by Jeremiah Hayden If you appreciate the Mercury's interesting and useful news culture reporting, consider making a small monthly contribution to support our editorial team. Your donation is tax-deductible. You can also subscribe and have our papers deli vered! Good Morning, Portland ☕ : The heavy rain continues into today, so grab your raincoat and stay out of the Willamette River (see below).  Let's doom scroll the news. 📰  If you’ve been following the controversy around funding the Portland Trail Blazers’ new billionaire owner asking the public to pay for Moda Center renovations, you’ve probably noticed a well-coordinated response from elected officials. For the most part, they seem willing to do just about anything to accommodate the owner and fend off his threat to move the beloved NBA team to another city. Now, OPB obtained public records that show how lobbyists worked behind the scenes to pressure local and state leaders to find hundreds of millions of dollars during compounding budget crises. Check out the full story at OPB here, which includes some good basketball puns along the way.  Pop Quiz! Think you know Portland? Wm. Steven Humphrey will be the judge of that. See how well you score, here. In this week's super fun, local (and icy) trivia quiz: the idiots of ICE are once again in court, the fate of Portland's only in-town ice skating rink, and an extremely funny joke about Vanilla Ice! (Individual results may vary.) See how well YOU score >> www.portlandmercury.com/pop-quiz-pdx...[image or embed] — Portland Mercury (@portlandmercury.com) March 12, 2026 at 4:48 PM Thanks to all the heavy rain this week, the main sewage pipe in Portland is now full. That means the outflow from the “Big Pipe” is about 80% stormwater and 20% sewage, into the Willamette River. The city of Portland issued an advisory to stay out of the Willamette River south of the Ross Island Bridge, which kind of ruins my weekend plan of taking a dip in the Willamette during a rainstorm, just south of the Ross Island Bridge. If you’re a podcast person, check out the latest City Cast Portland, in which I, Mercury reporter (and guy who should get a haircut if he wants to be taken seriously) Jeremiah Hayden, talk with KBOO's Althea Billings and City Cast's John Notarianni about a story we published earlier this week. The podcast and the story are about a labor leader’s activity inside City Hall to influence city councilors, advise them on how to sue the city, and stop the “MAGA of the left” progressive councilors from gaining any more power in the local governing body. Full story here, or podcast on some of it here:  It’s a big day on Saturday for math nerds, circle fans, and of course, people who love pie. Yes, Saturday is March 14, or 3.14, otherwise known as “Pi Day” to celebrate the mathematical constant π that represents a circle. Check out the EverOut list of Portland places celebrating Pi Day, here. There’s a grip of new arts and music stories up on the Mercury site today. This week, we published our Spring Arts issue, which is out in print all over town now. But that didn’t stop us from bringing more local culture news, like for instance: Ahead of her show at the Star Theater next week, the legendary, inimitable, indefatigable, Toody Cole spoke to the Mercury about life at 77, DIY ethic, and the loss of her bandmates: Dead Moon’s drummer Andrew Loomis and her husband, Fred Cole. Check out Audrey Vann’s interview with Toody Cole here. There are other shows happening this weekend too, and if you need some suggestions, our music editor Nolan Parker has you covered in this week’s Mercury Music Picks. Even if you live in a city as queer-friendly as Portland, being a trans person is a political act. Riot Queens, a small, trans-driven play that recently opened at the Back Door Theater in Southeast Portland serves as a dire reminder that trans rights are hard-won—and still under attack. Read this piece on the play, which centers around the immediate aftermath of the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, by Holly Hazelwood, here.  And if you’re looking for other music, film, sports, and visual art recommendations, peruse Do This, Do That for a bit of inspiration. Check that one out here. IN NATIONAL/WORLD NEWS: President Donald J. (for Jerk) Trump and Defense Secretary Pete B. (Beer Bong) Hegseth’s so-called “holy war” in Iran and neighboring countries appears to be going… not well. Not that any war represents things going well, but in this case they appear to have had few plans before joining hands with Israel to kill some 1,300 Iranians and multiple Americans while jacking up oil prices internationally. Just this morning, the US Central Command confirmed that six US servicemembers were killed when a refueling plane crashed in Iraq on Thursday. Also this morning, Hegseth claimed without evidence that Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei is wounded and likely disfigured while claiming the country’s military capability has been drastically degraded. There were also explosions near Tehran during an al-Quds Day march in solidarity with Palestinians, evacuation orders are on in Lebanon and… the horror, the horror. My god, just stop.  I just cannot stop watching this guy. If ignorance is bliss, this guy must be on cloud nine. Thanks for reducing the deficit though—oh you didn't do that? INTERESTING! This is Nathan Cavanaugh, another DOGE staffer explaining how he flagged grants at NEH for "DEI" which would be reviewed for termination. 404 Media has reviewed hours of this footage and we'll have more soon. Part of a lawsuit by @acls1919.bsky.social, @modernlanguage.bsky.social + @historians.org[image or embed] — 404 Media (@404media.co) March 12, 2026 at 8:33 AM Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville posted an image on the bad place (X, formerly known as Twitter) of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamadani next to a photo of the 9/11 terror attacks, claiming that “the enemy is inside the gates,” an anti-Muslim verbal attack on the mayor. Mamdani responded Friday, condemning the posts and standing up for Muslim Americans and encouraging them to celebrate their faith with joy. "When I hear such hatred and disdain unchecked in its rancor, I feel a loneliness and isolation that I know many of you have felt as well," Mamdani said at an iftar dinner (the fast-breaking evening meal during Ramadan) Thursday evening. "Who here has been told, you do not belong in New York City? Who here has been told, go back where you came from?" Read the full story at NPR, here, and don’t hesitate to check on your friends who may be feeling similarly amid of all this. Dark money groups be dark money-ing  HOLY SHIT. A dark money group, hidden behind a bunch of shell companies, is paying influencers thousands of dollars PER POST to attack @katmabu.bsky.social on social media a month before her election. Thank you to the people who declined the money and went forward with this. So who's behind this?[image or embed] — Tim Onion (@bencollins.bsky.social) March 13, 2026 at 7:31 AM The Senate voted down a measure that could have reopened the partial government shutdown, largely due to Republicans objecting to Democrats’ requests to fund parts of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) but not all of it. It’s a lot of pomp and circumstance, with Democrats wanting Republicans on the record opposing funding for agencies that are slightly more popular than Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Imagine your agency being less popular than TSA and trying to get funding. Anyway Republicans also blocked Coast Guard, Cybersecurity, and FEMA funding. Wild to see Democrats holding the line on anything at all, as the partial shutdown heads into its second month. This would be so funny if it wasn't so terrifying! Anyway, LOL 🤣 💀           View this post on Instagram                       A post shared by Andrew Rousso (@andrewrousso) ...read more read less