After border patrol agents fatally shot a woman in Minneapolis, agents showed up to a high school and released chemical weapons during dismissal, Minnesota Public Radio reports. Their live reporting here: www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

In the fall, a group called Literary Portland for Palestine asked Portland Book Festival to divest from Wells Fargo sponsorship funding. They've since grown into a collective working to raise awareness. And because they're a literary organization, they're doing it with poems.

"Renee was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known,” her mother said. “She was extremely compassionate. She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being.” www.startribune.com/she-was-an-a...

I occasionally get the great honor of interviewing poets for OPB (the part of my job I think my past young self would be most glad to know about my future). My latest such delight was talking to Reginald Dwayne Betts (Doggerel) & Mai Der Vang (Primordial) in November. Now you can listen on @opb.org:

Happy new year! Our "what our audience doesn’t know" series kicks off 2026 with All Things Considered host @geoffnorx.bsky.social. "I'm surrounded by some of the most gifted storytellers in the country, and it's shocking to me how little many of them are paid or valued." -Geoff Norcross, OPB host

[wild eyes, disheveled hair, crazed smile] Heyyy how’s everybody doing??? Everyone have a good day back at work today??? 2026 off to a great start??? Wooooooo [falls asleep]

This is a fun idea! Not surprised to learn that southeast Oregon is exceptionally dark AND exceptionally quiet.

Today on @opb.org's The Evergreen: Life these days can get noisy. Even if you get out of the city, natural settings aren’t immune to sounds of people, pets & cars. So where CAN you actually get peace & quiet? That’s what we wanted to know! So we set out to find the quietest place in the whole state.

For the past five years, the library at the state's largest youth correctional facility gathered dust in a closet. Now, there's an effort under way to make the books more accessible to the youth in custody there.

Co-sign

“Should you believe in any cause? Does believing in something mean you’ve lost the ability to do your job? How much life are you willing to give up? How much of life is one’s job? How much of your participation in being a human being will you cede? Where is the line between truth and fact?”

Today on @opb.org’s The Evergreen: the latest from our At Work With series! Thanks to Malya Fass & @anomalily.net, we get to know three Oregonians who keep the roller coasters running, the traffic flowing, and the cattle mooooving.

130 years ago, on the 28th of December 1895, the Lumière brothers gave their first public screening which consisted of ten short films. All were between 38 and 49 seconds long and included subjects such as 'baby's breakfast', 'horse trick riders', 'the sea' and 'the gardener'. #otd #history 🗃️

it does kind of feel like a lot of bluesky users spent four days around their extended family and immediately got on here to be like "the pizza you ate as a child sucks. the twin cities are overrated. what else. pencils should be illegal" you all are disregulated and you need to settle down!!

I saw the Rick Bartow exhibit at PAM! It was cool!!! That is all, have a nice Sunday!

Henry Sakamoto, a prominent leader in Portland’s Japanese American community who helped bring cherry trees to the Tom McCall Waterfront Park downtown, has died at age 98.

Seasonal hot take: maybe Charlie Brown would be less depressed if his friends weren’t such assholes about it! They are not very supportive. Did they consider that maybe *they* are the problem? Anyway though, happy Vince Guaraldi Day to one & all

“This is Hillsboro, Oregon, in the year 2025. For Shirley and Jasmine, and the people they serve, it’s an era of code names, secretive deliveries, encrypted messages, and concerns about government surveillance.” From Alejandro Figueroa & @hbarth.bsky.social:

Cheers to solidarity in 2026 & beyond 🥂

Today on @opb.org’s The Evergreen: Rick Bartow was once a small-town kid from Newport, OR. The Indigenous artist went on to see his work featured in 100+ museums & in a White House garden. His pieces are raw & emotional, beautiful & weird. He said art saved him.

Per NY Times’s Michael Grynbaum on X, this is Sharyn Alfonsi’s email to her “60 Minutes” colleagues in full:

In the summer of 1950 most US newspapers ran an AP story about how race had become the main issue in the upcoming Georgia governor's race. Segregationist Herman Tallmadge, governor from '47 to '55 and then a Senator until 1981 made a name for himself by refusing to "apologize for being a white man."

NEW OCEAN FRIENDS 🦀

Rick Steves is a man of the people!!!!

Saturday non-news related opinion post that Uncle Tsang’s Kitchen in Sellwood is the best vegan Chinese food in Portland

I love getting cool fun reminders that there are men out there that think I’m not actually qualified for my job

The was the first documented occurence of federal officers firing pepper balls in Portland this year, outside of protests at the ICE facility.

After an immigration raid swept up more than 30 Woodburn-area farmworkers earlier this fall, five of those workers have been released and their detentions declared unlawful.

“Detaining migrants who leave voluntarily may be aimed to impose long-term reentry penalties … However, the ‘Operation Irish Goodbye‘ may be serving a different purpose: inflating deportation statistics as the administration pushes to show progress toward Trump’s goal of record-high removals”

Cool job alert! The Portland Mercury is currently hiring for a managing editor to support our kick-ass editorial team. Are you a super organized person with newsroom experience and a love for helping reporters do their best work? Then this could be the job for YOU! (Or your very talented friend!)

My life living with a coffee roaster:

“Malheur was not in Oregon anymore. It was in the White House.”

Abandoned and derelict vessels have increasingly become homes for Oregonians. They've also become a costly and persistent problem for the state. Oregon Field Guide's Noah Thomas joins us this week to take a deep dive into the subject on "The Evergreen."

Today on @opb.org's The Evergreen: What happens when boats are abandoned in the water & start falling apart? Whether it’s a barge or a sailboat, abandoned & derelict vessels, or ADVs, are a complex issue — one that weighs potential hazard against potential shelter. We learn more from Noah Thomas:

What a terrible weekend. The way people are traumatized so often these days it’s just become the air we breathe.

I hate that college student journalists are having to do this. They shouldn’t have to do this.

"There’s a freedom people are craving because they’re feeling so constrained, surveilled and, frankly, threatened in so many other spheres." Zines have made a resurgence as communities seek to share information on everything from ICE raids to local elections.

I got tired at 8pm last night, slept 9 1/2 hours & woke up early enough to watch Regular Show on Cartoon Network; evidently I am an elderly child

Have any questions you want to know about food pantries & what they're going through right now? Or about the food access needs of Latinos in Oregon? (The place we're visiting on Monday specializes in providing culturally specific foods for Latinos.) Reply w/ them here or email [email protected]!

If you haven't gotten a chance yet, please listen to this week's episodes from @opb.org's Alejandro Figueroa & Mia Estrada, available in English or Spanish, about former Woodburn, OR resident Luis Lamas & his journey leaving the U.S. and returning to Mexico on his own terms.

The union representing more than 24,000 Oregon nurses has called out management at Portland’s Legacy Emanuel Medical Center for jeopardizing the rights, health and safety of patients in custody of immigration enforcement agencies.

Salem PD regularly violates public records law and apparently learned no lessons in Hush season 1. Records this old should not need any redactions under Oregon law and should be released for free. This is a money making scam because SPD doesn't want to spend money to follow the law.

Today I found a new low in public records hell: I paid $980.15 so a person employed by Salem Police could watch me view 33 year old records. My arguments with them went nowhere; they let me know any further viewing or copying would incur significantly more $.

Alex Zielinski @alexzee.bsky.social shares her story for our “what our audience doesn’t know” series. "Realizing how OPB inequitably values our colleagues has hurt morale across the entire organization." -Alex Zielinski, OPB reporter/producer

One of the many reasons AI can't produce good writing is it can't hate its own writing. It can't think to itself "Maybe I'm illiterate" during the writing process. And that's essential

I Lived It: I Accidentally Ate Popcorn For Lunch Despite Intending To Just Have a Little Snack Real Quick

Between rising costs of living & uncertainty of SNAP benefits, grocery costs have been tough. Food pantries have been providing extra support to folks facing food insecurity. So for our next "At Work With" interview, we're talking to a food pantry worker. Got a question for them? Send it my way! ⬇️

Today on @opb.org's The Evergreen: The Trump admin has been cracking down on immigrants, promising to deport people w/o legal status, & at times detaining people *with* legal status. Some immigrants are now choosing to leave the U.S. out of fear. We hear the story of an Oregonian who did just that.