Election interference, and the week's news

Morning all, 

Hopefully you're spending some time this weekend filling out your ballot if you haven’t already. 

Elections in several states this week got off to unusual starts, with President Donald Trump and the U.S. Department of Justice attempting to preemptively interfere in the outcome of a Senate race in Alaska, and attempting to pressure California to purge voters the feds think are noncitizens. Officials in California sampled 200 of the 20,000 names provided and found evidence that many are citizens, and most have never in fact voted before. 

If Democrats take both the U.S. House and Senate in the Nov. 3 midterms, it could lead to an interesting alliance of new progressives and establishment Democrats when it comes to challenging Trump and their Republican counterparts, our D.C. reporters note. 

In Oregon elections, our reporter Shaanth Nanguneri brings us a thorough breakdown of the two women running to be the state’s governor. A record number of women are running for state legislatures across the country this year, our national partners report. 

Resentment to data centers continues to galvanize voters in races across the country and in Oregon. Gov. Tina Kotek, running for reelection, recently halted data center development in the state temporarily via an environmental permitting pause, which has upset some leaders in data center heavy counties. In response this week the Umatilla City Council in eastern Oregon decided to declare a state of emergency over potential financial losses from the one year pause. 

Meanwhile, the owners of one of the largest gas pipelines in the region are beginning to ask federal regulators to allow them to expand the system to get more gas to Oregon to meet growing demand for electricity, which critics say is driven almost entirely by data centers, and that will wreak havoc on Oregon and Washington’s climate goals.

Looming larger than data centers, voters in Oregon and other states continue to bring up affordability issues as their biggest concerns. New home completions are stuck at 2020 levels in much of the country, nine states including Oregon lost jobs in the past year, and employer-sponsored health insurance plans continue to get more expensive. 

In central Oregon this week, we continued to follow news out of Bend in the aftermath of the Silver Rail elementary shooting, and to look at how the school and the district invested in preventative measures for years that so many Oregon schools have also spent hundreds of millions of dollars on. The area’s U.S. Representative, Oregon Congresswoman Janelle Bynum, spent the week meeting with families and community members, and called on federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to pause actions in the area after hearing many community members were afraid to mourn in communion and at public vigils for fear of targeting by ICE. 

Bynum described it as a matter of “basic decency and professionalism.”

“Federal agencies routinely adjust operations in the wake of natural disasters and other emergencies so that people can seek shelter and aid without fear. The aftermath of a school shooting calls for the same judgment,” she said.