This is KGW news at sunrise.
Hello Oregon. While this morning
on Sunrise POTUS in the Rose City,
President Biden is in Portland this morning.
It's his second visit here in
just six months. Good morning.
Thanks for getting up with
us on this Saturday morning.
I'm Tim Gordon.
We'll get to the president's visit
and other headlines this morning.
But first, let's check in with
Chris McGinnis for a quick,
quick look at our Saturday forecast.
Good morning.
We're welcoming the president with the
really nice weather right now for sure.
There you go. It continues.
It's still dark and early out there,
of course, sunrise creeping later and
later into the 7:00 o'clock hour,
which you can't see in this
picture though is the haze.
The wildfire smoky haze that is
pretty much present across most of
the Pacific Northwest that will be
with us throughout the weekend.
It's 53 last check at PDX.
The wind is fairly light there,
but check this out.
It is 68 in Troutdale, the East breeze.
The East wind machine is cranking so in
some cases temperatures are quite warm.
If you're waking up to an
E breeze this morning,
you are likely quite warm to start the day.
Meanwhile, we hop over the Cascades.
We're down near the freezing mark right
now in Baker City and Burns and once
again you folks will have a rapid warm up.
Once the sun comes up today,
I mentioned the air quality,
moderate air quality showing up at
a lot of the Willamette Valley,
even a couple of red indicators now
that indicating unhealthy air and
very unhealthy air in Lane County,
downwind of the Cedar Creek Fire.
That will continue to be an issue
as we mentioned throughout the
weekend and all of us seeing that
wildfire haze in the air.
But it will be warm today.
In fact record warmth in
our forecast again today.
I've got high temperatures
topping out in the mid 80s.
Tim.
All right, Chris, thanks very much.
Well, President Biden.
Touchdown in Portland just
before 6:30 last night.
The main purpose of his visit is
to drum up support for Democrats,
especially Tina Kotek, who is in a
very close race for Oregon governor.
There are, of course,
some tight congressional races
in the state as well.
The President has a busy
schedule in Portland today,
especially this afternoon,
and 1st up today, he'll visit the
East Portland Community Center.
That's where we find Christine Petawawa,
which this morning.
And Christine,
he'll make a speech about noon today,
right.
Yeah. Good morning.
Tim here this morning.
It is early, still still dark.
There's not a whole lot you can see outside,
but I can tell you after going inside,
lots of news crews setting up their cameras,
also special service or,
you know, security services here,
making sure that everything
is fine for the president.
A little bit later today here at
the East Portland Community Center,
he's going to be talking about
lowering drug costs at noon.
And here are a couple of specifics about
that plan. The president's focus will
be on how the inflation reduction.
That is set to go into
effect January 1st of 2023,
and that'll help people he says,
afford their prescriptions.
This as an open enrollment
for Medicare starts up.
The message is similar to what
he said Friday in California.
Take a listen. This
year, the American people won.
We took on Big Pharma and we beat
them finally. We beat them finally.
Now Big Pharma tries to raise drug prices.
Fashion inflation.
They're going to have to write a check
to Medicare for to cover the difference.
Now, instead of that money going
in the pockets of drug companies,
it's going to go into the pockets
in the form of lower drug prices.
In America, there's more money at the
end of the month to pay for groceries,
to get your car repaired,
to buy your grandson a birthday present,
whatever it is.
The Inflation Reduction Act gives
Medicare the power to negotiate
lower prescription drug prices.
Again, that is the first of two events
that we're expecting here in Portland.
Here's a quick look at the
timeline that we're expecting.
Again, here at the East Portland
Community Center at noon,
President Biden is supposed to be talking
about lowering prescription drug costs.
Following that event in Southeast Portland,
he's expected to throw his
support behind Tina Kotek.
That's the Democrat running for governor.
That'll be at about 1:45.
Then at 2:50,
the president is expected to leave Portland,
making his way back to the East
Coast where he'll spend the weekend.
In Delaware, back out here live.
Just a reminder to expect delays.
In fact, TriMet has already come out and
said that people should be expecting
delays until probably 6:00 o'clock tonight.
But if you're in this area
of Southeast Portland,
maybe you're downtown or even
out by the airport.
Just be patient,
Tim.
All
right, Christine, thanks a lot
for being out there for us.
Well, President Biden's first
stop last night was all about
meeting with Democratic campaign
volunteers in Southeast Portland.
He greeted them with a box of Donuts,
in fact. And.
Even joined volunteers by
working the phones,
he made several calls and left quite
an impression on those in the room.
They're
emotional. No, I want to scream.
Well, I get to scream a
little bit, but it was great.
I've never, I've never seen
a president like that before.
Just to be, you know, so close.
It was an amazing experience.
I mean, President Biden was on.
He was inspiring.
It really was amazing to
me in the room with him.
Biden's visit comes at a critical
time for Oregon Democrats.
Recent polling suggests Tina Kotek is
deadlocked with Republican Christine
Drazen in the race for governor,
non affiliated candidate
Betsy Johnson trailing.
And both Drazin and Johnson
responded to the president's visit,
Drazen tweeting, quote,
Oregonians are tired of status quo
politicians like Tina Kotek and
Kate Brown who have made life worse
for families across the state.
Bringing in a failing president isn't
going to save a failing candidate.
Meanwhile,
unaffiliated unaffiliated candidate
Betsy Johnson posted a video
saying she hopes the president
comes more often because it means
homeless camps that she pointedly
blamed on Kotek get cleaned up.
She also said the president needs
to talk to local officials.
About actually holding criminals
accountable and stay with us
for continuing coverage of the
president's visit today you can watch
his speech coming up streaming on
KGW or KGW plus and we will have a
wrap up of events of course later
on KGW News right here on air.
Well even without the president's
visit it was a busy night for
Portland police and officer shot
a man in downtown Portland after
police got a 911 call about a
man chasing people with a knife.
Now this unfolded near SW 12th and.
Jefferson where witnesses tell
us they saw a man,
an officer I should say shoot a man.
They took this video just after it happened.
Those witnesses believe the
man was hit in the arm.
The police confirmed one officer
fired his weapon after finding
a man matching the suspect.
Description.
They say the injured man is
expected to survive.
Investigators believe there are witnesses
who may have information who left the scene.
They'd like to talk to them.
And about 90 minutes before that shooting,
a man was killed in a homicide
in Northeast Portland.
Police found the man with a gunshot
wound right across the street from
Holiday Park that's in the Lloyd district,
around 4:30 yesterday afternoon.
He died later in the hospital.
So far,
no one's been arrested,
and investigators have not released
information on a suspect.
Well, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler is
set to announce an aggressive plan to
manage the city's homeless population,
according to Willamette Week.
It includes a ban on
unsanctioned camping citywide.
We got a brief statement from the
mayor's office confirming they are
working on something in this regard,
but plans to announce proposals next week.
It's easy to see people living
on the streets of Portland,
the tents and other temporary
shelters on sidewalks and other
public places throughout the city.
Now, Willamette Week reports Mayor Ted
Wheeler will propose sweeping change
by banning all unsanctioned camping
and building huge sanctioned homeless
camping areas as an alternative.
According to Willamette Week,
the mayor wants 3/5 hundred
person homeless campuses,
with each campus divided
into four 125% camps.
The city would look to have them
managed by outside contractors.
We asked City Hall to confirm
and got a two sentence response
from the mayor's office.
The first sentence saying city
commissioner Dan Ryan and I want to
complete our outreach to elected
leaders who have key responsibilities
related to the issues of affordable
housing and homelessness before
we finalize any proposals that
will be announced next week.
We visited Old Town today and the
street roots office vendors of
the homegrown paper are either
homeless or have been there
and nobody, nobody wakes up
and decides to be homeless.
Rachel Delaney is now in a tiny
home village and one step away
from permanent housing and not in
favor of large sanctioned camps.
Like I've been through the shelter
system with it being hundreds of
people in that shelter and I fell
through the cracks completely.
We also got a response from
Multnomah County leadership.
Today that included sharing a draft letter
from the mayor and Commissioner Ryan.
It generally spells out this campus proposal,
but it puts all the responsibility
for operating all houseless shelters
on the county, not the city.
County Chair Deborah Kafoury
gave us a statement laying out
what the county is already doing,
with a final line stating if the
mayor's office wants to clean
up this city and enforce time,
place and manner laws, they don't have
to hide behind me or anyone else.
They can just do it.
Not a ringing endorsement of a plan.
That seeks to end homeless camping
in the city by potentially
creating homeless mega camps.
Now, this isn't the first time very
large sanction camps have been proposed,
but they've never been built.
The mayor is trying to build some support
ahead of any announcement made next week,
and we will see exactly what that
proposal looks like when that happens.
Stay tuned. Well, there's a nationwide
push to cut and eliminate greenhouse
gas emissions from utility companies to
school districts in just two minutes.
How? One Oregon School district
is already seeing those changes.