Think Out Loud

It’s been eight months since the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on Grants Pass v. Johnson, which determined that cities can punish unhoused people for sleeping outside, even if they have nowhere else to go. Since then, Grants Pass officials have restricted public camping to two city-owned lots, one of which closed earlier this year. The city council recently voted to reopen the site after Disability Rights Oregon filed a lawsuit alleging that the city’s restrictions violated state law.  Amid the back-and-forth, homeless services providers have continued to provide aid to the city’s unhoused residents. Scott Nelson is the board president of the Mobile Integrative Navigation Team, or MINT. He joins us to share more about what providing services in Grants Pass has been like since the Supreme Court decision last summer.

In Europe, dogs have been used for centuries for their keen sense of smell to locate prized black and white truffles which can fetch hundreds or thousands of dollars a pound depending on their variety. In Oregon and the Pacific Northwest, using dogs to sniff out truffles is relatively new and growing in popularity. There are even training classes and an annual truffle dog contest held at the Oregon Truffle festival.  Oregon has four varieties of gourmet edible truffles, but there are hundreds of species of these mysterious fungi growing on the roots of conifer and oak trees across the state. So what if you could use a dog’s nose to home in on the odor signatures of all sorts of truffles, not just the commercially valuable ones, for a better scientific understanding of truffle biodiversity? That’s the goal of Heather Dawson, a doctoral student in the biology department at University of Oregon. She trained her golden retriever, Rye, to detect dozens of different kinds of truffles in the Willamette Valley alone. She joins us to share her work and the attention it’s attracting among other scientists and forest foragers.

Karen Thompson Walker, a Portland novelist acclaimed for her explorations of memory and identity, discusses her latest work, 'The Strange Case of Jane O.' She delves into the protagonist's disorienting experiences with memory and identity, highlighting the emotional turmoil it brings. The conversation also touches on the influence of Oliver Sacks, gender biases in narrative acknowledgment, and the delicate art of building tension in storytelling. Walker emphasizes the power of empathy in patient-doctor relationships, underscoring the intersection of science and literature.

On Tuesday, the House narrowly approved a Republican budget proposal calling for $2 trillion in federal spending cuts. The proposal specifically calls for the House Agriculture Committee to find $230 billion worth of reduced spending, which will be challenging without touching the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. At the same time, cabinet officials in the current administration support limiting what can be purchased through the program. In Oregon, food banks across the state have been seeing increased need in their communities. Matt Newell-Ching is the policy manager at the Oregon Food bank. He joins us to share what demand is currently looking like across the state and how it’s preparing for potential cuts and restrictions to federal programs. 

Guide Dogs for the Blind operates two campuses — one in San Rafael, California, and one in Boring, Oregon. The nonprofit raises and trains dogs to work with people experiencing vision loss, and provides a variety of programs for the humans who will one day partner with them. Plans are underway to expand GDB’s Boring campus through a new community hub, which would double the number of clients the organization can serve in Oregon.  Susan Armstrong is vice president of client programs for GDB. George Miers is a partner at Studio Miers | Chou | Poon, which designed the new facility. They both join us to talk more about the expansion and what it takes to design a facility with senses other than vision in mind.

 Abortion is illegal in Idaho, which borders Oregon to the east. For years leading up to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, women’s health advocates warned that maternal care and abortion services were part of an intrinsically woven set of OB/GYN care that women’s health depended on. Now that Idaho has outlawed abortion – the state's ban is among the most restrictive in the nation – residents are living out what advocates predicted. Some women who want to have children can now no longer get maternal care where they live, and some have suffered complications during pregnancies they desperately wanted to take to term but could not, because of their own health or fetal anomalies. Jen Jackson Quintano lives in North Idaho with her husband and two children and runs a tree service business. She began a storytelling effort she calls the Pro Voice Project, for women to tell their own stories about accessing – or not being able to access – reproductive health services. The project has held live performances mostly around Idaho for women to tell their own stories at the microphone. In some cases where they haven't felt comfortable doing so, their stories are performed by actors. Desi Ballis and her husband lost their third child, Tucker, a year ago, in the second trimester when the couple discovered he had a life-threatening condition. Ballis, who lives in Haley, Idaho, was at risk of life-threatening complications before she made it to Utah to have a medically necessary abortion. In Idaho, she would not have been able to get that care until she was actively dying. Ballis and Quintano join us to share their personal experiences and what they hope to achieve by sharing some of the most painful experiences of their lives. Members of the Pro Voice Project will be in Portland March 1 for an event that highlights women’s stories in Idaho and in Oregon, where women face no state restrictions on abortion, but some still struggle with other barriers to access.

A long-vacant block on North Russell Street and North Williams Avenue, which was once part of a thriving African American community in Portland, will finally house people once again. The site was razed in the 1970s as part of an urban renewal project to expand the hospital there. Tomorrow, construction will begin on an 85-unit apartment building, 20 single-family homes and office and retail space for Black-owned businesses. Bryson Davis, chair of the board of the nonprofit behind the project, Williams & Russell CDC, joins us, along with developer Anyeley Hallova, to talk about the project.

Rep. Cliff Bentz represents Oregon’s 2nd District in the U.S. House, covering most of the state east of the Cascades. He’s the only Republican in the state’s congressional delegation, and he voted in favor of the House budget resolution Tuesday that would mean nearly $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next 10 years. Statewide, about a third of Oregonians rely on the Oregon Health Plan, which is the way people in the state receive Medicaid. Bentz, like many others in his party, has held town halls that have drawn crowds of angry constituents who raised big questions about the Republican party supporting Trump’s cuts to the federal government led by Elon Musk and the overreach of the executive branch. Bentz joins us to talk about his vote and how he’s approaching his job at this political moment.    

U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley joined with other senators in a letter to Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and President Donald Trump urging them to not cut Medicare and Medicaid. The two programs serve 140 million people nationwide, and in Oregon, the way people receive Medicaid is through the Oregon Health Plan. Sen. Wyden joins us to discuss protecting the health care these federal programs provide, what Democratic representatives are hearing from their constituents about the rapid take down of the federal government and what he and his party are doing in response.

On Tuesday, a federal judge in Seattle temporarily blocked the suspension of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, which President Donald Trump halted by executive order on his first day in office. Several nonprofits that provide federally contracted refugee resettlement services, including Lutheran Community Services Northwest, along with stranded refugees and their relatives filed the lawsuit challenging the executive order. Since 1984, LCSNW has helped more than 45,000 refugees resettle in the region, according to Salah Ansary, its senior director of advocacy and government affairs. Ansary immigrated to Portland in 1978 shortly before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He joins us to talk about the lawsuit and the impact Trump’s executive order has had on his organization’s efforts to aid refugees in Portland, Southwest Washington and the Seattle area.