1. City Attorney Ann Davison and Mayor Bruce Harrell announced on Thursday—a date also known as Six Days Before the Primary Election—that they are suing the Trump Administration over two January 2025 executive orders threatening to withhold federal funding from jurisdictions that support diversity, equity, and inclusion or acknowledge the existence of trans and nonbinary people, a policy the Trump order refers to as “gender ideology.” (Harrell said there was nothing political about the timing. OK.)
The lawsuit isn’t the first in the nation to challenge the two executive orders, which seek to dismantle policies adopted by local jurisdictions by threatening the loss of critical federal funds. But it is the first such lawsuit initiated by the city of Seattle, which has also joined two other anti-Trump lawsuits filed by other jurisdictions.
The lawsuit argues that the Trump Administration has overstepped its authority by unilaterally imposing illegal conditions on federal contracts. By requiring the city to certify that it doesn’t have any programs that promote diversity or acknowledge genders other than “biological male and female,” the city argues the Trump Administration is subjecting it to “impossible choice when it accepts and spends federal grant money—either submit to the Administration’s policies through unlawful means or forgo vital funding for major infrastructure and safety initiatives.”
In a press conference Thursday, Davison avoided talking explicitly about gender diversity and DEI, limiting her comments to the legal aspects of the lawsuit. (Harrell, in contrast, talked about his own history of advocating for gender-affirming care to be included in the city’s health care plans and for the city’s Race and Social Justice Initiative.) “We should not have to forego our own local policies in order to obtain that money that has already been provided to us,” Davison said.
This year, Seattle has the authority to spend around $370 million in federal grant funds, much of that for transportation projects. According to the lawsuit, Trump’s executive orders put all that funding at risk.
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3. Late last month, former police chief Adrian Diaz quietly agreed to dismiss all claims against Mayor Bruce Harrell in his defamation lawsuit against the city of Seattle—a surprising turn for a legal claim that puts Harrell at the center of most of its allegations, claiming he helped spread false rumors that Diaz had an inappropriate affair with a subordinate, Jamie Tompkins, and that Diaz and Tompkins lied to investigators looking into the allegations.
Diaz’ complaint rehashes a number of his longstanding grievances, including his claim that a love letter, written in what an expert identified as Tompkins’ handwriting, was a “forgery.” (Four days after Diaz filed the lawsuit, the city released records and recordings from the investigation, which PubliCola covered at length.) But it also included many specific allegations against Harrell.
After Harrell “wrongfully” fired Diaz, the complaint says, he “escalated the injustice by making knowingly false and defamatory statements to the media and public, accusing Chief Diaz of dishonesty, lying, failing to disclose conflicts of interest, acting unprofessionally, and engaging in an improper personal relationship.”
Then, the complaint alleges, “in an effort to score political points in an upcoming election year, Mayor Harrell then engaged in a self-aggrandizing media tour during which he repeatedly and falsely proclaimed Chief Diaz had lied to him, statements that wrongfully labeled Chief Diaz as a dishonest cop who could not be trusted.”
Diaz is still suing the city—the other named defendant in his lawsuit. Asked about his removal from the lawsuit on Thursday, Harrell said tersely, “No reaction. No comment.”
3. Talk about performative: Two of Seattle Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck’s colleagues—Sara Nelson and Maritza Rivera—along with the council appointee Rinck handily defeated, Tanya Woo, recently endorsed Rinck’s opponent Ray Rogers, who’s one of four people running against the popular incumbent.
Rogers, a self-identified former gang member who supports community policing and opposes a “return to the radical council of the past,” has raised just $4,000 and is polling at about 2 percent. Like her other nominal opponents, he isn’t a threat to Rinck. By endorsing him, her colleagues (and Woo) are sending Rinck a message that they’d rather endorse a nonviable candidate than accept the fact that voters overwhelmingly support her.
Well? We’d like them 2 out of office. I think they are jealous. Or maybe curious?
Hardly surprising about Rivera and Nelson. They’re both vile, hateful wretches whose combined gray matter could drift about in a tin can for a year yet never touch the sides. And, really, who cares what Woo thinks? If that cretin ever had an original thought enter her brain, it must have been a breaking-and-entering.