The Stranger’s morning news roundup.

by Vivian McCall

Happy Juneteenth! On this day in 1865, Union soldiers marched on Galveston Bay, Texas to announce that the more than 250,000 enslaved people in the state were free. It’s a nice day ahead for those celebrating in Seattle. After more than a week of below normal temperatures, we’ll ascend to the high 70s today and stay warm until Sunday, when we drop down again.

Cafe Racer is closing: Just six months after linking up with Allied Arts Foundation and reopening as a nonprofit arts space, Cafe Racer is closing its Capitol Hill venue on 11th Ave on June 30th. According to Capitol Hill Seattle blog, it will live on as a “nonprofit community driven arts organization” and continue supporting Washington-based music online.

Save Scarecrow video! The University-District-video-store-turned-nonprofit-video-library could close unless it raises $1.8 million by the end of the year. It’s the same story dogging all of our city’s arts organizations: donations are down and costs are up. Fuck! I genuinely shouted into a quiet, empty office when I read the Seattle Times story about this. Scarecrow is a Seattle treasure, an institution, one of the genuinely cool places. Ephemeral, ever-disappearing streaming video can’t replace their robust physical library, one of the biggest publicly available video collections in the country. Losing it would mean losing a piece of our municipal soul. Don’t let it happen!

SOS – Save Our Scarecrow

Read our open letter to the communityhttps://t.co/rtFtMtUShl pic.twitter.com/7u7p3MQ7Zq

— ScarecrowVideo (@ScarecrowVideo) June 18, 2024

Seattle fines the Belltown Hellcat guy: Miles Hudon, 20, driver of the most hated Dodge Charger in Seattle (which is saying something) is accused of racing through the city at night and waking people with a thunderous, coughing exhaust pipe. Yesterday, a Seattle court ordered him to pay $83,000 in municipal fines for not responding to a City lawsuit against him within 20 days. Hudson, who didn’t fully comply with an SPD inspection of his car last week, arrived at court wearing a balaclava and dark sunglasses.

ICYMI: The Seattle Public Library is still reeling from last month’s cyber attack, which took out the WiFi, printers, Interlibrary loans, and the ability to return physical media. SPL wouldn’t let our freelancer Charlie Lahud-Zaher talk to library staff or admin, so Lahud-Zaher just hung around instead, observing how librarians were making do.

Most Americans like DEI: Last year, the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action and kicked the door down for conservative challenges to “woke” Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs in the public and private sectors. Turns out, people like them, meaning these programs are probably not the reeducation camp conservatives say they are. (Well, it’s either that or America must have already gone full communist). Roughly 6 in 10 Americans told the Washington Post and Ipsos pollsters that DEI was a good thing, a number that rose to 7 in 10 when the term was well-defined for them. Most said the effect was either neutral or positive. Only 14 percent of respondents said DEI hurt them personally. 

Thailand gets gayer: Thailand will become the first nation in Southeast Asia to legalize same-sex marriage after the kingdom’s senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of marriage equality. Only four members opposed the bill. The law won’t officially be law until the King signs off on it, but that’ll most likely happen. Gay couples in Thailand should be able to legally marry this year.

Club Q shooter pleads guilty to 74 charges: Shooter Anderson Lee Aldrich, who killed five people and injured a dozen more at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 2022 accepted a plea deal in connection with federal hate crime charges. He’ll never get out. A judge sentenced him to 55 concurrent life sentences, followed by 190 years imprisonment. Last year, Aldrich was already sentenced to 2,000 years imprisonment.

Noam Chomsky is alive, but we thought he was dead for a second: Here’s what happened. Last year, a stroke put Chomsky in the hospital. Yesterday, the doctors discharged him from the hospital to continue treatment at home. The hospital put out a statement about it, and then rumors of his death circulated the internet. The New Statesman and Jacobin published obits, which the latter headlined “We Remember Noam Chomsky,” before changing it to “Let’s Celebrate Noam Chomsky,” which is a charming way to fix a grievous journalistic oopsie. Surely, this event has prompted newsrooms across the world to prepare their obits for one of the world’s most prominent leftist intellectuals, if they haven’t got them in the can already. The man is 95, after all. We wish him good health.

pic.twitter.com/eg5x2786QH

— Mr. Thank You (@c0mmunicants) June 18, 2024

Northern heat wave: A heatwave is hitting an area that stretches east from Maine past Chicago with triple-digit heat dangerous enough to kill people. With projected temperatures ranging from 10 to 25 degrees higher than average for this time of year, more than 100 places are expected to break record highs through the weekend.

Get up to date on the conservative master plan for Trump’s reelection: If America is a beach, Project 2025 is the tsunami wave that threatens to slam into the shore and carry off our umbrellas, chairs, and sunscreen right along with our democracy. People are talking about it after a John Oliver segment this weekend, and if you’re not up on the particulars, then there’s no time like the present to become horribly, miserably familiar with them.  As described in this New York Times article, extremist conservatives are already laying the groundwork for Donald Trump’s return to office. Also for the Times, this guy read every page of the behemoth. NPR did a half-hour on the plan. Here’s Oliver’s segment:

John Oliver on Project 2025 and a second Trump term.

I was going to clip this segment out into shorter sections but decided to keep it together because it’s too important and, frankly, it should terrify you. pic.twitter.com/Kaqo07lurB

— Blue Georgia (@BlueATLGeorgia) June 18, 2024

Girls to the front: After 39 years of sidelining the series named for her, Zelda is finally getting her legend. Nintendo announced The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom at its Nintendo Direct showcase Tuesday. I’m excited for this one.

The Stranger