Drip, drip, drip: Slowly but surely, Lewis Kamb is going to uncover what happened to former Mayor Jenny Durkan's CHOP texts. His latest dispatch from the hunt includes a new report from an ongoing lawsuit against the City that alleges 191 texts were manually deleted from Durkan's phone, contradicting her earlier contention that a factory reset following the phone's unexpected bath in a tide pool was solely responsible for the missing records. 

But wait, there's more: The new forensic analysis also uncovered that "the phones of five other city officials — Scoggins, chief police strategy officer Chris Fisher, assistant police chief Eric Greening, city utilities official Idris Beauregard and Emergency Operations Center head Kenneth Neafcy — each had factory resets performed sometime from Oct. 8, 2020 to Nov. 3, 2020." The City claims each of the senior leaders forgot their passwords or otherwise locked themselves out of their devices, which required the factory resets, but the plaintiffs in the ongoing suit aren't buying that "coincidence" as a satisfactory explanation. 

Welcome to the movement, national GOP: After spending all of the 2020 election cycle vilifying those protesters outside the Seattle Police Department's east precinct, Republicans in Congress now seem to think they had a point. Of course, those protesters' grievances were based on legitimate abuses of authority over decades rather than fascistic nonsense, but logical consistency hasn't ever really been the GOP's strong suit.

Seriously, Forterra? The Seattle Times reports that the Snoqualmie Tribe is backing out of its joint grant application with the conservation nonprofit Forterra after learning of what it calls misleading and unrealistic claims the organization made in seeking $20 million from the USDA. Forterra will hire a law firm to examine the Tribe's claims, but it did not dispute those claims in its response to the feds. The grant was intended to fund a sustainable timber harvesting project on Snoqualmie Tribe land that would provide materials for affordable housing construction in Tacoma and Snohomish County.

Harrell and Constantine continue underfunding homelessness response: The Seattle Times reports the modest increases to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority in the Mayor's and King County Executive's respective budget proposals is neither a "radically larger budget" nor a "cutback." It's also far short of the billion dollars per year for the next decade that it will take to actually end homelessness. The only way we can unlock that amount of money, however, is if the State Legislature finally decides to appropriately tax the uber-wealthy who call King County home, or to give the county the authority to do so itself.

Suquamish Tribe wins settlement over Puget Sound pollution: After years of not fixing problems at the West Point Treatment Plant in Discovery Park, a new settlement with the Suquamish Tribe should force King County to get its act together and stop raw sewage pollution. The County will pay $2.5 million to the Tribe as compensation for damages resulting from the sewage spills, as well as an additional $50,000 penalty to the tribe for each additional spill moving forward.

Seattle Redistricting Commission needs you to yell at them: Otherwise they'll move forward with a terrible new map for our City Council districts. The new map would cater to the wealthy homeowners in Magnolia and dilute the power of renters in Fremont, so put a note on your calendars to chime in at the next public forum on October 8 at 10 am. You can attend in-person at City Hall, or provide comment remotely.

Putin breaks international law to own the libs:

A+ work from San Bernardino's finest: A tragic failure of policing took place on Tuesday when a 15-year-old girl was killed amid a shootout with cops while fleeing her father's attempt to kidnap her. Police had issued an Amber Alert for the girl earlier that day after her father allegedly killed her mother and then fled from authorities with her in the car. Police say the child was wearing "tactical gear" and that there were "indications" she participated in the shootout. I guess we have no choice but to give the cops more money for training on how to avoid shooting teenage girls fleeing kidnappings.

Better news out of California: Their Governor signed SB 1162 into law yesterday, which will require companies that employ at least 15 people to post salaries in all job listings starting on January 1. This is great news, but also something every company should do to reduce pay equity without the government forcing them to behave like decent human beings.

"It's not a gun problem, it's a mental health problem..." So goes the ubiquitous refrain from every NRA-funded Republican member of Congress after every school shooting, but they don't want to fix that problem either, apparently.

Reminder that Ron DeSantis has no principles: When other states experience natural disasters, DeSantis spoke out in opposition to the federal government bailing them out. Now that it's his state that's taken a beating from Mother Nature, however, the New York Times reports the Governor of Florida has changed his tune. 

KIRO 7 legend Essex Porter can't quit reporting: He's here to confirm capitalism has declared a change in seasons, no matter what the thermometer says. 

Looper, but make it real life: Bruce Willis is the first actor to grant a so-called "deepfake" company the right to use his likeness in entirely digital performances created without him ever having to set foot on set. So far, the only use has been to insert Willis into a commercial for a Russian phone service, but Willis of all people should understand the risk of other versions of yourself running amok. 

Since I forgot to mention this on Wednesday, the latest episode of KNKX's The Walk Home podcast continues the series' compassionate look into the life and death of Manny Ellis. So often, victims of police violence get reduced to a name on a protest sign or a hashtag, but this week's episode gives Ellis new life by capturing the impact he had on those around him long before the cops took his life. It's a tear-jerker, but worth your time to bear witness to his family's, and Tacoma's, loss.