YOU DON’T SAY: Leftist Seattle mayor admits Starbucks criticism ’caused more harm than good.’

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson is walking back earlier comments urging consumers to boycott Starbucks, as tensions grow over Seattle’s relationship with major employers and the coffee giant expands its footprint outside Washington state.

Wilson, a democratic socialist elected last year on a progressive, labor-backed platform, told The New York Times this week that comments she made during a Starbucks worker strike last fall were not productive.

“Those comments were not productive in the sense that they caused more harm than good,” Wilson told the outlet.

The remarks marked a notable shift in tone from comments Wilson made shortly after winning Seattle’s mayoral race in November, when she joined Starbucks workers on a picket line outside the company’s former Reserve Roastery on Capitol Hill and urged residents to boycott the hometown coffee chain.

Not much of an apology, really, and her anti-business policies likely won’t change, either.

HEY, IT’S NOT LIKE HE DID A DONUT ON A RAINBOW CROSSWALK:

SCIENCE:

THE DESIRE NAMED STREETCAR:

CHANGE: Jamie Dimon says JPMorgan will hire more AI brainiacs, fewer bankers.

Artificial intelligence is poised to drastically shrink the workforce at the nation’s largest bank, but the transition will happen without the pain of mass layoffs, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said Thursday.

In an interview in Shanghai, the renowned money man told Bloomberg that AI will make his employees vastly more productive.

While the technology will ultimately reduce the need for certain jobs, Dimon said the bank will manage the shift through “natural attrition” — simply not filling the positions of the 25,000 to 30,000 workers who quit or retire each year.

Left unsaid: What happens to the young people just entering the workforce who would have replaced those 25,000 to 30,000 workers.

HOMELESS, INC.:

What’s the point of giving away clean needles (paid for with other people’s money), if the poors don’t have any drugs (paid for with other people’s money) to inject?

THAT OTHER SUMMIT: Putin, Xi signal unity but fail to reach deal on pipeline sought by Russia. “Amid the elaborate ceremony of a visit to Beijing, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday failed once again to persuade Chinese leader Xi Jinping to sign off on a major new gas pipeline, underscoring once again the importance — and limitations — of Russia’s growing dependency on China for energy sales.”

“Growing dependency” is a good description of Russia’s relationship with China for a lot more than energy sales.

ROBERT SPENCER: A Man Plowed His Car Into a Crowd in Italy, but He Has a Perfectly Good Explanation. “Yes, okay, Salim El Koudri did drive his car into a crowd in Modena, Italy, last Saturday, maiming a couple of people for life (they both had to have their legs amputated) and injuring five others. But these are the days of compassion, the days when we know that the perpetrator of a crime has to be understood as articulating a grievance that we all must rush to assuage, and the era of empathy, when we don’t care nearly as much for amputated legs as we do for hurt feelings, if the legs are not attached to the right person and the feelings are.”

AND UN-SUNG HERO:

If he’s lucky he won’t be an organ donor.

WELL, BYE: Stunning number of illegal migrants who have been deported from US or left voluntarily is revealed by DHS.

More than 3 million illegal aliens have left the US or been deported since President Trump took office, the Department of Homeland Security has revealed.

Of those 3 million, 2.2 million have opted to self-deport through a program that allows migrants to turn themselves in via a DHS app in return for a cash stipend and free flight home.

Another 900,000 have been deported since Jan. 20, 2025, and as of this month, DHS has arrested 900,000 illegal aliens, according to agency figures.

It’s a marked shift from the Biden administration, which let an estimated 5 million to 6 million migrants into the country, according to the Cato Institute, under the less-than-watchful eye of then-border czar Kamala Harris.

I’ll remind you again that Democrats mocked Mitt Romney for suggesting self-deportation — but incentives work.

CORN, POPPED:

Five points:

1. Kristof minimizes Euro-Med’s chairman as someone whose views “can’t be taken lightly” — while failing to note a documented record that includes an Israeli anti-terrorism order against Abdu personally, and a brother-in-law who was a senior Hamas military commander.

2. Kristof cited peer-reviewed medical literature as scientific validation for the dog rape allegation. But that literature documents human-initiated bestiality and one accidental pet incident. Not one paper describes a dog trained to assault a human on command.

3. One of his only two named sources filed a petition with the Israeli Supreme Court after his detention, with lawyers, complaining about the food. He never mentioned rape. The Times calls this “additional details over time.” That’s not how things work.

4. Former PM Olmert accused Kristof of misrepresenting his words in the original column. The Times response doesn’t mention him once.

5. The Times confirmed its legal team reviewed the column before publication. Those internal communications now potentially exist for discovery.

Stay tuned…

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Now That Colbert Is Gone, Can We Start the Clock on Kimmel? “Jimmy Kimmel will no doubt use Colbert’s absence as an excuse to become more execrable than ever. ABC can keep him afloat for a while. The network is still a for-profit business, though, and not a weeknightly charity for the Democratic National Committee. ABC execs will almost certainly take a cue from their counterparts at CBS. Kimmel’s petulant attitude won’t do him any favors, either.”

JUSTICE: Lawsuit Against Virginia Tech Alleging Anti-Male Bias in Title IX Proceedings Can Go Forward in Part. “Johnny has alleged abundant facts that, if true, raise grave concerns about the way VT, through these administrators, conducted the investigations of Pauline’s and Jane’s sexual-assault claims, as well as the ultimate outcomes of those inquiries. Simply put, Johnny has alleged facts that, if true, raise a plausible inference the VT discriminated against him in these investigations because he is male and, in so doing, violated Title IX.”