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Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas announced the news of the latest school shooting while ignoring his and his partys responsibility.
Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas announced the news of the latest school shooting while ignoring his and his party's responsibility. Brandon Bell / Getty Images

GOOD AFTERNOON, PORTLAND! If you liked today's MOIST temperature of 66, you're gonna love the next two days which may be cloudy, but will soar to a DRIPPIER 73 degrees. Now let's get CLAMMY with some NEWS!

IN LOCAL NEWS:

• More fucking up from Oregon's current reigning "Fuck-Up of the Week," Clackamas County Clerk Sherry Hall: Last week she told reporters that she had NO IDEA how a representative of Rep. Kurt Schrader’s campaign got into HER elections office to "observe election workers"... but, what's this? Now there's VIDEO showing that Hall was not only there at the time, but had conversed with the employee who let the representative inside. (Reminder that Hall is up for reelection this fall... if she doesn't resign in shame first.)

• And it's about goddamn time: Secretary of State Shemia Fagan called a press conference today to address Clackamas County Clerk Sherry Hall's continued fuck-ups, saying that after THREE ATTEMPTS, Hall has finally agreed to accept help from the state in meeting the June 13 deadline for counting the ballots from the May 17 election. (Is it time to bring back the "lock her up" chant yet?) Anyway, our Alex Zielinski has the latest.

• ICYMI, the local dark money group People for Portland has embarrassed themselves yet again after a Multnomah County judge ruled their clearly unconstitutional ballot measure was (you guessed it!) UNCONSTITUTIONAL. But I guess when one is trying to override the will of the voters to suck away funds intended to make homeless Portlanders permanently housed and instead put them into mass temporary shelters that only hides the problem, one doesn't care much about constitutionality... does one? Our Alex Zielinski has more.

• While we're on the subject of "failures": The plan for a number of Oregon counties to secede and become part of Idaho is... not going great for them. A couple of counties—Douglas and Josephine counties—have already seceded from (read: rejected) the "Greater Idaho" plan, forcing the organizers to draw a new, much smaller map for... well, maybe now they should call it "Idaho Junior"?

• Oh no! Dan Savage's laptop is on the fritz, so his loyal readers ride to the rescue with a TON of sexy (sometimes *painful*) short questions in this week's SAVAGE LOVE!

IN NATIONAL/WORLD NEWS:

• In truly horrific (yet sadly expected) news: A gunman shot and killed 14 18 19 students and one teacher two adults at an ELEMENTARY school in Uvalde, Texas, according to Gov. Greg Abbott. Reminder: Abbott, along with his fellow Republicans, have protected gun nuts while doing everything they can to outlaw abortion and trans kids, and as such, carry much of the responsibility for this tragedy. And yet what was the first Republican reaction out of Texas? "Texas attorney general suggests solution to school shootings is arming teachers." May they all rot in hell.

• From Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter was murdered in the Parkland shooting:

“I’m done. I’ve had it. How many more times are we going to sit back? I’m going to listen to that governor of Texas talk about why he pushed … laws in Texas that made it easier for the guns to be had by those who want to kill? How many more times?” Guttenberg said. “I’m speechless. I don’t know what to say.”

• In other news, there's a lot of election drama happening tonight, particularly in Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas, where members of the DEATH CULT™ (AKA the Republican party) will be voting for a variety of important primary races including Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp vs. former senator David Perdue, and incumbent secretary of state Brad Raffensperger vs. the Trump anointed Rep. Jody Hice. Meanwhile in Alabama, former Trump love-toy Mo Brooks is trying to fend off the heavily funded Katie Britt and Mike Durant. (So basically, they're all a battle of HORRIBLE vs MORE HORRIBLE.)

• But also:

• Oh, and here's some also not-surprising-news-at-all, from the church I grew up in: The top leaders of the Southern Baptists announced they will release "a secret list of hundreds of pastors and other church-affiliated personnel accused of sexual abuse." My first response was, "Only hundreds?"

• Looks like comedian Ricky Gervais is trying to cash in on some of that Dave Chappelle/Netflix anti-trans money: "Ricky Gervais’ Netflix special blasted as ‘anti-trans rants.’" (Remember when comedians would punch up and not down? Those were the days.)

• And finally... because you need some inspiring (and yet also funny) news today, there's this: