The Stranger's morning news round-up. by Hannah Murphy Winter Good Morning! We did it. We survived the Longest Night. Today, the sun rose at 7:56 a.m., and we’ll get fractions of a minute back every day. We still have to get throu gh the sneakiest part of winter—February and March—which somehow feel darker and colder than December, but that’s a problem for future us. But for today, we’ve got highs in the 40s, lows in the 30s, with a 100 percent chance of rain. Let’s do the news. Trump Blocks Another Oil Tanker: Last week, Trump announced “a total and complete blockade” of oil going in and out of Venezuela, claiming (without evidence, naturally) that Venezuela is stealing American oil to fund narcotraffickers. But he followed that by saying that they’d be blocking sanctioned vessels, which is not a complete blockade, so no one seemed to know exactly what he was going to do next. Then over the weekend, the US Coast Guard chased and boarded a private supertanker carrying Venezuelan oil. That boat, called the Centuries, was headed to Asia and was not on the sanctioned vessel list. The Venezuelan government called it “theft and hijacking,” and the “forced disappearance of its crew.”  Pound the Alarm: This weekend, in the third level of Hell (Phoenix), all of the fascist talking heads gathered for the Turning Point USA annual conference, AmFest. Attendees posed in the same kind of tent that Charlie Kirk was shot in. Erika Kirk walked on stage with literal pyrotechnics, flanked by Nicki Minaj, and they hugged before diving into a QA on stage. I’ll just leave these two quotes from Minaj here for you: “I have the utmost respect and admiration for our president. He has, I don’t know if he even knows this, but he’s given so many people hope that there’s a chance to beat the bad guys and to win, and to do it with your head held high and your integrity intact.” “I can relate to them when I hear them speak, I know that they’re one of us… They haven’t lost touch of the world. You know, they’re still connected to the world. And what’s happening in the world, with the younger people and older people, with the richer people and not so rich people—they have the ability to still connect and be real and make us feel proud to be American.” Girls Fall Like Dominos: The big takeaway from AmFest, though, is that the MAGA acolytes are fracturing. Under Trump, the conservative “big tent” has included conspiracy theorists, bigots who sell antisemitism, and white supremacists. And now, as they’re trying to figure out what the future of the MAGA party looks like, they’re all swinging at each other. Ben Shapiro went for Megyn Kelly, saying she’s “guilty of cowardice” for not denouncing Candace Owens for spreading conspiracy theories about Charlie Kirk’s death, and called Tucker Carlson’s decision to host Nick Fuentes on his podcast “an act of moral imbecility.” Megyn Kelly literally laughed at Shapiro, saying, essentially, I made you, bitch. Steve Bannon called Shapiro a cancer. Do We Have a Problem?: Now, the party’s heir-apparent, JD Vance, has to decide if he wants to continue that legacy. At AMFest, he decided to lean into the bickering. “I know some of you are discouraged by the infighting over any number of issues. Don’t be discouraged,” Vance said. “Would you rather lead a movement of free thinkers who sometimes disagree than a bunch of drones who take their orders from George Soros?” Actual Censorship: Just hours before 60 Minutes aired this weekend, new CBS head Bari Weiss pulled a segment about Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration to what the program called a prison in El Salvador, claiming that it needed “additional reporting.” The story had gone through all of the program’s typical checks and balances, including reviews from their legal and Standards and Practices departments. Sharyn Alfonsi, the long-time 60 Minutes correspondent who reported the segment, accused CBS of pulling the segment for political reasons (duh). After viewing the segment, Weiss had demanded that they include a voice from the Trump administration (who had previously declined to comment) and questioned their use of the term “migrant,” because, she said, they were in the country illegally.  Even Fascism Doesn’t Kill Frippery: Hundreds of people attended, mourned, and grieved at a funeral at the Lincoln Memorial this weekend. For whom, you might ask? The penny. The Trump Admin discontinued the coin—which has long cost more to produce (four cents) than it’s worth (one cent)—in November, and hundreds of people gathered to say goodbye to our one-cent piece. The funeral started at 1:01 p.m., and included interpretations of Mary Todd Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington, and so many top hats.             View this post on Instagram                       A post shared by The Washington Post (@washingtonpost)   The Kennedy Center Needs a Shower: Maybe in the fetal position. At the end of last week, the Kennedy Center board voted to add Trump to the center’s official name. The renaming is very likely illegal without an act of Congress, but within hours, “Donald Trump” had been added above John F. Kennedy’s name on the side of the building. But to take the edge off: the domains TrumpKennedyCenter.org and TrumpKennedyCenter.com aren't available. MadTV and South Park writer Toby Morton bought them months ago. ICE Hires Bounty Hunters: US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has hired BI Incorporated, a surveillance company, to track immigrants to their homes and places of work so federal agents can easily swoop in and make arrests. The company is a subsidiary of GEO Group, the for-profit prison company that operates our ICE detention facility in Tacoma. According to records obtained by the Intercept, ICE has already paid BI $1.6 million, and the contract could grow to as much as $121 million by the time it ends in 2027. “It Really Comes Down to Speed”: Washington State Trooper Tara-Marysa Guting was investigating a two-car crash on Highway 509 on Friday night when she was hit by two different cars. The 29-year-old was killed in the crash. “It’s a very dangerous part of our jobs,” Rick Johnson, a State Patrol spokesperson, told the Seattle Times. “It’s a tough place to be in on the freeways, when you have 4,000-pound vehicles out there.” Police are looking for any information you might have on the second driver, who hit Guting between 7:20 and 7:30 p.m., near mile marker 2. They’re looking for a dark four-door pickup, either a Chevrolet Avalanche or a Cadillac Escalade EXT. Tacoma police are urging anyone who witnessed the collision, has dashcam footage, or has seen the pickup to contact 1-800-222-TIPS.  She’s Not Alone: A trooper was hit and injured on Highway 512 on Sunday, and a driver fleeing from cops ran a red light and crashed into a car carrying a family of four. All four family members were hurt, including a 4-year-old critically injured kid. Slow the fuck down. And I know the holidays feel like fantasy land, but you still can’t get behind the wheel if you’ve been drinking. (We tested it.) Snoqualmie’s Open for Business: The back-to-back atmospheric rivers may have trashed our local infrastructure, but they did dump a bunch of much-needed snow in the mountains. Crystal Mountain opened on Saturday, Mount Baker opened on Sunday, and now Summit at Snoqualmie is catching up, opening tomorrow. Meanwhile: Renton residents are taking kayaks into the Cedar River, using axes and rakes to try to break up logs and other flood debris clogging up the river. It’s cold, heavy, stinky work, but someone’s gotta do it. Some Music for Your Morning: KEXP released their 2025 top albums, ranked by their listeners, and local faves Deep Sea Diver made Number Two with their album Billboard Heart. Here’s one of their singles from that album. ...read more read less