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Good morning, Portland! Today, expect overcast skies with a high of 65 degrees and a low of 49.
It’s Veterans Day, in case you’re wondering why mail delivery is paused and some government buildings are closed today. Thank the vets in your life, if that’s a thing that’s applicable to you. For those who served, go get you some free Applebee’s or a Grand Slam at Denny’s. 🇺🇲
For the rest of us, let’s go get caught up on current affairs.
IN LOCAL NEWS:
• The race for the next chair of the Washington County Board of Commissioners is still too close to call. Current Commissioners Pam Treece and Nafisa Fai both ran for the chair’s position. Initial results showed Treece with a slight lead over Fai (about two percentage points), but as of Tuesday, the two are both sitting at 49 percent, with Fai leading by less than 365 votes. If the election is called for Fai, she’d be the first person of color to lead Washington County’s board. OPB reports Tuesday’s count “does not include thousands of ballots challenged due to signature issues.” It could take weeks for the county elections office to verify and count those ballots.
• A woman visiting Portland last weekend from Idaho says she is devastated after someone broke into her rental car and stole about $10,000 worth of horses…well, miniature model horses, to be exact. Molly Worek was in Portland for a model horse show in Tigard. She’d been collecting custom-made, hand-painted resin model horses since she was a young child. She brought her entire collection to the show, and won, taking best in show. After the show, she placed her miniature resin horses back in their soft pouches and stored them in luggage in her rental car. Her hotel in the Pearl District didn’t have a parking lot, so she parked in a garage across the street. Rather than hauling all her luggage back over to the hotel, she kept it in the car. The next morning, she discovered someone had busted the window and rifled through her all her belongings. All her horses—her life’s collection—gone. Worek says she searched the area and asked around, frantically, and discovered an employee at Powell’s Books had been given one. She’s hoping the person who stole them might be giving them out or selling them for cheap, and that Portlanders will recognize them and help reunite her with some of her collection. She’s filed a police report and her initial post on Facebook has been shared numerous times. Keep an eye out for these tiny ponies!
• Portland has its own reflecting pool problems. A leak in the Washington Park fountain is reportedly leaking an estimated 68,000 gallons of water a day. KPTV reports the reflecting pool is separate from an underground drinking water reservoir at the site, which is not leaking, according to the Portland Water Bureau. The Water Bureau is working with a contractor to narrow down the exact source of the leak, which originated somewhere in the fountain’s liner, and get it repaired. Currently, the water is leaking into the stormwater system and doesn’t pose a threat to drinking water, but man, what a waste!
• Two city councilors are pitching a “Fair Share” tax on companies whose CEOs make 50 to 75 times what their average employee makes. If approved, the tax would generate an estimated $72 million in extra revenue for the city each year, while also cutting taxes for the city’s small businesses. Critics say the tax would push out large corporations. In an opinion piece, Sarah Anderson and Steve Silberstein say that’s unlikely, and such a tax is more likely to encourage them to raise worker wages, or just pay the tax.
IN NATIONAL/WORLD NEWS:
• US Senator Bernie Sanders says he won’t support Sen. Chuck Schumer to serve as the next Senate majority leader. Schumer, the current minority leader, is expected to advance to serve as the Senate’s next majority leader after Democrats’ sweeping wins last week. But Sanders and others say it’s time for change, and Schumer represents the old guard. Sanders and Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin held a joint news conference Tuesday to push for different Senate leadership, indicating neither would vote for poor ol’ Chuck. Instead, some are eying Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen for the role, though Van Hollen may be considering a 2028 presidential run. In the US House of Representatives, there have also been calls for Representative and current House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to step aside and let someone else serve as House majority leader next term.
• On Tuesday, the US House blocked Republican Rep. Thomas Massie’s effort to impeach “Whiskey” Pete Hegseth, because unlike an actual house that’s built with structural integrity and provides shelter, the House of Representatives is unreliable and doesn’t actually support you or protect you from harmful elements like Pete fucking Hegseth. The “secretary of war” launched the Iran war without Congressional approval. In a 211-204 vote, “the House voted to refer the resolution to the Judiciary Committee, effectively killing it,” CBS explains. Rep. Massie was the lone Republican who voted with Democrats against referring it.
• A student at the University of Maryland who was valedictorian of her high school class just months ago was detained by ICE agents and transferred out of state. Maria Flores Garcia reportedly accompanied her mother to an immigration check-in appointment in Baltimore last week, when both the teen and her mother were detained and transferred to a detention center in Louisiana, according to Flores Garcia’s boyfriend, who’s been in contact with her. Flores Garcia and her family immigrated to the United States from El Salvador when she was a child.
• Speaking of ICE, the New York Times did a background investigation into the agent that shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero earlier this year in Maine. That’s significant because as it turns out, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, was so busy fast-tracking new recruits that it never actually did a background check of its own on David Brouillette before hiring him in 2025 and sending him out for duty. The Times investigation found numerous “red flags” in Brouillette’s history that would normally be disqualifying for a federal agent. Durán Guerrero, 25, was shot in the face while driving his car. A lawyer for his family said he had legal permission to work in the country. Brouillette, the rookie ICE agent, has been accused by at least one of his ex-wives of domestic abuse. He also harbored strong anti-immigrant biases and struggled with bipolar disorder, according to the NYT reporting, and had previously lied in court about being employed by a law enforcement agency in 2019 (he applied to be a cop but was never hired.)
• Congressional races in Alaska and Mississippi still remain too close to call, more than a week after Election Day. In Mississippi, Democrat Scott Colom was about 2,600 votes ahead of Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in the race for a Senate seat, and in Alaska, Democrat Mary Peltola is leading the incumbent, Republican Dan Sullivan, by about 2,500 votes as of Tuesday afternoon, the AP reports.
And finally, someone captured what that mid-week mania feels like…
