Think Out Loud

Since July, a new streamlined process in Washington allows family members of children in the foster care system to become licensed caregivers. As first reported in the Imprint, the change allows "kinship caregivers" to receive resources that were initially not available to them. The updates made by the state of Washington come after federal policy changes made under the Biden administration to allow states to come up with their own licensing standards. Ruben Reeves is the assistant secretary of licensing for Washington's Department of Children, Youth and Family. Jeanine Tacchini is the agency's deputy assistant secretary of licensing. They both join us to share what this streamlined process has meant for youth in foster care.

Some Portlanders will be seeing a single issue on their ballot, a 75% increase in the current levy that funds parks. Under this new increase, the average homeowner would pay an extra $133 a year in taxes. The levy would help fund swim lessons, summer camps, sports programs and allows the Parks Bureau to provide free or reduced cost programs to low-income residents. However, the levy would not be used for much needed maintenance and the city still lacks a stable funding plan for parks, which a recent city audit found.    Jason Williams is the executive director and founder of the Taxpayers Association of Oregon and opposes the levy. Portland City Council President Elana Pirtle-Guiney supports the increase. We’ll hear from both sides as they make their case on how Portlanders should vote.  

 Indigenous tribes in what is now the northeastern U.S. and Canada have played lacrosse for millennia. Similar stick-and-ball games were played by tribes across the Southeast and Great Lakes region. But according to NCAA data, less than 1% of college lacrosse players are American Indian or Alaskan Native, and more than 80% are white.   Pacific Northwest Native Lacrosse is trying to change that. As reported in Willamette Week, the organization recruits Indigenous lacrosse players from across the PNW to participate in tournaments, youth camps and clinics.   We listen back to a conversation we first aired in March 2025 with JD Elquist,  the founder of PNWNL. We also spoke with Bilįį Blackhorn, who was then a senior at South Eugene High School and who has played lacrosse for 10 years, including with PNWNL. They joined us to talk about the importance of emphasizing the sport’s Indigenous roots.  

A decade ago, nearly every country in the world adopted the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit the rise in global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius by 2100. Member nations are required under the legally binding treaty to submit every five years their climate action plans, or Nationally Determined Contributions, that detail the voluntary actions they commit to take to cut their carbon emissions.    The treaty couldn’t have come at a more urgent time. Last year was Earth’s hottest year on record, including the first year to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-Industrial levels. Still, the Paris Agreement has allowed countries to make some modest progress on cutting emissions and slowing the arrival of the 2 degrees Celsius tipping point that experts warn could trigger irreversible and catastrophic climate change impacts.  But a new study led by the University of Washington found that those carbon-cutting gains are not great enough to offset the environmental costs of global economic growth, which has risen sharply over the past decade. The study also projects how Pres. Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement for a second time may affect the collective, international effort to fight climate change. Adrian Raftery, a professor emeritus of statistics and sociology at University of Washington, joins us for more details.

President Trump’s use of federal immigration officers to arrest people alleged to be in the country without legal status has led to mass arrests, detentions and deportations. Some of those are U.S. citizens, and at least one such man in Milwaukie is suing the federal government over his unlawful detention. Alyssa Walker Keller is a coordinator for the Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition (PIRC). She says in years past, their statewide hotline, 888-622-1510, might receive about 50 calls in a typical month. In the last two weeks, she says, the number is more like 2,000. Walker Keller says the work of the organization is only possible with volunteers who give their time and expertise to support those targeted by ICE and their families. She joins us to tell us more about the growing demands on PIRC and the role it’s increasingly playing as heightened ICE activity continues.  

Charles Yu has written a lot about the nature of reality, how we understand what is real, and the assumptions we make about each other and the universe we live in. Yu’s first novel, “How to live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe,” follows a time machine repairman who is searching for his father who is lost in time and memory. His latest book, National Book Award winning “Interior Chinatown,” takes place in a Chinese restaurant that’s also the set for a police procedural TV show and a sendup of stereotypes of Asian American characters. Yu spoke to us on February 29, 2024 in front of an audience of students from Ida B. Wells High School.

The Alcan 5000 Rally isn’t the kind of car race you might think of. It runs from Kirkland, Washington over 5,000 miles up to the Arctic Circle over 11 days. It’s what’s known as a time-speed-distance rally, where following the course, maintaining the right speed and arriving at checkpoints on time is what matters the most. Portlanders Andy and Mercedes Lilienthal placed first in their class and second overall this year. The couple, who are both automotive journalists, have been obsessed with TSD rallies for years. They join us to talk about their win

 Last year, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center received nearly 18,000 reports of confidence/romance scams that resulted in losses of more than $672 million. Perpetrators of romance scams typically find their victims online, often through social media. They use a fake persona to deceive victims into trusting them or believing they’re interested in them romantically while making gradually increasing demands for money, which is usually sent by wire or cryptocurrency. The FBI says there was a record $9.3 billion in losses in the U.S. last year from scams involving cryptocurrency.    Romance scams can be especially costly for victims. The Columbian recently reported that between January 2021 and November 2024, Vancouver residents who were victims of romance scams lost an average of $112,000, according to the Vancouver Police Department. Sgt. Jay Alie, who oversees the VPD’s Property Crime Unit, says that while many romance scam victims are over the age of 60, people in their 30s and 40s have also fallen for them. Alie’s investigations of romance scams have widened beyond Vancouver to reveal other victims across the U.S. who’ve been ensnared in them, acting as middlemen to launder money for scammers they also believed they were in relationships with.   Sgt. Alie joins us for more details about these scams as they grow more sophisticated and shares how to protect yourself or vulnerable loved ones from them.  

 Earlier this month, Eugene paused the use of its automatic license plate reader cameras. They use AI to capture a car’s characteristics, like model and color, and can be used as a tool by law enforcement.   Local officials said the cameras have helped close more than 60 cases. But opponents of the technology say it can be used for mass surveillance, since the system is linked to a nationwide network.    Some residents say they’re concerned the technology could be abused under the Trump Administration and used to target people like immigrants, organizers and those seeking an abortion.    Rebecca Hansen-White is a KLCC reporter and has been covering this issue for the outlet. She joins us with details about the system.  

According to reports from U.S. adoption agencies, only 5% of domestic infant adoptions in recent years were completely closed, meaning no contact between the adoptee and their birth parents. Research suggests that some level of openness tends to benefit adoptive families, birth parents and adoptees, but navigating those relationships still presents a host of challenges.   Author Nicole Chung has documented her experience growing up as a Korean American adoptee in a white family in Southern Oregon in her two memoirs, “All You Can Ever Know” and “A Living Remedy.” Her own adoption was closed, but she recently wrote about the intricacies of open adoption for The Atlantic. She joins us to talk about her reporting.