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Good Morning, Portland! We've almost reached the conclusion of this recent, unseasonable heat spell. Tomorrow could graze 80-degrees, but the days following will hover at more reasonable highs of the mid-70s

IN LOCAL NEWS:
• Portland City Council approved a budget this week that cut out some expected increases to tax revenue and utilities, and kept housing developer fees status quo. The Mayor's office had previously asked city bureaus to leave out any new, ongoing, or one-time funding requests, despite rising inflation—instead stressing a desire to maintain “affordability.” While the Tax Supervising and Conservation Commission still gets to take a crack at the budget before its actually adopted, News Editor Courtney Vaughn breaks down what's currently moving ahead.

• Portland City Council also approved a $50,000 settlement to freelance journalist Donovan Farley, who was struck with a baton and pepper sprayed, by Portland police, during the George Floyd protests in June 2020.

• People for Portland (P4P) is a lobbying group, fronted by two powerful political strategists Kevin Looper and Dan Lavey, that would have you believe the city is a rotting hellscape, and the greater State of Oregon is swiftly descending towards those bedeviled flames. And while Portland certainly has its problems, the Mercury released a guide this week that focused on the city's enduringly lovely qualities: Say Nice Things About Portland. The guide got under P4P's skin, and whomever runs their Twitter account (transparency has never been P4P's strong suit) began alleging the Mercury bought some of its Twitter followers. The bizarre (and deeply incorrect) allegation spiraled into a racist response to a Portland protest journalist, former Mercury contributor, and now war correspondent Justin Yau. P4P have always let us know who they are, and this is just them letting us know once again. They deleted the tweet, but certainly haven't apologized. Several journalists have kept the receipts, and will continue to do so. And whomever supports them cosigns on this behavior—stop making excuses.

• That was stressful. Get your brainy-brain off it with this week's edition of POP QUIZ PDX—our weekly, hilarious trivia quiz about local news.

• As I wrote in yesterday's music column, this summer is shaping up to be very millennial dad rock friendly. Supporting my claims, Dave Matthews Band released a new album this morning and will soon announce summer tour dates to support it. Need more dad  tickets right at this very minute? Our Everout calendar team compiled a list of tickets dropping this morning and other recommended shows currently on sale. For instance: On August 10, Jeff Goldblum plays piano (and probably also sort of talks it up) at Revolution Hall.

IN NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS:
• Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky will visit the G7 summit. This year's G7 summit is in Hiroshima, Japan. President Biden says he would be down for Ukrainian pilots to learn to fly F-16 fighter jets.

• The Los Angeles Dodgers have held ten LGBTQ+ Pride Nights so far at Dodger Stadium—which is an embarrassingly small number of times, TBH. In June, they were going to award the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence with a Community Hero Award. However, it turns out that, at the slightest backlash, the Dodgers turned tail, announcing they would "remove them from this year’s group of honorees." The Sisters have been fabulous and strong for decades, unassisted, in spite of, and because of intolerance for their joyful practices. They do not need a baseball award—they are the award.

@cali_nostalgia

head to dolores park later today to enter the sisters of perpetual indulgence’s annual Easter “hunky Jesus” contest

♬ original sound - California nostalgia

• In order to understand this joke, you need to know that this week Elon Musk claimed that tech journalist Taylor Lorenz had an uncle who "owns the Wayback machine."

• And now a word from Tim Apple about a new iPhone feature that allows people to hear texts from you, in your voice:

@washingtonpost Apple will let you teach your iPhone to speak in your voice. The feature is one of many accessibility tools expected to debut this fall. It won’t require any additional apps or accounts. #LiveSpeech #PersonalVoice #accessibility ♬ original sound - We are a newspaper.