Think Out Loud

Operation Inflation was conceived last fall when protests at Portland’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement building routinely drew counter protesters and a large law enforcement presence. Jordy Lybeck and his wife Lacy wanted to impact the nature of news coverage as Pres. Trump threatened to send National Guard troops to Portland. As Trump’s baseless assertions that Portland was “war-ravaged,” a “burning-hellhole,” where the mayor and the governor of Oregon were “petrified for their lives” appeared with increasing frequency, so did their determination to help correct the record. They began providing inflatable animal costumes to those protesting at the ICE facility. 

The images of people playfully wearing large, inflatable costumes visually contradicted the narrative of a war torn city. They said they are also creating pure “absurdity” as counter-protestors yelled at larger than life frogs, chickens, unicorns and other creatures. Jordy Lybeck and Lacy join us to tell us about their strategy for supporting protests, how the movement has spread to other cities and how this weekend’s No Kings demonstrations went down.

Father Tom Oddo served as president of the University of Portland from 1982 until his death in a car crash in 1989. During his presidency, he helped UP transition to coed housing, oversaw construction of the Chiles Center and reversed the university’s declining enrollment. 

Before coming to Portland, Oddo was a key member of the gay rights movement in Boston, advocating for the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ Catholics in the church. From 1973 to 1977, Oddo served as the first secretary of DignityUSA, a nationwide organization that supports LGBTQ+ Catholics.

Portland author Tyler Bieber explores Oddo’s life in the new biography “Against the Current: Father Tom Oddo and the New American Catholic.” Bieber joins us to talk about Oddo’s activism, his time at UP and the legacy he left.

Just over two years ago, Eugene Weekly, the city’s longtime alternative-weekly newspaper, came to a shocking halt. EW’s editor announced that their beloved paper was flat broke — not because of mismanagement, but because their business manager had apparently been embezzling for years. The paper was missing $100,000, with an additional $200,000 in bills that hadn't been paid. Editor Camilla Mortenson said she had no choice but to lay off the entire staff, including herself, just before Christmas in 2023. But with a strong upwelling of community support, the paper resumed printing in February 2024.

In the meantime, a veritable saga unfolded as Elisha Young, the former business manager, was brought to  justice. She ultimately pled guilty this week to five felony counts of theft, just weeks before she was set to face a jury trial in May. Mortensen said the paper has been thriving, but is still building back to where it was before the embezzlement began. She joins us to share the more details about the impact these unfolding events have had on the paper, its staff and the community it serves.

New reporting from InvestigateWest finds it’s difficult for parents in Washington to challenge flawed reports concerning guardians ad litem, the court-appointed guardians assigned to children in custody cases, who decide where their children will stay temporarily. If parents do challenge these professionals, they risk hurting their case to regain custody of their children. In Washington, with little oversight and inadequate state-mandated training for guardians, parents are seldom able to hold guardians ad litem accountable for inaccurate or biased investigations. In some situations, children have been placed by these guardians in homes with abusive adults, and some parents have even lost custody of their children to abusers.

Kelsey Turner, a reporter with InvestigateWest, joins us to discuss her reporting, including a few Washington cases that have shaped the call to reform standards for this role.

The Thornburgh Resort is a planned resort in Deschutes County that would provide 950 residential units, 380 overnight lodging units, two golf courses and a luxury hotel, among other offerings. But for more than two decades, the resort has faced continued challenges with the state’s regulatory laws, delaying its progress. A new report from the developer says the continued delays have cost the state and county hundreds of millions of dollars in potential public revenue. Thornburgh Resort founder Kameron Delashmutt joins us to share more on where things stand with the project.

he Pacific Northwest has had an unusually warm winter. This year, Portland saw one of the warmest winters it has seen in the last 88 years. In fact, this February was one of the warmest and driest months in the nation's records. But what do these warmer winters mean for snow? A new study from the University of Washington found that warming temperatures leads to snow crusts happening more often in colder areas. This increase can pose new challenges for avalanche forecasting, ski operations and even for local wildlife. Clinton Alden is a PhD student at UW and the lead author of the study. He joins us to share more details.

Amazon has a big footprint in Morrow County driven by tax incentives, cheap power and available land. A new complaint from the Oregon Department of Justice claims that some of those tax incentives and land sales were approved by people who benefitted from the company’s purchase of internet services from a small company called WindWave. Mike Rogoway, business and technology reporter for The Oregonian, reported the details of this story and joins us to explain.

Artificial Intelligence is impacting business, government, social media — and countless aspects of modern life. Child health and safety advocates say the effects of social media and the rise of chatbots and other AI on children can be devastating and lead to depression, and in the worst cases, suicide. Oregon lawmakers passed a bill in the short session to protect children and youth from these emerging technologies, which will provide guardrails for adults using chatbots as well.

We talk with one of the bill's sponsors, Oregon Sen. Lisa Reynolds (D - Portland). And we hear from Kristin Bride, the executive director of the Carson J. Bride Effect, which she founded to protect kids from predatory tech practices, after the death of her son by suicide in 2020.

The Center for Addiction Science, Policy, and Research, or CASPR, released a nationwide report ranking states based on their ability to protect residents from online gambling harm. Oregon received an “F” grade — among the bottom 10 states for its lack of gambling harm reduction methods.

Gambling is often regarded as an invisible addiction due to its lack of visible physical symptoms or side effects — and it has become more accessible than ever. As people have begun to participate in sports betting, online poker, casino games and lottery from their mobile devices, guardrails protecting against harmful gambling behaviors have seldom kept pace.

We’ll discuss problem gambling in Oregon and recovery methods with Kitty Martz, the executive director of Voices of Problem Gambling Recovery, and Brian Ward, a certified gambling recovery mentor with the state of Oregon.

Note: If you or a loved one is experiencing gambling harm, Oregon’s Problem Gambling Resource call helpline is available at 1-877-MY-LIMIT (1-877-695-4648). 

The two unions representing faculty and staff at Portland Community College have been on strike since March 11. It’s the first ever strike at a community college in Oregon. Instructors and staff are negotiating for higher cost-of-living and salary increases, among other issues. With the spring term scheduled to start March 30, the negotiations could delay classes, many of which have taken place remotely or been canceled due to the strike. 

Ben Cushing is a faculty member in sociology and president of the PCC Federation of Faculty and Academic Professionals. Aaron Hill is the college’s interim associate vice president for finance. They both join us to talk about where negotiations stand.