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A person holding up a poster of the american flag with a rifle crossed out on it
A new poll finds 56 percent of gun owners favor reducing gun violence over protecting gun rights. Drew Angerer / Getty Images

Good morning, Portland! Let's get right into the headlines.

In local news:

• What do Amazon, Lyft, and New Seasons have in common? They all hired law firm Ogletree Deakins Nash Smoak & Stewart to quash unionizing efforts! New Seasons hired the seasoned (get it?) law firm after two stores in Portland and Hillsboro filed to unionize in late May. According to the director of the University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center, the local grocer may have a harder time convincing employees against unionize due to the dual campaigns.

• On Tuesday, a driver in a flatbed truck hit and killed a cyclist in the Hazelwood neighborhood. During an investigation, Portland police learned that the driver hit the bicyclist on NE 102nd and Glisan and then dragged their body for two blocks. Police charged the driver, 41-year-old Kenlly Leyvachi, with Manslaughter, Reckless Driving, and Failure to Perform the Duties of a Driver.

• Helloooooo sailors! Ships from the US Navy, Coast Guard, and more docked along the Portland waterfront Wednesday afternoon for the Rose Festival Fleet Week. Members of the public can tour the ships BUT you must show government ID and proof of vaccination.

• In other celebratory news, the Fred Meyer Junior Parade returned to the Hollywood District yesterday for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic. The parade featured the Unipiper, local school bands, and dozens of volunteers collecting signatures to place a gun control measure on the November ballot. Check out photos of the event here.

In national news:

• Today is the day: The House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol will publicly disclose its findings this afternoon. The event will be livestreamed by several different news outlets (like this one) starting at 5 pm PST/8 pm EST. The public hearing will include testimony from several witnesses, as well as a multimedia presentation.

• Disappointing but not surprising: Facebook failed a (pretty easy) test to determine how well it could detect hate speech in advertisements. The test, run by two nonprofit organizations, included 12 text-based ads that used hate speech to call for the murder of Ethiopia’s three main ethnic groups. Facebook’s systems approved the ads for publication (the ads weren’t actually posted as part of the test).

• An estimated 59 percent on Americans believe it’s more important to control gun violence than protect gun rights, according to an NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist poll. While the results still reflected a strong partisan divide—Democrats mostly supporting gun control and Republicans mostly supporting gun rights—the poll also found that 56 percent of gun owners believe its more important to reduce gun violence than protect gun rights.

• When driving around looking for her lost dog earlier this week, Chelsea Blackwell stumbled upon a movie set at a Greyhound bus station in Albany, New York. Blackwell asked the crew if anyone had seen her dog and—IT JUST SO HAPPENED—that award-winning actress Hilary Swank had scooped up the lost dog and kept it company until Blackwell came around looking. While this whole story is odd and sweet and charming, the best part is the correction at the end of the article: “This story has been corrected to change one instance of misspelling of the name of Blackwell’s other dog to Ladybug, instead of Ladybag.”

• Congrats to Justine Lindsay, the NFL’s first openly transgender cheerleader! Lindsay is the newest member of the Carolina Panthers’ cheerleading squad, the Topcats. “I think more people need to see this,” Lindsay told Buzzfeed News. “It’s not because I want recognition. It’s just to shed light on what’s going on in the world.”

• A small box of Kleenex in the US has 60 tissues; a few months ago, it had 65. Chobani has slimmed down its Flip yogurts from 5.3 ounce to 4.5 ounces. Earth’s Best Organic Sunny Day Snack Bars started filling boxes with seven bars instead of eight. Economists call it shrinkflation—when instead of raising the price of a product, manufacturers decrease the size the product. While some companies cite the current inflation rate as reason for the product changes, upsizing—reverting a product to its former size—is rare.

• Fluffy bird alert: