If you appreciate the Mercury's interesting and useful news & culture reporting, consider making a small monthly contribution to support our editorial team. Your donation is tax-deductible. You can also subscribe and have our papers delivered!

Good Morning, Portland: We've had dry falls in the past, long beautiful hills of time when the breeze grew blustery and we drew our hoodies tight against the November chill. THIS YEAR HAS NOT BEEN THAT. It's been a wet dang fall, folks, but this weekend looks SUNNY (at least, sunny for us). Today is a rainy lil mess in the morning, but she'll dry out, starting around 3 pm. Saturday and Sunday both top out at low 60s for temp highs, and the forecast looks dry. On Monday rain returns, but she's feeling mild, until Thursday when she'll def do some oversharing for the rest of next weekend.

IN LOCAL NEWS:
•
The only time I'm able to feel optimistic is when I'm drinking coffee. So let's loosen up with a new Yelle track. Shake out the tragedy, hypocrisy, and sorrow before we get ready to look at even more IN THE NEWS!

• Wednesday marked the start of a three-day strike by Portland's Independent Police Review (IPR), and if you're downtown today you'll see staffers camped out in front of City Hall in bright green tents. A coordinator told the Mercury that IPR has tried to negotiate a new labor contract with the city for months, and "to date, we only have one tentative agreement and it's around something not as critical as the economics or transition plan.” It's okay to be like WHAT WHAT HWAT is all this—Jeremiah Hayden and Courtney Vaughn have more. 

• On Monday,  Rep. Suzanne Bonamici traveled to Tacoma, WA to meet with one of her constituents, Victor Cruz-Gamez, "through a plexiglass barrier," the Oregonian reports. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has held Cruz-Gamez since October 14, when ICE agents pulled him over and arrested him, in Hillsboro, on his way home from work. According to review by the Oregonian,  Cruz-Gamez has no Oregon criminal history except for a 2008 traffic ticket that was dismissed, yet ICE has held Cruz-Gamez for nearly a month, seeking to deport him. The 55-year-old father and grandfather hasn't been allowed to post a bond for his release, due to a thorny snag in Tacoma Immigration Court, which decided in 2022 that even residents with no criminal record should remain in detention, if they had remained in the country unlawfully. This policy of mandatory detention is something immigration courts across the country are now following.

• In Hillsboro on Wednesday, hundreds packed the city's council work session—in-person and online—to call upon leaders and police forces to protect them and their community members. "We have masked men kidnapping and assaulting our community members, my neighbors, and the police department is just standing by,” said Rob Rogers, in another report from the Oregonian. Hillsboro's city attorney "stressed the city – especially its police department – cannot obstruct federal immigration enforcement nor prevent detentions." The council pledged to increase funding to support community members impacted by ICE activity.

• Being detained—not to mention traumatized—is expensive. After ICE unlawfully detained two men last month (ICE agents broke into their apartment with rifles drawn) they kept the younger Napoleon Andres Magaña at the long-term detention center in Tacoma for over two weeks. However, his stepfather, Arturo Garcia Cabrera was transferred "four different times to four different states" before federal agents finally released him in Mississippi. Having no cel phone or relatives in Louisiana, Garcia Cabrerano had to figure out how to get home. It took him almost a week.

• Wow, Portland Book Festival is triple secret probation levels of Sold Out—it won't be able to offer tickets at the door! If you have tickets, here are some of our can't-miss picks. If you can’t make it, this Q&A with political activist (and suspense novel author?!) Stacey Abrams might console your shattered nerves.

• Your Friday morning ticket drop arrives shortly, and EverOut has drawn up the deets on shows hitting the streets hoy dia. Snap up seats for Cat Power's 20th anniversary tour or Wolfmother's 20th anniversary tour? IS THIS SOME SORT OF PARENT TRAP SITUATION? NOW FOR NATIONAL NEWS.

IN NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS:
• Associated Press reports that a federal judge in Rhode Island has ordered the Trump administration to fully fund SNAP benefits for November. Where's the secret billionaire who wants to care for the country's hungrys, right? BUT WAIT, the President's administration is ON IT asking the appeals court to "suspend any court orders requiring it to spend more money than is available in a contingency fund." Earlier in the week the Trump administration argued that Congress needed to appropriate the funds for the program [read: they want Congress to end the shutdown]. This morning we've heard reports from multiple SNAP users that some or all of their payments went through.

• Also in pressuring Congress to end the shutdown today, PDX is one of 20 airports which will be impacted by the Federal Aviation Administration’s cuts to air travel. Although this idea was put forward by US secretary of transportation Sean Duffy as being for the benefit of air traffic controllers and as a result of the prolonged government shutdown, it's worth remembering that Duffy was—as recently as Tuesday—still parroting the rhetoric that Democrats alone are responsible for the budget impasse. "Democrats, you will see mass chaos. You will see mass flight delays. You’ll see mass cancellations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace,” he said in reporting from Associated Press. But is your flight cancelled? This weekend will likely see 4 percent cuts in planned flights at the affected airports, which could expand top ten percent by next Friday.

• I was sort of born a curmudgeon, but sometimes I yearn for a little more "yeah yeah, come talk to me when you've done it" from news outlets. But by all means let's give Elon Musk attention for love bombing Tesla shareholders and getting them to promise him more money. Tesla, you're a wealthy corporation, but according to the law you're also A PERSON. You deserve more than this cycle of promises, lies, and regret. I'M NOT personally here for you, but you have a lot of people who will be when you're ready to end the abuse.
 

Tesla shareholders have approved a pay package that could make CEO Elon Musk, already the world’s richest person, the world’s first trillionaire. https://cnn.it/43KZnkA

[image or embed]

— CNN (@cnn.com) November 6, 2025 at 2:15 PM

• Wow, what a talent! Revolver reports that Miss World Chile contestant Ignacia Fernández sang a death metal track at the contest's semifinal, "earning a standing ovation" and a spot in the final, which will be held on November 9th.