Subscribe to OPB’s First Look to receive Northwest news in your inbox six days a week.
Good morning, Northwest.
The Hillsboro Hops unveiled their new ballpark yesterday and will begin play there next week.
Stadium deals are a hot topic of conversation in Oregon at the moment. OPB and Report for America’s Holly Bartholomew starts today’s newsletter with a look at how Hillsboro’s $153 million facility became reality.
Also this morning, OPB politics reporters discuss how the Supreme Court’s impending ruling on late-arriving ballots could affect Oregon’s pioneering vote-by-mail system on the latest episode of “OPB Politics Now.”
Here’s your First Look at Friday’s news.
—Bradley W. Parks
The new Hillsboro Hops stadium on March 26, 2026, in Hillsboro, Ore.
Saskia Hatvany / OPB
Hillsboro Hops to begin playing at new $153 million stadium next month
The Hillsboro Hops will break in their brand new $153 million stadium April 7, the team’s first home game of the 2026 season.
The Hops, along with the city of Hillsboro, began construction on the new stadium in 2024 after Major League Baseball determined the team’s former stadium, then known as Ron Tonkin Field, did not meet league standards.
The determination almost forced the Hops to relocate, but the organization managed to secure $41 million in public funds and another $112 million in private financing to build a new stadium.
The stadium will also serve as a mid-sized concert venue for up to 7,000 spectators. The team plans to announce an upcoming concert lineup in the next few weeks.
The Hops, a minor league affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks, have played in Hillsboro since 2013. (Holly Bartholomew)
📨 Are you enjoying First Look? Forward this email your friends.
FILE - In this photo taken Sept. 10, 2019, people walk past a map of the world in a hallway of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Tacoma, Wash., during a media tour.
Ted S. Warren / AP
3 things to know this morning
- Confusion has surrounded how Portland spends its arts tax funding for years. After OPB published an investigation, the city revealed more details on how much is dispersed annually. (Alex Zielinski)
- Multnomah County health officials have confirmed a new measles case in Oregon that is linked to Gresham’s WinCo Foods located on 2511 SE 1st St., warning that people who visited there between 2-5 p.m. on March 7 might have been exposed to the disease. (OPB staff)
- Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network, a nonprofit that tracks immigration enforcement activity in the state, said its Deportation Defense Hotline received over 10,000 calls last year — more than double those in 2024. (Freddy Monares)
Vote by mail remains in the national conversation: Is it safe?
On the latest episode of “OPB Politics Now,” we explore how the case challenging a Mississippi election law and proposed legislation could upend some of Oregon’s work as the first state to pivot to voting only by mail. (Dirk VanderHart, Alex Zielinski and Andrew Theen)
A dead gray whale on a beach near Florence, Ore., on March 26, 2026.
Courtesy of Dolly Wholley
Headlines from around the Northwest
- WNBA sets April 3 expansion draft for new teams in Portland and Toronto (Doug Feinberg)
- Oregon business leaders urge Kotek to think bigger with prosperity council effort (Shaanth Nanguneri)
- Dead gray whale washes up on beach near Florence (Nathan Wilk)
- Superfund cleanup stage for JH Baxter site in Eugene still years away (Brian Bull)
- Bee survey finds dozens of species new to Washington state (John Ryan)
- 2 young bobcats released back to the wild after rehabilitation at Think Wild in Bend (KLCC staff)
- Oregon State athletic director Scott Barnes to retire in August (Anne M. Peterson)
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):
- New biography explores life and LGBTQ+ activism of former University of Portland president
- New reporting on Washington’s child welfare system finds court-appointed guardians have minimal oversight
Washington State Archives photo of Budd Inlet capture on March 7, 1976.
Washington State Archives
Reflecting on the legacy of the last orca capture in Washington state, 50 years later
Many of the orcas captured and sent to marine theme parks in the 1960s and 1970s came from the Pacific Northwest. An incident 50 years ago this month changed that.
On March 7, 1976, Ralph Munro, a staffer in then-Washington Gov. Dan Evans’ office, witnessed a SeaWorld crew trap a pod of nomadic orcas in a place called Budd Inlet on south Puget Sound.
Munro said what he saw and heard that day haunted him for the rest of his life. He called his boss, who, along with the state attorney general, spearheaded a lawsuit against SeaWorld.
A judge ruled against SeaWorld in just over two weeks. On March 23, 1976, the theme park owners agreed to stop capturing orcas in Washington state. (Kim Malcolm and John O’Brien)
Subscribe to OPB’s First Look to receive Northwest news in your inbox six days a week.
