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Good morning, Portland! Today, we can expect clouds and light winds, with a high of 69 degrees. Sit with the mild, possibly even chilly weather while it’s here. We’re in for a serious heat wave the rest of the week through the weekend, with temperatures predicted to soar into the 90s, starting Saturday. Summer weather is around the corner and is likely here to stay.
You know what else is heating up? This news roundup!
IN LOCAL NEWS:
• Portland City Council is again making adjustments to Mayor Wilson’s budget today, and one proposal could save over 100 city jobs. A proposal from Councilors Candace Avalos, Mitch Green, and Angelita Morillo would transfer interest accrued by the Portland Clean Energy Fund (PCEF, so hot right now!) this year to help pay for a host of union jobs that were slated to be cut. That includes jobs in public safety, parks maintenance and programs, as well as services for crime victims and immigrants. Proponents say the proposed cuts degrade trust in government, and the city should prioritize its workers and essential services, particularly as the city floats millions in taxpayer dollars for Moda Center upgrades. Critics of the proposal, including Councilors Elana Pirtle-Guiney and Steve Novick, who are proposing their own budget amendment, call it “an obvious election-year play that pretends no difficult decisions will ever have to be made.” Jeremiah Hayden has the deets!
• On the topic of City Hall, Portland city leaders are denouncing the recent funding package passed by Congress for the Department of Homeland Security (more on that later), which they say has “no meaningful accountability” tied to the funding. You may recall, Congress has been trying to get a funding bill passed for months for immigration enforcement agencies under the DHS umbrella. Anyway, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson, Council President Jamie Dunphy and Council VP Olivia Clark drafted a joint statement deriding Trump’s immigration agencies, many of which were deployed to Portland last year and terrorized immigrant communities. “Cities like ours continue to experience the ongoing impacts of aggressive and unregulated federal actions, and we cannot accept a system in which federal agencies operate without guardrails, transparency, or regard for the people who live here,” the statement reads. Obviously, the statement is just that–a reactionary document. There’s not much city leaders can do at this point, beyond working the legal levers they already have, but the letter calls on Congress and the Trump administration “to impose enforceable oversight, transparent reporting requirements, and clear limits on the use of force for all federal law enforcement.” Good luck, babe.
• Confirming what many local political wonks have suspected for months, former Multnomah County Commissioner Sharon Meieran has officially announced her bid for county chair. Meieran, an emergency room physician known for being hyper critical of county government both during and after her time in office, has been teasing a run with long-winded blog entries on a campaign-style website she launched. For the uninitiated, Meieran is smart, but if there’s one thing she excels at most, it’s critiquing the leadership of others. “The people who depend on county government deserve leaders willing to do more than manage decline,” the former county commissioner and now county chair hopeful said in her candidacy announcement, according to The Oregonian. “So I’ve decided to do what I hoped I would not have to do: run for Multnomah County chair.” Meieran will face current County Commissioners Julia Brim-Edwards and Shannon Singleton, though none of the candidates has officially filed for the seat yet.
IN NATIONAL/WORLD NEWS:
• As mentioned above, Congress finally passed a funding package for DHS, after the House narrowly voted (214-212) to direct about $70 billion to the agency for the next three years. NPR reports the money will fund Border Patrol and ICE and even though negotiations fell apart last week, “Republicans moved to circumvent Democrats using a special procedure known as reconciliation to fund the agencies without acquiescing to any of the reforms they were demanding.” The funding isn’t like a traditional spending bill and comes with few guardrails or stipulations on how it can be spent.
• Nancy Mace, the South Carolina Republican House rep who made transphobia a hallmark of her political career, appears to have lost her bid for governor and sabotaged her political career. Mace lost her primary for South Carolina governor last night, after Trump endorsed one of her opponents (likely after she broke with her party to demand release of the Epstein files last year). Mace gave up her seat in Congress to run for governor and Politico reports she’s indicated she won’t make another political run for the seat.
• We’ve been warned by economists for a long time that Social Security reserves are running out and future checks could be drastically reduced by the time those who are currently paying into it can collect it, but the latest projections are pretty dire. A report released Tuesday found that a special trust fund tied to Social Security is expected to run out by 2032. That’s not the same fund that pays for Social Security benefits that supplant wages when a person retires, but once the aforementioned trust fund is depleted, it leaves scarce revenue sources to pay for Social Security benefits, considering there are fewer workers in the workforce to pay into the system. While the revenue that is supposed to keep Social Security stable was already shaky, Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act made it worse, by implementing permanent tax cuts.
• This Sunday, the White House is slated to host a UFC fight on the South Lawn, but unlike traditional events hosted there, journalists won’t be allowed in unless the UFC lets them. The event is already shaping up to be a disaster, with Dana White, who runs the UFC, threatening to pull fighters out of the event if it gets too hot for safety, and the Trump admin facing a lawsuit over the massive dome and stage that have been erected on the South Lawn for the cage fighting event (which arguably does not require this level of theatrics or that level of architectural interruption–traditional fighting octagons are typically modest in size). I vote we let Pete Hegseth compete. I don’t care who his opponent is. I’m confident he’d get knocked out, regardless of whether he’s placed in the right weight class.
• If you’ve made it this far in the newsletter, I know what you’re thinking: Politics are exhausting. Just tell me how to wash my hats for summer, please. GQ to the rescue. (Hint: stop putting them in the dishwasher, you maniac.)
Finally, the most accurate depiction of the future, run by AI:
