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Good afternoon, Portland! I hope you're celebrating President's Day appropriately (whatever that may look like... what does it look like?), and ready to tuck into some NEWS.

IN LOCAL NEWS:

• Progressives are out of luck at City Hall right now, but that could change when the council expands in 2025—and a new Candidate School debuting this summer, from the political action committee Our Portland, is designed to help teach potential progressive candidates and campaign workers what it takes to get elected. 

• New data provided by Multnomah County and reported by the Oregonian on Monday found that of the roughly 1,700 houseless Portlanders offered shelter during sweeps of encampments over the last ten months, fewer than one percent are permanently housed today. A really solid showing from our data-driven city government here. 

• Mayor Ted Wheeler declared that he's "made for this moment" in an Oregonian profile over the weekend, which presumably caused uproarious laughter and spit-takes around kitchen tables all over the city. 

• Portland State University is moving closer to hiring its next president, with the board of trustees set to meet on the matter tomorrow (which is when, I presume, they will solicit my input). Current president Stephen Percy is retiring at the end of the current academic year. 

• Are you ready for a new week of hot goss? This week in THE TRASH REPORT by our Elinor Jones: A trashy investigation into President's Day, education for cops, and Bruce Willis' uncanny ability to surf a crashing plane.

IN NATIONAL NEWS:

• Joe Biden marked President's Day by making an unannounced visit to Kyiv, where he met with Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the eve of the first anniversary of Russia's invasion. Here's a look at how the White House made the clandestine trip happen. 

• Two more powerful earthquakes hit Turkey on Monday, just two weeks after the earthquake that left thousands of people dead there and in Syria. These earthquakes struck the southern province of Hatay on Monday, killing three people and leaving more than 200 others injured. 

• Israel continues to see massive street protests, with more than 100,000 people gathering outside the Knesset in Jerusalem on Monday to protest the Benjamin Netanyahu government's proposal to severely limit the powers of the country's independent judiciary. The opposition in Israel is claiming that the proposals would be anti-democratic, which is only slightly rich given that Human Rights Watch already considers Israel an apartheid state. 

• Enough with global politics, let's get into some juicy WEATHER NEWS: The Twin Cities are expecting between 19 and 25 INCHES of snow between tomorrow and Thursday! Wow! That's a lot of snow!

• Marjorie Taylor Greene came out in favor of the dissolution of the United States, calling for the country to be separated by "red states and blue states." Hard to know how this would work for Marjorie given that her own home state has two Democratic senators and voted for Joe Biden.

• Finally...Â