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Good Morning, Portland! Once again we join you from a police perimeter. The morning news might be short today because we're monitoring the PSU library, so stayed tuned for the latest updates on this evolving situation.

IN LOCAL NEWS:
• Portland State University's campus is closed again this morning, as Portland Police Bureau announced that they had staged around the PSU library to begin "an effort to clear" it. The blocked off area is below:

The campus has been closed for two days, but the plan—as of last night had been to reopen campus today in buildings other than the library. The Mercury is on the scene and monitoring the situation.

• Urban Alchemy is under fire this morning—Portland's City Auditor's Office has said that the California nonprofit, which runs a number of the city's congregate shelter sites, did not report the $4,000 it spent to send employees from California to Portland in 2022 to sell elected officials on its shelter management skillz.

• Roughly 15 cop cars were set ablaze at a training facility on Northeast Airport Way around 2 am this morning. No one was injured, no other property was damaged, and firefighters extinguished the blazes. Without providing proof, the Oregonian linked the fires to the current pro-Palestinian protest at PSU, because 🙄.

• In Vape News: An Oregon appeals court has ruled that Washington County's ban on flavored tobacco—the kind that kids just can't stay away from—will be upheld, saying that the law does not violate any of the state's current ordinances. 

IN NATIONAL/WORLD NEWS:

• As Portland cops gear up to evacuate protesters from the Portland State library, police in Los Angeles stormed a pro-Palestinian protest at UCLA this morning, firing stun grenades into the crowd of nearly 1,000 people and tearing down the demonstrators' encampment. Across the country around 90 arrests were made at Yale after a throng of 200 marchers made their way to the residence of the university president, while cops dismantled a newly erected camp at Dartmouth. So far it's estimated that police around the nation have arrested roughly 1,300 people exercising their First Amendment rights. You can probably expect more violence perpetrated against pro-Palestinian demonstrators from radical right-wing lunatics, after Trump announced that "radical left-wing lunatics" on college campuses "gotta be stopped."

 

• A sliver of good news in our current anti-abortion hellscape: Yesterday Arizona lawmakers voted to repeal their ancient abortion ban (circa 1864) with a 16-14 vote in which two Republicans broke ranks to join a united Democratic front. This ridiculous law, that the Arizona Supreme Court willed back into existence, was a near-total ban on abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest, and now will be replaced with a more recent law that—*squints... checks notes*—forbids abortion after 15 weeks, and makes no allowances for rape or incest. Sooooo... just about as terrible?

• Meanwhile in Trump's first (of probably many) criminal trial, prosecutors are once again asking the judge to hold the former president in contempt for repeatedly violating his gag order—you know, like he do. This time the blabber-mouth couldn't help but call his former playpen pal Michael Cohen "a convicted liar" and falsely accused the current jury for his trial of being "overwhelmingly" filled with "Democrats."

• South Dakota dog murderer (oh, and governor) Kristi Noem is still frantically trying to backpedal on her confession that she murdered the family dog in a gravel pit, now saying the pooch was "extremely dangerous." Nobody believes her now, either.

• Former Nickelodeon producer Dan Schneider—and the subject of the popular MAX documentary Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV—is suing the filmmakers for associating him with the sexual abuse of child actors who were employed by the network. =

• And finally... here's your daily dose of a "Taylor Lautner in wolf's clothing."