PORTLAND DRIZZLE

🌤️ Wednesday Morning! Cloudy start clearing into a mild mid-upper 70s afternoon, a nice break from last week's heat. Portland's police funding measure just cleared 62,000 signatures for the November ballot, and PGE got the green light to charge data centers 29% more. Big day for spreadsheets. Now what’s up with Portland’s sanctuary city status?

Oregon's sanctuary law just got a real-world stress test. A new state report shows federal immigration authorities made 329 requests to Oregon public agencies this year, up 246% from the year before. Most came from local jails, with Washington County logging the most at 79, followed by Multnomah and Clackamas. State law bars agencies from helping ICE without a judge-signed warrant, but the report found four agencies fulfilled a federal request anyway, including one tied to a March courthouse arrest in Salem. The Oregon DOJ says it can't independently confirm violations or force agencies to cooperate with its inquiries. Gov. Kotek and the attorney general now want more teeth in the law. Watch this space. KATU

Portland has a whole page about what it means to be a sanctuary city, with resources

Two Portland police officers were hurt early Tuesday after a trespassing call turned into a fight. Officers responded to a gated apartment parking lot on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard around 2 a.m. and asked a man to leave. He refused, then allegedly attacked both officers when they tried to arrest him. Bodycam footage released by PPB shows one officer yelling for the suspect to let go of his taser. Both officers eventually restrained him. The suspect, 23-year-old Yimer Funez-Cruz, was medically evaluated and booked on assault, theft, and trespassing charges. It's the kind of 2 a.m. call that used to be rare here. Lately it just blends in. KATU

Your PGE bill is about to get a tiny bit friendlier, care of the state's biggest power users. Oregon regulators approved Portland General Electric's request to raise rates 29% for large data centers, while residential customers see a modest 1.3% decrease and small businesses save even more. Data centers currently make up about 5.6% of PGE's electricity load, a share expected to roughly triple as more crypto miners and AI server farms move in. The change comes under the state's new POWER Act, designed to keep households from quietly subsidizing tech company server farms. Gov. Tina Kotek called Oregon a "cheap date" for data centers last week. As of today, the dating rules have officially changed. KPTV

Reddit User harte_doodles has been creating these wonderful characters and posting them up around town. I loved this one comment “This town needs a gritty anti-hero... Bike Mennett.” See the post HERE

On this day in 1776, the Liberty Bell rang out over Philadelphia for the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence, four days after it was actually signed. My mom lives 4 blocks away from from the Liberty Bell. That whole neighborhood is like a time capsule. Also there’s a ship nearby! Guys I really love ships.

I read some good reviews saying that Stormy Daniels actually does a funny comedy show. Comedy- nothing else.

by Michael Simpson Contact: [email protected]