It’s time to dig through your pile of unpaid bills and Safeway coupons. We’ve got a special election coming, and your ballot’s due on Tuesday. Let's get into it. 

At its simplest, King County Proposition 1 is a levy renewal. It would continue funding the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), a massive biometric database that stores over 3 million fingerprint and palm print records and helps police connect prints left at crime scenes to people. It also confirms the identities of arrestees, preventing people from being wrongfully detained or released under false names.

On its face, Prop 1 may seem tempting enough. This is, after all, a levy with no organized opposition (as you’ll see on your ballot), endorsed by nearly all King County Councilmembers (yep, even the ones you like), and designed to renew a decades-old program that helps solve crimes and identify the dead, sometimes those beyond recognition. It’s relatively inexpensive—about $24 a year for the average homeowner—and funds forensic infrastructure across 39 cities and unincorporated King County.

There’s no question that it’s better for local police departments to share a centralized, taxpayer-funded forensic system than to duplicate these services piecemeal at additional public cost. The people who currently run AFIS do seem to take privacy concerns seriously. Additionally, the system doesn’t store citizenship data, and it complies with King County’s ban on facial recognition. As of now, AFIS doesn’t collaborate with ICE (because of the Keep Washington Working Act), doesn’t scoop up facial scans, and doesn’t seem particularly interested in expanding beyond its current scope.

But what if that changes? But even reasonable-sounding systems can be dangerous when left unscrutinized. Surveillance overreach isn’t tinfoil hat anymore. It’s a Tuesday. And surveillance tools rarely stay in their lane for long. We can't afford to blindly renew government tracking tools—no matter how routine—without first demanding detailed accountability, privacy protections, and public oversight.

We asked Tee Shannon, the Technology Policy Program Director at the ACLU of Washington, and she flagged serious concerns about AFIS—from its potential for abuse to the lack of public transparency around how the system actually works. While the ACLU hasn’t taken an official stance on Prop 1 (they didn’t last time either), Shannon made it clear that questions about how this biometric data is managed, and what might happen to it down the line—are more urgent than ever in today’s political climate. Could this data be repurposed later? Used in ways the public never agreed to? That uncertainty alone should give us pause.

AFIS is a surveillance system, and like all surveillance systems, it lives inside a criminal legal infrastructure with a long and ongoing track record of racism, data misuse, and mission creep. And right now, this system operates with little meaningful public oversight, and just as little transparency about how it impacts the communities most likely to be swept up in it.

Back in 2018, we told voters to reject the AFIS levy because it came bundled with facial recognition software, tech we didn’t want then and still don’t trust now. To their credit, the county banned facial recognition in 2021, and AFIS officials say the software has been disabled. But pay special attention to that word: disabled, not deleted. Not dismantled. 

We shouldn’t expect the erosion of civil liberties to creep at a snail's place. Change is coming at the speed and volume of an avalanche. The federal government is hoarding surveillance powers and conducting warrantless data grabs. It’s proudly throwing immigrants like Kilmar Ábrego García in foreign prisons they may never escape. And the ICE snatch job on Rumeysa Ozturk, taken into an unmarked van by plainclothes federal agents, looked awfully like a secret police operation. Our civil liberties aren’t being chipped away at, they’re being jackhammered. So forgive us if we’re slightly suspicious of any system that collects biometric data on hundreds of thousands of people, promises it’s “just for fingerprints,” and asks us to trust that it will never, ever be used for anything nefarious.

This time around, Prop 1 supporters say there’s nothing to worry about. No facial recognition. No new biometrics. No big expansion. Just a routine renewal. Just trust us.

We’d be skeptical of that any day, but today? Today the federal government is pulling every lever it can find to surveil the population and amass information that can support its agenda of mass deportations—and that’s just what’s happening three months into the administration. 

Prop 1 allows data collected by AFIS to be shared with state and federal agencies—including the FBI—without any clear, enforceable restrictions. Once that data leaves King County’s hands, the Keep Washington Working Act (which keeps Washington law enforcement from participating in immigration enforcement) doesn’t protect our state’s immigrants. The data AFIS collects can be repurposed for uses that are opaque to the public and often hostile to civil liberties.

Worse, the public has no real way to see how the system is being used. AFIS doesn’t publish regular audits or racial breakdowns of whose prints are in the system. There are no citizen oversight bodies empowered to review its operations. There are no requirements for public disclosure when policies change or technologies expand.

AFIS is a biometric dragnet in an era when rights are increasingly fragile, and when the difference between “not used for this” and “can’t legally be used for this” matters more than ever.

Supporters of Prop 1 argue that rejecting this levy will delay investigations, hurt cold case resolution, and force local departments to pay more for worse systems. That might be true. But that’s an indictment of how little effort has been made to rebuild AFIS into something accountable and transparent, not a reason to keep funding it without conditions.

Voting no on Prop 1 is a vote demanding more from a system that has quietly amassed the biometric data of millions of people and is asking for our continued trust with almost no strings attached. 

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Surveillance systems don’t get safer when we stop paying attention. They expand when we’re distracted. They deepen when we stop asking questions. And eventually, predictably, they turn toward us.

We’re in a crisis of government, morality, and sanity right now. Anything that helps authoritarianism is worth saying no to, and finding new ways to make it work. 

We urge you to vote “No” on King County Proposition No 1. 

OPENINGS

Akebono Japanese Cuisine
This traditional Japanese restaurant serving "sushi, sashimi, rolls, rice bowls, teriyaki, katsu, tempura, ramen, bento and more" opened its doors in Ravenna last week.
Ravenna

Every day, I sift through the hundreds of tracks that bombard my inbox. On a biweekly basis, I tell you about the two artists whose music most impressed me. This time, it's Chicago's Hieroglyphic Being's acid-house renovations and Seattle quintet Dining Dead's acerbic art rock.

Hieroglyphic Being, “I'm in a Strange Loop” (Smalltown Supersound)

Chicago producer Hieroglyphic Being (aka Jamal Moss) has been making spines tingle, skulls vibrate, and asses move for nearly 30 years. (Anyone who caught HB at 2013's Debacle Fest can attest to the man's ability to bring the heat live.) With deep roots in the Windy City's paradigm-shifting house scene, Moss nonetheless has gone off on radical tangents from that fertile dance-music source with releases on several prestigious labels, including Planet Mu, Soul Jazz, and RVNG Intl. He's part of an elite cadre of electronic musicians who have maintained phenomenal quality control for decades; others include Jeff Mills, Robert Hood, Surgeon, and Autechre. 

While acid house—and various mutations thereof—has been Moss's main mode, his output has been anything but one-dimensional. With the J.I.T.U. Ahn-Sahm-Buhl (featuring Sun Ra Arkestra legend Marshall Allen), Moss explores the seldom-trodden intersection of club music and avant-garde jazz. See 2015's We Are Not the First for a prime example of their unique fusions. He's also delved into bizarre strains of ambient music with his "Imaginary Landscapes" series. 

On Wednesday, the Washington State Senate passed HB 1971, a first-of-its-kind bill from House Rep. Nicole Macri that compels insurance companies in the state to cover up to a year’s supply of hormone replacement therapy, starting in January 2026. Now it's on its way to the governor's desk. For trans people, whose health care is under federal attack, it’s coming at a clutch time.

Insurers typically cover a one to three month supply of most drugs, including hormones. Their rationale is that dispensing any more than that at a time comes with the risk of paying for drugs they didn’t have to pay for, like if someone switches insurance plans before they’re due for a refill (or, like, dies unexpectedly).

Rep. Macri thought an exception was in order after seeing the results of a survey from the state LGBTQ commission that found trans and nonbinary people across the state were very worried about losing access to their medications.

Whether you're blazing for 4/20 or praising during Easter this weekend, there's plenty of fun to be had on this two-fer holiday weekend. Step out for happenings from OUR Fest to Stoner Chicks Improv's 4/20 Show and from CHASM to an Earth Day Market. For more ideas, check out our top picks of the week.

FRIDAY

CLASSES & WORKSHOPS

Lay Your Burden Down Sewing Circle
The Seattle Art Museum's 2024–25 Constance W. Rice Fellow, Carina A. del Rosario, has exhibited widely in public exhibitions and installations throughout the state. (Maybe you've spotted one of her pieces at a bus stop, the Danny Woo International Garden, or along the city's Central Area Greenway.) Drop by the museum for this art activity with del Rosario and you'll be contributing to Lay Your Burden Down, her "participatory fellowship project." The artist asks that participants share a current burden on mulberry paper, then help sew and embroider these burdens onto fabric. Best part? The textile artwork that you helped create will be installed at Seattle Asian Art Museum once complete. LINDSAY COSTELLO
(Seattle Asian Art Museum, Capitol Hill, free)

Good morning! It’s Friday. The sun’s out. The birds are singing. We’re hitting 71 degrees today. So let’s ruin it by talking about the news.

Trump Tries to Use IRS as a Weapon: Do I need to say that that’s not normal? It’s not normal. After Harvard refused to comply with a list of the Trump administration's demands (including reporting foreign students and reducing the power of students and faculty over university affairs), Trump has called for the IRS to revoke the school’s tax exempt status. The IRS, an agency that has been intentionally independent of the president since the Nixon administration, is “weighing” the decision now.

We’re putting newly announced events on your radar—lucky you! The Marías will bring their bilingual indie pop to WaMu Theater this summer. Lucy Dacus, queer icon and one-third of boygenius, is on tour supporting her fourth solo album Forever is a Feeling. Plus, N.W.A legend Ice Cube will speak truth to power on a retrospective tour of his four-decade career. Read on for details plus some news you can use.

ON SALE FRIDAY, APRIL 18

MUSIC

Black Kray
The Crocodile (Tues June 3)

Buddy Guy - Damn Right Encore
Paramount Theatre (Sat Aug 16)

Collie Buddz
The Showbox (Sun Aug 31)

Bar del Corso
The cozy, intimate Beacon Hill bar specializing in Neapolitan-style pizza is taking full advantage of the fresh crop of produce with savory small plates like roasted asparagus, roasted artichokes, and nettle farrotto with king trumpet mushrooms, plus elegant, unfussy desserts like rhubarb polenta cake and buttermilk panna cotta with huckleberry compote.
Beacon Hill

As the weather gets warmer and the sun gets brighter, let’s remember to shut up about other people’s bodies!

This is a special fuck you to the woman who loudly commented to her companion that she could see my bike shorts and sports bra through my thin dress. Not just one comment, a slew of them!

Seattle Children’s Hospital is declining to provide gender-affirming surgery for transgender patients under 19 again, according to a patient and sources familiar with hospital policy.

Last week, a doctor at the hospital told a 17-year-old trans teen that the hospital wouldn’t perform his masculinizing top surgery until he turned 19, according to him and his family. The hospital did not respond to The Stranger’s requests for comment.

Back in February, The Stranger broke the news that the hospital decided to halt gender-affirming surgeries. A 16-year-old boy, who we called Ethan to protect his privacy, had gotten a call from hospital staff on his way home from school, indefinitely postponing his surgery half a day before it was scheduled.

The call was a shock, but the reason was clear. President Donald Trump had just issued an executive order that banned all trans care for people under 19. Trump’s government considers all medical intervention, puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and surgery, to be chemical and surgical mutilation. The order threatened the federal funding of any hospital or research institution that defied it. Across the country, hospitals folded almost instantly. (As we’re all learning, a lot of stuff, including hospitals, states and universities, need federal funding the way cars need oil).

A major research institution, Seattle Children’s was no exception. According to a court filing in support of Attorney General Nick Brown’s later lawsuit to block Trump’s order, millions of dollars and potentially hundreds of jobs were on the line. At the time, that filing was not public and the hospital wasn’t saying much, only cancelling gender-affirming procedures and removing mentions of surgery from its website.

A week after Brown announced his suit with the Attorneys General of Oregon and Minnesota, a federal judge blocked Trump’s order. From the courthouse steps, AG Brown encouraged hospitals to go back to work. Seattle Children’s said in a statement that Brown’s suit gave it the “clarity it needed at this time to deliver on our mission while ensuring we operate within all applicable laws.” It started rescheduling surgeries, including Ethan’s the week, said his mother Sarah, whose name we’ve also changed to protect her privacy..

Last month, Brown’s office also alleged the National Institutes of Health disobeyed the judge’s order by cancelling a grant for the hospital’s research into gender-affirming care.. The judge didn’t see the connection, noting the grants at Children’s that Trump had left untouched.

Grey’s family had more warning than Sarah and Ethan, but the news was no less frustrating for him and his family.

Grey, 17, whose name we’ve changed for his protection, said on a phone call with The Stranger and his mother that he’d been on the waitlist for top surgery. But when he had his consultation last week, the surgeon and his staff told Grey the hospital couldn’t operate before he turned 19.

The surgeon delivered the news matter-of-factly and didn’t explain why Grey had to wait, he says. The surgeon may not have betrayed his feelings, but one employee later had, grumbling that Trump was responsible.

Then he says one employee handed him a sheet of paper that warned him about “the rare but serious risk of regret” and warned of “permanent physical changes.” While every surgery carries the possibility of regret, the risk is far lower for gender-affirming surgery compared to other procedures. A review of 27 studies that involved 8,000 patients from Europe, Canada, and the US  found on average about 1 percent of teens and adults expressed regret.

The hospital did not respond to The Stranger’s questions about why it’s again drawing the line at surgery.

If it’s an attempt to shield funding, it’s a bad one. The hospital could stop these surgeries forever and its funding would still be at risk if it continued to prescribe hormones and puberty blockers, as was the case the last time the hospital halted surgeries. It still seems to be the case. Grey, who gets his testosterone from doctors at Children’s gender clinic, which operates separately from the gender affirming surgical program, says he hasn’t lost his prescription.

Surgery is by far the least common treatment for trans kids. Relatively few want or need surgery (and plenty are happy to call it a day with a new set of pronouns, a haircut, a name swap, and a shopping trip for new clothes—also called social transition). Those few who get it are usually trans boys and non-binary kids getting breast tissue removed, reducing their dysphoria and allowing them to stop binding their chests. Like an extremely tight sports bra, the compression hurts.   

Trump’s order does not consider surgery to be any better or worse than hormones. By the government’s definition, all trans care is mutilation and castration. It's about as measured as a stick of dynamite and surely designed to blow up the field as it exists today.

Doctors rarely operate on trans minors. A Reuters and Komodo Health Inc. analysis of insurance claims found that in the US, doctors performed 776 top surgeries on patients aged 13 to 17 between 2019 and 2021. Genital surgeries were even rarer, only 56 in the same time period (Seattle Children’s, like most US hospitals, doesn’t offer it to minors). Researchers at Harvard also found “little to no utilization” of surgery on minors–97 percent of breast-reduction surgeries on minors were on teens with gynecomastia, a hormonal condition that causes cis boys and men to grow breasts. 

Republicans have exploited the fear they’ve stoked about transgender kids for the last five years, steadily introducing thousands of  bills to ban or even criminalize their care, to keep them out of sports and to prevent them from being themselves at school. Speaking of school, during the campaign, Trump told voters that kids were going to class in the morning as one gender and coming home surgically altered that afternoon, a claim so plainly absurd it borders on confusing science with magic. But to an American who knows next to nothing about trans issues, it can sound at least plausible, even if it doesn’t really make much sense.

Study after study have found gender-affirming care improves the lives of children and adults. Claims that trans care has been “debunked” or is based on “low-quality evidence” are false. As are notions that gender-affirming care is less-regulated in the US, or that Europe has uniformly restricted such care. Gender-affirming care has a long history, but is regularly called “experimental.” Drugs used for gender transition are called dangerous when doctors regularly prescribe the very same medications to cisgender children for different medical reasons.

There is also no other known treatment for gender dysphoria and no evidence that waiting helps. There are those who say there’s no such thing as a trans kid, but they must be walking around with very dark sunglasses and cotton balls stuffed into their ears. These kids simply do exist. Still, the government crackdown continues. Last week, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, now led by famed charlatan Dr. Mehmet Oz, sent a letter telling State Medicaid agencies not to spend federal dollars on gender-affirming care for kids. Washington law protects access to gender-affirming care.

Sarah, mother of the boy in our first story, says top surgery has changed Ethan’s life for the better. After an uncomplicated recovery, he came out the other end less anxious and with a new freedom of dress. He used to pick clothes based on how well they could hide his chest, like baggy sweatshirts and unseasonably warm layers. He no longer has to worry about his chest outing him, a wonderful thing with summer weather on its way, she says.

It’s unclear why the hospital operated on her son but not on someone else’s. But Sarah couldn’t say the about face surprised her.

Grey is angry he has to wait.

Surgery isn’t intangible to him. Three years ago, doctors at Children’s fused Grey’s spine to correct his scoliosis. When he weighed his desire for top surgery against the reality of recovery, top surgery came out on top. Now he’s not sure what to do.

"A Message to You Rudy." That's the title of a tune I love. And with the riddim of that SKA classic in mind, I want to call this entry of Slog AM: "Message to You, Dow Constantine." It nothing but sucks that Link is virtually out of order until April 24. This is not at all acceptable. You just don't happen to find cracks in your rails, conclude it is what it is, and bring a major part of the region's public transportation system to a near standstill like it ain't no thing. People who work on our roads are free to believe they have regular jobs; this, however, is not the case for those in public transportation. You are on a mission to save the world. So, the message to you Dow Constantine (the former King County Executive, and present CEO of Sound Transit), you must stop this "messing around" and "better think of [our] future" because it's "time you straighten [this shit] right out" that's "creating problems in town."

Sound Transit to the Public: "Passengers may not know that the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel is a piece of legacy infrastructure that comes with some unique design constraints. The tunnel was designed for buses first and continued to support bus service for more than a decade after light rail service began. To support both vehicle modes, rails in the downtown portion of the tunnel are embedded into the floor and... yada, yada, yada." In Zimbabwe, we would call this a story. It goes like this. When you meet someone who owes you money and they don't have it, they instead tell you a story. "My mother got hit by a car, her legs are buggered, the bills are growing like that beanstalk, and yada, yada, yada." And you say: "A-a, if I wanted a story, I would have gone to the library. All I want is my money back, chete." 

On Wednesday, crosswalk beg buttons across the city had a lot to say. 

Five beg buttons—three in the University District, one close to South Lake Union, and another in Wedgwood—were hacked to sound a lot like Amazon CEO and wannabe space cowboy, Jeff Bezos. Push the button and instead of a robotic voice saying "wait," an AI Bezos opined about a wealth tax. 

“Hi, I’m Jeff Bezos,” AI Jeff said. “This crosswalk is sponsored by Amazon Prime, with an important message—please, don’t tax the rich, otherwise all the other billionaires will move to Florida, too. Wouldn’t it be terrible if all the rich people left Seattle or got Luigi’d? And then normal people could afford to live here again.” Then, comedian Bo Burnham's "Bezos 1" song played. 

The Bezos Beg Button's anti-wealth tax plead followed Gov. Bob Ferguson's decision to kill a proposal by state Democrats that would tax the wealthiest Washingtonians and the state's top-earning companies. Now, Democrats are proposing a new quiver full of taxes which includes increased capital gains and estate taxes, increased business taxes, more taxes on nicotine products, new sales taxes on services, and hiked up business and occupation surcharges. 

The in comes People for an Affordable Washington, the PAC that's spent over $1.5 million on advertisements, polling, and text messages naysaying a wealth tax, just since February. The folks behind the PAC won't be pleased with any sort of business taxes. And, by folks, of course I mean corporations, since 99% of that $1.5 million came straight from businesses. T-Mobile contributed $300,000. Microsoft contributed $300,000 in cash and an additional $24,000 in in-kind contributions. Alaska Airlines gave $100,000 and so did sweet, sweet Costco, which—despite supporting its workers and its diversity hiring initiatives—doesn't seem to care about our regressive tax system, or patching big, fat budget holes that will impact state programs. 

But, without a wealth tax or a high-earners payroll tax at a state level, it seems like the corporate money that flooded our airwaves with anti-tax ads worked. AI Bezos should be pleased. We'll see just how pleased he'll be as the legislative session comes to a close on April 27.

Except, we can't, because the Seattle Department of Transportation has killed the AI Bezos Beg Button. 

"We have corrected walk signal messages in multiple locations and continue to respond to tampered push buttons as we learn of them," SDOT said in a statement. 

It's unclear how the hackers got into the crosswalk beg button system, though a YouTube video from last year implied that anyone could try to access the crosswalk buttons via a smartphone app. SDOT said it is stepping up it security systems. After all, hacking into crosswalk beg buttons so that instead of useful instructions it's a rich guy pouting about taxes does nothing to help the visually impaired.

Maybe this will be the last we hear of the AI Bezos Beg Button. Unfortunately, it likely won't be the last we hear of the ultra wealthy whining about paying their dues. 

In 2015, city council chambers swelled with hundreds of Hookah Lounge supporters and detractors, there to shout down, up, and over each other as Seattle considered closures and regulation of the “after-hours lounges.” On the table was a bill from then-Mayor Ed Murray to completely shutter the doors of all Seattle hookah lounges.

Lounge owners and supporters claimed that the legislation was racially and ethnically targeted; Critics of the lounges countered that they were a primary culprit for health and public safety concerns—at best, a tobacco promoter, at worst a catalyst for criminality. City officials argued that hookah lounges had become magnets for violence, claiming that shuttering them would make streets safer and cut down on late-night shootings. But critics said the policy unfairly singled out businesses largely run by immigrants and people of color, deflecting attention from deeper issues driving gun violence, and casting broad suspicion on already marginalized communities in the process.

Introducing our new (and old?) writer, Nathalie Graham! Nathalie used to be on staff at The Stranger from 2018 to 2021. In the years since, she’s freelanced around town and started up a Stranger column on Seattle subcultures, Play Date. Maybe you’ve read it? Now, she’s come crawling back to our hallowed halls to pour all of her blood, sweat, tears, and whatever other bodily fluids are needed into The Stranger.

Let’s talk with Nathalie.

First of all, where the hell have you been for the last four years??