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Good Morning, Portland: WEATHER. NICE TIL SUNDAY; THEN RAIN. NOW NEWS.
IN LOCAL NEWS:
• Oh shit, the Portland Mercury Winter Guide is on stands now—waiting in front of your house with a boombox / slithering around your backyard (IT'S GOOD FOR THE SOIL) / tired because it spent all night yelling at the Blazers / sipping a latte in your local cafe / et al. The Portland Mercury Winter Guide WAS WITH YOU FROM THE MOMENT YOU WERE BORN, AND WILL GRIP YOUR HAND FIRMLY AS YOU PASS INTO THE NEXT REALM. This issue contains many tales of valor:
-Local comedian Ben Harkins' advice on how to celebrate the holidays, while staying thrifty and more than a little morose.
-A gift guide written by like 15 people—with good ideas for what your gift bottoms want 😉.
-Tips from Courtenay Hameister on how to survive seasonal depression.
-PLUS, this issue of the Merc is a return to pre-pandemic form. There's like news, arts & culture, food reviews, and a Wm. Steven Humphrey pump-up talk in there. It's a regular dang newspaper. Heck!
• On Wednesday night, Portland City Council voted to ban landlord use of artificial intelligence (AI) price setting systems. The Mercury's Taylor Griggs wrote about the ordinance yesterday, breaking down the ideas behind it. Councilors also discussed a proposal to charge the owner/landlord of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) building an annual fee to help offset costs associated with the contentious and violent tenants.
• At the opening of the meeting, Councilor Ryan took some time to explain some posts he'd made on social media that were ostensibly about the about idea of a ban on price fixing, but which contained the sentence: "The proposed ‘price-fixing' ban on housing providers comes straight out of the national socialist playbook." This raised eyebrows from some because the infamous National Socialist Party most often refers to the National Socialist German Workers' Party commonly known as the Nazi Party. At the top of the meeting, Ryan explained that he didn't know that and anyone who knows him would know he wouldn't have meant that. The social media post has since been changed "national socialist playbook" to "'Local Progress Impact Lab’ playbook." In response, Councilor Angelita Morillo and Councilor Candace Avalos replied that Ryan's comments didn't seem like an apology and that they would also like to make speeches. They did not get to make speeches at that time.
• Bike Portland's Jonathan Maus used the eyeglasses-wrecking fall of Mercury reporter Taylor Griggs to discuss Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT)'s Bike Lane Maintenance Program, which PBOT says has been sweeping lanes, but just not the one Griggs took a spill in. It's not clear that they ever plan to clear that one, since it's not a protected lane. In February, Maus reported on a grant from the Portland Clean Energy Benefits Fund (PCEF), providing PBOT $2 million per year for five years to clear the dang lanes. As it happens, Maus had also just attended a monthly Bicycle Advisory Committee (BAC) meeting, where he grabbed some useful slides for readers. The excuse? Leaves fell early this year, says a PBOT slide.
• A reader points out that PBOT has no problem encouraging Portlanders to keep their storm drains clean. But we were already culturally doing that (proudly out here in full body rainwear, clearing my street drain with a hook, like I Know What You Did Last Summer). Most of the bike lanes I use aren't on residential streets; they're in higher traffic business areas where industrious do-gooders might not have their leaf-clearing hooks on hand.
IN NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS:
• On Wednesday night, President Trump signed a bill compelling the Justice Department to release all files related to Epstein within 30 days. That includes their own communications about Epstein and the investigation into his death in 2019, which happened in a federal prison. They're allowed to redact portions that identify victims, but the can't block out information due to “embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.” Associated Press reminds that "Trump could have chosen to release many of the files on his own months ago."
• Oh, and contempt probe is BACK ON.
A federal judge has asked attorneys to identify witnesses and offer plans for how to conduct a contempt probe of the Trump administration for failing to turn around planes carrying Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador in March.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) November 19, 2025 at 1:31 PM
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• Hope you didn't want to know if the economy lost jobs last month (probably?!), because it turns out that the Bureau of Labor Statistics won't release an October jobs report for 2025. Blaming the 43-day government shutdown and delayed surveys, the agency says it just can't collect that data now. Uh. And that was supposed to inform the Federal Reserve’s upcoming decision on interest rates. "Never before has a government shutdown lasted long enough to unsalvageably ruin parts of the employment report, and this will be the first time in the survey’s 77-year history that the Labor Department will not publish an unemployment rate," writes New York Times economy reporters Lydia DePillis and Colby Smith. They also explain a little more about why the data would actually be pretty impossible to assemble. Because human memory is fallible.
• Jack Conte, co-founder and current chief executive of Patreon, made an opinion video for the Times that is borderline unwatchable because it has the same timing as '90s MTV "now we're gonna talk about serious issues AND SKATEBOARDING" public service announcements. In it, Conte argues that "we're endlessly doomscrolling, bombarded by rage bait, and it's because our experience on the internet is being overrun by these attention-based algorithms." I'm not here to hate on his opinion. But to be clear, this guy is here to sell you something. He's making his own, new algorithm that "won't rot your brain." Oh, also his band with his wife Nataly Dawn, Pomplamoose, dropped a new record in late September. I should be upfront that I've been really adverse to this band since approximately 2009, due to a whitewashed, rude cover they recorded of Beyoncé's "Single Ladies" where Dawn calls the song's lyrics "bad." I don't hold Beyoncé above ordinary human beings, but I do think her lyrics are good—they're actually abundantly lovely. Beyoncé is more than worthy of professional respect, especially from other musicians. And when monied tech people with home recording studios try to act superior to pop stars they're behaving like hypocrites. Pomplamoose's cover sucks, and it's rude. I would like to stop stewing about this someday, but for now—fuck you, Pomplamoose.
The founder of Patreon Jack Conte has a band with his wife called Pomplamousse, and I don’t like it. And I really don’t like this time they mocked Beyoncé during their whitewashed cover of “Single Ladies.”
— Suzette Smith (@suzettesmith.bsky.social) November 19, 2025 at 10:03 PM
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• In conclusion, here's something you can just ENJOY. I'M SO HAPPY FOR YOU, DRUM YOUTH.
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