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It’s Really Almost Over: We’ve got one more day of this heatwave, and then tomorrow we’re back to our perfect, mid-70s Seattle summer. In the meantime, make like a vampire: close the blinds, pull the curtains, find the nearest working AC, and wait for the sun to go down.
And while you’re sitting there, let’s do the news.
The FBI Is Still Looking for Travis Decker: Almost three months into this manhunt, 100 federal agents are bushwhacking through Eastern Washington to try to find one former Army ranger. They started an intensive two-day search on Monday for Travis Decker, the sole suspect in the June 2 suffocations of his three young daughters near a Leavenworth campground. Agents emphasized they still have no idea where he is, or if he’s even still alive. “You can’t be too thorough in a search like this,” the FBI’s Peter Orth said. “It is such incredibly dense vegetation that anybody who walks down one of these trails could walk 10 meters off the trail and no one would ever know they’re there.” US Marshals are offering a $20,000 reward for information that leads to his capture.
Trump Is Obsessed with Us: Trump is threatening to withhold more than $10 million in federal funding to Washington State if we don’t comply with his racist demand that truck drivers pass an English proficiency test that he himself probably can’t pass. The thing is, though, according to the fed’s investigation, we actually are enforcing his obviously racist policy: of the 6,000 safety violations Washington State’s Department of Transportation found since the new language rules were instated in June, four drivers have been taken off the road for their lack of English proficiency. He’s just throwing a fit because we haven’t screwed enough people over with his racist rule.
UberEats Eats Crow: Remember when City Council tried to undermine laws that protect delivery drivers? Well this morning, thousands of them are probably grateful that they couldn’t stick the landing. The food delivery app has agreed to pay more than $15 million to 16,120 Seattle drivers over (alleged) violations of the city’s pay transparency law. It’s less than $1,000 per driver, but it’s the largest ever reached by Seattle’s Office of Labor Standards.
Introducing the SS Good Boy: Seattle has way more dogs than it has kids, and Washington State Ferries finally got the message. Starting today, passengers can bring their leashed dogs into any of the passenger areas of the ferry (except the galley, they don’t serve kibbles, or bits). Because all dogs deserve to munch on a warm pretzel while taking in the views of the Sound without being blown in by the sea breeze. Just remember that it’s still your responsibility to clean up after them and do keep reactive dogs in their own little corner. This is just a pilot program through February, but if all our pups are Good Boys, they might get to be permanent indoor passengers.
Some Housekeeping News! The Stranger has a new sibling: the famous Chicago Reader. Our parent company, Noisy Creek, has acquired the Reader, the country’s oldest and longest-running alt weekly, and we’re so excited to welcome them into the family. If you’re not familiar with the Reader‘s work, you’re missing out: here’s their recent feature about trans guys getting acquainted with their new dicks, their investigation into a lab that misled courts on cannabis DUI cases, or if you want to go back in time, their award-winning 1992 feature, “A Simple Game,” which is some of the best writing you’ll ever find about high school basketball. And you can read more about this news here!
Israel Strikes Hospital Twice, Calls It a “Tragic Mishap”: At least 20 people were killed, including five journalists, members of the medical staff, rescue workers and patients. Dozens more were injured. Netanyahu’s office tried to frame the attack—two strikes on a hospital—as a mistake. “Israel deeply regrets the tragic mishap that occurred today at the Nasser Hospital,” the office said in a statement. It went on to lie that “Israel values the work of journalists, medical staff and all civilians.” At least 192 journalists have been killed in Gaza. Over 1,000 healthcare workers have been killed. And by Israel’s own estimate, more than 80 percent of everyone killed in their ongoing siege of Gaza have been civilians.
Microsoft Struggles to Understand How Consequences Work: The Redmond-based company, and the world’s largest software maker, has provided Israel with technology to surveil Palestinians throughout the genocide in Gaza, and now they’re really bummed that they keep dealing with pro-Palestinian protests at their conferences and on their campuses. It hurt their feelings enough that they asked for the FBI’s help tracking the protests. (Microsoft has announced that their investigating how Israel is using their tech.) They’ve also worked with local authorities to try and prevent them, fired employees staging disruptive events, flagged internal emails containing keywords like “Gaza” and deleted some internal posts about the protests, according to Bloomberg’s reporting. I know an easier way to get these protests to stop.
Utah Republicans Try to Steal Some Congressional Seats, Fails (for Now): A district court judge (respectfully) told the Utah legislature where to put their gerrymandered congressional map on Monday. The current map, which the Republican-run legislature adopted in 2021, divides Salt Lake County—Utah’s Democratic stronghold—between the state’s four congressional districts, all of which have since elected Republicans by wide margins. Who could have expected such an outcome? The judge ordered the state legislature to redraw the maps by November, because they had circumvented the independent commission that’s meant to keep the state legislature from doing, well, exactly this. With a slim margin in the US House, Republicans’ only chance of holding onto all of Utah’s seats is to appeal this decision to death, in the hopes of delaying it until the 2028 elections.
Meet the Pygmy Seahorse: They’re an inch long. They have a stubby nose like a pug. They’ve evolved to look like the poisonous coral they live in, either pink or yellow. The males carry the fertilized eggs until they mature. “All seahorses do that,” you say? Sure, but these guys one upped them: They tuck them into their lil quasi-uteruses, and give birth to them out of a little slit. Chinese and German scientists wanted to understand how these little guys evolved, so they sequenced their genome, and found out that they diverged from average-sized seahorses 18 million years ago, when our continents were still drifting toward their current positions and Africa and Eurasia were starting to crash together. “But most striking was how much DNA had gone missing from the pygmy sea horse’s genome,” the New York Times wrote. “Pygmy sea horses had lost 438 entire genes that are found in other sea horses. Another 635 genes have lost enough DNA that they no longer work, and 5,135 genes have lost nearby genetic switches, so that they no longer turn on in response to certain signals.”
Pygmy Seahorse 🩷
super macro photography
📷: Álvaro Herrero
— america.is.not.free (@antifapatriot.bsky.social) August 23, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Bumbershoot is almost upon us, and we’re giving you previews of the artists we’re stoked about throughout the week (don’t sleep on Stranger Arts Editor Emily Nokes’s interview with Fleetwood Snack). But consider this your essential reminder that Janelle Monae will be performing this weekend. I’m going to assume Dirty Computer is still recent enough in your memory (if it’s not, allow me to direct you to “Django Jane” and” Make Me Feel,” you heathen), so for your song this morning, let’s go back to 2010, for “Tightrope.” I saw Monae live the year this came out (back when she was opening for Of Montreal), and it was easily one of the best shows I’ve ever been to. Don’t miss it.
![Janelle Monáe - Tightrope (feat. Big Boi) [Official Music Video]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pwnefUaKCbc/hqdefault.jpg)