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Nationally, the electoral blue wave Democrats hoped for turned out to be more of a tsunami, washing away longtime Republican strongholds. In Oregon, where Democrats have been in the majority for decades, Democratic gains were more modest. The state will send U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley and its six incumbent members of…
Freelance photographers Jordan Gale, Rian Dundon and Laura Tesler were on hand for election night watch parties as Democrats in Portland and Salem celebrated electoral victories and Republican Christine Drazan’s supporters had their hopes dashed in Hillsboro.
Across red and purple states, the election news Tuesday was big: Massive changes in places where few would have expected them, flips of control of both sides of the Congress. As for Oregon, well, it went along its usual path. You could even say that the national election results may mean more change for Oregon
As of Tuesday evening, Democrats were poised to hang onto most seats challenged by Republicans, and to gain several new ones.
Democrats appear likely to flip a Marion County district and keep an open Southern Oregon seat, while Republicans have slim leads in two other competitive districts.
WASHINGTON — Democrats will regain control of the U.S. House early next year, after voters throughout the country rejected the policies that Republicans and President Donald Trump implemented during the last two years. The Associated Press, which States Newsroom looks to for the projected winner of congressional…
WASHINGTON — In a stunning upset, Democrats ousted Republicans and flipped control of the U.S. Senate Tuesday night, effectively establishing a barricade for President Donald Trump’s agenda for the last two years of his term. Democrats will now have the power to block many of Trump’s nominees, both executive and…
Oregon's five Democratic congresswomen, one Republican congressman and Democratic U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley have won their races to represent Oregonians in Congress.
The governor throughout the race had banked on nationalizing the election to seize upon discontent with the GOP’s control of Congress and the White House.
America voted. After the Trump administration pressured election officials, after concerns that armed federal agents would deploy to the polls, after fears U.S. Department of Justice election monitors would intimidate voters — ballots were cast by the millions Tuesday, mostly without incident. Across the United…
As of Tuesday morning, more than 1.5 million eligible voters had cast their ballots in Oregon, and election officials said turnout could reach historic highs by Tuesday night.
Oregonians will decide who leads the state for the next four years, pick six U.S. representatives and a U.S. senator and elect 75 members of the state Legislature. For the first time in decades, they won’t weigh in directly on any statewide ballot measures, though many will face questions about school and fire…
Four local Oregon agencies will receive $4 million each to advance street safety projects, members of Oregon’s congressional delegation announced Friday. The funding, which comes from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Safe Streets and Roads for All program, will go to Redmond Fire & Rescue, the city of Salem…
The Washington County District Attorney’s office will review video footage and police reports related to an early October incident in which a masked federal immigration agent appeared to slash the tire of a car belonging to two U.S. citizens.
American democracy faces one of its biggest stress tests of the modern era, as President Donald Trump’s sprawling campaign for power over elections encounters a firewall of judges, state election workers and voting rights leaders heading into Election Day. A cascade of courtroom losses over the weekend dealt a major…
WASHINGTON — When the polls close Tuesday night, the 2026 U.S. election will go down as one of history’s most expensive and extraordinarily ugly midterms — galvanizing record-breaking early voter turnout among a deeply divided electorate. Voters on Saturday crossed the high-water mark of 52.7 million early votes cast…
Voters in nine counties will vote on 16 local ballot measures to fund rural fire districts and departments, among 80 local measures on November ballots.
Most of the nation returns to standard time Sunday morning, and Congress could decide as early as next month whether it will be the last time people have to change their clocks. President Donald Trump wants year-round daylight saving time. The U.S. House voted overwhelmingly in July for the change. Lots of Democrats…
Oregon ranks as 12th in the nation for its gun safety laws, according to gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety. Those laws include banning guns at the state capitol and giving universities the authority to ban guns on campus. Oregon also bars domestic abusers from having guns while subject to restraining…
This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access. The Justice Department has sent yet another round of letters to state election officials warning them that they could face criminal prosecution for violating federal election laws…
A federal appeals court on Friday denied a Trump administration demand that California set aside and not count the ballots of 20,000 suspected noncitizen voters, setting the stage for a possible appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against a U.S…
Hundreds of thousands of natural gas customers across the state will see rates climb across three utility companies.
The closure of one Southern Oregon facility highlights barriers to expanding care for kids with complex behavioral health needs
Memo to the Oregon Legislature: The increasingly raucous battle over plans for public schools — mainly elementaries — in the Portland School District makes for a good reason for never making school district elections partisan. The realities of this debate are intensely practical. School boards in only five states…
Children are breathing in unhealthy air for longer periods of time as wildfires worsen across the country, according to a new study by researchers at Oregon State University’s College of Health. The study, published earlier this month in Environmental Research, found that over a 17-year span, the average number of…
More than a decade after a botched rollout earned Oregon a reputation for having one of the worst state-run health insurance marketplaces in the nation, the state is poised to launch its own system once again.
Disability Rights Oregon has reopened its hotline and launched new online resources for voters struggling to receive, fill out and return ballots.
WASHINGTON — Communities throughout the country have been inundated with television ads and outside spending as politicians try to spur voter turnout in the most competitive U.S. House races in Tuesday’s midterm elections. The focus on a short list of campaigns highlights how much power voters in a small number of…
Washington state’s campaign finance enforcers are allowing candidates for legislative and Supreme Court seats to spend as much of their own money on their campaigns in the final days of this election. And the state Public Disclosure Commission is also not enforcing caps on how much money political committees not tied…
Oregon should open up a “phantom supply” of land in the state for economic development by creating a $250 million industrial site readiness fund, expanding local programs allowing industries to set up across multiple jurisdictions and establishing dedicated swaths of underdeveloped land for future growth, according to…
ALBANY — In 1981, former Linn County Clerk Del Riley had a thought: If he was already required to print and mail out sample ballots before each election, why not just mail out real ballots to save money on printing expenses? He asked the Oregon secretary of state and the Oregon Legislature if he could
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is unlawfully scrutinizing naturalized U.S. citizens and placing them at risk of disenfranchisement, civil rights groups alleged in a lawsuit Wednesday, less than a week before Election Day. The lawsuit, filed in California, came as Homeland Security asked for an emergency…
As days grow shorter and darkness arrives earlier across much of the country, a new study suggests that brighter streetlights may help reduce nighttime violence — at least temporarily. Researchers found that outdoor nighttime violent crime fell by about 46% in targeted areas of Newark, New Jersey, during the first six…
The first comprehensive inventory of the area and volume of western glaciers from Portland State University found 300 have disappeared since the mid-20th century.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek’s recent directive barring data centers on state lands is creating roadblocks for telecommunications companies building out fiber-optic cable networks that transmit internet data and that are typically buried along state highways. Kotek’s September directive told state agencies to pause…
The U.S. Department of Justice plans to send election monitors to every state ahead of Election Day, expanding a long-standing practice that’s spurred concern this year among Democrats and voting rights advocates because of President Donald Trump’s push to influence elections. The Justice Department for decades has…
Many of the areas that saw a spike in late ballots were in Western states, which were the earliest and most enthusiastic adopters of expanded mail-in voting.
More than half a million Oregon voters have returned their ballots as of Monday morning, about 16% of the state’s 3.1 million registered voters, according to unofficial ballot return data from the Oregon Secretary of State’s Elections Division. Voters statewide have just a week left to cast their ballots. Oregon…
Following the Silver Rail Elementary School shooting in Bend, Oregon lawmakers across the political spectrum have shared publicly their grief and their personal experiences with mass shootings and firearm violence. But Oregon’s Democratic and Republican leaders have split when it comes to approaching policy…
Oregon was for a long time one of the last few states without any limits on political campaign contributions. A 2024 state law will change that for elections after this upcoming midterm.
Gov. Tina Kotek said she will request state funding to help Silver Rail Elementary recover from the attack.
Para leer en español, haga clic aquí. A Republican mental health clinician and a one-term Democratic House representative are both hoping their identities as the daughters of Mexican immigrants will appeal to voters in the Oregon House district with the highest share of Hispanic residents. Republican Noemi Legaspi is…
President Donald Trump’s 11th-hour campaign to intervene in California’s vote counting encountered its first resistance from federal courts on Monday, with appellate judges ruling against the effort. A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled against a U.S. Department of Justice request for a…
Americans’ growing frustration over high prices has defined many political campaigns ahead of November’s midterm elections. Rising costs of healthcare, gas and groceries during President Donald Trump’s second term have put Republicans on defense, not only in Washington, but in statehouse and gubernatorial races across…
The percentage of working-age adults without health insurance has increased in the past two years, largely because many people can no longer afford Obamacare coverage after Congress allowed federal subsidies to expire at the end of last year. The uninsured rate for adults ages 19-64 rose to 11.2% this year, up from…
Four years ago, Oregon hospitals were under fire from state authorities and patient advocates. Hospitals, critics said, had made it too hard for patients to apply for and receive help paying their bills. Within months, the state enacted a sweeping law that required hospitals to proactively screen patients and give…
The Department of Homeland Security agreed in a settlement with the state to alert city officials at least 30 days before environmental permitting would get underway.
SPRINGDALE, Pa. — Residents in a small southwestern Pennsylvania town are facing the prospect of a 47-acre data center facility on their doorstep. “Right here behind this fence is where they want to put up the data center, and as you can see, there’s houses right across the street, roughly 100 feet,” said lifelong…
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek on Friday offered some of the clearest details yet on legislation she is planning for the 2027 session to further expand childcare access in the state, flanked by advocates at a Portland-area private school heavily dependent on public funding for early learning and care.
It's not the first time elections monitors have been sent to Oregon, but follows unusual monitor behavior in other states, Oregon election officials said.
WASHINGTON — Fewer than 5% of U.S. House races are seen by a top political analysis as truly competitive heading into November’s midterm elections, giving relatively few voters the ability to determine which party controls the chamber for the next two years. The other 414 of 435 House districts are viewed by the…
The U.S. Department of Justice is stepping up its legal campaign over the midterm elections, suing Alaska over its U.S. Senate election and appealing a lawsuit against suspected noncitizen voters in California. Election law experts have cast doubt on the strength of the cases, criticizing them as performative. The…
Oregon voters have agreed to school bonding measures to pay for secure entries, cameras and fences to mitigate the risk of a tragedy like the Silver Rail shooting.
PORTLAND, Ore. — The latest cosponsor of a U.S. House bill to provide single-payer health insurance defeated a Republican incumbent in a suburban and rural Oregon district by fewer than 10,000 votes two years ago. U.S. Rep. Janelle Bynum, a Democrat now seeking her second term, doesn’t have the far-left profile of…
When you use an artificial intelligence system like ChatGPT, what it gives you depends on the prompt you enter. The answer is likely to be most useful if the prompt is carefully crafted. This underlies a concern recently raised at the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. That regional planning agency uses…
A record number of women are running for state legislative seats this November, more than two-thirds of whom are Democrats. Across the 46 states with legislative seats on the ballot, a total of 3,824 women are running — up from 2022’s previous record of 3,621 women candidates, according to the Center for American…
WASHINGTON — The price health insurance companies charge for employer-sponsored plans increased again this year, as did the deductible many people must pay before those plans begin covering most healthcare costs, according to a survey released Thursday by the nonpartisan health organization KFF. The cost of individual…
Pipeline giant Williams has proposed new expansions for its Northwest Pipeline from the Colorado Rockies through Idaho, Oregon and Washington.
The Oregon congresswoman who represents Bend is calling on federal officials to stop non-emergency immigration enforcement in the Central Oregon city in the wake of last week’s elementary school shooting. In a letter to acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director David Venturella, Democratic U.S. Rep…
Parents of mass shooters in other states have been criminally charged when they allowed their children to have a gun, in spite of warning signs.
Oregonians who were denied coverage for doula services since the beginning of this year could see their claims readjusted after state regulators informed health insurance providers that they misinterpreted Oregon laws.
National Democrats are suing President Donald Trump, accusing his administration of intimidating election officials and asking a federal court to block him from interfering in the midterm elections. The lawsuit, filed late Tuesday in Washington, D.C., comes as the Trump administration mounts a highly public offensive…
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday denied the Trump administration’s emergency request to implement a rule that would terminate gender-affirming care for transgender people incarcerated in federal prisons. It means a lower court order that blocked the policy from going into effect will remain in place for…
Nine states and the District of Columbia lost jobs in the year ending in September, according to a report released Tuesday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Hit hard by the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce, the District of Columbia suffered the largest percentage job loss, down 3.5% or 25,800…
I live in Tillamook County, a rural dairy-farming community where faith runs deep, and this fall, campaign signs line our roads. Abortion is part of the argument those signs are making. I am writing especially to those of who oppose abortion rights, in the hope that my story reminds you of the compassion Jesus taught.
The Umatilla City Council voted Tuesday night to declare an emergency, saying a pause on data centers would cost the city millions.
The Oregon Health Authority said it expects the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid to approve the rise by the end of 2026.
Single-family home completions remain stuck at early pandemic levels as of September as costs, labor supply shortages and high interest take a toll on home builders, especially in the Northeast and South. Apartment building was a more mixed picture, down nationally but up sharply in the Midwest (53%) and West (18%)…
In her second quest to defeat Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, Sen. Christine Drazan, R-Canby, has gone straight into the political lion’s den. She has announced policy plans to reduce taxes and regulations in the heavily-Democratic Portland metropolitan area, emphasized the natural beauty of its waterfront and advocated…
Democrats have used President Donald Trump’s unpopularity to expand the midterm map, and analysts project the party carries momentum heading into the final two weeks of the election cycle, even as Democrats are expected to flip fewer U.S. House seats than wave elections this century. The Cook Political Report with Amy…
Bears are having a very bad year. Across much of the United States, a warm winter and persistent drought have decimated the natural foods that black and brown bears rely on. With nearly every station at the buffet in short supply, the adaptable eaters are turning to human food. From California to Connecticut…
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday establishing a Women’s Health Division within the National Institutes of Health. The new division is set to work with the agency’s existing Office of Research on Women’s Health, which was established in 1990 and “has served as the focal point for…
Oregon famously allows people to place their completed ballots in the mail for dispatch to the county elections office. It’s safe and it works. If you want to be really super-rigorous about security, the platinum standard a small but determined group of Oregonians hold to is to take your completed ballot to the county…
The three Democratic incumbents representing former congressional swing districts in Oregon far outraised their Republican challengers in the third financial quarter of the year, according to federal campaign finance records. With less than three weeks before the general election, congressional candidates Thursday…
With the November election looming less than three weeks away, Oregonians took to the streets Saturday in the nation’s first vote-by-mail state to encourage their fellow citizens to cast their ballots.
The sheer size of investment in data centers is drawing concern as it surpasses all other historical booms and crowds out other more job-creating ventures. Until now, no industry had driven the U.S. economy with such force since the railroad expansion of the late 1800s, when titans battled one another to lay the…
Federal officials intercepted a “suspicious package” addressed to Oregon’s election office before it arrived in the state, Secretary of State Tobias Read said Friday. “We are not aware of any additional suspicious packages heading to Oregon, but our office and our federal partners remain vigilant, and we are asking…
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has a flurry of travel on deck in the final frantic weeks leading up to the end of the midterm elections, in which the GOP is vying to maintain its control of both the U.S. House and Senate. But that outlook looks increasingly less favorable for Republicans, as analysts say
Oregonians can keep track of their ballot’s whereabouts and know when election officials accept it for counting with a new statewide digital tool.
A third-party candidate has the potential to siphon votes from both the Democrat and Republican candidate running in Senate District 3.
Three children and a teacher are dead in Bend after a 16-year-old with a long gun shot them at Silver Rail Elementary School, police said Thursday. The suspected shooter, who has not been identified, is also dead. Police said a community member shot the alleged assailant after seeing him enter the school. Another…
Three Oregon City residents are all in the race to seize control of the Clackamas County-area swing seat held by state Rep. Annessa Hartman, the outgoing Democratic lawmaker who declined to run for reelection while battling cancer. Independent Party of Oregon member and pharmacy owner Pat Hubbell, Republican former…
A federal judge has issued a preliminary ruling blocking the Trump administration from moving the U.S. Forest Service’s headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City while the rest of the lawsuit over the relocation plays out in court. In the order signed Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria, in…
WASHINGTON —Suddenly there’s hope for cutting the reams of red tape that can make getting new energy projects a seemingly endless slog. Top Republican and Democratic senators have unveiled a 417-page bill to overhaul the approval process, a pathway for what’s known as “permitting reform.” A debate is likely when…
Big corporate and party money has pored into the race between Republican Scott Hege, 64, and Democrat Hank Sanders, 25, for Oregon’s 52nd House District.
WASHINGTON — Democrats are touting an ambitious legislative agenda centered on affordability and accountability if they take back the U.S. House or Senate — or both — in November. A slew of pressing policy debates are on tap for Democrats, including healthcare, immigration, voting rights, the war in Iran, oversight…
A business law attorney and an occupational safety professional with vastly different levels of political experience are vying for control of one of Oregon’s few swing districts.
The U.S. Department of Justice is demanding California not count ballots from voters it says are suspected noncitizens, a move by the Trump administration to apply last-minute pressure as voting begins in the midterm elections. The Justice Department on Tuesday gave California election officials 48 hours to remove…
WASHINGTON — The Social Security Administration announced on Wednesday that recipients will receive a 3.6% increase in benefits in 2027. The cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, will begin for 72 million Social Security beneficiaries in January. It will apply for Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, recipients…
AUSTIN, Texas — It was a good day for the defense. Standing in front of a judge in Austin’s Blackwell-Thurman Criminal Justice Center, attorney Matthew Shrum secured a ruling that spared his client from serious punishment on a shoplifting charge. In the hallway immediately afterward, the defendant thanked Shrum with…
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek and state Sen. Christine Drazan, R-Canby, spent their final televised debate for the 2026 Oregon gubernatorial race tussling over who could best spur economic growth, housing and development in the state with a focus on Oregonians outside of Portland.
Gov. Tina Kotek ordered the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality to pause air and water pollution permits until July 1, 2027.
In a county-by-county mail delivery test, Oregon’s secretary of state found rural areas received slow USPS service and urged voters to send mail ballots by Oct. 27 or find a ballot box.
Three weeks before Election Day, the Trump administration’s sprawling project to send sensitive personal information on millions of voters to the Department of Homeland Security has been declared illegal by a federal judge. The blistering court decision comes after the Department of Justice pressured or sued states…
Oregonians want a word with their leaders about data centers. That reminds me of what another state’s residents and their elected leaders succeeded in doing when another deep-pocketed industry came for their resources. In the 1970s, when Alaskans faced the challenges and opportunities that arose from the onset of oil…
Urban hospitals are closing at roughly the same rate as rural ones, and the shuttered hospitals are more likely to have served communities with high poverty rates and fewer transportation options, according to a new study published Thursday in the journal JAMA. Researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public…
Josiah Dean, a small business adviser and former hotel owner backed by the Pacific Green Party is hoping to unseat Oregon’s longest-serving state representative.
WASHINGTON — Democratic leaders in the U.S. House condemned a “deeply disturbing” raid early Monday at the District of Columbia home of Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat who has long been a target of verbal attacks by President Donald Trump and Republicans. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., Democratic…
The Trump administration’s order to allow import of Russian diesel violates a 2022 law banning Russian energy imports while the country’s war with Ukraine is ongoing, according to a bipartisan group of U.S. senators. Following an Oct. 9 call between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the U.S…
One of Oregon’s newest Democratic state lawmakers is under investigation by the Oregon Government Ethics Commission for failing to disclose income.