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Good Morning, Portland: Hello, it’s looking so nice this weekend! Here’s a whole bunch of morning news, including Lloyd Center updates, Moda Center shenanigans, Pulp Fiction church (not as fun as it sounds), and a new Massive Attack/Tom Waits song that locates a certain type of grief that pervades the modern world. Do you want the good news or the bad news first? Well, it’s mostly bad. But we’ll laugh a little here too, so let move ahead whenever you’re ready. 📰

IN LOCAL NEWS:

  • The Lloyd Center is closing for good on August 8, the mall’s owners announced Thursday. The shopping center has been on the rocks for a while. The Portland Design Commission recently approved a master plan to redevelop (demolish) it, promising new affordable housing, greenspace, and (I’m guessing) a host of public-private partnerships. The land it sits on is better connected to public transit than most other places in the city, so mall haters and urban design nerds say the valuable space should be redeveloped to be an inner-city asset. But artists and community members who have been turning the mall into an affordable place for small business and community have been working to “Save Lloyd.” They say there are environmental impacts to destroying the building, and the affordable business and art space Portland was long known for doesn’t have to be a thing of the past. Read more on this one from Joe Streckert, in the Mercury.
  • The city, county, and the state have been weighing their options to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to a renovation project at the Moda Center. It could cost the public some $600 million requested by the team’s owner—who is himself a millionaire more than two-thousand-three-hundred times over—and questions are mounting about what the public might get in return for its investment. Portland’s city councilors say the city wants to keep the Blazers, and want the city to try out something called “negotiating.” They say Rip City’s deep loyalty shouldn’t translate into a position of weakness at the negotiating table. Read the story by Abe Asher in the Mercury, here. 

  • Speaking of the Moda Center, the Portland Trailblazers’ first playoff appearance since the 2021 season begins this weekend in San Antonio against the Spurs. Here’s the Trail Blazers vs. Spurs full playoff schedule, Rip City fans:

    • Game 1: 4/19, 9:00 p.m. – Frost Bank Center
    • Game 2: 4/21, 8:00 p.m – Frost Bank Center
    • Game 3: 4/24, 10:30 p.m – Moda Center
    • Game 4: 4/26, 3:30 p.m – Moda Center
    • Game 5: April 28, TBD
    • Game 6: April 30, TBD
    • Game 7: May 2, TBD

  • Governor Tina Kotek vetoed a bill passed by the Legislature in its full session last year. This is one of those issues where fixing one problem in many ways creates a new one, and Kotek said legislators need to get it right. This appears to be a win for public transparency—journalists and transparency hawks were concerned the bill would lead to backroom deals—but it also throw a stick in the spokes of an already challenging Portland city charter. If elected officials can’t meet or message each other but under a very narrow set of circumstances, it’s hard to get the work done—and there doesn’t appear to be a perfect path forward do so. Still, this newspaper will always push for higher transparency in government.
  • 🎵 I’m on the campaign trail / I’m in a budget fight / I’m at the combination campaign trail and budget fight 🎵 The Multnomah County District Attorney, the current county board chair, and two county commissioners vying for the board chair position are in a battle of the press releases, floating their ideas for how to address a very challenging budget. To be clear, the federal government, under President Donald J. (Jail-bound) Trump, have created a disaster scenario, particularly for Democratic-run jurisdictions. MCDA Nathan Vazquez and chair-hopeful Julia Brim-Edwards brought criticisms, saying Chair Jessica Vega Pederson’s modest cuts to prosecutors were “dangerous” and “concerning,” and that the county should… well, that part is unclear. But, just, whatever the opposite of Vega Pederson’s ideas are should be fine. Shannon Singleton, who is also running for chair, released a proposal Friday morning outlining her priorities of eviction protection, workforce training, and data efficiency.

  • Loads of great recommendations for your weekend at the Portland Mercury dot com. Check out Do This, Do That here, and read through Mercury Music Picks here.

IN NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL NEWS:

  • Iran’s foreign minister announced on social media Friday that the Straight of Hormuz will be fully open for the remainder of the ceasefire. Trump reacted in ALL CAPS—that’s how you know he’s serious—and oil prices already started dropping. Meanwhile, Trump is still blockading Iranian ports until a full deal is reached, and it’s worth noting that Trump reversed a previous deal, the JCPOA, in 2018 during his first presidency. Critics at the time suggested it could create tensions and that he was only doing it as part of his campaign to undo anything his predecessor, Barack Obama, had done. Libs = owned!

  • The American South is trying to do slavery again.

BREAKING: Louisiana has advanced one of the cruelest anti-homeless bills in the country. It would force homeless people to choose between jail and involuntary treatment, make them pay for it, and if they can't pay, force them to perform unpaid labor. buff.ly/d6rXj5h

— National Homelessness Law Center (@homelesslaw.bsky.social) 2026-04-16T17:57:08.817Z
  • A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies found that the average tax payer this year paid over $4,000 toward weapons and war. That’s compared with $124 for school lunches, $19 for the postal service, and $49 for diplomacy. The organization has a very handy chart here where you can see the devastating averages. It also reveals how honestly Trump was speaking when he said we can’t have childcare because we have wars to fight.

  • The Department of War Crimes’ top dude is now opening his prayers with fake Bible verses that are actually fictional verses from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. At a Wednesday night worship service at the Pentagon. Wait. Is that? Yeah, I guess it was at a Wednesday night worship service at the Pentagon, that Hegseth quoted Samuel L. Jackson’s character from the film to a group of attendees, framing their Iran war as a righteous violence. It’s hard to tell what’s more sad: that Hegseth probably didn’t know, or that his audience probably didn’t know that the whole thing was fiction and a bit anti-Christ-like.

  • Ok, music heals and here’s some more evidence!
  • I haven’t recently, or ever, looked at the demographics of the Good Morning News! readership to know whether or not a link to a Massive Attack and Tom Waits song will hit or miss but this one is going in. The new collaboration—Mr. Waits’ first new song in 15 years—is a brutal anti-war and anti-“federal pricks” protest song. If I had to guess, this song was not produced by A.I., but maybe these guys are afraid of missing the boat and thought it was a good idea, despite the warnings. You be the judge.

Jeremiah Hayden reports on housing, homelessness, and other issues affecting Portlanders. He's lived in Oregon nearly all his life, and in Portland since 2001.