Today’s Newsmakers at Noon covered a lot of ground—from a wonderful weekend celebrating the wedding of our friends Solomon Yue and Kerry McQuisten, to a recap of the Polk County Fair and our prize winner.
Back to business, we dug into some big questions facing the Mid-Willamette Valley. With enrollment at Salem-Keizer Public Schools declining for years, why is the district only now confronting the mismatch between students, buildings, staffing and spending? And the bigger question: what has happened to spending per student while enrollment has fallen?
The Verrus/Oakline at Mill Creek data center debate continues as Verrus head of energy Jeff Bladen recently answered questions from Salem-area business leaders. We discussed the need to separate legitimate concerns from rhetoric and give the community solid information about what the project would actually mean for Salem.
We also returned to Flock Safety and mass surveillance. Supporters often point to crime reduction as evidence for expanding the technology—but violent crime in America was already on a decades-long decline before Flock was founded in 2017. Does collecting billions of vehicle scans actually make us safer, and how much privacy should law-abiding citizens surrender in the name of public safety?
Then there’s Oregon’s quality-of-life problem. WalletHub’s latest Best States to Live In ranking puts Idaho at #1 while Oregon comes in at #42, with particularly poor rankings for housing costs and homeownership. We talked about what those numbers say about affordability and the direction of the state.
And the battle over women’s sports keeps getting more interesting. Former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom declared himself a prospective WNBA player, saying he meets the requirements—a pointed way of making his case about biological sex and women’s athletics. Meanwhile, Sophie Cunningham was back in the headlines after being clotheslined during a game and then receiving a response from her own coach that generated even more controversy.
Links from Today’s Show
Enes Kanter Freedom on X
Collin Rugg on the WNBA story
Salem-Keizer school enrollment discussion
Flock Safety/crime discussion
WalletHub — Best States to Live In
Sophie Cunningham Gets Clotheslined — RedState
