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Last Month This Month is a recap of all the previous month’s news, featuring headlines from Slog AM. Find it in every issue of The Stranger! Subscribe to our daily Slog AM newsletter here.
This September was the worst September ever. And we mean that. A September to remember and never forget. There’s never been another September this awful. We will never forget this September and this September alone.
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Goodbye to the Americone Dream! Jerry Greenfield, the Jerry of Ben & Jerry’s, resigned this week after 47 years of making the maw of America feel so good. B&J sold their cream palace to megacorp Unilever in 2000, on the condition that they could continue social activism. But last year, the company allegedly tried to silence their call for a ceasefire in Gaza, according to a suit from B&J. Ben Cohen is staying, but he’s no soft serve. He was arrested for disrupting a May Senate hearing while protesting the US military funding for Israel. They should have thanked him. RFK Jr. was speaking.
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Autism is over. In a Scooby Doo–esque unmasking in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump and RFK Jr. revealed the culprit. It’s Tylenol, and it would have gotten away with making the world more interested in niche things if those meddlesome geriatrics hadn’t made up a bunch of science about a fever aid.
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Three trans women were beaten by a group of men on Capitol Hill. As we reported, it was at least the fifth group beating since last June. In one case, random men on the street joined in.
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As the University Bridge rose one Tuesday afternoon, a driver fleeing SPD jumped the gap, which is illegal but fucking sick as hell. The cops found the car totaled, but still running. This Righteous Knievel is still rockin’ and rollin’ (police are looking).
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Trump is cool. His hands and penis? Normal to large. His veins? Functioning. Don’t mind us, we’re just practicing for government censorship after Trump formally declared that everyone he hates is an antifa terrorist. As a reminder, antifa is not an organization. The name actually means anti-fascist.
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If you don’t toe the fascist line these days, your middling talk show will get cancelled. Then, after your cancellation sends Disney stocks plummeting ahead of a Disney+ price increase, it’ll get uncancelled. At least that’s what happened to Jimmy Kimmel for light commentary about Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Karen Attiah, the Black columnist at the Washington Post who was fired for her reasonable comments about Kirk, did not get her job back, nor did the dozens (hundreds?) of people who lost their jobs for posting about Kirk on social media. And this is not over. Though we have learned Disney adults control the economy.
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Oh, yeah, Charlie Kirk got assassinated. A sniper shot him in the throat during a debate at a Utah Valley University event. The killer turned out to be a 22-year-old irony-pilled white man who inscribed his bullets with memes. His ideology is still unclear.
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Two Colorado teens were shot by their radicalized classmate on the same day as the assassination, the 47th school shooting in 2025. But who gives a shit, right?
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The US military keeps destroying little boats off the coast of Venezuela and in the Caribbean, killing alleged members of drug cartels. Trump claims he has the power to summarily kill these people under the laws of war. Experts say he doesn’t. But again, who gives a shit? We’re a post-law, post-truth society. Bombs away, gentlemen.
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Doing the important work in the midst of attacks on free speech and the encroachment of an authoritarian regime on our personal liberties, Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison filed roughly $40,000 in civil penalties against three local taggers. “If you vandalize the Emerald City, you will pay,” said Davison. Shut up, Ann.
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In a virtual meeting with her supporters, Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson laid out a plan to stay employed. The key strategy: “bump up my sort of anti-Trump rhetoric, or acknowledge that we’re under attack, or whatever.” Very inspiring, Sara.
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City council voted 7-2 to expand police surveillance in Seattle this week, despite clear risks of police abuse and federal overreach. Public commenters pleaded for the council to take their concerns seriously for more than two and a half hours. It was clear most of them came to the dais with their minds made up. It’s great, actually. Friends and family, especially our big brothers, will have footage of the authorities dragging away their loved ones. They used to have to imagine it!
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After 13 years of federal oversight, US District Judge James Robart lifted the consent decree on the Seattle Police Department. They’ve been bad boys and girls (and bad boys to those girls, actually), and we really should be keeping an eye on them. With these new cameras, they’ll be keeping an eye on us. But, hell, at least Judge Robart can forget about those pesky, lingering accountability issues and focus on golf or something.
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Actor, director, timeless hottie, and activist Robert Redford died at his home in Provo, Utah. He was 89. Maybe the only 89-year-old too young to die. Watch The Sting and shoot ropes in his memory.
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Great, another orca calf is dead. Add it to the list of dead orca calves. Alki, a female orca in the J Pod, was spotted near the San Juan Islands pushing her dead calf through the water to keep it as close to her as possible. The good news: J Pod has a new orca calf. Hopefully this one lives, but who knows? Our environment is still degrading. The orcas are starving. We as a society can’t spare the energy to care about it beyond these headlines. Anyway, how ’bout those Mariners?
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Brazil’s Supreme Court convicted former President Jair Bolsonaro of plotting a failed coup d’état to overturn the 2022 election, disband the courts, hand power to the military, and assassinate the then-president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Manifesting accountability.
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Good news for fans of women’s sports and fingering women! Rough & Tumble announced they’re opening a second women’s sports bar! Coming (ha ha) this October to Columbia City.
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The One Seattle Plan, an initiative meant as a comprehensive road map for the city’s future growth, had more than 100 amendments, which is too many to begin with, and the shortsighted city council shot down pretty much all of the good ones. Those brainiacs cut back density in a number of proposed neighborhood growth centers and greenlit new tree protections. “Tree protections” sounds good, but it’s not. We already protected the trees. These are restrictions that make building onerous. The Lorax wouldn’t be fooled, and that guy is single-issue.
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NASA might have found evidence of a long gone microbial environment on rocks in a dry river channel. Not a euphemism for bacterial vaginosis. This indicates there may have been life on Mars. It’s inconclusive, but certainly something, the scientists say (for now). With all the federal cuts, it’s incredible that we’re even learning about this.
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Bad news for needlephobes, good news for needlephiles: Washington State is committed to protecting our access to vaccines. And no, they’re not going to hold down those hippie freaks on Vashon or whatever island that was and inject mind-control drugs into their tykes. They’re providing a choice.
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Meanwhile, Florida, land of fools and oranges, plans to become the first state to eliminate all vaccine mandates. The A-Team is coming back: tuberculosis, polio, rubella, mumps, and, though he took some convincing, whooping cough.