Good Afternoon, News: COVID-19 Rips Through Portland Jail, Regime Change at Amazon, and Guantanamo Bay is Still Open

Here’s your daily roundup of all the latest local and national news. (Like our coverage? Please consider making a recurring contribution to the Mercury to keep it comin’!)

• After months of warding off a raging pandemic, Multnomah County’s Inverness Jail is in the thick of a surging COVID-19 outbreak. On Thursday, the Northeast Portland facility reported 41 new COVID-19 cases in its inmate population. By Tuesday morning, that number had grown to 107—meaning 20 percent of the jail’s total population had been infected. Also, jail guards still refuse to wear masks.

• Jeff Bezos, a giant pencil with the eraser part missing, is stepping down as CEO of Amazon, a company that allegedly forces workers to piss in bottles rather than take a bathroom break. Bezos will reportedly be moving into a new role as executive chair, and will be replaced by another white guy, Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy. In a statement, Bezos says the new role will give him time focus on “my other passions.”

jeff bezos is quitting to pursue his true passion: opening an independent bookstore
— Brandy Jensen (@BrandyLJensen) February 2, 2021

• Wondering how your neighbors voted in the 2020 election? Use the New York Times’ super-detailed election results map to see which percentage of your neighbors did and did not vote for that one guy who used to be president… what was his name again?

• A new ad produced by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) criticizes House Republicans for turning a blind eye to, or downright encouraging, the mob violence at the Capitol on January 6. The ad’s kicker: “They stood with Q, not you.”

Trump brief boils down to ‘I’m not president any more so you can’t try me’ stirred in with ‘whatever I said was protected by the First Amendment’ and a dash of ‘you can’t prove that my belief about the election being stolen was false.’ w @sarahdwire https://t.co/bBuKbf9rpq
— David Lauter (@DavidLauter) February 2, 2021

• A coalition of over 100 different legal and civil rights organizations is calling on President Joe Biden to close Guantanamo Bay, an illegal prison that has held and tortured people for years without due process. In a letter, the group called the prison the “legal equivalent of outer space” and a “tumor that needs to be excised.” Former President Barack Obama promised to close Guantanamo and failed to deliver, so we’ll see what happens.

• Alexei Navalny, the political opposition leader whose poisoning and detainment has inspired mass protests across Russia, has been sentenced to a two-and-a-half year prison sentence. The move is part of a larger crackdown on Russians protesting against Putin’s regime.

In April 2020, Captain Sir Tom Moore wanted to raise £1,000 for charity by his 100th birthday by doing laps in his yard with his walker

His story inspired so many people that he ended up raising £32 million

In July, he was knighted

Sadly, he has just passed away with Covid-19. pic.twitter.com/4q9KF59W2j
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) February 2, 2021

• Circling back to Amazon for a minute: After a Federal Trade Commission investigation found that the company was withholding tips from its delivery drivers, Amazon is now forced to pay back $61.7 million to those drivers. Huh, I wonder if that news about Bezos stepping down was strategically timed or anything…

• And finally, here’s something a little bit fun, as a treat:

What makes for successful COVID-19 pop culture? We try to explore that in our new column, Streaming the Pandemic.https://t.co/zH0dqb4mwJ
— Portland Mercury 🗞 (@portlandmercury) February 2, 2021