Category: Media

City Council, Density, homelessness, Mayor Wilson, Media

This Week on PubliCola: July 4, 2026
KCRHA CEO Kelly Kinnison

KCRHA contracts yanked, opponents rail against plan to eliminate one avenue for challenging density, news vouchers pushed back a year, and much more.

Monday, June 29

KCRHA Spins the News that Homelessness Is Growing

At a meeting of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s governing board, KCRHA leaders put a positive spin on the news that more people are homeless in the region than ever, noting that the overall rate of increase has slowed. As we discussed on the Seattle Nice podcast, however, unsheltered homelessness grew substantially, making Seattle an outlier among US cities.

Tuesday, June 30

News Vouchers Delayed Until 2027

Mayor Katie Wilson’s office confirmed this week that a planned ballot measure to fund local, independent journalism has been delayed a year; initially, the mayor’s office had planned to introduce a proposal this summer.

Stranger’s Editor Out

The Stranger’s editor, Hannah Murphy Winter, was fired this week after two years on the job. The timing—one day before the paper released its primary election endorsements—sparked speculation, but the decision seemed to be unrelated to the endorsements.

Ex-Cop Fired for Punching Handcuffed Woman Involved in Fracas at Pride

Adley Shepherd, a former SPD officer who was fired after punching a woman who was handcuffed in the back of his police car, was apparently providing security for a street preacher at a Pride event when a melee erupted, ending when someone restrained Shepherd to break up the brawl. Shepherd appears to have been standing on someone’s wheelchair, ignoring people who asked him to let the person move.

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Wednesday, July 1

Regional Homelessness Agency “Right-Sizing” Will Largely Restore Pre-KCRHA Status Quo

King County Executive Girmay Zahilay and Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson announced they’ll transfer the region’s homelessness contracts back to the city and county, effectively ending the King County Regional Homelessness Authority as it has existed for the past five years. Although both demurred when asked if the authority was a failure, KCRHA CEO Kelly Kinnison told reporters, “As it was launched, [KCRHA] is a failed experiment.”

Thursday, July 2

“Ballard is an Environmental Disaster”: Opponents Rail Against Plan to Eliminate One Avenue for Land Use Appeals

A public hearing on a proposal to eliminate one of several avenues for appealing city land use decisions drew the usual crowd of opponents, who argued that allowing more housing for renters in Seattle would kill orcas, “clear-cut” the city, and lead to dangerous urban heat islands. They also testified against planting new trees, arguing that saplings do nothing compared to existing trees.

Friday, July 4

Proposal to Temporarily Cut Fees on New Housing Is Dead (For Now)

In an 11th-hour decision, Mayor Katie Wilson decided not to propose legislation that would temporarily reduce fees on new market-rate housing that help fund affordable housing projects, saying the proposal needed more process. Housing development has fallen off a cliff in the last year, and developers asked for a two-year, 80 percent discount on the fees so that projects that are currently in limbo could move forward.

Council Amendments Would Slash Transit Funding Plan, Subject Measure to Annual Council Vote

The city council has its hands on Mayor Katie Wilson’s proposal to increase the sales tax that funds additional King County Metro bus service in Seattle, and some councilmembers are asking for major changes. Bob Kettle wants to cut the tax to a level that will require cuts to service, and Rob Saka wants to divert funding for service hours to transit police and security officers on buses.

Also this week: On the latest episode of Seattle Nice, posted today, we discussed the big KCRHA news and what it means for the future of the region’s homelessness system, and the arguments for and against giving developers a break on affordable housing fees.

 

Mayor Wilson, Media, Police

News Vouchers Delayed Until 2027, Stranger’s Editor Out, Ex-Cop Fired for Punching Handcuffed Woman Involved in Fracas at Pride

1. Mayor Katie Wilson, who had been planning to release her “News Notes” proposal to help fund independent media on or around Independence Day, has pushed the potential ballot measure back a year, according to her office. We’ve followed up with more questions about the reason for the delay and will update this post if we hear back.

News vouchers would work much like democracy vouchers, Seattle’s public campaign finance program. If approved, the program would use a small property tax to provide funding to local news outlets that meet certain criteria, such as providing core content for free, adhering to basic standards such as factual accuracy, and having independent ownership. (Many of the details are TBD).

As they already do with democracy vouchers, Seattle residents could spend news vouchers on the outlets they want to support—providing a boost to the local news ecosystem and allowing more established independent outlets to expand their coverage.

Wilson’s team had reportedly been vetting the outlines of her plan with editorial board members at the Seattle Times, which had already started ramping up its opposition campaign—in the form of opinion pieces by their “save print newspapers” columnist Brier Dudley—as far back as 2023. The pro-news voucher camp was reportedly working to convince the Times editorial board to stay neutral on the measure, rather than opposing it.

2. The Stranger’s editor-in-chief, Hannah Murphy Winter, is out. Stranger publisher Tracey Cataldo told PubliCola Murphy Winter will “stay on to help see the team through the transition” but would not provide further details, such as whether the Stranger has hired a replacement. Murphy Winter took over the paper after it was bought by Noisy Creek, a media company founded by former state legislator and Grist CEO Brady Walkinshaw.

Stranger staff found out about the firing this morning. Internally, there appears to have been some shock at the timing, just before a print endorsement issue that will reportedly include at least one controversial pick. The optics of firing the paper’s top editor right as endorsements hit are also less than ideal.

Murphy Winter, previously the chief research editor at Rolling Stone, did not respond to text messages seeking comment. Walkingshaw also did not respond to messages. (Editor’s note: This post originally said Walkinshaw lives out of state; he contacted us to let us know that he lives in Seattle and owns a house in LA. We regret the error.)

3. A video from last weekend’s Pride events, taken by Turning Point USA activist Jonathan Choe., appears to show former Seattle police officer Adley Shepherd immobilizing a person’s wheelchair by standing on it as they yell “get off my chair!” Shepherd, ID’d in the video as a security guard protecting a street preacher who’s heard yelling something about the “kingdom of Satan,” then appears to shove or punch the person in the wheelchair, prompting a brief fracas in which Shepherd appears to trip and fall to the ground, where another person restrains him. When a third person briefly jumps on Shepherd, people in the crowd, including Choe, can be heard yelling “Stop!”

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If Shepherd’s name isn’t immediately familiar, here’s a refresher: He’s the former cop who was fired in 2016 for punching a woman who was handcuffed in the back of his police car after she kicked him. The woman, who suffered a fractured eye socket, had not committed any obvious crime before Shepherd handcuffed her and shoved her into his car. An arbitrator overturned the firing in a case that led a federal judge to rule SPD out of compliance with a longstanding consent decree, but the firing was upheld after a protracted court battle.

Shepherd was in the news again in 2020 after he attended the January 6 rally alongside with several SPD officers.

Choe and TPUSA, unsurprisingly, have characterized the incident as a vicious attack by activists on a Christian minister and his security guard, but even his own heavily edited video does not show anything of the sort.

Shepherd now runs a security firm, Edrei Solutions. When we called him, Shepherd said PubliCola had treated him unfairly in the past and hung up on us.

LGBTQ+, Media

Right-Wing Activist Accused of Assaulting Security Guard While Trying to Force His Way Into Pro-LGBTQ Event


The Turning Point USA activist was trying to force his way into the “No Hate in WA State” campaign kickoff at Neumos when he allegedly struck a security guard in the back of the head.

By Erica C. Barnett

Security at Neumos on Capitol Hill called police on Turning Point USA activist Jonathan Choe last night after Choe allegedly hit a security guard in the back of the head while trying to force his way inside the private No Hate in WA State campaign kickoff.

A Seattle Police Department spokesman said Choe left the scene after Neumos security called the police to report the assault.

According to a police report on the incident, Choe attempted to push and shove his way into the event, which kicked off the campaign against two far-right statewide initiatives on the ballot in November. The first would prevent trans girls from participating in school sports; the second would eliminate privacy protections for kids who reveal confidential information to school officials, including mental health counselors.

The latter proposal would force school districts to out LGBTQ kids to their parents and reveal private health information, such as whether student has asked about reproductive health care, if they have revealed that information to a trusted adult at school.

Choe, who is Korean American, was filmed outside Neumos yesterday, screaming nonsense like “I identify as a Black man!” “you’re wearing a wig!” and “you’re all white supremacists!” before attempting to force his way inside.

The police report notes that Choe also called the security guard a “white supremacist” for denying him access to the private campaign kickoff.

This is not the first time Choe has allegedly assaulted someone and then fled the scene. In 2024, he punched a trans woman and dragged her down the street by her hair, later claiming without evidence that she had “bumped” him; he fled that scene after throwing a metal baton he was carrying into the street.  Earlier this year, he filmed himself clubbing a protester outside a far-right rally and concert at City Hall; the protester he attacked was arrested, while Choe was not.

Choe even harassed supporters of Mayor Katie Wilson at her inauguration, shouting “he’s trantifa, he’s trantifa” while filming random people at City Hall.

Choe films constantly on his phone, but has never posted video that shows anyone actually assaulting him—despite frequently claiming to be the victim of left-wing violence. His typical MO, documented yesterday in videos that show him trying to provoke people into physical fights outside Neumos, is to claim that someone he is harassing has attacked or touched him in order to claim “self-defense” when he attacks them physically.

At yesterday’s event, Choe predictably yelled “don’t touch me!” at people who were not touching him, posting the video on X and claiming “the transgender mafia targeted me with death threats and also challenged me to a fight.” (Watch Choe’s own edited video to see what a snowflake this man is—in reality, people were pointing out that Asian Americans are also targets of white supremacists.)

Choe describes himself as a journalist. He was fired from his last journalism job, as a reporter the right-leaning KOMO TV station, after promoting the Proud Boys hate group with a promotional video scored with a far-right anthem known as the “Männerbund” In a Twitter post accompanying the video, Choe invited people to attend a Proud Boys rally in Olympia and listen to what they had to say.

We’ve reached out to Neumos management and will update this post if we hear back.

Elections, Media

Elections Complaint Targets Conservative Podcaster Brandi Kruse and Let’s Go Washington
Screen shot from a recent “unDivided” video titled ‘TRANS DEMANDS”

By Erica C. Barnett

A group called Washingtonians For Ethical Government filed a complaint against Let’s Go Washington and right-wing influencer Brandi Kruse on Tuesday, claiming that the conservative PAC failed to disclose in-kind contributions from Kruse, who has spent hours advocating for LGW’s latest ballot initiatives on her podcast and spoken at their rallies as a supporter.

Let’s Go Washington, which is financed by hedge-fund investor Brian Heywood, has two initiatives on this year’s November ballot.

The first would ban trans girls from participating in children’s sports. The second would give parents the right to inspect all their children’s school records, including notes from mental health counseling sessions, among other new rights. Opponents say the latter initiative would make it dangerous for kids to confide in counselors about problems at home, reveal that they’re LGBTQ+, or ask about reproductive health care.

The second would expand the so-called “parents’ bill of rights,” a Heywood initiative the state legislature passed with some alterations last year, to give parents unfettered access to their children’s school records, including counseling and medical records that might reveal whether a student was LGBTQ+ or asked a school staffer about birth control or abortion.

The complaint centers around Kruse’s activities in favor of the initiative, which WEG says constitute contributions to the campaign that need to be reported on campaign finance reports. The group has tallied up 159 incidents in which they say Kruse engaged in “political advertising” for the initiatives, calculating their value at between $345,000 and $1.25 million based on estimated ad rates for Kruse’s podcast and the reach of her social media posts.

Pam Stuart, the spokeswoman for Washingtonians for Ethical Government, said at a press briefing Tuesday that the difference between editorial advocacy and advertising is that people get paid to advertise specific products. Kruse’s “unDivided” podcast is sponsored, in part, by Project 42, a Heywood-funded group that pays Kruse to cover certain topics.

“If I were a sign maker… [and] I were to make signs for Let’s Go Washington and give them to them, I would have to file [that as] an in-kind donation, because I’m taking the services that I normally get paid for in my daily job, and I’m donating those to influence people to vote a certain way,” Stuart said.  “As a paid online influencer, Ms. Kruse is donating her online influencing services to this particular cause.”

Unlike sign makers, some journalists do support specific issues and causes.  Stuart said Kruse is no longer a journalist, but acknowledged that deciding who counts as a journalist and who is a mere “online influencer” can be a slippery slope. PubliCola, for example, primarily produces traditional journalism, but we also have values and a point of view that’s reflected in much of our coverage; we also publish opinion pieces that are clearly labeled as such. It feels obvious that what we do is journalism, while Kruse’s activities (including her widely mocked participation in a Trump praise circle at the White House) are not. But does that make her advocacy against trans children and kids’ privacy advertising rather than editorial commentary?

Stuart said that’s for the Public Disclosure Commission to decide,. “According to the PDC, advocacy tends to become in kind donations when three things occur: The speaker or the person doing the work normally charges for that service. … the content promotes or opposes a candidate or ballot measure,” and the person doesn’t receive any payment, she said.

” I think the difference is: Is this really just her expressing an opinion, or is this really a coordinated effort with a campaign?”

Kruse has gone back and forth about whether she is a journalist or, as she put it repeatedly on X, “not a journalist.” In an email Kruse forwarded to the media on Tuesday, she accused Washingtonians for Ethical Government of attacking the First Amendment, and appeared to threaten to sue them for defamation and slander.

“I have never received any form of funds or contribution—undisclosed and unreported or otherwise—from Let’s Go Washington,” Kruse wrote. “The claim that I have violated state disclosure law is therefore false and defamatory as a factual matter, and further ignores that state law explicitly makes clear that political commentary and editorials do not constitute political advertising.”  

“Tread very carefully,” Kruse wrote.

Courts, homelessness, Mayor Wilson, Media, Transit

This Week on PubliCola: May 9, 2026
Sound Transit’s four Seattle representatives: Katie Wilson, Dan Strauss, Girmay Zahilay, and Teresa Mosqueda.

Cops burn through sick time, county official accused of stalking must wear GPS monitor, Sound Transit announces “affordable” ST3 alternative, and much more.

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, May 4

Audit: Retiring SPD Officers Routinely Burn Through Months of Sick Time, Costing City Millions Each Year

An audit by the city’s Office of Inspector General shows that retiring Seattle police officers routinely hoard sick leave and use it all at the end of their careers, allowing them to accumulate full pay for those days (which would otherwise “pay out” at 25 percent of an officer’s salary) without providing evidence that they’re actually sick. The pervasive practice costs the city millions of dollars a year.

Tuesday, May 5

County Council Launches Action to Address Homelessness Authority’s Financial Issues

The King County Council is asking King County Executive Girmay Zahilay to conduct an assessment of the the King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s forthcoming “corrective action” plan responding the issues identified in a recent forensic audit, and produce a report on “whether the county should continue, amend, or terminate its participation” in the interlocal agreement that created KCRHA.

After “Cavalier” Social Media Posts, Judge Says County Assessor Accused of Stalking Must Wear GPS Monitor After All

King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson tried to convince a judge that PubliCola’s coverage of stalking allegations against him, which he characterized as unfounded opinions on a “personal blog,” was to blame for the negative reaction to his social media posts gloating that he had convinced a judge that he couldn’t wear an ankle monitor. The judge didn’t buy it, and said he’d have to wear a GPS monitor after all.

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No Wonder the Pundit Class Can’t Stand Her: We Discuss the Mayor’s “Gaffes,” Shelter Buffer Zones, and the KCRHA’s Financial Plight

On this week’s episode of Seattle Nice, we debated whether Mayor Katie Wilson is, as many pundits have recently argued, a “gaffe”-prone buffoon, or if she’s just saying things they don’t agree with. We also discussed a proposal (later withdrawn) to require shelter-free “buffer zones” around parks, child cares, and schools, and we talked about the fallout last week from a forensic audit of the regional homelessness authority.

Wednesday, May 6

Council Committee Approves Larger New Shelters Amid Cloud of Mayor-Council Conflict

A growing rift between the City Council and Mayor Wilson exploded (almost) into the open this week, after Wilson staffers made what many councilmembers and staff described as an inappropriate request to pull the mayor’s legislation to allow larger shelters because she was unhappy with some council amendments. At a meeting the afternoon before the vote, Wilson’s staff reportedly seemed to think they could tell the council, a separate branch of government, what to do.

Thursday, May 7

The Gaffe Faff: Wilson isn’t Misspeaking. She’s Delivering.

In his latest Maybe Metropolis column, Josh Feit takes a swing at pundits who are aghast that Mayor Wilson is openly supporting lefty priorities like taxing the rich and painting bus lanes. These things only seem like “gaffes,” Josh writes, to people in denial that Seattle willingly elected a socialist who ran on the exact progressive agenda she’s now espousing.

Friday, May 8

The C Is for Crank: The News About Sound Transit Is Grim. Why Are Most Seattle Politicians Pretending It Isn’t?

In my column, I wonder why elected officials from Seattle are playing nice about the latest Sound Transit 3 plan, which defers stations in Seattle (including Graham Street in the Rainier Valley, first promised in 1999) and cuts the entire Ballard line, at least until savings and “new revenue” (i.e. bonds regional taxpayers will still be paying back in the 22nd century) can be found.

Mayor Wilson, Media, podcasts

No Wonder the Pundit Class Can’t Stand Her: We Discuss the Mayor’s “Gaffes,” Shelter Buffer Zones, and the KCRHA’s Financial Plight
Mayor Wilson is excited about fixing transit! Or IS she??

By Erica C. Barnett

Is Mayor Katie Wilson proving herself to be a “gaffe”-prone executive, stumbling and bumbling her way into damaging missteps, as Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat argued recently? Or is she exactly who she appeared to be on the campaign trail—an authentic lifelong activist with socialist leanings who refuses to play the game pundits like Westneat want her to play? That’s our first topic on the Seattle Nice podcast this week.

Here’s my take: Westneat’s column was a confusing, first-pass confabulation of unrelated incidents, including a Starbucks rally before Wilson took office, an out-of-context remark about millionaires fleeing the state in response to taxes, and a comment Wilson made at an event in February about social housing.

In addition to these “gaffes,” Westneat was incensed that Wilson allowed a city staffer to steer her briefly away from KOMO’s Chris Daniels, who was interviewing the mayor in a one-on-one after a press conference where she took questions from all members of the media.

(Westneat, like most pundits and the Seattle Times editorial board, failed to summon similar outrage when Wilson’s centrist predecessor, Bruce Harrell, routinely deployed the phrase “how dare anyone question” him when deflecting questions he didn’t want to answer, ended press conferences abruptly, and was rude to unfavored reporters, including on Election Night 2021 when he literally pretended I was invisible. Wonder why.)

Although Daniels, Westneat and seemingly everyone who’s still on X treated this brief faux pas as an assault on journalism itself, Wilson actually did answer the question—which was about whether a recent shooting made her want to add more surveillance cameras faster. (No.)

Sandeep and David think there’s something deeper here—Sandeep in particular argued that it’s important to play nice with the business community—but I think what’s really going on is that people who didn’t want Wilson to win in the first place are now angry that she isn’t playing the usual political games by slapping backs and spooning up sound-bite pablum on command. Despite their outrage about this supposed assault on the free press, it’s clear that Westneat and the rest of the pundit class are perfectly happy when politicians give meaningless comments like “that’s a great question, Chris, and it’s a matter of great concern to me,” as long as the politicians treat them like they’re important.

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Case in point: Westneat praised Wilson’s counterpart at King County, County Executive Girmay Zahilay, for giving “a classic ‘I feel your pain’ answer” to the question Wilson was answering—at much greater length than the out-of-context clip—about millionaires leaving Seattle because of the new state tax. “He said he supports progressive revenue, but that every policy has trade-offs that ought to be acknowledged,” Westneat wrote. Then Wilson “did the very thing Zahilay had just suggested was bad to do.” She was honest. No wonder the pundit class hates her guts!

Later in the podcast, we talked about a couple of stories I covered last week: A proposal to create 750-foot “buffer zones” around schools, child care centers, and parks where new tiny house village shelters would be prohibited, and the ongoing fallout from a damning forensic evaluation of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s finances, which has left many of the people with the power to shut down the agency convinced it’s time to do so.