The Mercury provides news and fun every single day—but your help is essential. If you believe Portland benefits from smart, local journalism and arts coverage, please consider making a small monthly contribution, because without you, there is no us. Thanks for your support!

A doctor conducting a CT scan
Hospitals are rationing CT scans and other diagnostic procedures due to a shortage of contrast dye. Getty Images / Pool

Good morning, Portland! It’s going to be a beautiful sunny morning with some cloudy skies in the afternoon, so look out your window earlier rather than later. On to the headlines!

In local news:

• One year after the first round of grants was distributed, the impacts of the Portland Clean Energy Fund are starting to materialize. Sammie Lewis, a low income senior, is one of 20 people who received deep energy retrofits in her North Portland home as part of a program funded by PCEF. The retrofits will not only make her house more comfortable and her utility bills cheaper, but also bolster the longterm livability of her house.

• Formerly homeless veterans were housed in moldy, pest-ridden housing due to the Joint Office of Homeless Services’ lack of oversight and action, an investigation from the city auditor found. The report concludes the agency should have responded to residents’ concerns about the poor conditions much sooner or moved them out of the building. Instead, the Joint Office spent $850,000 housing the veterans over 16 months before the city eventually condemned the building last year.

• Food for thought from OPB. I, for one, will be embracing the true spirit of January 6th and will only get my news secondhand from my distant relatives’ Facebook posts:

• An LGBTQ pride and Black Lives Matter sign outside of James John Elementary School in North Portland was smeared with what appears to be feces over the weekend. The vandalism was discovered by a parent and reported to the police.

• A judge convicted a former Gresham-Barlow School District principal of sexually abusing four students from 2005 and 2009 Friday. Jeffrey Hays, 68, was found guilty on six counts of sexual abuse and one count of unlawful sexual penetration. Hays’ former students said the abuse happened during one-on-one lunches and tests in Hays’ office while they were in the third or fourth grade. Hays plans to appeal the verdict.

In national news:

• Beep, beep! Assholes coming through! The Tampa Bay Rays baseball team wore a rainbow patch on their jerseys for a Pride Night game—well, all except five players. Jason Adam, one of the pitchers who opted to peel off the pride patch from his jersey, said it was a “faith-based decision” because being gay is a “lifestyle” that they don’t want to encourage. In standard homophobic Christian fashion Adam added that, while he doesn’t approve of that gay shit, “all are welcome and loved here.” Someone tell Adam to look up what “welcome and loved” means because I don’t think he quite gets it.

• A federal court is sending the Louisiana legislature back to the drawing board after rejecting the state’s latest congressional map for gerrymandering. The rejected map—which was pushed through the GOP-controlled legislature despite a veto from Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards—only had one majority Black district that historically favored Democratic candidates and the five other districts favored Republicans. The court ordered the state to redraw the map so that there are two majority Black districts.

• The family of Andrew Brown Jr., a Black man who was shot and killed by law enforcement in North Carolina last year, reached a $3 million settlement with the Pasquotank County sheriff’s office Monday. Officers shot Brown in his car while a serving drug-related warrant last year. Officers said that Brown used his car as a “deadly weapon,” but body camera footage showed Brown sitting in a stationary car with his hands on the wheel when police shot him.

• A shortage of medical contrast dye used in diagnostic imaging has forced hospitals to ration their CT scans and other diagnostic procedures over the past few weeks. Some hospitals are opting to delay elective imaging procedures and only use the dye for life-or-death procedures. The shortage is due to a production facility in Shanghai that was shut down due to the city’s response to COVID concerns, eliminating a major supplier of the dye. Hospitals are anticipating the shortage to last at least through June.

• Riley is an ally: