As a result of the high winds that swept throughout Southwest Washington and the majority of Oregon on Monday night, tens of thousands of houses were left without electricity.
Following the issuance of a succession of thunderstorm and high wind warnings by forecasters with the National Weather Service on Monday afternoon, the power outages occurred as Fox 13 reported.
Wind gusts of up to fifty miles per hour could cause damage in certain regions, including portions of the Willamette Valley and the wider Portland/Vancouver metropolitan area, according to a warning issued by the National Weather Service (NWS).
When everything is taken into consideration, Portland General Electric (PGE) estimated that there were more than 1,000 active outages that affected about 100,000 people as of Monday evening at eight o'clock.
“PGE crews are out right now assessing damage and making repairs and will work as quickly as safety allows to restore service,” said John Farmer, a PGE spokesperson.
“We encourage customers to stay prepared for potential outages this evening as forecasted windy weather conditions continue.”
There were also large and dispersed power disruptions at Pacific Power. After midnight on Monday, the electric utility company stated that there were at least 200 current outages that affected more than 30,000 consumers.
The majority of the power outages are still being investigated, but officials with Pacific Power have stated that it is highly likely that many of the power outages are the result of trees that have fallen or branches that have fallen on power lines.
Clark Public Utilities reports that over 8,000 consumers in Clark County are currently without electricity.
Officials are advising individuals to refrain from traveling if feasible due to numerous downed trees and utility lines. Additionally, electric utilities advise individuals who encounter a downed powerline to keep away.
This outage comes just a few weeks after Washington Gov. Jay Inslee made his formal request for a federal disaster declaration in mid-Janurary following "bomb cyclone" storms that impacted the area.
Damage totaling millions of dollars was caused over the region by the storms, which featured hurricane-force winds.
Damage to public infrastructure in King County alone exceeded $11 million, according to King County Emergency Management.
This level of damage caused there to be serious debris and cleanup still underway when the more recent storms crashed into the area, furthering the damage.
Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency lost over 20 federal servants on Tuesday due to their refusal to use their technical expertise as part of the administration's downsizing efforts, as The Daily Mail reported.
“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter.“However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”
Employees reported that Musk recruited political ideologues with insufficient skills and experience to reduce the federal government under President Donald Trump.
Musk and the Republican president's tech-driven purging of federal employees suffered a momentary setback with the departure of engineers, data scientists, designers, and product managers. This follows a series of legal challenges aimed at halting the firing or coercion of thousands of government workers.
Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary for the White House, issued a statement in which she dismissed the widespread resignations.
“Anyone who thinks protests, lawsuits, and lawfare will deter President Trump must have been sleeping under a rock for the past several years,” Leavitt said. “President Trump will not be deterred from delivering on the promises he made to make our federal government more efficient and more accountable to the hardworking American taxpayers.”
Musk posted about the issue on social media saying the story was “fake news” went on to say that the staffers were “Dem political holdovers” who “would have been fired had they not resigned.”
Staff who left the US Digital Service reported that their duties were being incorporated into DOGE. Obama created the USDS after the failed introduction of Healthcare.gov, the web gateway millions of Americans use to sign up for insurance plans under the Democrat's signature health care bill.
All those who resigned were senior executives at companies Google and Amazon and said in their resignation letters that they joined the government out of obligation to public service.
Trump's decision to allow Musk the power to make changes, seems to have amended that. Following Trump's inauguration, staffers reported being called into interviews that hinted at the covert and disruptive activities of Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Staff said White House guests, some of whom would not be named, questioned nonpartisan personnel about their qualifications and politics. Many young people were driven by ideology and Musk fandom, rather than enhancing government technology.
“Several of these interviewers refused to identify themselves, asked questions about political loyalty, attempted to pit colleagues against each other, and demonstrated limited technical ability,” the staffers wrote in their letter. “This process created significant security risks.”
About 40 office workers were laid off this month. They wrote that the firings crippled the government's technology management.
“These highly skilled civil servants were working to modernize Social Security, veterans’ services, tax filing, health care, disaster relief, student aid, and other critical services,” the resignation letter states. “Their removal endangers millions of Americans who rely on these services every day. The sudden loss of their technology expertise makes critical systems and American’s data less safe.”
Tuesday saw the resignation of about a third of the 65 USDS employees who had previously refused to take on additional responsibilities under DOGE.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is the latest official in the Trump administration to give an exception to the DOGE request that all federal workers email a list of their accomplishments for the previous week.
The Office of Personnel Managment issued the email titled "What Did You Do Last Week?" and said that any federal employee that did not respond with a list of five items would be effectively resigning from their position.
The emails elicited an outcry from many employees, with some outraged at having to be accountable for their accomplishments and others worried that it could expose classified information to the public.
The FBI and DOD quickly told their employees they should not respond to the email, and Gabbard added her refusal soon after.
“Given the inherently sensitive and classified nature of our work, [intelligence community] employees should not respond to the [Office of Personnel Management] email,” Gabbard wrote.
It's not that the officials are defying DOGE head Elon Musk, where the request originated, or Trump in their instructions to sensitive departments, although that's surely what media outlets like the New York Times and UK Independent want the public to believe.
Instead, the officials want email responses routed through the respective agencies in a secure way, avoiding any national security breaches.
The initial confusion shows how Musk and others at DOGE are shooting from the hip in real time, rather than carefully planning their strategies for cutting government waste, fraud and abuse.
Moving quickly may be intended to keep media pundits off-balance so they don't have a lot of time to create oppositional content about the moves.
Or it could just be Musk's usual way of acting first and thinking about it/making adjustments later.
There are signs that OPM may be backing off from the requirement.
A memo from Health and Human Services to its employees said that the agency backtracked on the email request and that responses may expose senders to malicious observers.
"In discussions with OPM officials yesterday and today, OPM has now rescinded that mandatory requirement," HHS told its staff members. "There is no HHS expectation that HHS employees respond to OPM and there is no impact to your employment with the agency if you choose not to respond."
The deadline to respond to the email was Monday at 11:59 p.m., as originally imposed.
A Delta Airlines flight on its way to Sydney, Australia had to return to LAX and make an emergency landing there late Saturday after smoke filled the aircraft.
The flight had 162 passengers and crew, all of whom were safe in this latest aircraft incident to make the news.
The smoke was said to have come from the galley. Passengers were placed on another flight after the landing.
News footage from ABC7 showed the airplane landing in the darkness.
“Upon landing, there was no smoke in the cockpit, but pilots requested medical attention for passengers who may have been affected by smoke, according to audio from LiveATC.net,” ABC7 reported.
The incident occurred just days after another Delta Airlines flight crashed in Toronto Pearson Airport during landing, caught fire, and flipped over in the snow.
No one has been killed in that incident so far, but one child and two adults were critically injured and up to eight total passengers suffered injuries, according to paramedics.
On Wednesday, two small planes collided in Arizona near Marana Regional Airport, killing two of the four people on board the aircraft. The airport, near Tuscon, has no air traffic control tower.
Airplane-related incidents have been in the news since a military helicopter collided with an American Airlines jet last month, killing all 67 people on both aircraft.
USA Today reported that there have been 14 fatal aircraft incidents already this year, but the total number of aviation accidents so far in 2025 is down significantly from last year.
Furthermore, the American Airlines collision is the only fatal aviation accident in the last 15 years. All the others were smaller private planes.
A Bureau of Transportation report states, "Transportation incidents for all modes claimed 44,546 lives in 2022, of which all but 2,032 involved highway motor vehicles. Preliminary estimates for 2023 suggest a further decline in fatalities."
This makes flying the safest mode of transportation by far, even though the constant news reports of accidents make it seem much less safe.
President Donald Trump is planning on unleashing "holy hell" on Mexican drug cartels following the decision to label the cartels as "foreign terrorist organizations."
Trump has long promised to drop the hammer on the cartels in Mexico that have been responsible for smuggling in deadly drugs, engaging in human trafficking, and committing acts of violence on the southern border.
Trump's plans to go to war with the cartels are an extension of Trump's effort to secure the southern border which has become lawless thanks to cartels which were emboldened by the previous administration.
The White House's statements on the cartel paired with the terrorist organization designation have raised speculation that the Trump administration is going to use military force in northern Mexico.
National security adviser Mike Waltz spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference saying, "We are going to unleash Holy hell on the cartels. Enough is enough. We are securing our border, and the cartels are on notice."
The Trump administration is poised to flex America's military might in crushing the cartels, and to a lesser extent, Mexico.
Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum has been resisting Trump's calls for a crackdown leading some to suspect that Sheinbaum is a cartel asset considering the political violence and assassinations of her political opponents.
Considering the cartels run large portions of Mexico and utilize extreme violence, many suspect that Sheinbaum only rules in exchange for favors to Mexico's many brutal drug cartels.
These suspicions have only grown stronger since Sheinbaum loudly condemned the labeling of cartels as terrorist organizations and began to loudly chirp about Mexico's sovereignty.
The Trump administration appears to not care about Sheinbaum's bleating as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been clear that use of military force, even in Mexican territory is on the table.
Sheinbaum doesn't want Mexico's sovereignty violated but is harboring and aiding terrorist organizations that commit violence against Americans and traffic deadly substances into the United States.
Trump's executive order designating the cartels as terrorist organizations explicitly states that these criminal organizations are a threat to U.S. national security, foreign policy and economic interests.
The Pentagon has already begun to conduct intelligence operations against the cartels as U.S. drones were seen flying over northwestern Mexico.
It remains to be seen how Trump will handle President Sheinbaum and the Mexican government but ultimately Mexico has no recourse against the United States either militarily or economically.
Sheinbaum will verbally protest Trump's military intervention but ultimately has no power to stop the United States from coming in and stomping the cartels into oblivion.
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) became the only GOP Senator to break with the party in voting against a budget resolution that ultimately passed on a 52-48 vote.
The resolution will, among other things, fund Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan after his border czar Tom Homan said there were insufficient funds for the operation to deport millions of illegal immigrants let into the United States by former President Joe Biden.
The budget sets aside $175 billion for border security, which will be used for Trump’s border wall with Mexico, and a $150 billion boost to the defense budget.
The resolution is targeted at specifically border security and military spending which isn't the "one big beautiful bill," that Trump called for.
Senate Democrats were successful in putting up significant resistance to the bill via endless amendments and other procedural roadblocks. This entire situation hasn't reflected well on the Senate GOP and suggests that the next two years could be full of fruitless struggles.
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the Republican chair of the Senate budget committee, defended the situation claiming that other priority issues would be addressed in separate bills.
Graham stated, "This budget resolution is a complete gamechanger when it comes to securing our border and making our military more lethal. It will allow President Trump to fulfill the promises he made to the American people – a very big deal."
Graham also highlighted the need for this resolution to pass immediately saying, "I hope the House can pass one big bill that meets President Trump’s priorities. But this approach provides money that we needed yesterday to continue the momentum on securing our border, enforcing our immigration laws and rebuilding our military. Time is of the essence."
The situation has illustrated the difficulties that the Trump administration will deal with as a result of the slim majorities that the GOP hold in both the House and the Senate.
The House GOP caucus is particularly problematic as House Speaker Mike Johnson is reportedly having trouble getting all GOP Representatives to fall in line for Trump's desired "one big beautiful bill."
While Trump has significant power to prosecute his agenda in the executive branch, it's becoming clear that Congress is going to be Trump's biggest problem over the next few years.
Senator Paul wasn't the only GOP Senator who was planning a protest vote against the bill as Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) was planning on voting against it as well until he personally spoke to Trump.
Now the nation's attention will turn to the House where the biggest fight is set, likely over possible cuts to Medicare as the GOP pursues cost-cutting measures to offset tax cuts.
The GOP is looking to find $2 trillion in spending reductions and will look to cut $900 billion in unnecessary expenses related to health care programs. This has emerged as the keystone issue as many Democrats and even moderate Republicans are resistant to cuts.
Trump will have to get involved and will likely have to make more calls to get wayward Representatives to fall in line as the House gets ready to push truly game-changing legislation.
Four federal courts have now declined to reinstitute President Donald Trump's ban on automatic birthright citizenship after an injunction temporarily blocked it, setting up a Supreme Court fight over the issue.
The latest rejection was from the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, with Judge Danielle Forrest, a Trump appointee, ruling that the Trump administration did not qualify for emergency relief from the injunction.
The ruling says “nothing about the merits of the executive order or how to properly interpret the Fourteenth Amendment,” she made clear.
She said it was too early to consider the merits of the case.
“Judges are charged to reach their decisions apart from ideology or political preference,” Forrest wrote in a concurring opinion. “When we decide issues of significant public importance and political controversy hours after we finish reading the final brief, we should not be surprised if the public questions whether we are politicians in disguise.”
If the court rules too easily on emergency requests, she argued, it diminishes trust in the judicial system.
“There must be a showing that emergency relief is truly necessary to prevent immediate irreparable harm,” he wrote. “The Government did not make that showing here, and, therefore, there is no reason for us to say anything about whether the factors governing the grant of a stay pending appeal are satisfied.”
John C. Coughenour, an 83-year-old federal judge in Seattle, blocked Trump's original order to ban birthright citizenship last month pending legal challenges to it.
Critics say the order clearly violates the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause, which says that anyone born in the United States is a citizen.
Others point to wording in the amendment that limits citizenship to those willing to be "subject" to the laws of the United States.
The issue is one that will be fought over when the case is finally heard, but Trump knows his order will have a better chance of standing if it is already implemented than if it isn't.
Democrats seem to have a strategy to challenge all of Trump's policies in court, hoping they will be rejected there.
The executive and legislative branches are beyond their grasp right now, but the courts are not all dominated by Republicans yet.
If the case goes to the Supreme Court, though, Democrats are probably out of luck.
The President of the United States, Donald Trump, proclaimed himself "king" on Wednesday, as he praised his administration's attempt to halt federal approval of New York's "congestion pricing."
Congestion pricing is a toll on automobiles that was implemented one month ago in order to raise funds for the region's obsolete mass transport system, as the New York Post reported.
Sean Duffy, the Secretary of Transportation, wrote a letter to Kathy Hochul, the Governor of New York, stating that the federal government had control over roadways that led to Manhattan and that the additional tolls posed an unjust hardship for vehicles who were traveling outside of the city.
The prospective elimination of congestion charging was something that President Trump hailed as a triumph, going so far as to compare himself to royalty on Truth Social.
"CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!" he wrote on social media.
Within the framework of the system, the majority of vehicles that entered Manhattan's central business area were required to pay a peak cost of $9 between the hours of 5 a.m. and 9 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. on weekends.
This fee was applicable from 60th Street all the way down to the southern edge of the Financial area.
This change wasn't welcomed by the New York governor's office, a group that historically has gained much from increased collections on toll roads.
Hochul firmly stated at a news conference held not long after the announcement by the Trump administration that the toll cameras will continue to operate and criticized Trump.
"President Donald Trump tweeted, 'Long live the king.' I’m here to say New York hasn’t labored under a king in over 250 years," she told reporters at Grand Central Terminal in New York City. "And we sure as hell are not going to start now."
According to Duffy, the tolls, which were imposed on traffic heading to Manhattan, were "backwards and unfair."
“New York State’s congestion pricing plan is a slap in the face to working class Americans and small business owners,” he said in statement: “Commuters using the highway system to enter New York City have already financed the construction and improvement of these highways through the payment of gas taxes and other taxes."
Others in power outside of Manhattan have applauded the Trump administration's move to terminate the program, claiming that the program unfairly taxes their drivers.
“Today is a huge win for Jersey families, their wallets, and the environment," Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., said in statement. "From Day One, when we first started this fight, we knew that the Congestion Tax was just a giant cash grab for New York and the MTA — all on the backs of hardworking Jersey families."
The Washington Post withdrew a "Fire Elon Musk" ad, which would have demanded the firing of the Tesla CEO and SpaceX creator, who holds U.S. government authority as DOGE's head.
A spokeswoman for Musk critic Common Cause told reporters that the Post pulled the ad. The Washington, D.C.-based paper partnered with Common Cause and the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund to publish the ad in Tuesday's issue for $115,000, as The New York Post reported.
Submitting artwork to the Post, Common Cause President Virginia Kase Solomón was informed the ad might be placed inside the paper but not as a wrap: "We said 'thanks, no thanks' because we had a lot of questions."
The ad would have filled the front and back pages of the Tuesday Post and had a full-page segment with the same theme inside, Common Cause told The Hill.
The advocacy group's representative said Common Cause learned Friday that the Post would not print the Musk ad.
The Post's owner, Jeff Bezos, publicly backed Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, and the publication took a lot of heat for not endorsing a candidate. This led to the decision to pull the plug.
"It's deeply concerning that our ad was censored and rejected without a valid reason. We believe this is limiting our freedom of expression at a critical time in our nation's history," a joint statement emailed to USA TODAY from Solomón and Margaret Huang, Southern Poverty Law Center president & CEO, reads.
"This seems to show the Washington Post is feeling pressure to cover the news a certain way."
A representative from The Washington Post informed reporters via email that the publication would rather not discuss internal decisions on individual advertising campaigns, instead referring to its broad advertising guidelines.
Journalists were provided with the design of the advertisement by Common Cause.
The advertisement featured a giant photo of Elon Musk laughing with his head cocked back, as well as a cutout image of the White House and large white writing that says, "Who's running the country: Donald Trump or Elon Musk?"
On the lower area of the first page of the ad, a smaller text says, "Since day one, Elon has created chaos and confusion and put our livelihoods at risk. And he is accountable to no one but himself."
"The Constitution only allows for one president at a time. Call your senators and tell them it's time Donald Trump fire Elon Musk," the ad reads, followed by the URL FireMusk.org. The second page of the ad says, "No one elected Elon Musk to any office."
On August 5, 2013, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the space corporation Blue Origin, acquired the Post for $250 million.
Since that time, the publication has been subjected to scrutiny for certain political decisions, such as choosing not to endorse a candidate during the 2024 presidential election.
"The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election," Post publisher Will Lewis said in a statement. "We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates."
According to Solomón, the Post’s decision not to run the ad could be attributed to the relationship between Bezos and Trump.
"Is it because we're critical of what's happening with Elon Musk? Is it only OK to run things in the Post now that won't anger the president or won't have him calling Jeff Bezos asking why this was allowed?" Solomón told the Hill.
Acting Social Security Administration (SSA) Commissioner Michelle King quit her position over the weekend after she disagreed with giving Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffers access to taxpayers' private data.
Three sources close to King confirmed her departure, and Trump appointed Leland Dudek to take her place on Monday while his nominee for the position, Frank Bisignano, undergoes the confirmation process.
The White House expects Bisignano to be confirmed within the next few weeks.
"In the meantime, the agency will be led by a career Social Security anti-fraud expert as the acting commissioner," Principal Deputy Press Secretary at the White House, Harrison Fields said about Bisignano. "President Trump is committed to appointing the best and most qualified individuals who are dedicated to working on behalf of the American people, not to appease the bureaucracy that has failed them for far too long."
Bisignano reportedly has posted positive comments about the efforts of DOGE to find and cut federal fraud and waste.
DOGE reported over the weekend that it found more than 20 million people in the Social Security database that were 100 years old or older, despite census data putting that number at more like 80,000.
DOGE wants to find out how many are collecting benefits fraudulently so it can correct the situation and save taxpayers billions more dollars.
According to SSA's numbers, the average Social Security check in January 2025 was $1,976.
If 19,920,000 people are getting fraudulent checks every month, that's a potential fraud of over $39 billion per month or $472 billion per year, which is almost half a trillion dollars.
It stands to reason that a career SSA employee like King might not want that level of fraud to be known, or may not want to be blamed for it.
Musk said that it's probably magnitudes larger than the largest private scam ever.
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, commented on Musk's X post that "this problem has been known for at least a decade and now @realDonaldTrump, through @DOGE and @ElonMusk's team, wants to finally do something about it!"
Half a trillion dollars is about a quarter of the amount DOGE aims to find in yearly savings to balance the U.S. budget and reverse the decades-long trend of deficit spending.
How many more secrets are hiding in our government agencies that have contributed to the more than $36 trillion in debt our nation now carries?