Signed by Gov. Kate Brown: Oregon’s new minimum wage increases, making ours the highest minimum wage in the nation. Even President Obama is proud. The O‘s coverage quotes from his statement: “I commend the Oregon Legislature and Governor Kate Brown for taking action to raise their state’s minimum wage…Congress needs to keep up with the rest of the country. They need to act, and finally give America a raise. And until they do, I’ll continue to encourage states, cities, counties and companies to act on their own to support hardworking families.”
Anybody but Trump: That seems to be the rally cry of some of the GOP’s most vocal neocons, who distrust Trump on foreign policy so deeply that some have publicly stated they’d vote for Hillary Clinton in a general election over Trump. Here’s one choice quote from Politico: “’The only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton,’ [Robert] Kagan warned. ‘The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be.’”
Related: Here is a real headline at the Washington Post: “GOP establishment working through the five stages of grief as Donald Trump trudges to Cleveland.”
Related: Mitt Romney calls Trump “a phony” AND “a fraud”!
I wrote about this anybody but Trump, maybe even Hillary Clinton thing yesterday. It’s still fascinating.
Speaking of fighting fascism: Delmer Berg, the last of the American volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War (aka the Abraham Lincoln Brigade), has died.
Speaking of Hillary Clinton: The DOJ has given immunity to one of Clinton’s former State Department staffers who worked on her private email server. Sounds like the investigation’s advancing.
In Texas: The state trooper who arrested Sandra Bland was finally fired.
Sorry, Mitch McConnell: A new poll shows most Americans want President Obama to nominate someone to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court left by Antonin Scalia’s death. MAYBE BECAUSE IT’S HIS JOB
BYEEEEEEE: Ben Carson has cryptically dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
Gross: There’s a new scourge called Super Lice. It’s what it sounds like.
Today, in horrible ideas: North Korea fired six projectiles off its east coast today. The AP reports that it happened “just hours” after the UN Security Council’s approval of “the toughest sanctions on the North in two decades for its recent nuclear test and long-range rocket launch.”
You’re riding the bus wrong: Inside the “secret handshake” between traffic signals and TriMet buses.
The trailer for Paul Feig’s reboot of Ghostbusters is here. Good morning!
Jarhead – Sorry, that’s not true. Just a year before people were aching for him to run again. For some reason Romney has clout.