The Stranger

The 2025-2026 Budget Raids Affordable Housing Funds, Avoids New Taxes on the Rich, and Increases Police Budget

Serve, protect, mechanize: The FAA granted the Redmond Police Department a waiver that allows them to deploy drones without a second officer to watch the airspace. As long as there’s one pilot-certified officer to fly, the department can deploy drones to any call they want. The cops say it reduces their staffing by 50%. Redmond is the second department on the West Coast to receive the waiver. While police say drones allow them to monitor dangerous situations without risking human life, there are immense privacy implications to expanding unchecked, warrantless aerial surveillance.

Serve, protect, mechanize: The FAA granted the Redmond Police Department a waiver that allows them to deploy drones without a second officer to watch the airspace. As long as there’s one pilot-certified officer to fly, the department can deploy drones to any call they want. Redmond is the second department on the West Coast to receive the waiver. While police say drones allow them to monitor dangerous situations without risking human life, there are immense privacy implications to expanding unchecked, warrantless aerial surveillance.

The Democratic Party is stuck with believing in what the GOP plainly disregards: The United States of America.

See Cyndi Lauper's Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Farewell Tour at Climate Pledge Arena December 1. Patrick Beaudry

A New Exhibit at the Frye Explores Surveillance and Disposession in the Asylee Experience

Turns out, a gay man assaulted in Capitol Hill the morning after the election wasn’t the only one who called the police.

Office of Police Accountability (OPA) Director Gino Betts resigned last week as head of the city’s police watchdog department following an unrelenting anti-Betts campaign from the Seattle Police Union, Interim Chief of Police Sue Rahr, and certain right-wing radio hosts. For those who don’t know, almost anyone you’ve ever read about in Bad Apples, Betts investigated and recommended their discipline —or lack thereof.

We’re Seattleites, so I get it. We don’t have a reputation for being warm, inviting, or even conservative with our fellow citizens. Stranger danger is real, and I understand not wanting to go out of your way to talk to a rando.

We asked four of our favorite chefs to share their best quick-and-easy recipes that make enough to feed a crowd, but can also be enjoyed alone, in the dark, with Bob’s Burgers holiday episodes on loop.