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Morning, Portland! No dilly dallying, let's jump right in.

In local news:

• Starting this summer, the city will embark on investing $350 million over 30 years in the Cully neighborhood as part of the Cully Urban Renewal District. While urban renewal has long been connected to the mass displacement of low-income Portlanders, Cully neighbors spearheaded the creation of the district in hopes of using it as a tool to invest in affordable housing and climate resiliency. However, some planning experts believe the district may still unintentionally lead to gentrification and rising prices that the neighbors seek to avoid. Make time for this interesting long read from the Oregonian’s Gosia Wozniacka.

• Can you believe it’s almost election season again? Announcements and rumors of who will run for the empty Multnomah County commissioner seat—made vacant when Jessica Vega Pederson won the county chair position in November—are already starting to churn ahead of the May election. Per Willamette Week, former Vega Pederson staffer Ana del Rocío has announced her intention to run and longtime Portland Public Schools board member Julia Brim-Edwards is considering it. February 4 is the first day candidates can actually file paperwork indicating their candidacy.

• Yet another dead whale has washed onto the Oregon Coast, making it the fourth beached whale in two weeks. This time, a gray whale was found in a remote part of Cannon Beach. Officials say this whale was dead in the water for about a month before it washed ashore and there is no reason to believe the four deaths are connected. 

• Salem police shot and killed a person suspected of armed robbery Monday. According to a police statement, five officers were responding to a report of an armed robbery at a Walmart around 9 am and confronted an armed person in a nearby parking lot where “gunfire was exchanged.” Side note: The Salem Police Department released the names of all five officers involved in the shooting less than 8 hours after police killed the person. Meanwhile in Portland, we now have to wait up to 15 days before the police bureau will reveal names of officers who shoot a member of the public. Food for thought.

In national news:

• The US has already had more than 30 mass shootings in 2023. In the last three days, a gunman killed 11 people at a ballroom in Monterey Park, California, two students were killed during a school shooting in Des Moines, Iowa, an attack on a Louisiana nightclub left 12 people injured, and a gas station shootout in Oakland, California, killed one person and wounded seven others.

• The sedition trial of five Proud Boys members is underway and providing new details on the extremist group. Prosecutors entered the Proud Boys' handbook into evidence Monday, revealing the group’s guidelines for their initiation process, their ideology, and… wait for it… rules on masturbation. “A Proud Boy may not ejaculate alone more often than once every thirty days,” the section titled “No Wanks” reads. Members of the Proud Boys must also abstain from pornography, and if he “needs to ejaculate it must be within one yard of a woman with her consent.”

• The January 6 insurrection participant who propped his feet up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk was convicted of civil disorder and obstructing an official proceeding Monday. Richard Barnett, 62, said he was looking for a bathroom in the Capitol when he was photographed with his feet on Pelosi’s desk and plans on appealing the conviction. Barnett is expected to be sentenced in May.

• Hippo zoomies: