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MERCURY STAFF

Good morning, Portland! If you spent all day yesterday obsessing over the new Bennifer photos, don’t worry—we’ll get you caught up on the rest of the news.

Here are the headlines.

• After six months of virtual negotiations over its contract with the city, Portland’s union representing rank-and-file police officers has asked to move the incomplete conversation into private mediation. Portland Police Association Director Daryl Turner, a former Portland Police Bureau officer, said his team chose to request mediation out of concern that the city isn’t taking the union’s need seriously. That’s exactly what Portland needs—to take the needs of police more seriously.

• The city of Tigard is poised to lose one-fifth of its affordable housing, thanks to greedy developers who can’t see morality because their eyes are clouded by dollar signs. Read more about this issue—which is poised to affect towns all over Oregon—in this great report from OPB.

• Checking in with Portland’s restaurants:

• Communities across the West Coast and Southwest are experiencing a record-breaking heat wave. Death Valley, California, currently holds the record for the hottest temperature ever recorded at 134 degrees. That record could be broken in the coming week. Climate change has arrived!

• A new trove of emails released by Democrats on the United States House Oversight Committee shows that Donald Trump and his cronies tried to pressure the US Justice Department to “investigate” claims of “election fraud” in the 2020 presidential election, before Trump left office. For example, Trump’s chief of staff emailed then-Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen about how “there was a plot in which U.S. election data was altered in Italian facilities and loaded onto ‘military satellites’ and that Trump was ‘clearly the winner,'” according the NPR. Color me shocked.

• Hmmm:

• A new investigation from the Associated Press shows that at least 1,900 US military guns were lost or stolen in the last decade—and many of those guns were later used by civilians to perpetrate violence. Making matters worse, the Pentagon has been trying to keep a lid on this alarming phenomenon.

• President Joe Biden’s White House is planning to host a July 4 party celebrating “independence from [the COVID-19] virus” and a “summer of freedom,” and is encouraging other Americans to do the same. So, I guess we now know what post-pandemic life will look like in the US: one giant college frat theme party.

• Have you watched In the Heights yet? There’s a lot to like about the new movie musical adaptation, but there’s one glaring flaw: The film does a poor job of including Afro-Latino representation, despite Washington Height’s high population of Black Latinx people. Producer and director Lin-Manuel Miranda apologized for the omission yesterday, writing on social media that “In trying to paint a mosaic of this community, we fell short.”

• And finally, keep an eye out for the Mercury’s Pride coverage this week—a series of pieces around the theme of Queer Beginnings. Here’s our first (fun, thoughtful, righteous hilarious) entry:

Blair Stenvick is a former news reporter and culture writer for the Portland Mercury.

2 replies on “Good Morning, News: West Coast Heat Wave, Housing Crisis in Oregon Suburbs, and a Very American “Summer of Freedom””

  1. How does it make sense to eliminate affordable housing? All people do currently is viciously attack the population that is has nowhere to live but on the streets. All businesses do currently is complain that people don’t want to work. People do want to work. People want to have a place to live. They also want to be paid enough to pay their bills and live their lives beyond working and bill paying. But hey, raise the rents, make it impossible for anyone to live anywhere, refuse to raise wages, and all the while continuing to blame people for not wanting to work!

    Americans truly are the stupidest and greediest people there are. I don’t want to hear it. Businesses and politicians should be using their collective economic and political power to ENSURE AFFORDABLE HOUSING AND LIVING WAGES. That is how this state will thrive.

    Doing the exact opposite, while continuing to whine and complain about everyone else but your own greed and stupidity is beyond comprehension. I, for one, hope every single greedy person involved in this idiocy suffers. No one to fill the overpriced housing, no one to fill the underpaid jobs, and when the state fails to thrive, oh guess what there will be no one to blame but themselves. Can’t fix stupid.

  2. Well bust my buttons! I would never have guessed that Portland’s restaurateurs might end up keeping their expanded seating areas, located on property once owned by the public.

    For those keeping score:

    Shanties occupied by poor people trying to survive = No bueno.

    Shanties occupied by upper class foodies = A-Okay!

    Keep being Portland, Portland.

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