Travelers were dreary-eyed Saturday morning at Portland International Airport after the Federal Aviation Administration halted nearly all flights nationwide for several hours the day earlier.

Southern California residents Rebecca and Steve Packard were visiting their son in Portland and were due to fly home Saturday, a straight flight to San Diego.

Unaware that nearly all flights nationwide had been grounded Friday, they got up at 5:30 a.m. and headed for the airport — only to find their flight had been canceled.

“Unfortunately, I did not turn on the news last night, so I had no clue that anything was amiss until we got here,” Rebecca said.

The FAA lifted the ground stop at about 6 p.m. Friday, but by then, many travelers’ plans had been upended entirely.

At Portland International Airport, 144 flights were canceled Friday, according to Port of Portland spokesperson Kara Hansen, though she couldn’t confirm if each cancellation was caused by the ground stop.

“I feel for the people who are missing weddings and major events, cruises that aren’t going to wait for them — whatever — because of this,” Rebecca said.

Arizona couple James and Nisha Kirchgatter were bound for Yonkers, New York, to attend Nisha’s friend’s wedding.

It would have been their first time visiting the Empire State. But when their flight was canceled, their layover in Portland became their last stop, and they slept in the airport.

“My wife pretty much slept on the bench, and I tried to make sure I was security for her so she could get some good rest,” James said.

Nisha was able to find a flight home Saturday through another airline. But she said the ticket was nearly $600, “so we had to reach out to the family to help us get back home.”

At a news conference Saturday morning, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the communications failure that led to the stoppage happened during an upgrade to old air traffic control equipment. He said a contractor had been working to replace a section of the system’s old copper wire with a new fiber-optic cable, which led to a system malfunction.

“Virtually every single institution in America has gone from copper to fiber, from analog to digital — just maybe the FAA is the last one to be doing this work,” Duffy said.

In 2025, Congress approved $12.5 billion in funding for the FAA to transition from copper to fiber. Duffy called for an additional $30 billion to complete the project.

Rebecca said, “We’ve been hearing this for years that the system needed to be updated. Does it give me confidence that it won’t happen again? No, it’ll happen again, I’m sure.”

According to the FAA, the U.S. air travel schedule should be back to normal by the end of Sunday. Hansen said travelers are encouraged to continue checking with their airline for the latest flight updates.

For some, those updates are becoming increasingly overwhelming.

Vancouver, Washington, resident Yaretzi Vargas has been going back and forth between her phone and the airport’s arrival and departure board, wondering whether her evening flight will get canceled.

She was supposed to arrive in Cancún, Mexico, Saturday to celebrate her 21st birthday. But having missed the first day of her stay at the hotel, she’s effectively lost $500.

“I’m just, like, really upset that I have no control over this situation,” Vargas said. “It’s so annoying and frustrating.”

First elected to the state Senate in 2024, Broadman is the first Oregon Senate Democratic leader representing the east of the Cascades since the 1980s, according to a press release from Senate Democrats. His district includes Bend, Redmond, Sisters and much of Deschutes County. Broadman previously served on the Bend City Council and worked as a lawyer for tribal governments. He served as a chief judge of the Warm Springs Court of Appeals on the Warm Springs Reservation in Central Oregon.

Broadman said his priorities are focusing on the economy, affordability and making Oregon’s schools and communities safer. Broadman represents Bend, where there was a school shooting last month at Silver Rail Elementary School.

“Voters entrusted us with the largest Democratic majority in decades, and our first priority must be making life more affordable for Oregon families,” Broadman said in a statement.

Broadman replaces Sen. Kayse Jama, D-Portland, who made history when he was elected to the Oregon State Senate as the first former refugee and first Muslim American to serve. Jama fled from Somalia and came to Portland in 1998. He was elected to leadership in 2024 and voluntarily stepped aside. He is still serving in the Oregon Senate.

Senate Democrats also reelected Senate President Rob Wagner to the post. Wagner, of Lake Oswego, was first appointed to the state Senate in 2018.

Wagner succeeded longtime Senate President Peter Courtney, who served in the post for about two decades. Courtney was the longest-serving state lawmaker in Oregon’s history. He died in 2024. Sen. James Manning was selected as Senate President Pro Tempore. The full chamber will vote in January on Wagner’s and Manning’s position. Broadman’s selection is effective immediately.

The U.S. organ transplant system has approved the first national policy for a controversial procedure used to remove organs from hospital patients. The guidelines are designed to protect potential donors. But critics say they do little to improve safety and fail to address deeply troubling ethical concerns.

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The procedure is called normothermic regional perfusion, known as NRP. It can be used after a family has decided to withdraw care because there’s no hope of meaningful recovery for the person. To perform NRP, doctors attach an external pump to a donor minutes after their circulation has ended and they’ve been declared dead. The pump restores blood flow to their hearts, lungs, kidneys, liver and other organs to keep them from deteriorating.

“The hope with NRP is that it increases the supply of organs and it increases the quality of the organs,” says Dr. Raymond Lynch, the director of transplantation at the Health Resources & Services Administration, the federal agency that oversees the organ transplant system.

NRP could help solve the chronic organ shortage, Lynch says. More than 109,000 Americans are waiting for an organ transplant, according to HRSA. About 12 die every day because of a chronic organ shortage.

Critics, however, say NRP is unethical because it violates the Dead Donor Rule, which is the most important rule protecting potential donors. The rule says transplant surgeons can only take organs from patients after they are dead because of brain death or circulatory death. But because NRP restarts circulation, critics say the procedure reverses the very condition upon which the person has just been declared dead.

“In order to be dead by circulatory criteria it means we’re not going to attempt to reestablish circulation. But that’s exactly what they do in NRP,” says Dr. Lainie Friedman Ross, a University of Rochester bioethicist. “So, yes, I have a real problem with NRP. I think it violates the dead donor rule. It’s taking organs from people who are no longer dead.”

The other aspect of NRP that troubles critics is what surgeons do to try to make sure the donor is also brain dead, after circulation has been restarted by a mechanical pump. They clamp off blood vessels that supply the head. But alarm bells started going off for organ retrieval teams when blood appeared to get restored – or “reperfused” – to the brain during some NRP cases.

“We have seen signs of life in NRP when the brain has been reperfused,” says Dr. Claire Morgan, a transplant surgeon who serves on the transplant network’s Patient Affairs Committee and was the first to report such cases to HRSA. “It’s extremely disturbing.”

Those cases prompted HRSA to instruct the Organ Procurement & Transplantation Network (OPTN), which runs the organ system, to investigate and develop a response. On Nov. 6, the OPTN board of directors approved the first phase of the first uniform national guidelines for how to perform NRP.

The new guidelines, which will go into effect Dec. 6, call for surgeons to do more than just clamp the blood vessels to the brain. They should also cut holes in them, according to the new policy.

“Clamping the blood vessels should stop blood flowing to the brain,” says Lynch. “Cutting or venting above the level of the clamping is a second safeguard to make sure that if the clamping is insufficient that it immediately drains out of the head and is not supplying warm oxygenated blood to the brain.”

The new policy also includes other protections, including recommending against giving donors drugs that would paralyze them and mask any movements.

But critics say the new safeguards are insufficient. Most surgeons already both clamp and vent blood vessels to the brain, for example, they say.

“I honestly don’t believe they have created a policy that creates much or any more protection than these donors already had,” says Morgan, who also disagrees with the decision to implement the first phase of the new guidelines on an emergency basis before the public had a chance to weigh in.

Critics also say the new policy doesn’t begin to address the bigger concerns that NRP donors are not technically dead when surgeons remove their organs. They worry the adoption of the policy could speed the use of NRP before the troubling questions have been fully aired.

“I really think the policy is the cart before the horse,” says Dr. Matthew DeCamp, a University of Colorado bioethicist. “The fundamental issues around NRP still remain unresolved.”

Lynch, however, argues the new guidelines will protect donors and that NRP is ethical.

“This is an important first step to make sure NRP care is available but that the safety of the family’s loved one is always at the forefront,” Lynch says. “This is life-saving care that will extend the supply and improve the quality of organs that patients can get in transplant. And if it is done properly, it is safe.”

DENVER — Democrats descended on Denver for a two-day conference that was half victory party, half sober look at the road ahead on delivering for the voters who elected them.

The “What’s Next” conference, hosted by the group Majority Democrats, was scheduled long before Democrats outperformed expectations with their best electoral performance since Watergate. It brought together rising stars — like incoming Gov. Rob Sand in Iowa and Sen.-elect James Talarico in Texas — along with strategists, organizers, state and federal lawmakers and potential presidential contenders.

Held at a concert hall, with colorful artwork of party heavy hitters dotting the venue, Democrats attended sessions like “What Voters Want” and “What Needs To Change.” The overwhelming emphasis from speakers was that Democrats have to earn back trust.

“We won races in places where we haven’t won in a long time, even in some places where we’ve never won. And the message shouldn’t be that [voters] are fully embracing the Democratic Party,” said Colorado Rep. Jason Crow in an interview.

“It took us decades to dig ourselves in a hole and to push people away from us, and it’s going to take us more than one cycle to earn that trust,” said Crow, who is one of the party’s recruitment co-chairs.

A party on probation

Anderson Clayton, chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, took the party to task for not investing more in the South and in Black voters.

“When we say that Black voters are the base of our party, then I ask why are we not investing in a region of the country that on Tuesday night just proved everybody wrong of what is possible,” said Clayton to much applause. “Rural America deserves the investment from the Democratic Party and we must run towards communities that our party has run away from.”

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Democrats shouldn’t rest on their laurels.

“I think we are adequately politically traumatized by the last few cycles, so that we will not draw the wrong lessons from all of this,” Buttigieg said. “Because here’s the thing: it is yet to be written whether what we just experienced is one more oscillation from one side to the other and back, or whether it is the beginning of a tectonic movement changing American politics.”

He said Democrats can learn from the current White House on two fronts, by having: “a bias towards action and a readiness to get things done coming out of the gate and at the very same time a readiness to plan for the long-term,” adding Democrats should come out of the gate strong, with a rapid-fire series of bills to lower the cost of living.

Presumptive next Speaker of the House Hakeem Jeffries told the audience he has plans to do just that, with a robust agenda that includes reversing Medicaid cuts, banning congressional stock trading and mid-decade redistricting, establishing a statutory right to abortion, and overturning the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that did away with limits on political spending by corporations and unions.

The conference itself was peppered with potential presidential contenders, including Buttigieg, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego, and California Rep. Ro Khanna, one of the few progressive speakers.

No one announced an official run, but many gave previews of their theory of the case.

“I do think it’s important that whoever we hire to be the chief executive of this country knows how to run something, knows how to get stuff done, knows how to not just have a vision but knows how to deliver on it,” Shapiro told reporters.

Someone who was previously kicking the tires for a possible White House bid — Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen — told reporters he’s no longer considering it, as he instead pursues the top leadership post in the Senate.

Should Democrats work with Trump?

Throughout the conference, Democrats debated whether and how to work with the Trump administration in order to deliver meaningful change for voters.

“If slapping Trump’s name on it and putting it in gold letters would get it through — hell yes, I would do that,” said Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin.

Talarico agrees.

“The American people cannot wait two years for change, so we must work with President Trump,” Talarico said. “We should make the final two years of his presidency the most productive of any American presidency.”

But New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill added a note of caution, describing the president as a bad faith actor.

“The art of the deal to Trump is he figures out what you want, he leverages the you know what out of you, and keeps taking, taking, taking, and never delivers,” Sherrill said. “My advice to Sen. Talarico is if Trump wants to work with us, we will lay out the agenda, and he can sign it.”

If you’re on social media, there’s a good chance you’ve seen the videos: people getting hot and bothered about the young men Democrats just elected.

“I’m looking at you, Rob Sand. I’m looking at you, Jon Ossoff. I’m looking at you, El-Sayed,” said fitness coach Jesse Barton, reacting to the midterm results. “I am looking, I am not the only one, and I’m very happy about what I see.”

There are debates over candidates’ relative levels of hotness. There are a lot of AI-generated images. And there are many, many montages of the politicians set to sexy pop music.

One of the most viral pieces of content was a parody Tiger Beat magazine cover featuring Democratic men … which Manoushka Guerrier, an LA-based chef and content-creator, took one step further.

“I created the entire Tiger Beat style personality quiz, complete with the different boy band personas,” she said. The quiz gives people matches including “the Babyface” (Texas Sen.-elect James Talarico) and “the Heartthrob” (Colorado Rep.-elect Manny Rutinel).

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Guerrier pays a lot of attention to politics, and she emphasizes that these guys’ looks are just a bonus.

“They’re young and they’re ballsy and they’re smart, and they’re not just smart; they’re brilliant,” she says.

The tidal wave of attention on these young men creates a striking contrast to the first Trump midterm, in 2018. That election — after the Women’s March, Me Too and the long list of assault and misconduct allegations against President Trump — yielded a record-setting wave of Democratic women. It all suggests that the thirsty social media posts aren’t just a cheeky trend; they also say a lot about how Democrats have responded to the Trump era.

A response to Trump

Two main forces are behind the wave of attention on these men according to Christina Wolbrecht, a political science professor at Notre Dame University.

“I think it’s a function of our kind of society-wide debate about masculinity,” she said. “And I also think it’s about age.”

The age side is straightforward — just ahead of the midterms, a majority of likely voters said they favored candidates with new ideas over those with experience in the job, according to a NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll.

The masculinity side, meanwhile, is in response to MAGA and its elevation of a very specific type of manhood, Wolbrecht said.

“For 10-plus years, Donald Trump has presented one very distinct version of masculinity,” she said. “It’s very much power over [others]. It’s very much power through wealth and status.”

Manliness took center stage on the Democratic side this election. Candidates leaned into it, with people like Rutinel and Michigan Senator-elect Abdul El Sayed posting weightlifting videos. El Sayed at one point did a video spoofing Love Island.

Voters noticed, posting admiring videos well before the election. Meanwhile, the media noticed and amplified this narrative, with profiles and think pieces throughout the midterm cycle, and reporting on Democrats’ “rugged” and “authentic” candidates.

‘That’s a girly thing to be, is a Democrat’

Amplifying young, “manly” men may have boosted the party in this election. That’s because Democrats had a problem after Kamala Harris lost the presidency in 2024, according to Democratic strategist Monica Venske.

“The feeling within the straight male demographic, if you will, [was] that it just wasn’t cool to be a Democrat,” she said. “It wasn’t sexy to be a Democrat. It’s not manly to be a Democrat. That’s a girly thing to be, is a Democrat.”

That’s why she started the Instagram account Boyfriends We Deserve, where she highlights attractive Democrats — mostly men, but a few women as well.

Venske explains she is careful in how she posts about women’s looks — unlike when she talks about men, like Montana’s incoming Democratic congressman.

“Like when I call Sam Forstag hot, it will most likely never, ever hurt him,” she said. “But I can call someone like Keisha Lance Bottoms hot and that could hurt her every time.”

She said she instead will call the women “baddies” or focus on their hair, as opposed to highlighting their bodies or overall looks.

To Venske, the Boyfriends We Deserve posts are part of making it clear that the Democratic party is a big tent that includes young men.

“I’m like, ‘Look at all these manly guys who are Democrats,’” she said. “Sam Forstag is an example I usually give. He was like a smokejumper in Montana. And in his announcement video for Congress, he’s fixing up a truck. If a guy who is jumping out of planes to put out fires and fixing up trucks can be a Democrat, you can be a Democrat, I promise.”

…But Democratic women won, too

All of that said, plenty of Democratic women ran and won this year, including several historic firsts: Georgia’s Keisha Lance Bottoms, for example, will be the first Black woman governor. New Mexico’s Deb Haaland will be the first Native American woman governor. Minnesota’s Peggy Flanagan will be the nation’s first Native American woman senator.

That highlights a big difference between this midterm and 2018’s wave of women.

Since that election, Democrats have seen Joe Biden defeat Trump, and then watched a second woman lose the presidency to Trump. And while Democrats most certainly do still elect women — far more than Republicans — the masculinity of their male candidates received outsized attention this year.

It’s possible, then, that the attention on Democratic men isn’t simply lighthearted, but is part of Democrats’ continual conversation about electability.

“I hear it from all sorts of people with all sorts of engagement that 2016 and 2024 proved that it took old-guy, aviator sunglasses Joe Biden to defeat Trump,” Wolbrecht said, “and we need more of that and not more Kamala Harrises or Hillary Clintons.”

“I think that’s a mistake,” she added quickly. “I think it’s a misunderstanding of what happened in ’16 and in ’24. But the meaning we put on elections has consequences and it really shapes what parties do strategically going forward.”

Democrats have struggled to win over men in recent elections. For example, Harris won 43 percent of men overall in 2024. This year, the party won 50 percent of the men’s vote.

Guerrier disagrees that the attention on candidates’ looks is about electability, but she thinks that for a lot of voters, this election was about changing the Democratic Party’s story.

“It was just like these guys came out of nowhere, and it was just so refreshing that, wow, we can get out of this darkness and into something that is hopeful,” she said.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — President Trump is confronting new realities nine months into the war with Iran that leave him with dwindling options to ending the conflict.

On Thursday, he waved away the need for a deal with Iran, saying the U.S. has billions of Iran’s dollars frozen in overseas accounts.

“We don’t need a deal with Iran. Those days have long since passed. We’ve got their money,” he wrote in a Truth Social post.

Negotiations with Iran are stuck with mediator Qatar working to bridge the divide. Trump met Qatar’s prime minister at the White House this week, and said afterward that Gulf Arab allies prefer “the status quo” of continued economic pressure on Iran. He wrote that while the U.S. remains “locked and loaded,” an attack at this point “seems to be quite unlikely.”

That’s a pivot from his threats to carry out quick, intense strikes on Iran in the days before he had to contend with two election setbacks.

Trump’s wartime ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he’d thrown his support behind, is on the cusp of being ousted from power after elections there.

Meanwhile, at home, Trump’s party lost its majority in Congress in midterm elections. Vice President Vance blamed Republican losses on the unpopular war with Iran and the nature of U.S. relations with Israel.

With less room to room maneuver and Iran still defiant, Trump’s strategy appears to be to keep things as they are, for now. That means the possibility of escalation still looms.

Senior UAE diplomat, Anwar Gargash, told an audience in the country’s capital of Abu Dhabi this week that the region must “prepare for a prolonged period of uncertainty, in which neither a decisive resolution nor a stable regional order can be taken for granted.”

Here’s what keeping the status quo looks like.

Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz persists

Official Iranian social media accounts frequently post videos of attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz for violating Iran’s new rules requiring permission to navigate the waterway, which was open and free to ships before the war.

The U.S., meanwhile, is assisting oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz using a route that’s close to Oman’s coastline. While this has helped Arab states export their oil, it does not solve the bigger problem of how to bring back the pre-war production levels of other vital products like liquified natural gas, fertilizer and aluminum. Nor does a status quo allow countries like Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain to import goods to their ports.

The International Monetary Fund says Gulf Arab states are in economic recession as a result of the war, despite higher oil prices. It says Kuwait, Qatar and Iraq’s economies are contracting approximately 16% this year. Bahrain’s is down 11%.

More limited strikes that could rapidly escalate

The U.S. is sending a third aircraft carrier with thousands of troops to the region, leaving open the possibility of another planned military escalation.

This week, Iran unveiled what it says is a new underground missile production site.

The U.S. and Iran are also still occasionally carrying out tit-for-tat for strikes.

On Friday, Iranian media said the U.S. struck one of its islands in the Strait of Hormuz. It’s an area where Iran has radars and drone launch sites. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said it hit back, targeting an early warning U.S. radar in Bahrain.

Iran remains economically battered, starved of oil revenue

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters this week there’s no need for military action against Iran at this stage because economic sanctions are doing the job.

“The pain that they’re feeling is, eventually you have to eat. Eventually you have to be able to pay your own fighters and your own security forces,” Rubio said.

There’s also a U.S. naval blockade at sea barring Iranian ships from transporting oil to countries like China. This blockade, according to the U.S. military, has cut Iran off from at least $25 billion in revenue so far.

One of the biggest economic blows, though, has come from the United Arab Emirates. The UAE announced over the summer it was severing all economic and trade ties with Iran. The UAE had been among Iran’s biggest trade partners and local bank accounts were allegedly used by Iran’s supreme leader and Revolutionary Guard to move money around.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military’s Central Command announced a new operation, dubbed “Iron Gate,” with other U.S. government agencies, aimed at preventing Iran from using land routes to transport advanced weapons across its borders and the Caspian Sea.

War in Yemen intensifies, draws in more countries

Another consequence of the conflict with Iran is the resumption of all-out war between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis in Yemen.

The Houthis, who are not a direct proxy of Iran but are supported by it, say Saudi airstrikes across Yemen have killed scores of people in past months, including nearly 60 this past weekend, many of them women and children in a village near the capital Sana’a.

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, faces daily missile and drone attacks by Houthis, including some this week that hit its key East-West pipeline carrying crude oil to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. Another Houthi attack hit Saudi oil company Aramco’s skyscraper in Riyadh’s financial district.

Deadly Houthi attacks on Saudi airports have led to flights and high-profile events being canceled.

As the Yemen war drags on, Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt are among the countries entering the fray with defensive support to Saudi Arabia. The U.S. is assisting with intelligence on the Houthis.

The United Nations says some 330,000 Yemenis have been displaced by the renewed fighting between the Houthis and the Saudi-backed Yemeni government, exacerbating an already dire humanitarian crisis.

Efforts by mediators continue, neither side budges

Iran says it’s prepared for a short-term pause on attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz, but insists that seven demands be met before entering into direct talks over its nuclear program.

“The message has been only one thing. These seven items are on the table. Take it or leave it,” Hamidreza Gholamzade, Tehran municipality spokesperson, told NPR.

These demands include lifting sanctions, ending the naval blockade, unfreezing Iran’s dollars in overseas accounts and enforcing a ceasefire across all fronts, which includes halting Israeli attacks in Lebanon and Gaza.

Rubio has described the conditions as “absurd.”

There’s also discussion on diluting and moving Iran’s enriched uranium abroad. However, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Mohsen Rezaei, told Iran’s state broadcaster Wednesday: “We will not remove even a shred of enriched nuclear material from Iran.”

It’s another indication of the gridlock.

NPR’s Hadeel Al-Shalchi in Antalya, Turkey, and Ahmed Abu Hamada in Cairo contributed reporting.

SANTIAGO, Chile — Chile’s ultraconservative president finds himself on the back foot after just eight months in power.

José Antonio Kast, a politician who spent a career railing against progressive issues, reproductive rights and welfare policies from the extreme fringes of right-wing politics, now finds himself with just 24% approval in the polls.

It is less than a year since Kast stormed to the presidency in December 2025 by avoiding all mention of his hardline stances on social matters, focusing instead on two hot-button issues whipped up in the national media: illegal immigration and public security.

But rather than pressing ahead with those at the top of his agenda, he has floundered. And as elsewhere around the Americas and worldwide, rising costs of living have come to hit him hard.

“Our salaries are maybe 20% of a European income, but with a similar cost of living – it’s terrible,” said Simón Echavarría, a 30-year-old architect, at a march in Santiago on Friday evening.

“We want to protest against the measures that have set us back on environmental issues, on human rights, even reducing the sentences of pedophiles – they are implementing things that nobody asked for,” he said.

Behind him, heavily armed police blocked the streets and fired water cannons at protesters chanting and waving flags in the square.

Much of the recent ire stems from the revelation last month that Kast’s government had signed decrees to cut the sentences of 56 prisoners whose crimes range from the rape of children to dictatorship-era human rights violations.

Kast has since admitted that this was an “error”, but came out in support of the undersecretary who signed the decrees nonetheless.

But beneath the more egregious moves Kast has made in his first year in power is simmering discontent over affordability.

In July, Kast’s government chose not to apply an anti-inflation tool available to the Chilean state to ease the rise in fuel prices brought about by the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.

Protests exploded as prices shot up overnight and motorists joined long queues at gas stations to fill their tanks before the rise came into effect.

This week, Chile’s formidable truckers’ unions blockaded two major highways in an effort to exert pressure on the government and address high fuel prices.

On Friday, the strike was broken after the government backed down, sending a bill to Chile’s congress which will reverse planned fuel price rises.

It is expected to be approved this month, but public anger continues to grow over the cost of living.

Politicians across the Americas who have enthusiastically aligned themselves with President Donald Trump are facing challenges similar to those confronting the U.S. administration, as rising fuel prices and the cost of everyday goods fuel public discontent.

In Argentina, far-right libertarian Javier Milei faces reelection in less than a year, with 60% of the country disapproving of his leadership amid spiraling inflation. In Peru, President Keiko Fujimori is also facing growing discontent, with 53% disapproving of her government, according to a recent Ipsos poll.

At the march in Santiago on Friday, 30-year-old veterinarian Patricia Pereira said that she was concerned about cuts to science funding, but that her discontent ran deeper.

“Here in Chile, it was a hard-won victory for children to have free education, achieved through protests, and now even that’s also being called into question,” she said.

Protests are likely to grow in Santiago if the government fails to address the rising cost of living. President Kast has shown little sign of doing so.

To the contrary, his budget proposal is making its way through Congress, with the government seeking cuts to education, culture, science and a host of social programs.

She purchased the land in 2003 and started April Joy Farm with her husband a few years later.

“I’ve always had a deep passion for, like, ‘How can I leave it better than I found it?’” she said on a brisk November morning.

Thatcher and her husband have a flock of about 75 egg-laying hens and grow a plethora of fruits and vegetables — asparagus, figs, pears, radishes, rhubarb, tomatoes, and more.

Much of what they grow goes to a charitable program they started called Farm to Heart, which distributes locally-grown products to Southwest Washington families facing food insecurity.

But even with support from community donations and grants, their farm’s margins are thin. To maintain Farm to Heart, Thatcher has relied on a somewhat obscure local agency — the Clark Conservation District, which is at risk of cutting services to growers like her if the county doesn’t approve stable funding during a public hearing set for Nov. 17.

The district is asking county councilors to approve a 10-year parcel fee that would be collected with property taxes. It’s a familiar request and one the council has shot down multiple times before, most recently in 2018.

But the stakes are higher now, according to Clark Conservation District Executive Director Zorah Oppenheimer. Federal and state grants that have supported the agency in the past are drying up, while region-wide, small-scale farms face development pressure to accommodate a growing population.

Lately, Oppenheimer said, when she drives out to rural parts of the county that she hasn’t visited in a while, she sees new subdivisions between fields. She worries that more farmland will be fragmented under the county’s recently-adopted land-use plan.

‘Agriculture in Clark County is struggling’

There are 45 conservation districts in Washington. They offer free, voluntary natural resource expertise and financial help to farmers and other land managers. They also do things like water quality work and habitat restoration.

“We will do anything from a $130 septic inspection to a $175,000 manure storage facility to a $500,000 bridge,” Oppenheimer said.

One of the biggest projects her agency has worked on with Thatcher is a static aerated compost structure, which makes it easier to safely turn manure and other organic materials into compost that can be used on crops.

These setups can cost tens of thousands of dollars, and the Thatchers were only able to make it happen with the help of the conservation district.

“That was pretty transformational,” Thatcher said. “Those are the types of investments that really pay off, and not only just for me, but whoever stewards and farms this land after I’m here.”

Despite having one of the highest concentrations of farms in Washington and abundant fertile soil, Clark County’s agricultural community is struggling, Oppenheimer said. One stressor she pointed to is land use planning for population growth, and the county council’s latest 20-year growth plan that will open some farmland to development.

“In the comprehensive planning process, the councilors spent a lot of time talking about agriculture and the importance of it,” Oppenheimer said. “Having a robust conservation district is, in my opinion, the No. 1 way to support agriculture in Clark County.”

Of Washington’s 10 most populous counties, Clark is the only one that doesn’t provide stable funding for its entirely grant-funded conservation district.

Oppenheimer said changing that is urgent. Her agency just lost a federal grant she says effectively makes up more than 40% of its budget.

The cost of conservation

Clark County’s elected officials have been reluctant in the past to raise fees to support the conservation district.

At an Oct. 28 county work session, Councilor Glen Yung said he was supportive of the agency but had concerns about charging property owners who are already facing high costs.

And even if the county does approve a fee, Yung questioned how sustainable that would be.

“The natural tendency is, once you do get that sustainable funding, you start relying less on those grants,” he said during the session, adding that such a change could pose problems for the agency down the line if a future council doesn’t renew funding.

Under the proposed rate system, most property owners would pay less than $25 annually. Thatcher would pay $24.52 for her land. Those fees would bring in more than $3.5 million for the district next year. To Thatcher, the benefit of a thriving conservation district far outweighs this cost.

“You think about a time like COVID,” she said. “We never missed one week of distribution. Grocery stores are cleaned out, and where do you fall back on? You fall back on the farms.”

The Thatchers distribute most of their farm’s products through the food access program they co-founded, Farm to Heart.

They rely on community donations and grants to supplement their own offerings with food purchased from a network of 34 other local farms. Then, they provide boxes of produce to families facing food insecurity through their community-supported agriculture program, and set up free markets at local elementary schools.

“We basically see ourselves as a matchmaker,” Thatcher said. “We’re connecting families that need food with farmers that need healthy, strong markets that are also equitable.”

For the last few years, Thatcher has worked to ensure her land will continue to be farmed into the future.

With help from the Washington Farmland Trust and Clark County’s Legacy Lands Program, this summer she established April Joy Farm as a “forever farm,” which means it’s protected from development and must remain available for agriculture.

Her farm is the first in Clark County to be protected through this partnership.

If the conservation district wins its funding fight, Oppenheimer said, her agency will be able to help other farmers protect their land from development too.

As the sun rises on a quiet November morning, the rain pauses and dots of color appear along the gray streets of Portland’s Chinatown. Bouquets of yellows, magentas, pinks and greens shuffle across the streets, obscuring the faces of their porters in a multicolored parade into the Lan Su Chinese Garden.

Inside, florists and their assistants work quickly to set up their workspaces with the materials needed for the day: scissors, twine, wire, ladders, light fixtures and plenty of chrysanthemums.

Each year, floral designers compete for a spot in the Lan Su Chinese Garden’s annual Chrysanthemum Festival and Floral Design Showcase. The festival, inspired by the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, celebrates the chrysanthemum as a Chinese symbol of nobility and longevity. Cultivated in China since as early as 700 B.C., the chrysanthemum — known more commonly as a “mum” — is unlike other flowers. It blooms in the fall and, in Oregon, reaches peak bloom in November.

“As other plants are going into sleep in the winter, the mum is coming into its own,” said Josie Losh, the curator of horticulture at Lan Su. “This is a bright point in fall.”

This year, the festival features 81 mum varieties, 19 local floral designers and one featured designer. They are tasked with designing around the theme “Golden Blooms upon Autumn Waters.”

“In classical Chinese poetry, the chrysanthemum is referred to as jinying (金英), which literally means ‘golden blossom,’” explains Losh. “Autumn waters” refers to the lake in the middle of the Lan Su garden.

As the designers interpret the theme, the garden transforms. In one corner, a designer crafts a dragon out of fresh and dried flowers. Across the garden, chrysanthemums line a mirror, inviting viewers to reflect on everyday life and find joy in it.

Down another path, Emily Thompson weaves yellow mums and grasses along a rock formation to create the illusion of a cascading waterfall. Her piece, titled “The Odes,” is inspired by the first mention of golden blooms in Chinese literature in a collection of poetry from 1100 to 700 B.C.

“It’s a kind of a tribute to my mom, who is from Hong Kong,” said Thompson. “She grew up in America, so she didn’t really get a chance to learn about her culture or anything. So I’m kind of taking that on as second generation here in America.”

After three hours, designers finish their installations, and a team of judges walks the garden to evaluate each piece on its floral design technique and how well it matches the theme.

“We didn’t know what to expect,” said judge Annie Chen, a florist who teaches at the American Institute of Floral Designers and Floral Design Institute. “It was like Christmas.”

For Chen, the opportunity to celebrate the chrysanthemum is special because she considers it an overlooked flower in floral design work. “It is kind of like the backup dancer to the star flowers,” she said. “I actually use it a lot in my wedding work, and you probably wouldn’t notice until you really look closely.”

Losh notes that the chrysanthemum has a reputation as a “common” flower, but reveres it for its strength. “They have to be able to brave the wind and the cold and the rain,” she said. “So they have to be pretty tough.”

To put the chrysanthemum on full display this year, Losh has studied Chinese traditional floral art, called huayi, and created an arrangement for Lan Su guests to see.

“This art form actually is the predecessor to Japanese ikebana, which many people are familiar with, but many people do not know about Chinese huayi,” Losh explains. “It’s having a revival and Lan Su is very excited to be able to introduce this art form to our audience and let more people know about how amazing this art is.”

On that evening, guests enter Lan Su to experience the displays at night for the festival’s kickoff event, Nights of the Golden Flower. Amid the melodic sounds of a zither and twinkling lights reflecting across the lily-padded water, the garden transforms into a tranquil architectural landscape.

The dragon wins first place. Guests wander the garden, taking in the elegance of the designs.

For Losh, this is the culmination of nine months of work. “For a long time you really only see leaves and you see pests and then all of a sudden you start to see buds forming. And when that happens, it’s like, okay, the time is here,” she said. “All of this investment of fertilizing and pest control and the care of watering them throughout the hot summer, it all comes to this peak in November where we get to share them with everyone.”

The floral designs are on display until Sunday, Nov. 15. Festival activities run through Nov. 22.

Good morning, Northwest.

After experiencing an 11% decline in enrollment since 2019, Portland Public Schools proposed yesterday closing 10 elementary schools over two years, starting in fall 2027. OPB’s Elizabeth Miller has the details.

Plus, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said earlier today that U.S. air travel should fully recover from the longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years by the end of tomorrow. OPB reporters visited Portland International Airport yesterday to learn how the ground stop affected passengers.

Here’s your First Look at Saturday’s news.

— Winston Szeto

Top story

Portland Public Schools superintendent recommends 10 schools for closure

Portland Public Schools Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong is proposing closing 10 Portland elementary schools over a two-year period, starting in fall 2027.

Armstrong’s recommended plan is a revision of the district’s earlier proposals, which would have closed up to 14 schools.

If the school board approves Armstrong’s recommendation, five schools would close in fall 2027, and the remaining five schools would close in fall 2028.

Under the proposal, other changes going into effect at that time would include several dual language immersion program moves, as well as the conversion of six K-8 schools to become K-5s. (Elizabeth Miller)

Learn More

3 things to know

1. The Federal Aviation Administration canceled all flights in Oregon and 47 other contiguous U.S. states yesterday afternoon, saying communications problems at regional air traffic control centers were a factor in the mass flight cancellations. The order was lifted shortly before 6 p.m. (Troy Brynelson, Riley Martinez and Courtney Sherwood)
2. The Oregon Coast is experiencing big waves and wind, which is expected to last through the weekend. A high surf warning is in effect for the central coast today through noon. (Rachael McDonald, KLCC)
3. Oregon Senate Democrats selected Sen. Anthony Broadman, of Bend, as their new caucus leader as they head into a long legislative session. (Lauren Dake)

Northwest headlines

• PPS school board starts independent ‘fact-finding’ effort into Signal reports (Natalie Pate)
• Chrysanthemums transform Portland’s Lan Su Chinese Garden into a vibrant landscape during dark fall weeks (Julia Reihs)
• Vancouver City Council fires City Manager Lon Pluckhahn (Erik Neumann)
• Emeralds and Medford pull the plug on stadium proposal (Justin Higginbottom, JPR)
• Clark County farmers could lose critical conservation district support if funding effort fails (Elena Neale-Sacks)
• Washington AG hires outside firm to defend ban on transgender girls in girls’ school sports (Amy Radil, KUOW)
• Oregon wildlife officials report growing numbers of waterfowl with bird flu across the Willamette Valley (Brian Bull, KLCC)
• Trail Blazers beat Kings 120-107 in NBA Cup play for third straight win (Associated Press)

One more look

Superabundant recipe: Savory persimmon-onion galette with miso caramel

A Fuyu is versatile, like a slightly spicy, less-sweet apple. Whereas an underripe or un-bletted Hachiya persimmon will turn your tongue to a roof tile, a Fuyu’s low astringency makes it ready to go right from the jump, as a crispy addition to salads and cheese boards, stewed into chutneys or roasted like a root vegetable.

And when it eventually languishes long enough to go all soft and silky on the insides, it’s ready for cakes, jellies and confections.

Here, persimmons share the spotlight with onions for a savory galette glazed with buttery miso caramel — find the recipe in this week’s Superabundant newsletter. (Heather Arndt Anderson)

Learn More

Subscribe to OPB’s First Look to receive Northwest news in your inbox six days a week.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. air travel should be fully recovered from the longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years by the end of Sunday, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said Saturday.

Bedford said the flights “will still have delays and cancellations” on Saturday but promised that the “worst is behind us.”

His comments came as airlines across the U.S. worked to recover from a ground stoppage that lasted four hours, stranding hundreds of thousands of passengers.

New technology being added to the nation’s air traffic control system overloaded antiquated equipment and caused “intermittent” communications and radar gaps, leading to the flight shutdown of more than four hours, Trump administration officials said.

Planes were taking flight and landing Saturday, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said. But the effects could be felt for days. Officials say the system will likely return to normal in time to handle the Thanksgiving travel rush.

The nationwide stop was the first since January 2023, when another key Federal Aviation Administration computer system that sends notices to pilots malfunctioned, and the second since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Andrew Charlton, an aviation consultant, said Friday’s stoppage affected about a quarter of the 45,000 flights in the U.S. each day.

“The knock-on effect of that is incredible,” said Charlton, managing director of Aviation Advocacy. “The aircraft doesn’t just fly from A to B and back to B and then stop. It then moves onto C and then over to E and around and around and around. It is, of course, exacerbated if you’re talking about long-haul flights, international flights over the Atlantic or over the Pacific.”

Thousands of flights delayed and canceled

At airports, passengers stared at screens showing delays or rushed to find buses or trains to their destinations.

Emily Brown and her 14-year-old daughter waited more than four hours Friday at the Dallas airport for their flight to Columbus, Ohio, before giving up. They were traveling to surprise her daughter’s best friend. Instead, she had to settle for phoning the friend through tears in the airport, Brown said.

“She saved up her money to buy her own ticket, and she’s planned this whole weekend,” Brown said. “Now we’re not sure when we’re gonna be able to go.”

A cheerful Southwest Airlines gate agent greeted passengers at Dallas Love Field at dawn Saturday with, “Good morning, good morning,” then repeatedly said all flights were full and asked passengers to have boarding passes ready to expedite the process and help keep flights moving.

Sports teams scheduled to play this weekend adjusted game start times, searched for hotel rooms, rescheduled flights and chartered buses. No. 19 Mississippi’s game at Oklahoma was delayed a full day to Sunday. Start times for some other games were pushed back hours.

FlightAware, a website that tracks flights, said more than 4,100 flights had been canceled. Cirium, a similar site, put that number above 3,200 flights.

Corbyn Wascher’s flight was on the tarmac at the Charlotte, N.C., airport for four hours Friday on his way home to Moline, Illinois, from a conference in Miami. The 37-year-old high school teacher paid $100 to take an Uber to a hotel 25 minutes from the airport after he was unable to find a flight until Saturday afternoon to Chicago.

At London’s Heathrow Airport, several flights to and from the U.S. were listed as delayed or canceled Saturday.

“While U.S. flights have resumed, there may be some follow-on disruption as airlines work to rebook affected passengers and get all services back to normal,” said Tim Johnson, consumer director at the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority.

Officials say no one was in danger during ground stop

Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin told reporters at the White House that no one was in any danger as more than 3,000 flights in the air at the time of the grounding order landed safely.

Duffy blamed Congress for failing to approve more funding for new technology, while downplaying the fact that trying to implement new fixes overtaxed the system. He suggested more disruptions might occur.

“We didn’t think we would have this kind of outage. We did,” he said. “We were able to review what went wrong, and then reboot the system and go. But, you will have more of these.”

Duffy said the failure involved old equipment and was not linked to the FAA’s new AI-powered system, which the agency is rolling out to help predict problems in the sky.

The problem was due to updating a system that can never shut down, Charlton said.

“What you’re watching here is trying to change the tires of your car when the car’s going at 80 miles an hour down the expressway, because nothing stops in aviation,” Charlton said. “It’s a 24/7 operation. And to make changes on the fly, if you’ll pardon that pun, is incredibly complex and dangerous.”

The FAA already replaced thousands of old copper wires with fiber optic lines and upgraded hundreds of radio systems as part of the overhaul that began last year after Congress approved $12.5 billion in funding. Duffy and the White House are pushing for $30 billion more to complete the work.

Past problems have been linked to equipment failures

The problem appeared similar to a regional air traffic control communication outage in September that snarled hundreds of flights across the Northeast, although that disruption was linked to a construction crew cutting a fiber optic line. Aging equipment was also blamed for brief radar outages last year that disrupted Newark airport.

Aviation safety expert Steve Arroyo said the difference this time was the nationwide scale of the disruption, which left controllers unable to reliably talk to pilots.

“If you don’t have that ability, whether it’s because the old wires that they have are just run down or for whatever reason, you’ve got to stop airplanes on the ground and not put them in the air, where you’re going to risk not being able to communicate with them,” said Arroyo, a former United Airlines pilot.

It differed from the one after 9/11 because planes were not being told to land immediately and pilots likely were able to communicate with ground controllers at airports, Arroyo said.

___

Funk reported from Omaha, Nebraska, and Golden from Seattle. Associated Press journalists David Keyton in Berlin; Stephen Hawkins in Dallas; Mead Gruver in Fort Collins, Colorado; Jessica Hill in Las Vegas; Ali Swenson in Chicago; Alex Veiga and Jaimie Ding in Los Angeles; Seung Min Kim and Aamer Madhani in Washington; Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City; and Brian Melley in London contributed to this report.

In an abrupt turnaround, the City of Medford and the Eugene Emeralds have ended their exploration of building a stadium for the Minor League Baseball team.

“We believe the best path forward is to focus our efforts on keeping the Emeralds in Eugene,” said Eugene Emeralds owner DG Elmore. “We’re grateful for Medford’s partnership and thoughtful consideration.”

The city said it remains committed to exploring opportunities for economic development.

The decision comes after councilors heard more details of the project at a study session Thursday night. At that meeting, a city-commissioned study revealed the cost for Medford to build the stadium on the site of Hawthorne Park was more than $75 million.

Councilors shared concerns over the large cost and tight timeline to bring the Eugene Emeralds to the Rogue Valley. City staff said the $75 million cost was likely an underestimate, with the true cost closer to $90 million.

Although Harry and David Field was included in the study as a potential stadium location, the Emeralds owner said his team would only be satisfied at the site of Hawthorne Park.

“We’re willing to put $10 million into the ballpark if we can get it on a quick timeline and we can get an agreement in place that makes sense for both parties,” Elmore said.

The stadium would have been owned by the city, with the Emeralds leasing the facility for an undecided amount.

Elmore wanted the stadium to open by April of 2029. That would have likely required the council to move forward with the plan at next week’s meeting. The city was first approached by the Emeralds about the potential relocation to Medford in the spring of last year.

“What appears to me is the city of Medford taking a bulk of this, and it’s still a very expensive project,” Medford Mayor Michael Zarosinski said last night. “It’s going to really suck up a lot of resources that could be used in other places.”

Councilor Nick Card also shared concerns over the short timeline.

“I think we need the opportunity to talk to the state and see if the state is willing to participate in this kind of a project, see if we can find other community partners who want to participate,” he said.

Councilor John Quinn said the stadium would divert resources from a potential conference center.

“You don’t want to start with something that puts you in a hole of debt that will never generate property tax, and hope that it generates revenue in other ways,” Quinn said.

He also doubted the study’s breakdown of potential parking spaces for the 3,000-seat stadium.

“Those parking spaces are not real,” Quinn said. “They’re already reserved and they’re being used by other people.”

The meeting attracted around 40 members of the public, including organizers collecting signatures to protect the downtown park from being developed into a stadium.

“We’re here because we don’t want it at Hawthorne Park,” said Miriam Grayer with Citizens for Hawthorne Park. “It’s the only [park] in walking distance of those downtown residents.”

Now that the stadium proposal has been shelved, Hawthorne Park would appear to be safe, at least for now.

Justin Higginbottom is a reporter with Jefferson Public Radio. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.

The Oregon coast is experiencing big waves and wind, which is expected to last through the weekend.

A high surf warning is in effect for the central coast through Saturday at noon. They’re expecting really large waves with breakers over 30 feet.

Tyler Kramz, a lead meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Portland, said in these dangerous surf conditions, people should stay off the beaches. Not only are the high waves a hazard, but rip currents and sneaker waves can knock people over and drag them under water.

Kramz says if people want to watch the waves, to stay well away.

“Now, if they really want to, they could go on top of a cliff or an overlook and be way high up in elevation and look down from above,” Kramz said. “That would be a safer bet than being on the beach.”

The coast will continue to be stormy through the weekend with wind gusts up to 45-50 mph and more high surf conditions overnight Saturday.

“We’re looking at breakers probably up to 30-35 feet once again over the weekend,” Kramz said. “So, those coastal hazards are going to remain a threat this weekend, long story short.”

Kramz said the Willamette Valley will also experience rain and windy conditions this weekend but it’s not expected to have a huge impact in terms of downed trees or flooding.

Rachael McDonald is a reporter with KLCC. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Deni Avdija scored 34 points and the Portland Trail Blazers beat the Sacramento Kings 120-107 on Friday night in NBA Cup play to open a six-game trip with their third straight victory.

Damian Lillard added 29 points to help Portland improve to 9-3. The Trail Blazers are 6-1 on the road, with the lone loss to the Los Angeles Lakers in their NBA Cup opener.

Avdija was 11 of 13 from the field, hitting 3 of 5 3-pointers, and nine free throws without a miss. Toumani Camara added 14 points for Portland, and Donovan Clingan had 13 points and 11 rebounds.

De’Andre Hunter led Sacramento with 24 points. The Kings have lost five in a row to fall to 1-11 overall and 0-7 at home.

Domantas Sabonis had 21 points and 12 rebounds.

Up next

Trail Blazers: At Minnesota on Monday and Tuesday nights.

Kings: Host Oklahoma City of Sunday night.

___

See AP’s full NBA coverage here

On a hot August night in the heart of Southeast Portland, dozens of moviegoers lined up under the soft glow of the Cinemagic Theater marquee. Inside, where the smell of fresh popcorn lingered in the air, people buzzed with excitement.

It was a sold-out crowd in the single-screen auditorium. But the audience didn’t come to see the latest summer blockbuster.

“When we had ‘Oppenheimer’ on 35mm it didn’t sell out. But ‘Bad Moon,’ 1996, on VHS? No problem.” Cinemagic co-owner Ryan Frakes said to an excited crowd. “Are you guys ready to fire up the VCR?”

It’s the first Friday of the month: VHS Night.

For nearly five years, Frakes and co-owner Nicholas Kuechler have teamed up to showcase films and trailers on VHS that may have otherwise been lost to time and obscurity. Zany, underground B-movies like Philippe Mora’s “Pterodactyl Woman from Beverly Hills,” “Rumpelstiltskin” and “Shakma” are played on a physical VHS tape.

August’s pick? “Bad Moon.”

“It’s a criminally underseen film that has my favorite werewolf design ever,” Frakes said.

In Cinemagic’s projection booth, a lone VCR sits on a music stand, sharing space with the theater’s hefty digital and film projectors. If the tape warbles or jumps, it’s part of the experience. The crowd loves the imperfections.

The monthly event is a pillar of Portland’s VHS scene. It’s easy to know when people become regulars.

“I know at least 20 people by name that come in every month,” Frakes said. “I start to build relationships with those people, and they become VHS Night family. Straight up.”

Olivia Salazar is a part of that family. Over the years, she’s attended VHS Night with her husband Romeo. She said Cinemagic has been an important community hub in the city, especially coming out of the pandemic.

“Being able to enjoy something that, sure, you could stream it alone by yourself. But you could be in this room full of people and have an amazing time. That is just beyond what you could ever get on your own,” Salazar said.

“We live in such an amazing town for movies, and I’m so glad that Cinemagic is part of that,” said Salazar, who held her wedding party at Cinemagic with a double feature of “Brainsmasher…A Love Story” and “Voyage of the Rock of Aliens.”

“I love sharing it with everybody, especially the people that I love.”

Be Kind, Rewind

This analog revival may seem recent. But for many Northwest cinephiles and collectors, VHS culture has been thriving for years.

The Rose City hosts regular VHS tape swaps at local watering holes like Cult Classics, a VHS-themed bar where video tapes and old, analog TVs decorate the walls. There are also neighborhood lending libraries with VHS exchanges and a VHS-themed haunted house. Hundreds of VHS titles at video rental store Movie Madness are set to relocate to their new home in the Hollywood District in 2027.

The vintage video format from the ‘80s and ‘90s might seem niche. But fast-forward to the present, and you’ll find a passionate community that champions the medium.

Billy Organ is a Portland artist who runs Retro Release Video, where he works with movie studios to put out officially licensed VHS tapes of new and reissued classics. Organ said he’s seen a growing number of younger people turn to VHS and the analog horror genre.

“I think VHS is a rejection of whatever AI slop is coming out,” Organ said. “Being able to physically hold your movie is such a foreign concept to [young people.] Once they see that DVDs and VHS [tapes] are coming back, they’re like, ‘I want that.’”

Collectors and tape vendors say the fuzzy aesthetic of VHS oozes nostalgia and is a warm reminder of simpler times. It can even offer comfort for folks who didn’t grow up with VHS at all.

“I think the present is very scary to a lot of people. We live in very politically and environmentally uncertain times,” said Bill Kilby, who operates the Portland pop-up video store Pictureshow Collections with his wife. “I think a lot of millennials and Gen Z cinema fans — to be able to reach back in time and experience the media they love in a simpler way, it’s attractive.”

Pictureshow Collections is a frequent vendor at tape swaps in the region. Their tables are stocked with dozens of tapes, ranging from millennial classic “The Mummy” starring Brendan Fraser, to movies filmed in Oregon like “Stand by Me” or “The Goonies.”

Hillary Buckholtz is the other half of Pictureshow.

“We feel like a lot of people view VHS tapes as trash,” she said. “We clean them. We test them. We restore them. And we sell them to people so that they can have another life.”

In an era when streaming services are getting more expensive with seemingly infinite choices, VHS also allows for someone to have complete ownership of their movies, with no fear of losing their media.

“People like having the ability to own media and not have to focus on which subscription they have to watch what they want,” said Alex Burnett, co-founder of the horror podcast Brothers in Blood.

Burnett admits that tapes are not as crisp or sharp as other forms of media, but he says VHS leans into life’s blemishes.

“It’s a lesser media compared to a Blu-ray. But seeing that grain, hearing the hum of the TV, there’s a beauty to it that you lose,” Burnett said. “With VHS, you kind of lean into that grittiness.”

Burnett, along with his brother Logan, also founded one of the biggest VHS tape swaps in the Portland region: Drive-In of the Dead. This year’s event at the 99W Drive-In in Newberg featured 55 vendors celebrating the horror genre.

The brothers say horror and VHS go hand in hand because many popular horror movies of the ‘80s and ‘90s were initially released on the format. Classics like “Halloween III,” “The Thing” and “They Live” are hot commodities for collectors.

“Horror fans love practical effects and physical media,” Logan said. “VHS embodies all of that.”

At Variety Records, preserving physical media is a higher calling

Outside of tape swaps and horror markets, Portland also has no shortage of mom-and-pop shops that specialize in selling VHS.

Southeast Portland’s Variety Records is a physical media oasis. The store’s shelves and walls are stocked floor-to-ceiling with DVDs, Blu-rays, vinyl records, CDs — and a truckload of VHS tapes.

“There’s got to be at least 25,000 VHS movies just in these two rooms alone, probably 10,000 titles,” said Gilbert Zimmerle, the shop’s co-owner.

Zimmerle runs Variety Records with Richard McClellan in the Foster-Powell neighborhood. At the ages of 65 and 71, respectively, Zimmerle said the store is a passion project of a lifetime. The shop opened in 2004, drawing from Zimmerle’s personal collection of 10,000 records. Then came the movies.

“All of a sudden these VHS [tapes came from] ... the Blockbusters and the Hollywood Videos that were closing down and we had a big collection of movies come our way,” Zimmerle said.

Zimmerle said it’s his life mission to preserve physical media in order to share it with the next generation of film fans.

“This media has never left. It never died, not in my world,” he said. “As long as I’m alive, I’m gonna try to save it as much as I can.”

OPB digital video producer Joey Lovato contributed to this story.

Business travelers were stranded in Portland, players on a girls’ softball team wondered whether they’d make a big tournament in time, and foster kittens bound for a new home were stuck at a boarding gate with their human after a major national ground stop Friday affected nearly all flights to and from Oregon and the rest of the country.

The Federal Aviation Administration said communications problems at regional air traffic control centers were a factor in the mass flight cancellations. The so-called “groundstop” ended shortly before 6 p.m. Pacific time Friday, but federal officials warned that getting planes back in the air and ironing out backlogs would be a slow process.

That left airport staff across the country stuck with the cat-herding task of redirecting travelers facing potentially long delays.

Traveler Gwen Ma, 54, found herself stuck in San Francisco with two kittens and a deadline.

Ma, who fosters kittens in her retirement, planned to fly from San Francisco to Portland on Friday to deliver two kittens she had raised since infancy to a child’s birthday party.

“This is supposed to be a fun trip,” she said. Though she accepted she would not make it to the party on time, she was not giving up. “I will at least try to get on our flight tomorrow to take these kittens up to those kids.”

Portland resident Chris Cloney was hoping to travel in the opposite direction to visit family in San Francisco. As he was headed to the airport, a friend told him flights were being canceled nationwide, but Cloney continued en route to PDX.

“Before we got through TSA, I got the text that the flight had been canceled,” he said. He said he was optimistic that he’d be able to book a later flight and still make it on Friday.

Parents of girls trying to reach Southern California for a weekend softball tournament were less optimistic.

One of those parents, Laura Berta, said only three of the girls on her daughters’ team have made it to their destination so far, and they’ll need at least nine to compete in the weekend-long tournament.

Berta said her 14-year-old daughter, Mackenzie, seemed to be taking the travel delay in stride — at least for now.

“She’s with some of her friends, and they’re playing and hanging out in the airport,” she said. But she added, “I think if it comes down to not being able to make it down there, she’s going to be very, very upset.”

The Berta family decided to wait at PDX and appreciate the recently remodeled airport’s amenities, she said, in hopes that flights might resume in time.

Business traveler Andra Kaufman was less optimistic that flights would resume quickly.

Kaufman had already boarded her 1:15 p.m. flight and was eager to get home to Little Rock, Arkansas, after a week in hotels when the ground hold was announced.

“We were completely boarded. They had closed the doors to the plane,” she said. Flight crew members announced a slight delay — then a longer delay. As they waited, passengers started to see updates on their phones about a nationwide ground stop.

Finally, flight staff told passengers to gather their belongings and exit the plane “for comfort” as they waited for another update, Kaufman said.

Though she wants to get home to her husband, Kaufman said she was trying to look on the bright side and planned to re-book a room at the Portland hotel where she had been staying.

“I did make the joke that it is, you know, Friday the 13th,” she said.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Andra Kaufman’s last name. OPB regrets the error.

Armstrong’s recommended plan is a revision of the district’s earlier proposals, which would have closed up to 14 schools.

If the school board approves Armstrong’s recommendation, the following schools would close next fall:

• Beach Elementary
• Peninsula Elementary
• Sabin Elementary
• Creston Elementary
• Buckman Elementary

Under the proposal, other changes going into effect at that time would include several dual language immersion program moves, as well as the conversion of six K-8 schools (Beverly Cleary, César Chávez, Faubion, Laurelhurst, Sunnyside and Vernon) to become K-5s.

More changes would come in fall 2028, including the closures of the following schools:

• Rose City Park Elementary
• Lewis Elementary
• Marysville Elementary
• Woodmere Elementary
• Irvington Elementary

Along with those five closures, Armstrong’s plan includes the conversion of Bridger K-8 to a K-5 and the move of the focus option program Odyssey K-8 to Forest Park Elementary.

The school board is set to vote to approve or reject the recommendation on Dec. 15, with community input sessions scheduled to continue.

It’s been over a month since Portland Public Schools presented two proposals to “rightsize” Oregon’s largest district, which has experienced an 11% enrollment decline since 2019. Since then, the district has hosted several feedback sessions to hear from students, families and staff on the proposals. While some families seem to support the district’s plan to close schools, PPS has faced intense criticism for how it handled the process, sowing distrust in the district across the Portland community.

Portland is far from the only school district considering closures. In Salem-Keizer, school board members are also expected to vote on a school closure proposal next month. Across the country, school districts are announcing closure plans to address declining enrollment.

But in Portland, the idea of closing public schools has drawn ire from local elected officials as well as Gov. Tina Kotek, with many highlighting the importance of schools to their neighborhoods.

In a press release Friday, Armstrong said changes from the original proposals were made to reflect feedback from the community.

Under her proposal, four schools would remain open: Sellwood Middle School, James John Elementary, Maplewood Elementary and Stephenson Elementary.

Sunnyside would no longer be at risk of losing its status as an environmental focus school, though it would still become a K-5. The Mandarin Dual Language Immersion program at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary would remain there.

“These changes reflect the voices of the families, students and staff who participated in this process,” Armstrong said.

“We know that closing or consolidating schools is deeply personal and difficult. We have taken that feedback seriously while remaining focused on the long-term needs of all PPS students.”

PPS says “rightsizing” the district will lead to better allocation of resources, more consistent staffing for counselors and social workers in schools, and “more balanced class sizes.”

But there are still many unknowns in this plan. Among them are the impact to staffing and students with disabilities, and whether the proposals will cause more families to leave PPS and choose other educational options.

PPS says it will provide “individualized transition support for students affected by school closures, program relocations or boundary changes,” with more support for students with Individualized Education Plans, or IEPs.

What this “rightsizing” proposal will not do is solve the district’s budget issues. PPS projects a $65 million budget gap for next school year, and will spend next spring making cost-saving plans to balance the budget. If the school board rejects Armstrong’s “rightsizing” plan, it will not change the district’s grim budget outlook.

“Maintaining the status quo will not protect our students from the financial challenges ahead,” Armstrong said.

This plan will also not solve a lack of trust in the district that has been building for months. Between an expensive district contract to outsource its bond program and concern about district officials’ use of the messaging app Signal, the district is facing a challenging environment ahead that will only be made more difficult by school closures.

Friday’s recommendation presents a next step in Portland’s plans to reshape the school district. But more community pushback is likely to follow.

The FAA had grounded all flights nationwide, including at Oregon airports, Friday afternoon, causing hundreds of flights to be diverted. Officials cited “extraordinary circumstances” caused by communications problems at regional air traffic control centers.

All flights out of Portland International Airport are on hold and travelers should contact airlines directly for the latest flight impacts, the airport said in a travel alert posted to its website Friday afternoon.

Eugene Airport Assistant Director Andrew Martz told OPB news partner KLCC that no inbound flights have been affected, though airport officials are also trying to get more details on the grounding. The PDX airport website also lists incoming flights as still continuing to land.

The nationwide ground stop was the first since January 2023, when a key FAA computer system malfunctioned, and the second since the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The nation’s top homeland security official attributed the problem to a telecommunications outage and said there was no indication the communications failure was related to a cyberattack. The consequences were profound, disrupting potentially thousands of planned flights through at least late Friday night and upending travel plans for passengers.

“It’s frustrating. This certainly sounds like it’s going to be more than the usual run-of-the-mill delay. I look forward to finding out why,” said Jeff Dubner, a Washington attorney whose Alaska Airlines flight home from Los Angeles was already half an hour late and taxiing to the runway when the plane came to a halt.

Friday’s restrictions were imposed “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety,” according to an FAA notice. The agency was investigating a communication issue affecting the 22 regional air traffic control centers that direct planes en route between airports nationwide, said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.

International flights were being handled on a case-by-case basis, according to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, with some seen taking off Friday evening. Meanwhile, some flights within Alaska and Hawaii were not impacted, Alaska Airlines said.

Top official says no sign yet of nefarious act

Mullin told reporters at the White House that there was no indication yet that “this was a nefarious attack against us. It’s just a telecommunications outage as of right now.”

“Everybody’s safe. There’s no reason to be concerned about your loved ones if they’re flying,” Mullin said.

At least 827 flights have been diverted so far as a result. As of 7:05 p.m. EST, 670 flights were sent back to the airport from where they originally took off, while 157 were redirected to a different airport, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics company.

The airports where many of the flights ended up being diverted included Washington Dulles International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport, Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport and Nashville International Airport.

Some 11,000 flights carrying more than 1.5 million passengers were scheduled to take off from airports in the U.S. after 4 p.m. EST, raising the likelihood of more cancelations and flight diversions.

United Airlines and American Airlines said flights already in the air will continue.

“It will be all hands on deck across American to get customers on their way as soon as possible when the FAA lifts this nationwide ground stop,” American said in a statement on the social platform X.

At Chicago O’Hare Airport on Friday afternoon, travelers passing through security learned about the ground stop when they looked up at screens that showed flight delays across the board.

Some called friends or family members, debating whether to stay the night in Chicago or find another way to their destinations.

Amber McQuilkin, 27, sat on a bench, disappointed that she might miss a trip with friends to New York for the League of Legends world finals. Her friends, she said, had already arrived there.

“There’s not really any information being passed to me,” said the Seattle software engineer, who took a week of vacation for the trip. “I contemplated just abandoning the flight and driving, but then the more I thought about it, the more I’m like, that would be miserable.”

Austin Curtis and his wife were rethinking their trip from South Bend, Indiana, to a friend’s baby shower in Denver after getting delayed during a layover in Chicago.

They had boarded a flight to Denver from O’Hare International Airport when they were told to get off the plane.

“We did see them taking luggage off our plane and others, so we’re assuming it’s going to be a pretty substantial delay,” Curtis said.

They were unsure whether to get a hotel room or keep waiting out the delay at the airport. With care already in place for their two young children at home, they might stay the weekend in Chicago, he said.

Sports teams stranded and cargo flights delayed

NBA, NHL and college teams were left stranded as they tried to reach their destinations. Meanwhile, NFL teams were left to wonder whether the issue would be resolved in time to travel to their games this weekend.

Cargo flights were also delayed by the ground stop.

FedEx, the world’s largest cargo airline, said it is prepared to activate contingency plans to keep any possible disruptions at a minimum.

U.S. airlines move about 61,000 tons of goods – from letters to packages -- to and from more than 220 countries daily, according to the industry trade group Airlines for America.

Despite the nationwide FAA ground stop, SpaceX launched its Starship rocket from Texas on Friday afternoon on its latest test flight.

The government has been working to overhaul outdated technology

There is no timeline for restarting flights. Mullin said investigators will look at whether there is any link to the FAA’s nationwide rollout of a new artificial intelligence system to help identify problems and reroute planes. But that system operates out of one location near Washington, D.C., and just sends recommendations to the air traffic control centers.

The government has been working to overhaul the outdated technology that air traffic controllers rely on since Congress approved $12.5 billion for the project last year. Miles of old copper wires have been replaced with fiber optic lines and old radio systems are gradually being replaced at airports across the country.

But much work remains. Duffy has said that another $30 billion will be needed to complete the work, and the White House has begun lobbying Congress to approve it.

The problem appeared similar to a regional air traffic control communication outage in September that snarled hundreds of flights across the Northeast, aviation safety expert Steve Arroyo said, except this time on a nationwide scale. It may be linked to the outdated technology used by air traffic controllers.

“If you don’t have that ability, whether it’s because the old wires that they have are just run down or for whatever reason, you’ve got to stop airplanes on the ground,” said Arroyo, who is a former United Airlines pilot. “And not put them in the air where you’re going to risk not being able to communicate with them.”

Friday’s ground stop was different than the one after Sept. 11 because planes were not being told to land immediately and pilots likely were able to communicate with ground controllers at airports, Arroyo said.

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AP writers Mead Gruver in Fort Collins, Colorado; Ali Swenson in Chicago; and Alex Veiga in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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This story has been corrected to show the Sept. 11 attacks were in 2001.

The Portland Public Schools Board of Education is kickstarting an independent investigation into whether administrators from Oregon’s largest school district used an encrypted, unapproved texting app for official district business.

Earlier this month, Willamette Week reported that district leaders, including Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong, used the app Signal for nearly a year. Signal is an encrypted messaging platform with a disappearing-messages feature, which, according to the school board, is not district-approved for official communications.

According to WW’s reporting, some of the screenshots the outlet reviewed show some chats between Armstrong and other leaders with Signal’s “disappearing messages” feature enabled. That lets users set a time frame after which messages are deleted.

As a public institution, PPS is required to follow district policy and state law when it comes to communications and stewarding public records. As public officials, district employees’ communications are themselves a form of public record when discussing district business.

Board members met for a special, virtual hearing Friday afternoon. After debating the language of the text, the board passed an amended resolution, authorizing an independent fact-finding process.

The process is meant to determine if, how and why Signal or other unapproved platforms were used; by whom; if any public records were exchanged; and whether those records are still accessible.

“I want to reiterate that compliance with public records law is very important to the district,” Board Chair Eddie Wang said in his opening statements Friday.

Wang added that the board has retained an outside lawyer and identified two outside agents to assist in the fact-finding process — one specializing in IT and one specializing in legal matters within educational institutions.

The counselors are tasked with reporting back to the board by Dec. 11. If they have not completed their fact-finding by then, they will still need to present a preliminary report. The board has a regular meeting scheduled for the following Tuesday, Dec. 15, when they’re expected to vote on school closure recommendations.

Members on Friday stressed the importance of an independent process and that those who speak up during fact-finding can do so confidentially, as appropriate.

“We’re here to guarantee that the district ship is sailing smoothly and fulfill our oversight obligations,” said member Virginia La Forte. “It’s just really important that we have a process … that is demonstrably independent and not simply one that we’re being asked to trust that it’s independent.”

The Federal Aviation Administration’s decision to ground all flights nationwide Friday threw the sports world into chaos, leaving NBA, NHL and college teams stranded as they tried to reach their destinations. NFL teams were left to wonder whether the issue would be resolved in time for them to travel to their games this weekend.

The FAA issued a notice that said the ground stop was “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.”

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy later said there was a communications issue affecting the 22 regional air traffic control centers that direct planes en route between airports nationwide, and that FAA technicians were investigating.

“There’s no reason to be concerned about your loved ones if they’re flying,” Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin said.

Most college football teams playing Saturday travel the day before their game, and the stoppage left many schools — including No. 2 Utah, eighth-ranked Texas and No. 9 Tennessee — at a standstill as they departed for road games. The Utes play at No. 22 Arizona, the Longhorns visit No. 24 LSU and the Vols are traveling to Texas A&M in three of the bigger games of the weekend.

In the case of the Longhorns, they posted on social media a short video of them boarding their plane before the stoppage. If they end up taking a bus to Baton Rouge, the trip for the 6:30 p.m. CT kickoff Saturday takes about seven hours.

“We are grounded and waiting to see when we can leave,” a team spokesman said.

Other schools affected by the stoppage included No. 19 Ole Miss, Baylor, Kansas State, Washington and Minnesota.

It also was unclear whether referees, who typically fly to their assignments the day before games, would make it on time.

Several teams were able to take off before the stoppage went into effect, including Missouri, which was flying to No. 1 Georgia; Duke, which was traveling to No. 5 Miami; and No. 10 Texas Tech, which was on the way to Oklahoma State.

Meanwhile, the Nets were among five NBA teams scheduled to fly Friday for games on Saturday. They had just boarded the team plane in New Orleans after playing the Pelicans earlier this week when their flight to Memphis was halted in place.

The Pistons flew earlier in the day to Miami. The Cavaliers, Bulls and Grizzlies play Friday night and were due to fly afterward.

There are 14 scheduled games in the NHL on Saturday. And while the Panthers made it to St. Louis for their game before the stoppage began, the Sharks were among those that were left waiting to leave for their game in Utah.

The FAA did not provide a timeline for restarting flights, leaving sporting events taking place beyond Saturday in limbo. That includes most of the Week 10 schedule in the NFL along with numerous college sporting events.

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AP Sports Writers Jim Vertuno, Aaron Beard and Tim Reynolds contributed to this report.

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See AP’s full sports coverage here

The Drive-By Truckers have been churning out Southern rock anthems for three decades. The band hails from Athens, Georgia, by way of Alabama, but for the last 10 years, co-founder Patterson Hood has called Portland home. The band is celebrating with a weekend of shows at Revolution Hall from Nov. 12-14. The showcase is modeled after the band’s annual “Heathens Homecoming” in Athens, which began in 2000.

Hood joins us for a performance and conversation about his 30 years on the road with the band.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. The Drive-By Truckers have been churning out Southern-fried rock anthems, twangy ballads and alt-country story songs for three decades now. The band hails from Athens, Georgia, by way of Alabama. For the last 11 years, co-founder Patterson Hood has called Portland home. The band will have a trio of shows next weekend at Revolution Hall in Portland. They are Thursday through Saturday, a showcase modeled after the band’s annual “Heathens Homecoming” in Athens, which began in 2000.

Patterson Hood joins us now to talk about his life and his 30 years with the Truckers. It’s great to have you in the studio.

Patterson Hood: It’s great to be here.

Miller: Can we start right in with one of your songs?

Hood: Let’s kick it off with “Heathens.” All right.

[“Heathens” by Drive-By Truckers playing, performed live in studio by Patterson Hood]

Something ‘bout the wrinkle in your forehead

Tells me there’s a fit ‘bout to get thrown

If we get the van out of the ditch before morning

Ain’t nobody gotta know ‘bout what I done

And I never hear a single word you say

When you tell me not to have my fun

It’s the same old thing that I ain’t gonna take off anyone

And I don’t need to be forgiven

By them people in the neighborhood

When we first hooked up, you looked me in the eye

You said “Paw, we just ain’t no good.”

We were heathens in their eyes at the time

I guess I am just a heathen still

And I never have repented for the wrongs you say I’ve done

I done what I feel

It was a difficult delivery

Now he’s growing up mean and strong

When you tell me that it’s getting just a little bit tight

Ain’t the first time I been outgrown

And now I’m gonna push a little harder

She ain’t revved till the rods are thrown

And I’ll walk away

And I don’t need to be forsaken

By you or anybody else

And I never had a shortage of people tryin’ to warn me

The dangers I pose to myself

Heathens

And these times can take their toll sometimes

And I know you feel the same way too

It just gets so hard to keep between the ditches

When the roads wind the way they do

[Song ends]

Miller: That was “Heathens” from the Drive-By Truckers album “Decoration Day” played as a solo version by Patterson Hood. I love that last line there: “It gets so hard to keep between the ditches when the roads wind the way they do.” Does it feel right now like you have to stay between ditches?

Hood: [Laughter] Like with white knuckles…

Miller: Still?

Hood: With all my might, yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Miller: What are the ditches now?

Hood: You know, the turmoil our country’s gone through for the last few years that I’m hoping is going to be significantly better for a while, but we’re not out of the woods yet. And we definitely made a big statement this week about all that, but that guy is still in the White House and his new chief of staff is pretty awful that he announced today. So there’s that. And, of course, raising kids right now, it’s hard. I was just listening to the last segment right before now, and it just breaks my heart. It’s terrible. So it is a struggle sometimes to keep between the ditches, as they say.

Miller: You’ve written a song about a school shooting in Oregon.

Hood: In Oregon, right after I moved here, I wrote “Guns of Umpqua” about the shooting at Umpqua Community College. And when my family moved cross country here in the summer of 2015, we spent three weeks driving cross country and stopping along the way. And our last night on the road, we stopped in Roseburg, Oregon. So I could visualize what the town looked like and everything that terrible morning when the shooting happened. I was hearing the news about it and actually wrote the song a couple of days later on an airplane flight flying cross country to go play a show with the band. And then I have another song called “Thoughts and Prayers.” It’s also about that whole thing, too, all of that.

Miller: I want to go back in time um to some more positive stories. We can talk about politics more as we go though. You come from musical royalty. Your dad co-founded the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio and was there, a session musician, for basically a who’s who of the most famous, most iconic musicians of the ‘60s and ‘70s – a very short list. [It] includes Aretha Franklin, Mavis Staples, The Rolling Stones, Paul Simon, but literally dozens more.

Hood: Yeah, it’s incredible.

Miller: Were you encouraged to make music yourself as a kid?

Hood: No. [Laughs] He wanted me to be a pharmacist, I think. He did not encourage me at all. And he said it’s a crazy way to make a living. He kind of felt like he got really lucky and won the lottery, and didn’t think the odds would be very good for it happening again. And I’m not sure he saw from me the kind of gumption it takes to stand up to it and to keep doing it because…

Miller: Was he right, at the time, to not see it in you?

Hood: He was right based on what he saw. I can say that honestly, because I was a terrible student. I heard all the time from teachers, “he just doesn’t apply himself” and all that. So I think he thought I was kind of slack. I think my dad’s the type of person, if he had a session at noon, he was there at 10:00 in the morning. He was the first one there for the entire 25, 30 years that he was part of that band, of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. He was the first one at work every time. He was super, super conscientious about everything. So I think he couldn’t picture me being that way to the extent that I actually kind of am, because I am pretty professional at my job stuff.

Miller: That’s the music side. There’s also the politics and racial politics side. There were white musicians playing with white and many very prominent Black artists. This is in Alabama in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Hood: In the midst of the civil rights stuff, in the very middle of all of that.

Miller: How did that influence you?

Hood: It did greatly. I think one of the absolute core influences of my life, and who I am and who I grew up to be. My dad hated George Wallace and hated all the things that that type of movement stood for. [He] kind of raised me to feel that way, too, and just raised me to see that’s holding us back as a people from being the better country that we claim we want to be or we claim to be. So it’s always been a very big part of my writing and my art. What I do is try to be aware of that.

Miller: You’ve said, on multiple occasions, that you were just a failure at everything until the age of 30. You went from Alabama to Athens, Georgia, and finally got together – including with a bandmate who you’re still with – a band that worked, had sold out shows and had people who cared about your music, and then a band that now has lasted for 30 years.

Hood: Yeah, it was amazing.

Miller: What was it like though to have that success after years of struggle?

Hood: Mike Cooley and I have played together for 41 years now. The Drive-By Truckers was our fourth band together. When our first band broke up, somehow we didn’t get that memo that you’re supposed to quit playing together when your band breaks up. So we just kept trying and trying. We got signed to a record deal on our 16th year together, which was the Truckers’ fourth album when we put out “Southern Rock Opera,” and signed our first record deal. It’s been an incredible journey.

But moving to Athens really kind of enabled me to do the things I’d been trying to do all along, because all of a sudden, I was in a place where there was this huge community of like-minded people who were essentially trying to do the same thing I’d been trying to do all along, too. And it’s more musicians to choose from too, a bigger pool to swim in. So it was amazing and a wonderful town with great venues to play in. When you’re touring, it’s good to have a place to come home to where you can actually play a show to maybe pay off some of the debt you ran up being on tour.

Miller: Can we hear another song? This basically takes us from Athens to here, to Portland. Can we hear “Sun Don’t Shine?”

Hood: Let’s do. I wrote this song right after I moved to Portland. I gotta say, when I first came to Portland in 2000, [I opened] for Jerry Joseph at a venue in town, and then the second time I came to town about a year-and-a-half later, I was also opening for Jerry Joseph for a couple of New Year’s shows here. I fell in love with this town. And when I started dating Rebecca – who’s now been my wife, we’ve been together for about 25 years now – she would fly out and meet me out here when I was on the road, and we both just loved it here. So I wrote this song shortly after moving to town. So this is my love song to Portland. It’s called “Sun Don’t Shine.”

[“Sun Don’t Shine” by Drive-By Truckers playing, performed live in studio by Patterson Hood]

When the sun don’t shine

I’ll be better when the sun don’t shine

I like it better when the sun don’t shine

When it’s cold outside

I grab a sweater when it’s cold outside

Get close together when it’s cold outside

I get so happy when it’s cold outside

I like it better when the sun don’t shine

I’d much rather watch the clouds go by

Or watch the moon peek into my room

A little rain to make the roses bloom

I like it better when the sun don’t shine

And I don’t have to watch you say goodbye

I can stand behind the clouds and hide

A little rain to protect my pride

I like it better when the sun don’t shine

I’m gonna love you ‘til the big one comes and shakes my bones and washes us out to sea

Have a blast ‘til the markets crash and smoke and ash is left of these beautiful trees

Next morning it’ll be so lonely they’ll have to send somebody around

To pick up the pieces of me

To pick up the pieces of me

I’ll be better when the sun don’t shine

I like it better when the sun don’t shine

Clouds are forming in this state of mind

It’s always storming in this state of mine

I like it better when the sun don’t shine

Love it better when the sun don’t shine

Love it better when the sun don’t shine

Love it better when the sun don’t shine

[Song ends]

Miller: That was “Sun Don’t Shine,” a love letter to Portland, a few hours before the rain comes back for the day. It’s from the 2024 Drive-By Truckers album, “American Band.” Do you feel like the transplant to Portland worked? Are you a Portlander?

Hood: I think so. I feel I will always have a deep connection to Athens, Georgia, and to my hometown [and] Muscle Shoals, but especially to Athens because that’s where the band’s still based. It’s where I met my wife, started my family and all that. But I’ve been here 11 years now, and I love my neighborhood and our neighbors, and I love this town. I love Revolution Hall, which is where we’re playing next week for three nights, and many other venues in town. And it is a delightful town. I love going to the Hollywood Theater and going to movies. I’m a huge movie buff and we go to a lot of movies there.

Miller: Has living here changed your relationship to the South?

Hood: I think it’s ironically probably helped my relationship with the South.

Miller: You’ve called that, in the past, a “love-hate-love relationship.” I love the second love because I’ve never heard that before.

Hood: Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot to love there. And of course, right now, the South is having a very sweet moment after this election and seeing some very long-standing red states really making a shift to a politics that I think would maybe help us become the better people that we want to be.

Miller: And this is something you’ve done shows for Jon Ossoff for years…

Hood: Just the other day.

Miller: Yeah, but also the first time he ran for Senate in Georgia. I’m curious, for you as an overtly, proudly political musician, what’s it like to see this historic resurgence in South Carolina, in Texas, maybe even in Mississippi, in Georgia as well, when you’re not there?

Hood: Yeah, it’s gonna happen in Mississippi. I don’t wanna jinx it, but I feel like he’s gonna pull that off.

Miller: Here you are in a progressive bastion 3,000 miles away. What’s it been like to watch this now from afar?

Hood: Well, with a little bit of guilt for not being there to be part of the fight, more hands-on in town there for sure. But also, I’m very proud to see it happen. It’s about time. I wish Alabama had done a little better. I wish the Democratic Party had put a little bit more oomph behind what Doug Jones was trying to do because he came really close. And I’m kind of looking at the Doug Jones thing in Alabama is maybe a little bit like what Stacey Abrahams went through in Georgia. I think it really greased up the machine and kind of got things rolling. Hopefully, maybe next time it will be the one.

Miller: I should give a correction. “American Band,” it was 2016. I gave the wrong year for that before, but can we hear one more song from your most recent solo album? Can we hear “Pinocchio?”

Hood: Sure, absolutely. And I put out a solo record last year called “Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams,” and this song’s on it. And it’s probably my most autobiographical song. It’s called “Pinocchio.”

[“Pinocchio” by Drive-By Truckers playing, performed live in studio by Patterson Hood]

Life’s a hard lesson that keeps piling on

Trying to learn which star to wish upon

Wish upon a star like Geppetto did

Turn this block of wood into a well-formed kid

Trying to figure out like a sad detective

Pushing out thoughts when your brain’s defective

Pushing out words from my ill-formed mouth

Trying to see the light when the sun hides out

Trying to see the light like Todd Rundgren’s song

Standing in the darkness trying to sing along

Raise our voice to heaven so our friends will hear

Then sing a little softer just to pull them near

Life’s a hard lesson but it’s always teaching

Arms ain’t long enough but I‘m always reaching

Reaching for a line that can save my soul

Spending all my favors just to pay my toll

Pay my toll, it’s getting kinda old

Searching for the truth like Pinocchio

It’s a whale of a tale with so many miles to go

but I get a little closer each day to my long-term goal

Trying to get a grip on my constant [beep]

Heaven is a house with a modern kitchen

Heaven is the pace of a slow news day

A closer look at someone with a lot to say

A closer look at someone in the morning’s light

Yellow sunglasses to keep my mood just right

Devil’s in the details but we’ll see us through

Til my blue fairy makes my wish come true

I’ve learned that Heaven ain’t Pleasure Island

More to keeping love than just keeping on smiling

Truth can hurt a lot, but a lie destroys

Deep inside of every man is a real live boy

[Song ends]

Miller: That’s “Pinocchio” from my guest Patterson Hood’s 2025 solo album, “Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams.” You said just before that this is one of your most autobiographical songs. What’s one of the lines that you think is most true for that?

Hood: Oh my God, I think every line. I was always kind of an obsessive little kid and I guess I grew up to be obsessive growing up, but…

Miller: Deep inside of you is a real life, obsessive boy?

Hood: My first obsession as a kid was the movie “Pinocchio.” I saw it over and over and memorized it.

Miller: Wow, OK. Next time we meet, we’re gonna talk about all of it. We’ll start there and we’ll see where it goes. [Laughter] Patterson, we’re out of time. It was a real pleasure to have you on. Thank you so much.

Hood: Thank you so much.

Miller: And I should say again that the Drive-By Truckers are going to be playing three shows next weekend, Thursday, Friday and Saturday – an expansive view of the word weekend – at Portland’s Revolution Hall.

“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.

For the last 10 years, photographer Greg Constantine has been documenting what he calls “the hidden spaces, immense human toll, and profit-driven architecture of the United States immigration detention system.” His latest work, “An American Gulag,” profiles communities where immigration enforcement has not garnered the kind of media attention it has in cities like Portland, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and Chicago.

Instead, he traveled to Oklahoma, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Missouri to explore the impact on people and communities around four themes: people, power, politics and profit. Constantine joins us to share more about the exhibit that opened this week at the PLACE Galeria in Northwest Portland. It’s the first public display of this collection of photographs and will remain up through Jan. 29, 2027.

“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.

Sarah Castillo, director of the sport and performance psychology program at UWS, joins us to talk about the growing field and what the new accreditation means for students.

“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.

So the two first-year students at Clackamas Community College attended the school’s Financial Aid and Scholarship Application Workshop last month.

It’s a hands-on event designed to guide students and families through the financial aid process, including applying for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, the Oregon Student Aid Application, known as ORSAA, and Clackamas Community College’s own scholarship application.

Students and families park at one of the many tables set up throughout the space, open their laptops, pull out their tax documents, and get to work. Meanwhile, college staff float around the room to answer questions and look over their shoulders for help.

“I just wanted to make sure that, you know, my classes were well-funded,” Lopez-Cruz said, “so that in like a month, I wouldn’t get, like, a fee of like $1,000 or something that I didn’t know about.”

Porter attended the event for similar reasons. He went to Clackamas’ spring workshop, too.

“I came tonight just in case, like, I had trouble logging in or I had trouble, like, figuring anything out,” he said. “I had all the same info on file, so it was pretty easy for me.”

College can be expensive, often costing tens of thousands of dollars per year for tuition, room and board, and supplies. And applying for financial aid can be stressful.

Right now, families and students are seeing soaring sticker prices, reduced federal loan limits and smaller savings. They’re also figuring out how to pay for college while colleges themselves struggle financially.

Financial aid 101

College advisors suggest students and parents start by learning the basics. Financial aid falls into four key buckets: federal, state, institutional and non-institutional.

Federal funding includes grants, work-study programs and student loans. State funding here includes the Oregon Opportunity Grant, Oregon’s largest state-funded, need-based grant program for college students. The grant provides funding to more than 30,000 Oregon resident students each year, according to state officials.

For institutional funding, sometimes students are automatically considered when they apply to a specific school, but that isn’t always the case. The College Board’s CSS Profile is used for students to apply for money at hundreds of private colleges nationwide, including Reed College in Oregon and Whitman College and Whitworth University in Washington.

‘Dead in the water’: How FAFSA can shut LGBTQ+ young adults out of college

Students can also get money from sources other than government programs and the colleges themselves. What’s often called “non-institutional funding” is typically one-time money for specific programs or needs. But Oregon’s OSAC Scholarship Application lets students apply for multiple scholarships at once. State officials said OSAC awards more than $10 million annually through more than 600 scholarships.

Financial aid applications often require specific information and must be completed in a certain order. When in doubt: FAFSA first.

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A combination of these funding streams may be enough for families. Increasingly, more and more families are relying on financial aid to pay for college.

But experts — along with students like Porter and Lopez-Cruz who’ve gone through the process — say applying early is one of the best ways to maximize how much money you get.

And applications are already open for several funding streams that families might not start thinking about in earnest until spring.

Paying for college … in THIS economy?!

Prospective students applying for college today are entering into a shifting landscape.

“I think that right now families are getting a message that college is really expensive,” said Anastacia Dillon, associate vice president for financial aid at Lewis & Clark College in Portland. “And they’re also getting messages that maybe a college education isn’t a good value in terms of outcomes.”

This is despite research showing that, over their lifetimes, people with a college degree have much higher earning potential and report higher levels of health and happiness.

Under a new federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid

Dillon has worked at Lewis & Clark for more than 25 years. She’s seen how the world of higher ed has changed, not only for individual families, but for the institutions as well.

Federal funding for higher education has been slashed. Birth rates are down, leading to lower enrollment and less money for both private and public schools. Many higher education institutions are facing substantial, multi-million-dollar budget cuts. Americans are facing rising costs from inflation. And families are questioning, perhaps more than ever, whether college is even a possibility.

“There are several steps that a family has to go through to apply for admission to a school,” Dillon explained. They have to complete the FAFSA, submit information to individual colleges, receive offers from those schools, then sit down and decide between the aid offers from all the other colleges.

“That’s really an overwhelming process,” she said.

Dillon stressed that schools’ sticker prices often differ greatly from what families actually pay. Even at a private liberal arts school like Lewis & Clark, nearly all students receive some amount of financial aid. And Dillon works with students throughout their time in college to maintain financial stability.

Private colleges typically have higher sticker prices, but they can often be more generous with financial aid. Average student loan debt varies by institution type — private vs. public, in-state vs. out-of-state, etc.

According to U.S. News & World Report, 2024 graduates from a private, nonprofit college nationwide borrowed more on average, $32,806, than public college graduates, who took out $25,549.

That’s where employees like Dillon come in.

“I really believe that financial aid is where the rubber meets the road in terms of higher education,” Dillon said. “We’re working with families who are bringing their hopes and dreams for their children to our office, and we’re working with them to figure out how it actually works — like on a monthly budget basis.”

Overcoming barriers

One of the most common fears Michell Gipson hears from students and families is just that applying for financial aid will involve a lot of questions. Gipson coordinates financial aid services at Clackamas Community College.

She said they also fear their application won’t be accepted. Some families are navigating the application process in a language they don’t know as well. Others have incomes that put them in the no-man’s-land middle of financial aid — earning too much for need-based assistance but not enough to pay outright.

“The first year is really difficult for students because they’re figuring out what financial aid is,” Gipson said, noting that this year in particular is difficult because colleges and students are learning about federal loan changes. “So, we’re having to walk through all of that with them.”

She said one of the biggest misconceptions about financial aid is that students submit their application one day and then get awarded the money the next.

But officials like Gipson have to review applications, ask follow-up questions, go back and forth with the federal government, make sure everything meets regulations, and then come back with an offer.

Institutions often have teams that try to find additional funding for students who need it. Clackamas has its Coordinated Student Resource Team, for example. Lewis & Clark also offers a program that pays students when they take on unpaid internships, so money isn’t what stops them from gaining important professional experience.

“I think sometimes people who work in financial aid can be looked at like they’re just, you know, counting numbers or whatever,” Gipson said. “But this team really cares about every single student that comes across their desk.”

FAFSA problems put students from immigrant families at a disadvantage

Tips to rock your financial aid applications

Gipson and Dillon both stressed that the FAFSA application in particular has been streamlined and simplified. Still, they advised going slow.

“The FAFSA is not a long and complicated form,” Dillon said, “but I really encourage people to, before they sit down to file the FAFSA, just take a kind of a cleansing breath,” she paused to breathe out, “and don’t rush through it.”

In general, make sure you have your documents ready. Sit down with the taxes from two years prior — that’s tax year 2024 for next school year — Social Security numbers and your FAFSA ID.

Dillon said to prioritize submitting the FAFSA application quickly, you can always add more schools later.

“What I always recommend is to make a chart of all of the different deadlines for all of the different schools, and then you just pick the earliest deadline,” she said. “What’s the school that wants the FAFSA the earliest, and then you file it by that deadline, and then you know you’ve met the deadline for all of the other schools as well.”

Clackamas students Porter and Lopez-Cruz said it’s crucial to get the process done sooner rather than later.

“You can only get as much money as early as you do it,” Porter said, pointing to the finite amounts that schools and scholarship organizations have. “It’s like they run out so quick with how many people apply for it. It’s just really important to get it done as quick as possible.”

Lopez-Cruz agreed, adding that if you put it off and things get complicated, you’ll want that extra time to figure it all out.

And at the end of the day, the two students said you have to put yourself out there.

“Don’t be afraid to ask for help,” Lopez-Cruz said. “Everyone needs help at some point. If you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s better to ask someone that might, instead of just going into it blind and making things worse.”

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story incorrectly spelled Jayse Porter’s name. OPB regrets the error.

The Vancouver City Council voted unanimously to remove Lon Pluckhahn from his role as city manager during a special meeting on Friday morning. Councilors gave no specific reason for removing their top administrator during the meeting, which lasted about five minutes.

Tensions have grown between city officials in recent months as they debate how to expand city limits. Earlier in the year, Pluckhahn was at the center of a different controversy, when the city’s former chief financial officer notified Vancouver she may file a lawsuit alleging Pluckhahn fired her in retaliation.

At the brief meeting to fire him Friday morning, Pluckhahn sat with members of the public. He declined to answer reporters’ questions.

After the meeting, Vancouver Mayor Anne McEnerny-Ogle read a statement that called the firing the result of “ongoing evaluations of the city manager’s performance and the city’s long-term strategic direction during executive sessions over the past year.”

The city manager is akin to Vancouver’s CEO. Their role includes developing biennial budgets, carrying out the city council’s priorities, and managing city departments.

City leaders voted to remove Pluckhahn “without cause,” because giving a reason would be “extremely damaging to a person’s career,” City Councilor Sarah Fox said after the meeting in council chambers.

“But I would imagine folks that have watched council meetings over the past year probably could have picked up on some things without us calling them out individually at this time,” she said.

The city council voted to hire Pluckhahn as the city manager in late 2024. Before that, he served as deputy under City Manager Eric Holmes, who was in the role for 14 years.

Questions about the city’s financial planning arose between city officials in recent weeks as they considered annexing Vancouver’s urban growth area into city limits as part of the 2027-28 biennium budget. Various proposed scenarios would have added tens of millions to the city’s deficit by making Vancouver responsible for services to communities that are currently outside city limits.

In a letter sent to councilors in late October, the former city manager, Holmes, expressed concerns about “fiscal consequences” of the current annexation plans in the proposed budget.

Holmes urged the council not to adopt the annexation plans, noting that the city is already operating under a structural deficit and that, in the proposals, current Vancouver residents would end up paying disproportionate costs for service in areas that are absorbed from Clark County.

“However the numbers are reworked, the cost of providing urban services outstrips the capacity of the revenue system meant to support them,” Holmes wrote.

The annexation proposals were later dropped. The City Council is set to adopt its next budget on Nov. 16.

Pluckhahn’s conduct toward employees came under scrutiny earlier in the year when the city’s former chief financial officer, Natasha Ramras, filed a tort claim against the city in February, alleging retaliation after the city manager fired her, according to the Columbian.

In her claim, Ramras described financial and ethical concerns in the city’s use of public funds and questioned Pluckhahn’s hiring of a different candidate for a deputy city manager position after she had applied.

Pluckhahn will be put on paid administrative leave until his termination is finalized during a regular Dec. 14 council meeting. Deputy City Manager Lisa Brandl will serve as acting city manager until a permanent replacement is found.

Wildfires leave behind charred trees and scorched vegetation that impact the streams and rivers providing drinking water to much of the country, and new studies show that contamination could remain for more than a decade.

These findings about the longevity of contamination in the nation’s drinking water supplies are especially concerning as climate change and increasingly strong El Niño weather events, which intensify drought conditions, have led to bigger and more frequent wildfires in the U.S. So far in 2026, there have been 68,179 blazes burning more than 14,062 square miles.

After a wildfire sweeps through hillsides and forests, rains carry ash and organic matter into the streams that feed water treatment plants for towns and cities alike. Communities are working to adapt, but it can take years and require stopgap solutions.

People in the city of Las Vegas, New Mexico, went without water for months after the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon wildfire contaminated the Gallinas River in 2022. In the four years since, they’ve had to give residents bottled water and ship tanks in from nearby towns as they collected funds to build a new treatment plant.

Karen Pettine, who has owned the Hillcrest Restaurant for 50 years, said the water crisis forced them to close, sometimes for a week at a time.

“It’s hard to run a restaurant without good water,” she said. “We used some paper plates at times. They brought in semi-truckloads of bottled water. You could pick up four cases at a time. The water situation is ongoing because when it rains, it floods and it brings dirty water down the stream.”

Las Vegas Mayor David Romero said climate change has made the things that used to be reliable less predictable.

“It’s a scary situation that we’re all going to encounter,” he said.

Sediment from burned landscapes a headache for water-treatment plants

Wildfires are a natural part of forest ecosystems, but an increase in their severity has made areas that capture, filter and regulate the flow of water, known as watersheds, vulnerable, said Amanda Hohner, an assistant professor at Montana State University who specializes in wildfires and water quality.

Forested watersheds provide water to nearly two-thirds of municipalities in the U.S., according to Carli Brucker, lead author of a University of Colorado Boulder study that assessed wildfire-affected water quality in hundreds of burned basins and compared them to unburned areas. Their study found that the impacts can last up to eight years.

Garrett McKay, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Texas A&M, said utilities are extremely concerned about the impacts wildfires have on water. They’re reaching out to experts like him for help finding different water sources or to learn how to treat the organic matter coming into their plants.

Water treatment facilities that rely on streams and rivers typically treat high quality water, aided by trees and soil that act as a natural filtration system, Brucker said. But wildfires cause spikes in heavy metals or dissolved organic matter, which the plants aren’t built to handle, she said.

This can force treatment facilities to shut off the incoming water and resort to other sources, which may not be immediately available, Brucker said. Some have groundwater or reservoir backups, but even those can be impacted.

Reservoirs can serve as a “sedimentation basin” where particles can settle, said Kyle Shimabuku, an associate professor of civil engineering at Gonzaga University. But sediments from burned vegetation are rich in nutrients, like nitrogen and phosphorus, and as they sit in still water, algal blooms can grow, he said. The algae can make people sick and kill the fish.

Chlorine, routinely used to treat water, also is impacted by wildfires, said McKay at Texas A&M. When facilities add disinfectants, like chlorine, to water, they react with the dissolved organic matter left behind by the fires to form “disinfection byproducts,” which are regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency because they can cause illnesses, including cancer.

Since plants can’t remove the disinfection byproducts, they must get rid of the organic matter before disinfecting the water, which can cause delays in the water supply.

Implementing new options can cost facilities millions

When a 2020 wildfire burned the area around No Name and Grizzly creeks, the primary water sources for the city of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, officials scrambled to protect against sediment expected to wash down the slopes when spring rains arrived. They sought help from the Colorado Water Conservation Board. Within two months, the board authorized an emergency loan of $8 million for improvements to the treatment system.

Fort Collins faced a similar challenge that year when ash and sediment from the Cameron Peak fire forced the city to close its river intake and pull water from the Horsetooth Reservoir, which was safe to use because it’s fed by a different watershed.

Las Vegas, New Mexico, was hit harder when the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon fire damaged the Gallinas River watershed in 2022. A massive rainstorm swept ash and sludge from the burn scar into the river and reservoirs, forcing the town to shut down its water treatment plant while they installed additional filters and looked for additional water sources.

As they worked on solutions, a massive flood in 2024 carried more burn debris into the town’s two reservoirs, leaving them with only a few days of safe water. As businesses closed and residents bought bottled water, the town hired trucks to bring 2.2 million gallons of water from nearby towns of Santa Fe and Santa Rosa.

They were hit again in February 2025. Burn scar debris coupled with bad weather and equipment failure caused a pressure drop, which resulted in a monthlong boil-water advisory and more water shipments.

“The February event was probably the scariest,” Romero said.

Ultimately, the state and federal governments allocated $148 million to rebuild the town’s treatment plant and help support their efforts to find other options, including drilling wells and reusing water. Groundbreaking on the first phase of their new water treatment plant is slated for Nov. 18, the mayor said.

“We’ve been doing a lot of work for other sources of water and we know with climate change and what we experienced in the past, the Gallinas River is something we can’t depend on forever.”

Ybarrondo and her family and many others within the Silver Rail community are grappling with grief, trauma and feelings of isolation. To help with needs both immediate and long-term, Ybarrondo created the Silver Rail Children’s Fund. Since its launch on Oct. 23, the grassroots nonprofit has collected more than $35,000 in donations from individuals and local businesses to pay for outings and services for Silver Rail survivors, their families and school staff. Those include field trips to pumpkin patches; a pizza-making and arts and crafts event; and child drop-off at a gymnastics center so that caregivers could attend a virtual meeting with Gov. Tina Kotek’s office.

Ybarrondo joins us to discuss more details about the fund and her thoughts about the district’s plans to reopen Silver Rail on Nov. 12.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We start today with an update on the Silver Rail Elementary School community in Bend. It’s now been about three weeks since a 16-year-old former student shot and killed three children and a teacher there, and critically injured two others.

Nicole Ybarrondo is a mother of two Silver Rail students. She has talked about the grief, trauma and feelings of isolation that followed the shooting. She created the Silver Rail Children’s Fund as a response. The nonprofit has collected more than $35,000 in donations from people and businesses to pay for outings and services for Silver Rail survivors, their families and school staff.

Nicole joins us now to talk about the fund and the district’s plans to reopen Silver Rail next week. Nicole, thanks very much for making time for us.

Nicole Ybarrondo: Thank you, Dave. Thank you for having me.

Miller: How are you? How is your family doing today?

Ybarrondo: Today was a harder day. My kiddos have been, as expected, really attached since the shooting happened, which is not their norm. They’re very independent these days. My son is 6 years old in first grade and my daughter is 9 in fourth grade. And I think given what happened, it’s perfectly understandable.

Miller: What about you? How are you doing today?

Ybarrondo: I’m doing OK. We have harder days and we have days that are less hard. I wouldn’t say that any days are easy right now. I think I’m having a harder time because Kaylub’s 911 call was released publicly a few days ago, and it was really difficult to listen to his 911 call while the shooter was entering the school.

Miller: For people who are not familiar with this story, which probably at this point is not the majority of our listeners, but he is the parent who saw the shooter, and then followed him and eventually fatally shot him. Where were you on October 15?

Ybarrondo: I was working out in Sisters when I got the first call from the school. And then I got another call. I started getting many calls from friends. I picked up the call from my neighbor. I live next to the school. I can see it from my children’s bedroom window. And one of my neighbors called me and I couldn’t understand her. She was very breathless. It was very hard to understand, but she just said, “There’s a shooter. There’s a shooter in our school right now. There’s an active shooter in the school.”

I hung up the phone. Thank you for telling me. I hung up the phone immediately, screamed and ran to my car, and then proceeded to drive about 20 minutes to Bend for what felt like the longest drive of my entire life, thinking about Uvalde the entire time as I was driving and hoping it wasn’t another Uvalde situation.

Miller: How long was it before you were reunited with your kids?

Ybarrondo: Well, I live in the neighborhood with the school, so I started to drive to the school, obviously. And then by the time that I was nearly there, it was completely blocked off. And they told me that I had to go to a reunification center. I waited at the reunification center for about, I would say nearly four hours before seeing my children safe.

Miller: You mentioned that your son is 6, a first grader. How did you navigate your initial conversations with him? How did you think about what you would tell him about what happened and what you would try to keep to yourself?

Ybarrondo: Well, unfortunately, while we were waiting for reunification and they were calling grades and classes, there were some people present who were learning that their children were the children hurt that day. And then we were seeing other parents who were very emotional when they greeted their children, and some of those children were confused. There’s different levels of exposure, right?

So my husband and I agreed to be very calm and be a very calm front for our kids, from the moment that we picked them up and walked them to the car. We drove in two separate cars, so we were able to have individual conversations, which I’m grateful for because my 6-year-old son was pretty far away. He heard the gunshots, but he just said that was a really scary fire drill. And his teacher had later told me that he had cried and fallen asleep on her lap while they were still waiting in their classroom. So his level of exposure was different.

I rode in the car with my daughter and she was much more affected. But you asked me about my son. My son didn’t know. And that did not last very long because some neighbor kids came up and were saying, “Did you see the shooter? Did you see the kids that got killed? Did you know who got killed?” And my son had no awareness of that, and he turned to me with tears in his eyes. He’s 6 years old, and he slammed his hands down and he said, “Tell me everything.” So we had to sit down at our dining room table and tell him that a bad guy came into the school with a gun and shot and killed a teacher and three children, and there’s a couple people who were very hurt, and that we’re so happy that he is safe and grateful that he is safe, but not everybody can say the same thing.

But my daughter had a different experience. She was at Walk to Skill that day and in a small group, so I think that was part of the reunification, that kids were mixed up. They weren’t with their classmates in their room. It was a Walk to Skill that day. It was also picture day. And they were in smaller groups. She was in a reading group in an open area directly above the special ed room, called The Commons, when it started. And she heard every bullet, the glass breaking, the teachers screaming and pleading for their lives, the children. She heard everything until there was nothing left to hear.

While she was listening, she was running around trying to get in somewhere safe, but it had gone on lockdown, and she was in the open and left without a door to hide behind. She was running and trying to open doors with other kids. They were tripping, falling and panicking. They had a substitute – and that poor woman, I hope she’s OK – was not in a place and prepared for that to happen. Nobody is, and our babies were just out there. And I think Miss Kittleson went and tried to find the kids that were out and pulled my daughter into safety, so my daughter has a much different exposure. Answer your question?

Miller: What made you start the Silver Rail Children’s Fund?

Ybarrondo: I think, like everybody else with children in the school that day and those who lost their children, we were in our homes with grief and not really leaving our homes. We did hear that there were so many wonderful people in the community. Bend is such a great community, and they were stepping up and they were raising funds to help the victims, the injured and the survivors, the staff. And we were volunteering with the PTO. I was given a script to ask local businesses if they wanted to help in any way, and the pumpkin patch said that they would like to close down and invite the entire Silver Rail Elementary School that day for a day at the pumpkin patch, like a field trip. And they mentioned that they only needed to cover their staffing costs. They’re a small business. It’s a busy time of year. And I said, “Oh, don’t worry about it. I don’t know if you’ve seen that Bend has stepped up for our kids in a major way. Getting your staff’s wages for the day would not be a problem.”

So I went back and I asked for those funds to be covered, and that’s when I learned that due to bylaws, administrative bodies and organizational rules that unfortunately, that money is not for the victims or their families, but rather the school or the district. I was very confused, and I was upset. I went to crisis counseling that day, and the crisis counselor said, “You just need to worry about what’s within your control.” But they did tell me about a different school who had a nonprofit that was parent-led. That afternoon, on Friday – not the following Friday, but the Friday after – I started the Silver Rail Children’s Fund, which is a survivors fund but also for the families that lost someone that day and their children, and for the teachers and their children.

We went to the pumpkin patch. And they turned off the cannon, and they turned off the shooting gallery out of sensitivity because many of our kids are not OK. And the parents are not OK. I’m so grateful, and we had a local business step up and pledge to pay the full amount for our kids to go to the pumpkin patch. We had over 340 of us at the pumpkin patch. And it was very nice. The sky was blue, the birds were singing and the leaves were golden. It just felt like a nervous system reset. We gathered together. I got to hug my son’s kindergarten teacher. We got to hug each other, gather around and talk as adults while our children ran through pumpkin fields. It was very therapeutic.

Miller: That’s something that these kids were able to do just recently, just a wonderful kid activity for kids. One of the things that’s notable about the fund that you’ve set up is that it’s intended to serve children from this school until the age of 25. How are you thinking about long-term needs right now?

Ybarrondo: We did have the meeting with the school district, privately for Silver Rail families, I believe on Wednesday. And one of the things they mentioned is that the Oregon Department of Education is making allowances for our children having missed a month of school. Nobody will be penalized. But something that wasn’t considered or talked about was the lost education, and what it means for our kids to sit in their classroom again, especially our fifth-grade classrooms whose windows overlooked the exact area that the shooter threw his gun over the fence, climbed and ran across the field. Those kids saw it. And they’re suffering from survivor’s guilt. They lost a classmate. When they get back into that class, it’s going to be very hard for them to focus, and there’s going to be hard days. They might need to come home and they might need to miss some more school. And what happens when the next school shooting happens and it’s re-triggering for them again? They might need some time.

So I think we’re talking about the education that was lost during these 30 days and the long-term impact. There’s studies from Stanford that show that children who witnessed or survived a school shooting are much less likely to graduate high school, have lower grades – up to 20% of them go on antidepressants. And less of them attend college, and I think 15% of them make less money in their 20s than children who are not in a school involved in a school shooting.

One of the things that the fund is looking to do right now, especially after Wednesday’s meeting, is we’re working with local tutors here in Bend, but we’re also informing the families who have already packed up and left, or have gone on homeschool, that this resource is now available for them. We will be paying private tutors if it makes sense for someone to come to their home. The Silver Rail Children’s Fund will pay if it makes sense for their children to go to one of those after-school programs in a reading intervention or a math intervention, like a Kumon or a Sylvan Learning Center, or any other local partner or local to them. Wherever they may be, the fund will pay for that. So we are pledging to stand by these children for as long as funds allow, to not only help them socially and emotionally but also academically.

Miller: The district wrote this in a statement recently: “We recognize that healing happens on different timelines. While we will be ready to welcome students on November 12, we fully respect and support your family’s timeline for returning.” How have you and your family been thinking about this decision for yourselves, the decision about whether or not to go back to that school on November 12, next Thursday?

Ybarrondo: I think that choice belongs to my children. I wasn’t in the building that day. They were. I didn’t experience that. They did. My daughter did. And when I heard it was reopening on the 12th, I was on the phone with the same neighbor who called me to tell me about the active shooter in the school that day. I thought in my head, OK, it’s really important how I let my children know that their school is reopening. My emotional response and how I lead is the model that they will follow. So I casually said, “Oh, Sophia, I heard the school’s reopening on the 12th, which is next Thursday.” And she said, “Oh,” and she started to do a little dance.

I know our kids want to be together with their classmates. Even victims after 9/11 said that when they were with somebody who had that shared experience, that it provided a certain level of healing that they weren’t able to reach individually. So I do see a therapeutic opportunity for my daughter to be resilient and brave, and to go back on Thursday the 12th. And she has made that choice. I have a lot of other ideas and opinions, but ultimately it’s her choice. I support her, and I will be taking her to school on Thursday the 12th.

My 6-year-old, even though his exposure was more distant than my daughter’s, he did not want to immediately go back to the school. Even though we sat down with him and we explained what happened, he’s 6. So, later on when we drove … I live next to the school, so I drive either past the school to get out of my neighborhood or past the shooter’s apartment. Those are my only two ways to get out of my neighborhood. When we drive past the school, which I chose more so, my son, I said, “Oh look, they’re doing construction, they’re fixing it.” And he says, “I don’t want to go back there. They have too many fire drills and kids die at fire drills.”

So we’re working with counseling. It’s been hard to get in sometimes. That’s another reason why we have the counselors at all of our Silver Rail Children’s Fund events. We have therapy dogs and therapeutic counselors, so it’s not just a fun event, it’s support and resources as well. So I don’t know if my son wants to go back. I haven’t had that moment to sit down with him and ask him if he wants to go and let him know it’s up to him.

Miller: There was a community meeting last night at which parents asked for things like privacy film for school windows, bulletproof glass, police officers, school resource officers in every middle and high school. District leaders basically said to those requests, we don’t have the money for that, we cannot pay for that. What’s your takeaway from that meeting?

Ybarrondo: So just so you’re aware, the public community meeting last night is a round two of almost the exact same meeting that we attended as Silver Rail parents. I looked at the live stream of last night’s video, and most of the seats were empty. And I’ll tell you, for the Silver Rail meeting of the same methodology, there were people standing. We packed into that house. We received many of the same answers and were essentially told to start a political action committee to get the funds.

It’s frustrating, but I understand that we were already struggling as a school district to support just the staffing needs for our children, before October 15 happened. Our special ed program, the state of Oregon has some of the lowest caps on funding for special ed and intervention in the country. I think we’re in the bottom 5% of budget. And those students were in the special ed class, and now we’re looking for teachers and support for a group of students who, in my opinion, didn’t have enough support to begin with.

So I’m trying to be logical and understanding with everybody and the Bend-La Pine School District. I don’t really have a clear answer for you, Dave. I don’t know. It doesn’t make me feel good to know that beautiful school that is nearly brand new was built without bullet-resistant film or bullet-resistant glass. And I don’t think it’s a reasonable ask, either, to say, OK, Bend-LaPine Schools has 33 schools in the district, and they need to retrofit every single window and door, and replace them with bulletproof glass. All of our kids will be out of school, and in this limbo and in this nightmare that our Silver Rail kids and families are going through today.

So I don’t think it’s reasonable. It doesn’t make me feel good to know that additional physical safety measures aren’t going to be in place. I don’t feel good about that, but I guess that’s our reality.

Miller: What are your hopes for your community right now?

Ybarrondo: I really hope that this doesn’t happen again. This child who got his hands on a gun, and was in a very dark place and being manipulated online, he didn’t have the supports in place. That child was failed, and not just by his mother. I’m not sure if she was the one that bought him that gun or not, but he wasn’t failed just by his mother or his father. I think that our community, and our country and the state of things, and even down to a more granular level of intervention for children exhibiting behavioral issues, we could have done better by him. My heart breaks for that child for who he was before that day. His actions that day and the result, I have no sympathy for him, but for the child he was before, my heart breaks.

I hope that our community can see that there’s a lot of children that are in a similar position to him in Bend and across the country. And I think that we need to do better at every single level, at a grassroots level, in the neighborhood. There’s other kids that are 8, 9 and 10 that attend Silver Rail [who] don’t have a great home environment. Now that school has started for everybody else and everybody else is back to work, I see them just out and about unsupervised. And they’ve already had run-ins with the police. They already have behavioral issues. These are the kids that I hope to embrace with the Silver Rail Children’s Fund.

I hope to identify every one of our kids who needs the extra set of eyes, who needs that mentorship, who needs that community and that support … Not what I see happening today, which is, “Oh, you picked up those kids and brought them to the event? Our children aren’t allowed to hang out with those kids. Those are bad kids.” Or, “Why would you do that? Why would you do that? Don’t you know what those kids do?” I said, “These kids are 8 and 9. These kids are 8 and 9, we could help them. Everybody could help them. We, as a community, could help them.” So that’s another driving factor for Silver Rail Children’s Fund, to embrace kids who need that support.

It’s estimated that 53% of our student body at Silver Rail lives at or below federal poverty level. The shooter himself and his mother lived in a low-income apartment, right next to our school. And this is happening across the country. I’m hoping for more youth support, more empathy and this grassroots type of support. If we can’t fix the federal laws, the left and the right, gun laws, mental health and all of these things, and how slow governmental bodies move, if we can’t fix that, we can start right at home with the kids in our neighborhood, the kids at our schools and the kids in our community. We can help those children. That’s all I can do.

Miller: Nicole, thank you very much for your time today. I really appreciate it.

Ybarrondo: Thank you.

Miller: It’s Nicole Ybarrondo. She is a parent of two Silver Rail Elementary School students and the founding director of the Silver Rail Children’s Fund.

“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.

Brown said his decision was in response to potential conflicts of interest and would allow his office to continue its focus on equal protection for transgender people.

Conservative critics had accused Brown’s office of facing conflicts when it came to upholding the initiative, given that the office has argued against bans on transgender female athletes in other contexts, including signing on to lawsuits outside of Washington state, and the fact that Brown’s former law firm, Pacifica Law Group, is part of the plaintiffs’ legal team.

Brown has appointed the national firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner to defend Initiative 638 “on behalf of Washington state.” He described the move as a common step his office takes to address conflicts of interest or workload issues.

In a statement, Brown said, “One of the most important duties of the Attorney General’s Office is to ensure that laws passed by the Legislature or by the voters through initiative are vigorously defended.”

“My personal views do not dictate what laws get defended or the strength of that defense,” he added.

Brown also acknowledged work his office has done to defend the rights of transgender Washingtonians.

“We have brought and won important cases against the federal government to protect access to vital healthcare services, and we have vigorously defended state laws that give transgender people equal protection under Washington law. We will not and cannot abandon that work,” Brown said.

Whether Brown’s decision to hire an outside firm to defend I-638 will mollify its supporters is yet to be seen.

Conservative commentator Brandi Kruse previously said on Facebook, “No way in hell should Attorney General Nick Brown be trusted to defend a voter initiative that he does not support, that his own party vowed to defeat, and that his former law firm is challenging in court.”

And Washington State Republican Party Chair Jim Walsh wrote that “in a rational system, State AG Brown’s close personal [and] professional ties to this left-wing law firm would require one of them to acknowledge a conflict of interest [and] withdraw from a court action against each other. WA courts, as currently operated, are not a rational system.”

On Nov. 9, the ACLU of Washington, Legal Voice, and Pacifica Law Group sued the state in King County Superior Court to block the measure from going into effect.

They represent five families with daughters who play school sports, including two trans girls. The state’s largest teachers union, the Washington Education Association, and a non-profit that supports families with transgender children, TransFamilies, are also plaintiffs in the case.

The suit alleges the initiative and the sex verification process it requires are discriminatory and violate the Washington state Constitution and students’ rights to privacy. It asks the court to intervene promptly and enjoin the initiative from being enforced before it takes effect Dec. 3.

Seven of the plaintiffs are parents of trans and cisgender girls ages 11 to 17 in Seattle Public Schools who participate in school sports. They say their students would be harmed by the initiative’s “intrusive sex verification requirements.” The parent of a transgender athlete in 12th grade said the exam and prohibition would cause her daughter “severe harm and compromise her well-being.” All of the parents have sought to remain unnamed in the lawsuit to protect their children’s privacy.

The teachers union joined the lawsuit because its members would be “required to implement and explain the verification regime,” it said.

The ban would require girls to obtain a genital exam, a hormone test, or a chromosome test to verify their birth sex before they could participate on a girls’ school sports team. It would be a shift in Washington state policy, which has allowed students to participate on sports teams that align with their gender identity for nearly 20 years.

The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association would determine how to align public school sports rules with the new law.

After the approval of I-638 by voters, the organization said in a statement it will continue to follow state law and is prepared to make “necessary changes” by Dec. 3.

The lawsuit noted the Attorney General’s Office argued against a similar ban on transgender girls in girls’ school sports last spring, when the WIAA considered but did not adopt a similar change in amendments to its handbook. According to the lawsuit, “The Civil Rights Division of the Attorney General’s Office reviewed the amendments and concluded they would violate state law.”

The lawsuit against I-638 argues that for students who don’t have a consistent health care provider, the sex verification process could require costly lab tests or invasive exams that aren’t medically necessary.

Plaintiffs also argue the Dec. 3 effective date is confusing: “Families of girls will need to schedule hurried mid-season medical appointments — and possibly blood tests or genetic tests — in order to continue playing a fall or winter sport,” according to the lawsuit.

Darren Littell, executive director of Let’s Go Washington, which backed I-638, told KUOW opponents’ sex verification claims were based on “false assumptions.”

Littell said doctors are already aware if a kid is trans, and that info can be communicated to schools without violating a student’s privacy.

“ What we’ve seen work in other states is just saying, ‘Is this individual eligible for girls’ sports, yes or no,’” Littell said. “That has nothing to do with releasing any kind of private information. All it does is say whether or not that person is eligible for girls’ sports.”

He said there are a lot of girls in Washington state who “want to see this upheld,” and he trusts the Attorney General’s Office will vigorously defend the initiative.

The initiative language said it was intended to preserve the integrity and fairness of women’s interscholastic sports. Backers said transgender girls have advantages in sports that cisgender girls don’t have. However, research into this matter is inconclusive for school-aged athletes.

Amy Radil is a reporter with KUOW. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.

On Tuesday, the Oregon Department of Agriculture confirmed a positive test result for the virus, known as highly pathogenic avian influenza, at a Morrow County dairy. State agriculture officials have not identified any other affected dairies as of Thursday.

Oregon agriculture officials say they’ve put the Morrow County farm under quarantine and will continue to investigate how the cows got sick.

Earlier this month, a farmworker in Washington’s Yakima County died after contracting the virus, though human deaths linked to bird flu are very rare. Health officials in that state say that the dairy worker had underlying health conditions. Two Yakima farmworkers also contracted the virus but did not experience severe illness, nor were they hospitalized.

Officials maintain the nation’s milk supply and other dairy products are safe to consume since pasteurization effectively inactivates the virus. Milk from sick animals is also diverted or destroyed so that it does not enter the food supply.

The current public health risk to the general population remains low, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, although people working in close contact with dairy cattle or poultry are at a higher risk of getting sick.

While the Oregon detection is significant, it’s not surprising, said Dr. Ryan Scholz, the state veterinarian for the Oregon Department of Agriculture. The virus is spreading among dairy cattle across the country, he said.

“Oregon’s milk surveillance program worked exactly as intended, identifying this infection quickly and allowing us to respond rapidly with our state and federal partners,” Scholz said in a statement.

Bird flu was first detected in dairy cattle in March 2024 and has since been identified in multiple states, including Washington, Idaho and California.

Oregon officials first discovered the virus in Morrow County through the state Department of Agriculture’s routine statewide milk surveillance program, which began weekly testing in late 2024.

Oregon health officials did not immediately disclose how many people were exposed to the sick cows in Morrow County. But they are monitoring farmworkers exposed to the infected animals and will keep checking them for symptoms, said Dr. Melissa Sutton, the medical director of respiratory viral pathogens at the Oregon Health Authority.

“With the use of appropriate personal protective equipment, the risk to farm workers remains low,” Sutton said in a statement. “Our public health approach is focused on ensuring rapid testing and treatment for any individuals who develop symptoms to prevent severe disease.”

In Washington, the virus has spread rapidly with at least 41 dairy farms testing positive for bird flu over the last 30 days.

This is the same virus that has affected millions of poultry birds across the U.S. since 2022, including more than one million commercial and backyard chickens in Oregon, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Of all known bird flu infections in Oregon, most have been on commercial poultry farms and backyard flocks.

There is evidence that suggests the virus affecting dairy cattle is mainly spreading from cow to cow, unlike in commercial or backyard poultry farms. Poultry usually catch the virus from wild migratory waterfowl.

Unlike what the name suggests, avian flu can jump to other animals, including wild mammals. In Oregon the virus has been detected in at least one pig at a noncommercial farm, in skunks, raccoons, rodents and at least five cats last year.

It’s the wettest time of the year for one of the wettest parts of the country: the Pacific Northwest.

This week is no exception as heavy rain, high tides and a rising sea level hit the West Coast.

And more storms are on their way.

Two atmospheric rivers, bringing heavy rain, will pound parts of Oregon and Washington state back-to-back on Friday and Saturday. Two other atmospheric rivers already dropped multiple inches of rain on both states earlier this week.

“What’s really problematic is when you get compounding impacts from multiple atmospheric rivers,” said Josh Weiss, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Weather Prediction Center. Those impacts include flash flooding, urban flooding and even landslides, he said.

This year’s atmospheric river season, which runs from October to March, is off to a fast start, said Weiss.

What do we mean by a river in the sky?

An atmospheric river is a narrow band of water vapor pushed by the wind. Loaded up with moisture, it dumps rain or snow. These rivers can be up to 2,000 miles long and 600 miles wide, said F. Martin Ralph, the director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

“It’s literally a river in the sky,” said Ralph, one of the leading researchers on atmospheric rivers. These rivers are a natural climate pattern. In fact, about 50 to 60% of rain in California comes from atmospheric rivers, Weiss said.

Residents in the Pacific Northwest are used to heavy downpours. But the atmospheric rivers are hitting as El Niño’s warm ocean waters contribute to rising sea levels and fuel storm systems. And right now, these natural weather patterns are coinciding with annual high tides, known as King tides. That leaves coastal and inland waterways along the West Coast at risk for flooding.

Ralph said that according to 40 years of data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, 90% or more of all flood damage in the Western U.S. is from atmospheric rivers.

This weekend, Jeff Michalski, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Seattle, said that Washington’s coast could be hit by significant 20-foot swells.

Pineapple and rum

People may know atmospheric rivers from their nicknames, such as Pineapple Express or Rum Runner Express. These names describe where the atmospheric river originates. A Pineapple Express, which came across the Pacific Ocean from Hawaii in late October, caused devastating flooding and multiple deaths in the Southwest’s Four Corners regions.

Atmospheric rivers aren’t just a West Coast phenomenon. Some larger nor’easters on the East Coast can pack a “nasty” atmospheric river, UCSD’s Ralph said.

The term atmospheric river is one of a few technical science terms that have gained traction on social media and in the news over the past few years, along with El Niño and Kelvin waves.

But is there a relationship between El Niño and atmospheric rivers? Do the warm ocean temperatures associated with El Niño and the heat those waters release make the rivers stronger? That was Ralph’s theory back in 2015, but his research showed the opposite.

“[Atmospheric rivers] don’t dance to the tune of El Niño,” Ralph said

Climate scientists say there also isn’t enough data to connect the weather pattern to human-caused global warming, although a warming world does mean more water vapor in the atmosphere.

“We’ve got to keep our eyes” out for atmospheric rivers, Ralph said. “Whether it’s an El Niño year or a La Niña year or a No Niño year.”

Officials with the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife say migratory ducks and geese are showing signs of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). The majority are being reported in the Willamette Valley.

Julia Burco is a veterinarian with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. She told KLCC that an HPAI-infected bird may be lethargic, unable to fly, shake its head, swim in circles, or have cloudy eyes.

“They’re pretty non-responsive,” she added. Burco said, so far, her staff have fielded calls and emails for hundreds of infected or dead birds. Most of the affected waterfowl are cackling geese, relatives of Canada geese. HPAI-infected birds may appear in unusual areas, including people’s yards or streets.

“If there’s a dead one and it needs to be removed from the area, we do suggest people not touch it directly,” said Burco. “Wear a mask and gloves when doing so. So those can be double-bagged and either put in the garbage, they can be incinerated. If you don’t need to touch it, we’d advise not touching it.”

People are encouraged to report groups of dead birds, but not to bring them in. The public can report these to the ODFW lab by calling 866-968-2600 or emailing them at wildlife.health@odfw.oregon.gov. They add that given the high volume of reports, lab staff may not be able to call people back.

While the risk to humans is low, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there have been 74 U.S. cases of people with avian influenza, and three deaths.

“There have been a few mortalities, and that’s the people that have close contact with infected animals,” Burco explained. “And they’re immunocompromised or have some medical issues going on.”

People who handle birds in cattle or poultry processing plants are potentially at risk. And pets like cats and dogs could get infected if they eat the carcass of an HPAI-infected bird.

The ODFW says people should immediately report dead or sick domestic birds such as chickens and turkeys to the Oregon Department of Agriculture by calling 503-986-4711 or 800-347-7028.

Copyright 2026, KLCC News.

Brian Bull is a reporter with KLCC. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.

The group found success in an election that saw a nationwide push to the political left, largely in opposition to the Trump administration. Some candidates had little, if any, previous government experience and billed themselves as working-class activists pushing back against data centers and powerful corporate interests.

Many ran against candidates backed by politically influential groups — like chambers of commerce and public safety unions — but received ample support from labor unions and other progressive groups that power today’s Democratic politics.

The Washington County Democrats endorsed 17 candidates this election, many of whom ran on this progressive platform, including those who align themselves with the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA. Fifteen have won and another is currently leading their race as of Thursday.

The nonpartisan county commission, where just six years ago Republicans held a majority, will be without a single Republican commissioner for the first time in decades — at least.

Karim Delgado, one of three progressive candidates elected to the Hillsboro City Council, said his coalition’s success signifies that voters want change.

“Our slate is prepared to deliver that change,” Delgado said. “The people of Hillsboro have spoken. They recognize that their government does not support them, but instead supports corporate interests for some of the richest companies in the world.”

One critical contest remains too close to call. In the race for county chair, Nafisa Fai is beating her fellow Washington County Commissioner Pam Treece by 363 votes, according to the latest results. She took the lead on Tuesday after initial results on election night put Treece ahead by 3 percentage points. She would be the first person who is Black and Muslim to lead the county.

In another race for a county commission seat, Kipperlyn Sinclair, a Hillsboro city councilor who ran a campaign critical of data centers, defeated Steve Callaway, the former mayor of Hillsboro who was on council when the program granting generous tax breaks for data centers was renewed.

And in Hillsboro, Delgado and two other progressives, Dorian Russell and Diana Jackson, secured decisive victories. In addition, two Democratic Socialists, Tammy Carpenter and Myrna Muñoz, easily won seats in the Oregon Legislature that were long occupied by moderate Democrats.

“I feel like the people who won this time genuinely believe in that progressive platform,” said Martita Meier, the chair of the Washington County Democrats.

Critics — fellow Democrats among them — question whether this crop of electeds will be good policymakers. Some have voiced concerns they could push away unaffiliated voters, the region’s largest electorate.

Dan Mason, a national committeeman for the Oregon Republican Party who has worked extensively in Washington County politics, criticized the candidates’ messaging as pandering to a nationwide backlash to data centers without substantive solutions.

“It’s gonna be amateur hour at all levels of local government,” Mason said. He said he’s concerned their proposals could be damaging to the region’s economy, pushing away industries that fuel the tax base.

“And if that’s happening in the economic engine of Oregon, we’re probably in for a wild ride,” Mason said.

Supporters believe this contingent of voices is necessary to bring about new ideas to shake up the Democratic majority, which has struggled to make headway on major issues like housing, the economy and immigration. Some have called for steep taxes on corporations and the wealthy, free universal healthcare and abolishing immigration enforcement.

The progressive Oregon Working Families Party lauded the victories. The group had endorsed Carpenter, Muñoz, Fai, Sinclair, the three Hillsboro candidates and Tigard council candidate Gabriel Elijio Velásquez.

“The message was clear: voters in Washington County are not going to stand for unlawful and traumatizing attacks on immigrant communities and giving tax breaks to corporate interests in the name of AI and data centers,” Working Families Party state director Annie Naranjo-Rivera said.

Many candidates pledged to oust establishment politicians that they say have hindered the party’s progress. Muñoz, the DSA senator-elect, unseated a longtime lawmaker, former state Sen. Janeen Sollman, D-Hillsboro, in the May primary.

The election represents a further shift to the left in Washington County, the state’s economic engine and home to Nike, Intel and the “Silicon Forest.” The county was once politically moderate, and led by Republicans for long before that. But in recent years, voters have backed a number of progressive leaders for elected office.

Justin Stark, outgoing co-chair of the Tualatin Valley branch of the DSA, said the latest election results indicate the group may be growing its foothold in Washington County.

“I think the more left-leaning people end up in government, the more opportunities that we have to work in coalition with people within the state, which can generate some pretty good outcomes,” Stark said.

As the state’s most racially diverse county, Washington County became ground zero for last year’s immigration crackdown. That crackdown spurred discontent among many voters and prompted some to run for office with a promise to push back against the federal government’s tactics.

But much of the candidates’ campaigns this election centered on economic forces. Business-minded Washington County leaders have long held the door open for industry with the hope of reaping an economic benefit. That paved the way for 29 data centers in the county, the highest concentration in Oregon.

That tide shifted in the runup to the midterms. Voters filled public meetings, voicing outrage over the data center industry’s outsized wealth and the encroachment of artificial intelligence. In response, candidates promised to take tougher stances against the industry and criticized previous leaders for allowing data centers to gobble too much of the region’s resources.

It’s unclear precisely what guardrails the new leaders might propose, but it seems likely that the results could usher in a major change to regional industry. Meanwhile, just days after the election, Gov. Tina Kotek said she would call upon Oregon Democrats to piece together legislation with new rules for data centers within the first 60 days of the upcoming legislative session.

Update: This story was updated with the names of all progressive Hillsboro city councilors who won races as well as a statement from the Oregon Working Families Party.

Jonathan Bucci served as the collections manager and curator of the Hallie Ford Museum of Art for the last 20 years, until he stepped into his role as director in September.

We’ll hear from Bucci about his hopes for the museum, and why he believes this is a moment of transition — not only for his museum, but for museums and collections across Oregon.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Hallie. OPB regrets the error.

“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.

Catch up on what you missed with our Education newsletter, sent weekly.

Google is a big part of the school day for millions of students. It’s not only a search engine. It’s a hub for sharing documents and turning in homework.

An announcement this month makes it clear: Google wants AI to be a part of that education ecosystem.

Many parents do not.

“Parents are angry,” said Jodi Carreon, a mom in Southern California. “They’re very angry.”

When Carreon, who also runs the advocacy group Schools Beyond Screens, first read that Google was letting schools turn off AI features for students, she was excited. Her group is part of the parent-led movement demanding limits on technology in the classroom.

But even as districts including Los Angeles Unified, Seattle Public Schools and New York City Public Schools recently agreed to bans on AI in the classroom, Google did not. If schools don’t want AI Overviews to appear when students use its flagship Search tool, the company said, they will lose access to Google Search altogether. Even advocates who want less tech in schools know losing the ability to “Google” something will be an issue for teachers.

In a post on X, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Google is using “its monopoly power to force AI into our public schools,” and Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts wrote to Google’s CEO demanding the company reverse its policy.

A baffling move

Tracy Pizzo worked at Google for more than a decade before leaving the company in 2022. Much of her time at the company was focused on education and ethical AI standards. Google’s move this month baffled her, especially coming at a time when young people’s use of AI is under such scrutiny.

She has a theory about why the tech giant is taking this stance: It could be linked to two recent court cases Google fended off in D.C.

Google was sued by big online publishers who said adding AI overview to search negatively affected their business. The publishers sued under antitrust laws, and their argument hinged on convincing the court that AI Overviews was a separate product from Google Search.

“The judge decided that Search and AI are an integrated product,” Pizzo said, and subsequently dismissed the cases. “Now if Google were to provide an off switch for schools only … that’s evidence that they can be separated. And that undermines the win they just had in court.”

When asked for comment, Google directed NPR to its original announcement, where the company said, “Our goal is simple: provide school leaders the control and confidence to use AI products in classrooms as they see fit.” The company did not respond to additional questions by NPR about any connection between its announcement and recent antitrust cases.

NPR asked antitrust experts about this theory. They weren’t entirely convinced, but also didn’t dismiss it altogether.

The “AI or nothing” approach

In any case, Google’s AI Overviews doesn’t get high marks from some watchdogs.

Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that evaluates how teens interact with technology, recently gave the product an “unacceptable risk” rating. Among other things, Common Sense dinged the tool for unsafe content and citing false information.

The day after the announcement, Google came under fire for another AI product in schools. Parents in North Carolina sued the company after Google’s chatbot, Gemini, helped their 13-year-old daughter plan her suicide and funeral on her school-issued Chromebook.

Even some of Google’s longtime partners are surprised by the company’s current position, including superintendent Hank Thiele in Illinois.

“It may have caused a lot of damage in the trust that Google has built in education,” he said.

Thiele has worked with Google Classroom for almost two decades and says the company has always been a great partner. His district, made up entirely of high school students, is in the process of figuring out AI for its students. As an early adopter of tech in the classroom, he wants to be on top of it with AI.

He said he thinks the company will listen to people’s feedback but they bungled the messaging.

“Google should have just plainly said, ‘Our bad,’” Thiele said. “That would have been the appropriate response to a school.”

The “AI or nothing” approach, as Thiele put it, did not land well.

Edited by Nirvi Shah and Nicole Cohen

Google is a financial supporter of NPR.

Good morning, Northwest.

Washington County voters have elected a slate of new leaders who have vowed to push the local politics to the left.

OPB’s Bryce Dole and Holly Bartholomew report on the new direction for the suburban Oregon county.

Also this morning, the analog dream of the ’90s is alive in Portland, where a burgeoning community has come together around a love for VHS tapes.

Here’s your First Look at Friday’s news.

— Bradley W. Parks

Top story

Progressives dominate in Washington County elections

Progressive Democrats in Washington County won big in the 2026 midterm elections, as a slate of left-wing candidates were elected to state and local offices.

The group found success in an election that saw a nationwide push to the political left, largely in opposition to the Trump administration. Some candidates had little, if any, previous government experience and billed themselves as working-class activists pushing back against data centers and powerful corporate interests.

Many ran against candidates backed by politically influential groups — like chambers of commerce and public safety unions — but received ample support from labor unions and other progressive groups that power today’s Democratic politics.

The Washington County Democrats endorsed 17 candidates this election, many of whom ran on this progressive platform, including those who align themselves with the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA. Fifteen have won and another was leading their race as of yesterday. (Holly Bartholomew and Bryce Dole)

Learn More

3 things to know

• The Oregon Department of Agriculture confirmed a positive result of the highly pathogenic avian influenza at a Morrow County dairy. It’s the first confirmed case at a commercial dairy in Oregon. (Alejandro Figueroa)
• College admissions officials, parents and students are all aware that financial assistance is only getting more critical as the cost of higher education continues to rise. We’ve compiled some things to know about financial aid. (Natalie Pate)
• Vancouver City Council plans to vote tonight on whether to fire City Manager Lon Pluckhahn. Officials have provided no explanation in public documents about why Vancouver’s top appointed official could be terminated. (Erik Neumann)

Northwest headlines

• Oregon nuclear company sued by investors over executives’ stock sales (April Ehrlich)
• Newly elected, Washington’s first openly transgender legislator ready to ‘stand on business’ (Jake Goldstein-Street, Washington State Standard)
• Trump administration wants to sell public lands and shrink the federal estate (Matthew Brown, AP)
• DOGE cuts cost tribes $470M, gutting funding for climate projects (Joseph Lee, Grist via AP)

Listen in on OPB’s daily conversation

“Think Out Loud” airs at noon and 8 p.m. weekdays on OPB Radio, opb.org and the OPB News app. Today’s planned topics (subject to change):

• Sport psychology program at University of Western States in Portland earns national accreditation
• Willamette University’s Halle Ford Museum of Art has a new director
• ‘An American Gulag’ documents the impact of immigration detention in the US

One more look

Physical media is making a comeback. For Northwest film fans, VHS never left

On a hot August night in the heart of Southeast Portland, dozens of moviegoers lined up under the soft glow of the Cinemagic Theater marquee. Inside, where the smell of fresh popcorn lingered in the air, people buzzed with excitement.

It was a sold-out crowd in the single-screen auditorium. But the audience didn’t come to see the latest summer blockbuster. It was the first Friday of the month: VHS Night.

For nearly five years, co-owners Ryan Frakes Nicholas Kuechler have teamed up to showcase films and trailers on VHS that may have otherwise been lost to time and obscurity. (Donald Orr)

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Coming out of the bruising the Republicans suffered in the midterms, this week was bearing up to be a bad one for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Many thought he’d be the first in the administration to be fired for his support of the Iran war, which proved unpopular with voters.

Then a member of his own party called for a vote to impeach him and, in an embarrassing incident that went viral, he also got chastised for poor decorum when visiting the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Still, he managed to survive the former – except for Thomas Massie, who sponsored the resolution to impeach him, all other Republicans in the House voted against it – and sought to turn the latter into a PR opportunity.

The day after the impeachment effort, an incident occurred at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, one of America’s most sacred military sites. It happened when Hegseth, his wife, and staffers went to lay a wreath at the memorial just outside Washington D.C., to mark Veteran’s Day on Wednesday.

Someone in the defense secretary’s group laughed loudly, prompting a sentinel on duty at Arlington National Cemetery to shout: “All visitors will maintain an atmosphere of silence and respect at all times!”

As the video spread on social media, there was a flurry of condemnation online, with some dubbing Hegseth “the secretary of offense.”

Political opponents, including Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.), as well as former GOP congressman Adam Kinzinger, criticized Hegseth and his group.

“Pete Hegseth continues to demonstrate his utter lack of fitness for his office,” said Moore on X. “One day after narrowly avoiding impeachment, he shows his contempt for our men and women in uniform by disrespecting the sanctity of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.”

On Thursday, the embattled Defense secretary tried to regain control of the narrative. He invited the soldier who bellowed at him, Spc. Thomas Iglesias, to the Pentagon, where he honored him with the “Joint Service Commendation Medal for the execution of his duties at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on November 11, 2026.”

“We love soldiers. We love standards. Well done, Specialist,” Hegseth wrote. “Carry on Patriots.”

Millions of individuals, organizations, and businesses – including the NPR newsroom - were left without access to Microsoft’s Outlook email on Thursday.

Early Friday, after Outlook had been down for more than 12 hours, Microsoft reported “marginal success.”

Very little is known so far about what is behind the outage, but Microsoft has attributed it to an “elevated load,” or servers becoming overstretched. The tech giant assured users it was doing everything it could to fix the problem.

“As of now, we are not aware of any malicious activity that is causing this incident. We will continue to treat this incident with urgency and priority until full resolution,” the company said.

While Microsoft did not say how many users were affected, Microsoft 365 apps have around 430 million users globally. Its communications platform Teams and AI chatbot Copilot were also affected.

The problem has affected users in more than 70 countries, according to Downdetector, which tracks cyber outages. Countries from the U.S. to South Africa to India and New Zealand were affected.

The U.S. House of Representatives said it was also affected, as were the Australian police and the Japanese government. In Hong Kong, bankers told CNN their work was disrupted. Companies including OpenAI and Anthropic were also affected.

While some people were fuming, others online said they were relishing the opportunity to wind down work early ahead of the weekend.

Social media was full of memes of people slacking off at work or enjoying tranquil scenes without the pinging of a constant barrage of emails, with some telling the Microsoft technicians not to hurry with fixing it.

Mauricio Pochettino, who took over an ailing U.S. men’s national soccer team in 2024 and led the squad to a Round of 16 finish in the 2026 World Cup, is departing to take over as coach of famed Manchester United.

Pochettino was the highest-profile manager the U.S. had ever hired. His aggressive attacking style of play won praise from his players and fans alike. At the 2026 World Cup, the USMNT finished first in its group and won its first knockout-round game since 2002. Pochettino’s three wins were the most at any World Cup by a USMNT coach.

As a player, he represented Argentina in the 2002 World Cup and played in soccer leagues in Spain and France. As a coach, he managed some of Europe’s most recognizable clubs: Tottenham Hotspur, Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain. Last August, he signed an extension to lead the USMNT through the 2030 World Cup, giving him a full four-year cycle to build the team into a true contender.

Pochettino will lead the U.S. for two more games — against Haiti in the coming days — before departing for Manchester United.

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So many of the coolest autumn fruits are totally slept-on, and I can’t understand why.

Ok, yes, hachiya persimmons, medlars and quince all need to be bletted (relatably, they require a bed-rotting period in order to access their magic), or because the husky little physalis berries must fully ripen and fall on their own, making you hunt through the dirt on your hands and knees, but I aim to prove that they’re worth it.

… Just not with this recipe.

Look, I love massaging hoshigaki as much as the next weeb, but a Fuyu persimmon is just so easy. She’s versatile, like a slightly spicy, less-sweet apple. Whereas an unripe Hachiya will turn your tongue to a roof tile (thanks to a high concentration of tannic polyphenols called proanthocyanidins), but Fuyu’s low astringency makes her ready to go right from the jump, as a crispy addition to salads and cheese boards, or roasted like a root vegetable. And when she eventually languishes long enough to go all soft and silky on her insides, she’s ready for cakes, jellies and confections.

Besides, if you have a Fuyu tree, you might not have the luxury of letting things fully ripen in place. Depending on how wanton and dastardly your neighborhood squirrels are, you might be looking at a lot of fruit with a bite or two missing. This is a great use for underripe fruit — as long as it’s firm enough to slice, you’re golden. (Cut out the bite marks as needed.)

Feel free to zhuzh this with a spoonful of herbed mascarpone or a crumble of chèvre, but I think this galette is a lovely addition to any autumn holiday table as-is. Best of all, this kind of rustic pastry doesn’t require a skilled hand — its chicness comes from the “what, this old thing?” of it all. Serves 6-8

Ingredients

1 pie crust (homemade or store-bought)

4 slightly underripe/firm Fuyu persimmons, peeled and thinly sliced crosswise

1 medium-sized red onion (roughly the same size as the persimmons), peeled and thinly sliced crosswise

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 tablespoons honey

1 teaspoon molasses

1 tablespoon miso

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

Salt and pepper

1 egg, lightly beaten

Instructions

1. Line a pizza pan or other baking sheet with parchment paper and lay your pie crust on it.
2. Arrange the sliced persimmons and onion as artfully as you like, leaving about 2 inches of pie dough around the edges. Don’t worry about forcing it all to fit; just aim for an even layer.
3. Fold the edges of the pie dough over the filling and then pop it in the fridge to chill while you preheat the oven to 400 F and make the miso glaze.
4. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat, then add the honey, molasses, miso and vinegar and whisk until smooth.
5. Remove the galette from the refrigerator and brush the persimmon/onion filling with the miso glaze. Add a few pinches of salt and pepper.
6. Brush the dough with the beaten egg, then pop the galette in the oven for 15 minutes. Brush on more glaze. Do this once more (bake 15 minutes and glaze), then continue baking until the pastry is golden brown and shiny and the glaze is sticky and caramelized, about 10-15 more minutes (for a total of 40-45 minutes). If the crust is getting brown too fast, cover the edges with foil.
7. Remove the galette from the oven and give it another crack or two of pepper. Cool slightly before serving.

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