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Good Morning, Portland! We’re all just trying to dry out after drowning in yesterday’s atmospheric river. Hopefully you were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the brief, but spectacular double rainbow Monday afternoon. Expect things to be slightly more dry today, with less rain and intermittent spells of sunshine, a high of 53 degrees, and a low of 37. 

Here's what's happening in Portland, and beyond.

In Local News:

• The 46-day strike of Providence nurses and doctors is finally over after the health care workers reached a labor agreement with the health institution. All eight bargaining units across Oregon voted to ratify the new labor contract, the Oregon Nurses Association reports. The new contract includes substantial salary increases of 20 to 42 percent over the course of the contract, as well as pay for missed breaks and meal periods, and new staffing strategies that take into account patient acuity (severity of care needed). Nurses will be back at work at the start of the night shift on Wednesday, Feb. 26.

• A group of environmental advocacy organizations, together with 18 residents, plans to appeal the city of Portland’s decision to grant a Land Use Compatibility Statement (LUCS) to Zenith Energy earlier this month. How we got here: The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) paid a surprise visit to the Zenith oil transport and storage site in Portland last year and noticed the company made some unapproved site expansions. The DEQ then told Zenith it needed to get a LUCS from the city if the company wanted a new air permit from the state. 

The LUCS–essentially an official determination from the city that Zenith’s activity complies with all local land use and planning rules–was paramount for Zenith to acquire its state permit and continue its operations in Northwest Portland. BUT, a lot of folks, including climate advocates and a third of the Portland City Council, weren’t stoked on the city’s decision to grant the land use credential to Zenith, noting there was no public hearing or process for Council input. Hence, the APPEAL. For more than just the TL;DR, check out Taylor Griggs’ succinct, snappy rundown of the situation. 

A group of climate organizations and city residents will challenge Portland's decision to issue a key land use credential to Zenith Energy, filing an intent to appeal with the state Land Use Board of Appeals today. Petitioners say the city failed to involve the public in its decision.

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— Portland Mercury (@portlandmercury.com) February 24, 2025 at 5:02 PM

• Roughly 90,000 Portland households lost power Monday amid heavy rains, winds, and flooding in some areas. Portions of NW Cornell Road and NW Thompson Rd on the city's west side were closed Monday due to landslides from flooding.

• ICYMI: Last week, OPB reported that six protesters arrested at Portland State University last year during the Free Palestine occupation-style protest at the school's library recently had all their charges dropped. The reason? The city of Portland withheld key video evidence from attorneys. Several video files were apparently not initially released to the Multnomah County DA's Office, meaning the prosecutors never released the footage to defense attorneys, as required by law.  The mishap happened when a defense attorney for one of the protesters subpoenaed the city for all video files related to the protest and found a trove of previously unreleased footage. The error led the judge to dismiss the cases.

• Oops!…We Did it Again. We convinced nearly 75 restaurants to make special, limited-time sandwiches for just $10 each. Next Monday marks the start of the Mercury’s Sandwich Week! Eat your way through the city and taste all the creative takes on everything from the classics, to fusion, to the downright unconventional. To indulge all our senses, that is just so typically us. 

All hail humankind's greatest creation THE SANDWICH. 🥪 And prepare yourself for the best week of your life with the Mercury's SANDWICH WEEK—heading toward your mouth on March 3! DO. NOT. MISS. 😋

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— Portland Mercury (@portlandmercury.com) February 20, 2025 at 1:42 PM

In National/World News:

• A Southern California library will soon get a MAGA plaque. The Huntington Beach Central Library will install a plaque that uses four descriptive words–"magical, alluring, galvanizing, adventurous"– to spell out M-A-G-A. As designed, the wording on the forthcoming installation appears to provide nods to the Obama, Biden, and Trump presidencies with the phrase, “Through hope and change, our nation has built back better to the golden era of Making America Great Again!”

During a meeting of the Huntington Beach City Council, which approved the plaque, the LA Times reports former NFL player and Huntington Beach resident Chris Kluwe spoke out against the public installation before running past security to a restricted area, in an “act of peaceful civil disobedience," only to be arrested moments later.

Kluwe called the MAGA ideology “profoundly corrupt, unmistakably anti-democracy and most importantly...explicitly a Nazi movement.”

“You may have replaced a swastika with a red hat, but that is what it is,” Kluwe said in his public comments.

• Two years ago, Americans were mostly united around support for Ukraine after Russia's invasion. Fast forward to today, and the US can't bring itself to support Ukraine at the United Nations. The BBC reports the US has "twice sided with Russia" in UN votes. The report notes the US voted against a resolution condemning Moscow and supporting Ukraine's rights to its territory, joining Russia and North Korea in its opposition. A US-drafted resolution calling for an end to the Russia/Ukraine war contained no criticism of Russia. The Washington Post reports Vladimir Putin is offering Trump and the US access to its mineral resources in exchange for allyship. 

@dada_exauce I was not ready for it 🤣 #foryoupage❤️❤️ #funnytiktok #foryou #fyp ♬ Whos that girl - amira

• Elon Musk’s AI program, Grok, may have outed itself as the Orwellian tool it was created to be. As one Reddit user found, the software seems to have been trained to purposely exclude the names Elon Musk and Donald Trump in searches with the word “disinformation.” This is a stark reminder that AI is unpredictable, cannot be trusted, and if left unchecked, could become yet another weapon to erase history and truth.

So it looks like Elon Musks own AI just accidentally exposed him.
byu/Rare-Site inChatGPT

UPDATE: Responses to the Elon Musk-directed email to government employees about what work they accomplished over the past week are expected to be fed into an artificial intelligence system to determine whether those jobs are necessary or not, sources say.

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— NBC News (@nbcnews.com) February 24, 2025 at 12:55 PM