Seattle's Only News Roundup by Hannah Murphy Winter I’m writing this at 7 am and there’s still no sign of sunlight. We’re officially in the deepest of the Big Dark—five days away from our shortest day. Behind today’s rain clouds, we get less than eight and a half hours of sunlight today. It’s gonna be raining and in the 40s, but when the sun is up, go outside anyway. Speaking of weather: Who kept their lights on this weekend? Saturday’s windstorm knocked out power for about 78,000 people. The worst of it was on Bainbridge, Whidbey, and Camano islands, but as of Sunday, most people had their power back. Now we just have to get ready for the incoming atmospheric river. Climate change is fun.  Sara Nelson fires back: The Council president was on KUOW on Friday to respond to Council Member Tammy Morales’ description of the council as “toxic.” Nelson claimed she wanted to “stay above the tit for tat allegations” but that she “had a responsibility” to “respond to the attacks on the integrity of the body.” She defended the body, denying Morales’s claims about bullying, and her worries that the council "is sliding towards really undemocratic behavior." Sounds to me like she’s worried no one will want to work with them after Morales shared her experience: "One of the reasons that I wanted to be on this show is because I don't want anybody who is interested in serving District 2 to be discouraged from applying because of how the Council dynamics have been characterized by Councilmember Morales," she insisted. "This is a positive work environment." And of course, she still skirted the question of whether she’s going to try to appoint Tanya Woo again.  Let the D2 appointment race begin: Randy Engstrom, a 20-year Beacon Hill resident and former head of Seattle's Office of Arts & Culture, has officially announced he’s going for the District 2 City Council seat Tammy Morales is stepping down from. In an email to supporters over the weekend, Engstrom touted his decades of civic work focused on equity, and creativity, as opposed to the typical political tap dance. He says he aims to protect vulnerable communities while giving Seattle a shot at being a true cultural and progressive trailblazer. Though he's the first to toss his hat in the ring, the D2 appointee race is likely to get crowded before the January 27 deadline. People keep clocking an extra-fluffy coyote in Capitol Hill. But it turns out that coyote sightings are on the rise in general, which is unusual this time of year. If you want to see where they’re popping up, the Woodland Park Zoo and Seattle University provide a Carnivore Spotter map. (Though it does show one sighting in the middle of Elliott Bay, which I have…questions about.) And remember, coyotes are cute but they probably don’t want to be your friend. Leave them be, and keep your cats inside.  Years in the making: The Highway 520 bike-and-pedestrian bridge opened this weekend! It connects Washington Park Arboretum trails with Montlake and the University District. The city also opened the 3-acre Montlake Lid. Maybe we’ll lid I-5 next! Separate but equal: Adding to our early-season anti-trans Christmas presents, several Washington school districts are pushing the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) to implement rules about how trans athletes can participate in school sports. Currently, the WIAA allows athletes to participate on teams that align with their gender identity, but Amendment No. 7 would specifically ban transgender girls from participating in girls' sports, or girls' sports divisions with athletes assigned female at birth. Instead, they would make a separate, third division that trans athletes could compete in. On top of the fact that checking kids' genitals before they compete in school sports introduces a whole mess of privacy issues, this all sounds a little Plessy v. Ferguson to me.  Washington gets a brand news Superfund site! For almost 100 years, a Canadian smelting company called Teck Metals dumped toxic “slag” into the Upper Columbia River, and last week the EPA officially named it a Superfund site. By making it a Superfund listing, the EPA can use federal funding to clean up the river. But even better, it also allows the agency to compel polluters (in this case, Teck) to pay for the clean up (like how Boeing, King County, and the Port of Seattle are paying about $1 billion to clean up the Duwamish.) Boeing fought tooth and nail to avoid paying their fair share, so we’ll see what kind of fight Teck puts up!  More things to be proud of: Washington is home to one of the first sexual harassment convictions since the military reclassified it as a criminal offense. Lt. Col. Herman West of Joint Base Lewis-McChord was found guilty of repeatedly sexually harassing a female officer in his command. It's considered a felony-level offense.  Ho ho ho: SantaCon was this weekend. To all those who celebrate, I wish you much Gatorade. I’m happy to report that all of my favorite bars had “No Santa-Con” signs on the door.  The wrong kind of zoning: Capitol Hill Seattle Blog reported that the Seattle chapter of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression was planning a protest and flyering rally on Saturday at Cal Anderson Park to protest against the neighborhood’s new SODA zone. D3’s Joy Hollingsworth led the effort to add a Capitol Hill SODA zone to the list in September, even though SPD Chief Sue Rahr has explicitly said that the zones are “not ideal” for treating a “medical problem.” Cool.  Back to Basics: Washington has a new guaranteed basic income program, targeting indigenous parents. Hummingbird Indigenous Family Services will give 150 pregnant people who identify as American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander $1,250 a month, no strings attached. “This program is going to build Indigenous generational wealth,” Tia Yazzie, Hummingbird’s Abundance Auntie, told the Seattle Times. “It’s not just money wealth, but cultural wealth, healing wealth.” Research overwhelmingly shows that UBI works, and we recently had a successful pilot program down in Tacoma. Plus, the Heritage Foundation thinks UBI is BS, which just makes me want it more. McConnell does something we don’t hate: Senator Mitch McConnell is a polio survivor, so RFK Jr.’s petition to withdraw the polio vaccine from the market didn’t sit well with him. He teeeechnically didn’t name names, but he issued a thinly veiled threat to incoming Trump admin members who might be, shall we say, science-hostile: “Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed—they’re dangerous,” said McConnell. “Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.” Major news outlets fawn over CEOs: This weekend, the Seattle Times published a syndicated Washington Post article about the late UnitedHealth CEO, Brian Thompson. (They literally used the word “bootstrapped” to describe Thompson’s background.) Apparently, he was aware that the company had a serious PR problem before he was killed. “He was actively articulating a vision that helped better educate and help people better understand what the company is doing,” one source told the paper, which sounds an awful lot like corporate PR spin to us. Meanwhile, the New York Times published an OpEd by the company’s new CEO, saying: “We know the health system does not work as well as it should, and we understand people’s frustrations with it.” But they didn’t design the system, and healthcare is hard, so don’t blame them, he said. Tell that to the $23 billion UnitedHealthcare netted last year.  Meanwhile: ProPublica found that UnitedHealthcare had a “playbook for limiting mental health coverage,” which impacted the treatment of children with autism on Medicaid. Cool. Same playbook, just more of it: We’re weeks away from the new Trump administration, and he’s already threatening the press. The New York Times called it a “small flurry” of defamation lawsuits, aimed at news outlets that dared to criticize him or his cabinet picks. ABC News has already been cowed, coughing up $15 million to Trump's presidential library fund to settle a defamation suit - meaning some in the Fourth Estate are now sponsors of the MAGA empire’s greatest hits collection What we’ve been waiting for: Texas Attorney General and all-around garbage pile Ken Paxton is suing a New York doctor for prescribing abortion pills to a woman near Dallas. It’s one of the first challenges to shield laws that Democrat-controlled states passed after Roe v. Wade was overturned. There are countless ways to work around state laws and get abortion pills by mail. Because abortion is community care. A tune for your Monday: My new favorite, if kinda unsettling, cover of Black Hole Sun.