Good morning! We have a break from all the weather today. Expect some sun. Temps in the 50s. Not a drop of rain. The works.
Speaking of Weather: I hope your power is on. After we got walloped by a rain and windstorm on Saturday night, trees came down and took powerlines with them. At its peak, more than 310,000 households lost power, and as of Sunday evening, more than 100,000 of them were still in the dark. Most of the Puget Sound region is back up and running this morning, but if you’re one of the unlucky ones, today should be your last day lighting candles and plugging your phone in at the local coffee shop.
Support Your Local Food Pantry: They’re gonna need it. The USDA announced over the weekend that SNAP benefits are officially halting on November 1, thanks to the government shutdown. The Trump administration had already announced that it wouldn’t dip into the $5 billion they have in backup funds to keep the SNAP program moving—a program that helps one in eight families in the US buy groceries. The party of family values, ladies and gents.
That Government Shutdown Is on Day 26: Want to know how I know that? Because Donald Trump put a Shutdown Clock on the White House’s website. Flights to LAX were temporarily halted yesterday because of staffing shortages with air traffic controllers, who have been working without pay for 26 days. O’Hare, Newark, Reagan, and Teteboro had similar staffing issues this weekend. Real World contestant, competitive lumberjack, and current US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said it’s “a sign that the controllers are wearing thin.” Give us healthcare, and everyone gets their salaries back.
The ICE Crackdown in Chicago Keeps Getting Worse: And they’re crossing over into local politics. Last week, immigration officers pulled over a Democratic Illinois state lawmaker, tried to break his car window, and pulled a gun on him before letting him go with a warning for going door to door to alert residents that ICE was in the area. The next day, at least four US citizens were detained by ICE in the city’s largely Mexican neighborhood, Little Village, including two staffers for a city Alderman. And Trump is still threatening to jail the Illinois governor and Chicago’s mayor. They’re all scare tactics, but what Trump might not have considered? Illinois has an unusual number of congressional seats up for the election next year, and the state’s Dems are using this chaos in their campaigns to retake the House.
Freedom Wolves: After melting down over a Canadian ad over his tariffs, Trump now doesn’t want Colorado to import Canadian grey wolves into the state as part of their ongoing effort to repopulate the area with the apex predator. They now have to pull from wolf populations in the Northern Rockies, which isn’t a realistic option. But at least we won’t have any of those socialist wolves in our midst.
Trump 2028: To try to get around constitutional term limits, MAGA supporters have floated the idea that Trump could run as VP in 2028, with the understanding that the lead on the ticket would step down on day one. On Monday morning, Trump told reporters he doesn’t plan to try to run that gambit because that would be “too cute.” But he’d “love” to run for a third term.
In Probably Unrelated News: He’d really like to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un while he’s in Asia this week.
Election Day Is Coming: And based on the polling that The Stranger conducted with DHM Research, we know that the mayor’s race is all about turnout. When we polled the general population, Katie Wilson had a 12-point lead, but when we asked only likely voters, that lead shrank down to a statistical tie (she was still four points ahead, but the margin of error was 4.9 percent). What does that mean? Everyone has to get out there and vote.
So have you voted? No? Go get your ballot right now. Dig it out of your pile of mail and vote. And if you’re not registered yet, here’s how you can vote anyway. Not sure who to vote for? We’ve got you: the version for people who like to read our funny but highly informed endorsements; and the version for people who just like to be told what to do. And remember, USPS has new postmarking rules that means you’re not guaranteed a day-of postmark, so put it in a ballot drop box, not in the mail.
Why Are You Still Reading? Go vote.
Okay, if you’re still here, I’m assuming your ballot is already safely in a ballot box. I’m trusting you.
Area Man Tries to Get Famous on the Back of a Woman’s Accomplishments: More than 88 years after Amelia Earhart and her plane went down somewhere over the Pacific, Oregon archeologist Richard Pettigrew thinks he knows where it is. “We have a lot of evidence to go on, and I believe the chances are 9 out of 10 that it’s Amelia’s plane, but we won’t know until we go in there and take a look at it,” he said. On November 4, his team of 14 explorers leave for a tiny, remote island halfway between Australia and Hawaii called Nikumaroro in hopes that they’ll be the ones to find her long-lost plane.
King County Drops the Ball on Housing: The County Council commissioned an analysis of their progress to reach their housing goal: 308,677 new homes between 2019 and 2044, half of which would be affordable housing. According to the report, the County would need to scrounge up another $4 billion a year to meet those goals. If it stays at the pace it’s going right now, we’ll only build about a third of it.
There’s New Evidence in the CHOP Shooting: The wrongful death lawsuit that Antonio Mays Jr.’s father filed against the City of Seattle is headed to trial next week, and new video contradicts the City’s prevailing narrative of what happened in the minutes before the Black 16-year-old from Los Angeles was shot. You can read the Seattle Times’s four-part breakdown of the evidence here.
KING 5 Can’t Handle the Spice: That’s the only reason we can think of that they spent a whole news segment on unpermitted pop-up food trucks. Like Micah mentioned on Friday, King County public health officials shut down 17 unpermitted food vendors selling around Lumen Field during the Seahawks game last week, and Snohomish County is juggling a wash of complaints as well. The only person complaining in the news segment? A food truck competitor who did pay for his permits, and he’s grumpy about it. It’s worth watching the news segment just for the comments, though.
Turns Out Some Food Can Hurt You: But it’s probably not from a food truck. Hormel had to recall almost 5 million pounds of frozen, boneless chicken because customers were finding metal in the meat. The chicken was sold to food service companies, not directly to consumers, so you don’t have to go digging in your freezer unless you own a restaurant, hotel, or cafeteria.
Louvre Robbers Roped: French officials announced that they’ve made arrests in the motorized ladder-based jewelry heist that shocked Paris and delighted everyone else. Details are light: officials haven’t said if they arrested all four of the people who escaped via scooter after the heist, nor did they say whether or not the jewels were on them when they were arrested. Experts say the investigators are racing to find the jewels before they remove the gems and melt down the precious metals.
A Song for Your Monday: For no particular reason.
