Enjoy retirement as a Seattle legend, Sue:Ā After a tough loss that ends the Seattle Storm's hope of sending Sue Bird riding off into the sunset as a WNBA champion one last time, Seattle gave our most famous basketball player one hell of a send-off.

Solidarity forever:Ā As Rich and Megan wrote in last night's PM, school will not start as planned today in Seattle as teachers strike for better wages and more resources for students in special education. If you're a parent who suddenly needs child care for the day, here's a handy resource to find a local provider.

Collective action works:Ā After striking for the first few days of what was supposed to be the new school year, teachers in Kent reached a tentative agreement with the school district.

Rest in peace: My colleagues haveĀ shared individual stories from the Seattle Times's coverage of the people who lost their lives in the recent floatplane crash yesterday, but, in case you've missed them, here's a collection of all of those touching obituaries.

New local podcast drops: The first episode ofĀ KNKX's podcast, The Walk Home,Ā was released today. It's about how Manny Ellis's sister investigated his death at the hands of police. Do your civic duty and educate yourself on how this tragic police killing almost got swept under the rug.

Speaking of police shootings:Ā On Sunday night in Federal Way, police officers shot and killed a man armed with a knife after a standoff at the Federal Way Transit Center. KING 5 reports that 911 callers said he appeared to be under the influence and possibly experiencing a mental health crisis. Despite a crisis negotiator attempting to de-escalate the situation, police shot the man after he exited a bus he was attempting to start and allegedly rushed them with his knife.

As local police accountability activist Howard Gale will tell you, officers in lots of other countries seem to subdue suspects armed with knives without fatally shooting them all the time. Guess our only option is to give the Federal Way PD more money for training and equipment.

If you only have time for one long read today, then make it Wesley Lowery's profile of AOC for GQ.Ā The progressive Congresswoman discusses the role men need to play in protecting everyone's bodily autonomy, her own history of surviving sexual assault, and the trauma of having her workplace invaded by a mob of seditionists. Trust me, it's worth your time.

Speaking of people undermining democracy: The Senator from Hawaii is right to not mince words here. The next coup attempt is unfolding in our court system as I type:

This isn't new, but it is news:Ā TheĀ AP reports that the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism got its hands on membership lists from the Oath Keepers, a far-right extremist organization that played a key role in the January 6 insurrection. Among the 38,000 names the ADL reviewed, they discovered more than 370 members of law enforcement agencies, including police chiefs and sheriffs as well as more than 100 current members of the military. It's not like the FBI warned the country about white supremacists infiltrating police departments 16 years ago or anything... oh wait.Ā 

But surely that's not a problem in a blue state like ours...Ā 

Turns out good industrial policy produces results: TheĀ New York Times reports that companies are pouring money into renewable energy projects following the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. The law incentivizes these investments with $369 billion in direct funding, loans, and loan guarantees. Leveraging that government dough should produce a total of $1.2 trillion invested in renewable energy by 2035. Don't look now, but I'm starting to think we might have a shred of hope in preventing the worst of the climate crisis, though I won't be too upset if we take long enough to let Florida sink into the Gulf of Mexico first.

That, my dear reader, is what we call a segue:Ā 

This is the dumbest self-own I can imagine:Ā Indiana announced that it plans to consider student loan debt forgiveness taxable income under state law, even though Congress specifically exempted it from taxation in the American Rescue Plan Act. Let this be a lesson to squishy centrists who apparently spent the entire implementation of Medicaid expansion in a coma: There is no amount of means-testing that will win the approval or cooperation of conservative politicians determined to score points with their country club donors by making poor people's lives worse.

Congrats on the contract, comrades:Ā If you're not familiar with them, the Sunrise Movement has been a key organizing force on climate for several years. Most notably, they helped pressure the 2020 Democratic primary candidates into a day-long, climate-specific town hall back in 2019, and they recently helped young people call, harass, and cyberbully their federal elected officials into passing some meaningful climate policy. Now, they're proving you can do all that and still respect your workers' humanity in the process.

On the day of Sue Bird's retirement,Ā could we really end AM any other way? There's something special about sports legends who earn that status by making their teammates great, so enjoy this highlight reel of some of the WNBA's all-time leader in assists doing just that.