Think Out Loud

Transportation funding is a priority for Oregon lawmakers this legislative session. The Democratic proposal includes a major gas tax hike and other new taxes. The Republican plan puts less money towards public transportation, biking and pedestrian infrastructure. Sarah Iannarone is the executive director of The Street Trust. John Charles is the president and CEO of the Cascade Policy Institute. They join us with their perspectives on what approach lawmakers should take.

A bill in the Oregon Legislature would make it easier for law enforcement to use drones. Senate Bill 238 passed in the state house with bipartisan votes and is now being considered in the senate. It would give law enforcement agencies more authority to use drones without a warrant. Many law enforcement officers have testified that it would make their work more efficient and more safe. Opponents of the bill have concerns about its constitutionality and the future of automated policing more broadly. Michael Abrams, the policy counsel at ACLU of Oregon, opposes the bill. Aaron Scmautz is the president of the Portland Police Association and the Oregon Coalition of Police & Sheriffs, who support the bill. We’ll hear from both sides to learn more. 

Since her birth in February, Asian baby elephant Tula-tu has become a star attraction at the Oregon Zoo. Asian elephants are endangered, with roughly 40,000 of them remaining in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. With all the attention Tula-tu has been getting, it’s easy to overlook the presence of Chendra, a Bornean elephant who has been in the zoo’s care for more than 25 years and whose relatives in the wild are even more at risk of extinction. 

Only about a thousand Bornean elephants remain, mostly in the forested northern tip of the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. 

For more than a decade, the Oregon Zoo has been supporting efforts to help save Bornean elephants. Last month, the zoo sponsored a symposium in Borneo attended by government officials; NGOs that are helping to protect habitat and reduce conflicts between people and elephants; representatives from the palm oil and tourism industries and other participants. At the symposium, the Sabah Wildlife Department launched a new plan co-developed by the Oregon Zoo to care for the growing number of calves and juvenile elephants that are being separated from their herds or found orphaned, like Chendra. 

Dr. Sharon Glaeser is the Oregon Zoo’s elephant conservation lead. She joins us with more details about the fight to save the world’s smallest elephant.  

A federal education program known as TRIO is effectively zeroed out in President Trump’s proposed budget. It began as part of Lyndon Johnson's so-called War on Poverty in the 1960s. Today close to a million low income and disadvantaged students in the U.S. get help from these grants. Earlier this year, the Trump administration excluded students without legal status from being eligible for these programs. We'll hear what TRIO means for Oregonians from the executive director of Oregon TRIO Association, Matt Bisek, and Oregon State University student Brianna Eck. 

 On Monday, Oregon Health and Science University and Legacy Health announced they are mutually walking away from an effort to combine the two healthcare organizations. The merger was first announced last August, when OHSU agreed to acquire 8 hospitals, $3 billion in assets and promised a whopping $1 billion in upgrades to Legacy facilities. The merger garnered scrutiny from a citizen review committee and public comments have reflected opposition to the deal. Amelia Templeton is OPB’s Healthcare reporter and has been following this story. She joins with the latest.

Oregon hospitals are “on the brink” according to a recent Oregon Hospital Association report. Half of them are losing money on operations, and more than two-thirds say they don’t have the resources to keep up with patient care. The data is from 2024, and anticipated federal cuts to Medicaid make the outlook even worse. Becky Hultberg, the President and CEO of the Hospital Association of Oregon, said in the report that if the trends continue or worsen, the state will see “a cascade of service closures, hospital consolidations or hospital closures.” Hultberg also said, “Oregon already has the second fewest hospital beds per capita. We can’t afford to lose these beds.” Hultberg joins us to tell  us more about some of the interrelated and complex factors that have led to this state of affairs, and what she sees as possible solutions.

From acidic excrement that eats through bridge coating to nesting near roadways causing accidents, cormorants have been known to create some problems for humans here in Oregon. But for more than a decade now, researchers at Oregon State University have been using these diving birds to better understand oceans in Oregon and around the world. As recently featured in Audubon Magazine, by strapping sensors to birds, researchers are able to chart and understand data around underwater terrains, temperatures and more. Rachael Orben is an assistant professor at OSU’s Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation. Jim Lerczak is the associate dean for research and a professor at OSU’s College of Earth Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences. They both join us to share more on what we’ve been able to learn from cormorants.

Between the on-again-off-again tariffs and the cancellation of federal funding, Oregonians across the state are affected by the many changes coming from the federal government. Reporters at the Portland Business Journal set out to take the temperature of business, nonprofit and political leaders across the state, three months into the Trump administration. Elizabeth Hayes, reporter for the Portland Business Journal, joins us to share what they found out.

On Monday, the U.S. Department of Education is expected to resume collections on student loans that are in default, ending a five-year pause that first began at the start of the pandemic. According to the agency, more than 5 million borrowers are in default, which typically happens after nine months of non-payment on a federal student loan. The federal government can force collections on defaulted student loans by garnishing wages, tax refunds or Social Security benefits. 

About 500,000 Oregonians have student loans, most of which have balances between $10,000 and $40,000, according to Lane Thompson, the Oregon Student Loan Ombuds. That position was created through the passage of SB 485 in 2021 that also required all companies that service student loans in Oregon to be licensed by the state’s Division of Financial Regulation. Thompson joins us to share more information about her office and offers advice for borrowers in Oregon. 

When Dennis Nyback died in 2022, the Portland film archivist and programmer had amassed a collection of thousands of reels of films, whether they were black and white cartoons, 1960s-era commercials or educational films shown in classrooms. Nyback would share his eclectic finds through curated screenings at independent movie theaters not only in Portland, but also across the U.S. and Europe. 

As reported by Oregon ArtsWatch, Nyback’s friends and fellow cinephiles faced a daunting challenge after his death to track down and sort through the thousands of mostly 16mm reels of film he left behind. That effort evolved into The Nyback Archive, with a group of volunteers working to catalogue Nyback’s collection and eventually make it available for public viewing and study. The team leading this effort began sharing some of the gems they’ve found through monthly theater screenings, like the “16mm Nyback Showdown” between dueling projectionists on May 6 at the Clinton Street Theater. 

Joining us to talk about the value of preserving analog film in our digital age are Greg Hamilton, a film curator and co-founder of The Nyback Archive, and filmmakers and curators Ioana Cherascu and Garrett Schroeder. Hamilton organizes screenings of films from the archive through his Psychotron Afterschool Special series, while Cherascu and Schroeder curate films from the archive and other acquisitions through their Astral Projections series shown in Portland and beyond.