Protesters confront a line of riot police in Brooklyn Center, MN, who are blocking access to the scene where officers shot and killed Daunte Wright. Credit: Getty Images / Stephen Maturen

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Protesters confront a line of riot police in Brooklyn Center, MN, who are blocking access to the scene where officers shot and killed Daunte Wright.
Protesters confront a line of riot police in Brooklyn Center, MN, who are blocking access to the scene where officers shot and killed Daunte Wright. Getty Images / Stephen Maturen

Good morning, Portland. Get our your sunscreen, nerds, this week is promising some downright balmy weather (yep, I said it, balmy). Today kicks off a warm spell with a high of 66 degrees. Before your bust out your jorts, let’s get caught up on the weekend’s headlines:

– China’s COVID-19 vaccines aren’t very effective, according to Beijing’s top infectious disease official in a rare admission of defeat this weekend. The domestic vaccine, created by a company called Sinovac, has proven to have a 50 percent success rate (compared to Pfizer’s 97 percent). The solution, per some China officials: Just mix the weak vaccine with another vaccine and everything should be fine (?!?!).

– Prince Phillip, husband of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, died Friday at the age of 99. All I know is that he hated giving up his last name to a woman, was unsurprisingly racist, and his funeral will likely lead to another Oprah tell-all.

– And another RIP to DMX, who is no doubt bringing this kind of energy to the afterlife:

– With a Sunday victory, Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama has become the first Asian-born man to win the Masters golf tournament.

– A police officer shot and killed an unarmed Black man in a northern suburb of Minneapolis Sunday afternoon, igniting familiar protests in a city currently gripped by the Derek Chauvin trial. Duante Wright, 20, was pulled over by police for a traffic violation in the town of Brooklyn Center. When officers found Wright had an open arrest warrant, they attempted to arrest him—but he apparently got back inside his car. That’s when an officer shot Wright. According to Wright’s mother, who spoke to her son shortly before he was killed, her son was pulled over for having too many air fresheners hanging from his rear-view mirror.

– In similar but nonfatal news, a Black army lieutenant is suing Virginia police officers for violating his constitutional rights during a traffic stop, where he was pepper sprayed, shoved to the ground, and had his career threatened for questioning the baseless stop. (Fortunately, it was all caught on an officer’s body camera).

– An investigation by the Texas Tribune and ProPublica found that elected officials with Big Oil financiers in Texas worked hard to steer criticism away from oil and gas companies during the state’s massive electricity outage in February. Several of these politicians instead placed the blame of a giant collapse of the petroleum-reliant power system on wind power, “a narrative that quickly gained traction among Texas Republicans on social media.”

– The US saw the highest number of child migrants arriving solo at the US-Mexico border in a single month in March. The nearly 19,000 kids—a 71 percent increase from February—has the White House scrambling to meet safe housing needs for all recent arrivals. For now, here’s where many are sleeping:

– The dozen or so “White Lives Matter” rallies planned to take place in cities across the US Sunday drew few attendees. Most cities saw a much larger turnout of people counter-protesting the white supremacist events. A gem, from NBCs coverage: “In Raleigh, North Carolina, a small crowd of antifa and anti-racist protesters gathered at the park where the ‘White Lives Matter’ march was planned marched around downtown behind a large white sign that read, ‘WE ACCEPT YOUR SURRENDER.’”

– Seattle’s electric utility company is paying off-duty Seattle cops $90 an hour to direct traffic at construction sites and other so-called “security” jobs. And you better believe there’s absolutely no oversight or accountability for these moonlight cops.

– Some protesters lit fires outside of Portland’s ICE facility Saturday evening, drawing out federal officers and their no-good impact munitions.

– Oregon House lawmakers unanimously approved a bill Friday making Juneteenth—the day in 1865 that slavery “ended” in the United States—a state holiday. The new holiday, in a state that once outlawed Black residents, falls on June 19.

– What better way to start your week with some piping hot DRAMA coming out of the Portland Public School Board race? Portland Monthly has the scoop.

– Saving the best news for last:

Alex Zielinski is a former News Editor for the Portland Mercury. She's here to tell stories about economic inequities, cops, civil rights, and weird city politics that you should probably be paying attention...