In today’s newsletter: The FDA’s special pass for risky drugs from foreign factories; ProPublica reporting on John Oliver’s show; deaths of homeless residents in Portland, Oregon; and more from our newsroom.
A ProPublica investigation found that for more than a decade, the FDA gave substandard factories banned from the United States a special pass to keep sending drugs to an unsuspecting public.
Our local reporting highlighted on “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”
If you’ve been following our work for a while, you know we often investigate abuses of power by those involved with the juvenile justice system. Recently, news-comedy host John Oliver featured a variety of our reporting on the show “Last Week Tonight.” Here’s a thread on Bluesky of all those investigations, and here’s where you can read them:
That’s how much money the city of Portland, Oregon, committed to a new strategy that then-Mayor Ted Wheeler said would “reprioritize public health and safety among homeless Portlanders” from late spring 2021 through the end of 2024.
As reporter K. Rambo of Street Roots detailed in their reporting with ProPublica, deaths of homeless people recorded in Multnomah County quadrupled throughout that time, despite spending roughly $200,000 per homeless resident. Homeless residents there now die at a higher rate than in any major West Coast county with available homeless mortality data. One of the city’s strategies to address homelessness was to intensify encampment sweeps, which experts say has perpetuated the problem.
Cody Bowman, a spokesperson for the city, called the increase in deaths during the most recent efforts “heartbreaking and deeply concerning,” and outlined steps like providing new shelter beds that the city has taken to support the homeless population.
