Biden pounds the table on gas prices: The president wants oil companies to stop gouging Americans at the pump, according to a draft of a sternly-worded letter obtained by the Associated Press. Our ancient president rails against some of the globe’s largest corporations banking profits that mark the “highest levels ever recorded” while inflation hits record highs. You know what would be much more effective than sending a bunch of CEOs a letter they’ll promptly repurpose as toilet paper? Nationalizing the culprits of the climate crisis.

ICYMI, we’re still not done talking about the 2020 protests: Maybe once literally anyone involved with the decision to tear gas a whole-ass neighborhood faces some meaningful consequences, we can move on. Until then, check out KUOW's effort to get people to pay attention to Carolyn Bick’s excellent reporting on former Chief Carmen Best’s casual relationship with the truth.

It’s a Wednesday Slog AM, so you know what that means: More primary election results! Not as many fun ones to recap, as yesterday’s headliners were Congressional primaries in South Carolina and Nevada. Down in the birthplace of the Confederacy, voters delivered a confusing split decision in two races where incumbent Republicans who criticized the former president over the January 6 coup attempt faced Trump-backed primary challengers. Rep. Tom Rice lost his race after sticking to his principles and refusing to recant his criticism, while Rep. Nancy Mace's apologetic bootlicking video in front of Trump Tower seems to have won back enough of the MAGA faithful to hold her seat.

One of the Senate’s most vulnerable Dems will face Big Lie backer:

WA isn’t the only place where counting ballots takes awhile: A new batch of ballots were counted in LA’s local elections, and progressives now appear to be taking a lead. In addition to the reversal in the mayoral election, a slate of judges committed to decarceral policies solidified their positions heading into their runoffs. Approximately 350,000 ballots still need to be counted, so results could still shift.

Totally normal swing state politics, surely this won’t bite us in the ass in 2024:

In November’s general election, he’ll go on to face Democrat Francisco Aguilar, who was uncontested in the Democratic primary yesterday.

Zoomers getting wise to the consequences of inaction on climate: A new report from Oregon health officials says the increase in wildfires and other effects of climate change have led to “climate anxiety” among teens. I imagine if they expanded the survey to anyone who enjoys breathing clean air, they’d find similarly widespread concern about summer becoming known as “smoke season.”

The kids are still not alright: Students at a school a few hours down I-5 in Kalama faced threats that required closing the school in retaliation for a walkout protesting the bullying of a trans classmate. Students and parents told KOIN that they see the latest safety concern as part of a pattern of inaction by school officials when kids report bullying.

Big Brother’s focus on China to produce predictable collateral damage: According to a new report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, American spy agencies’ shift to prioritizing China as a target of surveillance poses a risk of sweeping up communications from Chinese Americans chatting with their relatives back home. The AP gets into the details of how this latest undue scrutiny from the police state has roots in decades of anti-Asian discrimination by the federal government.

Have we ever seen a more destructive rodent? In a gift to telecommuters across British Columbia, a single beaver knocked out internet, cell phone, and landline service for roughly eight hours last week when it chewed through an aspen tree. When the tree fell, it took a BC Hydro and Telus fiber-optic cable line with it. Here’s BC Hydro official Bob Gammer with my favorite Canadian quote of the week: “I wouldn't be a rich man if I had a nickel for every beaver outage, but they do happen.”

January 6 hearings take a break: The hearings will resume tomorrow, which gives you all of today to catch up on the new revelations about Trump’s coup attempt the committee has already released. The first couple of episodes of the most important miniseries in American history featured footage of closed-door interviews with Trump aides who unsuccessfully argued that attempting a coup would be bad for the former president’s image.  

Amazon continues proving why all its workers should unionize: The Washington Post has the story of Bezos’ goons getting desperate in their efforts to avoid giving workers any power in their workplace whatsoever: “Amazon has been accused of illegally firing workers in Chicago, New York and Ohio, calling the police on workers in Kentucky and New York, and retaliating against workers in New York and Pennsylvania, in what workers say is an escalation of long-running union-busting activities by the company.”

An ode to the world’s wealthiest union-buster from Bo Burnham’s The Inside Outtakes, a must-watch if you haven’t seen the special yet:Â