by Taylor Griggs 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, th ere is no us. Thanks for your support! Good morning, Portland! It was a beautiful, (but too-warm-for-March) day yesterday, and today we may be in for...tornadoes? Toto, I don't think we're in pre-climate crisis Oregon anymore. To be fair, we've seen tornadoes here before, and the area's geography usually prevents them from getting to Wizard of Oz levels. More likely, you'll encounter some hail and thunderstorms, along with unseasonably warm weather. Drizzle and temps in the mid-50s are set to return on Thursday.  Reshare from NWS Portland: There is potential for severe thunderstorms across the area tomorrow from 10AM-8PM PT. There is an increased risk for heavy rain, hail, damaging wind gusts, lightning, and even tornadoes cannot be ruled out. Practicing thunderstorm safety can mitigate further hazards.[image or embed] — Multnomah County, OR (@multco.bsky.social) March 25, 2025 at 2:11 PM IN LOCAL NEWS: • Tenants are organizing in Portland, collectively calling on their landlords and property managers to improve their living situations. The tenants union at inner Southeast Portland's Wimbledon Square and Gardens—a relatively (if not officially) affordable housing complex that accepts residents using rental vouchers—is asking for better conditions, citing air quality problems, mold, poor insulation, and more. Find out more by reading the latest Mercury article by Kevin Foster, right here! 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 • The U.S. Department of Education (wait, I didn’t realize that still existed…?) has apparently opened an investigation into our very own Portland Public Schools, citing the district allowing a transgender girl to be a member of a high school girls’ track team. The DOE, under Trump’s hateful and authoritarian regime, is using Title IX (the law banning sex discrimination in education) as the basis for the investigation. It’s so ridiculous these fools claim to care about women and girls only when they can discriminate against another, even more at risk group of people. PPS, don't capitulate to their horrible demands by throwing your most vulnerable students under the bus. Seriously.  • Governor Tina Kotek tried to do something cool with her order to require union labor in many state construction projects. Unfortunately (but inevitably), the contractors and business interests freaked out at that requirement, saying it "alters Oregon's system of competitive bidding and open and fair competition." Yeah, open and fair competition to pay and treat workers like shit! Now, a Marion County judge has stalled the order, putting a major barrier to it moving forward.  • Make sure to see the cherry blossoms while they're still out!! (Watch out for tornadoes today, though.)   The blossoms line the Japanese American Historical Plaza along the Willamette River. They were donated to the city in 1990 when the plaza opened.[image or embed] — The Oregonian (@oregonian.com) March 25, 2025 at 4:30 PM   • In this week's Mercury music picks: Adrian Younge at the Aladdin, MSC at Industry One Foundation, Frank La Rocca’s Requiem for the Forgotten at St. Mary’s Cathedral ("for fans of monastic chants"—we love Nolan Parker), and more. Check out the rest here!  IN NATIONAL/WORLD NEWS: • Yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order attempting to overhaul US elections, including by requiring voters to prove their citizenship to vote in federal elections and effectively ending mail-in voting policies that allow ballots to be counted as long as they were postmarked by Election Day. (This is the policy Oregon has, which admittedly can slow results, but is also much better for democracy and fairness.)  Not only is this executive order wrong, meant to disenfranchise voters across the country (and particularly poor people and people of color), it's also likely illegal and unenforceable. Elections are handled by individual states, so Trump cannot mandate Oregon (or any other state) switch its policy—at least, not without a huge fight. The order is facing major backlash and will likely be the subject of lawsuits. It's just the latest sign Trump is completely off his rocker with paranoia and power/looking to turn the US into a fascist dictatorship with 19th century voting policies. We must not let him!!! • Trump also apparently DGAF about the big national security fuckup revealed earlier this week, in which Jeffrey Goldberg from the Atlantic was accidentally included in a Signal group chat revealing imminent, sensitive plans to carry out military strikes on Yemen’s Houthis. According to Trump, the situation "turned out not to be a serious one." Oh yeah? It certainly made them all seriously look like the laughingstocks of the world they are, which I'm okay with, except that their happy-go-lucky way of dealing with national security is also, like, really dangerous and bad for the country. But as long as the group chat is still together <3  • I'm literally so jealous of countries with functioning democracies...   Breaking News: Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s ex-president, will be tried on charges of attempting a coup in 2022, the country’s top court ruled.[image or embed] — The New York Times (@nytimes.com) March 26, 2025 at 9:11 AM • The Washington Post published a story yesterday with a headline that greatly intrigued me: "Two Killer Whales Are Hunting Great White Sharks—To Eat Their Livers." Unfortunately, the story has a very limiting paywall and the Post has been severely disappointing lately. However, as it turns out, they're actually late to this story, as the situation has been going on for quite some time. According to other articles, great white sharks started washing up dead on South African shores in 2017, all with distinctive and cuts and marks—and their livers missing. This has continued to happen in the years since, with the culprits identified as two very bloodthirsty orcas named Port and Starboard. These orcas have apparently succeeded in scaring great white sharks away from the area, which has had broader ecosystem impacts down the food chain. So, yeah. I guess that's it, but I'm a sucker for any whale-related story and the ocean's orcas haven't been making the news much lately (are they still tipping over yachts??).  • Happy hump day...and did you know this fact about camels?? The world can be beautiful. Let's save it. TTYL! View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Kangaroo Sanctuary 🦘 (@thekangaroosanctuary) ...read more read less