Earlier this week, Gov. Bob Ferguson directed almost $2.2 million in state funding per week to provide additional support to Washington’s food banks as working families brace for their federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to freeze due to the ongoing, Republican-driven shutdown of the federal government. That’s cool. It’s not enough. As Ferguson acknowledged in his press release earlier this week, about 930,000 Washingtonians receive SNAP benefits. The shu...| The Burner
Tuesday night, some of us drank too much at election parties, some of us continued on with our normal lives. Either way, you’ve been waiting for The Burner to pull out some highlights. Here we go!Something Good Actually Happened In A Seattle ElectionSeattle lefties have the pleasure of imagining our corporatist incumbents waking up Wednesday morning and realizing that the initial ballot drop was not a nightmare. They really all fucking lost. The voters totally rejected the clusterfuck conse...| The Burner
The Kids Table (TKT) –– a new Seattle-focused PAC advocating for “pro-Jewish” candidates and against antisemitism, “illiberalism,” and “radical voices,” –– is pouring unusually large sums of money into the Seattle school board election, races that typically do not see outside spending. If their candidates win, TKT will have achieved their stated goal to introduce “risk for candidates who condone (explicitly or implicitly) or endorse [antisemitism or radicalism]” — ...| The Burner
Over the weekend, Mayor Bruce Harrell’s campaign sent a text to Seattle voters overblowing a few lines in a KUOW post to frame his progressive challenger Katie Wilson as some kind of overgrown trust-fund kid cosplaying poor while mooching off her parent’s New York money. This morning, Wilson’s campaign clapped back, calling Harrell out of touch for mocking how families help each other scrape by in an expensive city. Early last week, KUOW posted a profile of Wilson titled “Katie Wils...| The Burner
Young people: This is fucking serious. The 2025 election could be a huge shift in the balance of power at City Hall — voters could kick out our MAGA Republican City Attorney, banish the most incompetent council president in the City’s history, and elect Seattle’s first progressive Mayor in over a decade. All the challengers taking up the left lane beat the centrist incumbents in the primary, but they only win the whole thing if you show up by Nov. 4 at 8pm. And so far, a little more tha...| The Burner
Mayor Bruce Harrell announced his negotiation team and the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) came to a tentative agreement over a collective bargaining contract covering salaries and working conditions from 2024 to 2027 . During a press conference Wednesday morning, Harrell, Chief of Police Shon Barnes, and Chief of CARE Amy Barden touted the contract as a historic milestone, but on closer inspection, their enthusiasm reads as premature, self-indulgent election-year spin. The Biggest...| The Burner
Council President Sara Nelson is desperately trying to appear tough-on-Trump after her pathetic performance in the recent primary election, but she’s still trying to win over his sycophants by airing campaign ads on far-right news stations Fox News and Newsmax. Nelson’s campaign basically scoffed when The Burner asked for comment about the ads. But her critics argue the ad placement shows Nelson’s campaign sees viewers of far-right, conspiracy theory laden broadcast brainrot as an imp...| The Burner
In an unceremonious betrayal of working people, the Seattle City Council approved Mayor Bruce Harrell’s .1% sales tax increase to fund “public safety. The council feigned discomfort at the regressive nature of the tax — Seattle already boasts the highest sales tax in the country — before ultimately insisting their hands were tied. But District 2 City Council Member Eddie Lin, who's been trying to sharpen his progressive image, is proving that no, their hands are absolutely not tied. ...| The Burner
Seattle boasts the highest sales tax in the country — 10.5% — and it's about to get even higher thanks to a recent vote by the Seattle City Council. And don’t be softened by all the hemming and hawing, all the apologies for the regressive nature of the tax, all the empty acknowledgment of how this will disproportionately burden working people — they didn’t have to do this and they chose to anyway. In his recent budget proposal, Mayor Bruce Harrell proposed taking advantage of th...| The Burner
On Monday, after a five-week long suspension, Amazon fired Palestinian tech worker Ahmed Shahrour. I’ll give you one guess as to why! As The Burner reported last month, Shahrour sent a letter to Amazon executives and his coworkers condemning the company’s role in the genocide of his people through Project Nimbus, a 2021 deal in which Israel paid Amazon Web Services and Google $1.2 billion to provide cloud services for the Israeli military and government. Shahrour called his firing a...| The Burner
Last week, the Seattle School Board voted 5-2 against reviving the School Resource Officer program at Garfield High School, which would have overturned one of the few, lasting policies won during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. And the vote didn’t just prevent one temporary contract for one officer. According to public records, it may have stopped the City’s plan to use dollars designated for education to put 15 cops in schools around the City. In March, Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washi...| The Burner
In a press conference at KOMO PLAZA Thursday, progressive Seattle Mayoral candidate Katie Wilson told the press she will not agree to any...| The Burner
Republicans introduced, and passed with bipartisan support, a ceremonial measure to honor the life of right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk...| The Burner
Yesterday, two of Washington’s Democrat congress members, Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Rep. Kim Schrier, betrayed the city they work...| The Burner
King County Council Member Girmay Zahilay beat his council colleague Claudia Balducci in the primary contest for King County Executive, now a new poll is testing messaging to bring him down. Some hoped this race would be an opportunity for two strong progressives to sharpen each other in the political arena, but if Zahilay opponents use thw attacks from the poll, King County suburban mailboxes may receive a barrage of mailers desperate to paint Zahilay (in bold, red lettering) as a fiscally irre| The Burner
Council Member Alexis Mercedes Rinck is making Council President Sara Nelson sweat.Rinck and Mayor Bruce Harrell’s Seattle Shield Initiative would temporarily cut Business & Occupation taxes for 90% of Seattle businesses while hiking the rate for the city’s largest corporations. The policy is projected to raise $90 million for essential services. And it’s doing more than raising revenue — it’s breaking the spell. The usual business coalition is divided, and corporate-backed politic...| The Burner
