Imagining the future of downtown Seattle, this week

Bill Radke reviews the week's news with Q13 reporter Jennifer Lee, creator of The Wild West Newsletter, Eli Sanders, and Crosscut's editor-at-large, Knute Berger.

Thursday saw the final Presidential debate. It was also the night of the only Lieutenant Governor's debate before the election. Of course, plenty of people already have headed to the dropbox. So how much of an effect will these debates actually have?

Plus, Attorney General Ferguson has announced that he'll be suing Google (again) over its failure to follow Washington state's law on political ad transparency. Google banned political ads in Washington state back in June 2018. But reporting shows Google has since sold around $200,000 worth of political ads to more than 50 Washington state campaigns. Will this second lawsuit change anything?

And this isn't the only lawsuit announced this week. Officials from Seattle, Portland and New York City filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging the Trump Administration’s designation that they are “anarchist jurisdictions”. That designation could let the Justice Department withhold federal grants from the cities. How big a threat is this designation?

Also, Amazon has announced that they'll let corporate employees work from home through at least June of 2021. That's a lot of people who won't be in downtown Seattle - they won't be eating at restaurants, going into stores, or populating those giant office towers. What will downtown Seattle look like if tech workers continue working from home long-term?

Finally, Covid cases have been rising in Washington since mid-September. In King County, Public Health Officer Jeff Duchin says we have about 140 to 150 cases a day, about twice as many as a month ago. But that's not the only health crisis King County is facing. In 2015 fentanyl related deaths only made up 1% of all overdoses in the county, compared to 40% in 2020. What's led to such a huge jump so quickly?