Latest news with #Portland
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Mayor Wilson: Portland to comply with Trump administration's DEI demands
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – Portland Mayor Keith Wilson has issued an executive order to city employees to comply with the Trump administration's . The mayor's choice to comply with the federal demand comes as the city says it that would be at stake if the City of Portland were to not comply. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now Wilson's order said, 'By complying with these laws, City programs and services will provide services, programs, and benefits without regard or preference based on protected class status, consistent with our ongoing commitment to complying with federal nondiscrimination laws.' shortly after taking office again in January that mandated entities with DEI practices would no longer receive federal funding. Since the president's order, Mayor Wilson says Portland has had to 'wrestle with a difficult question' due to the city's $349 million in active federal grants that are at risk. About 90% of these grants support the City of Portland's transportation and housing programs. 'If lost, the funds that keep our roads safe and our neighbors housed will be sharply felt,' Wilson said in a previous statement. 'The consequences for accepting grants without compliance are severe, including the possibility of both civil and criminal penalties against anyone who signs for the funds.' There are at least 13 key roles in Portland's Office of Equity and Human Rights that will be impacted by the city's compliance. After Mayor Wilson issued his executive order, he shared a statement that reiterated the city's commitment to the rights of 'people of color, immigrants, women, LGBTQ+ people, and people experiencing disabilities.' Local organizations are questioning the move by the city. 'It's not surprising, but it's very sad,' said Aubrun Marie, a spokesperson for Basic Rights Oregon, the longest-running Queer advocacy group in Oregon. 'We are seeing people wanting to actually leave Oregon, versus coming here. And that is really, really sad and something that we are definitely aware of. And again, thjat's why it's so important that we continue to advocate and protect these rights,' Marie said. On the other hand, Naomi Inman with Cascade Policy Institute, which researches 'free market perspective,' said this could be a good thing for Portland if the city actually does follow federal policy. 'What matters most to us is that Keith Wilson is sincere in upholding civil rights law for all people in the city…not trying to serve a particular group or under serve a particular group based on maybe their skin color or some other characteristic that they, you know, have no control over,' Inman said. Both groups said it's still too early to tell how this will impact Portland. Mayor Wilson's full statement following the announcement can be read below: 'Today, I signed an executive order that directs our city government to ensure that City programs or policies do not violate federal anti-discrimination laws, as likely to be interpreted by the current federal judiciary. This means City programs and services cannot give preference to groups with 'protected-class status' based on characteristics such as race or gender, unless the City pursues a disparity study that legally supports that preference. 'Although this decision has been challenging, my executive order is in the best interest of Portlanders. Losing federal funding would harm the very people that many of our city programs are designed to help. The City of Portland is managing $349 million in active federal grants, with more than 90 percent going toward housing and transportation. We distribute federal investments to dozens of 'sub-recipients' – community organizations and government partners who work alongside us to serve Portlanders. If we lose federal funding, so does our community. 'We have $31 million in new federal agreements that must be signed in the coming weeks. To secure that money, we must certify that the City complies with all grant requirements, including federal anti-discrimination laws. Some jurisdictions and organizations have gone so far as to purge some, or all, of their references to diversity, equity, and inclusion, including eliminating DEI offices and equity-focused jobs. We think this goes too far. We believe in our values and remain committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and our offices and employees who support this work. 'Let's be clear. In Portland, we believe in diversity, we believe in equity, and we believe in inclusion. We say those words proudly. We will continue to operate the vast majority of programs designed to help all Portlanders, including people of color, immigrants, women, LGBTQ+ people, and people experiencing disabilities, by making city government more inclusive and more accessible. For the small subset of programs and policies that need to change, we will build upon existing equity strategies and practices to serve Portland in a manner consistent with our values. 'I want to thank those who've taken my calls and sat together in recent weeks, sharing your expertise and your hearts. Here's what I heard from you: Portland cannot afford to lose investments that make our communities stronger. Together, we are strong enough, creative enough, and determined enough to find new ways of creating the equitable Portland we envision. 'I also want to thank the Portland City Council, who have affirmed their unwavering commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Portland will continue to stand up to the Trump administration when federal directives clash with the law and our values. We are a proud sanctuary city in a sanctuary state, meaning that local police do not assist the federal government in immigration enforcement. We are participating in lawsuits against the Trump administration's unlawful executive orders that penalize sanctuary jurisdictions and attempt to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion work. We will fight, and we will win. 'Thank you for standing with Portland during this challenging time. We have always been stronger together.' More to come. Stay with KOIN 6 News as this story develops. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
12 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Here are the big questions that will appear on Maine's November ballot
A voter deposits a ballot in a drop box at Portland's City Hall. (Photo by Jim Neuger/Maine Morning Star) When ticking through the statewide ballot in November, Maine voters will first see a question about changing election procedures before being asked about implementing a red flag law. This order was determined Thursday when Secretary of State Shenna Bellows held a public lottery to determine the order of the two citizen-initiated referendum questions for the upcoming election. Maine law requires that questions on the ballot be arranged in a specific order, with carry-over measures from a previous election listed first, followed by people's veto questions, initiated measures, bond issues, constitutional amendments and then other legislatively proposed referenda. The questions within each of those categories must be arranged in a random order. The first question will read: 'Do you want to change Maine election laws to eliminate two days of absentee voting, prohibit requests for absentee ballots by phone or family members, end ongoing absentee voter status for seniors and people with disabilities, ban prepaid postage on absentee ballot return envelopes, limit the number of drop boxes, require voters to show certain photo ID before voting, and make other changes to our elections?' The campaign for this question was launched in April 2024 by the Dinner Table PAC as an effort to require voters to show photo identification at the polls. However, the official five-page petition submitted to the state in January seeks to change additional aspects of Maine election law, such as absentee voting. The question posed to voters encompasses the multitude of election law changes included in the petition. Though there was pushback on the wording from the campaign and its proponents, Maine's highest court gave it the OK in mid-July. In addition to legal action, the referendum has also drawn big spending on both sides. The 'Voter ID for ME' ballot question committee has raised more than $550,000 with half a million of that coming from the national Republican State Leadership Committee PAC, which typically focuses on electing Republican candidates in down-ballot races. Dinner Table PAC was founded by state Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn) and Alex Titcomb, who now serves as 'Voter ID for ME' campaign manager, with the goal of electing local conservatives to the Maine Legislature. Those opposed to the voter ID referendum have collected even more with a group named 'Save Maine Absentee Voting' having raised more than $600,000. Additionally, the Democratic Governors Association and the Maine Democrat's House of Representatives campaign arm each contributed $50,000 to a progressive Washington-based law firm that specializes in voting rights. The second question on the ballot will read: 'Do you want to allow courts to temporarily prohibit a person from having dangerous weapons if law enforcement, family, or household members show that the person poses a significant danger of causing physical injury to themselves or others?' The question asks voters if they would like to implement a red flag law, officially called an Extreme Risk Protection Order, which would make it easier to temporarily confiscate one's guns if they are deemed to be a threat by law enforcement or their family members. Both gun safety advocates and owners in Maine have emphasized the need for such a law. The Maine Gun Safety Coalition spearheaded the efforts for this question by collecting more than 80,000 signatures in less than two months. Maine currently has a so-called yellow flag law, a weaker provision that allows law enforcement officials to take away guns from someone considered a safety risk to themselves or others after an evaluation from a mental health professional. If the referendum passes, it would not replace Maine's current law, but would be an additional tool police or the general public can use to temporarily confiscate weapons. A group opposed to the referendum connected with the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine reported it raised more than $12,000 as of mid-July. Currently, 21 states have adopted a red flag policy. A red flag proposal introduced in the Maine Legislature in the wake of the 2023 Lewiston mass shooting advanced out of committee but never was voted on by the full House or Senate. Though the question hasn't raked in as much cash as the voter ID initiative, it caused somewhat of a kerfuffle late in the legislative session. Before sending it to voters, lawmakers were required to hold a public hearing on the bill associated with the referendum. As adjournment neared, Republicans pushed for the hearing that was eventually held the final days of the session. Some gun rights proponents, including the Sportsman's Alliance, wanted to put a competing measure on the ballot that could potentially have drawn some voter support from the red flag question. However, that proposal, which sought instead to beef up the current yellow flag law, required a work session to be introduced, which the Judiciary Committee declined to hold before adjournment. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
The Guardian
16 hours ago
- General
- The Guardian
Worried about your child's screentime? Get a landline
Among the many useless but consoling facts I've hung on to at the expense of real knowledge is the telephone number of my best friend from high school. I can say it in my head – 612505 – and, like a combination lock, it throws open the door to a memory of me sitting on the stairs after school, yakking to the person I'd just said goodbye to on the bus. Given it's more than 30 years since I used that number, I have to assume it will stay with me – along with the lyrics to the Cadbury's Roses ad from 1983, the name of the fictional head teacher of Summer Bay High (Mr Fisher) and my own telephone number from that era (623492) – until the day I die. I hadn't given much thought to landlines or the teenage experience of sitting on them after school every day, until a recent piece in the Atlantic shared the results of a small, highly localised experiment: in Portland, Maine, a parent nervous of giving her 10-year-old child a smartphone took the eccentric step of reintroducing a landline, and then persuaded the parents of her child's friends to do the same. Before she knew it, between 15 and 20 families in the area had reinstalled landlines for their preteens in what the Atlantic called a 'retro bubble'. Charming scenes ensued, communications habits changed, and everyone learned a valuable lesson about the advantages of ancient technology. The funny thing about this is that unlike the brick phone, another answer to the puzzle of how to keep children off social media, the families of Portland discovered that the very thing that limits the landline – the fact it's attached to the wall – turned out to be one of its big attractions. Most families put the phone in a high-traffic area of the house, keeping their kid at least notionally in the mix rather than shut away in their room. This was a tactic popular in the early days of home computers, when parents would put the family's single, giant desktop on a table in the kitchen so the kid wasn't isolated or left alone with 'the internet', a healthy instinct that smartphones effectively killed. For the kids involved, pivoting to landlines entailed a conceptual leap as big as any they'd encountered: the amazing Russian roulette of having to pick up a ringing phone to discover who was on the other end; the mediation experience of having to say hello to a parent and ask politely to be put through to their child; the need to memorise a number; and the wildest thing of all, trying to remember that phoning a friend on a landline meant that, if they picked up, they could only possibly be in one place, so that shouting 'ARE YOU HOME?!' down the phone, as one young case study did, made no sense whatsoever (but was very funny). None of the families involved had an interest in reducing the contact their children had with their friends. But they were concerned with the issue of distraction – that kids speaking to each other on smartphones are often scrolling at the same time – and one of the reported findings was that the old-fashioned phones encouraged them to become 'better listeners'. For anyone who grew up getting home from school, changing out of their uniform and getting straight on the phone to carry on the conversation they'd broken off an hour earlier, this idea of extracting formal skills and takeaways from basic behaviours seems part of the broader parenting shift towards turning every last thing into an effing learning experience. On the other hand, I get it; the appeal of old phones is rooted in nostalgia but also in the idea that there is something wholesome about the relative transparency of landlines and returning to a way of doing things that, while it annoyed parents back in the day, didn't strike the fear of God into them. Pre-mobile phones, the main anxiety suffered by parents with kids who were forever on the phone was that they were going to 'run up the bill', 'tie up the line', or fritter their life away gossiping, all adorably quaint concerns. No one can groom or catfish a child via a hunk of plastic attached to the wall. What was the takeaway for us, who grew up on landlines? I guess if mobiles these days exert an enormous gravitational pull in our pockets, still some other order of magic existed around the old landlines. 'I'll get it!'; 'it's for me!'; redundant phrases now that, back then, spoke to the tiny thrill of election that came from receiving a call via the family phone – and like ghosts from the deep past, the lifelong dedication to memory of the numbers. Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
National Post
21 hours ago
- Business
- National Post
Smarsh Sets New Industry Standard with Data Freedom Guarantee
Article content Guarantee gives Professional Archive customers full control of their archive data—countering common lock-in practices Article content PORTLAND, Ore. — Smarsh, the global leader in digital communications compliance and intelligence, today unveiled its Data Freedom Guarantee, an industry-first commitment to refrain from self-service data export fees and regulatory documentation surcharges for Professional Archive customers. With this guarantee, Smarsh reaffirms its promise to provide customers with the most open and accessible platform in the digital communications governance and archiving market. Article content No Fees. No Lock-In. No Using Data as Leverage. Article content With the Data Freedom Guarantee, Smarsh is setting a new standard for customer empowerment. For its Professional Archive customers, the policy includes: Article content No fees to export your data: Smarsh provides a self-service option to export data at no cost—whether for audits, legal discovery, vendor transitions, or internal use. No fees for regulatory assurance: Annual compliance attestations, policy controls, and audit-ready reports are included—no additional charge. No barriers to AI: With Smarsh Professional Archive, both new and existing clients can benefit from AI features, such as faster and more effective supervision workflows. Because Smarsh delivers AI benefits as a seamlessly integrated add-on—not as a full platform overhaul—getting started is simple and near instant. This means you won't incur additional costs or effort by being locked into a specific migration process just to access advanced AI capabilities. Article content This guarantee ensures that Smarsh customers can access, manage, and move their data freely, without fear of penalty or vendor lock-in. Article content A Bold Stand for Customer Control in an AI Era Article content Modern AI applications rely on access to clean, unstructured data to drive value across compliance, discovery, risk mitigation, and operational workflows. However, many industry providers limit functionality or require costly data migrations to enable AI capabilities—creating unnecessary disruption. Article content Smarsh takes a fundamentally different approach. With the Data Freedom Guarantee, customers can apply AI to their existing archived data—without the need for data migration fees or vendor lock-in. This approach ensures that AI can be deployed quickly, securely, and efficiently, enhancing productivity and compliance while maintaining control over critical information assets. Article content 'As high-quality data becomes the foundation for effective AI, firms need partners who champion data freedom, not those who hold it hostage,' said Sheldon Cummings, President, Corporate Business at Smarsh. 'The Data Freedom Guarantee is more than a pricing policy, it's a commitment to data accessibility. Smarsh understands how critical it is for customers to use their data—whether for audit, investigation or driving innovation—without strings attached. We're proud to set a standard for the industry that puts customers first.' Article content Freedom, Trust, and the Smarsh Difference Article content 'Our partnership with Smarsh gives us total confidence,' said Mario Chilin, Chief Compliance Officer and Partner at EP Wealth Advisors. 'The Data Freedom Guarantee offers unmatched peace of mind—we know our data is accessible, our costs are predictable, and our compliance needs are met without lock-ins or 'gotchas.' That kind of trust is rare in this space.' Article content Smarsh is empowering customers to future-proof their compliance and data strategies by removing cost and access hurdles, giving organizations the flexibility to adapt, grow, and innovate. Article content The Data Freedom Guarantee is a cornerstone of the Smarsh Promise—the company's broader commitment to set the industry's highest standard for technology, services and support. Comprised of unmatched service, frictionless data access and usage, security by default and continuous innovation, the promise is designed to keep customers safely ahead of what's next—be that regulation, technological advancements or economic change. Article content Learn What Your Archive Could Be Saving You Article content Smarsh is offering a no-cost ROI consultation for any organization evaluating archiving solutions. Smarsh technology experts are equipped to run cost-benefit analyses tailored to your needs. Article content About Smarsh Article content Article content Article content Article content Article content
The Guardian
21 hours ago
- General
- The Guardian
Worried about your child's screentime? Get a landline
Among the many useless but consoling facts I've hung on to at the expense of real knowledge is the telephone number of my best friend from high school. I can say it in my head – 612505 – and, like a combination lock, it throws open the door to a memory of me sitting on the stairs after school, yakking to the person I'd just said goodbye to on the bus. Given it's more than 30 years since I used that number, I have to assume it will stay with me – along with the lyrics to the Cadbury's Roses ad from 1983, the name of the fictional head teacher of Summer Bay High (Mr Fisher) and my own telephone number from that era (623492) – until the day I die. I hadn't given much thought to landlines or the teenage experience of sitting on them after school every day, until a recent piece in the Atlantic shared the results of a small, highly localised experiment: in Portland, Maine, a parent nervous of giving her 10-year-old child a smartphone took the eccentric step of reintroducing a landline, and then persuaded the parents of her child's friends to do the same. Before she knew it, between 15 and 20 families in the area had reinstalled landlines for their preteens in what the Atlantic called a 'retro bubble'. Charming scenes ensued, communications habits changed, and everyone learned a valuable lesson about the advantages of ancient technology. The funny thing about this is that unlike the brick phone, another answer to the puzzle of how to keep children off social media, the families of Portland discovered that the very thing that limits the landline – the fact it's attached to the wall – turned out to be one of its big attractions. Most families put the phone in a high-traffic area of the house, keeping their kid at least notionally in the mix rather than shut away in their room. This was a tactic popular in the early days of home computers, when parents would put the family's single, giant desktop on a table in the kitchen so the kid wasn't isolated or left alone with 'the internet', a healthy instinct that smartphones effectively killed. For the kids involved, pivoting to landlines entailed a conceptual leap as big as any they'd encountered: the amazing Russian roulette of having to pick up a ringing phone to discover who was on the other end; the mediation experience of having to say hello to a parent and ask politely to be put through to their child; the need to memorise a number; and the wildest thing of all, trying to remember that phoning a friend on a landline meant that, if they picked up, they could only possibly be in one place, so that shouting 'ARE YOU HOME?!' down the phone, as one young case study did, made no sense whatsoever (but was very funny). None of the families involved had an interest in reducing the contact their children had with their friends. But they were concerned with the issue of distraction – that kids speaking to each other on smartphones are often scrolling at the same time – and one of the reported findings was that the old-fashioned phones encouraged them to become 'better listeners'. For anyone who grew up getting home from school, changing out of their uniform and getting straight on the phone to carry on the conversation they'd broken off an hour earlier, this idea of extracting formal skills and takeaways from basic behaviours seems part of the broader parenting shift towards turning every last thing into an effing learning experience. On the other hand, I get it; the appeal of old phones is rooted in nostalgia but also in the idea that there is something wholesome about the relative transparency of landlines and returning to a way of doing things that, while it annoyed parents back in the day, didn't strike the fear of God into them. Pre-mobile phones, the main anxiety suffered by parents with kids who were forever on the phone was that they were going to 'run up the bill', 'tie up the line', or fritter their life away gossiping, all adorably quaint concerns. No one can groom or catfish a child via a hunk of plastic attached to the wall. What was the takeaway for us, who grew up on landlines? I guess if mobiles these days exert an enormous gravitational pull in our pockets, still some other order of magic existed around the old landlines. 'I'll get it!'; 'it's for me!'; redundant phrases now that, back then, spoke to the tiny thrill of election that came from receiving a call via the family phone – and like ghosts from the deep past, the lifelong dedication to memory of the numbers. Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
