After all that, Pelosi is prepared to take her moderates to the floor to pass Bidens budget.
After all that, Pelosi is prepared to take her moderates to the floor to pass the gutted social spending bill. CHIP SOMODEVILLA / GETTY IMAGES

Inslee will ask Feds for money to pay for flood damages: Communities up in Whatcom County and over on the peninsula are cleaning up shops and assessing flood damage now that the rains have subsided, the Associated Press reports. A market owner in Sumas told the outlet, "It’s not great, but we’re hanging in there." The Red Cross is still operating three shelters west of the mountains.

Aw fuck: The West Seattle Blog reports that the floods to got to West Seattle's Mariposa Farms, a family-owned organic farm that always has tons of produce at the Farmers Markets on Capitol Hill, Columbia City, Magnolia, and West Seattle. Send them some cash if you want to help them come back to life.

Seattle Councilmember Kshama Sawant rallied outside some First Hill apartments this morning: Tenants say a busted boiler has left them "almost entirely without hot water and/or heating for the last two months," according to a press release. My hot water was out for like 1.5 days and it threw off my entire life, so solidarity to my renter friends over on that hill.

Inslee won't add to Biden's COVID-19 restrictions: The Governor toyed with the idea of "removing the testing option" from the President's vaccine mandate for companies that employ over 100 workers and/or maybe including smaller businesses in the mix, but he ended up deciding against it, the Seattle Times reports.

A dump trunk driver and an SUV driver collide on Highway 2 in Monroe: Two people died in the crash, KIRO7 reports.

Officials stand up a 50-square-mile quarantine zone in south-central Washington: The zone isn't to keep COVID-19 patients away from others but rather to keep a massive invasion of Japanese beetles out of the Grandview area, KING 5 reports. During this "pest-trapping season," officials scooped up 24,000 bugs in the region. Not really sure what the big problem is here. The beetles eat "roses, hops, [and] grapes," so it seems like they're just lookin' for a good time and a little romance.

Scientist argues first COVID case started at Wuhan Market: In a New York Times analysis of a new report from Science, University of Arizona evolutionary biologist Dr. Michael Worobey claimed the bug spread on the breath of a seafood vendor in China. “In this city of 11 million people, half of the early cases are linked to a place that’s the size of a soccer field. It becomes very difficult to explain that pattern if the outbreak didn’t start at the market," Dr. Worobey told the Times. Other scientists told the newspaper that Worobey's paper only identified the market as a super-spreader event and articulated a few more holes in the World Health Organization's data.

Activision Blizzard employees want CEO's head: Over 1,000 employees claim CEO Bobby Kotick "knew about sexual misconduct claims at the video game company but failed to inform its board of directors," and so now they want him to resign, the Washington Post reports. The petition follows a walkout on Tuesday, as well as a letter sent Wednesday from a bunch of shareholders demanding the resignation of a bunch of other executives over accusations of "widespread sexual harassment, gender-based harassment and pay inequality in the workplace."

House Democrats take Biden's budget to the floor tonight: After all that moaning and complaining from conservative Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi aims to vote on the $1.7 trillion "social spending package" this evening. Politico reports that leadership feels as if they have the votes after the Congressional Budget Office released a score showing that the bill was pretty much paid for. Once the House passes the bill, Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema will get to tear out anything that preserves the environment or lowers drug prices, and Biden will get to sign a big bill with a weak universal pre-k thing and a policy that appears to increase childcare costs for poor people.

Good enough for the moderates:

Oklahoma decided not to kill Julius Jones: Governor Kevin Stitt said he commuted Jones's sentence to life in prison after "prayerful consideration," the BBC reports. A jury convicted Jones of killing a man in a car-jacking in the late 1990s, but Jones still says he didn't do it.

Pro-democracy protesters in Sudan "promise escalation" after security forces kill 15: Al Jazeera reports on the activist reaction to a police crackdown that has killed at least 40 people and injured hundreds. The cops say they didn't use "live bullets," only tear gas and other "legal means."

I leave you with a movement from Amy Beach's "Gaelic Symphony:" The Seattle Symphony is running an all-woman show this week with the world premiere of Hannah Lash's The Peril of Dreams and a performance of Beach's variously stately and whimsical "Gaelic" Symphony. The Lash piece features TWO harps, which means you get to hear the genius stylings of Seattle Symphony principal harpist Valerie Muzzolini.

And here's Lash doing some moody, anxiety-inducing, dissonant harp stuff: Happy Thursday.