Seattle’s most celebrated billionaire is getting a campus wake-up call. A UW student is asking whether philanthropy can keep insulating power from accountability.

Want to scream? Me too. We're putting a monthly protest calendar in @thestranger.com, including marches, rallies, and other ways to get involved. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Doesn't that feel better?

"There's a specific kind of lie that powerful men tell when the walls start closing in: the minimizing lie, the "it wasn't what it looked like" lie, the "I was barely there" lie. Bill Gates tried that last one earlier this month. www.thestranger.com/news/2026/02...

Get our Sexy February issue in print on stands near you!

It took Mayor Katie Wilson 37 minutes into her State of the City to mention the Seahawks. A new era in local government.

Katie Wilson interrupts her State of the City address to note the fact that a 27-year-old was killed last night by a driver in Capitol Hill. "We have to do better. We're not on track for our Vision Zero goals, and we have to make it safe for our vulnerable road users to get around the city."

Mayor Katie Wilson as she starts her State of the City Address: "I don't think I've ever talked for as long as I'm about to talk, so we'll see how it goes."

BREAKING: @councilmember-amr.bsky.social and Toshiko Hasegawa spoke to the Stranger about new their new policies to impede ICE in Seattle and at the Port. www.thestranger.com/news/2026/02...

Local officials across Seattle, King County, and the Port are moving to limit ICE’s reach.

Team USA keeps their 5-0 win streak alive if you don't count the Britta Curl goal, which I don't because fuck transphobes.

BREAKING: Our local lawmakers are hustling on measured that would impede ICE this week. I talked to Councilmember Rinck and Port Commissioner Hasegawa about their newest policies. www.thestranger.com/news/2026/02...

Is there some sort of award for perfectly missing the point?

❤️

We read the astrological charts for the 1 Line and the soon to be open Cross Lake Connection, and the two might not be a love match.

Do you eat food? Then you should care about farm workers. Read Conor Kelley on the effort to get collective bargaining rights for the people who grow your food.

All eyes are on Minnesota today, as millions of us watching make our own private calculations for how far we’ll go to protect our cities. Or how we’ll live with ourselves in what’s left of them.

every single successful general strike in US history has had union backing through the local AFL-CIO this is the first time it’s been called for since the 1940s

Coordinated a beer drop by a white friend to deliver a 30-rack of Hamm’s to a Hispanic friend’s doorstep because his wife wouldn’t let him leave the house to go buy more beer for fear he’d be brutalized by lawless armed masked federal paramilitaries. This is Minnesota community. We take care of us.

Seattle’s police chief built his reputation on transparency. But a report released last fall in Madison found Shon Barnes ignored directives and key data in a body-cam pilot. Now Seattle is expanding police surveillance and trusting the same guardrails.

- US Terrorizes Greenland - US Terrorizes US - Washington Sheriffs Yell on Facebook Get this news and more at The Stranger.

The Play About the Immigrant Experience Takes on a New Meaning in Trump’s America

That's funny, I was just thinking about how peaceful everything was

- Varsity Theater Will Close This Week - Bob Ferguson Grows a Spine, Maybe - Trump Keeps Making Moves on Greenland Get this news and more at The Stranger.

King County Prosecutors Won't Charge Pedro Gomez. "Our system is inadequate to provide healing to most survivors," they say.

Charles is asking the hard hitting questions, like why are modern apartment buildings so ugly? This is Stranger Places with @mudede.bsky.social

At HUMP!, there is truly nothing we love more than talking about sex. So, as the @thestranger.com said, tell us everything! Take The Stranger's 2026 Sex Survey now! www.thestranger.com/sex/2025/12/...

Have you taken The Stranger's Sex Survey yet? It'd be a lot cooler if you did!

What if you achieved your lifelong dream of getting on Jeopardy! but your biggest win was not throwing up onstage?⁠ ⁠ David Lewis writes about realizing the game is more reflex than knowledge, and coming home to Seattle with a head full of trivia that wasn't as trivial as he thought.

Hundreds gathered outside the federal building downtown as Seattle joined a national wave of anti-ICE protests after Renee Nicole Good was killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. @micahyip.bsky.social reports.

Everything's fucked, but I wrote an article about how writers are fighting for the future and why we're going to win: www.thestranger.com/sci-fi/2026/... 🪐 #booksky

A moment of levity: One man's failure on Jeopardy!, which many say is the world's greatest game show www.thestranger.com/jeopardy/202...

This is valuable, clear reporting

Videos of the shooting do not show the woman attacking anyone.

Interviewed several musicians and venue operators about the precarious state of the Seattle music scene for @thestranger.com . www.thestranger.com/music/2025/1...

The nurses are on the verge of a strike www.thestranger.com/news/2025/12...

The Army veteran and husband of a former Congressional candidate has been detained by ICE since August. If he's detained much longer, he could lose his eyesight.

For some weekend reading, @thestranger.com partnered with The Guardian to explore what it means to run a winning mayoral campaign as a community organizer.

ICE raids are rising, and Seattle says SPD cannot help. Advocates call Harrell’s order mostly symbolic, so the council is pushing SPD to spell out how officers will respond, what they can refuse, and how they will protect residents if federal agents overreach.

- Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Out - Trump Has a New Crush - The Olympic Pipeline Could Screw Over Your Holiday Plans Get this news and more at The Stranger!

King County Council Saved the Sound Stage, but It’s Only Funded for the Next Six Months

Took a brief break from the news to rip my horrible couch to shreds www.thestranger.com/arts/2025/11...

The disingenuous whiners at the Seattle Times ed board actually suggested that Katie Wilson—mayor-elect and the founder of the Transit Riders Union (who used to do outreach at the bus stop on Third and Union)—doesn't know that the county, not the city, runs the buses. Cry harder, losers

During his concession speech, Harrell said: "A lot of people were saying that I shouldn’t concede and that there were anomalies, differences, and stuff." There was no evidence of irregularities. At all. Why imply this? He didn't say. www.thestranger.com/news/2025/11...

Katie Wilson explicitly called herself a socialist in her victory speech. Can't wait for the conservative media frenzy from that soundbite.

In the lobby of City Hall, waiting for Bruce Harrell's speech where we expect him to concede the mayor's race in a couple minutes.

It's official: Katie Wilson is the next mayor of Seattle!

The results are in. Katie Wilson is up by 1,976 votes and 0.72 percent of the vote. It’s tight, but we’re outside of recount territory. Katie Wilson will be Seattle’s next mayor.

For those wondering why the ballot counts didn't quite add up today (ballots counted were less than total votes and write-ins went down), King County Elections says they go through all the write-in ballots by hand and some of those were for one of the two candidates, so those got added to the totals

With this new ballot drop, Katie Wilson is very likely our next mayor.