Slog AM: A Walking, Talking Drain on Worker Power, To Make Peace, President Threatens War, Hayden Panettiere Dead at 36

GEO Group, the transparent owner of the Northwest ICE Processing  Center in Tacoma, said it’ll soon talk to the feds about selling them a few of their privately owned prisons for immigrants. It is unclear if those negotiations include the Northwest ICE Processing Center, but the company’s CEO, George Zoley, a Greek immigrant who came with his family to the US through Ellis Island in 1953, said during a call with investors that there’s “mutual interest by us and ICE” to wrap this up by September. Back in July, Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a “Request for information” seeking to buy detention facilities in states including Washington. In early August, ICE bought a California facility similar to the Northwest ICE Processing Center for $500 million.

US Rep. Emily Randall told KUOW this was part of a plan by the Trump administration and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller to enrich CEOs like Zoley. “Zoley and GEO Group donated heavily to Trump’s reelection campaign,” KUOW reports.

Bar Fight: The shooting started after a scuffle spilled out of a Pioneer Square bar near First Avenue and King Street Sunday morning. One person walked to Harborview Medical Center after they were shot in the back. Police told KING 5 the injuries were not life-threatening. Bullets damaged several cars and buildings nearby. As a clue for investigators, one of the shooters left behind a gun. 

“Robots* That Walk and Talk Are Coming to Car Factories,” reads a New York Times headline. Automakers, which have automated workers out of existence and power for decades, think humanoid robots can do the work their enormous robotic assembly arms have been incapable of snatching from human beings (the arms did not have legs and could not talk). This is apparently what fighting China looks like. The Times puts the other benefits—from the perspective of a Detroit-style bloodsucker—bluntly: “They would never take a lunch break, join a union or require health insurance.” But sirs, if nobody gets paid for things, how will they buy the things you make?

*Robots that rock and sock were considered but ruled out.

ICYMI: Stranger contributor Chase Hutchinson has the latest on the SIFF union negotiations post-Odyssey walk out. Staffing levels are a sticking point.

ICYMI 2: Tiffani Lennon at Legal Voice wrote a Guest Rant about why Brian Heywood’s anti-trans sports ban initiative on the ballot this November will threaten all women and girls in Washington. Gabriel Neuman, policy and advocacy director at the GSBA, also wrote Guest Rant where he shared his story of school counselors saving him from an abusive home as evidence against Heywood’s other initiative to restore Washington’s so-called Parents’ Bill of Rights.

Weather: Cloudy in the morning, and clearing with a calm wind in the afternoon. High of 77. No chance of rain before Saturday. Beautiful.

Isn’t It Ironic 🙁 Within seven hours of moving into their new home in Spokane, the Old Trails wildfire burned it down. The father of the family was returning the U-Haul when his wife called to say she and their five children were being evacuated. They lost everything and did not yet have renters insurance, KING 5 reports.

The indestructible cheerleaderdies: Heroes was the first TV show that blew my mind. Now, it didn’t blow my mind for long, and it has aged poorly, but at 10, I’d never seen anything so violent and fantastical. So when my girlfriend called across our apartment to say that Hayden Panettiere—who played Claire Bennett, a cheerleader with the power of rapid self-healing, the subject of the tagline “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World”—I felt a pang in my chest like a wire snapping. Her career did not begin with Heroes. At 9, Panettiere played the ant princess Dot in A Bug’s Life. Four years later, she was cast as the daughter of Assistant Coach Bill Yoast in Remember the Titans. But Heroes is what she’ll be remembered for (that and Nashville, which people watched, apparently*). Found unresponsive in her apartment complex in Greenville, South Carolina, Panettiere died after paramedics administered “advanced life support.” People reports an overdose may have killed her. She was 36.

*Editor’s note: BECAUSE IT FUCKING RULED.

Galaxy-Brained Geopolitics: President Donald Trump ordered the Pentagon to trim its annual joint military exercises with South Korea over the country’s unwillingness to help in Iran (not why the US is losing the war) and his good relationship with Kim Jong Un (not the Korean leader you’re supposed to be pals with as an American President). The exercises are “totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea, said the man who is totally inappropriate and hostile at all times. In May, Pete Hegseth praised South Korea for its commitment to increased defense spending. 

More Brain/Geopolitics: 60 days ago, the US and Iran agreed to work toward a peace deal in the next 60 days. So President Trump threatened to bomb Oman this morning if it gets in the way of peace with Iran.

Song: Fun fact, did you know “You Oughta Know” was written about Uncle Joey on Full House? Also Flea and Dave Navarro, then guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, played on the song. (It always comes back to the Peppers, I’m sad to say.)

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