Good morning, Blogtown. What's worse today than it was yesterday? Plenty! So much.
Donald Trump's going to war on national monuments. He announced yesterday he's going to vastly shrink the size of two Utah monuments, as part of a partisan war over whether the federal government should be protecting lands. It's "a rollback of some two million acres that is the largest in scale in the nation’s history," the NYT notes.
The Washington Post has the backstory over the fight over one of the monuments, Bears Ears National Monument, which had been a hotspot for artifact plunder before the feds cracked down (with some sad results). There's still no telling what will become of Oregon's Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, which also has Trump's attention.
For some context into why the arguments for killing monuments don't make a ton of sense, check out this editorial from the High Country News.
Oh, and also: Patagonia, the apparel company, is having none of this.
The Supreme Court gave the thumbs up to Trump's travel ban—at least for now. As legal challenges to the travel restrictions on eight countries (six of them mostly Muslim) play out, the high court says the thing can be enforced. It's a pretty clear sign that the ban stands a fine chance of being upheld by the court, probably later this year.
Speaking of the Supremes, they're taking up what might be a landmark case today: Whether a Colorado baker had the right to deny a wedding cake to a gay couple—and by extension, perhaps, whether business owners around the country can refuse to serve people because of religious convictions.
The chef at beloved Cully Mexican spot Angel Food and Fun has been forced out of the country.
For the second time this year, city officials have demanded information from Uber, after revelations that the company hid news of a data breach. As we reported last month, City Council is mulling stricter rules for Uber, and this isn't likely to dissuade them.
A bad scene: A Newberg man fired a gun six times outside a Portland strip club over the weekend after acting creepily for a while and insisting the DJ had treated him poorly because he is white.
Who's More Ice Cold? The Everett, Washington, nanny who wrassles a would-be package thief like a straigt-up boss, or the package thief's would-be accomplice who knocks her over and abandons her while fleeing? You suck, package thief.
I KNOW YOU KNOW, but it's a week until Alabama maybe elects an accused child predator to the US Senate, and one of the teens he dated (at age 17) just found more evidence that she dated him and he's still completely denying it and it's unclear that any of it will matter.
Diego Valeri: Very good at soccer.
John Conyers, the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives, isn't going to run for re-election after being accused of sexual harassment, a relative of his has said.
Aaaaaaaand the GOP's tax plan is going to whack Multnomah County and other liberal, high-tax localities harder than others, due to the fact that the state and local tax exemption has been curtailed. Here's an explainer.
That forecast tho.
