Tina Kotek

Today

Sabrina Philip

The madcap effort to ban farming, fishing and hunting in Oregon

What happens when something you do every day becomes illegal? If animal rights activists in Oregon have their way, the state’s hunters, fishers and farmers may be about to find out. A sweeping new initiative potentially headed for the November ballot targets the legality of farming, hunting, fishing, ranching, animal sciences, or even killing a mouse that has scurried in your house. Initiative Petition 28 (IP28) would make Oregon the first state in the US to ban such practices. Initiative Petition 28 proposes the enforcement of the PEACE Act, or the People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions. The act states animals should be cared for “in ways that minimize their pain, stress, fear, and suffering.

oregon

Wednesday

Matt Purple

Eight Democrats we all hope lose this November

It is midterm election season, an important period on our political calendar as it marks that there's only two years to go until the next presidential election. And while something called the "blue wave" supposedly took hold last summer, the latest polling shows that Democrats are in trouble. How much trouble? You do hate to wish ill on a party running a campaign based on third-trimester abortion access and an imagined threat from brownshirts. But given the choice, here are eight Democrats we wouldn't mind seeing ousted this year. 8. Representative Jerry Nadler Nadler presided over both impeachments of Donald Trump and is a fairly reliable progressive. The New York rep is not the most inept Dem out there — but then he did almost dislocate his nose trying to remove a Covid mask.

Thursday

Nate Hochman

Oregon’s nasty woman

Tina Kotek could be well on her way to being the thirty-ninth governor of Oregon. The Democrat, who previously served as speaker of the state’s House of Representatives, won her party’s primary this Tuesday. And with a Democratic supermajority in the legislature and a governor’s mansion that hasn’t housed a Republican since 1979, that’s likely a one-way ticket to victory in November. Kotek is, in many ways, a creature of the state Democratic establishment. Yet in Oregon — and in blue states like it — “establishment Democrat” means something very different than it once did.