• The latest issue of local grassroots media The Dissonant Times is out with a story on lessons from arrests at the Federal Building, an interview with Sofia De Ferrari, a trans woman currently incarcerated at Oregon’s Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, on federal plans to deny prisoners gender-affirming health care, and a deep dive into what caused the end of pregnancy and birth support nonprofit DaisyCHAIN in Eugene. Read them at DissonantTimes.org. The Highway 58 Herald reports that former resort Kitson Hot Springs has been sold to a Eugene family. The town of Oakridge had sought to purchase the property, and says the family, which bought it for $2.5 million, plans to reopen public access and preserve the surrounding forest. Let us know what other small, local media you support that is out there breaking news!
• We are saddened to hear of the loss of Marion Malcom April 23, 1939 to April 27, 2026. She was a social justice advocate and a longtime anti-war activist who had worked with Community Alliance of Lane County (CALC) since the 1970s and organized with Springfield Alliance for Equality and Respect (SAfER) among her many, many other contributions to the community. Irrepressible and passionate, she participated in the March No Kings rally in Springfield even while dealing with the effects of illness. She wrote this week’s viewpoint on May Day with Marty Bennett and Dennis Renolds.
• The General Service Administration, the federal agency that maintains federal buildings, applied for a right-of-way use permit with the city of Eugene April 25 for a fence surrounding the downtown Eugene Federal Building. In an email to Eugene Weekly, city of Eugene director of communications Elle O’Casey writes, “GSA indicated it will place part of the fence along the northern part of the Pearl Street sidewalk next to the federal building. This part of the sidewalk is on federal property. The city has no easement for this segment and no legal authority to prevent GSA from closing it.” Since part of the fence will be situated upon the Pearl Street sidewalk, a frequently trafficked sidewalk to downtown Eugene, the Riverfront and Market districts, the city is converting a parking strip along Pearl Street into a pedestrian walkway before the fence on federal property is erected. Eugene Weekly broke the news of the fence project on April 1. Thanks to The Register Guard for mentioning that.
• Head to EugeneWeekly.com for an update from Eve Weston on EWEB’s Trail Bridge Dam and its fish passage issues, a story by Ysabella Sosa on the recent annual Día del Niño event at Guy Lee elementary and ever so many primary election letters from all the readers!
• When one of our own completes a feat of athletic prowess, you better believe we are gonna shout from the rooftops how proud we are to have them in our office. Catalyst Journalism Project reporter Seira Kitagawa ran 26.2 miles in the Sunday, April 26, Eugene Marathon. “I didn’t think I would actually do it,” Kitagawa says, “But then this year I’ll be graduating [from the University of Oregon], so I told myself it would be my little graduation requirement.” This was Kitagawa’s very first time running a marathon, but she says she thought about possibly doing one w
hen she goes back to her hometown of Tokyo, Japan. “It was so cool, even though there was some pain, I just felt so grateful,” Kitagawa says. Her goal was to make it under five hours, and she met that goal with a run time of 4 hours and 28 minutes. Great job, Seira!
• As the PeaceHealth saga continues in court, comedian Dr. Glaucomflecken comes to town to raise money to make medicine local again in Lane County. Dr. Glaucomflecken, aka Oregon-based ophthalmologist William E. Flanary, is known on TikTok and other social media for his medical-based comedy. His fundraiser is at 6:30 pm, May 1, at Venue 252, 252 Lawrence Street. Alas, we hear the event is sold out, but you can get more info at eventbrite.com or email MakeMedicineLocalAgain@gmail.com. What saga, you ask? PeaceHealth (already shit-listed for taking away Eugene’s only emergency department) announced it was changing its ED providers from Eugene Emergency Physicians to a group run by Atlanta-based ApolloMD, and at stake in court is whether this violates Senate Bill 951, Oregon’s new corporate practice of medicine law that prevents corporations from controlling medical decisions. At stake locally are local doctors, emergency room response times, healthcare and corporate medicine. Find Dr. Glaucomflecken’s take on PeaceHealth on YouTube and more.
• Wildfire season is nigh, and folks are freaking out over the American Lung Association’s “State of the Air” annual report, which, not for the first time, gave the area an F for air quality. Lane Regional Air Protection Agency, for a good 20 years or more, has had to explain that Oakridge — due to its location in a deep valley, local wood smoke and frequent large wildfire events — regularly has some of the worst particulate matter pollution levels in the county and that affects the grade Lane County gets as a whole. LRAPA also notes, “Wildfire smoke is the biggest threat to air quality in the Pacific Northwest.” Not gonna lie, we’re worried about the upcoming fire season.
• Let it not be said that Oregon is shirking its contribution to the incompetence and corruption of the Trump Administration. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who resigned under a cloud of investigations April 20 as Donald Trump’s secretary of labor, was mayor of the Portland suburb of Happy Valley from 2011 to 2018, and a U.S. representative for Oregon’s fifth Congressional District from 2023 to 2025. According to a New York Times story in March, the Labor Department has been looking into allegations of professional misconduct, including charges that she had an affair with a member of her security team, that she traveled extensively for personal reasons on the taxpayers’ dime, that she kept a large stash of alcoholic beverages in her office, drinking during the work day, and that her aides awarded public contracts for political reasons. Meanwhile, the paper reported, her husband, Dr. Shawn DeRemer, was barred from entering the Labor Department’s offices after two women employees complained that he made physical advances to them. Chavez-Demerer and her husband both deny the allegations. Apparently, it was all too much even for The Donald.