Google is adding more generative AI features to popular navigation apps such as Google Maps and Waze.

Trump's views on artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, electric vehicles and other issues could reshape the tech industry.

Robert Griffin III continued to throw during practice; he continued to run and he continued to be optimistic about his chances for being ready at the start of the season. That’s why, when asked if the start of training camp was a realistic possibility for his return, Griffin didn’t hestitate.

Serving as a bridge between traditional textbooks and peer-reviewed journal articles, ebooks allow scientists to efficiently learn about new findings or fields.

A breakthrough enzyme aims to resolve a persistent DNA artifact that has challenged forensic analysis for decades.

Zymo Research, Unravel Biosciences, and Channel Islands Marine & Wildlife Institute team up to combat increasing cases of domoic acid poisoning in sea lions.

This new system raises the bar in high-resolution, high-throughput 3D imaging for cells and organoids, providing researchers with faster, more detailed, and more accurate insights into biological processes.

A new algorithm detects when immunotherapies create surges of T cell responses in melanoma patients.

In this webinar, Alex Rimmer, Samuel East, and Catriona Jamieson will discuss how they developed low-cost, animal-free culture media for cellular agriculture.

Nematodes can sniff out trouble, kicking off a mitochondrial defense in the gut to fend off bacterial invaders.

Almost every scientific presentation uses a slide deck, but little time is spent learning how to make or improve them. 

Washington, D.C., Councilman Charles Allen is facing a recall effort led by a former government worker, who cited that the representative of Ward 6 should be more focused on curbing crime.

Washington, D.C., is on track to follow several states in implementing California's electric vehicle mandate to eliminate the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035.

The home team wasn't going to win every game in the NBA playoffs, anyway. The defiant and defensive-minded Chicago Bulls also might've been the easiest to predict as the first visitors to get a postseason victory after higher seeds went 8-0 in Game 1s over the weekend.

The scene is all too familiar now. The long and tortured Stanley Cup playoff history of the Capitals means little to the current generation of players. None of them were born or raised here, after all.

Gio Gonzalez threw strikes on Thursday night – 78 to be exact, on 112 pitches — keying his one-hit work over eight dominant innings in the Nats’ 8-1 victory over the Reds. Gonzalez (2-1), the Nats’ starter most susceptible to wildness, had walked 11 in 20 innings, lasting no more than six innings in any of his previous four starts. But with the lead from the third inning on, Gonzalez was able to attack.

How rare was Jordan Zimmermann’s complete game shutout in Friday’s 1-0 win over the Reds? It was just the eighth for the Nats since moving to D.C. in 2005 and was the first complete-game one-hit shutout. Here are the Nats pitchers who have pitched complete-game shutouts.

Former Idaho state Rep. Aaron von Ehlinger was sentenced Wednesday to 20 years behind bars for raping a 19-year-old intern.

A judge ordered Cowboys for Trump co-founder Couy Griffin to leave his Otero County commissioner post effective immediately.

A former top aide to the mayor of Washington D.C. sexually harassed a female employee, according to an internal probe.

(The Center Square) — A legislative task force "to study the dissolution or absorption of fiscally distressed municipalities" set the tone in its first meeting with a vote to change its name.

The Newsbabes -- those pink-clad broads of broadcasting -- are back again this year with their annual breast cancer fundraising, this year raising money for the Howard University Cancer Center. The event, in its fifth year, will be taking place June 27 from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Hamilton in downtown D.C. Tickets cost $75. The host committee consists of WJLA's Rebecca Cooper, NBC4's Angie Goff, CNN's Brianna Keilar and more.

In the fall of 2006, The Washington Examiner launched the Yeas & Nays column to cover the world of people, power and politics. In those almost seven years, the print column has entertained hundreds of thousands on their daily Metro commutes. Now, with the print edition gone after Friday, Yeas & Nays will have a new home. The column is moving to our sister site, Red Alert Politics, and will resume covering politics and pop culture on July 1.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's acting head Ann Carlson will resign on Dec. 26.

California will ticket a driver for violating the rules of the road, but for driverless vehicles, there is reportedly no mechanism to ticket the person responsible because of a loophole in some jurisdictions.

The Federal Aviation Administration ordered Boeing 737 Max 9 planes to be temporarily grounded on Saturday.

(The Center Square) - How should researchers measure the populations of migratory birds? Researchers developed an idea around a campfire that was put to the test for the first time in Bosque Del Apache earlier this month, according to the University of New Mexico.

Green pump for diesel, blue for gas – but what’s the difference?

Capitals get crushed in decisive Game 7

Star shows frustration of another playoff loss

Players can't explain latest loss in playoffs

Caps have yet to re-sign Ribeiro and Hendricks

It’s not often that something almost universally unexpected happens in American politics. Frequent public opinion polls and a variety of political media usually give political junkies a good idea of what to expect next.

I was excited to see Microsoft bring the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) back from the dead this past year: At Build 2024 back in May, it announced that it would continue investing in this 20-year-old technology, starting with support for Windows 11 theming that would arrive as part of .NET 9. In fact, I was so excited about this that I brought my .NETpad project back from the dead as well, and I spent much of the summer modernizing my Notepad clone with the new features. I wrote 24 articles documenting this work, but I was stymied by the half-assed nature of the improvements.

Microsoft released exactly one WPF update during the several months of .NET 9 development, and it never added any of the features I discovered were missing. And so as we headed into today's release of .NET 9, my excitement was somewhat diminished. My assumption was that we wouldn't see those missing features implemented until .NET 10, if ever.

Well, Microsoft just released .NET 9. As part of that release, it published updated documentation for WPF (and all the other .NET technologies). And to my surprise, there are some updates to WPF that address at least one of those missing features.

So let's take a look.

To add support for Windows 11 theming to a WPF project, you need to add a reference to the new Fluent theme resource dictionary in its App.xml file. It looks like so:

<Application.Resources>
    <ResourceDictionary>
      <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
        <ResourceDictionary Source="pack://application:,,,/PresentationFramework.Fluent;component/Themes/Fluent.xaml" />
      </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
    </ResourceDictionary>
</Application.Resources>

But with the shipping version of .NET 9, there's a second, more elegant way to add Windows 11 theming support. Now, you can access a new Application.ThemeMode property of a new styling API to toggle the app's theme mode between Light, Dark, System, and None. And that's fantastic, because it addresses one of those missing features: To date, .NETpad has adapted itself to the system theme (Light or Dark), but there was no way to let the user pick a theme mode. (For example, if the system was set to Dark and the user wanted the app to use Light mode.) With this change, I can implement that feature.

Fortunately, .NETpad is ready for this change, too: If you followed along with my work this past summer, you may remember that I implemented the user interface for switching the app theme into its settings interface, but left the UI hidden because it didn't do anything. But I always felt that Microsoft would need to implement this features, so I left the code in there. Granted, I didn't think it would happen this quickly.

The shipping version of .NET 9 also adds explicit support for the Windows 11 accent color (as configured by the user in the Settings app in Personalization > Accent color). As it is, .NETpa...

The post Modernizing .NETpad: .NET 9 Arrives with a Few (More) Small Improvements for WPF (Premium) appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Nvidia is ready to replace its GeForce Experience app on Windows with its new Nvidia app, which is now officially out of beta.

The post New Nvidia App is Ready to Replace GeForce Experience appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Short Run Comix Festival, Diwali: Lights of India, and More Cheap & Easy Events Under $15 by EverOut Staff

We hope you're not too tired from Halloween partying because there's plenty of fun events to hit up this weekend, from Short Run Comix Festival to Diwali: Lights of India and from the Polish Fall Bazaar to Seattle Art Museum's Día de los Muertos Community Celebration. For more ideas, check out our guide to the top events of the week. P.S. Daylight Saving Time ends on Sunday—don't forget to set your clocks back!

Día de los Muertos Community Celebration
Each year, in honor of Día de los Muertos, printmaker and artist Fulgencio Lazo creates a tapete. (Spanish for "rug," tapetes are large-scale sand paintings created on the ground). Inspired by ancestral Oaxacan traditions, the tapete has become an annual tradition at the Seattle Art Museum in observance of the role death plays in the life cycle. This year's Día de los Muertos celebration will also include a musical performance by La Banda Gozona, dances performed by energetic Oaxacan troupe Grupo Cultural Oaxaqueño, and art-making activities with printmakers Edith Chávez and Ivan Bautista. LINDSAY COSTELLO
(Seattle Art Museum, Downtown, free)

In between playing defense and scheming to win back Seattle’s voters over the next few election cycles, we should carve out some time for self-reflection. It’s tempting to think of the present moment as a backlash against progress, a temporary deviation in the arc of the moral universe—or perhaps, for the pessimist, to doubt the notion of progress altogether. But was this reaction really inevitable? by Katie Wilson

It’s a trying time for Seattle’s left.

The city’s new council members are rounding the curve on their first year in office, and I don’t know about you, but I’m wishing it was time to pass the baton. It’s depressing enough that City Hall is no longer a laboratory for progressive policy innovation. But it’s the Bad Idea Whac-A-Mole that’s truly exhausting: rolling back minimum wages and renter protections; defunding community-driven development; reinstating so-called SOAP and SODA zones; turning our big business tax into a slush fund. The left is having to fight like hell just to defend the achievements of the past decade.

In between playing defense and scheming to win back Seattle’s voters over the next few election cycles, we should carve out some time for self-reflection. It’s tempting to think of the present moment as a backlash against progress, a temporary deviation in the arc of the moral universe—or perhaps, for the pessimist, to doubt the notion of progress altogether. But was this reaction really inevitable? Can we draw any lessons from it? What should the left do differently in the future to regain influence and maintain it?

Critics of progressive-left political culture, as it’s developed over the past dozen or so years, often emphasize its supposed impotence: its penchant for loudness on social media, insistence on ideological purity, and zeal for “canceling” individuals instead of changing systems. Its adherents operate mainly in the symbolic realm and can’t break out of their echo chamber long enough to affect the real world.

Whatever the merits of this kind of critique, it doesn’t fully capture what’s happened in Seattle. Precisely what characterizes our city (and just a handful of others) is that the progressive left has been effective, relatively speaking, at winning real things. But our success is not due to some special organizing prowess or because we’ve avoided the pitfalls of the wider culture. It has more to do with our city’s demographic peculiarities.

Over the past several decades, progressive politics have come to correlate ever more strongly with educational attainment, while “dealigning” from markers of working class status. The gradual replacement of old Seattle’s blue collar workforce, displaced by rising housing costs and the dwindling of maritime and industrial jobs, with the younger, more affluent tech worker set hasn’t made Seattle any less blue; perhaps the opposite. Add to that some political self-selection among new arrivals, and the average normie non-activist voter just happens to be a flaming lib. On top of all that, union density in Washington state is among the highest in the country, and when Seattle’s labor unions decide to throw their weight around in local elections, left-leaning candidates tend to get a leg up.

With these advantages, Seattle’s left hasn’t had to be extraordinarily smart or strategic to win a modicum of political power. And a movement with power faces different problems than a movement in opposition. From the outside, it’s easy to lambaste the status quo and its obvious failings. But actually governing is more complicated. It means passing policies, implementing them, defending their results. It also means being vulnerable to blame for whatever’s going wrong in the city, whether or not it’s your fault or within your power to fix.

Of course, even at its strongest, Seattle’s progressive left held only partial power—through a city council majority that was often undermined by more centrist mayors. In such circumstances, governing also means having to decide when to remain oppositional, and when to compromise and win what you can. Either way, you have to tell a good story, explaining what you’ve done and why you couldn’t do more, to avoid being seen as ineffective.

All this means that the progressive predisposition of Seattle’s electorate is a trap, as well as an advantage. If it were harder to get lefties into office, that might force us to be more strategic about what they should do when they get there—and to build the kind of movement that can support them when the going gets rough.

Winning power is one thing, holding it is another.

Over the last two election cycles, the left lost it. The backlash began in 2021 with the victories of Mayor Bruce Harrell, Councilmember Sara Nelson, and City Attorney Ann Davison. Last fall finished the job, ushering in the most conservative city council Seattle has seen in a long time.

In my new column for The Stranger, I plan to look both backward and forward. I’ll dig through the past ten-plus years in search of lessons that can help Seattle’s left into the future. I write as someone who’s been involved in many—though by no means all—of the progressive policy battles of this period, primarily through my work with the Transit Riders Union. But I’m speaking for myself, not for any organization, and I don’t expect that all my opinions will be popular. There is too much groupthink on the left; so let’s disagree!

The backlash elections of 2021 and 2023 centered most obviously around the issues of homelessness, policing, and public safety. I will start the journey there, looking critically at the question of what our goals should be and how we frame and explain these goals.

These are themes we share with other progressive big cities, but our politics have a unique side, too. No look back at the past decade of Seattle’s left can bypass an assessment of Kshama Sawant’s tenure on the council, and the influence of her former organization, Socialist Alternative.

And these discussions will raise larger questions about progressive-left organizing. Who is “the left,” anyway, and does “progressive” mean anything anymore, if it ever did? Whom are we trying to organize and how? Toward what ends?

The left is not a monolith. In practice, Seattle’s left today is an uneasy alliance of labor unions, community organizations from the long-established to the ad-hoc, issue-based advocacy groups, service-focused nonprofits, parties and other overtly political formations, and freelance activists, coalescing imperfectly and temporarily around specific campaigns or policy goals. Between and also within these entities there exists a multiplicity of worldviews, theories of social change, and visions of a future, better social order.

When someone on the left (like me) talks about what “we” should be doing, only in the most abstract sense are they speaking to and about this whole constellation of actors. But throughout these institutions and broader left milieu there are individuals who, to a greater or lesser extent, can choose to do things differently, or to do something new.

There is a gleam of light on the horizon. In next Tuesday’s special election for citywide council position 8, the left looks poised to claw back a seat. Next year will bring a larger opportunity, with the mayor and city attorney up for re-election as well as the two citywide council positions. But progressives won’t have a chance at a reliable governing majority until 2027.

So let’s make sure that when we win that majority, we’re prepared to hold onto it. It’s easy to bemoan the hypocrisy of Seattle liberals, the reactionary and ungenerous impulses too often hiding behind those “in this house we believe” yard signs. I’ve done that myself. But if the left can’t maintain the edge in a city where your average voter is at pains to prove his progressive bona fides, what chance do we have at power anywhere?

The Stranger's morning news round-up. by Nathalie Graham

Welcome to hell week: Somehow, it's here. The 2024 election is tomorrow. If you haven't mailed yours in yet, do it today. Better yet, drop your ballot in a ballot box. Please do not drop any incendiary devices in ballot boxes. Tell your friends to vote. Tell your enemies to vote. Vote like your life depends on it. Vote like someone else's life depends on it. Then, take a nap or something. 

Scene setting: Wind and weather are turbulent today. Everything is astir. 

⚠️The next storm system will move into western WA Monday into Tuesday, bringing gusty winds, lowland rain, mountain snow, & high surf to the region. Details are highlighted below!

— NWS Seattle (@NWSSeattle) November 3, 2024

To make everything worse: The sun is dead. It isn't coming back until spring. Say goodbye to long days. Go to an antique store and buy a lamp. I went to the Antique Mall of West Seattle this weekend and bought myself one. It's saving me. We all deserve soft, buttery warm light this winter. 

Starting tonight, the sun will set in the 4 pm hour every night until Jan. 25.

Seattle area vampires, rejoice! ????

— Seattle Weather Blog (@KSeattleWeather) November 3, 2024

Iowaaaaat? Cross your fingers and hold your breath for this next part. The poll by respected pollster and possible soothsayer Ann Selzer commissioned by the Des Moines Register/Mediacom shows Vice President Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump 47% to 44% in Iowa. The state has voted staunchly red and resolutely for Trump. Back in June, Trump led President Joe Biden (before he decided he should lay down and take a nap instead of running for re-election) by 18 points. Even as recently as September, Trump led Harris in Iowa by 4 points. Apparently, the tables are turning and women are the ones doing the spinning. Particularly, older and independent women voters. Abortion is soooo on the ballot and Iowan women are not taking their futures lightly. If this poll is right, Harris wouldn't just win Iowa, she'd win it in a landslide. 

Trump says "actually, no:" Famous fact-lover Donald Trump says the Iowa poll is wrong and we are all mistaken. According to Trump, the truly accurate poll is the one from Emerson College that shows him up 53% to Harris' 43%. 

Someone who will not get to see if the Iowa poll is accurate: Music legend Quincy Jones died on Sunday. He was 91. 

Don't look a gift poll in the mouth: The knock-on-wood-worthy polling isn't just for national politics. In local news, a Northwest Progressive Institute poll found that in the Seattle City Council Position 8 race, Alexis Mercedes Rink leads incumbent Tanya Woo 52% to 28%. Remember how U2 slipped its album "Songs of Innocence" into everyone's iTunes libraries back in 2014? That's basically how it feels having the council-selected Woo, who knows nothing about anything, in a position of power. Seems as though Seattle is rejecting Woo the same way everyone rejected "Songs of Innocence"—moving her straight to the trash where we hopefully will never have to listen to her again. 

Not worried about the election? Must be nice. But, also maybe you should be. Gov. Jay Inslee clearly is. He signed a letter activating the National Guard in the event of civil unrest after the election.

Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee is activating the state's National Guard, directing personnel to make preparations in case they need to respond to “civil unrest” related to the election. pic.twitter.com/26JGFkv03a

— Mike Baker (@ByMikeBaker) November 2, 2024

Bad news for Peanut: Tragedy struck the squirrelly saga of Peanut, the social media sensation plucked from his owner's care last week by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). Apparently, after removing Peanut, the DEC then euthanized him to "test for rabies." The squirrel who often donned tiny cowboy hats will only do so now from heaven. Rest easy, Peanut. 

Roaming police: City officials mysteriously placed Tacoma's police chief on a brief administrative leave back in September. Now, we know why. Chief Avery Moore was gabbing too much while on vacation. Moore racked up a $1,082 bill on his city-issued cellphone while he was in Sweden. Most of the charges appear to be international usage charges, but I like to imagine Moore couldn't stop gossiping on the phone while touring fjords. 

Work stoppage for NYT tech guild: The "over 600 software engineers, product managers, data analysts, and designers" keeping the New York Times website up and running went on strike at 12:01 this morning, in the latest attempt to win a union contract with the media company. The work stoppage comes at a pivotal time for the NYT; Election Day coverage on the ~newspaper of record~ requires a lot of tech. Maybe this squeeze will give these workers the contract they're asking for. In the meantime, don't cross the digital picket line. No Wordle. No Connections. Just solidarity. 

Have you seen this prayer wheel? Capitol Hill Himalayan restaurant Annapurna needs helping finding the handmade Tibetan prayer wheel that normally sits outside its front entrance. Someone nabbed the prayer wheel last week. Last time a business's prayer wheel went missing, someone found it in Lake Washington. 

WA GOP's sexist, racist, anti-LGBTQ text campaign: In Washington's 14th legislative district, the texts are getting out of hand. The Spanish texts spread lies about Latina Democratic candidates, saying they "support chemical castration of children at school," they want to "eliminate the Spanish language," and they "hate your family, they hate God, and they hate the truth." Washington GOP chair Jim Walsh confirmed the organization footed the bill for these texts. The Democrats are pissed and believe these texts are defamatory and broke campaign finance laws. They'll be taking legal action.  

The Washington State GOP is sending out these texts in an increasingly Latino state senate district (14), per a source who sent these along.

(I speak French, not Spanish, so these translations are not my own).

Demographic data on the district here, which is held by 3… pic.twitter.com/ZLy0TCf3As

— Jake Lahut (@JakeLahut) November 2, 2024

Volcanic eruptions in Indonesia: Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki erupted at around midnight Monday. The hot ash shot as high as 6,500 feet into the air and hit several villages, burning down several houses, including a convent of Catholic nuns. Ten people are dead so far. 

South Africa's Steve Irwin died: Dingo Dinkelman, 44, was a wildlife content creator and a conservationist. Dinkelman died from a venomous snake bite after spending a month in an induced coma. 

Something to take your mind off the election: Make this chili. 

The right has been spreading outrageous lies, claiming that kids are going to school as one gender and coming home as another after "impromptu surgeries." The writer points out how absurd this idea is: surgeries, especially gender-affirming ones, aren’t done in schools, don’t happen on a whim, and certainly aren’t performed on minors without extensive parental involvement. It’s a scare tactic with no basis in reality. by Vivian McCall

Lately, Donald Trump has been spreading a ridiculous lie that kids are going to school one gender and arriving home another.

I wanted to explain how a person doesn’t have to know anything about transgender people, schools, or medicine to know this isn’t true. A little boy isn’t going to come skipping home from school a little girl after an impromptu genital gender-affirmation surgery because gender-affirmation surgeries are not impromptu, are rarely performed on minors, and are never performed on minors without parental consent. They’re not performed in schools at all because schools don’t have operating rooms. Even if there was enough time in a school day to rush a kid to the hospital, this is not a check-up. Nobody waltzes out of the hospital after a major surgery. Think for one second and it makes no fucking sense.

Then I heard Trump say that the Democrats want gender surgeries for “almost everyone in the world” because they’re evil. Suddenly, it felt kind of futile and stupid to write a sarcastic, reasonable explanation of the facts because the floor for what Trump is willing to say about transgender people is a chasm. 

By his telling, the people cheer him on when he mentions “transgender” at his rallies, and he’ll do anything for the applause. This fervor is also why the hundreds of failed anti-trans bills—or polling that shows Americans by and large don’t really give a shit about trans issues and would rather talk about the economy—won’t dissuade Republicans from launching more anti-trans campaigns and introducing hundreds more bills restricting LGBTQ civil rights. During the World Series, viewers were subjected to anti-trans and anti-abortion ads so graphic that networks issued content warnings explaining that legally they have to air anything a qualified political candidate pays for.

We’re not having a rational conversation about trans issues in this country, we’re watching a panic attack about the threat trans people supposedly pose to the concept of gender and the nuclear family.

My better angels want me to tell conservatives about the trans people who want children with their spouses, or still love the ones they had before coming out. But if someone believes Big Gender is an evil enterprise, it’ll take someone they love coming out for them to recognize the groomer talk as the manipulative fiction it is. It will always be easier to hate some blue-haired apparition lurking in the shadows of your mind than your childhood buddy Jim when she tells you to call her Linda.

For obvious reasons, the possibility of a Trump victory is freaking out people in the queer community, even here in Washington, with our protective laws and Democrat-dominated Legislature. Because what Trump says and does are often different things, they’re unsure of the implications for their health care, their families, their marriages, and their futures. 

What We Can and Should Worry About at the Federal Level

In 2023, Penny Nance, CEO of the Christian nonprofit Concerned Women for America, asked Donald Trump to sign a pledge that if he won in 2024, he’d direct all federal agencies to uphold that a person’s “gender identity” doesn’t overrule their “sex.” Pledge or no pledge, nothing Trump did as president or has said during this campaign indicates he wouldn’t.

While in power, Trump appointed a slate of anti-LGBTQ judges. He banned transgender people from serving in the military and weakened their already tenuous access to gender-affirming care. How much farther he could go is another question. The man’s mind is an enigma. No matter who wins, the courts will remain a chaotic x-factor for us all.

By the time Trump took office in 2017, federal courts had recognized existing civil rights laws banning sex-discrimination protected gay and trans people, reasoning that anti-LGBTQ discrimination was, at its core, a reaction to people deviating from the norms of their sex. But the words “sexual orientation” or “gender identity” are not in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, or Title IX, a 1972 law prohibiting sex discrimination in education, or Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (the ACA, also known as Obamacare) outlining groups protected from discrimination.

Those rights exist, but they’re not codified. Their existence depends on a broader legal interpretation of what sex discrimination even means. 

Trump’s administration rejected that interpretation. It rolled back Obama-era non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people and plotted to erase the word “sex” from federal civil rights laws. In 2019, the House passed the Equality Act, a bill that would add “sexual orientation” and “ “gender identity” to the Civil Rights Act, on a bi-partisan vote, but the Senate didn’t take up the bill after Trump said he wouldn’t sign it. The bill passed the House again with only three Republican supporters, but did not survive a Senate filibuster. 

Then at the end of Trump’s presidency, the conservative US Supreme Court delivered a stunning 6-3 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County that found Title VII of the Civil Rights Act protected gay and trans people from employment discrimination. As Trump’s handpicked appointee Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion, “it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.” Trump, whose White House filed two briefs urging the court to rule the other way, admitted to reporters it was a “very powerful decision, actually.” Not that its “power” changed his thinking. 

Yipee! All solved, right? Gay people have rights forever? Gorsuch is competing in International Mr. Leather next year and drinking with us at the Stonewall Inn? Right? 

Not quite. 

Bostock laid an important legal precedent and textualist argument that’s been cited in hundreds of sex-discrimination cases around the country.  The ruling prompted President Joe Biden to issue an executive order on his first day in office that directed all federal agencies to consider policies banning sex discrimination to apply to gay and trans people. It remains at the core of its interpretations of Title IX, the Violence Against Women Act, the ACA and the federal Fair Housing Act.

But Bostock did not end the fight, and its narrow scope leaves some rights potentially vulnerable should Trump take control. Say he’s elected and makes good on his pledge to Nance. The Supreme Court was clear on workplace protections, but Trump’s lackeys could say their ruling doesn’t apply to housing, healthcare, access to public accommodations, and education.

Mirroring Biden’s executive order to federal agencies, Trump said he’d reverse Title IX protections for trans students on day one of his presidency. He’s also vowed to ban gender-affirming care for minors, which he’s called child mutilation, and cut federal funding for schools that push “gender ideology.” His running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, introduced five anti-trans bills between 2023 and 2024, which included criminalizing healthcare for trans kids. Saving his most deranged takes for the race’s photo finish, Vance appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast and suggested middle- and upper-class white kids become trans to get into good schools, so they can, I guess, piss their pants in the lecture hall if a state revokes their bathroom access. As CNN pointed out, trans kids are actually a lot less likely to get into good schools because all the bullying, harassment, and dark thoughts tend to bring down the ol’ grade point average.

Harris, Harris, Harris, Harris, Harris. In the 2019 primary, she said she supported gender-affirming surgeries for trans migrants in custody. She’s not special for that–federal law requires the government to provide necessary medical care to inmates, and documents show Trump’s Federal Bureau of Prisons acknowledged that law–but people have made a lot of her apparent lack of support this cycle. When asked about transgender rights, Harris’s canned answer is that she’ll “follow the law.” Without a crystal ball or Ouija board handy, I’d hazard to guess she’d likely follow in Biden’s footsteps and his “follow the law” line is a dodge —perhaps part of her plan to nab all the Republican-leaning voters who can’t stand Trump but may not get trans issues. After all, trans issues have been a fruitful wedge issue precisely because people don’t understand them – and people fear what they don’t understand.

That said, laws are not virtues, and trans people are pissed about her lack of commitment. They’re scared because they’ve been pilloried in this election, and following the law in certain states means they don’t have civil rights. Plenty have fled those laws. Her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has one of the best records on gay and trans rights of any Democratic governor, from his time as a football coach sponsoring a Gay-Straight Alliance in a small town to signing an executive order to make Minnesota a “trans refugee state.” I don’t trust politicians as a rule, but Walz has been an ally much longer than it’s been cool or even acceptable.

Now for the part that made me go uh-oh out loud.

No matter who wins, these anti-discrimination protections are up against federal courts stacked with conservative appointees, and conservative think tanks have the money, the time, and the zealous devotion to launch sophisticated attacks to invalidate LGBTQ rights and restrict the legal definition of sex in perpetuity.

Jaelynn Scott, Executive Director of the Lavender Rights Project, a Seattle-based LGBTQ legal advocacy organization, is convinced the broad interpretation of Title VII will face continual legal challenges until lawmakers amend the Civil Rights Act to include “gender identity” or pass the Equality Act.

Federal judges have already blocked Biden’s Bostock-backed interpretations of Title XI and the ACA’s non-discrimination protections. The same Supreme Court justices who ruled in favor of Bostock also blocked the administration's Title IX rules. The court’s recent decision on Chevron Deference compounds the problem. It not only weakened the power of federal agencies to enact new rules that comply with often vague laws from Congress, but it also made challenging federal regulations much easier and shows we can’t count on the Justices to adhere to binding legal precedent, which sucks because this all may come down to if or when the Supreme Court sets limits on Bostock. 

We know it will soon decide if laws restricting gender-affirming care violate the US Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. On December 4, the Court will hear US v. Skrmetti, a challenge to Tennessee’s ban on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for minors.

The case is important because it could determine what level of protection trans people have under the Equal Protection Clause. Elana Redfield, Federal Policy Director at the Williams Institute, a LGBTQ public-policy research center at the University of California, Los Angeles, says the issue at the heart of this case is whether it is unlawful for the state to ban these treatments in the way that it did. 

Recent cases show the state might be able to legally prove no sex discrimination took place. The first is Dobbs, the case that struck down abortion. In the Dobbs decision, the court cited an old case called Geduldig v. Aiello, which found a state could legally deny insurance coverage for medical complications during pregnancy, even though it would have almost entirely burdened cis women, to say states could prohibit abortion. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals applied Geduldig to Adams, a case that upheld a state’s right to enact trans bathroom bans. In Skrmetti, The Sixth Court of Appeals again applied the same exact legal reasoning to gender-affirming care. It ruled the Bostock decision applied only to workplace discrimination and lawmakers had the right to regulate medical procedures as long as they did so without discriminatory intent. 

“I know, it's pretty in the weeds, but it is also important,” Redfield said in an email. “In part because it provides a pathway for courts to avoid finding sex discrimination, and in part because they are citing back to cases decided before “intermediate scrutiny” for sex discrimination was even established.”

It’s not all bad news. This April, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed lower court decisions that North Carolina’s and West Virginia's bans on gender-affirming care were unconstitutional. 

Trump’s focus on trans people has obscured his position on gay rights, which enjoy broader support from the American electorate than trans rights.

But would a party more aligned with the religious and extreme right than ever abandon the positions they’ve consolidated power over for decades, just like that? The supposedly “softer” Republican platform that claims the party will leave abortion to the states has not convinced millions of women across the country. Omitting a direct reference to same-sex marriage in that same platform, while still invoking its “sanctity,” shouldn’t convince gays, either. 

A second Trump administration would be filled with pre-vetted loyalists. The aides, staff, bureaucracy, and institutions that inhibited his most destructive impulses during his first turn have been foxed out of the henhouse. If Trump follows the plan outlined in Project 2025, he’ll reconstitute the administrative state as a faithful engine of Trumpism. If decisions from the Washington Post’s and Los Angeles Times’s billionaire owners are any indication, institutions may be folding in advance. Trump is promising to throw his political enemies in jail, for God’s sake. When have gay people ever emerged from a regime like that unscathed?

Um, What About Washington?

Even if everything goes to hell and Trump or the courts change how the government interprets sex-based anti-discrimination protections, Washington State will probably remain a good place to be gay and trans, legally speaking. Though there’s always uncertainty in the brackish waters between federal and state law, we're pretty Trump-proofed.

The Washington Law Against Discrimination (WLAD) broadly guards against anti-gay and anti-trans discrimination in housing, places of public accommodation, employment, credit transactions, healthcare, and other areas. 

Meaning you should be able to sign a new lease, take out a massive home loan, celebrate with fine dining and heavy drinking, stumbling and falling on your way out the door, breaking your arm, calling an ambulance, arriving at the hospital, and having a qualified medical professional examine you without anyone throwing your gay or trans ass into the street.

The WLAD also guarantees access to gender-affirming care and requires insurers to cover it, a protection the Gender Affirming Treatment Act (GATA) strengthened in 2022.

The state also allows those born here to change the gender marker on their birth certificate from M to F, F to M, or from either to X. In 2023, Governor Jay Inslee signed laws that sealed name changes for transgender people and protected trans runaways in the shelter system. He also signed a shield law that protects people who seek gender-affirming care and abortions in Washington from the authorities in states that have banned or criminalized their healthcare.

Even if the Supreme Court struck down Obergefell v. Hodges, gay marriage would remain legal in Washington, save the Supreme Court losing its mind and allowing for a federal prohibition on same-sex unions, another can of worms that would be litigated to hell along the lines of states rights. Gay couples would still be able to adopt, too. Lesbian couples could count on the law to protect access and insurance coverage for fertility treatments.

Adrien Leavitt, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Washington, says in many regards our state constitution is also more protective than the US constitution, that we have a strong State Supreme Court, and that our lawmakers have shown an ongoing commitment to upholding and strengthening protections for LGBTQ people.

Our Democratic lawmakers did let the right take one victory on LGBTQ issues this year, however, when it passed Let’s Go Washington’s legally ambiguous, but dog-whistle-y Parents Bill of Rights ballot initiative I-2081.

Concerned the law may allow parents to access their child’s counseling records, the ACLU of Washington, QLaw and Legal Voice filed suit. A King County Superior Court Judge later blocked that provision. But passing the law might have been a political calculation in Olympia. HadDemocrats let it go to voters, and it passed, the Legislature couldn’t amend it next session.

We still don’t have all the answers. Rebekah Gardea, QLaw’s director of community advocacy and outreach, raised I-2081 as an example in a pattern of attacks on LGBTQ rights across the country able to infiltrate even a progressive state like Washington. Even if advocacy groups can be fairly confident laws banning gender-affirming care would die in committee here in Washington, the right can always introduce an initiative if there’s the money and motivation to do so. In the event of a second Trump presidency, Gardea says her organization is concerned about how our shield law would hold against a federal investigation, or what potential data privacy gaps the state may have. It’s a question the Legislature may have to answer next session.

“There’s a lot of unknowns that we’re still looking into,” she said. “We’re trying to figure out how we strengthen those protections as soon as possible so there’s really no room for interpretation.”

Should the storm come, the best thing Washington could do is adopt the position that it will live up to its progressive values by vigorously defending them against outside actors, including a federal government that imposed restrictions on LGBTQ rights. Bob Ferguson, the Attorney General and Democratic frontrunner for the governor’s race, said in a statement he’d be ready on “day one” to combat a Trump presidency.

That’s all well and good for us, but sanctuary state thinking is a trap. Your civil rights are tenuous if they can disappear at the state line.  

These progressive state laws do not regulate hate and intimidation, and if the federal government goes screwball, there’s no telling how that would change the social dynamics in this country. They’ve already changed so much in a short period of time.

Eight years ago in 2016, lawmakers nationwide had only introduced 55 anti-trans bills nationwide. That same year, North Carolina's passage of a single anti-trans bathroom bill prompted the NCAA to ban college sports championships in the state, PayPal to cancel plans for a new office and Beatle Ringo Starr to cancel a massive concert. The Associated Press determined the state stood to lose $3.76 billion dollars over the bathroom policy, which is why lawmakers repealed it the next year. In the last two years, we’ve seen between 1,000 and 1,200 bills. Most fail, but plenty are passing. Where are those boycotts now? The only transgender-related social contagion in this country is ignorance. When it comes to hate, state borders are astoundingly porous.

I’m very confident Washington won’t pass a gender-affirming care ban in the next five years, or even the next 10 years. But 15? A lot can change. Fifteen years ago, Donald Trump was hosting Season 8 of The Celebrity Apprentice. 

The world changes and complacency is one way to speed up that change. There’s a snide attitude in blue states about red states, like the only reason regressive laws get passed is because all the people there are stupid and backward enough to let it happen. I hear variations of this contemptuous position in gay bars and on gay couches at parties all the time, and it totally ignores decades of disenfranchisement and manipulation that have tilted the balance of power in red states. 

So the next time you think something to the effect of, “at least I’m safe,” think about the woman going septic in the hospital parking lot, or the trans kid weighing suicide in their bedroom. If you’re not for them, you’re not for anything at all.

The 2024 Bainbridge Island Film Festival runs from November 7-10. by Charles Mudede

If catastrophe strikes on Tuesday, and all you can see is four years of gloom and more gloom, then it might be the right time to take a ferry to Bainbridge for two reasons. One, the November-colored waters of Elliott Bay will match and maybe even soothe your mood. (One thing you can always depend on is the love misery has for company.) Two, there is a festival, Bainbridge Film Festival, which features a superb distraction, the comedy Micro Budget.  Directed by Morgan Evans, who has worked for The Onion, the film cannot be praised for originality but for getting the most out of a concept that really should have no gas left in it: The mockumentary.

The plot: An Iowan, Terry (Patrick Noth), decides to relocate to LA to make a movie that can only be, when completed, unspeakably bad. His wife is very pregnant, he doesn't have enough money, and the sun has never shined on his imagination. He hires actors who have many rungs to climb before they come anywhere close to the D List, and the production moves from one absurdity to the next. 

During the filming process, the pregnant wife suffers, the actors suffer, and the members of the production team work without disguising their contempt. All, including the cousin shooting the documentary, are caught in the fantasy of a madman who should have kept his desires in the lowest drawer of his office desk.

We have been there and seen all of that. And yet, Micro Budget, is actually funny and, once in a while, reaches a region that can be called brilliant (particularly in the moments when the director attempts to meet what he imagines to be the woke standards of Hollywood). The film also has a priceless cameo. One you will never expect in a million years.

It's worth watching even if a catastrophe is averted on November 6.

The 2024 Bainbridge Island Film Festival runs from November 7-10.

With Election Day upon us ‘tis the season to make hasty accusations about the insecurity of America’s voting system. In Washington, like in other parts of the country, the right-wing has focused on attacking the idea of mail-in ballots. Last week, with the ballot explosions in Clark County and Portland, right-wing influencers such as Jonathan Choe quickly capitalized on these incidents to make claims that the “entire system is vulnerable.” by Ashley Nerbovig

With Election Day upon us ‘tis the season to make hasty accusations about the insecurity of America’s voting system. In Washington, like in other parts of the country, the right-wing has focused on attacking the idea of mail-in ballots. Last week, with the ballot explosions in Clark County and Portland, right-wing influencers such as Jonathan Choe quickly capitalized on these incidents to make claims that the “entire system is vulnerable.”

As we move through Election Day and beyond, bad faith actors are poised to take every single election related mishap or misunderstanding and turn it into another reason to make our elections more “secure” which just means erecting more barriers to make it harder to vote, measures that often disproportionately affect Black and Brown voters. So how do you stop yourself from becoming a sucker for a piece of election misinformation that could lead you to support a law that might deprive your neighbor of their right to vote? Glad you asked. I’m here to walk you through what misinformation might look like in the days to come.  

Most of the time, rumors around elections fall into four buckets, according to local election rumor expert Kate Starbird. She co-founded the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, which studies false and misleading information online and designs strategies to combat it. First bucket: Someone observes an event and assumes something has gone wrong, but in reality, the system functions as intended—they simply don’t understand the process. But the person shares the information as something potentially nefarious. Some examples include last week when former President Donald Trump’s name appeared on the second screen for the California ballot, leading people to complain about having to click an extra button to vote for him. The explanation was not that California was purposefully suppressing Trump voters, only that California randomizes the order of names on ballots and, unluckily for Trump that meant he landed on the second page.

The other three buckets involve when someone faces a real issue with voting, such as the machines not working, their name missing or misspelled on the voter rolls, or as has happened recently in Washington, they receive multiple ballots. These issues are typically distorted in one of three ways. First, the rumor emerges that whatever issue prevented someone from voting was intentional. Second, someone makes an unverified claim that the issue is widespread and deprives a much larger group of people from voting. Finally, the rumor obscures the fact that even if someone faced an issue voting, the elections office actually had a solution to the problem.

A good example of some local election rumor coverage happened last week when KING 5 reported a poorly contextualized piece claiming that a woman had received 16 ballots with names of people she’d never met. The station quoted the woman as saying the incident caused her to have concerns over the democratic process. To verify what actually happened, I spoke to the King County Elections Spokesperson Halei Watkins who explained the woman had moved to a new address where she received her ballots. But she also was sent the ballots of seven people who previously lived at her address. She then returned those seven ballots to the post office, which redelivered them to her, creating the appearance that she had received more than a dozen ballots. Watkins said the ballots ultimately were undeliverable because the voters hadn’t updated their addresses with the county. Watkins called it an isolated incident, not indicative of a massive problem within the election system.

That’s a pretty typical case of an election rumor that paints a picture of some deeper issue where one doesn’t exist. But when Starbird looks at how people use the ballot boxes to undermine confidence in our elections, things become a little more tricky. The fires don’t fall cleanly into any of the four buckets of misinformation, Starbird said. First of all, the fires represent a real attack on our voting systems. We don’t know the motives of the person involved. Remedies exist for the problem, but they’re imperfect and some ballots may have been lost. These attacks do appear isolated to two ballot boxes, and one possible earlier attempt on October 8 in Vancouver that did not result in any damaged ballots. The fires also had mixed outcomes regarding the ability of ballot boxes to extinguish fires. In Portland, only three ballots actually suffered damage, because the mechanism to extinguish flames in the ballot box deployed quickly. In Vancouver, Washington, the fire-suppressant device worked less effectively, but Clark County and King County are both looking into better tools to prevent fires. 

So yes, the fires exposed a vulnerability, but it can hardly be used to definitively call into question mail in voting as a concept, which is how people such as Choe wish to use the incident. Overall, issues with mail in voting are few and far between, and voter fraud involving mail in ballots is exceedingly rare.

When Watkins hears people decry mail-in voting or talk about returning to in-person voting, she points out that polling places have a whole host of issues that could leave the election vulnerable to mishaps or mistakes. Before King County switched to mail-in voting in 2009, the county had 500 polling locations, with 8,000 temporary staff or volunteers who received between four to 12 hours of training in preparation for election day. Now, teams of two pick up ballots from the various ballot boxes that they deliver to election headquarters in Renton. King County has 75 permanent and 800 temporary staff who help with all things related to the election. The process is much more streamlined. 

Watkins also pointed out that at the time King County switched to all mail-in voting, 86% of votes in King County had registered as permanent absentee voters, meaning they already voted by mail, which speaks to the preferences of the county, Watkins said.

“I feel like people who push for in-person voting would just end up creating barriers to voting, not making it more secure,” Watkins says.

Best of the Northwest Fall Show, SECS Fest, and More Cheap & Easy Events Under $15 by EverOut Staff

Well Seattle, it's been a hard week and there are difficult days ahead. Take care of yourselves and each other this weekend. If you're looking for something to do to take your mind off things, we're recommending events from Best of the Northwest Fall Show to a Community Fruit Pressing at Republic of Cider and from Seattle Hmong New Year to SECS Fest 2024. For more ideas, check out our guide to the top events of the week.

Carson Ellis with Jon Mooallem
If Portland City Illustrator were a job, I'd want that role to go to Carson Ellis—something embedded in the Rose City-based artist's naturalistic, folk-inspired, muted, yet richly detailed aesthetic falls in perfect harmony with the Pacific Northwest landscape. Ellis' adult debut is an illustrated memoir filled with paintings depicting memories from a 20-something-year-old journal. One Week in January digs into Ellis' first experiences living in a Portland warehouse in the early 2000s, during which time she met future hubby Colin Meloy (who, as I'm guessing you know, fronts the Decemberists and penned Wildwood). LINDSAY COSTELLO
(Elliott Bay Book Company, Capitol Hill, free)

The Stranger's morning news round-up. by Ashley Nerbovig

Goooooood morning: The National Weather Service predicts a 50% chance of rain today, with a breezy evening ahead. Meteorologists expect wind speeds to possibly top 29 miles per hour, so batten down your rotting porch pumpkins people!

Time to talk dollars: Want to tell the City Council how to spend your tax dollars? Go to public comment tonight at 5 pm at City Hall. Or you can participate remotely. You can go to tell them to support a capital gains tax, or oppose cuts to tenant services. Or tell the Council to respect the Jumpstart spend plan and actually use the payroll tax to pay for affordable housing, as it was intended. Check back on the blog for more coverage of the budget from Hannah. 

ICYMI: With the blowout loss for former Council Member Tanya Woo, Hannah tells City Council Member Sara Nelson to count her days. Local politicos plan to mount a serious challenge to the conservative Council President Nelson next year in the hopes of ousting her and her pro-cop, pro-business agenda out of office.

Rob Saka Seeks Street Car phase-out: Saka proposed phasing out the South Lake Union streetcar and redirecting the funding to bus service in the City. The budget for the street car is about $4.4 million, which isn't a whole lot of money when you consider Saka wants $2 million to remove the Delridge median so he can take a left turn.

Last week, the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) completed its investigation into Seattle Police Department (SPD) Officer Kevin Dave, who hit and killed 23-year-old Jaahnavi Kandula as she crossed through a crosswalk in January 2023. The OPA found Dave violated the department's driving policies as well as its policies requiring officers to follow the law. The City must hold a Loudermill hearing for Dave, which allows him to tell his side of the story before deciding on his discipline, so it may be a couple months before we know the final outcome. In the meantime, Dave continues to fight the traffic ticket Republican City Attorney Ann Davison issued him for his killing of Kandula. Seattle Municipal Court shows Dave's next hearing is scheduled for 8:30 am on December 18 in courtroom 301. 

BREAKING: OPA concluded its investigation into SPD Officer Kevin Dave on Friday and sustained policy violations for breaking the law and vehicle operation. Next step will be deciding discipline for him.

— Ashley Nerbovig (@AshleyNerbovig) November 11, 2024

What's your plan for this week anyway? Maybe you're checking out Christmas Dive Bar? Or maybe it's too soon? Maybe you're trying to enjoy something with more Thanksgiving vibes? Well, as always, our sister publication EverOut has you covered with the top 41 things to do this week in Seattle.

Republicans likely to control the US House: As it stands, Republicans have won 214 seats in the House, with Democrats at 205, and 16 races yet to be called. To control the House, Republicans need only to pick up another four seats, which they seem highly likely to do. Congress returned to Washington this week, ready to start setting Trump's right-wing agenda into motion.

Trump plans to pick Senator Marco Rubio for Secretary of State: The worst people in American continue to jockey for a position in Trump's new administration, with Florida Republican Rubio possibly securing the role of America's top diplomat, according to Politico. We're sure to hear more names in the coming days, including people such as Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, who Trump may consider for Secretary of Education. The nightmare continues. 

Israel kills 14 in Gaza: Two Israeli strikes killed 14 people in an area Israel had mostly declared to be a humanitarian zone. The deaths included at least two children, according to the Associated Press. 

Migos’ “Bad And Boujee” (Feat. Lil Uzi Vert): Been a minute since I checked out Tom Breihan's the Number Ones column, and I'm glad I plumbed it for a song today because I normally wouldn't think about Migos around holiday season, but that's when "Bad and Boujee" climbed to the number one spot on the charts, so I suppose that makes it a holiday classic.

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