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Good Morning, Portland! Enjoy the drip today because area temps rise starting tomorrow! Our Sunday forecast tops out around 90 degrees, and the week to follow looks a smidge too warm for Portlanders. The good news? The Mercury‘s Nacho Week lasts through Sunday. The bad news? National news.
BUT FIRST, LOCAL NEWS:
• Welcome to the end of the Oregon legislative session, the final exams/term paper rush for state lawmakers. The session must end Sunday! Should you have been studying French this whole time? MAYBE. Can that massive and sprawling transportation bill make it through the House? [NON-COMMITTAL SOUNDS]
Wake up babe, new 155-page amendment to the #orleg transportation bill just dropped. olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2025r1/D…
— Julia Shumway (@jmshumway.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 3:33 PM
• Also imperiled: Multnomah County’s Preschool for All tax, which was approved by 64 percent of county voters in 2020. For the past few weeks, we’ve seen both state legislators and Gov. Kotek try to restrict the tax, out of concern that its discouraging wealthy people from moving to the area. The Mercury‘s Taylor Griggs digs into the issue, speaking with one family who says Preschool for All has transformed their family’s lives for the better. The legislature dropped an attempt to phase the program out on Tuesday, but Kotek criticized Preschool for All as recently as Thursday, in what many are calling a “double down,” saying the program still doesn’t support enough Oregon preschoolers for the money it collects from taxpayers.
• Further legislation’n: The House passed a bill prohibiting “rapid-fire activators” [bump stocks and friends]. A new fix may ease the pinch of Oregon’s stinging public defender crisis… by okaying public defender overtime and instituting quotas? Feels bad. Lawmakers also passed a bill to curtail how much Oregon’s for-profit utility companies can raise rates. Oregon Capital Chronicle is providing live updates 🤓.
• Also in whaaaaat?! You can’t park right by stop signs? When I moved here, years ago, everyone made fun of me for leaving a car’s length gap before a stop sign—because that’s what they teach you in Michigan driving school—and I believed it was just one more of Portland’s Bad Driving Habits for Bad Drivers. This is how I find out I have been lied to?! AGHAST.
A major court ruling could force Portland to shake up how it keeps thousands of intersections safe www.oregonlive.com/portland/202…
• Expect that to show up soon on Editor-in-Chief Wm. Steven Humphrey’s Pop Quiz PDX. This week he got down into Oregon’s Official State Microbe—do you know what it is?
• Music editor Nolan Parker and I co-edited the Mercury‘s 2025 Queer Guide, and they wrote a banger of an intro: “The theme of this year’s Queer Guide as ‘Be Gay, Do _____.’ Be gay, do community! Be gay, build networks of care! Be gay, free Palestine!” They’re respectfully calling in the essay Be Gay, Do Crime by the Mary Nardini Gang, “a group dedicated to the teachings of Italian anarchist Mary Nardini. The short text of radical queer ideology insists upon the here and now: We take care of us because we know us; we know what we want and need. It’s up to you and me—right now—to envision the realities (plural) we want to live in, then put ourselves in those realities, and build them for ourselves, with ourselves.”
• There are so many great things to check out in the guide: Our queer events calendar for Pride [gestures]. A profile of queer icon / urban development writer Iain Mackenzie. A serious piece about Trump’s threats to cut crisis line funding specifically for queer youth. Pick up a print copy around town and / or become a subscriber—you can has delivery.
• A brief non-sequitur: Love this report from KGW about Oregon State Hospital (OSH) buying sex toys for patients; $2,900 to provide “65 sexual aids to patients last year,” and that just seems like not very much money and fine? However, this is a great example of percentages. If OSH distributed 42 toys in 2023 and 65 in 2024, that’s a 55 percent increase, but just 23 sex toys. So go into this glorious weekend remembering that percentages are often tools of hyperbole.
• Okay let’s exit local news with thoughts of lenticular clouds. DEEP BREATHS.
Great lenticular cloud time-lapse over Mt. Hood Thursday evening! 🏔️☁️ @koin6.bsky.social #PNW #Weather
— Josh Cozart (@joshcozartwx.bsky.social) June 27, 2025 at 12:07 AM
IN NATIONAL NEWS:
• I’m not saying that all the Supreme Court justices are cowards, but the majority of them are.
The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to allow President Trump to end birthright citizenship in some parts of the country, even as legal challenges to the constitutionality of the move proceed in other regions. Here’s what to know about the 6-to-3 decision. nyti.ms/3ZTsSif
— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) June 27, 2025 at 7:42 AM
• Another complete wreck in the separation of church and publicly funded schools from the Supreme Court this morning.
JUST IN: The Supreme Court rules in favor of parents who want to opt out of classes that use books with LGBTQ characters.
— NPR (@npr.org) June 27, 2025 at 8:24 AM
• We have to hand it to them, though. Opening the Evil Tomb Of Batibat is just what is right for our nation at this time.
They did it.
— Tim Onion (@bencollins.bsky.social) June 27, 2025 at 8:00 AM
• It’s always confusing that the Supreme Court also does things like maintain the Affordable Care Act, but there’s always that “for now” on the horizon.
JUST IN: The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a key provision of the Affordable Care Act, ensuring, at least for now, that some 150 million people will continue getting many free, preventive services under the act.
— NPR (@npr.org) June 27, 2025 at 7:50 AM
• Kind of weird to share this, but we have actual footage of Mercury Editor in Chief Steve Humphrey trying to get me to stop working and take a vacation. A quote from the video: “[Suzette] gets a bad rap that they’re scary or mean, but they’re actually really important for the ecosystem.” SO THERE.
