If you believe Portland benefits from smart, local journalism and arts coverage, please consider making a small monthly contribution to the Mercury, because without you, there is no us. Thanks for your support!
Good Morning, Portland! Well, here comes the rain again. We can expect five days of overcast, wet weather, which might be a good break from the heat and a good reset for the garden. If you’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest for long, you know summer doesn’t start until the 5th of July, so we’re a bit ahead of schedule with the hot hot heat mid-June. Hey, this gives you more time to read the news instead of going wherever you run off to when it’s nice out. Let’s cozy up with a coffee, and get to this morning’s news. 📰
IN LOCAL NEWS:
• Earlier this week, Mayor Keith Wilson sent a newsletter to Portlanders, trying to rally support for the city sending millions in taxpayer dollars to renovate the Moda Center, and one of two people who run the website “Rip City, Not Rip Off” caught a stray. Rather than name the creator of the site, Edan Krolewicz, Wilson referred to him tacitly—as an “opportunist” and a “Brooklyn-based techbro.” The mayor also claimed that Krolewicz, who has researched similar NBA arena deals, tried to coax the mayor into using a specific term sheet for the Moda Center lease, by promising to “deliver 10 city council votes” if the mayor agreed to a meeting. A copy of the email sent to Wilson’s office and obtained by the Mercury shows a much different conversation, one in which Krolewicz talked about polling, what the Council’s skeptics will need to make an informed decision, and requesting a meeting to go over ideas that might get a better deal over the finish line. The Mercury’s Courtney Vaughn brought the receipts, here.
• Speaking of the Moda Center, the local chamber of commerce held a $350 per ticket fundraiser on Wednesday at the arena, which appeared largely in tact and operational. (The paper towels in the restroom came out quickly, unlike that one office dispenser [iykyk] which could use a drop of WD-40 imo.) Anyway, it’s unclear if anyone who purchased a $350 ticket to this year’s Portland Metro Chamber meeting is feeling buyer’s remorse, but if they expected anything more than a pep rally, sans pep, they certainly could be. Elected leaders spoke in broad terms about why it would be bad if the Portland Trail Blazers left town (literally no one disagrees with that), and why Oregon leaders should leverage state funding and private sector activity to pay for upgrades to the city-owned building. Now if that doesn’t sound like a good time, at least the reception snacks may have partly justified the price of admission. The flank steak was presented on a fried wonton topped with pickled carrot, cabbage, and cilantro, while gochujang aioli gave a mild hint of spice. Read a Mercury reporter’s highlights of the event (the catering), here.
• The city of Woodburn has decided to remove its Flock Safety cameras just a year after they were installed, the Oregonian reports. The city with the highest Latino population in Oregon removed the cameras after learning that Flock shared data with federal immigration agencies, a violation of Oregon’s sanctuary law. The city audited the data during a moratorium passed in November, then kept the cameras off—this time forever. Woodburn joins a growing list of cities removing the surveillance tech. Read more in the O here.
• Governor Tina Kotek has released a set of recommendations from a committee she set up to look for ways to give Oregon’s economy a jump start. The “Prosperity Council,” a 15-member group of business leaders, convened in January, and met a handful of times to make its recommendations. She gave them six months, but they probably only needed about 10 minutes. Their ideas appear to be roughly the same as former-President Ronald W. Reagan’s ideas: temporarily lowering taxes for wealthy individuals and businesses, potentially lowering taxes for lower income Oregonians someday, and reducing regulations. But who will think of the businesses? OPB has a deep dive here.
IN NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL NEWS:
• The death toll is rising after two devastating earthquakes that shocked La Guaira, Venezuela on Wednesday. As of Friday morning, Venezuela’s Acting President Delcy Rodriguez reported that 589 people are confirmed dead, and nearly 3,000 injured as aftershocks continue in the region. Still thousands of people are missing. The quakes registered at 7.2 and 7.5 on the Richter scale—the largest quakes in the country in a century. Content Warning: The stories coming out of the region are just gutting, and you can read some of them here.
• After the White House claimed on Thursday that video vindicated his assertion that a tourist had vandalized the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool on June 19, the Guardian—unlike the BBC—did what the press should do, and tried to find out what the truth was. It turns out, the clip shows one woman dipped her hand into the pool, but neither her or the man she was with had a knife or anything that would cut the floor. The Guardian correctly framed its reporting, saying the video actually vindicates the journalists who reported that the pool lining was falling apart one day prior to the woman dipping her hand in the water. Read the full story here.
• Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton pleaded guilty this morning in a case over his handling of classified information during Trump’s first term. Bolton faces five years in prison and more than $2 million in fines—basically the amount he got from his book publisher for his 2020 book The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir. This could be a lesson that cozying up to Trump will always end poorly and with you in jail instead of the president, but who are we kidding? Nobody likes to learn anymore. Read more in NPR on the case here if you like, but don’t worry about reading that profiteering-ass book.
Have a great weekend, Portland. I hope your dance party is better than this one:
