everyone should know by now he’s incapable of humility. If anything is surprising it’s that he managed to find room to sink even lower. Quite a feat for a guy who started his first campaign calling Mexicans rapists.

“City Council Finally Unleashes Its Conservative Wrath”

Turns out elections really do have consequences.

For Trump, it’s all about getting into the news cycle, by any means necessary. What else would you expect from a deranged psycho?
Why put in the hard work to win an election, when you can spend half of the time golfing, and when you expect state legislators and court judges to install you as der leader?

In fairness, Republican media and MAGA crowds appear to be Trump-eting his "total owning" of both the journalist and the VP, so... great day for America?

Well. If not the jail in Kent, then where do you suggest we hold criminals? If the answer is “stop arresting criminals” then fine. But I really need a bunch in my neighborhood to be stopped from breaking the law or go elsewhere. They can go to your neighborhood if you wish?

@14

I hope HMW has a functional political compass in her tool kit. I don't think !hanaH is employing the Stranger's traditional absurd sauce, she is in fact earnest about the current SCC being conservative.

Why on earth is Ashley back on Twitter - what the actual fuck is wrong with these ST staffers. I have a hard time buying the sincerity of their anti-corporate spiel when they’re putting money into the pockets of Elon fucking Musk. ST staffers, you have options - make a better choice.

“Just after killing Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh,”

Please note the linked story (and the related story linked there) do not in any way demonstrate any Israeli involvement in Haniyeh’s death.

Not sure why progressives like Hannah support folks like Mohammed Deif (or was there some other reason a Seattle blog is posting about his killing?)

I think reintroducing the SODA law would be a great thing for downtown. Do that, and allow cars back on Third Avenue through downtown (as a normal street, with curbside parking and no bus or bike lanes) and we might see some progress downtown.

And as far as all the social services being in the Pioneer Square area, it's way past time that we break that up. There's way too much valuable property that is not being taxed because they are owned by parasitical religious groups, and the services need to be where the people are.

Bringing back the no-loitering laws might finally bring some relief to the business districts and the ridiculous situation we see on Aurora Avenue above 100th. I am all for legalized prostitution, but our local history has taught us that that open-air areas can lead to tragic and horrible deaths of sex workers.

None of this is "conservative". It's good government.

Han-Han, how many times do we have to tell you: the Seattle City Council is NOT conservative by any stretch of anyone's imagination. They are bog-standard, center-left Democrats.

@22 "Bringing back the no-loitering laws might finally bring some relief to the business districts and the ridiculous situation we see on Aurora Avenue above 100th. I am all for legalized prostitution"

You can't realistically be for legalized prostitution and also for anti-loitering laws, especially post SESTA-FOSTA. Plus the anti-loitering laws only hurt the sex workers and do nothing to stop human trafficking or other associated harms. They're the exact opposite of "good government."

21, ??? It’s a national news item and a big development in a war that people have been bickering about in these comments since last October.

@22 FTW. Not only 3rd; I'd return vehicles to Occidental from Jackson to Washington, and Pike from 1st to 2nd. I am also fine with cars in Pike Place Mkt most days. Opening Pine through Westlake was met with pearl-clutching, now no one even remembers why it was closed.

My daughter thinks I'm a bad Urbanist.

@21, @25: The Stranger simply will not allow any opportunity to criticize Israel to pass. Full stop. (Even if they must assume Israel’s involvement.)

This country and the insatiable greed of the already obscenely wealthy is not sustainable, not even if they get their wildest dreams to come true (everyone incarcerated and used as labor for the wealth class with as little money as possible spent on the incarceration and anyone unable to work they'll just kill). It won't just be the disabled (us "useless eaters" according to Trump and the Nazis: EVERY ACCUSATION IS A CONFESSION) either.

You can't have stagnant wages or 2% raises and expect people to continue to pay more and more and more for housing (so many people are paying 2/3 or more of their income to housing).

My mother's retired income increases by the tiny SSA COLA increase granted each year. This year it might be 2.6% Last year our landlord raised our rent 14.2%. Every year going forward he told us he would be raising the rent the maximum allowed (10% a year here in Oregon).

NO ONE GETS A 10% INCREASE IN THEIR INCOME. And even if they did, why should all of that 10% increase in income go in the landlord's pocket?

Has anyone actually read Project 2025? I've read some of it and the shit is INSANE. They want us back living in a feudal society, where women have no rights other than to be bred like cows, everyone who does all of the labor gets as little as possible, and the wealthy just get wealthier and wealthier and wealthier until the planet has been raped of every last possible bit of life or life sustaining substance and we all die anyway.

Humans believe they are the smartest beings on the planet and yet we are the only species that kills itself off in every possible way in the pursuit of money, in a universe where the concept of money is meaningless. Money is a made up idea that only mean something because humans have convinced each other that it does.

thirteen12 dear, I am for licensed and regulated prostitution, operated in designated safe areas or hotels, where the sex workers have complete agency over their bodies and their business. That would require either repeal or intense modification of SESTA-FOSTA. You must try to have more imagination and not be bound by the current state of legislation.

As for "loitering," you were probably never told about the Green River killer, but in the 80's and 90's he killed 49 women, most of which were prostitutes that he picked up off of Pacific Highway South down by Sea-Tac. Scores of other sex workers have been killed by their patrons, or by their pimps. I'd prefer that we not enable another Gary Ridgeway.

@29 your idea is really to have cops arrest and jail sex workers to protect them from potentially being picked up by a serial killer? Anyway, while we're waiting for the government to establish the "designated safe areas" you imagine, I suggest we not authorize the cops to harass sex workers in the non-imaginary locations actually available to them.

PS here's an article about two women who, as teenage sex workers, were raped by a Seattle cop. I'd prefer that we not enable another Officer KC Smith.

https://www.kuow.org/stories/seattle-pays-nearly-2m-settlement-to-woman-who-says-police-officer-raped-her-as-a-minor-decades-ago

@29 You've got to burn the village in order to save it.

thirteen12 dear, you must have missed the part of the story where the women were forced into sex work by pimps, and at least one was on the stroll downtown when she was raped by the cop (Downtown was the Aurora Avenue of the time. Particularly 1st Avenue). You don't think the exact same thing isn't happening now on Aurora? And, unfortunately, cops sexually assaulting prostitutes is nothing new.

Also, has it occurred to you that businesses may not want to have people loitering (for whatever reason) in front of their business or that patrons may not want to have to look at vagrants, sex workers, or the "Johns" who cruise them?

@32 "has it occurred to you that businesses may not want to have people loitering (for whatever reason)"

Obviously, and just as obviously that's why you support the laws. You don't really care about the sex workers you just want them out of sight of the big box hardware store and chain fast food customers. Should just say so

I rather think it's you who doesn't care about the sex workers. In this case, women are either being exploited/trafficked or working as free agents with no protection. You're fine with them taking extraordinary risks to their life and health.

You cite an article about two women who were raped by a cop when working as sex workers as justification for letting sex workers be exposed to being raped by a cop. That's certainly an interesting perspective you have there, thirteen12 dear.

What's the word the kids use? Privilege. That's it.

@32 countries like the Netherlands have legal prostitution in set areas (red light districts) - not a fucking free for all where pimps are having running gunfights over territory. So yes, you can support legalization that empowers the sex workers and at the same time not want out of control madness on a city street.

@34 the Council has proposed no legislation to help protect sex workers. The question at hand is solely whether cops should be able to arrest them for loitering, you say yes I say no. The fact you apparently think you have the moral high ground is either laughable or terrifying not sure which.

thirteen12 dear, why are you so binary? Have I said that sex workers should be arrested? No. I have said that the loitering laws should be enforced. That doesn't mean people should be arrested. It means that we, as a society, should find an alternative path.

Sex is a primal urge. People who want to satisfy that primal urge for other people as their vocation deserve both respect and a safe working environment for themselves and their clients.

@37 "Have I said that sex workers should be arrested? No. I have said that the loitering laws should be enforced.'

You cannot honestly believe that enforcing the loitering law means anything other than arresting sex workers.

@37 "Have I said that sex workers should be arrested? No. I have said that the loitering laws should be enforced."

You cannot honestly believe that enforcing the anti-loitering law means anything other than arresting sex workers.

There should be no issue with prostitutes, or anyone else, being arrested for breaking an anti-loitering ordinance in high crime areas.

Mrs. Catalina dear, here our dear thirteen12 merely toes one of the most sacrosanct of the Stranger’s many party lines, viz: when in dialog about crime, and Seattle’s response to crime, the effects of crime upon peaceful, law-abiding residents of Seattle must never, ever, not under any circumstances, be mentioned. At all. Dialog must be strictly confined to the effect, always defined to be Bad, of the criminal justice system upon the criminal. Nothing else — and, much more importantly, no one else — may ever receive so much as the tiniest hint of concern. At all.

As you can read, your repeated implied concern for non-criminal residents has violated this absolute rule, thus causing thirteen12 great upset. Hence the twisting of your words, imputation to you of statements you have not made, and sneering that your stated concern for other persons is really just your love of corporate property rights.

Please do learn your lesson soon, dear, as I’m finding thirteen12’s continuing outbursts even more tiresome for their utter predictability. ;-)

"You cannot honestly believe that enforcing the anti-loitering law means anything other than arresting sex workers."

Yes, I do believe that. You certainly don't have much vision or imagination, thirteen12 dear.

@41 help me out then, if we make loitering for purpose of prostitution a crime what do you anticipate police will do when discovering a person loitering for the purpose of prostitution? Give them a stern talking to?

If you imagine the police will in any way actually help the person then I ask: why can't they just do that right now? Why would we need to create a new crime?

It's not a new law, dear. It's an old law that was rescinded, and now they are thinking about re-establishing it because of the unintended consequences.

Why not a Nevada model of licensed brothels? That would involve changing state law, but the cities and counties that object to prostitution could make it illegal at their level.

I think the recent uproar over the WSLCB agents targeting nightclubs proves that we need a complete revamping of the vice laws in this state, and that includes prostitution.