The Stranger's Morning News Roundup by Vivian McCall Senate Committee Passes Millionaire’s Tax: The 9.9 percent income tax on people making more than $1 million a year is moving forward with a tax break for small businesses. Busi nesses making $300,000 or less won’t have to pay a dime of the state’s business and occupation (BO) tax, while those making below $600,000 will see limited relief. The state Senate could vote on the bill as early as next week. Party Fouls: Police arrested several people after the Seahawks won the Superbowl Sunday night. For having a good time? No, for DUI, assault, and weapons violations. Not the Olympic Marmot! Our local whistling rodent isn’t on the endangered species list yet, but the US Fish and Wildlife Service has determined a petition to list them warrants further review. As temperatures warm, trees are advancing up the mountain, destroying the alpine meadows they call home. There’s no place else for them to go. Fortunately, climate change is not real. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency will revoke the “endangerment finding” this week, an Obama-era policy that determined that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide threaten public health. The finding is the legal basis for nearly all regulations under the Clean Air Act. At least we have our health? Roughly 19,000 fewer Washingtonians signed up for health insurance through the state’s online marketplace this year. The drop isn’t as bad as the state predicted (80,000), but decidedly not good either. The state’s Cascade Care Savings plan for people who make up to 250 percent of the federal poverty line helped mitigate the loss of federal subsidies this year, but it won’t last. At least we have … capitalism? Trump’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has largely stopped protecting us, a decision that has cost Americans about $19 billion in the last year. The report says in the last year the CFPB has abandoned major consumer protections, stalled investigations, and dismissed lawsuits. Last year, Trump announced that he wanted to essentially pull the plug on the agency, reducing staff from 1,689 to 207, a move mercifully blocked in the courts. Um, chat? Next month, default gamer messaging app Discord will automatically set user accounts to “teen-appropriate” experience, unless they can verify their age with a government ID or an AI face scan. This is the same company that exposed the government IDs of 70,000 users when a third party service it used for age verification was hacked. Hostage Situation: Trump posted that he won’t open the Gordie Howe International Bridge between Detroit and Winsor, Canada until Canada has “fully compensated” the US for “everything we have given them.” “With all we have given them, we should own, perhaps, at least half of this asset.” Trump also said that if Canada made a trade deal with China, “the first thing China will do is terminate ALL Ice Hockey being played in Canada, and permanently eliminate The Stanley Cup.” What? Rare W: The Republican Governor of New Hampshire vetoed her party’s anti-trans bathroom bill for a third time. Here’s the state’s motto: Live Free or Die.  ICYMI: If you miss rooting for the home team, you could watch Seattle drag queen Jane Don’t compete on Drag Race. Stranger contributor Mike Kohfeld has another RuPaul recap. Phone … wallet … keys, and OH NO! A Louisiana National Guard soldier left his AR-15 in a hotel bathroom on Bourbon Street while on patrol in the French Quarter. “I kind of feel bad for him because that's one of the main rules of being in the Army I would think is you're always supposed to have your weapon in your hands and not in somebody else’s,” said French Quarter performer Nervous Dwayne. I know nothing gets past you. But the less observant people in your life will appreciate this explainer of the political and cultural references in Bad Bunny’s Superbowl performance. I believe many, many things get past this guy:   It literally had a heterosexual wedding, dude[image or embed] — Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona.bsky.social) February 10, 2026 at 5:21 AM   Liar: Trump has maintained he knew nothing of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes. But in 2006, he told the then-chief of the Palm Beach police department Micahel Reiter that Epstein’s “activities” with teenage girls were well known in New York and Palm Beach. “Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this,” Reiter recalled Trump saying in a 2019 FBI interview released in the Epstein case files. A song for Trump: ...read more read less