OPB Audio

The cuts are just the beginning. The hole in the state’s budget will double as federal funding phases out over time.

Marisa Anderson has been dubbed as one of “this era’s most powerful players,” for her deep and varied interpretations of American music. Her latest album, “The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music,” takes inspiration from folk music from around the world. From Vietnam and Syria, to Afghanistan and the Soviet Union, the album is shaped by songs from countries that have been in conflict with the U.S....

“Death of a Drag Queen” opens on the 60th birthday of fictional queen Cram Brulee. Her water is shut off, an eviction notice is on the door and the friends who are supposed to take her out to celebrate keep pushing back their arrival. Inspired by “Death of a Salesman,” the play follows Cram as she grapples with her own fading relevance and mortality. The play opened at Portland’s Echo theater in D...

Nearly 5 million acres of forest and grasslands in Oregon could be seeing drastic changes under the federal government's new draft plan for the Blue Mountain Forests. The draft, which was recently released to the public, proposes tripling the logging happening across three national forests in the state’s Blue Mountain region. While some are hopeful this could boost timber jobs that have declined i...

The public university that received $3.3 million in public funds to build a daycare center that doubled as a workforce training pipeline closed after just 11 months.

Several days a week, Quinn Brown will head to Goodwill stores in the Portland area to spend hours at a time sifting through blue bins to look for clothes to resell on the secondhand clothing site Depop. Brown launched his business reselling vintage clothes in 2023, when he was a junior at Lincoln High School. He says his items sell on average for $13 and the biggest sale he’s netted to date was $2...

Oregon students missed classes, left school and struggled to learn as the fear of ICE undermined the school year. Washington County saw Oregon’s highest number of recorded immigration arrests from July to December. In all, Operation Black Rose led to the detention of more than 1,400 people statewide. That number includes some of the 39 kids who were arrested in Oregon between January 2025 and this...

After more than 40 years in Portland’s Old Town, homeless services nonprofit Sisters of the Road is moving. Last month, the organization closed on a house in the Lents neighborhood which will serve as the new base of operations for the organization. This comes after the nonprofit closed its physical doors in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and after the organization initially announced their in...

Last Thursday, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek announced she had accepted the resignation of the director of the Oregon Health Authority, Dr. Sejal Hathi. As OPB reported, Hathi wrote to OHA employees that she was leaving to focus on her family, health and “personal priorities” without mentioning what she plans to do next. In May, the New York Times published an op-ed Hathi wrote about the lack of postpart...

St. Paul Rodeo celebrates 90 years in small-town Oregon

Portland hosts the world’s largest fencing event

Oregon communities have some of the nation’s highest rates of alcohol-related deaths among adults age 65 and older. That’s according to a new study conducted by the Woodlands Grove Recovery Campus in Ohio. It used CDC data from 2020 through 2024 to rank metro areas by both alcohol-induced death rates and total number of deaths. Of the top 15 cities with the highest rates, six were in Oregon. Roseb...

Cathedral Park Cohousing is a mixed-income cohousing development in North Portland that was recently awarded $1.4 million in Oregon State Lottery Bond funds. Along with $2 million in funding previously awarded by Oregon Housing and Community Services and other funding sources, the project is expected to break ground early next year. In cohousing developments, residents typically own their own unit...

In just a few weeks, our nation will commemorate the 250th anniversary of its independence. As we approach this historic milestone, “Think Out Loud” has been hearing from guests whose life experiences and personal histories illuminate different aspects of what it means to be an American. Noushin Hoshyar came to the U.S. in 2010 and just last month, became a naturalized citizen. She's originally fr...

It took months for Pendleton city staff to negotiate a tentative settlement to resolve a lawsuit over the city’s homelessness policies. Ultimately, it took only three hours of public pressure before it unraveled.

In just a few weeks, our nation will commemorate the 250th anniversary of its independence. As we approach this historic milestone, “Think Out Loud” hears from guests whose life experiences and personal histories illuminate different aspects of what it means to be an American. Jill Gentry is the recently installed State Regent of the Oregon State Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution...

The National Civic League has announced the 10 recipients of its prestigious All-American City award. Woodburn was the smallest of the 10 cities from around the country to receive this honor, and the only one on the west coast. The winning cities were chosen by a panel of judges based on how they demonstrated “innovation, civic engagement, and inclusive collaboration.” Woodburn Mayor Frank Lonerga...

The punk organization Volume Bomb has been around in one form or another for the last 10 years. It’s been organizing and promoting local punk bands ever since it began — with one neighborhood block party. Volume Bomb’s mission has gradually evolved since then, says co-founder Jason Rocksmore. Last year, they incorporated as a 501(c)(3) to better fulfill their goals of supporting local punk bands....

Nanaimo bars bring a sweet taste of Canada to Portland

Since 1971, the WWAMI (Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho) program at the University of Washington school of medicine has been working to bolster the rural physician workforce, both by recruiting medical students from these communities and providing them financial support to return to their communities as family physicians. The program also provides specialized education that prepares...

Centrally Oregon is a co-working space for artists, writers and other professionals which opened earlier this month in Sunriver. The Bulletin previously reported on its opening and owner Stephanie Gregory’s vision for it. Located inside a 1,400-square-foot warehouse, members have access to dedicated desks, an art studio space and workshops Gregory currently teaches on writing, printmaking, waterco...

As we approach the 250th anniversary of American independence, “Think Out Loud” has been hearing from guests whose life experiences and personal histories illuminate different aspects of what it means to be an American. We’ll continue that conversation with Tony Johnson, the chairman of the Chinook Indian Nation. The nation represents five tribes whose ancestral homelands surround the mouth of the...

A Washington State University study found that rates of food insecurity in the U.S. vary among members of different racial and ethnic groups. It found, for example, that only 10% of Asian American adults who live in severe poverty are food insecure, compared to 40% of American Indian and Alaska Native adults living in severe poverty. It also found that low-income white adults had similar levels of...

Gina Jacobsen and Leslie Warren are both financial advisors based in Portland who specialize in helping women navigate financial confidence and life changes such as divorce or death of a partner. They say they notice patterns in the women they work with — oftentimes, they have their first interactions with money management later in life, and Jacobsen and Warren often take on the role of building u...

Last week, the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration to end protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants. The Temporary Protected Status program was signed into law by George H. W. Bush in 1990 and allows citizens of other countries to stay in the U.S. when it is deemed unsafe for them to return to their home countries. The 6-3 vote only ends protections for p...