Well, that is … something.

It was a very busy day for Republican crimes and humiliations—so busy that we can’t even mention more than a scrap of it. Aside from a federal search warrant executed at a former certain president’s for-profit house: Alex Jones’ troubles continue with a report that the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 coup attempt is now in possession of his text messages for the period in question.

No one expects innovation or forward-thinking from Republicans, but it’s astonishing just how mired in the past they are these days. It’s no wonder Republicans could never pass their own health care bill after howling about the Affordable Care Act for 80-plus full moons. They have no ideas and no real policy prescriptions.

A class action lawsuit claims that the credit reporting agency Equifax provided inaccurate credit scores for hundreds of thousands of consumers seeking loans between March 17 and April 6. The fallout of what Equifax described as a “coding issue” within a “legacy, on-premise server environment” included credit and housing denials that may have otherwise been approved, according to the suit filed on Wednesday on behalf of plaintiff Nydia Jenkins.

The evenly divided Senate finally, finally passed the reconciliation package known as the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 today. The vote was 51-50 along party lines, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie breaking vote. The package provides at least a starting point for climate mitigation actions, and represents a much-scaled-back version of the climate bill that Sen. Joe Manchin killed earlier in the Biden administration.

The Senate has voted to approve the reconciliation measure known as the Inflation Reduction Act today, after spending well over 24 hours in continuous session so that senators could offer amendments that had no chance of passing. The final vote was 51-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie breaking vote. A last-minute change backed by Sen.

Ukrainian fury over a report from Amnesty International released last week—a report that blames the Ukrainian military for fighting in urban areas, as they fight to keep Russia from capturing those same urban areas—doesn’t look like it will be abating anytime soon. Already a high-profile resignation has taken place, and there may be other fallout.

FRIDAY HARBOR, Washington—So far, the summer of 2022 has been the most encouraging season in at least six years in terms of restoring the health of the Southern Resident killer whales’ native summer habitat in the Salish Sea. The last time the SRKWs visited as frequently as they have this year was 2016, a season that was shadowed by death and decline.  

In 2022, they’ve been frequent though not entirely regular visitors to the Salish Sea and the San Juan Islands.