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Good Morning, Portland! It's going to be a cold, cold weekend, so please bundle up and watch out for your neighbors. Let's get to the news.

IN LOCAL NEWS:

  • Right after Border Patrol agents shot and injured two people in East Portland earlier this month, protests at Portland’s ICE facility ramped up. The Portland shooting happened one day after ICE agents shot and killed Renée Good in Minnesota. During those protests, a Portland Police officer was filmed punching a protester in the head after they appeared to be restrained on the ground. The next day, another officer was recorded giving his unsavory take on Good’s death, shrugging it off. “Sometimes criminals get shot,” he told a protester who recorded him, acknowledging he too would’ve shot the 37-year-old mother if she drove a car at him (video from the shooting in Minnesota suggests Good was just trying to leave and wasn’t trying to aim her car at the agent who placed himself in front of her headlight.) Both officers were identified in a Mercury story yesterday, because they didn’t have their names displayed while policing the protests. Turns out, they’re likely related. Read more about the events here. 

  • (No) thanks to freezing overnight temperatures, many of the area’s warming centers have extended their hours, and are expected to stay open through Sunday. These shelters include Burnside Shelter (30 SW 2nd), CityTeam Grant (526 SE Grand), Moore Street Shelter (5325 N Williams), NW Northrup Shelter (1435 NE Northrup), and St. Stephen’s Shelter (1432 SW 13th). Temperatures are expected to stay extremely chilly through the weekend, with an expected low of 26 on Saturday and 24 degrees on Sunday, before warming up into the low 30s on Monday. Keep an eye out for your neighbors who may need help!

  • A group of activists have been trying for months to get the city of Portland to revoke the land use permit for the local ICE facility. On Wednesday, during a City Council meeting, a large group swarmed City Hall to give public testimony. Apparently they were frustrated when the Council didn’t address the land use issue (it wasn’t on the agenda and the Council can’t legally take up issues or items that aren’t on the agenda, and Council doesn't have the authority to do what the activists are demanding in the first place) and made their way over to councilors’ offices, where they tried to rush their way in, only to be greeted by City Hall security, who pepper sprayed them. The bizarre incident made Mayor Keith Wilson's statement from just an hour before make a little more sense. He hadn't provided much context for why he was issuing his comments, but it appears (like at least one of the group's leaders) he may have the gift of second sight and could see the indirect action before it happened. 

 

  • The state transportation funding situation is a complete nightmare. And that nightmare just took another twist, because evidently, state lawmakers are considering dipping into funding meant to help children walk and bike to school safely. That’s right, they want to eat up Safe Routes to School funding to fix a crisis that is solely of their own making. To be fair, the blame mostly lies on the Republican legislators who ran a referendum campaign on the only funding package lawmakers could come up with last year, after several botched attempts during the 2025 legislative session. (Also, blame falls on the sole Democratic lawmaker who refused to vote for the initial funding package back in June.) It’s seriously a whole mess that cannot be easily summed up in a short blurb. Long story short: when you try to take money from kids, people get rightfully pissed. Check out BikePortland’s story for more.

  • There’s something so sweet about Claire Hall—Lincoln County commissioner for many years and a trailblazing LGBTQI+ political figure—writing a utopian novel that imagined a world where former Oregon Gov. Tom McCall became president. One of the first openly trans politicians in the state, Hall championed expanding housing and homelessness services and increasing access to health care for two decades. She died early this year, on January 4. She was 66, and facing a recall campaign. According to this Oregonian memorial piece, her death was related to stress. But her life was one of hope, bravery, and service.

IN NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS:

  • It has to be more than one day's news that federal agents used a five-year-old boy as a decoy, then detained him and his father and sent them to Texas. The news cycle usually moves on, but we can't have a society that just does this and then moves on to brunch. Read up here.

  • Minnesota leaders are going on a general strike today to protest ICE in their community and beyond. Organizers are demanding that Jonathan Ross—the officer who shot Renée Good in early January—be held accountable, that elected officials defund ICE, and that the agency be investigated for human rights violations. One can, in fact, decline to purchase goods in solidarity with Minnesotans and immigrants everywhere, just to be clear. If you're interested in good local journalism, and we know you are, Minnesota's alt-weekly The Racket has dropped its paywall as part of strike, and thrown its recent ICE coverage on the home page.

  • Meanwhile, some Democrats, including Pacific Northwesterner Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, have decided to join their Republican colleagues in sending more money to DHS. "Is this 4D chess?" a group of biennial runners-up ask every election cycle.

NEW: DHS appropriations bill funding ICE passes 220-207 7 Democrats voted YES on the bill: - Jared Golden - Marie Gluesenkamp Perez - Henry Cuellar - Tom Suozzi - Laura Gillen - Don Davis - Vicente Gonzalez One Republican voted NO: Thomas Massie

— Andrew Solender (@andrewsolender.bsky.social) January 22, 2026 at 1:42 PM
  • Ryan Coogler’s Sinners debuted in a box office dump month, April 2025, with a story about singing / dancing vampires in the prohibition era American South. It sounded risky but burned beautifully across IMAX screens, scored with music that—in the words of our review—“gets so wild it dissolves the boundaries of space and time.” Oscar nominations don’t always go to the good films, but it’s not surprising that Sinners received more than a nod. In fact, the Coogler’s first film since Black Panther: Wakanda Forever received 16 nominations in total, more than any other film in Academy Award history.

  • Wait, how many Amendments do we need to know again?

2026: the year so bad that even the Third Amendment is suddenly relevant

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— John Scalzi (@scalzi.com) January 22, 2026 at 7:13 AM
  • As a potentially deadly ice storm sweeps across the southern part of the nation, most Texans are bracing for the dangerous conditions… that is, except for Republican Sen. Ted Cruz who, of course, was spotted slipping out of the state on Tuesday, flying out to the much sunnier, warmer climate of Laguna Beach, California. And those of you with good memories will recall this isn’t the first time Cruz ran away from inclement weather (and his constituents)—in 2021, he famously escaped to Cancun to avoid a wild, winter storm that left Texans without heat or electricity for several days. Oh, and then there was last July when he was conveniently vacationing in Greece when deadly floods killed at least 135 people in Central Texas. So maybe the next time he runs for the hills, he can just stay there?