Good morning, Portland. It's game day, and if you see someone wearing a Michigan basketball jersey around town today, that may be me. Sorry.

Out in print as of yesterday (you should pick up a copy) is this feature by Santi Elijah Holley on his trip to the Oregon Freedom Rally, a conservative gathering at the Oregon Convention Center:

...This was the most common refrain I heard at the rally—the belief that Trump is doing what he said he was going to do. Leaving aside that Trump has not yet successfully accomplished anything he’d promised—and rather than “draining the swamp” he’s fortified the swamp with billionaires like himself—the idea of doing “everything he said he wanted to do” as being a virtue is suspect when Trump, during his campaign, said wildly contradictory and combative things.

Also out in print yesterday, another deep-dive into the shooting death of a homeless man Jason Peterson by a Southeast Portland business owner: "Now dozens of pages of police reports obtained by the Mercury offer the most detailed picture yet of the event that took Petersen’s life. And they give some credence to the belief, voiced by Susan Petersen and others, that a highly charged altercation on February 20 didn’t need to turn fatal."

Civil rights groups are advocating for the Portland Police Bureau to tone down its crowd control weapons, like teargas, pepper spray, and stinger grenades.

The officer who killed 17-year-old Quanice Hayes last month was cleared by a grand jury on Tuesday afternoon. His mother, Venus, spoke out yesterday.

Kenneth Barrett—the 71-year-old mayor of Winston, Oregon, who was busted on accusations of soliciting sex from a 14-year-old on Facebook (it was actually an undercover cop)—talks to the Oregonian. It's... interesting.

Here's another reminder that you shouldn't conduct expensive financial transactions with children. The Oregonian:

Bend police have arrested a pair of 17-year-old boys and accused them of selling artificial gold bars as the real thing to unsuspecting customers.
The suspects received over $50,000 in cash and other goods for the artificial gold, according to a Bend Police Department news release. Bend police recovered some of the money used to purchase the artificial gold bars.

"It's a problem that nobody wants to touch. Literally," the Idaho Statesman reports. "There are 10 to 15 cattle carcasses floating in Owyhee Reservoir in Malheur County, Ore. — the result of heavy snow burying their winter forage and ranchers’ inability to reach the livestock with food, according to the Malheur County sheriff."

CNN dropped a big story yesterday: "The FBI has information that indicates associates of President Donald Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton's campaign, US officials told CNN."

And, finally, there's a big basketball game this afternoon. Oregon vs. Michigan in the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA basketball tournament at 4:09 p.m. on CBS.