Maryland Gov Wes Moore and Colorado Gov Jared Polis were disinvited from the fancy White House dinner, California Gov Gavin Newsom says he also was uninvited. Oregon Gov Tina Kotek says she decided not to go at all and focus on the legislative session.

As threats against elected officials rise, Oregon lawmakers want to make threatening an elected official, candidate for office or their family a felony. oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2026/02/09/o...

Bad news: ORESTAR won't load Good news: This is the first time ORESTAR breaking brought up this charming image of a pioneer trying to push a wagon through the mud

Living for this personalized sketch downtown Salem’s Easy Otter put on my takeout bag.

Two minutes before a hearing on moving a transportation tax referendum from November to May is scheduled to start, maybe two dozen people are in a Capitol hearing room waiting to testify. #orleg

ProPublica spoke with a dozen kids detained in Dilley Texas, including 7-year-old Diana Crespo who was released from the facility on Friday. Great reporting by @micarosenberg.bsky.social

Our version of the Big Game is breaking out a new pipe cleaner

BREAKING: The Crespo-González family, who was detained in January in a Portland hospital parking lot while seeking care for their 7-year-old, was released from detention today. U.S. Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Oregon, is escorting them back home. oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2026/02/06/f...

Great reporting by @dirquez.bsky.social: #orleg Republicans are testing whether Dems will try to enforce a possibly unconstitutional House rule that bans members from collecting campaign contributions during session. www.opb.org/article/2026...

The #orleg is mostly done with its first week, and what a week it’s been! Our small but mighty @oregoncapitalchronicle.com team has been busy catching all the developments we can. Here’s a thread on what you may have missed…

Less than a year after a bipartisan bill to streamline the payout process for exonerated Oregonians stalled, Oregon lawmakers are trying their hand at a narrower piece of legislation. buff.ly/MiezAr0 by @shaanthx.bsky.social

Not all Oregon voters can participate meaningfully in primaries. That could change, columnist Randy Stapilus writes. oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2026/02/05/e...

Salem Mayor Julie Hoy, who late last year voted against declaring a local state of emergency over increasingly intense immigration enforcement in Oregon’s second-largest city, was not among the mayors who signed onto the letter.

An Oregon Republican who backed a Democrat-led bill restricting the deployment of the state’s National Guard and other states’ troops to Oregon has revoked his support.

After failing in recent years to convince the Oregon Legislature to extend food benefits to tens of thousands of immigrants, an anti-hunger coalition is narrowing its scope this year to addressing coming cuts to federal food aid. buff.ly/mAzgqRM by @jmshumway.bsky.social

If the four younger brothers I grew up sharing a bathroom with could figure out how to put the toilet seat down and clean up their messes, the grown men with important jobs using the Capitol’s new gender-neutral restrooms can too, right? oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2025/12/12/o...

Lawmakers are looking for ways to cut budgets and get more $$ by partially disconnecting from the federal tax code. Oregonians filled the Capitol concourse yesterday waiting to share their thoughts. oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2026/02/04/p...

Big news from WA, where the #waleg stepped in with a minuscule amount of state funding a few years ago to help pay for a few more reporters. www.reportforamerica.org/2026/02/04/w...

Oregon has more money than expected (but not enough to fill new budget holes brought on by federal changes to Medicaid and SNAP). Economists, like the rest of us, are confused. oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2026/02/04/s...

Peak capital-with-an-a life is probably overcoming the fear of teenage gym bros enough to work out on a weeknight only to spot a lawmaker at the same gym.

Oregon's U.S. Rep Maxine Dexter announced she's traveling to Texas on Thursday to perform an oversight visit at the Dilley detention facility. There, she'll visit the Oregon family detained by immigration agents in January on their way to the hospital. oregoncapitalchronicle.com/briefs/u-s-r...

Incredible reporting today from my colleague Matt Kish: She was a key voice of the 1990s labor movement in Nike’s Indonesia factories. Today she relies on donations from abroad www.oregonlive.com/business/202...

Disappointed to report that the morning people are still in charge of the #orleg

The elementary school where I attended 4th and 5th grade apparently rebranded as a “computer science academy” with a cartoon robot mascot named Chip the Challenger, but I remember when the mascot was just the Challengers and the school song ended with yelling “Blast Off!”

Difficult read about the company that gobbled up newspapers in Oregon. Suzanne Roig, the now-former Bulletin business reporter at the end of the piece, and her husband, former Bulletin city editor Mike Gordon, were mentors to so many young reporters. www.cjr.org/feature/carp...

Because most viewers’ main problem with TV news is that there’s too much original reporting and not enough pundits. 🙄 www.npr.org/2026/01/27/n...

Waubgeshig Rice’s “Moon of the Turning Leaves,” which follows six Anishinaabe people as they scout their way home in a post-apocalyptic future, is the best book I’ve read in months. Torn between continuing the hopeful but heartbreaking trend with a “Station Eleven” reread or finding a fluffy romance

Chris Dudley, the ex-Portland Trail Blazer who came closer than any Republican in decades to winning an Oregon governor’s race, said Monday that he will run for the position once again, entering an increasingly crowded field for the upcoming May primary. buff.ly/RCGZaGe

“Our position has been that, if we can get a court, any court, any judge to fully consider all of the evidence in the case, that a grant of asylum is obvious. These are very straightforward cases.” story via @jerodmacevoy.com

2026 is dark, but where the road ends there’s sun and sand and salty air and tiny birds standing unflinching against the crashing waves and impossibly smooth stones and a memorial for a crab.

Federal immigration officers shot a third Minnesotan in as many weeks, the @minnesotareformer.com reports.

Published this @stateline.org piece a few hours before feds shot and killed another person: The Department of Homeland Security repeatedly insists its officers acted in self-defense in violent encounters, despite contradicting video and witness statements. oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2026/01/24/r...

Federal immigration agents in Portland detained a 7-year-old girl and her parents last week on their way to the hospital, according to a GoFundMe page in Spanish created by family relatives.  buff.ly/G3AbO70

FOI Friday "Fun:" — The Oregon governor's office responded to a public records request from April 2025 with multiple copies of emails I sent and nothing to answer why the office disappeared the governor's online staff list last spring. (It's back now.)

Reporter @miamaldonado.bsky.social was out in Stayton tonight for Rep. Ed Diehl’s gubernatorial campaign launch. More here: oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2026/01/21/r...

One of the leaders behind the effort to block increases to Oregon’s gas tax has entered the race for governor.  buff.ly/3nlH5s0 by @miamaldonado.bsky.social

January 6th riot participant (and Oregon Capitol stormer!) David Medina appeared on Benny Johnson's show this morning to announce he wants to run for governor of Oregon as a Republican. Trump pardoned Medina for his actions on J6.

A federal judge tentatively ruled Wednesday that Oregon does not have to hand over personally identifiable data of more than 3 million Oregon voters to the federal government @jmshumway.bsky.social reports: oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2026/01/14/f...

New edition to the newly reopened Oregon press offices, which we’ll dedicate this afternoon to longtime Capitol reporter Peter Wong.

The Oregon Department of Human Services says it needs $114.6 million from the state’s general fund to fill gaps in its 2025-27 budget because of cuts and other changes to federal food assistance.

Former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich is dead at the age of 59, his family said story via @jimsmall.bsky.social

Multiple monkeys are on the loose in St. Louis. And AI generated images are complicating the effort to find them.

Hundreds of Oregonians turned out across Portland and in Salem to protest against federal agents shooting people in Portland and Minneapolis, as well as U.S. military action in Venezuela. oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2026/01/10/h...

Organizers estimated about 800 people protesting in Salem. Statesman Journal’s @diannelugo.bsky.social, the rare journalist who’s good at estimating crowd sizes and has seen lots of demonstrations in this park, agreed with that approximation.

A couple hundred people protesting ICE north of the Oregon Capitol. The turnout for this hastily pulled together protest is lower than we’ve seen at prior events in Salem.

A federal judge in Washington state on Friday permanently blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a 2025 executive order that sought to require voters prove citizenship and that all ballots be received by Election Day.  buff.ly/C4H7kgS

The Portland driver shot by federal agents yesterday has an active DUII case in Washington County and also DHS spelled his name wrong so we couldn't find him in court records earlier today. oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2026/01/09/f...

Very jarring to go from reporting on claims of “weaponized” cars to nearly being struck by a car because the people speeding through downtown Salem are incapable of checking whether pedestrians are in a marked crosswalk before they turn into it.

UPDATE: The two people shot by federal officers in Portland have unspecified ties to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, Portland Police Chief Bob Day said. Both are in stable condition. buff.ly/CoK52sO

A Portland-based Latin American history professor who has studied Tren de Aragua told @alexbaumhardt.bsky.social he hasn't seen evidence of the gang's presence in Portland, and urged skepticism of DHS claims. oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2026/01/09/f...