Red Cup Rebellion: Today, Starbucks workers in town and at more than 100 stores throughout the country will strike on one of the company’s busiest, most profitable days of the year, Red Cup Day. On Red Cup Day, the company distributes reusable, red holiday cups, which some nuts collect. The conservatives spun the company’s red cups into a “war on Christmas,” but it sounds like the tradition is more of a war on workers. Starbucks fanatics line up around the block in the wee hours of the morning every year, slamming the workers to score a cup. According to workers who spoke with NPR, many baristas try to request the “very insane day” off. 

Where it is happening here: Starbucks workers in Seattle will picket outside the store on 5th & Pine, the one just south of the Capitol Hill Dick’s Drive-in, and the one across from Cafe on the Ave in U-District:

Student loan forgiveness, baby: Unrelated to the Biden administration's recently stalled attempts to forgive student loan debt, a federal court approved a BIG-FUCKING-DEAL settlement that will pay out $6 billion in student loan forgiveness for over 200,000 borrowers to resolve a Trump-era class action lawsuit. The lawsuit pointed fingers at Betsy DeVos's Education Department, alleging it wrongfully denied or delayed thousands of applications for student loan forgiveness. So, if you submitted a Borrower Defense application by June 22, 2022 and attended one of the dozens of schools on the approved list, then you'll get a piece of the pie. 

All my homies hate landlords: Three lawsuits allege a landlord “cartel” conspired to raise prices for their apartment renters via communication on RealPage. It’s a doozy, and I’ll let the Seattle Times explain. 

Here's the forecast: 

Moscow murders: Video from a food truck's Twitch stream is helping authorities piece together the final hours of two of the four University of Idaho students killed over the weekend. The video captured the two young women ordering food at 1:41 am on Sunday morning. According to the food truck manager, the women did not appear to be in danger or distress at the time. CNN has more. 

Homeownership disparity: Black people own homes at much lower rates than white people, and that gap has only grown wider in the last 60 years. KING 5 dug into what causes the disparity, and what do you know? It's racism. With U.S. slavery and continued racist policies, Black families often build less generational wealth than white families that have more advantages and a several-hundred-year head start. KING 5 also found that Black homeowners are more often targeted by predatory, lowball offers and fake collection notices that claim they’re behind on her property taxes. 

Ranked-choice voting claims victory: After a long battle between election nerds, one group of democracy fanatics claimed victory over the other. It’s probably an especially sweet victory because ranked-choice voting (RCV) sorta made a name for itself as THE election reform, with advocates lobbying for years to get the system off the ground in the State Legislature and more recently in King County.

Then, pot shop owner Logan Bowers and some California lobbying group sorta stepped on RCV's toes by starting a signature drive to put another election system, Approval Voting (AV), on Seattle's 2022 ballot. At first, the two groups kept their feud on Twitter (and on the Stranger.com lol), until Council Member Andrew Lewis put the beef on the ballot.

Looking at the results, the people decisively decided that they preferred RCV, but the reform had to overcome two prompts on the ballot to make it through. The other prompt, which asked if we should change the system at all, got a couple thousand more votes for “Yes,” and FairVote, a RCV lobby group, called that a win. The results will be certified later this month. 

Adopt a dog! For the rest of the month, you can adopt an adult dog at the Humane Society for Tacoma & Pierce County without paying an adoption fee. According to KOMO, the shelter is trying to “contain a canine respiratory disease,” and the best way to do that is get the healthy dogs to new homes. 

Important:

ICYMI: The Stranger wants to save Seattle music and we need your help to do it. 

Didn’t they try to hang you? Former Vice President Mike Pence is sticking his neck out to say Trump probably shouldn’t run. If I were him, I’d probably sit this conversation out. He’s not a favorite among the MAGA crowd, and you're just gonna make him look like a cool, party outsider to his base. But maybe the Republican party is ready to move on from the dude who tried to overturn a perfectly normal election and instead send another evil dude—like Ron DeSantis—to the White House 

Other Republicans: To be fair, Pence is not the only Republican who thinks running Trump is a losing strategy. Here’s how Republican leaders reacted to Trump’s big announcement. 

Uh oh: This morning, North Korea launched a test missile into the water. While North Korea has been testing missiles like crazy the past month, the country took a break for eight days, only to resume today, just hours after North Korean officials threatened “fiercer” military responses because the US doubled down on its security commitment to South Korea.

For your ears: