The Stranger's morning news roundup. by Nathalie Graham Oh Shit: On Thursday night, two landslides spilled onto northbound I-5 south of Bellingham, completely blocking all lanes. No fleeing to Canada this weekend. Another landslide is gumming up state Route 11 in Skagit County. Blame all this sloughing earth on the rain we've been getting. We’re Cancelling Women: ABC is scrapping a season of The Bachelorette over a video showing star Taylor Frankie Paul (of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives fame/infamy) putting her ex-boyfriend Dakota Mortensen in a headlock and attacking him with kicks and multiple stools. A 2023 video released by TMZ shows that one of her kids was hit during the fight. Paul pleaded guilty to aggravated assault over the incident. Paul’s season was slated to premiere this Sunday. Nathalie's Uncle Is Gutted: My family group chat was all about March Madness today. My uncle Ted chimed in with a Yahoo! News screenshot of The Bachelorette news: "Why are you guys texting about college basketball? All that matters is that the Bachelorette got canceled. :( " The conversation turned back to basketball. Later, Ted texted, "Duke won, nothing exciting about that. It preoccupied me for 10 minutes and now I’m sad again." They're Cancelling the Trains: Wednesday's Sound Transit board meeting sent Seattle City Hall into a tizzy. The board had announced proposed cuts to light rail projects to dig themselves out of a $35 billion hole, including a plan that would kill all hopes of light rail ever making it to Ballard. “It’s completely unacceptable to cut Ballard from the Sound Transit plan at this time,” King of Ballard Dan Strauss told KUOW. Citywide Councilmember Dionne Foster wasn’t happy about the axing of the infill station at Graham Street in south Seattle. “It's a community where people rely heavily on transit," she told KUOW. Cuts could also kill stations in West Seattle and South Lake Union. Any plan that doesn't see Sound Transit 3 built the way it was promised to voters will be a generational mistake. The Weather: More rain. Sun tomorrow if you behave. They’re Cancelling Books. Shy Girl, the forthcoming horror novel that really seemed to have been largely written by AI, is being pulled from publication by one of the largest publishers in the US over allegations that it was probably written by AI. Hachette Book Group pulled it a day after The New York Times showed off its evidence. Mia Ballard, the author (?) claimed in a late night email to the Times she hadn’t used AI, the acquaintance she’d hired to edit her novel had. Cool, cool, cool: The World Health Organization says it's preparing for a “worst-case scenario” nuclear threat if the US-Israel war against Iran escalates any further, reports The Independent. But the US and Israel don't think Iran will be dropping any bombs any time soon because... Israel says Iran can no longer enrich uranium. Is it because they keep bombing them? Washington State Gov. Bob Ferguson says we won’t celebrate César Chavez day. If you haven’t seen the news, Chavez allegedly abused women and girls. Meanwhile, California will rename César Chavez Day to Farmworkers Day. Elizabeth Warren Endorses Guy with Nazi Tattoo: Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren endorsed Graham Platner’s bid to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins in Maine. Out of this crowded race of Democrats, Warren had to pick the guy who would still have a skull and crossbones Nazi tattoo if word hasn’t gotten out about the having-a-Nazi-tattoo business. The thing he covered it up with—a Celtic knot with imagery of dogs—is also a little... weird. Oh—I Don't Think You Can Say Tha— Trump made a Pearl Harbor joke while meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. Also, this is a real "people in glass houses" situation. Trump: "Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbor?"[image or embed]— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 19, 2026 at 9:14 AM Bad Officer: A 13-year Washington State Patrol Officer is resigning a year after a drunken car crash that killed a 20-year-old motorcyclist in the Tri-Cities. Officer Sarah Clasen, 36, is accused of driving with a blood-alcohol level of 0.17 percent, or more than twice the legal limit. The Costco CEO ate a Costco hotdog. You know, for that trend of CEOs eating their shitty food? This does not matter, but is a great opportunity to bring up the time when Costco co-founder Jim Sinegal told the former CEO Craig Jelinek, who wanted to raise the price of the hot dog: "If you raise the effing hot dog, I will kill you. Figure it out." After taking a bite of the raw on the bun, no toppings hotdog like a sociopath, current CEO Ron Vachris said he’d never change the price. It’s Going Well: In a memo Friday morning, editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and president Tom Cibrowski informed CBS News they would be laying off 6 percent of staff. This is the second round of layoffs since CBS Skydance Media bought the network's parent company, Paramount, last summer. ICYMI: Venezuela won the World Baseball Classic, which is like the World Cup for baseball. They beat the USA in the final. Poetic! Former Mariner Eugenio Suárez was the game's hero. Suárez had his US citizenship processing cancelled in December "because of the Venezuela thing," he said. He's also spoken about how Immigration and Customs Enforcement is negatively impacting Latino baseball players. Here's his RBI double in the ninth inning: EUGENIO SUÁREZ RBI DOUBLE Venezuela retakes the lead in the 9th[image or embed]— MLB Daily News (@insidemlbnews.bsky.social) March 17, 2026 at 7:39 PM Don't you hate when this happens? A French officer on an aircraft carrier deployed to the Middle East  went for a run on the carrier's deck. He allegedly logged it on the workout app Strava because of the age old saying: "If a man goes for a run and nobody sees the time, distance, and route, does he achieve any gains?" In doing so, he posted a map of his location and a map of the carrier's clandestine location. Oops! He ran 35 minutes though, good for him! Google Sucks Shit: According to The Verge, Google search is now replacing headlines—those things we painstakingly craft—with inaccurate, AI generated AI slop, often changing the meaning entirely in what the company calls a "small and narrow experiment." It changed a Verge headline from "I used the ‘cheat on everything’ AI tool and it didn’t help me cheat on anything” to “‘Cheat on everything’ AI tool.” This is bad. Google search was the internet. It's a fucking verb. A Song for Your Friday: Do you remember when the Seattle Police Department lip-synced to "Downtown" by Macklemore in 2018? It was part of this internet trend of local police departments challenging each other to lip sync battles. I think about this video at least once a year. ...read more read less