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Good Morning, Portland! Weather forecast for today is high 50s. You may want to get out there because we’re looking at a week’s worth of rain to follow it up—and maybe snow next Sunday? Let’s get into the news.

IN LOCAL NEWS:
• Bike Portland lowered the boom on Commissioner Mingus Mapps yesterday, after he answered a question—at a meeting with a union that represents PBOT maintenance and operations employees—about funding allocation to fixing roads. He said, “And again, I emphasize, these are not the funds that are being used to build, you know, the bike lanes that drive everybody crazy.” Mapps has since clarified that he meant… bike lane projects that draw criticism. 

Mapps to PBOT union: Gas tax won’t fund, ‘bike lanes that drive everybody crazy’ https://t.co/nldTgiXNqb

— BikePortland (@BikePortland) February 22, 2024

• Please be kind to all service workers, but especially teens. The Oregonian reports that a trampoline joint in Vancouver, WA has been fined $22,000 for working teens for too many hours and without meal breaks. That was also my experience as a teenage worker; the main manager was listening to Nine Inch Nails and writing his screenplay upstairs while I did everything. Typical.

• Yesterday, voters finally got a peek at a proposal for campaign donations in Oregon. OPB’s Dirk VanderHart breaks down the people yelling (liking), and the people talking quite loudly (not liking) about it.

For weeks, Oregon’s most prominent business and labor groups have negotiated a bill for limiting campaign contributions.

That proposal was unveiled today, and will get its first hearing in the Legislature tomorrow. #orleg #orpolhttps://t.co/gPEoW8Qf33

— Dirk VanderHart (@dirquez) February 22, 2024

• On Saturday, the Timbers’ season opener game kicks off at Providence Park, where they’ll play the Colorado Rapids. They didn’t have the greatest 2023 season; is there any hope for 2024? Our Abe Asher focuses in on six burning questions fans should be focused on right now.

• For the second time this week, children taking umbrage at the theatre have found their voices elevated in the careful reviews of critic Robert Ham. On Monday, he measured the reactions of his pint-sized audience neighbors against his own at a pretty weird (cool) sounding planetarium dance performance. Now, he wholeheartedly recommends catching a performance of the Oregon Ballet Theatre’s Peter Pan at Keller Auditorium this weekend—with caveat that “one young lad sitting behind me took umbrage with the fact that the creature on stage was an alligator and not a crocodile (as he had been promised!).”

• Don’t forget to eat the cool sandwiches the Mercury‘s Sandwich Week is hooking you up with, and take our neat Sex Survey where you can brag about your SENSUAL PROCLIVITIES.

• Your Friday morning ticket drop is arriving shortly and our Portland Mercury EverOut calendar team has drawn up a list of shows hitting the streets this morning. 

IN NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS:
• As we approach the anniversary of two years of war in Ukraine, things aren’t looking great. More financial support from the US has been slow to make it through Congress. Following the death of the Aleksei Navalny last week, the Biden administration trotted out more sanctions on Russia.

Russia’s invasion came in two phases, many Ukrainians say: the first a decade ago, when it sent soldiers over the border in an unacknowledged military intervention, and the second when it began its full assault two years ago. https://t.co/Ufe9LPNes5

— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 23, 2024

• NPR reports that negotiations are underway in Paris today, trying to establish a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. The outlook is hopeful, even as Netanyahu’s long-awaited after-war plan isn’t helping.

• Have you been following Capital One’s acquisition of Discover? This episode of the Journal breaks it down nicely. 

• Although Vice Magazine was co-founded by the guy who also founded the Proud Boys—and that slimy veneer never really left the media company— there have been many quality stories that came from Vice News and a good many respectable journalists who moved through their offices. Vice Media announced yesterday that it will lay off hundreds of people on its staff and cease producing stories / content for its site vice.com. The company had declared bankruptcy back in May and been purchased by an investment management firm, with some speculating that the hedge fund would sell various parts of the media company like a butcher repackages parts of a cow. (Anyway, I think that’s what I said.) The New York Times reports that “Refinery29, the company’s women-focused publishing division” could soon be sold. One thing is for sure, I’m never going to get the $700 Vice owed me.

• Nice to see Tasmania bringing the weird today—now this is how you support local art.

@erilikecherry

An image generator but it’s original artwork from real tasmanian artists???

♬ original sound – Erica