by Taylor Griggs If you’re reading this, you probably know the value of the Mercury’s news reporting, arts and culture coverage, event calendar, and the bevy of events we host throughout the year. The work we do helps our city shine, but we can’t do it without your support. If you believe Portland benefits from smart, local journalism and arts coverage, please consider making a small monthly contribution, because without you, there is no us. Thanks for your support!  GOOD MORNING, PORTLAND! It's going to be chilly and cloudy today, so I hope you caught some rays yesterday. The sun should return over the weekend, but temperatures will stay low. Still, we're expected to remain in a dry spell for some time. Nice for taking brisk walks, bad for our foliage and preventing fire season. Let's get some more rain soon, IMO.  Ok, here's the news. IN LOCAL NEWS:  • The largest health care worker strike in state history remains underway as thousands of Providence nurses—and some doctors—have walked out of Oregon hospitals, demanding more staff and better compensation. 4,000 nurses from all eight Providence hospitals in Oregon have joined the strike, as well as 150 physicians and advanced practitioners who have unionized with the American Federation of Teachers. According to new reporting from our Abe Asher, the union and hospital management are set to return to the bargaining table in hopes of ending the strike. It's clear in Asher's story that the nurses and doctors have really been put through it the last few years, and are absolutely not being compensated enough for their massive workloads and the traumatic situations they endure on a daily basis. And without adequate pay, the hospitals will continue to be short-staffed, and the cycle continues.  • Here's what's happening in Portland music news:   •The second single from Keeks (FKA Maarquii) encourages other femme queens to defend themselves by any means necessary• Wynne rhymes intimately, from her sofa.•Portugal. The Man play Cinema 21Here are your local music happenings, Hear in Portland![image or embed] — Portland Mercury (@portlandmercury.bsky.social) January 15, 2025 at 5:36 PM • The new Portland City Council had its first-ever REAL meeting last night, like with actual agenda items and public testimony and votes and stuff. They made some decisions on city issues unrelated to City Council administrative matters, including approving a $7 million US Department of Housing and Urban Development grant to develop the Barbur Apartments affordable housing project. But, because this is the very beginning of a brand new City Council under a brand new system of local government, they spent the majority of the meeting talking about administrative stuff.  One major issue among the new City Council relates to their staffing budget. The city only budgeted enough for each of the councilors to have one staff member, which is very meager indeed—especially when you consider how the old City Council was simply overflowing with staff members, from chiefs of staff to policy advisors to communications people. Perhaps they don't need quite so many staffers, considering their different responsibilities, but more than one each would be nice. At last night's meeting, councilors voted to move forward on a plan to make a one-time, $4.6 million allocation from the city's contingency fund to the staffing budget, enabling them to hire more staff members.  Councilors also voted to approve eight council committees, which will each include five councilors and focus on the following topics: Transportation and infrastructure; homelessness and housing; climate, resilience, and land use; community and public safety; arts and economy, labor and workforce development; finance; governance. The committees will be similar in function to legislative committees and allow the council to focus on specific issues outside of their biweekly City Council meetings.  Finally, you might've noticed I wrote the City Council had its first real meeting last NIGHT. That's right, Portland City Council is now meeting at night every other Wednesday session, which amounts to once a month (on the third Wednesday of the month). I can appreciate the benefits this new scheduling has for increasing opportunities for civic engagement from people who, y'know, have jobs and stuff. I think it's a good idea. It also means the inevitability that a journalist will fall asleep in City Council chambers during some drawn-out session that stretches past midnight. This could be remedied if a 24-hour diner with unlimited coffee refills were built downtown. Take heed, councilors.  • BIG Pamplin news: Robert Pamplin, the 83 year old businessman who raided his employees' pensions over the past five years, admitted to doing so and agreed to a US Department of Labor lawsuit and resulting penalties.  Efforts are underway, the Oregon Journalism Project has learned, to unwind one of the great timber fortunes in the state—at the order of the federal government. www.wweek.com/news/2025/01...[image or embed] — Willamette Week (@willametteweek.bsky.social) January 15, 2025 at 12:00 PM IN NATIONAL/WORLD NEWS Sheesh, it is NOT a slow news day nationally and internationally. Struggling to figure out what to put first. Here we go.  • After 15 months of horrific bloodshed in Gaza—and many failed peace agreement talks— Israel and Hamas have finally reached an agreement on a cease-fire that, if actually implemented, would end the war in Gaza. The deal has been confirmed by the US and mediator Qatar. According to President Biden, the deal is the same as a proposal he made last May, and will "halt the fighting in Gaza, surge much needed-humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians, and reunite the hostages with their families after more than 15 months in captivity." US envoys from the Biden administration and President-elect Trump's team were both present throughout the negotiations, and both men are taking credit for the deal. But even if the cease-fire is followed, the details are somewhat complicated. The deal includes a six-week initial ceasefire with the "gradual withdrawal" of the Israeli army from Gaza, and the release of both Israeli hostages and many Palestinian prisoners. But shortly after the deal was announced, Israeli forces continued to attack Gaza, killing 32 people on Wednesday evening.  It makes sense, then, that the reactions in Gaza are mixed. So many people have been killed—not to mention homes, schools, hospitals, and entire cities destroyed—during Israel's 15 month siege on the territory that it must be impossible to truly celebrate, but it's also a relief to imagine this war could be ending soon.  EDIT: I wrote all of that last night, but this morning discovered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office is delaying meeting to approve the deal, claiming Hamas is "creating a last-minute crisis." (Crisis unspecified.) So, we'll see. • When discussing the horrible death toll of Israel's war on Gaza, it's been difficult to know exactly how many people have been killed. The Gaza health ministry cites around 46,000 deaths, mostly civilians, while the Israeli government provides a much lower figure and maintains it does not "intentionally target civilians" in Gaza (a very dubious claim, indeed, and worthless even if true, considering how many women and children we know have been killed). However, some outside studies show the Gaza health ministry may have been undercounting the deaths by about 40 percent. A study in The Lancet medical journal estimated a death toll between 55,298 and 78,525 people. This is not including the people who are severely injured, missing under the rubble, or dead as an indirect consequence of the war (medical problems they couldn't access treatment for, starvation, hypothermia). An earlier study in The Lancet estimated up to 186,000 people (or even more) people could have been killed, if you include those indirect deaths. In summary, a cease-fire is imminently needed. But the losses here are on an unfathomable scale that will not be resolved easily—or, for many people, ever.  • President Biden—about to pass the torch to Trump for his second term—gave his farewell address last night, and he took a Bernie Sanders-lite approach in his speech that I wish he would've pulled out a little sooner. Biden's address included warnings about an "oligarchy" of the super-rich and a "tech-industrial complex" that is threatening the future of democracy. Biden said there's a "dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a few ultra-wealthy people," and the "oligarchy taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead." Biden also warned Americans about the future under the second Trump administration, which he said will threaten our freedoms and institutions as we know them.  I don't know how Biden's presidency will be viewed in the future (assuming we have one of those). He did some good things that may be remembered fondly (the Inflation Reduction Act, his mostly-failed attempt at student loan debt reform, his affinity for trains and unions, that one time he fell off a bike [double parenthetical alert: In fairness on that last point, his bike pedals had toe cages, which ARE very tricky and completely unnecessary for most bike rides. Okay, grammatical experiment over.]). He also didn't do nearly enough to combat the immense threat of the climate crisis, stop the atrocities occurring in Gaza, or keep Trump out of office for a second time. Alas, poor Joe! A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. One thing we can be thankful for: No "Hamilton" goodbye tributes are scheduled this time around, at least not to the best of my knowledge. We did it, Joe.  • A rare "W" from the NYT Opinions section (and I must say, I really wish Meta didn't own Instagram) “One of the most recent actions that Zuckerberg’s supposedly emboldened company took was to banish tampons from office men’s rooms,” Zeynep Tufekci writes about Meta. “That is the most snowflake move I’ve heard of in a long time.”[image or embed] — New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion.nytimes.com) January 15, 2025 at 1:16 PM • Flags at the US Capitol (and other federal properties) are at half-staff in commemoration of Jimmy Carter's recent death, but Inauguration Day is coming up. So, what do you think: Will Donald Trump—always a class act, as well as a humble public servant—respectfully agree to let the flags remain in mourning position even on his Inauguration Day? (Having the flags half mast during your second presidential inauguration is kinda like not wearing white to your second wedding, right?)  HELL NO! He's wearing that custom Vivienne Westwood gown, a la Carrie Bradshaw, with a 20-foot train and bird headpiece. I mean, Trump will FLY THOSE FLAGS HIGH, baby. Tradition calls for the flags to remain at half mast for 30 days after a former president's death, but Trump says SCREW THAT! In a Truth Social post, Trump wrote that "Democrats are all 'giddy' about our magnificent American Flag potentially being at 'half mast' during my Inauguration. They think it’s so great, and are so happy about it because, in actuality, they don’t love our Country, they only think about themselves." Oh!  A strikingly similar situation occurred ahead of President Nixon's 1973 inauguration, which took place shortly after the death of former President Harry Truman, and the flags remained at half mast then. Perhaps Trump knew that and decided the flag placement would be a bad omen, considering how Nixon's second term went. Anyway, I just wrote way too much about flag placement, a topic I don't care about at all but found shockingly rich as riffing material. Let's be done now, for all our sakes.  • Finally....I am jealous of these snowed-in Brits. So much for dry January. And now, a big TTYL for you all.            View this post on Instagram                       A post shared by BBC Yorkshire (@bbcyorkshire)