Think Out Loud

A Moda Center deal is in the works, and the Portland City Council will vote in just a few weeks to decide if it will spend public money on a renovation. But details are hazy about where exactly the funding would come from.

Mayor Keith Wilson and city councilors have suggested they’ll draw upon city revenue streams such as the Portland Clean Energy Fund and a fund within Prosper Portland, the city’s urban development agency. But the boards that govern those sets of funding would first have to determine if their revenue can be spent on the arena.

It’s just the latest in a long saga that has involved negotiations between the Trail Blazers and city officials to keep the team in Portland and meet demands for renovations.

Alex Zielinski covers Portland politics for OPB. She joins us to break down the latest  updates.

The rule change, which is scheduled to take effect in September, removes the regulatory definition of “harm” under the ESA that for more than 50 years has been interpreted to include harm to endangered species’ habitats. That interpretation was affirmed by the Supreme Court in a 1995 decision. U.S. Department of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a press release the rule change “restores common sense, respects private property, provides much-needed certainty for landowners and follows the statute Congress actually passed.”

Miles Johnson, legal director of Columbia Riverkeeper, joins us for more details. 

For most artists, Portland isn’t the place to relocate amid the heights of their career.

But for iLoveMakonnen, relocating to Portland from Atlanta offered a space away from the pressure and attention of the music industry, and the opportunity to explore himself.

Makonnen joins us to share more about his upcoming performance at the Pride in Demand Queer Takeover and what has kept him in Portland nearly 10 years later.

Oregon school districts rely on the state for funds they need to educate students in their schools, but some educators and advocates say the formula they use to allocate those funds is outdated and inequitable. In-depth reporting by The Oregonian/OregonLive describes the way that students in poverty are undercounted, their schools underfunded and details how the resulting cuts are affecting some of the most vulnerable children in the state. 

Education reporter Julia Silverman spent time with a student, a teacher, a principal and an attendance specialist in the Reynold’s school district in east Multnomah county. The district serves the highest percentage of low-income students in the Portland area. Silverman joins us to share more about her reporting and the possibility of state lawmakers reforming or overhauling the funding formula.

July 17 is the deadline for Washington counties to mail out ballots to voters. And it’s the first day voters can submit ballots. In the state’s top two primary, an unusual number of state supreme court judicial candidates appear on the ballot. And five of the nine seats will be decided in November. We talk with Sarah Mizes-Tan, state government reporter for KUOW and KNKX, about this unusual turn of events and other notable primary races.

Despite wildfires becoming more frequent and intense, little is known about how wildlife responds to the threats they present. Researchers at Oregon State University are attempting to shed some light on the issue. 

A recent study looked at how wildfire smoke affected the behavior of robins. Instead of simply fleeing the smoky conditions, the birds often reduced their activity and shortened their flight distances to remain in their home environments.

Jamie Cornelius is an associate professor in the department of integrative biology at OSU and principal investigator of the university’s Little Bird Lab. She joins us to talk about what scientists are learning about how different wildlife species respond to wildfire.

A new report found that Portland Police Bureau response times for high-priority calls is on average more than 20 minutes. And as reported in Willamette Week, some neighborhoods in Portland can wait as much as 40 minutes. The reports of these delays come as a  new city budget is adopted that will lead to cuts to public safety. A PPA-backed proposed measure aims to direct Portland Clean Energy Fund dollars to the bureau. Portland Police Chief Bob Day joins us to share more on response times and the new budget.

Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read recently called for the United States Postal Service to look at its policies around mail pick up on Election Day, after officials in Benton county found some voters’ ballots were left in mailboxes. The postal service has said they prioritize package delivery when staffing is short.

Read has also pushed back against the Trump administration’s threats to elections officials in all 50 states and D.C.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked vote-by-mail with false statements and is pressuring Congress to pass his “Save America Act” in an effort to exert federal control over state elections in a variety of ways. 

We talk with Secretary Read about federal interference in Oregon elections and the security of elections in this state.

When ESPN feature writer Roberto Jose Andrade Franco spent two weeks in Woodburn, Oregon, he met and spoke with a host of community members, from business owners to coaches to artists. Those conversations informed a new piece Franco wrote about the ways the community came alive and together during the World Cup.

Franco joins us to discuss his reporting and what he found during his time in Woodburn.

In Oregon’s rural, coastal communities, volunteers are coming together to reimagine what end of life care can look like for aging residents outside of medical settings.

Three years ago, Margo Lalich co-founded the North Coast End of Life Collective. She’s a nurse and public health professional who says the COVID-19 pandemic was a “wake-up call” that helped her identify a lack of intentional, communal grieving and gaps in infrastructure surrounding end-of-life care in rural areas. She began hosting educational workshops via Zoom for people who wanted to learn more and be involved in facilitating end-of-life conversations and initiatives for their communities’ aging residents. One of the attendees was Kevin Shluka, a sculptor and landscaper located in Tillamook County who’s been volunteering in community hospice since 2024.

We’ll hear more from Lalich and Shluka about the role the End of Life Collective has filled in these coastal communities, and more on what it looks like to facilitate this unique model of care.