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Good Morning, Portland: And a very fine week to all the Hobonichi Techo 'April Start' people, who descended upon the distributors in your respective countries yesterday to acquire the 2024-25 planner. January is a fucked up time of year to try to start anything new. We planner flip in Spring. If you're like, Suzette, are you getting kickbacks to talk about a kind of planner? NO. What would be the point? It's not an expensive planner. I just like to talk about things that are good—like, for instance, the Tomoe River Paper that makes the Hobonichi planner so slim and wieldy. I'll shut up about it for another year now—LET'S HIT THE NEWS.

IN LOCAL NEWS:
• Who's that city commissioner running for mayor (there are three 😰) whose fundraising has drastically outpaced his competitors? It's Rene Gonzalez! Abe Asher reports on who's giving Gonzalez money and why he's seen as the champion of downtown business interests. In 2022, Gonzalez almost had to pay a $77,140 fine for receiving reduced rate office space downtown from Jordan Schnitzer—violating the terms of the Small Donor Election program—but Senior Administrative Law Judge Joe Allen said the city hadn't proven Gonzalez's office space, which faced the South Park Blocks, was valuable.

• The biggest Oregon news story yesterday (and arguably this week) hails from the Capitol:

• On Wednesday, the Portland Bureau of Transportation revealed draft designs for dangerous east Portland arterial 82nd Avenue. PBOT is now seeking public input to finalize the project design, and plans to begin construction this summer. Mercury reporter Taylor Griggs unpacks the plans.

• This week in culture: During part of this play, the audience is permitted to vote about whether to abolish the constitution or not.

• Also in culture: The Friday morning ticket drop is upon us! The Mercury's EverOut team has a round-up of music shows and performances to which you must scoop tickets.

IN NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS:
• A big ol' asteroid will pass close to the Earth today—and by close I mean about seven times the distance from the Earth to the Moon. Every few years some wealthy people get together and discuss bringing asteroids into the Earth's orbit to mine them for metals. I predict this is how life on Earth will be extinguished, but it will probably be something duller, like climate change.

• And now, some news about enforcing weird, old laws:

• On Thursday, President Joe Biden imposed financial sanctions on four specific Israeli settlers in the West Bank for actions like assaulting Palestinian farmers and Israeli activists and threatening and displacing Palestinian and Bedouin civilians. The Associated Press reports the "penalties aim to block the four from using the U.S. financial system and bar American citizens from dealing with them." Uh... I guess four people is a start? NPR called the move "mostly symbolic."

• There's a pretty wonderful new episode of This Is Uncomfortable, a Marketplace—a news and finance radio program from American Public Media—show about finance and human relationships, where the host Reema Khrais steps outside her usual coverage to talk to her father about what's been happening in Gaza. Her family is from Gaza, and her father used to work in Ahli Arab Hospital. The conversation originally started as a discussion about what the hospital was like and what it was like when he saw it had been bombed. Granted any conversation with a sweet dad is gonna pull at the heartstrings, but I found the episode to be particularly illuminating.

• On Thursday, Florida passed a bill to make it possible for 16-and 17-year-olds to work longer and later hours—which many are quick to point out follows a June 2023 state law increasing punishments for employers who hire people in the country illegally. Who's gonna do the jobs we don't like? Kids, I guess! These youths are takin' our jobs!

• Oh, also worth noting—despite claims that Biden's governing will cause a recession—the economy just keeps adding jobs.

• AOkay, not let's look at some buildings: