Think Out Loud

Earlier this month, the Urban League of Portland released top-line findings from a new report that examined how Black communities across Oregon are faring. The latest State of Black Oregon — which follows up on a report of the same name from 2015 — found persistent challenges in education, while documenting substantial gains in several measures of civic participation, including voter r...

The Bureau of Land Management intended to capture an entire herd of wild horses in southeastern Oregon this month after a wildfire burned much of the vegetation in the area. But a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order limiting the roundup , stating that the agency failed to adequately study how it would affect the herd’s genetic diversity. The BLM began its reduced roundup last...

Last Wednesday, thousands of students in Bend-La Pine Schools returned to class following a school shooting at Silver Rail Elementary in Bend on Oct. 15. A 16-year-old former student at Silver Rail killed three children and a teacher, and seriously injured another educator and young student that day. A Silver Rail parent, Kaylub Giamanco, who was passing by the school at the time of the attack, pu...

Kaylub Giamanco is a 36-year-old carpenter and father of two children who attend Silver Rail Elementary school in Bend. In an exclusive interview with OPB News Regional Managing Editor Emily Cureton Cook, Giamanco described the “split second decisions” he made when his life forever changed on Oct. 15.    That afternoon, Giamanco pursued and fatally shot an armed 16-year-old w...

While juggling her graduate studies in computer science at the University of Washington, Yael Eiger has been volunteering at two prisons in the Seattle metro area to teach math and other subjects. Her weekly visits exposed her to technologies such as electronic kiosks and tablets incarcerated people are required to use for communicating with loved ones or for buying and playing digital content.&nb...

Within the first week of classes, the University of Oregon received five reports of sexual assault on or near campus. At least four of those reports involved students. In response, the president of the university in a statement urged students to complete their annual required sexual assault-prevention training online. But as new reporting from Inside Higher Ed shows, these trainings when used alon...

Oregon’s 2026-27 Teacher of the Year is Nate Jackson, a social studies teacher at Willamette High School in Eugene. He also advises the school’s Black Student Union , helping to organize student trips and the first Black Summit for students across the district. Before becoming a teacher, Jackson had a career as an entertainment journalist and emcee for college sporting events.   J...

A million people in the Portland area get their water from the Bull Run watershed , about 25 miles east of the city. The city council voted in 2017 to build the water filtration plant to protect against cryptosporidium to comply with Environmental Protection Agency standards.   The project was originally estimated at $500 million, but since then it’s risen to $2.58 billion. The water bu...

Some families living in mobile home parks in Malheur County have been dealing with arsenic in their drinking water supply for years. And water tested recently at one location where unsafe levels of arsenic have been found since 2004, recently found levels six times higher than federal standards for safe drinking water. We’re joined by OPB Eastern Oregon reporter Monica Carrillo-Casas , who&r...

The Portland Trail Blazers kicked off their new NBA season Wednesday night at the Moda Center with a resounding 41-point victory over the Phoenix Suns . It marked the return of 9-time NBA All-Star Damian Lillard to the Blazers and his first regular season game since an Achilles injury he suffered in April 2025 while playing for the Milwaukee Bucks. Lillard scored 25 points, including six 3-pointer...

Monarch butterflies in the Pacific Northwest are currently making their annual migration south for the winter. Around 200 of them are carrying innovative digital trackers that will allow researchers — and the public — to follow their path for the first time.   David James , an associate professor in Washington State University’s entomology department, is overseeing the proje...

In 2022, Portland musician and storyteller Joe Kye created Tiger Tiger, a festival in Portland celebrating the region’s diverse Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. The festival was also a way to bring joy and healing to those communities after a surge of anti-Asian bias and hate crimes during the pandemic.     After Tiger Tiger, Kye decided he needed to focus on h...

Ayad Akhtar is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and the author of the novels “Homeland Elegies” and “American Dervish.” His works explore themes that span religion and identity, cultural assimilation and immigrant aspiration drawn from his upbringing as a Pakistani American in the Midwest.    His latest book is “The Radiance.” It’s written in...

With a chill in the air and Halloween around the corner, there is no denying that the scariest time of the year is here for Oregon. While some will be celebrating the season by shopping for costumes, decorating their homes and stocking up on candy, others will be trying to experience the scares first hand.   Broadly, so-called dark tourism is a $32 billion industry and includes many ghost tou...

Voters in Multnomah County will see three familiar names on their ballots running for county chair. It's the first time ranked-choice voting will be used for this position. Julia Brim-Edwards is a current county commissioner who previously served on the Portland Public Schools Board of Education. She was also a longtime lobbyist for Nike for 17 years. Sharon Meieran is an emergency department medi...

 Big changes are coming to the individual health insurance marketplace in Central Oregon. PacificSource, Moda and Providence are all pulling out of the region , leaving just two options for people shopping for their own health insurance: BridgeSpan Health and Regence BlueCross BlueShield. Both carriers are raising their rates by roughly 20% next year.   Erik Wood is an enterprise market...

The Central Oregon community is grieving after a gunman opened fire at Silver Rail Elementary School on Thursday afternoon, killing three children and a teacher, according to police. Another child and teacher are also hospitalized. Police said that the suspected shooter, a 16-year-old boy, is also dead after he was shot by a community member who followed him into the school.   The community g...

The Portland Public Schools proposal to close up to 14 schools is getting a lot of pushback. Earlier this week , School Board Chair Eddie Wang answered questions from parents who would be affected. He emphasized that even though the district has had to make a series of significant cuts over the last several years, the closures would not be helping fill a budget gap. Instead, they are aimed at bett...

Dozens of volunteers across the state have now signed up to help tally wildlife they observe either dead or alive along Oregon’s roadways. That might mean, for example, taking out their phone to snap a photo of an elk munching on moss next to a country road or a photo of a dead opossum struck by a vehicle. The images will be collected from Oct. 17 to Oct. 25 and uploaded to the iNaturalist c...

Christopher McKnight Nichols taught history at Oregon State University for a decade and was also the director of its Center for the Humanities until 2022. He left that year for Ohio State University where he is today the Wayne Woodrow Hayes Chair in National Security and a professor of history. He is also the co-chair of the university’s America at 250 Initiative, a series of programs commem...

Since the Klamath Dams came down in 2024, researchers, tribes and conservation officials have all been waiting to see whether salmon would return to the rivers and streams they last populated 100 years ago. A study published in the journal “Nature” this summer shows that they have.   Researchers documented thousands of salmon migrating upstream in 2024 and 2025. They found that Ch...

Southern Oregon was the only region in the state to see more wine production in 2025 than 2024. That’s according to the Oregon Vineyard and Winery Report released this summer. USA Today also named the Rogue Valley the best wine region in the country in its annual poll. The recognition comes amid falling wine sales nationwide due to rising prices, changing drinking habits and other factors. &...

For more than 20 years , Oregon has been monitoring toxic algal blooms. Other states such as Utah, Wyoming and California have been monitoring the blooms as well. Now, new reporting from High Country News highlights how these blooms are happening more frequently and are lasting longer. Reporter Christine Peterson joins us to share more on why this is happening and what states are doing to try to a...

A new six-part investigative series follows several cases of educator sexual misconduct that took place at Centennial high school in Gresham in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It closely follows the story of Stacy Love, a student who married her former high school teacher shortly after graduating in the 1990s. But her story wasn’t the only one. The series also details an investigation into J...

 Since 1986, the Portland-based nonprofit Ukandu has offered a week-long, free camp for children with cancer, ages 8 to 18, and their siblings. In 2022, Ukandu began offering a free week of camp on the Oregon coast for the entire family.      Ukandu is now about to expand its programming year-round with the opening of The Loft on Oct. 21. The roughly 22,000-square-foot com...