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Good morning, Portland! This Sunday marks the first official day of summer, but we’ve already been baked by a heatwave. Luckily, things are cooling down back to somewhat normal Portland summer temps. Today, expect sunshine and a high of 76 degrees with an overnight low of 53.
IN LOCAL NEWS:
• Oregon’s Secretary of State has received a whopping 28 complaints about the Enhanced Community Safety Initiative. The initiative petition seeks to divert clean energy funds to the Portland Police Bureau to pay for hiring hundreds of additional officers. The state is investigating the allegations, which allege paid canvassers are regularly misleading voters about the initiative’s goals and funding source. The controversial proposal seeks to divert 25 percent of Portland Clean Energy Fund revenue to hire more cops, but canvassers have been telling voters it would do much more than that, including claims of hiring 911 dispatchers and alternative responders, according to complaints filed with the state. Misleading voters in order to get them to sign an initiative petition could come with hefty fines, as Taylor Griggs reports.
• Multnomah County confirmed it’s investigating four deaths as possibly heat related. Four people, all of whom died Monday, June 15, are undergoing tests and investigation by the Medical Examiner’s office. The deceased ranged in age from 47 to 82. The Medical Examiner’s office says it won’t know whether the “suspected heat-related deaths” were officially due to the record-breaking temperatures for several weeks, to months. The county hasn’t released additional information like the names or housing status of each person. Monday’s temperature reached a record-breaking 97 degrees Monday, amid a dangerous heat wave that started the day prior. The county opened cooling centers, but not until Monday afternoon, toward the end of the sweltering heat event.
•Speaking of dangerous heat, this is your annual reminder not to bring your dogs with you as you run errands, or leave your dog in a car when it’s hot outside. The temperature inside a vehicle can rise 20 degrees in 10 minutes and up to 50 degrees within an hour–making it much hotter inside a car than the outside temperature.
A man was arrested last weekend after he left his dog in a car for hours Saturday, when temperatures were in the high 80s. Titus Bagnall, 38, was charged with animal neglect and failing to register as a sex offender after concerned neighbors flagged down police near where a dog was being kept in a hot car in the parking lot of an apartment complex, the Oregonian reports. Police found the dog in a late model Mercedes with the windows cracked and an empty food and water bowl panting, whining, and in distress. The dog was released to one of its owners, who wasn’t charged.
• While Portland’s Pride celebrations haven’t gotten into full swing yet, June is nationally celebrated as Pride month. If you haven’t yet, pick up a copy of the Mercury’s Queer Issue, out in print around town now, and online for your reading pleasure. Among my favorite pieces from this issue: the exploration of pro-wrestling as a queer-centric sport. IYKYK, but if you don’t, read on in Riley McCarthy’s feature on the underexamined world of wrestling.
IN NATIONAL/WORLD NEWS:
• The Trump regime is unraveling the US Department of Education, piece by piece. The federal agency’s latest tack: moving the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services out of the Education Department and rolling it into the Department of Health and Human Services (a much larger agency that has historically not been tasked with ensuring students with disabilities get the proper support they need in educational settings). The Education Department also moved its Office for Civil Rights into the Department of Justice. The moves could weaken protections put in place for vulnerable students, and those impacted by discrimination in school settings.
• Even Republicans recognize the inherent flaws in the criminal justice system. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine says he wants the Buckeye state to abolish the death penalty, acknowledging it’s not a deterrent to serious crime. DeWine, a Republican, helped write the state’s death penalty policy while he was a state legislator 45 years ago, the AP reports, but has since postponed executions over the past seven years.
• SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space exploration and AI company, went public last Friday, pushing the company’s valuation to $2.66 trillion by Tuesday afternoon. The early market position is astronomical, but whether the company will be as profitable as Musk promises remains to be seen. This is the same man whose self-driving cars have killed people, because he likely skimped on safety features and better technology. Shares are already falling, and CNBC reports the company ended last year with a net loss of $4.9 billion. What’s notable is that the likely over-inflated valuation gave Musk enough capital to acquire AI companies that are actually capable of producing quality results, unlike Grok—the dog shit AI platform Musk owns that has notoriously been trained to spew factually incorrect information, to Musk’s liking. Musk took SpaceX money to acquire Cursor, an AI coding company he paid $60 billion for. (Disclosure: The statements above regarding the efficacy of Musk’s shitty cars and tech products are my unsolicited opinion and not that of my employer, as a whole …. though most of us possess enough brain cells to know when something’s dog shit.)
• Stephen Colbert’s sly move to have his band do an unauthorized performance of “Linus and Lucy” from the “Peanuts” theme during his final late night show in May went exactly as (and possibly better than) Colbert expected. The former late night show host joked, “I hope this doesn’t cost CBS any money” as the band played the jazz song written by Vince Guaraldi. Colbert had just mentioned that Lee Mendelson Film Productions, Inc (LMFP), which owns the rights to the music, had been suing for unauthorized use of the copyrighted material in commercial settings. LMFP did in fact file suit against CBS, but is apparently donating the proceeds of the legal action to World Food Kitchen.
And here’s your daily motivational reminder that while it’s never too late to quit, it’s also never too late to give drugs a try.
