What an awful week, eh? Limp proudly into the weekend though, Portland. We're doing okay.
So Donald Trump, who lost the popular vote by 2,864,974 votes, was supposed to meet with Mexican Enrique Peña Nieto in the first meeting between the two allied leaders since Trump took office. Not happening. Peña Nieto cancelled the meeting yesterday, following Trump's shady bluster about building a border wall.
Why shady? Besides just being a bad idea, Trump's long-held promise to make Mexico pay for the wall turn out to mostly just be an idea to tax goods the US imports from Mexico. Which as this very good NYT piece explains would largely mean US consumers, car makers, and other companies are paying for the wall. And since that would mean Trump had been lying all this time, his administration snatched back the idea pretty quickly.
You didn'treally need a newspaper report to tell you that Trump ordered the head of the National Park Service, which controls the National Mall, to help him find photos that suggest more people attended his inauguration than the press suggested. Here you go, anyway.
In that same vein, Trump advisor and alt-right abettor Steve Bannon is at least being up front about the fact that this administration sees journalism as "the opposition party" that needs to keep its "mouth shut." Good.
And you'll never guess who Trump's chatting with by phone tomorrow.
To local news, the Trib catches TriMet misrepresenting how clean its bus fleet is. Since 2010, the agency has shown graphs suggesting a swift drop off in diesel emissions from buses. That might have been what happened nationally, but it doesn't offer an accurate picture here because TriMet has been slow to filter or switch out its diesel buses.
The so-called COAB, a community board that was supposed to help Portland usher in federally required police reforms, appears nearly dead. After a tenure marred by tumult, board members' terms expire next week. And Mayor Ted Wheeler made clear last night there wouldn't be reappointments.
Something I wouldn't necessarily have guessed: The guy who was arrested for having a rifle outside the federal courthouse during the trial of Ammon Bundy and Co was the same guy who was arrested for playing the violin naked outside of the federal courthouse in 2014.
The man who raped a woman who'd asked for help with her flat bike tire on the Springwater Corridor last year will spend the next 20 years in prison. Ideally he will never see freedom again.
