U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, 68, announced Thursday he’d run again for the Senate seat he’s held for more than 16 years. He’s represented Oregon in the U.S. Senate since 2009, alongside Oregon’s senior U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, also a Democrat. Merkley was last elected to his seat by Oregon voters in 2020.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek has declared the first drought emergencies of the year for two counties on opposite sides of the state. The governor signed the orders on Thursday in Baker County along the northeast Oregon-Idaho border, and Lincoln County, on the Oregon Coast.
Kris Strickler, director of the Oregon Department of Transportation, provided details of layoffs looming at the agency in an all-staff email he sent Monday morning. “Today, 483 current ODOT employees will be notified that they will be laid off as of July 31,” Strickler wrote in the email. Twelve are in Jackson County.
The Oregon Health Authority expects that up to 200,000 Oregonians could lose their health insurance coverage through Medicaid in the next decade due to new eligibility requirements passed in Congressional Republicans’ massive tax and spending cut bill.
Hundreds who work for the Oregon Department of Transportation got notice that they’re being laid off in what Gov. Tina Kotek called a preventable emergency and the largest round of layoffs in the state government’s history. The 483 Oregon Department of Transportation employees who received layoff notices on Monday will be employed until July 31, according to a news release and FAQ from Kotek’s office.
Thirteen arts and culture organizations are in line – pending the governor’s signature – to receive a total of $8.275 million in funding as the Oregon Legislature wrapped up its 2025 session last week. The grants range from $150,000 to Historic Jacksonville to $2 million to the High Desert Museum in Bend. More than a third of a million dollars is set aside for a project at Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland.
Oregon leaders expressed anger, devastation and disappointment with the passage of a nearly 900-page tax and spending cut bill by Congressional Republicans expected to take health insurance and food assistance away from millions of Americans while sending tax cuts worth tens of thousands of dollars to the nation’s highest earners.
By the middle of the upcoming school year, Oregon students will not be allowed to use their cellphones in school. Gov. Tina Kotek issued an executive order to Oregon’s 197 school districts, requiring they adopt a policy for banning student cellphone use by Oct. 31, 2025.
Recology, Ashland’s contracted waste and recycling collection service, has announced a change in curbside recycling rules effective Tuesday, July 1, according to a post on its website.
In the end, Oregon lawmakers did grapple with the biggest questions before them this year. All it took was six months of grinding work weeks. The 2025 legislative session ended Friday evening at 11:15 p.m. after a marathon day packed with more drama and uncertainty than any session in recent memory. With the final gavels, lawmakers bid farewell to a session that included some notable accomplishments — and one dizzying failure.
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Ask Strider: A worried older brother asks our advice columnist’s advice. And a dog’s guardian wants to know if there is any hope getting their hat-hating dog to calm down. As always, Strider tries to give words that help!
After a successful production of “The Vagina Monologues” and raising more than $2,000 for Planned Parenthood of Southwestern Oregon, Ashland actor and director Lia Dugal intends for “The Climate Monologues” to premiere in Oregon in late 2025 or early 2026 at the Bellview Grange in Ashland.
It’s complicated.
Herbert Rothschild: Whether visualization and intention by themselves can effect broad social change is impossible to determine, but the question merits sustained consideration.
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