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 in for a high of 74 degrees with a visit from the clouds today. 🌤. If you've been too blissed out in the sunshine to pay attention to what's happening in the world, let's get you caught up.

In LOCAL NEWS:

  • Portland must be taking its austerity measures to new heights, because the city is now selling off a major possession. For the first time ever, a streetcar will be auctioned off. A Portland Streetcar spokesperson confirmed to KOIN6 that the car being put up for auction was a prototype debuted in 2012 that had operational issues and has been out of service for years. Anyone can bid on the 61,730-pound streetcar on govdeals.com, but the buyer must be willing to haul it themselves, at an estimated cost of at least $50,000. Who’s taking bets on how long it takes before this thing becomes a food cart?
  • Speaking of transportation-oriented things: Portland's Biketown program that allows riders to rent bikes by the minute is backing off its previous efforts to ensure equitable access via the Biketown For All program. The program allowed low-income users to access bikes at reduced rates. Since Biketown's rollout a few years ago, the fleet has switched to electric bikes at noticeably higher rates that don't pencil out for most users. Read Taylor Griggs's latest Street View column to learn more about the bikeshare program and why its corporate backer appears to be tanking it.
  • A Lake Oswego man was sentenced to two years in prison for drugging his daughter and three other young girls during a sleepover. Michael Meyden, 57, admitted to feeding the 12-year-old girls smoothies laced with sedatives, after he said they didn’t go to bed by 11 pm, as he had asked. Testing showed high levels of benzodiazepine in the girls’ systems after their parents picked them up from Meyden’s home and took them to a hospital. One girl at the sleepover said she didn’t drink the fruit smoothie and was awake while Meyden returned to the girls’ room to make sure they were asleep. When she realized Meyden had drugged her friends, she frantically texted her parents and a few friends, asking to be picked up. Worth noting: Meyden got just two years, with the possibility of a shorter sentence for good behavior. The maximum sentence is 10 years.
  • An effort that would allow Portlanders to vote on implementing participatory budgeting at the city level has been postponed for now. Portland's city elections office says the initiative petition was withdrawn on June 3. The group that initially filed paperwork to get the measure on the November ballot didn't list a reason for withdrawing the request. Here's our prior coverage of what participatory budgeting is, tactfully explained by Taylor Griggs.

In NATIONAL/WORLD NEWS:

  • In revelations that should prompt all of us to hang upside down flags on our homes, US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann Alito, was secretly recorded at a gala spouting off about how much it ails her to have to look at pride flags from her home, saying she wants her own flag to counter them. Mrs. Alito also divulged other garbage ideas floating around in her head. She was recently under fire for hanging an upside down flag at the couple’s home in January 2021, the same month Congress met to certify President Biden’s win in the 2020 election. Also caught on tape was Justice Alito himself, responding to what he thought was an informal conversation with a supporter, agreeing we need to “return our county to a place of godliness.”

  • A day after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited the Middle East to push for a cease-fire in Gaza, Hamas has apparently agreed to a cease-fire resolution adopted by the UN Security Council. The news comes not long after an Israeli military attack on a refugee camp in Gaza, in a mission to free four Israeli captives held there. The raid killed an estimated 300 people. 

Who’s gonna tell her?

  • New executive actions from President Biden are making it nearly impossible for immigrants to the United States to be granted asylum. Under the new policies, anyone who crosses the border without prior authorization is detained and almost immediately deported, with no chance at applying for asylum. Recently, immigrations officials have deported people to countries they didn't come from, in a mass effort to discourage unauthorized immigration.