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A Bit of Housekeeping: Since Monday, the Mercury has been publishing stories from BlackOut: A Five-Year Retrospective on Portland’s Racial Justice Movement which you'll also find in print all over Portland, inserted into the paper's 2025 Food Issue. This weekend, as we pass the fifth anniversary of George Floyd's murder, we're turning the entire site over to this vital work. You'll still be able to find this week's articles on the Latest scroll, but we're devoting our homepage to essays by Black Portlanders on the changes they've seen since the 2020 protests—including the question, has anything actually changed at all?
IN LOCAL NEWS:
• There's a hot new cancer treatment bubbling up at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), and it may break up tumors targeted in focused ultrasound treatment. The Oregonian's Kristine de Leon reports that an OHSU team has engineered particles "about a thousand times thinner than a sheet of paper" and covered them in microscopic gas bubbles before injecting them into tumors. The approach, when combined with ultrasound treatment, breaks down a tumor’s structure more precisely with no major side effects.
• Hope you didn't need to use the aerial tram this weekend. The Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) will close the Portland Aerial Tram this weekend, beginning on Friday at 7 pm, to provide maintenance to the tram’s carriage, which crews will replace. KOIN reports that officials say the carraige must be rebuilt and tested every six years.
• Election update: pretty much the same; more people voted than originally thought. On Thursday, Multnomah County Elections Office updated voting totals from Tuesday's special election. Near 25 percent of registered voters participated, which included a surge of 47,000 ballots on election day and another 9,500 ballots so far received that were postmarked on Election Day.
• It's cyanobacteria algae bloom season! Oregon Health Authority (OHA) has released its regular alert warning, as the weather warms—and a Portlander's mind turns to thoughts of swimming pools—about "potentially toxic cyanobacteria harmful algae blooms." OHA would like folks to keep the blooms in mind when they head out on the river or too other bodies of water. Cyanobacteria blooms are natural, but some can be toxic to people and animals. It's pretty unlikely that folks will keep their pets and kids out of bodies of water and OHA doesn't have the staff to monitor every Oregon body of water, but they do keep a list of reported bloom and advisories, note some danger symptoms to be mindful of, and advise that folks 1) avoid drinking untreated water and 2) rise themselves and their pets off after swims.
• Baby elephant awarded largely symbolic authority over parade: The Rose Festival has named baby elephant Tula-Tu as its Grand Marshal of the 2025 Rose Festival’s Grand Floral Parade, an honor that is haphazardly bestowed upon humans, sports teams, politicians, animals, and rolls of iconic carpet, among others. She won't walk in the parade—a parade would freak an elephant out. You may watch a baby elephant play with roses below.
• Tula-Tu isn't even the first Portland elephant awarded this title. You can expect a question along those lines in an upcoming version of the Mercury's Pop Quiz PDX, which seeks to KEEP YOU SHARP on local news happenings and historical tidbits that our editor-in-chief deems worthy.
• Ever wondered what goes on at the UFO Festival in McMinnville? Corbin Smith provides a Corbin-Smith-eye-view on the festivities:
Is the truth out there? @corbinsmith.bsky.social took his camera and interviewing skills to last weekend's UFO Festival in McMinnville to speak to the true believers. Charming extraterrestrials, ahoy! 👽
— Portland Mercury (@portlandmercury.com) May 22, 2025 at 4:58 PM
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IN NATIONAL INTERNATIONAL NEWS:
• There's more Trump administration wildin' afoot, and as ususal there's almost too much to keep up with. On Thursday, the Trump administration announced it had revoked Harvard's authority to enroll international students. In response, Harvard has sued to block the order's implementation. It's the second time the university has sued the federal government in the past couple weeks, another piece in the administration's ongoing attempts at dismantling the nation's most powerful educational institutions.
• Also in Trump doing things: He's back on his tariff bullshit, and back to threatening Apple iPhones. The markets are sad.
• Brian Eno, chime composer? Okay.
Windows 95 chime composer Brian Eno denounces Microsoft for its ties to Israeli government
— The Verge (@theverge.com) May 21, 2025 at 1:20 PM
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• Probably not going to plummet and or explode: Seattle's Space Needle will open its new glass elevator to the public today. The Skyliner is the first of its kind in the US, a double deck elevator with floor-to-ceiling glass—definitely not the thing we saw plummet to a fiery doom in Final Destination: Bloodlines.
• Sending you into the weekend with some concern that you traveled here in... a car? I heard people can get seriously hurt in those things.
