by Courtney Vaughn The Mercury provides news and fun every single day—but your help is essential. 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 spring. Trees are blossoming. Sunshine is hanging around. Most importantly, it’s Aries season bay-beee! Embrace new beginnings. Be bold. And while you’re at it, pony up to the IRS (did we dismantle this one yet?) because it’s tax season, too. Here’s what’s popping off in the Rose City, and beyond.  In Local News:  • Tenants in affordable and transitional housing are often among the most vulnerable renters. Many of them rely on housing vouchers to help cover rent. As the region scrambles to add more affordable housing, tenants often struggle to find an apartment they can afford. For some, that means being stuck in sub-standard units with habitability issues, while landlords (property management companies) are ignoring, or slow to address pest problems, maintenance, and repair issues.  Kevin Foster delves into the problems and lack of protections for tenants with low or limited incomes in a tight rental market.  Bed bugs. Mold. Overflowing garbage. They're just a few of the issues that highlight potential systemic problems in Portland’s affordable and transitional housing landscape, where low-income tenants often find themselves with few options and little recourse. www.portlandmercury.com/news/2025/03...[image or embed] — Portland Mercury (@portlandmercury.com)March 25, 2025 at 8:33 AM • Did you know Donald Trump’s name is emblazoned downtown? Apparently two bricks in Pioneer Courthouse Square bear his name. They're easy to miss. The Trump bricks are among thousands of etched bricks, most of which reflect the names of those who paid to have a customized brick forever laid into “Portland’s living room,” but some contain names of prominent public figures, like Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Still, an online petition is circulating to have the Trump bricks removed, because Trump is a terrible person. That's highly unlikely to happen, since some poor soul paid for them.  A person has created an online petition calling for the removal of Trump’s name from the square.[image or embed] — The Oregonian (@oregonian.com) March 24, 2025 at 3:30 PM • If you’re driving around with studded tires because your car is a snowmobile that can’t be inconvenienced by Portland’s annual big weather event, it’s time to switch them out. Drivers have until April 1 to remove studded tires, which are legal to use from November 1 to March 31. The tires help navigate icy conditions, but also do damage to pavement, hence the seasonal removal requirement. • A bill headed to Oregon’s House of Representatives for consideration would make it easier for homeowners to remove squatters. House Bill 3522, introduced by Rep. Annessa Hartman (D–Gladstone) is gaining support from landlords and tenant advocacy groups. HB 3522 would close a loophole in Oregon’s property laws that currently prevents property owners from using a forcible entry and detainer process to remove squatters if there is no evidence of forced entry or a landlord-tenant relationship. Hartman says the bill wouldn’t impact tenants with a lawful rental agreement, but would help bring Oregon’s laws up to date and remove the lengthy and cumbersome legal process that property owners currently have to go through. In other words, no more “squatters rights.” She said part of the impetus for the bill was a constituent in Gladstone who bought a house at auction “only to find that squatters who knew the previous owner had moved in, hung Nazi flags around the property, and refused to leave—even when offered services to relocate.” Hartman said the home buyer had to endure “an expensive civil lawsuit just to access their own home.” • Meet Jeffrey Kim, purveyor of sashimi bowls that spotlight fish in a different way: using a dry aging process. "The lunchtime bowls at his Aji Fish Butchery are composed of sliced, dry-aged sashimi topped with only maldon flake salt, simply dressed salad greens, and white rice. That’s it. And that’s all it needs to be," writes Andrea Damewood about chef Kim's carefully crafted offerings.  At his Aji Fish pop-up, Chef Jeffrey Kim serves simple sashimi bowls with explosively delicate flavors.[image or embed] — Portland Mercury (@portlandmercury.com) March 24, 2025 at 2:07 PM In National/World News: The people running the US government might be tools, but they certainly aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed. Yesterday, an editor at The Atlantic reported he was added to a group chat among government officials by mistake. The chat included US Defense Secretary and Christian Nationalist Pete Hegseth, who always looks like he just snorted a line of coke, and whose whole vibe is a piss jug wrapped in an American flag from a dollar store. Hegseth reportedly added the journalist to a Signal chat that included yet-to-be authorized “war plans” for bombing Houthis in Yemen. Apparently national security and cyber security aren’t friends.            View this post on Instagram                       A post shared by The Daily Show (@thedailyshow) Beyoncé isn’t stopping in the Pacific Northwest on her Cowboy Carter tour, but tickets for several shows on her upcoming tour are available for as low as $35 each. That’s an astounding drop from the prices her tour initially launched at: at least $100 for nosebleed sections, and a hefty $1,800 for floor-level tickets at some venues, like SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. Because Ticketmaster–now a scalper-infested platform–allows people to re-sell their tickets through the site at any asking price, the system is ripe for exploitation. Fans are often unable to buy concert tickets because scalpers buy up tickets in bulk, particularly at shows that will likely sell out, then sell them at inflated prices on the same site that fans couldn't get tickets from initially. There's a reason the company recently had to shell out $20 million to settle a class action lawsuit from its investors after the DOJ announced it's investigating the company's alleged breach of antitrust laws. (Full disclosure: the Mercury's parent company also owns a ticketing company, and yes, it's much smaller and superior to fucking Ticketmaster, because nearly every ticketing platform is.)  Every now and then, karma catches up to the bots and scalpers, when they have to sell their $1,500 tickets for $540 because of an unexpected drop in demand. Case in point: Beyoncé added extra tour dates, including two in Las Vegas, causing demand to plummet for some shows with unsold tickets. Fans who didn’t nab seats during the initial on-sale dates will also likely hold out until shortly before the show, when scammers can’t offload their tickets at inflated prices and end up selling them dirt cheap. Donald Trump has been in a near-constant power grab since he took office for his second term roughly two months ago. It's nothing new for him to challenge the bounds of a president's legal authority, but this time around, he's just skirting the Constitution, and eroding the checks and balances that form the foundation of our democracy. The latest abuse of power is now threatening law firms, some of which will no longer represent the president's opponents in court, due to fear of being sanctioned.  "If the legal community — all of its self-appointed leaders — do not call out Trump’s disdain for the rule of law and actions to destroy it, Trump will keep escalating his attacks and eventually these BigLaw firms will be saving themselves for nothing. What is a law firm if there is no law?"[image or embed] — Law Dork (@lawdorknews.bsky.social) March 23, 2025 at 7:20 PM Reminder kids, talking about highly classified matters in your group chat is a no-no.  @mrs.frazzled Let’s review how we want our military planning to look, sound, and feel.#greenscreen ♬ original sound - frazz   ...read more read less