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Good Morning, Portland! Yes, baby! Fall on momma from the sky! We are looking at rain today—rain all day! 100 percent precipitation forecast! It looked for a second like we were going to have thunderstorms, but now we’re not doing that. Take the headphones off your doggo; it’s time for the news!
IN LOCAL NEWS:
• Today in “worst cyanobacteria colony,” oh no! This is a local story! For years, the Ross Island lagoon has been under a reclamation plan with close monitoring, but recent sampling showed severe algae blooms. A silt curtain installed in the lagoon was meant to trap the potentially toxic algae and prevent it from seeping into the nearby Willamette River, but researchers say it’s also causing the water to remain more stagnant, leading to what one local professor called the worst cyanobacteria colony blooms at Ross Island she’s ever seen. For the Mercury, Abe Asher has the scoop (of algae!).
• I definitely did not think Portland was going to rename Cesar Chavez Blvd anytime soon. It’s going to be wild hearing people try to pronounce “campesinos” if this succeeds.
• The 2026 Time-Based Art Festival (TBA) starts next Wednesday—slamming the work of 52 artists into five wild days of app-guided supermarket dances, experimental movement super groups, and presentations on sexy ex-boyfriend look-alikes. WTF are we even talking about? Mercury culture head Suzette Smith explains what is jokes, what is singing, and what will probably be dancing—we think.
• This week’s Mercury Music Picks are short and sweet: four shows and a speed dating-style round up of all the diverse sounds Portland has to offer: Latin Grammy winner Silvana Estrana at the Wonder Ballroom, Japanese house DJ Powder at Process PDX, there’s always something to keep you on your toes (and out on the dance floor)!
• Bad internet connection at PDX airport is just plain un-American.
IN NATIONAL / INTERNATONAL NEWS:
• See you all at the Gloria Steinem vigil later tonight? No? What color we turning the bridge? The journalist, feminism advocate, and co-founder of Ms. Magazine has died. She was 92. Steinem is remembered for her advocacy and the glamour with which she practiced it. Steinem made a name for herself when she went undercover as a server at the Playboy Club in 1963 and wrote an expose on the poor pay and rampant workplace harassment. According to Associated Press, Steinem had recently completed a memoir, which is set to be released this fall.
• The Trump administration-controlled Treasury Department added updated rules this morning, seeking to take away tax-exempt status from schools—seemingly any school?—with any policy or program that the IRS finds to be racially discriminatory. This is code for programs to support Black or other minority students. This seems hard to enforce, let alone something a line of judges wouldn’t get in a line to block, but that’s what the Treasury Department is trying today!
• But the Supreme Court ruled to allow the Trump Administration renovations of the White House ballroom to continue, so maybe the administration is just feeling lucky:
• Refresh on a conspiracy theory: Most of us don’t spend much time thinking about the seafood market where the 2020 coronavirus pandemic spilled over from one animal (bat?) to another (hedgehog?) and then into humans. But we know that some people THINK ABOUT IT A LOT. The conspiracy theory of COVID-19 “leaking” from a lab located approximately 10 miles from that market seems to mutate and endure, not unlike the virus it concerns. At this point, even perfectly reasonable people might not be super sure on the prevailing thought—did the government do it? Virologist Bob Garry has published several papers that establish Wuhan’s Huanan market as the likeliest site for the spillover, which he thinks happened naturally. For his trouble he’s been called a “propagandist” by Sen. Joshua Hawley, while testifying about his findings. But Bloomberg‘s Jason Gale and Max Chafkin did write a truly wonderful profile of Garry and his long history as an “old school virologist.” This is a wonderful read and it’s also very frustrating that Garry has had to “stop accepting new doctoral students because he can’t guarantee funding their work”, and he’s spent the past two years nudging his researchers into jobs elsewhere.” Read all the way to the end for an anecdote of Garry driving hundreds of genetically engineered mice out of downtown New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
• Sending you into Thursday to pursue your eccentric hobbies—or if you’re Jeremiah this is just your reporting style:
