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!

Good Morning, Portland: We're looking at some nice ass weather this weekend. I wouldn't be a true midwesterner if I didn't immediately follow such a statement with a reminder to keep your drunk bros out of the fast, cold, and tricksy Oregon rivers.

IN LOCAL NEWS:
• OPB's Amelia Templeton has been writing a multi-part investigation of Oregon's mental health system. Yesterday, part one looked at the problem of not having enough facilities to house people experiencing serious mental illness. Today's part two is about rural areas, which have disproportionately higher instances of “deaths of despair.”

• If the conversations about ongoing staff shortages in Oregon's hospitals are of interest to you, the newly released study—compiled by the Oregon Longitudinal Data Collaborative—explains some of the problems and recommends solutions. By all means, read the study, but OPB's Meerah Powell summarizes it well, too.

• Today in continuing the tradition of making "a desire to focus on his family" sound sketchy as fuck:

• If you take Amtrak regularly (or even just next week) you may want to be aware of these service hiccups.

• OH, IT IS FRIDAY, BY THE WAY, and you know that means new tickets are dropping for upcoming shows:

IN NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS:
• Oh holy shit, this just dropped so keep an eye out for future developments, but the Associated Press reports that the International Criminal Court located in the Hague, Netherlands issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Whether this is anything other than a piece of political theater remains to be seen—my general understanding of the Hague is that it only matters to people who respect the Hague?  And Russia does not.

• As former president Donald Trump works on his bid for reelection to the White House in 2024, YouTube announced this morning that it will allow him to return to the platform. He had previously been banned in 2021, after thousands of his followers attacked the US Capitol on Jan 6. It's not like YouTube has repeatedly been reported on as a radicalizing medium or anything.

• French President Emmanuel Macron forced a bill through his nation's parliament yesterday, raising France's retirement age from 62 to 64. And the French ARE NOT HAVING IT. If you ever wonder why the French travel, vacation, and eat lunch like human beings—it might be because every time someone tries to take away their rights they get out there and flip cars. For more background on the story, I liked yesterday's episode of the Daily.

• Your energy today—I am going to be that dachshund still carrying the hotdog costume til the end:

@yunabugs YOU GUYS… I AM WINDED FROM THIS TREND. 😮‍💨 #fyp #fy #foryou #dog #dachshund ♬ ceilings - Sped Up Version - Lizzy McAlpine