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It’s official: Seattle Seahawks going up for sale after Super Bowl win
Associated Press
The Seattle Seahawks are going up for sale in accordance with the wishes of late team owner Paul Allen.
Allen’s estate announced Wednesday that it has begun the process of selling the team, which is just coming off its second Super Bowl victory in franchise history.
Oregon News
Avel Gordly, first Black woman elected to Oregon Senate, dies at 79
OPB | By Lauren Dake
“There aren’t many people in this building that get to say they served alongside a legend,” said Sen. Bruce Starr, the Senate Republican Leader. “I’m one of the lucky ones.”
By the time Starr was first elected to the Senate in 2002, he said, Gordly was already a fixture.
“For nearly two decades in this Legislature, she fought to make Oregon live up to its promise,” he said. “Working to remove the Black exclusion laws from our constitution, championing cultural competency and mental health and education. And reminding the rest of us constantly that justice is not an abstract. It has faces and names and neighborhoods.”
Starr said Gordly had a “moral clarity that was rare” and a “warmth that made it hard to stay away,” and even when the debate was sharp, she “never lost her grace.” Gordly was open about her own mental health struggles in her memoir, “Remembering the Power of Words.”
Starr noted that Oregon Health & Science University named its behavioral health center after her, the Avel Gordly Center for Healing.
“That feels just about right, maybe exactly right,” Starr said. “Because that is what she spent her life doing: healing what was broken, lifting up what had been pushed down and building something better in its place.”
Politicians remember trailblazing Sen. Avel Gordly, Oregon’s first Black female state senator
The Oregonian | By Beth Slovic, Sami Edge
At the Legislature, senators of both parties praised Gordly, the first Black woman elected to the Senate in 1996, for her work with colleagues across the aisle. She straddled party lines herself, at times registering as a Democrat and at other times preferring to identify as independent.
“She and I formed a really good partnership. She understood the needs of Oregon and what a dichotomy it was,” Sen. Fred Girod, R-Silverton, said. “I will miss her as a friend.”
POLITICS
Portland lawmaker says Bend colleague ‘created a hostile work environment’ and ‘stress’ during public meeting
The Oregonian | By Aimee Green
Two days after a gun rights advocate filed an official complaint claiming that a powerful state legislator had appeared to “verbally abuse” and “intimidate” another lawmaker into changing her vote on a gun control bill, that lawmaker says she indeed thinks that the legislator “created a hostile work environment.”
Democratic Rep. Thủy Trần of Portland told The Oregonian/OregonLive that while she has “a great deal of respect” for Democratic Rep. Jason Kropf of Bend, a Monday deadline to pass the bill out of committee made for “an extremely stressful time.”
“Upon reflection, it created a hostile working environment to me, staff, advocates, and the public,” Trần wrote in a text to The Oregonian/OregonLive Wednesday morning.
“Tuesday’s meeting caused stress for many in the room, not just me,” Trần said.
The complaint alleges that Kropf left Trần “visibly shaken” and with “tears in her eyes” during the live-streamed meeting. Trần, however, clarified that “there were no tears.”
The very public episode sparked a wave of backlash in the Oregon Capitol and elsewhere Tuesday, with one Republican seeming to chide Kropf’s behavior on the House floor without naming names and a gun-rights lawyer in Canby creating an AI comic depiction of Kropf as the character “Mr. Burns” in the Simpsons next to the words “No doesn’t mean no.”
Bills are debated, dead or dying as Oregon 2026 legislative session hits midpoint
Oregon Capital Chronicle | By Alex Baumhardt
Dead bills
Several Republican priority bills did not make it out of the committees where they were first introduced.
Among them was a bill proposed by Rep. Shelly Boshart Davis, R-Albany, to roll back greenhouse gas emission reduction targets under the Climate Protection Program, Oregon’s bedrock climate change law. Another, proposed by Rep. Alek Skarlatos, R-Canyonville, would have repealed a 2025 law that expanded unemployment insurance benefits to striking workers.
Two bills proposed by state Sen. Christine Drazan, R-Canby, died early, including one bipartisan bill to prohibit public health and harm reduction groups from handing out free hypodermic needles and syringes to drug users within 2,000 feet of schools or child care centers. The other bill would have allowed teachers to remove disruptive students from their classrooms, and required students be held back who are unable to demonstrate grade-level proficiency in core subjects in third grade. Both would have come up against legal challenges as they have in other states, critics pointed out.
On the Senate Floor on Monday, Drazan accused her colleagues of “posturing” and “virtue signaling,” about kids’ safety and learning rather than passing the two bills.
Another bipartisan proposal to exempt Woodburn from some of the state’s urban growth boundary limitations so more housing could be built, ideally for the area’s farmworker population, also died. Powerful farming groups, including the Oregon Farm Bureau, opposed the bill, stating that a process for requesting urban growth boundary expansions is already established in existing state law, and that Woodburn should follow that process.
A few ambitious bills brought by Democrats died early, including a revived proposal from the 2025 session that would have required Google and large tech companies to pay for the local news content those companies take at no cost, aggregate and profit from. The bill died after one public hearing due to a lack of support from moderate Democrats.
Another proposal to require contractors and grant recipients accepting money from state agencies to attest they won’t transport individuals detained on behalf of federal immigration agents also died after a single public hearing. Most of the Democrats’ proposals to strengthen the state’s protections for immigrants and to push back on aggressive federal immigration enforcements continue to move closer to final votes.
Oregon lawmakers want to build on immigration protections. Here’s where those bills stand
Oregon Capital Chronicle | By Mia Maldonado
It’s unclear which bills will receive support from Republicans. On Monday, House Republicans called for the presence of American Sign Language interpreters — likely a tactic used to delay bills from getting a floor vote.
Bill could enable secret government talks, Oregon ethics chief warns
The Oregonian | By Betsy Hammond
A bill intended to clarify what public officials can and cannot talk about outside of public meetings could lead to secret discussions of public business by some or all members of city councils or other local governments, the head of Oregon’s ethics commission told lawmakers Tuesday.
Oregon might pause new hospice licenses to curb possible fraud
The Oregonian | By Kristine de Leon
Oregon lawmakers on Monday advanced a bill designed to strengthen oversight of hospice providers and prevent fraudulent operators from entering the state.
State Sen. Deb Patterson, D-Salem, the bill’s chief sponsor, said the bill is meant to get ahead of problems that have surfaced elsewhere.
Fugitive Oregon politician investigation: 5 takeaways
The Oregonian | By Noelle Crombie
Melissa Fireside, the Clackamas County politician who vanished last year as her trial on felony theft allegations approached, remains at large as investigators continue to work the case against her.
The Oregonian/OregonLive on Sunday disclosed new details of the investigation in an extensive examination of Fireside’s political and business dealings.
Here are five takeaways from the story:
‘Food is political’: A Portland pizzeria shared its anti-ICE stance. Then it was targeted by a conservative social media site
The Oregonian | By Veronica Nocera
A Portland pizzeria has faced a wave of online backlash for speaking out against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
One of the site’s most recent targets was Tastebud, a Multnomah Village pizzeria that last month shared a heated message to its website.
The post — which spanned a laundry list of statements, from “f--- ICE” and “trans women are women” to less-divisive stances like “cook chicken to 165” and “stay hydrated” — eventually caught attention of Libs of TikTok, which on Sunday posted a screenshot to its various accounts.
“Pizza shop in Portland, Oregon says ‘food is political’ in an unhinged anti-ICE rant,” the post, which garnered thousands of interactions across Instagram, X and Facebook, reads. “I guess if you support ICE they don’t want your business …”
BUSINESS & ECONOMY
New Seasons lays off 95 employees, citing recent labor agreement
The Oregonian | By Veronica Nocera
New Seasons Market laid off several dozen employees this week, attributing the cuts to rising costs following a new labor agreement.
The layoffs affected 95 employees, the Portland-based grocery chain confirmed Tuesday, less than 5% of current store staff.
“Following the ratification of a new labor agreement and wage increases across all stores, our ongoing labor costs have significantly increased,” a New Seasons spokesperson told The Oregonian/OregonLive in an email statement. “As a result, we have had to make limited staffing reductions… to ensure the long-term sustainability of the business.”
New Burgerville CEO wants to take burger chain ‘back to its roots’
The Oregonian | By Matthew Kish
Burgerville on Tuesday named board member Kyle Welch CEO and said he wants to steer the company “back to its roots.”
Welch succeeds Ed Casey, who served four years in the role.
“Burgerville was built on people — our employees, our guests, the local farmers and ranchers, and the communities we’re part of,” Welch said in a press release. “My intention is simple: bring us back to those roots and strengthen them for the future.”
HOUSING
It Takes Home Forward 185 Days on Average to Fill an Apartment at One of Its Buildings
Willamette Week | By Sophie Peel
That’s a remarkable figure, given that the city and state are in an affordable housing crisis and are scrambling to build more units.
EDUCATION
Trump administration to investigate Portland’s Center for Black Student Excellence
The Oregonian | By Betsy Hammond
The U.S. Department of Education has opened an investigation into a complaint that accused Portland Public Schools of “flagrant racial preferencing” by creating a Center for Black Student Excellence.
2026 ELECTION
Ban Hunting In Oregon – At What Cost To The Economy And Habitat?
The Dallas (TX) Express
A proposed ballot initiative to ban most hunting and fishing in Oregon could ripple far beyond the woods and rivers, potentially affecting conservation funding and thousands of jobs.
Chief petitioner David Michelson told a television station that the goal is to “make Oregon the first state to vote on something like this,” acknowledging that “it’s unlikely 50% of Oregonians are ready right now to move away from killing animals,” according to KOIN 6.
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