(Just The News)—U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal questioned the competence of Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson during the confusion over the news conference after the July 26 Bite of Seattle triple-fatal shooting, new records The Center Square obtained Thursday show.
At 10:12 p.m., Jayapal messaged Gov. Bob Ferguson, writing “I’m wondering if we should be there at all. I don’t think she knows what she is doing.”
The city’s response to the shooting and getting timely information out to the media and public has haunted Wilson’s administration, resulting in her requesting the resignation of the police chief and apologizing for a lack of quick response.
In the hours following the shooting, rumors spread as to the reason for the delaying a police briefing and press conference, with one Seattle Police official telling media they were waiting on “dignitaries,” presumably referring to Jayapal and Ferguson, both Democrats.
While the records indicate at one point that was the case, it was after they had been told previously that a press conference would take place the next morning.
In a text message sent after the shooting included in the public records request, Jayapal wrote to Ferguson that she spoke to Wilson and “suggested Katie pull us all together with a call with police chief to brief us.”
Jayapal also wrote that she “suggested to her (Wilson) that if they are doing a press conference, it would be good if we were all there.”
“Agree,” Ferguson texted back.
Then-Police Chief Shon Barnes was in Dallas at the time of the shooting and flew into Seattle that night to attend the press conference, which involved a verbal confrontation with a local reporter. Barnes resigned days later at the request of Wilson.
The Center Square previously reported that Wilson initially told Ferguson at 7:41 p.m. a briefing might be held that evening, but her office sent no subsequent confirmation via text. However, phone call logs show Wilson called Ferguson several minutes later.
Minutes afterwards there was an 8 p.m. Zoom meeting attended by Ferguson, Jayapal, and several city officials, followed by a 9 p.m. Teams meeting in which SPD said there was still an active scene and elected officials should not go near the area.
According to a statement from the Governor’s Office contained in the Public Record’s Office email to The Center Square, “the Governor believed his scheduled meetings for the day were complete, and that he would be attending a media availability with other elected officials the following morning.”
However, plans changed at 10:05 p.m. the Governor’s Office was informed Wilson would hold a press conference that night.
At 10:12 p.m., Jayapal messaged Ferguson, questioning whether Wilson knows what she’s doing.
A minute later, Ferguson texted Wilson, writing “Pls call.”
Ferguson then texted Jayapal back minutes later, saying “Spoke w mayor. Asked her to call u directly.”
“They’re waiting for both us,” Jayapal replied. “I will be there in 15 minutes.”
At 10:35 p.m., Jeremy Harris of KOMO News posted on X that “this is outrageous. The police press update is being postponed again because ‘dignitaries’ want to be here. The public is being told to wait for information about a mass shooting outside a press conference because politicians want to make sure they’re here when cameras roll.”
According to records obtained by The Center Square, Jayapal sent Harris’ post to Ferguson the next day, calling the accusation “outrageous.”
Interim Press Secretary Alex Hudson sent The Center Square a statement that did not address Jayapal’s remarks questioning Wilson’s competency.
“In the two months since the tragedy at the Bite of Seattle Mayor Wilson has stayed focused on strengthening public safety communication practices, releasing a new approach to reducing gun violence, and introducing a balanced budget which invests in public safety and well-being,” he wrote. “The mayor has reflected on that evening’s coordination with other elected officials and moving forward remain committed to increasing safety outcomes for people and working effectively across all levels of government to deliver.”
Ferguson Communications Director Brionna Aho would not answer further questions, writing to The Center Square that “our office doesn’t have further comment beyond the detailed timeline provided.”
Jayapal issued a news release, saying “in my ten years in Congress, I’ve had to respond to many difficult moments and have learned the best way is to immediately brief the public quickly and transparently, convene elected officials across all levels of government to ensure availability of any federal resources needed, and be visibly present to offer support and information to our constituents who rely on us to be there for them. My text messages with the Governor reflect exactly this approach.”
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
