Genius alert: The Seattle Times’s Danny Westneat marveled at last night’s election results. Democrats, especially the victories of those who supported the millionaires tax and those who campaigned against anti-millionaire tax candidates. Sen. Jamie Pedersen, the tax’s author and lead sponsor, won 71 percent of the initial vote against two challengers. Talking about an income tax used to be political poison, Westneat wrote. Not anymore. Think about it: Why do bank robbers rob banks? It’s where the money is. Still, there was no referendum on the millionaires tax in this primary election. We hope the conservative clowns behind the anti-millionaires tax initiative on the ballot this November are sweating.
Justice Land: By now, we’ve all hopefully internalized the gospel about this year’s unprecedented Washington State Supreme Court races. Four races were on the primary ballot and a fifth race will be on the November ballot. The initial ballot drop showed the conservative, anti-tax candidates behind in all races except one. In the race for State Supreme Court, Position 1, Colleen Melody, the Gov. Bob Ferguson-appointed former head of the Civil Rights Division at the Attorney General’s office, held a solid 51 percent of the vote statewide (and a decisive 64.8 percent in King County). Anti-tax lawyer Scott Edwards and his 30 percent will make it through the primary. The Position 3 race shows Antonin Scalia fan David Stevens leading with 35.6 percent, while former ACLU of Washington legislative strategy director Jaime Hawk and Court of Appeals judge Mike Diaz are close behind with 33 percent and 31 percent respectively (at the King County level, Diaz leads Hawk, and Stevens only won 23 percent). Hawk and Diaz are splitting that more progressive vote, but only one of them will make it through to the general. The Position 5 race has Ferguson-appointed civil rights lawyer Theo Angelis winning with 34 percent and Project 42 conservative darling Dave Larson is right behind him at 32.6 percent. And in Position 7, incumbent Debra Stephens is trouncing a rogue’s gallery of conservative chuckleheads.
Seattle loves the library: Proposition 1, which will raise property taxes to fund the Seattle Public Library, is going to pass. According to initial returns, 71 percent of voters approved it. The library haters at the Seattle Times Editorial Board are quaking in their illiterate boots. In a statement after the results came in, SPL’s executive director and chief librarian Tom Fay said, “At a time when libraries across the U.S. are experiencing book bans, budget cuts, and closures, this vote speaks volumes about Seattle’s values and the confidence voters have in The Seattle Public Library and its stewardship of public funds.”
The primary race for Washington Congressional District 4, which is basically central Washington, and includes Yakima and Tri-Cities, has come down to a Trump-endorsed Amanda McKinney and John Duresky, a Democrat. With 41 percent of the votes counted, the former stands at 34.9 percent, and the latter at 30.8 percent. A Trump-rejected Republican, Jerrod Sessler, has claimed 14.2 of the votes. With McKinny and Duresky heading to the general election, the question is this: Who will claim Sessler’s voters? But the real question is: Who in this day and age would vote for Trump? The economy sucks, the new endless war is costing a fortune, and you yoyos didn’t get the Epstein Files. And yet, you are all back at that trough, which is filled with more shit than ever. In the words of Depeche Mode: “Help me understand.”
The only path Kshama Sawant had to the general election in the 9th Congressional District required the demolition of Melissa Chaudhry. But her explosives proved to be not up to snuff, and Chaudry, a controversial progressive, claimed a good chunk of the votes (11.4 percent) Sawant desperately needed. (The former Seattle councilmember got 12.6 percent of the votes.) There now appears to be no path at all for the state’s most-famous socialist, whose campaign was much more aggressive than Chaudry’s. The reason for the latter’s strong performance will be revealed in the days to come. A guess? Sawant failed to draw votes from the East African community.
What else happened last night? We were flies on the walls at a bunch of candidate parties. We saw victories, defeats, and the interior of a Bellevue church that felt like Backrooms. Read our live blog for the play-by-play.
Get fucked, Haley Stevens: The right-leaning moderate had the establishment on her side, but not the people, in the Democratic primary for US Senate in Michigan. Abdul El-Sayed, a Muslim-American MD and former public health official, emerged victorious and will face former Republican congressman Mike Rodgers in the general election. If he wins, he’ll be the first Muslim senator. El-Sayed ran on Medicare for All and cutting military spending to Israel and ran against massive spending from hidden donors and pro-Israel groups. Half a dozen outside groups, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, poured $62 million into advertising for the Stevens campaign, which was as helpful as a pair of concrete boots in a swamp. Unable to read the room—American support for Israel is slipping—Stevens barely engaged with questions about her AIPAC funding. In an interview last week, she said voters had “campaign finance zoomies.” When the SECB bumped into a cocktail-craving Pramila Jayapal at her election party last night, she was fresh off a call with El-Sayed, who she’d endorsed.
To show support for establishment Democrats in his own special way, our aging fascist leader cried fraud in a post before the race was called, warning of “fake mail-in ballots” and calling Michigan “one of the most corrupt voting areas in the United States.” “Get ready for another Rigged Election,” he posted. A few minutes later, he said the results were “great news” for the Republican Party. Meanwhile, Republicans fumed over El-Sayed using the Arabic phrase “inshallah”—or “God willing”–in his election-night speech.
The anti-AIPAC wave did not reach St. Louis. The Democratic primary for Missouri House District 1 saw a rematch between progressive Cori Bush and AIPAC darling Wesley Bell. Two years ago, Bush, then the incumbent, lost the seat to Bell. Last night, Bush lost again to Bell, and by a convincing margin (Bush claimed 36.9 percent of the votes, and her opponent, 59.2 percent). What this race revealed was the command centrist Dems have on the Black vote. Indeed, over in Detroit, progressive Abdul El-Sayed lost the city’s county, Wayne County, the county with the largest Black population in Michigan, by 6 points (Haley had 51 percent of the votes; El-Sayed, 45 percent). It is possible Zorhan Mamdani will eventually draw Black voters to the progressive camp, but for now, moderate Dems still got the power.
The ballot measures in Missouri tell a different story: Missouri voters kept a sales tax intact that keeps parks free and funds conservation. They rejected measures that would make citizen-initiated amendments harder to pass, and they voted against repealing the state’s income tax.
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez will live to peel another banana. The part-time Republican moderate Democrat survived a crowded primary race down south. She’ll face Republican state Sen. John Braun in the general election. Early returns showed Gluesenkamp Perez with 38.9 percent and Braun with 38.7 percent. The progressive to MGP’s left, Brent Hennrich, held 15.3 percent of the vote.
Spokane arson suspect might be a fire bug: The man arrested for the suspected arson that caused one of the three massive fires in Spokane was a person of interest in other fires. Before his arrest this week, a fire investigator who interacted with the suspect before his arrest recognized him from a fire investigation in August 2025 at Riverside State Park’s equestrian area. The investigator also learned that police had contacted the same man in connection with a different arson last July.
It’s also reported that the Spokane arson suspect had a bag full of wind-proof and waterproof matches. These matches are considered to be “heavy duty.” The kind of matches you want when our civilization collapses.
Lunar fender bender: Last night, an abandoned SpaceX rocket booster crashed into the moon at 5,400 mph. It created a crater 60-feet-wide and 12-feet-deep. The booster, or the rocket’s upper stage, was part of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched in January 2025. It was supposed to go into orbit around the sun after its mission, but that got messed up, and the booster was left on a trajectory that intersected with the moon.
Extreme heat kills three lions in Japan: Three female lions at Tokyo’s Tama Zoological Park died within three days of each other. They likely died of dehydration, organ failure, and stress caused by soaring temperatures. In July, Tokyo’s average temperature was 90 degrees. Combine that with the thick humidity, and the average heat index was around 110 degrees. The climate has changed, and we are living through the hellish aftermath. Rest easy, little lions, Mugi, Ichigo, and Ruena.
Everything is climate change actually: The Danube River’s water levels are so low that the hulls of sunken World War II German battleships are showing.
By the way, the weather: Expect today to do nothing but suck. Lots of smoke. Very hot. More smoke. Still very hot. You get the picture. Expect a high of 85 and, at the end of the long day, moments that will make you feel like you are in Blade Runner.
Let’s end this Slog AM with a track, “Abraxas,” from a studio album, The Coldest Season, by the dubtech duo Echospace.
Correction: In an earlier version of this post, we mistakenly pulled the county numbers for the statewide races for Washington State Supreme Court, which is obviously wrong. We regret the error. We will write “King County is not Washington State” on a chalkboard 100 times until we learn our lesson.
