Good Morning! We’re still in the drizzly phase. It’ll be damp until Sunday, in the mid-50s. It’s not hang-out-oustide weather, but you won’t totally hate waiting for the bus.
Wanna start with a headline that’ll make you want to smash things? Here’s one: “Kristi Noem Wants Migrants to Compete for Citizenship on New Reality Show.” This is a real headline in the Daily Beast, followed by a real story about how she’s working with the producer of Duck Dynasty to pitch a reality TV show called The American, where contestants would ride around the country, competing in regionally-specific contests like log rolling or rocket building (??). At the end, the winner gets sworn in on the steps of the Capitol, and the losers go home with some super-American prizes like airline miles, a Starbucks gift card, or a lifetime supply of gasoline. “Along the way, we will be reminded what it means to be American—through the eyes of the people who want it most,” the producer wrote in a 35-page pitch. The Department of Homeland Security is still vetting the proposal, but they HAVEN’T. SAID. NO.
Assuming you weren’t able to keep your breakfast down during that first one, let’s have a quick palate cleanser. The Point Defiance Zoo welcomed a new Malayan tapir calf. He’s cute, he’s striped, and he hasn’t heard about our rapid decline into fascism yet. Just look at him for a little while.
Canada’s Getting Sick of Our Shit: Customs and Border Patrol (CPB) has started stacking bonus checkpoints near the Peace Arch at the Canadian border, slowing the crossing down to two and a half hours, and pissing off any remaining Canadians in British Columbia that didn’t hate us already. (At the same time, the Trump administration has launched a program to track the biometrics of every person who leaves the country by car.) Canada’s pissed, and so are the border towns that count on their tourism dollars.
Even the Supreme Court Is Skeptical: Washington AG Nick Brown was in the Supreme Court chambers yesterday morning as states, including Washington, threw down against the DOJ, while Trump’s lawyers answered hours of questions from justices about their attempt to overturn birthright citizenship. “I really think today was an unraveling of the absurdity of some of the arguments the Trump administration is making,” Brown told the Seattle Times. He said several of the justices said “pretty explicitly” that they thought the Trump administration arguments “violated 150 years of precedent.” At least someone around here remembers how laws work. The question is, will Trump care?
Seattle Judge Forgets to Be a Human, Walks Back Refugee Ruling: Earlier this month, Seattle-based US District Judge Jamal Whitehead had shown some basic decency and ordered the Trump administration to allow the 12,000 refugees into the US who had “arranged and confirmable” travel plans to enter the US before January 20, when Trump took office and suspended our refugee admissions program. But yesterday, he lost track of that humanity and walked the order back, saying the US should admit just 160 refugees who had plans to resettle in the US within two weeks of inauguration day. The rest? They have to go through a case-by-case assessment by a “special master.” Nothing screams liberty and democracy like the words “special master.”
Kilmar Is Still in El Salvador: Today, DOJ lawyers will be in court to defend their refusal to disclose details about Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s wrongful deportation, including the diplomatic steps that officials have taken in the past few weeks to get Abrego Garcia released (none), and the information about the deal between the White House and the Salvadoran government to house deported immigrants in its notoriously dangerous jails. Marco Rubio claims that sharing any of that information “could be expected to cause significant harm to the foreign relations and national security interests of the United States.” Abrego Garcia’s lawyers pointed out the absurdity that the government’s (absolutely lack of) efforts to free him from El Salvador could be considered a state secret, especially given that they’ve plastered his face on their social media for weeks.
Talking Around It: I want to take a moment on one line in the New York Times story about Abrego Garcia: “[The Trump administration’s] public statements have raised significant questions about whether the administration is openly defying the Supreme Court’s instructions—and what, if anything, might be done about that.” Trump has openly defied instructions from the Supreme Court—an absolute violation of our system of checks and balances that maintains our experiment in democracy—and doing nothing about that is accepting that we now have a dictator. Let’s keep saying that out loud.
It’s SIFF Season: Seattle’s very own film festival kicked off last night, and it runs until May 25. This year, we returned to our tradition of attempting to watch every single SIFF film, and, as Stranger Arts Editor Emily Nokes wrote, we “are proud/exhausted to say that we made it through every single screener that was made available to us, so that you, dear reader, could be a little more informed about what rules, what sucks, what is beautiful, and what is incomprehensibly boring.” We wrote up every damn film in the lineup, and we are thrilled to report that we loved 32 of them, and there are an additional 18 that we think you absolutely shouldn’t miss. If you want a little extra fun, we made a SIFF bingo card in our new print issue, with Easter eggs from all of the films we watched. Bonus points if you can figure out which film has a scene where a cop gets hit in the head with an 18-inch used dildo.
Stop Cyber Bullying Our Libraries: This time, a cyber attack hit the Pierce County library system, and most of its services are frozen. The branches are still open, with free public internet access, and the library collections are available on a first-come, first-serve basis. If you have books from the library right now, don’t worry about it. They say to hold onto them for now—they don’t charge fees for late returns anyway.
What happens to kids when the US deports their parents? Good question. Since we haven’t figured out a functional system for states to body block ICE agents yet, both Oregon and Washington are pulling together teams to discuss how they should handle actual children left parentless by ICE. We’re almost four months into the Trump administration, and no one appears to have a clear plan yet.
Still shaking off the rage from that first blurb (and everything after it)? This might help. Juno Birch is coming to town on Sunday with her Probed tour. Get your butt to the Neptune and lose yourself in a little gay joy for a night.
