The Ayatollah responds to the blue wave: “If there are still those who entertain the slightest hope that the hegemonic system may change behavior or shifts in its political parties may bring about change, or that by making concessions to the US, they can persuade it to abandon its hostility, they’re gravely mistaken,” he posted on X. While Democrats won big Tuesday off Trump’s unpopular war, Iranians, like much of the world downrange of the US, are waiting for the rugpull.
The US is still arming a genocide, and one new congressman has seen it up close: US Representative-elect Adam Hamawy of New Jersey says what he saw in Gaza volunteering as a surgeon made him run for office. “After coming back from Gaza. I just couldn’t go back to life as usual, because what I witnessed there wasn’t a war. I witnessed a level of destruction I had never experienced before. What I witnessed was really a genocide. I was taking care of the victims of it, and I couldn’t stay silent,” he told Democracy Now in June.
Here in the weapons factory we call Seattle, the agenda is more bombs: Two major military expansions are planned for the Salish Sea, a “mega” drydock for US Navy repairs, as well as eight new ballistic missile submarines for the Navy’s quiet nuclear weapons complex on the Kitsap Peninsula. These submarines aren’t the type that torpedo other ships, they’re the worldenders that lurk in the dark corners of the Earth waiting for the signal to nuke millions of civilian foreigners at a moments notice.
Israel thrilled by new Congressional Democratic leadership: Yair Lapid, the far-right leader of the Israeli legislature’s opposition to the far-right Likudnik-led governing coalition, posted the following on X, the everything app: “Hakeem Jeffries will lead the House of Representatives. Chuck Schumer will run the Senate. Both are my friends; both voted with Israel this year even when the majority of their party caucus voted otherwise.”
“The world’s largest Jew-hater,” that’s how the chair of the DOJ’s Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism described Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who launched the DOJ’s recent investigation into the University of Washington, according to an investigation by the Harvard Crimson. The UW administrators who smeared their students as antisemitic find themselves in strange company, and out on a limb after Tuesday’s election results. To shamelessly plug my own work, you can read The Stranger’s new comprehensive coverage of the prosecution of 33 UW students who occupied a Boeing-sponsored campus building last year.
UPDATE: She resigned.
Washington voters ban trans girls from trans sports: I-638, the far-right-sponsored public initiative, has passed, and as of latest vote totals it wasn’t even close, 57-43. Voters in most counties supported the ban, and opponents didn’t pick up enough votes in the counties that recognize bigotry for what it is (like King County). Expect a human rights lawsuit to accomplish what Washington voters were too stupid to do. In the meantime, the Gender Equity Movement has organized a rally and march set for 6 p.m. tonight at Westlake Park if you need somewhere to scream.
I don’t read the Seattle Times business section for its coverage of social justice and historical inequity, but I do think their recent coverage of the wealthy Freeman family’s latest real-estate listing in Bellevue could have written more than the following: “The grandfather’s history is controversial, however. He agitated for decades for the exclusion of Japanese immigrants, including the farmers working the strawberry fields that covered the Eastside.”
Miller Freeman was an ardent anti-Asian racist, not just an agitator for “exclusion,” but for deportation of the Japanese-American community to concentration camps during the war. He fought to keep them from returning as well. Freeman’s reputation is so bad among the Japanese-American community that Densho, the digital archive and public history center devoted to documenting America’s wartime concentration camps, has a whole section on him. It’s crucial context.
Some good news from the Times that flew under the radar: The five Washington immigrants snatched at night from a family camping trip in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest have been released from Tacoma’s ICE camp, the Northwest ICE Processing Center. The Seattle Times coverage here is refreshingly comprehensive.
“Accountability is coming,” says Minnesota Governor on visit to Renee Good and Alex Pretti’s memorial: Residents have been covering the memorial to the ICE victims with “I voted” stickers for the past few days, with heartbreaking photos available from Minnesota Public Radio. We will see if voting is enough.
Before accountability, profit: If you can stomach it, Politico has a rundown of Democrat-oriented K Street lobbyists absolutely salivating at the business opportunities presented by the blue tsunami in the US Senate. Just how big of a night was it for reptile class? “ONE OF K STREET’S OWN: Adrian Boafo, who until recently worked as a senior director of government affairs for Oracle, was elected to replace outgoing Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) last night, Daniel B. reports. It marks a rare case of a lobbyist being elected to Congress,” Politico reports.
The feds say they caught the fake anthrax mail attack suspect: They say the man, arrested in Oklahoma City (a city no stranger to actual terror attacks) was responsible for a similar stunt back in 2024, the Associated Press reports. Rather than a DSA guy, as the return address on the mail falsely tried to present, the suspect is just another MAGA boomer.
I know I probably got you down after your post-election high, but here is your reward: Rod Crawford, “Curator of Arachnids” at the Burke Museum, and Washington’s leading spider man, has a lot to say about your Halloween spider decorations. God bless our cranks.
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