02-16-2025  10:32 am   •   PDX and SEA Weather

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NORTHWEST NEWS

Californians Brace for Mudslides in Areas Torched by Fires as Freezing Rain, Snow Aim for Oregon

Officials in Oregon’s Multnomah County, which includes Portland, extended a state of emergency through at least Thursday and said six emergency shelters would be open.

Labor Leaders Push for Strike Support in the Capital

Lawmakers, picket line veterans argue in favor of SB 916, which would allow individuals involved in qualifying labor disputes to collect unemployment while waiting for a contract.

Pastor Mark Knutson on Strengthening Sanctuary and Responding to Trump’s Threats

Augustana Lutheran Church is part of an interfaith network in Portland organizing to protect immigrants.

“Young Black Men Are ___”, A Multimedia Interactive Storytelling Project, Opens February 1

Word Is Bond partners with the 1803 Fund to explore Black identity.

NEWS BRIEFS

AG Rayfield Files Multistate Lawsuit to Stop Elon Musk’s Power Grab

The lawsuit argues that President Trump has exceeded his authority and violated the Appointments Clause of the United States...

Swift Victory in Lawsuit Stopping DOGE’s Attacks on Americans

Attorney General Dan Rayfield has released a statement after an early morning victory in court last week. ...

AG Rayfield Reacts to Latest Victory in Trump’s Attempt to Block Birthright Citizenship Order

“This just proves what we’ve been saying all along. No president can rewrite the Constitution with the stroke of a pen,” said...

Budget Committee Ranking Member Merkley: Vought Dangerously Unfit to Lead OMB

Merkley spoke on the Senate floor to kick off Democratic opposition to Trump’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) nominee and...

Portland Trail Blazers Host First-ever Albina Rose Alliance Game

Game to highlight the Albina Rose Alliance – a partnership between Albina Vision Trust and the Portland Trail Blazers ...

Fresh lawsuit hits Oregon city at the heart of Supreme Court ruling on homeless encampments

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The small Oregon city at the heart of a major U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that allowed cities across the country to enforce homeless camping bans is facing a fresh lawsuit over its camping rules, as advocates find new ways to challenge them in a legal landscape...

Western Oregon women's basketball players allege physical and emotional abuse

MONMOUTH, Ore. (AP) — Former players for the Western Oregon women's basketball team have filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging emotional and physical abuse. The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in Marion County, seeks million damages. It names the university, its athletic...

Slaughter leads Missouri against No. 5 Texas

Missouri Tigers (12-10, 1-6 SEC) at Texas Longhorns (20-2, 6-1 SEC) Austin, Texas; Thursday, 9 p.m. EST BOTTOM LINE: Missouri visits No. 5 Texas after Grace Slaughter scored 31 points in Missouri's 78-77 victory against the Mississippi State Bulldogs. The...

Slaughter leads Missouri against No. 5 Texas after 31-point game

Missouri Tigers (12-10, 1-6 SEC) at Texas Longhorns (20-2, 6-1 SEC) Austin, Texas; Thursday, 9 p.m. EST BOTTOM LINE: Missouri visits No. 5 Texas after Grace Slaughter scored 31 points in Missouri's 78-77 win over the Mississippi State Bulldogs. The...

OPINION

Bending the Arc: Advancing Equity in a New Federal Landscape

January 20th, 2025 represented the clearest distillation of the crossroads our country faces. ...

Trump’s America Last Agenda is a Knife in the Back of Working People

Donald Trump’s playbook has always been to campaign like a populist and govern like an oligarch. But it is still shocking just how brutally he went after our country’s working people in the first few days – even the first few hours – after he was...

As Dr. King Once Asked, Where Do We Go From Here?

“Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall...

A Day Without Child Care

On May 16, we will be closing our childcare centers for a day — signaling a crisis that could soon sweep across North Carolina, dismantling the very backbone of our economy ...

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE NEWS

Trump consoles crash victims then dives into politics with attack on diversity initiatives

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday responded to the deadliest American aviation disaster in more than two decades by blaming diversity initiatives for undermining safety and questioning the actions of a U.S. Army helicopter pilot involved in the midair collision with a...

US Supreme Court rejects likely final appeal of South Carolina inmate a day before his execution

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Thursday what is likely the final appeal of a South Carolina inmate the day before his scheduled execution for a 2001 killing of a friend found dead in her burning car. Marion Bowman Jr.'s request to stop his execution until a...

Trump's orders take aim at critical race theory and antisemitism on college campuses

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is ordering U.S. schools to stop teaching what he views as “critical race theory” and other material dealing with race and sexuality or risk losing their federal money. A separate plan announced Wednesday calls for aggressive action to...

ENTERTAINMENT

U.S. & WORLD NEWS

By Tom Cohen and Michael Pearson CNN




Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday that his decision to remove himself from the Justice Department investigation into a leak that led it to surreptitiously collect telephone records from the Associated Press leaves him unable to respond to questions about it.

"I don't know what happened there with the intersection between the AP and the Justice Department," Holder told the House Judiciary Committee. "I was recused from the case."

The news agency revealed Monday that federal agents had secretly collected two months of telephone records for some of its reporters and editors.

The AP said agents were apparently investigating the source of a story revealing that the CIA had thwarted an al Qaeda plot to blow up a U.S.-bound jetliner in May 2012, around the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Sources later told CNN that the operative who was supposed to have carried the bomb had been inserted into al Qaeda's Yemeni affiliate by Saudi intelligence, and that the device had been handed over to U.S. analysts.

Holder told the hearing that he had recused himself to avoid any potential conflict of interest in the case and had left the decision to subpoena the phone records to Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole, who authorized the subpoena.

"I recused myself because I thought it would be inappropriate and have a bad appearance to be a person who was a fact witness in the case to actually lead the investigation given the fact, unlike Mr. Cole, that I have a greater interaction with members of the press than he does," Holder said.

Asked what made him a fact witness, he said, "I am a possessor of the information that was ultimately leaked. And the question then is who of those people who possessed that information, which was a relatively limited number of people within the Justice Department, who of those people, who of those possessors actually spoke in an inappropriate way to members of the Associated Press."

Asked who else had access to the information, Holder cited the ongoing nature of the investigation. "I would not want to reveal what I know and I don't know if there are other people who have been developed as possible recipients or possessors of that information during the course of this investigation," he said. "I don't know."

Answers like those prompted some sharp criticism of Holder and his deputy from Wisconsin Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner, a former Judiciary chairman.

"There doesn't seem to be any acceptance of responsibility in the Justice Department for things that have gone wrong," Sensenbrenner said. "Now may I suggest that you and Mr. Cole and maybe a few other people go to the Truman Library and take a picture of the thing that he had on his desk that said 'The Buck Stops Here?' Because we don't know where the buck stops, and I think to do adequate oversight, we better find out and we better find out how this mess happened."

And a Democrat, New York's Hakeem Jeffries, said the subpoenas appeared to be "overly broad in scope."

"Hopefully that is something that the investigation that takes place will examine with close scrutiny," he said. "And second, that I think, as many of my colleagues have expressed, I'm also troubled by the fact that the negotiation or consultation with the AP did not occur in advance of the decision to issue the subpoenas."

Holder said he recused himself because he had been questioned by FBI agents as part of the leak probe. He Tuesday that the leak, which he did not describe, had put Americans at risk and demanded "very aggressive action."

But AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll said Tuesday that the records collected by the investigation cast a "very broad net" and involved AP operations "that have, as far as I know, no particular connection to the story that they (federal authorities) seem to be investigating."

"We've never seen anything along the size and scope of this particular investigation," she told CNN's Erin Burnett.

In all, the AP says, federal agents collected records involving more than 20 phone lines -- including personal lines -- used by about 100 journalists in New York; Hartford, Connecticut; and Washington.

The Justice Department on Tuesday defended its decision to subpoena the records, saying the requests were limited and necessary.

"We are required to negotiate with the media organization in advance of issuing the subpoenas unless doing so would pose a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation," Cole wrote in a letter to the AP. "We take this policy, and the interests that it is intended to protect, very seriously and followed it in this matter."

White House spokesman Jay Carney said White House officials were not involved in the investigation and knew nothing about the AP inquiry.

The Obama administration has launched several high-profile leak probes, leading to the prosecution of two government employees accused of revealing classified information.

Thomas Drake, a former National Security Agency official, was sentenced to one year of probation and 240 hours of community service in 2011, while former CIA officer John Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months in prison after admitting to identifying a covert intelligence officer.

In 2002, Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley criticized the Justice Department for its subpoenas of John Solomon, an AP writer who had written about an investigation into then-Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-New Jersey. The subpoena also spurred a protest from the journalism association Investigative Reporters and Editors.

Documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald, whose movies have criticized the war in Iraq, Fox News and Walmart, called the administration's pursuit of leakers "an effort to silence and scare whistleblowers, and to get the press to be quiet and do what it wants them to do."

"This is a systemic, continuing problem," said Greenwald, whose latest film, "War on Whistleblowers," focuses on the issue. "It's not a one-off, and it's not an accident, sadly."

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said Monday that the subpoenas were likely legal, but they go further than previous administrations in pursuing private information of journalists.

"I have never heard of a subpoena this broad," Toobin said.

CNN's Tom Cohen reported from Washington. Michael Pearson reported from Atlanta. CNN's Matt Smith, Jessica Yellin, Carol Cratty, Kevin Bohn, Greg Botelho, Joe Sterling and Josh Levs contributed to this report.