The Stranger’s morning news roundup.

by Hannah Krieg

Weather: Today will not be as nice as yesterday, so I’m really sorry if you didn’t drink prosecco outside with your dear friends in the sunshine. I sure did! But you can definitely still spend time outside this fine Thursday— we’ll get a high of 68, we’ll just have a little more cloud cover than Wednesday. Not too bad!

Florida’s not so lucky:

Sunrise revealed ongoing water rescues one day after catastrophic flooding in South Florida. 20″ of rain fell between Miami and Fort Lauderdale the last two days. Another 3-6″+ of rain is expected today with the next round of downpours only a few hours away. #FLwx pic.twitter.com/4JCJajTCMO

— Brandon Orr (@BrandonOrrWPLG) June 13, 2024

Hold up: Remember Council President Sara Nelson’s big hurry to repeal the gig delivery driver minimum wage ordinance? Well, the council was supposed to vote on it May 28, but now the council won’t even tell the Seattle Times when they will get around to it. Council Member Joy Hollingsworth will host a stakeholdering meeting today to talk about the amendments she’s working on. She may meet with the competing parties again next week, too. Her amendments need to be pretty strong if she wants to help Nelson pass some version of this repeal. They really don’t seem to have the numbers to pass this thing anymore. 

FBI: A woman came into the Seattle FBI building yesterday afternoon with a gun pointed at her chest, according to KIRO 7. No one got hurt, but she’s in custody now.

VIDEO | Footage of police surrounding the FBI building in Seattle at gunpoint

They have shut down the roads#breaking #seattle #washington

pic.twitter.com/Zmi1XuInsS

— Bobby Ellison (@BobbyEllisonKY) June 12, 2024

So long: UW President Ana Mari Cauce announced yesterday that she will step down at the end of her term next June. Cauce claimed she planned all along to call it quits after her second term in the role, but I think if I were a student from the recently disbanded encampment protest, I would take some credit for giving her a little hell the past few weeks. 

Contempt: All but one Republican voted yesterday to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over audio recordings of President Joe Biden’s interviews as part of a probe into his handling of classified materials. Garland said it was “deeply disappointing” that the House “turned a serious congressional authority into a partisan weapon” that “disregards the constitutional separation of powers” and undermines the Justice Department’s responsibility to protect its investigations. Besides, Congress already has access to a written transcript of the Biden interviews. 

Breaking: The Supreme Court unanimously agreed that the morons who sued the Food and Drug Administration for approving a widely used abortion pill did not have the right to sue, and so they rejected the case. That’s nice for now. In another case, a majority of the justices sided with Starbucks, which means it will now be more difficult for courts to protect the jobs of workers fired for organizing. Boo. 

Ceasefire now: Hamas proposed changes to the US-backed ceasefire deal. According to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, some of those changes are “workable” and others are not. Blinken didn’t give much detail, but in general he expressed frustration that Hamas had not accepted. Meanwhile, Hamas says they haven’t heard Israeli officials saying they’d accept the deal, they’ve only heard the US insisting that Israel would accept the deal, so they don’t think they are the ones slow-rolling the situation. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to insist the war will only end once they “destroy” Hamas and free the hostages. As for the amendments, Hamas spokesman Jihad Taha said that they “aim to guarantee a permanent ceasefire and complete Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza,” the AP wrote. 

Crimes against humanity: A United Nations inquiry found that Hamas committed war crimes in its October 7 attack. This includes torture, murder, outrages upon personal dignity, and inhuman or cruel treatment. The report also found that Israel did all that shit and used starvation as an act of warfare, which amounts to a crime against humanity. The report notes the scale of Israel’s actions: “The immense numbers of civilian casualties in Gaza and widespread destruction of civilian objects and infrastructure were the inevitable result of a strategy undertaken with intent to cause maximum damage, disregarding the principles of distinction, proportionality and adequate precautions.”

Get fucked, Putin: At the Group of Seven summit, the US and some European countries agreed to a lil scheme where they’ll lock up about $300 billion in Russian assets and use the windfall profits to pay for a $50 billion loan for Ukraine.

End of an era: Twitter (I know it is called “X,” but I just can’t say that without compromising my morals) just made “likes” private, so we can no longer catch Ted Cruz liking porn clips on main. Some people seem to be taking advantage of the change.

Now that twitter likes are private, there’s a man who is currently scrolling through my media tab and liking every boob selfie. He just reached 2021. Huge day for him. pic.twitter.com/doD5oTQLfr

— cinnamon bun (@notsofiacoppola) June 12, 2024

ICYMI: Did anyone notice that the City took down the chain-link fence in the middle of Cal Anderson? Parks and Rec put up the fence after it demolished the Black Lives Memorial garden at the end of December, presumably to keep gardeners from replanting. It really cramped my style for several months. Like, why is the lawn in jail? Libs really only have one strategy to handle shit they don’t like, huh? Anyways, super glad I got to sit in that space again. 

PANIC: Ashley sang this song at karaoke on Tuesday btw.

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