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Good morning, Portland! If world events are making your head spin, today will offer a good excuse to go out and touch some grass, or sniff a flower. We’re in for some morning clouds followed by a sunny afternoon with a high around 70 degrees.
IN LOCAL NEWS:
• When the Ritz Carlton project first came to Portland, it was supposed to build affordable housing, or pay nearly $8 million in fees to help pay for affordable housing development. By 2025, the Ritz had failed to sell enough luxury condos or office leases to stay afloat, and the building’s lender threatened to foreclose on the building. Instead, Ready Capital acquired the building, and an amended agreement between the city and the owner signed March 20 means the city will finally see the money for housing it desperately needs. The Mercury‘s Jeremiah Hayden has more details.
• Oregon Congressional Democrats US Senator Jeff Merkley and US Rep. Maxine Dexter joined Senator Cory Booker (D—New Jersey) for a joint press conference in Portland Tuesday afternoon to condemn the wild ass threats of Donald Trump toward Iran. The Congressional lawmakers urged Republicans to pressure Trump to back off his military threats and end the conflict with Iran. That same afternoon, the US agreed to a two-week ceasefire with Iran as the rest of us sat around biting off our fingernails and re-reading the language in the 25th Amendment.
• Oregonians thought we had a win when US District Judge Michael Simon put heavy restrictions on the federal government’s ability to use tear gas and other crowd control munitions during protests, but a three-judge panel at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals seems convinced Simon erred in his order. The court heard from attorneys Tuesday representing the US DOJ, as well as plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against the Trump administration and DHS officials.
• Barbara Forever puts—according to our critic HR Smith—“the body-ody-ody in body of work.’” Brydie O’Connor’s new documentary provides a delightful survey of Barbara Hammer’s experimental films—synthesizing the joy of throwing oneself into strange and improbable art projects with a helluva lot of dyke drama. Your chance to see it comes via Portland Panorama Film Festival on Friday!
IN NATIONAL/WORLD NEWS:
• You know things are bad when every day you’re just praying the president WON’T make good on the things he says he’ll accomplish while in office, like, ENDING “A WHOLE CIVILIZATION.” Unsurprisingly, Trump didn’t actually order a catastrophic attack on Iran Tuesday, but instead agreed to a two-week ceasefire with Iran, brokered by Pakistan. The FIFA Peace Prize winner initially made the alarming, deranged post Tuesday morning declaring “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran didn’t reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The post alarmed even GOP loyalists and led to calls for Trump’s removal from office. Now, an Iranian ambassador says the country doesn’t trust the US, and is keeping its military on standby as it waits to see how negotiations play out.
• For all its awful headlines and downplaying of the president’s horrific, unconstitutional behavior, this NY Times piece about whether Trump’s threats could also be the sword he falls on is a worthwhile read that encapsulates his behavior in plain language. “…he has made what appear to be self-incriminating statements about an intent to commit war crimes if the Iranian government does not submit to his demands,” Charlie Savage writes. “Some top aides to Mr. Trumphave reportedly offered rationales that he could lawfully deem as military targets all of Iran’s bridges and power plants. …But if there was any room left for reasonable ambiguity, Mr. Trump further reduced it early Tuesday, threatening that if the Iranian government did not concede and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, he would have the U.S. military annihilate Iran’s whole civilization.”
• Now that Lorazepam Bondi is out, we’ve got a new sycophant leading the US Department of Justice. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, swears the DOJ isn’t just out to seek legal revenge on Trump’s enemies. Blanche, who served as the deputy AG under Bondi, also says he doesn’t know why she was ousted, and if he faces the same fate, he doesn’t care because not having a spine means the sensory appeal of licking a boot is heightened tenfold. In his words: “I love working for President Trump. It’s the greatest honor of a lifetime. And if President Trump chooses to keep me as acting, that’s an honor. If he chooses to nominate me, that’s an honor,” Blanche said. “If he chooses to nominate somebody else and asks me to go do something else, I will say, ‘Thank you very much. I love you, sir.’ So I don’t have any goals or aspirations beyond that.”
• A new opinion piece published in the Guardian offers a glimmer of hope in the fight against catastrophic climate change. Later this month, 85 countries will convene for the First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels. It’s an effort to initiate a global transition away from oil, gas and coal. As the story notes, the conference won’t be operated under UN rules, which require consensus, but by majority rule, “thus preventing a handful of countries from sabotaging progress as petrostates did at Cop30.”
While you’re thinking about climate science, here’s another lil science nugget for ya.
