Pope Francis Is Dead: Pope Francis, who was the first Latin American pontiff, is dead at 88. Francis moved the Catholic Church progressively—or, at least progressively for the Catholics. He believed in climate change, he made the church a somewhat more welcoming place for LGBTQ people, he opposed the death penalty, he condemned both the war in Gaza and Ukraine. Poetically, Francis died the morning after Easter. Tragically, one of the last people he met with before his death was Vice President JD Vance. I'd want to die after meeting him, too.
SPD "Stop the Steal" Attendees Appeal to Supreme Court: Four of the Seattle Police Officers who attended Donald Trump's 2021 "Stop the Steal" rally, which later turned into the Jan. 6 insurrection, don't want their names revealed in public records. The officers maintain they did not participate in the insurrection. Earlier this year, the Washington State Supreme Court ruling which found "the officers failed to show that disclosing their names in public filings would violate their right to privacy," according to CBSNews. Unsatisfied with that, the officers, some of whom are still active within SPD, are banking on the Supreme Court to keep their political beliefs unassociated with their names. If they simply attended a peaceful rally, what are they worried about?
Xoxo, Pete Hegseth: We might as well call Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth Gossip Girl since he can't stop texting state secrets to anyone who will listen. The New York Times found that Hegseth sent details about forthcoming strikes in Yemen to another Signal group chat. This time, instead of a Signal chat with other members of the Trump cabinet and the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, Hegseth texted virtually the same deets to a private chat with his wife, brother, and personal lawyer. The chat also included about a dozen people from his personal and professional life. He called it "Defense | Team Huddle." Hegseth allegedly shared the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen.
Once again, I was left to wonder: was Pete Hegseth signal chatting military attack plans to everyone but me??
Am I the one that’s insecure, or is it his communication practices that are insecure?
— Leah Litman (@leahlitman.bsky.social) April 20, 2025 at 2:37 PM
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The Weather: Today, it will be cloudy, but the sun could break through any gray and stick around.
RIP Sen. Bill Ramos: Washington State Sen. Bill Ramos (D-Issaquah) died suddenly over the weekend during a trail run. He was 69. Ramos leaves behind two children and his wife, King County Councilmember Sarah Perry. "Billy is my East, my West, my North and South. I don’t know how I’ll do this without him," Perry wrote in a Facebook post.
Democrats Keep $12 Billion Tax Package Alive: Washington state senators are approving pieces of a $12 billion tax package left and right. So far senators have passed "bills to expand the capital gains tax, increase tax rates on large corporations and big banks, and begin collecting sales tax on an array of services," reports the Washington State Standard. The big risk with all of this momentum is it's not clear if Gov. Bob Ferguson will sign any of these bills into law. Ferguson has been a big, frugal bummer in the face of a huge hole in our state budget. Let's get creative here, Bob!
Hey, cut that out! An electric vehicle charger company, Virginia-based Electrify America LLC, is suing three King County men for allegedly pilfering charging cords and technology trade secrets at charging stations around Seattle. The men are accused of stealing and reselling metal stripped from the stations and developing a scheme to break into station cabinets to get the inside scoop on the technological goings-on in there. The company is seeking $500,000 from the men for allegedly violating Washington's criminal profiteering act.
What's your jet return policy? Thanks to new tariffs on US goods, a Boeing 737 MAX airplane intended for a Chinese airline returned back to Seattle like a pair of ill-fitting jeans. Since Trump put a 145 percent tariff on Chinese goods and China levied a reciprocal 125 percent tariff on US goods, purchasing a $55 million market value Boeing airplane could now financially destroy a Chinese airline. Before the tariffs went into effect, Boeing had 130 planes scheduled for delivery to Chinese companies. Will any of those orders still go through? Boeing and all of its pre-tariff financial woes probably really hope so!
[solemnly] "Boeing" is the sound made when the check for a jetliner bounces
— Kelsey Atherton (@atherton.bsky.social) April 20, 2025 at 9:03 PM
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Keep Being Polite to the Bots: Apparently, by saying "please" and "thank you" to ChatGPT bots costs OpenAI tens of millions of dollars, according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Can we really kill the AI companies with kindness? Probably not, but shhh.
Supreme Court Blocks Deportations: In a rare hurry, the Supreme Court issued a late night urgent order blocking the Trump administration from deporting a group of Venezuelan migrants under the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely-invoked 18th-century wartime law. The unsigned, one-paragraph-long order came through at 1 a.m. on Saturday. It expressed skepticism about whether the administration could make good on a stipulation from a previous, April 7 order which said "detainees were entitled to be notified if the government intended to deport them under the law within a reasonable time," reports the New York Times. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented because the Court's involvement, in their view, wasn't "necessary or appropriate."
In Happy Wildlife News: Here's a Kenyan reporter getting interrupted by playful elephants.
Kenyan #journalist Alvin Kaunda was reporting live from Nairobi when a curious baby #elephant, Kindani, decided to join the broadcast. The playful elephant stuck her trunk in Alvin's mouth, making for a hilarious moment! A joyful reminder of wildlife's charm and the work of the Sheldrick Trust!
— Emily Carter (@emilycurates.bsky.social) April 20, 2025 at 10:59 AM
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In Horrible Wildlife News: Gray whales are dying by the thousands thanks to melting arctic ice. Global warming has made it almost impossible for gray whales to get enough sustenance; their food webs are disrupted. Gray whales are starving. Their population has declined by 40 percent across the last decade.
Israel Says "Oops": Israel has admitted wrongdoing in the killings of 15 rescue workers in Gaza last month. After making excuses for killing emergency responders and then burying them in a sandy mass grave, Israel admitted to several "professional failures" and a breach of orders in a report from an internal investigation into the matter. Israel has fired one deputy commander responsible for the order to kill the aid workers and has censured another. That is the extent of the punishment for what really looks like a cut and dry war crime. The Palestine Red Crescent called the Israeli report "full of lies."
Kristi Noem's Purse Nabbed at DC Restaurant: A thief nabbed Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's purse while she was eating dinner. They made off with the purse and all of its contents which included "Noem’s driver’s license, medication, apartment keys, passport, DHS access badge, makeup bag, blank checks, and about $3,000 in cash."
Breeding Kink: The White House is considering a slew of new policies to incentivize Americans to reproduce more and reverse the declining birthrate. Some of the ideas include giving every mother $5,000 after giving birth to a baby, reserving 30 percent of scholarships in the prestigious Fulbright program to people who are married or who have kids, and bestowing a "National Medal of Motherhood" award to mothers with six or more kids. Trump pledged last month to be the "fertilization president." There is something deeply stomach-churning about all of this. It's an extension of the administration's focus on restoring "the American family." Of course, the American family to them is a traditional one between men and women and set within typical gender roles.
Music for your Monday: It just felt fitting. Not sure why.
