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! You know I love you because I've rounded up a bunch of actual news you can use instead of using this space to write about last night's Met Gala looks, which is what I want to be doing. It's causing me physical pain to look away from shiny dresses. In the immortal words of Tom Hanks at the end of Saving Private Ryan: Earn this.

IN LOCAL NEWS:

• It's been a rough few days of gun violence in Portland, as two separate incidents left three people killed and another person injured. Police neither prevented the shootings nor have they arrested anyone for them.

• Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan has apologized for having exercised "poor judgment" for working as a private consultant for the La Mota chain of weed dispensaries. In her statement, Fagan lamented that her income as SOS is simply not enough to make ends meet, which is how I learned that her income is just $77,000 a year—which is not very much! Especially for a single mother of two, as well as for someone who has to wear so many suits for work. Both childcare and suits are very expensive. 

• Have your allergies got you feeling like tearing your eyeballs out of your head and throwing them into a river just to get a moment of relief? Me too! According to OPB, this is an exceptionally brutal time in an exceptionally brutal year for pollen. A nurse practitioner from Oregon Allergy Associates explained that "the plants are trying to get their genetic materials out for pollination." In other words: plants are DTF, and those horny blossoms DGAF that you can't breathe in your sleep anymore.

• From the Oregonian: a nine-year-old boy named Jeremiah in Winston, Oregon, was playing near a creek at his grandma's house when he found an interesting rock in a creek... that turned out to be a freaking wooly mammoth tooth! Congratulations, Jeremiah! That's some instant legend shit, and it's going to have all the kids in his towns getting very annoying about looking in creeks for a while. 

• And speaking of new local celebrities, the town of Packwood, Washington has one in an elk who had a run-in with a resident's outdoor hammock, and now wanders around with the remnants of the hammock dangling from his antlers like macrame dreadlocks. The elk has been named Hammock Head, obviously, and I love him.

IN NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL NEWS:

• The Writers Guild of America couldn't get a fair contract that would allow creators a reasonable slice of the gigantic profits they help generate, and they are on strike! Now is a good time to stock up on books you've been meaning to read so you aren't tempted to watch scab shows. TV is good, but solidarity is better.  

• US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that the US could run out of money by June 1, which is a pretty bold thing to say just two after tax day when I had to give this idiot country a bunch of money! Did it all go up her damn nose? Make better choices, America. 

• This is so sad and scary: A dust storm blew over an Illinois highway yesterday reducing visibility to zero, leading to major traffic accidents that killed at least six people and injured another 30 more. The CNN article  about this incident didn't mention climate change as a possible culprit, but I do have to wonder if it's normal for soil to be so dry in the midwest in the middle of spring that tilling a field can cause blackout conditions. 

• One of the officers present at George Floyd's murder at the hands of Minneapolis police in 2020 was found guilty of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter for encouraging his fellow officers to keep the hold that strangled Floyd, and also for preventing bystanders from rendering aid that would have saved Floyd's life. Sentencing is set for August 7. 

• E. Jean Carroll wrapped her testimony yesterday in the New York case against former President Donald Trump in which Carroll alleges that Trump raped her in the mid-90s. Trump's lawyer had moved for a mistrial, presumably on the basis of "but he doesn't want to face any consequences for his actions!" which the US District Court Judge presiding over the case denied, presumably on the basis of "lol, no."

• Yesterday was May Day, and the French continue to show us how it's done in giant protests over President Emmanuel Macron's plan to raise the nation's age of retirement to 64. Upwards of two million people hit the streets, dozens of people were arrested, and police fired tear gas at the crowds to try to subdue them. But like, this is a culture that regularly naps. Almost everyone takes off the entire month of August. They are both angry and well-rested, and honestly America could never.

IN FASHION NEWS:

• Ha ha, I'm writing about the Met Gala anyway! This will be a test of whether or not Mercury Editor-in-chief Wm. Steven Humphrey actually reads all the way to the end of the stuff I submit. [Surprise! I do!—Wm. Steven Humphrey] ANYWAY, the Met Gala was last night, and fashion's boldest showed up in varying levels of success in the theme of Karl Lagerfeld, which is a dumb theme, so honestly it's pretty impressive that the red carpet wasn't worse.  Many sites have delicious slideshows to turn your Tuesday into an ooOOOooosday. Jared Leto and Doja Cat dressed as actual cats were instantly iconic, Anna Wintour used the opportunity to introduce her new relationship with none other than Bill Nighy, and Pedro Pascal wore shorts! Flawless, no notes.

Well, one note:

Have a great day out there, besties!