Think Out Loud

he Trump administration has created a lot of uncertainty as state lawmakers crafted a budget this year. In the latest economic forecast, Oregon went from a nearly $500 million cushion over the next two years to a roughly projected $373 million deficit. Carl Riccadonna is the state’s economist. Democratic Senator Kate Lieber represents Beaverton and Southwest Portland and is a co-chair of the Legislature’s Joint Ways and Means Committee. They join us with more on Oregon’s economic future. 

Tory Johnston is an enrolled member of the Quinault Indian Nation and a lecturer in American Indian Studies at the University of Washington. He grew up in the Quinault Indian reservation on the Washington coast with a love for music, whether it was the loud guitar riffs of Metallica or the jazz improvisation of Thelonious Monk. In 2023, with no prior experience as a radio DJ, he applied to work on a new show Seattle radio station KEXP was launching that appealed to his academic and personal explorations of Indigenous music. He got the job and is today the co-host and DJ of “Sounds of Survivance.” Airing on Mondays, each episode exposes listeners to artists spanning musical continents and styles, from classical piano compositions by Navajo musician Connor Chee to thrash metal songs performed by New Zealand band Alien Weaponry in English and Te reo Māori. Johnston spoke with us in January 2025 about the show’s eclectic catalog and to share some highlights from his music playlist.

Last year, Oregon ended its three-year experiment with drug decriminalization known as Measure 110. This came when Oregon lawmakers passed House Bill 4002 to implement new criminal penalties for drug possession and fund efforts at the county level to deflect drug users away from the criminal justice system and into treatment as a way to avoid charges. Those deflection programs look different in every county across the state. It has now been a year since that program began in Washington County. District Attorney Kevin Barton joins us, along with John Karp-Evans, the deputy director of the Peer Company, to talk about Washington County’s legal and behavioral health responses to drug use.

Class is now back in session for students across Oregon. Schools are navigating a new statewide ban on cellphones in the classroom, as well as the growing use of artificial intelligence among both students and educators. Meanwhile, aggressive federal immigration enforcement tactics have raised fears in some communities that schools could become hotspots for arrests. Natalie Pate covers K-12 education for OPB. She joins us to talk about these issues and more.

This summer, the Oregon Arts Commission is marking the 50th anniversary of the Percent for Art program, which has helped 900 artists create 3,000 pieces of public art. The 1975 law requires that one percent of the cost of new and renovated buildings go toward a piece of art that’s accessible to the public. The arts commission and Travel Oregon launched a “50 for 50” program in August, highlighting 50 pieces in the collection that span across the state and encourages people to get out to see them. We talk with the Oregon Arts Commission Public Art and Artist Programs Coordinator Ryan Burghard about the campaign, along with artist Christine Clark. She is one of the 900 artists included in the collection. Her piece, “Gathering Panes and Shapes,” is installed at the Eastern Oregon University library in La Grande.  

A recently published study from the University of Oregon found that the fear of deportation declines with age among immigrants without protected status. The research is based on interviews with Mexican immigrants over the age of 50 in the California communities of Oakland, Fremont and Berkeley. The interviews were mostly conducted in 2019 and some in 2022, before the second Trump presidency.   The study found several factors that affected the fear of deportation. For example, older undocumented immigrants tend to have children who are now adults, and so family separation was less of a concern than for an immigrant with minor children. The study also found that “life course mechanisms,” such as leaving the workforce because of retirement, and the older immigrants’ own perception that their age made them less visible targets, also shaped their fear of deportation.    Joining us to discuss the implications of these findings is the study’s author, Isabel García Valdivia, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Oregon.  

Last Friday, Oregon lawmakers convened in Salem for a special legislative session called by Gov. Tina Kotek to pass a transportation funding bill. The special session will now likely not end until later this month to allow Democrats to muster the necessary votes to pass the bill in the Oregon Senate. On Monday, the House passed a bill that would raise gas taxes by 6 cents per gallon, hike vehicle registration and titling fees, raise costs for drivers of EVs, and temporarily double a payroll tax that funds public transit. The bill contains many elements of one introduced earlier this year by Sen. Chris Gorsek, D-Gresham, who is currently recovering from surgery and is seen as a critical vote for the passage of the new transportation funding bill to avert mass layoffs at the Oregon Department of Transportation and cuts in the agency’s services. That earlier bill failed during the regularly scheduled legislative session which ended in June.   OPB political reporter Dirk VanderHart joins us for the latest developments about the special legislative session and the political rifts that have emerged as it nears conclusion.  

 Three years ago, Paul Susi launched PDX ID Assistance, a free service to help people replace lost forms of identification, such as a driver’s license or birth certificate. In a recent magazine essay he wrote for Oregon Humanities, Susi says he was motivated to start PDX ID Assistance after working for years as a manager of homeless shelters in Portland where he saw firsthand the frustration clients experienced trying to obtain housing, employment health care or other services without identification documents.    PDX ID Assistance operates as a kind of free drop-in clinic Susi holds several times a month at locations that are familiar to people experiencing homelessness, like a library or homeless services provider. Susi shows up with a stack of application forms to request a birth certificate in all 50 states, envelopes and stamps for mailing off the forms and checks he fills out to each person seeking his help to cover the cost of replacing an identification document.     Susi joins us to share his experiences with PDX ID Assistance and how it’s taken on new significance in the current political climate.   

The No Vacancy Window Gallery is a self-guided art tour through Portland’s Old Town-Chinatown neighborhood. It launches on September 4 and runs through November 30. The gallery aims to create accessible art in the area by turning boarded-up buildings into exhibition venues. We hear more from curator Lauren Lesueur about the exhibition.

Vaux’s swifts are small, migratory birds that travel from their breeding grounds in the Pacific Northwest to Central and South American each fall, roosting in chimneys and hollowed-out trees along the way. For a few weeks in September, huge flocks of the birds have spiraled into the chimney of Chapman Elementary in Northwest Portland. The nightly display has entertained crowds for decades, but as of last year, the birds appear to have abandoned the chimney.    Joe Liebezeit is the statewide conservation director for the Bird Alliance of Oregon. He joins us to talk about why the birds might be moving and what to expect from the swifts this year.