The Mercury provides its readers with interesting and useful news & culture reporting every single day. If you appreciate that, consider making a small monthly contribution to support our editorial team. If you read something you like, something you don't like but are glad to know about, and/or something you can't find anywhere else consider a one-time tip. It all goes in the same pot and it all goes to the editorial team. Thanks for your support!

Good Morning, Portland! Did you love those sudden bursts of torrential rain yesterday? You'd better because you live in Portland. Read to the end for sexy Death Eaters. For now, let's hit the news!

IN LOCAL NEWS:
• Portland Public Schools' teacher's union is alarmed over the district's quiet addition of a policy controlling what educators display in their classrooms. The Oregonian's Julia Silverman reports "rules specify that classroom spaces 'cannot be used for an employee’s personal expression, whether that is related to a political or personal issue.'" Silverman points out that the new guidance follows an incident in the spring where a group "a group affiliated with the Portland Association of Teachers published a controversial guide to teaching and organizing in support of Palestinian statehood."

• Remember when people were incensed that "at least four Portland City Council candidates" donated to one another's campaign in order to reach the threshold to receive matching campaign funds from the city? WELL, the Oregonian's Carlos Fuentes reports that it now appears that number is much greater: "69 candidates for Portland office gave more than 900 reciprocated contributions to each other this year," Fuentes writes, citing a newsroom analysis of the city’s public campaign finance database.

• Fuentes also reports that Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade has directed her office to open an investigation into the situation.

• At the tail end of August, Portland newspaper Willamette Week announced an expansion to state news coverage with the ultra-generic name of Oregon Journalism Project—along with their intention to use this new nonprofit arm to essentially pay themselves rent ("from which our back-office services are provided via a service agreement") 😬. If I sound salty, I'm not. More reporting, more speech—it's good. And if they work really hard, I bet they can learn to differentiate between Portland, Oregon and Portland, Maine. 

Willamette Week announced its Oregon Journalism Project with an image of Portland, Maine.

[image or embed]

— Suzette Smith (@suzettesmith.bsky.social) September 11, 2024 at 7:33 PM

• What's your weekend looking like? Our music columnist Jenni Moore has some suggestions. For starters, Lose Yr Mind Fest is back on Friday and Saturday—and this year LYM added free afterparty dance nights at Lollipop Shoppe. Read the latest installment of Moore's column, Hear in Portland.

• Speaking of rad fests, you'll want to hear about the new shoegaze festival in St. Johns, Dreamgaze PDX, organized by Portland bands Ten Million Lights and Kallai. The two-day fest is drawing out-of-town shoegaze-adjacent groups from as far as Mexico City and Brooklyn, responding to the city's growing love for "dreamlike vibes, floaty melodies, guitars that sparkle and fuzz."

• If you celebrate the longstanding practice of browsing $13 flash tattoos, on Friday the 13th, you'll want to check on this list of parlors celebrating tomorrow.

IN NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS:
• While many outlets declared Vice President Kamala Harris as the winner of Tuesday's debate between presidential nominees, former prez Donald Trump appears to be in total denial. He followed his bizarre performance onstage with even more bizarre behavior, like walking into the press "spin room" to personally attempt to reframe his defeat.

• This morning in things that mourning family shouldn't have to deal with, grieving father Nathan Clark has demanded that Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, get his son's name out of their mouths. Clark's son, 11-year-old Aiden, was killed in an August 2023 accidental collision between the boy's school bus and a minivan driven by an immigrant man. “They can vomit all the hate they want about illegal immigrants, the border crisis and even untrue claims that fluffy cats are being ravaged and eaten by community members,” Mr. Clark said at a regular meeting of the Springfield City Commission. “They are not allowed, nor have they ever been allowed to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio.” 

• Ahead of another trial concerning disgraced Miramax film producer Harvey Weinstein—prosecutors are retrying an overturned rape conviction of which he was initially found guilty—additional sex crimes charges against Weinstein have joined the chat.

• Former N'SYNC other-hot JC Chasez is about to release a second solo album—actually a musical—on October 25. Stereogum reports that Playing with Fire is a concept album "inspired by Mary Shelly's Frankenstein," which takes the form of "a conversation between Victor Frankenstein and the creature that he created." Since Guillermo Del Toro and the Weekend also have Frankenstein projects dropping we could be looking at... my complete lack of belief that these people really like Frankenstein this much.

• If Frankenstein concept projects don't cheer you up, you can perhaps get a glow off Jon Bon Jovi and a video production assistant SAVING A LIFE:

• Now let's send you into your Thursday with the knowledge that visitors to Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights find this year's Death Eater actors incredibly sexy.

@annaa.rose in loving memory of hhn 32 ♥️  #booktok #hhn #haloweenhorrornights #hhn32 #hhn2023 #deatheaters #diagonalley #universalorlando #universalstudios #universal #orlando #jamespotter #jily #jegulus #regulusblack ♬ getaway car - tayloraudios🎧