Fall is Coming: Not for another 19 days, but can’t you feel the chill in the night air/the not melting into your couch like sweaty cheese?
A Spooky Twist: According to the National Weather Service, “widespread haze” will settle over Seattle around 2 p.m., and gradually dissipate when the sun comes out, with a high near 74. But the haze will return before midnight. Tomorrow and Thursday, we’ll be mostly sunny and in the mid- to high-70s. The clouds will roll in on Friday and stay for the weekend. These temperatures are pleasant, but above average for this time of year.
The Bumbershoot at Home: While my colleagues were covering Bumbershoot, I was watching anti-LGBTQ Christian supremacist superstar Sean Feucht play awful music at Gas Works Park. He’d set up all the pins for a heated, potentially dangerous confrontation, but didn’t knock them down. From a provocateur and propagandist’s perspective, it flopped. Come for the news, stay for the gay clowns, the music criticism, a fascinating “weirdo” Reverend, and a strange conversation with a “real Jesus person” named Linda.
Due to the Seattle community understanding the threat and Feucht’s playbook- this is the only propaganda they were able to cut. Folks waving their flags, holding signs and looking great doing it. Great job Seattle.
— Kate Burns (@katerqburns.bsky.social) August 31, 2025 at 11:30 AM
Billionaires and Nevernudes Fuck Off: Hundreds of (clothed) people gathered outside Seattle Central College yesterday to protest everything at a rally hosted by the 50501 movement (which organized the No King’s March): oligarchy, Trump, fascism, Medicaid cuts, and US support for Israel, while a handful of (naked) people protested the city’s anti-masturbation fence with a nude-in at Denny Blaine Park. Attorney General Nick Brown was at one of them, but I won’t say which.
First Hill Shooting: A 28-year-old man was shot on East Jefferson Street and Broadway last night and taken to Harborview in serious condition. The 25-year-old man suspected of shooting him was arrested and taken to police headquarters for interrogation. The victim’s current condition is unknown, and it’s unclear what led to the shooting, reports The Seattle Times, which will post updates here.
Community Leader Killed in Grocery Store: A 74-year-old woman plowed her car into a Grocery Outlet in Kirkland this Sunday, injuring several people and killing well-known community volunteer Sheila Stanton. In January, Stanton was reappointed to the Washington State Commission on African American Affairs.
Muhammad Zahid Chaudhry Update: The Pakistan-born US military veteran will remain at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma while a judge determines if she has jurisdiction to proceed with his request for bond. ICE arrested Chaudhry during a citizenship interview in Tukwila last month.
Deportation Flights at All Time High, But: Immigration monitors say airlines are hiding the flights using dummy call signs and blocking the tail numbers from tracking websites. Fascist policies aren’t “brand safe.”
Venezuela Prepared for War with US: Over the holiday weekend, Nicolás Maduro said his country was at “maximum preparedness” and ready to respond if US forces deployed in the Caribbean attacked them. The US is deploying three Aegis-guided missile destroyers to waters off the Venezuelan coast to “combat” drug cartels. They’re set to arrive soon, an anonymous official told the AP. In response, the country’s defense minister announced he’d deploy vessels to the Gulf of Venezuela and the country’s “territorial waters” in the Caribbean to “combat” drug trafficking, too. Maduro calls the US show of force “an extravagant, unjustifiable, immoral, and absolutely criminal and bloody threat.”
If you’re wondering, “what the fuck??”—this all started in March 2020, when the Department of Justice publicly charged Venezuelan President Maduro with “narco-terrorism” for allegedly using cocaine “as a weapon to ‘flood’” the United States, which is a very exciting plot for an ’80s movie. Maduro has denied the allegations. The US has not presented any conclusive evidence that Maduro is trafficking cocaine; according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Venezuela doesn’t even make it. DEA Investigators have found 84 percent of cocaine seized in the US comes from Columbia. Peru makes cocaine too, and the drug passes through Mexico, Ecuador, and Central American countries. Venezuela isn’t on that list.
To Bring Us Back to the Present: On August 7, after a lot happened in the world over several years, US Attorney General Bondi announced a $50 million reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest, a weird thing to ask for when you’ve already filed charges, but whatever. Within hours, the US deployed 7 pirate ships war ships and 4,000 military personnel to Caribbean waters. It was odd timing: Just a few weeks before, Venezuela had swapped prisoners with the US and resumed oil exports through Chevron.
Meanwhile, On the Homefront: Nine (!) former heads (and acting heads) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote an op-ed for the New York Times to tell Americans that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. handling of public health is “unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency and unlike our country had ever experienced” and it’s endangering us all. This is obvious to anyone who has been paying attention to RFK Jr., but most of us have not run the fucking CDC.
Mom? Dad? Can I (Not) Kill Myself? Because of a new parental consent law, kids in Idaho can’t talk to the suicide hotline (988) unless they have a parent’s permission. In most cases, they just hang up, 988 Director Lee Flinn told the Idaho Capital Sun. Operators can make an exception if the kid has a plan and “lethal means,” but really wanting to kill themselves isn’t enough to meet the law’s standard of emergency.
Da Gays: Chicago Pope Leo XIV (14th) met with Rev. James Martin yesterday, one of the most prominent advocates for queer inclusion in the church. Martin says Leo intends to continue Pope Francis’ pro-LGBTQ policies. Though a flippy flopper on trans rights who said the Vatican had a “frociaggine” (faggotry) problem (was that what Spotlight was about?), Francis was decent on gay rights for a man whose title roughly meant “the most conservative man in the world.” (Additionally, Francis had no way of knowing the joy that comment would bring TikTok twinks, specifically.)
Old Dog Bows Out: New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler is retiring next year after 34 years in Congress. He told the AP he’s reluctant to step down while President Donald Trump is threatening US democracy with “incipient fascism,” but believed it was time to change over the guard. They’re looking tired and decrepit defending this crumbling blue parapet. “I’m not saying we should change over the entire party,” he said. (I am! Go on now! Git! Pokemon GET the fuck out of here.)
Greta Thunberg heads back to Gaza: The flotilla departed Barcelona, Spain yesterday with medical supplies, food, and 350 activists. A second flotilla is expected to leave Tunis, Tunisia Thursday. The last time Thurnberg sailed for Israel, Israel intercepted the yacht Maldeen and deported everyone on board. Israel’s foreign ministry called the humanitarian vessel a “selfie yacht” for bringing a celebrity activist and a symbolic amount of food, but then again, Israel has starved 13 people to death in the last 24 hours, bringing the total to around 361. It killed another 78 in attacks since dawn.
The US Suspended Visas for Palestinian Passport Holders: They won’t be able to travel to the US for medical treatment, for college, to visit relatives or to conduct business, officials told The New York Times.
