The Seattle City Council unanimously passed a controversial tax on big businesses Monday to raise revenue for fighting homelessness. The $275-per-employee "head tax" will affect only businesses with more than $20 million in gross revenue, and the proposal that passed Monday evening was a compromise with Mayor Jenny Durkan (D), who had threatened to veto the $500-a-head tax that the council passed Friday on a 5-4 vote. The new version, expected to raise about $47 million a year for low-income housing and homelessness programs instead of $75 million, also sunsets after five years if it isn't reauthorized.
Amazon, which will pay a large share of the head tax and whose rapid expansion has helped drive up the cost of housing in Seattle, led opposition to the proposed tax. It said it is still "disappointed" with the compromise tax but will resume construction on Block 18, a 17-story office tower in downtown Seattle. It had halted planning on that and another office tower pending the outcome of the vote, leading to charges of blackmail from head tax supporters. Amazon has grown to about 45,000 employees in Seattle, spread across 40 buildings accounting for about 20 percent of prime Seattle office space. Seattle has strained to accommodate the influx of Amazon workers, and the median house price has shot up to $777,000.
Seattle and King County declared a state of emergency in 2015 over its homelessness problem, but gentrification has only accelerated since then. Peter Weber
President Trump will nominate Barbara Barrett as Secretary of the Air Force, he announced on Tuesday.
"She will be an outstanding Secretary!" Trump tweeted. Barrett is the former chair of the Aerospace Corporation, and was the first civilian woman pilot to land an F-18 fighter jet on an aircraft carrier, The Arizona Republic reports. She is also a former ambassador to Finland and advised former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. In 1994, she became the first female Republican to run for governor in Arizona, but did not win the nomination.
Heather Wilson resigned as Secretary of the Air Force in March, in order to become the next president of the University of Texas at El Paso. Catherine Garcia
In public, Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó remains optimistic about his efforts to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his United Socialist Party from power. But, privately, The New York Times reports, Guaidó and his advisers are beginning to feel the pressure from Maduro's forces after the opposition's failed military uprising in April.
"The persecution has been savage," Guaidó, who is recognized by several countries, including the United States, as Venezuela's legitimate interim president, told the Times.
Nowadays, Guaidó is often stationed inside one of several safe houses, while his deputy chief of staff Rafael Del Rosario remains in exile, after escaping Venezuela with his family by foot, aided by soldiers sympathetic to Guaidó's cause. Several other soldiers and legislators who stood by Guaidó in April are reportedly either in jail or being harbored in foreign embassies.
The situation has the opposition seriously considering negotiating with Maduro, which Guaidó had previously rejected, the Times reports. Last week representatives from the opposition and Maduro's government traveled to Norway for preliminary talks, though Guaidó maintains that the goal is to remove Maduro. Even the United States, Guaidó's most fervent supporter, has taken a step back from the situation, as President Trump has turned his attention more heavily toward Iran in recent weeks, making it even more unlikely that the Venezuelan opposition could secure U.S. military support if the situation intensifies. Read more at The New York Times. Tim O'Donnell
More subpoenas are on the way for former White House employees and Hope Hicks, once the Trump administration's communications director, is next in line.
House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) issued subpoenas on Tuesday to Hicks and Annie Donaldson, the chief of staff to former White House Counsel Don McGahn, who failed to show up to his scheduled hearing before Nadler's committee earlier on Tuesday. The two new subpoenas are part of a sprawling congressional investigation into the actions of the Trump administration, which spun off from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into 2016 Russian election interference. Nadler wants Hicks and Donaldson to answer questions concerning possible obstruction of justice on behalf of President Trump during Mueller's investigation, Bloomberg reports.
Donaldson kept very detailed notes of her meetings with McGahn, which were frequently cited in Mueller's report on his investigation, The Hill writes, while Hicks was considered to have played a "pivotal role," in the White House, serving as one of the president's most trusted advisers.
Hicks' and Donaldson's subpoenas order both of them to turn over documents by June 4 and then testify later that month — Hicks is scheduled for June 19, Donaldson for June 24. Tim O'Donnell
Two Hollywood productions have just scrapped plans to film in Georgia over the state's new abortion law.
Director Reed Morano told Time on Tuesday that she has called off plans to scout locations in Georgia for her new Amazon Studios series The Power following Gov. Brian Kemp (R) signing a law that effectively bans abortion after six weeks. "We had no problem stopping the entire process instantly,” Morano said. "There is no way we would ever bring our money to that state by shooting there." Location scouts had been working in Savannah for months, one of whom already bought a house there and told Time, "we're in panic mode."
Additionally, the upcoming Kristen Wiig comedy Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar has also pulled out of Georgia, a representative for Wiig confirmed to Time. Wiig will star in this film and co-wrote it along with Annie Mumolo, whom she previously collaborated with on the hit 2011 comedy Bridesmaids.
This comes after a number of producers had announced plans to boycott Georgia, which has become a popular filming location thanks to its generous tax incentives. The Wire creator David Simon was among those who said his company wouldn't film in the state over the law. The Motion Picture Association of America previously said amid these boycotts that "the outcome in Georgia will also be determined through the legal process" and that "we will continue to monitor developments."
Some have objected to the Georgia boycotts, arguing they will only unjustly hurt the thousands of members of the film industry there. Morano told Time that while "I'm sorry if the work moves away from where you live ... having this basic fundamental right for women is more important than anything in this moment in time." Brendan Morrow
Baby sharks have been up to some things that weren't covered in the song.
New research published in the journal Ecology on Tuesday has found a surprising factor in the diets of newborn tiger sharks. Small songbirds, like the sparrows you might see in your backyard, have somehow ended up far enough from home to become prey to the marine predators.
Scientists performed what's called a "gastric lavage," a harmless procedure that flushed out the contents of the stomach for testing, on over 100 juvenile tiger sharks. Out of 105 specimens studied, 41 of them had partially digested birds. All of the bird remains came from North American land birds, National Geographic reported — a strange find, given that most of the sharks were tested far from shore in the Gulf of Mexico.
The study concluded that the most likely scenario is that these birds had been caught in autumnal storms during their annual migration; this would explain why most of the birds seemed to be eaten during the fall. As for why it was mostly baby sharks eating these birds, it's possible that mother tiger sharks have taken notice of the abundance of easy prey, and specifically give birth in the area so that "the young can capitalize on the seasonal songbird scavenging opportunities," National Geographic explained.
Further research will be required to determine the exact link between tiger sharks and terrestrial songbirds, but this discovery just goes to show that nature can interact in weird, unexpected ways. Read more at National Geographic. Shivani Ishwar