Think Out Loud

After more than two decades, Portland will once again host a women’s professional basketball team. The as-yet-unnamed team will start playing in the 2026 season. The city’s last WNBA team, the Portland Fire, played from 2000 to 2002 before folding. The announcement comes roughly a year after a different deal to bring a WNBA team to the city fell through. It also comes amid an explosion of interest in women’s sports, both in the Northwest and across the country. Sean Highkin broke the news of the expansion last month in his Substack newsletter, The Rose Garden Report. He joins us with more details on the new team and what it could mean for Portland.

The Western Oregon State Forest Habitat Conservation Plan, which was passed by the Oregon Board of Forestry in March, will reduce logging in western state forests to protect threatened species. Now a school district in Clatsop County is suing the state over the proposed plan. They argue reducing timber harvesting in the area could cause the district to lose millions. Alex Baumhardt is a reporter for the Oregon Capital Chronicle and has been reporting on this issue. She joins us to share more.

For many in the U.S., it can be difficult to find a mental health provider that’s covered by insurance. But many mental health clinicians say insurance companies can make it difficult to be a part of their network. They say companies have “clawed back” payments from therapists or questioned a patient’s need for services.  Health care reporter Annie Waldman, along with a team of other ProPublica journalists, reported on why therapists leave insurance networks. The story was also co-published with NPR. Melissa Todd, a licensed psychologist practicing in Eugene said she left an insurance network after feeling pressured to limit a patient’s care.  We hear more from Waldman and Todd on what providers have experienced and what mental health care looks like in Oregon. 

Hearings on the proposed merger between Kroger and Albertsons ended on Tuesday in Portland. The grocery chains argue that the merger is necessary for them to compete with non-traditional grocers like Costco, Amazon and even Dollar General. But the Federal Trade Commission sued to block the deal in federal court in Oregon on the grounds that it would harm workers and consumers. Lawsuits against the merger are also slated to begin soon in Washington and Colorado. In the meantime, U.S. District Court Judge Adrienne Nelson’s ruling on the Oregon case is expected to have significant implications for the deal. Elizabeth Hayes has been following the proceedings as a reporter for the Portland Business Journal. She joins us with more details on what she heard over the past few weeks. 

It’s not often a new language emerges.But in the last 15 years, a new language was born right here in the Pacific Northwest. It’s called Protactile, and it was created by a group of DeafBlind people who prioritize touch. One of the people at the center of creating this new language is Jelica Nuccio. She moved to Monmouth, Oregon, where Western Oregon University just received a grant for $2.1 million from the U.S. Department of Education’s Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) to help train Protactile language interpreters. We spoke to Jelica about her work in 2021.

Hardly a week goes by in the U.S. without a mass shooting, as the recent shooting at a high school in Georgia earlier this month reminds us of. In that tragedy, a 14-year-old student is suspected of killing two students and two teachers with a semiautomatic assault-style rifle which was legally purchased by his father. The National Rifle Association, along with some conservative lawmakers and the gun lobby argue that mental illness is to blame for mass shootings – not the easy access to firearms.  A new study by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University challenges that view. It compared the U.S. to 40 other countries for the prevalence of mental health disorders and deaths from firearms over a 20-year period, from 2000 to 2019. It found, for example, that the firearm death rate was 11 times greater in the U.S. compared to the other nations while the prevalence of mental health disorders in the U.S. was similar. It also found that the firearm death rate in the U.S. had increased, whereas it declined among the other nations. Joining us to share details about the study is Archie Bleyer, a pediatric and young adult oncologist at OHSU.  Read on-air: The Great Salt Lick auction will take place this Saturday at 6 p.m. at the Churchill School in Baker City. Attendance is free.  

Hardly a week goes by in the U.S. without a mass shooting, as the recent shooting at a high school in Georgia earlier this month reminds us of. In that tragedy, a 14-year-old student is suspected of killing two students and two teachers with a semiautomatic assault-style rifle which was legally purchased by his father. The National Rifle Association, along with some conservative lawmakers and the gun lobby argue that mental illness is to blame for mass shootings – not the easy access to firearms.  A new study by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University challenges that view. It compared the U.S. to 40 other countries for the prevalence of mental health disorders and deaths from firearms over a 20-year period, from 2000 to 2019. It found that death by firearms was 20 times greater in the U.S. compared to the other nations, while the prevalence of mental health disorders in the U.S. was similar. It also found that the firearm death rate decreased, on average, in those other countries whereas it increased sharply in the U.S. over that timeframe. Joining us to share details about the study is Archie Bleyer, a pediatric and young adult oncologist at OHSU. 

NW Natural told Oregonians it had a new source of clean energy: renewable natural gas derived from decomposing organic waste at sites like landfills or dairy farms. In 2017 the company helped to write a law promoting the development of the new fuel, with the promise that it could replace fossil natural gas in our pipelines. Internal documents obtained by ProPublica reveal how the company painted a picture of going green while it has continued to sell as much fossil natural gas in an average year as it did before. NW Natural maintains that it has been stymied in its efforts by lack of support from regulators and too many barriers. McKenzie Funk, reporter for ProPublica, joins us to explain.

In 1990, Barbara Roberts became the first woman elected governor of Oregon. She began her political career as a member of the Parkrose school board and then the board of Mount Hood Community College. She was elected to the Oregon House of Representatives in 1980 and was chosen by her colleagues to be the House majority leader two years later. Two years after that, she became Oregon's Secretary of State, before going on to the top office. We spoke to Roberts in front of an audience at the Civics Learning Project’s Legal Citizen of the Year award ceremony in May, 2024.

Each year, there are nearly three million cases of antibiotic-resistant infections in the U.S. caused by MRSA and other antibiotic-resistant bacteria, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While many of these infections happen during hospital stays, less is known about the role wastewater treatment facilities can play in the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the environment. Researchers at Oregon State University aim to change that with a new study that launched this month. They were awarded more than $2 million from the Environmental Protection Agency to study the presence of antibiotics, antibiotic-resistant bacteria and their genes at 40 wastewater treatment facilities in the U.S., including Oregon. The two-year-long study will also look at seasonal and regional differences in the population of that bacteria and how different treatment processes affect their growth and evolution. Joining us to share details of the study is Tala Navab-Daneshmand, the principal investigator of the study and an associate professor of engineering at OSU.