PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — The Oregon Department of Human Services is asking for help finding a 2-year-old boy who is believed to be in danger. 

Armani Andrews disappeared on June 17 and is thought to be with someone in the Portland area, officials said. 

He’s about two feet tall with brown hair and brown eyes and African American/mixed race, ODHS said.

Locations around Portland that the child may have frequented include the Rose Haven shelter on Northwest Glisan Street, the Multnomah County Central Library on Southwest 10th Avenue and Southeast Portland between 82nd and 103rd avenues.

People who have any information about Andrews’ whereabouts are asked to call 911.

SALT LAKE CITY — A first-of-its-kind monument that could become one of the largest bronze sculptures in the western United States is under construction in Utah.

Surrounded by sculptures lining his home, sculptor Sabin Howard refines his model for what will become the Grand Liberty Arch, a 60-foot-long, 36-foot-tall bronze monument depicting American history.

“It’s based upon geometric solids and how they move in and out of space,” Howard said.

The Grand Liberty Arch tells the story of America through a series of bronze reliefs.

“It is an arch to honor what we can be and is built to celebrate our nation’s 250th year with pride for the original American virtues and ideals,” Howard wrote in the monument’s proposal.

The front of the monument depicts the birth of America, including the Revolutionary War and the Declaration of Independence. Visitors walking through the arch will see the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution displayed on the interior walls alongside an eternal flame.

The opposite side portrays westward expansion and the 20th century, from World War I through space exploration. The two ends depict emancipation and the Civil War.

Each figurine is deeply symbolic. One recurring figure throughout the monument is Lady Liberty.

“Because that liberty is here. It’s a symbol,” Howard said.

Another figure carries a shield, representing the protection of freedom.

The monument features 56 sculpted figures, some standing up to 12 feet tall.

One of those figures, carrying an American flag, is modeled after a Texas veteran. Howard said the veteran served in two wars and, shortly before returning from Afghanistan, stepped on an explosive device that resulted in the loss of his leg.

“He has a tremendous amount of strength and courage,” Howard said. “He’s still going forward, so we’ve been wounded, we’ve been injured, yet we still have the courage to proceed forward.”

Many of the models Howard found in the Beehive State were at local CrossFit. Howard wanted bodybuilders and athletes for his artistic style, something he described as putting a movie on a monument.

“It’s a superhero’s version of American history,” Howard said.

The $55 million monument has been approved by the Capitol Preservation Board and Gov. Spencer Cox for a site above the Capitol. A circular plaza will surround the arch, symbolizing unity and a beacon of guiding light.

Partnering with the American Preparatory Academy, Howard hopes it will design lessons and programs that allow students to recite founding texts and perform at the monument.

Howard will work alongside three or four sculptors, including two from the Beehive State. He has most of the project funded, but is still seeking donors.

“This will show the world what’s going on in Utah,” Howard said.

At 62, decades of dedication have led Howard to this moment.

“It took 42 years to get here,” Howard said.

Howard couldn’t even draw when he was 19 years old, yet he was determined to try.

“I decided one afternoon, I’m going to make art like Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael,” Howard said.

Becoming a sculptor for Howard is about more than mastering technique.

“You’re not only developing your skills, you’re also developing your ability to tell a story through visual narrative,” Howard said.

The story Howard is telling, he said, has never been presented on this scale before.

“What I’m basically doing is I’m manifesting a universe,” Howard said.

A universe that was inspired by his previous creations, and most recently, a monument for the nation.

After more than 75,000 hours of sculpting and after roughly four decades, Howard was commissioned to create the National World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C., featuring 38 figures.

The WWI model took six months to complete. Although the Grand Liberty Arch will be a larger monument, Howard said the current model took only three weeks, not because it’s less complicated, quite the opposite.

Howard attributes his successes to his belief in God.

“I operate with the assumption that someone has my back and Christ and God and light and truth are what drives things forward,” Howard said. “You cannot accomplish things of such magnitude if you do not have faith in something larger than yourself.”

That faith ultimately brought Howard to Utah.

“I was told, ‘Go make a monument for your country. Go make a monument to represent who we are and what our history is,’” Howard said. “There is no human commissioner here. It’s my maker.”

Howard was encouraged by Sen. Mike Lee to make Utah home to his monument, and Howard agreed that the faith-based communities would appreciate the monument more than any other location.

“I don’t think there’s another place in the country that could manage a sculpture of this magnitude or meaning except Utah,” Howard said. “Nothing like this has ever happened.”

The monument’s magnitude in size alone makes the project significant, and Howard called it akin to the Sistine Chapel with how many figurines and symbols will be portrayed.

“When they go look at a monument like that, they’re hit in the gut in a very visceral, alchemical way,” Howard said.

Howard’s six-foot model of the Grand Liberty Arch will be displayed during Independence Day weekend in the Capitol Rotunda.

He will begin sculpting the full-sized monument in July, hoping to install a new panel every 15 months. Howard plans to complete the monument in time for Utah to host the 2034 Winter Olympics.

by Marcos Cruz, CT Mirror
June 29, 2026

Every week in Bridgeport, I sit with immigrant families as they divide their limited weekly earnings in two different directions. Part will pay the rent here in Connecticut. The remaining amount will be transferred back to a family member overseas.

I started a bilingual financial literacy program for these families, but many of the questions they ask me are not related to my services. Instead, they want to know how to safely transfer money to relatives living in Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, or Mexico. Economists call this kind of transfer a remittance. Together, millions of these transfers create a massive flow of capital out of wealthy nations and into lower and middle-income countries.

According to the World Bank, migrant workers transferred over $685 billion into low and middle income countries in 2024, a total that surpassed both foreign direct investment and international development assistance. The Inter-American Development Bank reports that Latin America and the Caribbean received approximately $161 billion in remittances during 2024, and the World Bank puts Mexico’s share at about $68 billion , making it the second largest recipient in the world.

Numbers this large become foreign policy issues. Researchers at the Overseas Development Institute found that in 2023, remittances to developing countries reached approximately $656 billion, three to four times greater than global foreign assistance, which totaled roughly $224 billion. Unlike foreign assistance, which can take months or years to arrive, remittances are paid directly to recipients and spent immediately on basic necessities such as food and medicine. They represent one of the most efficient poverty reduction programs yet developed, and no government designed it.

It should disturb anyone concerned with U.S. foreign policy that Congress has chosen to tax the money sent abroad through remittances.

As part of President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law on July 4, 2025 , a new 1 percent excise tax was added on money sent abroad, beginning January 1, 2026. Earlier versions of the bill proposed a 5 percent tax and then a 3.5 percent tax before lawmakers settled on 1 percent. They also extended its scope to cover both citizens and immigrants. Based on data from the Center for Global Development, an estimated 48 million foreign-born individuals could be affected.

Although a 1 percent tax appears minor when expressed as a decimal, its implications are strategic. The same analysis projected that Mexico could lose over $1.5 billion per year, and that El Salvador, a country whose stability Washington treats as an important relationship, could lose the equivalent of roughly 0.6 percent of its national income. These are precisely the economies whose instability contributes to the migration that Washington says it wishes to reduce. By taxing remittances and lowering incomes in these countries, Washington will have worsened the root cause of the immigration problem while claiming to address it.

The tax also fails on its own merits. The law excludes bank transfers and payments made with U.S. issued debit and credit cards, so it falls hardest on cash transactions, the method used by people who do not have or cannot obtain bank accounts. As predicted, taxing the most transparent means of sending money pushes families toward less transparent channels, the reverse of what the tax intends. It also stacks on top of the roughly 6 percent that migrants already pay in transfer fees, about twice the 3 percent rate the United Nations set as a global development goal.

I was drawn to this issue by faith as much as economics. Catholic social teaching upholds the dignity of work and the central importance of the family, and a remittance is exactly that: money earned through one’s labor and sent across a distance out of love. To tax it is to treat an act of devotion as a loophole to be closed.

There is a superior alternative to the policy our federal government is advancing on immigration. Lower the cost of transferring money internationally. Rather than punishing the people locked out of the banking system with higher costs, give them greater access to it. And treat remittances as what they are, a development tool more effective than nearly all of the direct funding we engage in. A nation confident in its own economic strength does not need to take a cut from the money a domestic worker sends home to her mother.

I will continue to spend my days with these families in Bridgeport, helping them find ways to safely send as much of their earnings as they can. But the next time I hear someone claim that Washington is trying to address immigration at its source, I will remember the new line on that $60 transfer, and I will wonder whether anyone in the room understood what they were taxing.

Marcos Cruz lives in Fairfield.

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