Fewer international students expected

By Alex Baumhardt | Senior reporter

The number of international students enrolling in U.S. universities had been rising for nearly a decade before President Donald Trump first took office in 2017. Then those numbers declined every year of his first term as he enacted travel bans on several majority-Muslim countries, visa restrictions and as the Covid-19 pandemic hit.

In Oregon, the number of international students has been declining steadily every year for the last decade, and the number enrolled at one of the state’s seven public universities in the fall of 2025 — just over 4,000 — was half of what it was in 2015, according to data from Oregon’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission.

The state’s largest public universities are bracing for what they expect will be more declines this fall following issues abroad with student visa appointments, more Trump travel bans and visa restrictions, and what one official called “ever-changing federal rules.”

Also in today's edition:

A federal U.S. Fish and Wildlife officer from Scio died while helping to evacuate Oklahoma wildfire victims.
Federal government tries to ditch demographic data collection needed to understand workplace equity.
A reporter goes behind the scenes of Washington state efforts to train and certify more residents to lead prescribed burns.
Federal judge on Monday reaffirms temporary order blocking U.S. Postal Service from carrying out a rule placing new restrictions on mail-in voting.

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Oregon universities brace for international enrollment drop following visa delays, Trump policies

By Alex Baumhardt

Oregon State University, pictured here, is currently home to about 1,900 international students and their families, down from 2,400 in recent years. (Photo courtesy of Maia Insinga/Oregon State University)

Ahead of the fall semester at Oregon’s largest public universities, staff are helping students from around the world navigate challenging visa delays and uncertainty over President Donald Trump and his administration’s immigration policies that are expected to drive down international enrollment.

Federal officer from Oregon dies while responding to Oklahoma wildfire

By Barbara Hoberock, Oklahoma Voice

Firefighters respond to the Railroad Fire in Comanche County, Oklahoma. (Photo courtesy of Comanche County Office of Emergency Management)

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said in a social media post that federal wildlife officer David Taylor, 38, of Scio, Oregon, is believed to have died while helping evacuate residents threatened by the Railroad South Fire in Comanche County.

Oregon labor department urges feds to continue collecting workforce demographic data

By Mia Maldonado

Employees restock groceries at a Target store in Minnesota. Private employers with 100 or more employees since 1966 have been required to report the demographics of their employees to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (Photo by Max Nesterak/Minnesota Reformer)

Oregon’s employment rights agency is joining a coalition of states in opposing the federal government’s move to rescind a 60-year-old rule used to inform antidiscrimination practices in the workplace.

This Washington town is burning. That’s the plan.

By Alex Brown, Stateline

A crew member hoses down vegetation to keep a prescribed fire from spreading outside of a designated parcel. Local leaders in the small town of Roslyn, Washington, have embraced prescribed burns as a way to protect the community. (Photo by Alex Brown/Stateline)

ROSLYN, Wash. — Francisco Martinez hefts a canister filled with a mixture of diesel fuel and gasoline. A tongue of flame dances above the nozzle. He tips the drip torch forward — whoosh — and a stream of blazing liquid races across the forest floor.