A roundup of Oregonians who played an outsized role in the protests, policies and major tax cut and spending packages that made headlines this year
By Alex Baumhardt,Oregon Capital Chronicle
In state and national news this year, many Oregonians stood out for standing up. From protests and marches against President Donald Trump and his administration’s policies and executive orders, to dozens of lawsuits against the federal government.
Massive spending and tax cut packages that passed in Washington D.C. and Salem dominated political coverage, touching everything from transportation, to health care and rising utility bills.
Behind the 2025 headlines, the following Oregonians played an outsized role in the year’s big political headlines.
The utility watchdog
Bob Jenks, director of the watchdog Citizens’ Utility Board, has fought rising utility rate increases for decades. But Jenks became increasingly vocal as investor-owned monopoly gas and electric utilities in the state raised rates about 50% over the last five years. He was especially outspoken about record power and gas shutoffs that low-income Oregonians were experiencing, and that electric utilities’ data showed rates were rising in part to pay for new infrastructure needed to meet the needs of massive new data centers.
Jenks was behind several laws passed in 2025 that allow the state to more firmly regulate utility rate increases to curb the rising costs of power for Oregonians. Those new laws include the POWER Act, which requires data centers to pay for the costs of their growth on the system, as well as the FAIR Energy Act. That law limits how often utilities can ask the Oregon Public Utility Commission for permission to raise rates, and prohibits any rate increases from going into effect during the winter, when usage is highest.
The transportation funding drivers
Melissa Unger, executive director of Service Employees International Union Local 503, was a fixture around the Capitol throughout the spring and summer, as were hundreds of state transportation employees represented by the union. They were there to advocate for a funding package lawmakers could pass to cover the Oregon Department of Transportation’s $300 million budget and stave off the loss of hundreds of union members’ jobs.
When lawmakers failed to pass a bill by the end of the legislative session in June, Unger brought union members from across the state to the capitol several more times during a special session and votes in September until a package passed, temporarily pausing what would have been more than 500 layoffs.
A referendum led by state Rep. Ed Diehl, R-Scio, and his No Tax Oregon petition could, however, bring those jobs and that package down, and lawmakers back to square one in the year ahead. After Gov. Tina Kotek belatedly signed the bill into law in November, Diehl led a signature gathering campaign, submitting nearly 200,000 signatures to the Oregon Secretary of State’s office to refer the new taxes and fees to Oregon voters in November.
Oregon’s chief lawyer
Attorney General Dan Rayfield makes the Capital Chronicle’s list for the second year in a row, though it’s his first appearance as the state’s attorney general. He took office last December after about a decade as the Democratic state representative for Corvallis in the Legislature, including three years as House speaker.
Rayfield, a lawyer by trade, wasted no time leading lawsuits against the federal government and the president on behalf of Oregon and other Democrat-led states over the constitutionality of everything from Trump’s tariff policy to new restrictions on food assistance for refugees and asylum seekers. Oregon has been part of 50 lawsuits this year against the federal government under Rayfield, including one that has so far kept Trump from deploying National Guard troops to Portland. The lawsuits have helped Oregon hang onto roughly $4.5 billion in funding that the Trump administration threatened to cut.
The judge
U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut in September was thrust into a fast and deeply consequential case she said was “unlike any” she had ever overseen. It was over the legality of Trump’s attempts to deploy hundreds of National Guard troops to Portland to guard an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility that was the site of mostly small, mostly peaceful protests.
In an expedited case that played out over several weeks, and that had to be decided in days, Immergut ruled Trump’s attempt violated the U.S. Constitution and blocked troops from being deployed. A review of the case at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and a U.S. Supreme Court decision in a similar case brought against Trump by the state of Illinois could upend that.
“This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law,” Immergut wrote in one of her decisions that temporarily restricted Guard deployment while the case was ongoing. “Defendants have made a range of arguments that, if accepted, risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power — to the detriment of this nation.”
The protesters
Oregonians in small towns and big cities alike showed up in record numbers for ‘No Kings’ protests and donned inflatable costumes to protest Trump’s aggressive immigration policies outside the Portland ICE facility and to fight back on Trump’s attempted Guard deployment to the city.
The absurdity of the protesters’ costumes, especially in light of Trump calling the city “war-ravaged” and accusing the protesters — some famously dressed as inflatable frogs — of leading a “rebellion” against the federal government, set off a nationwide costume trend at protests against the administration.
The lone Republican congressman
U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz, Oregon’s only Republican in Congress, made headlines this year as one of the self-proclaimed architects of new Medicaid work and citizenship requirements passed this summer in the GOP tax and spending cut law, meant to cut funding for the health care program serving low-income Americans.
It’s likely to lead to about 7.6 million people losing coverage over the next decade, or a bit less than 10% of everyone in the country who relies on Medicaid, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Bentz’s district will be heavily impacted. About one in three Oregonians relies on Medicaid for their health insurance. But in the 20 counties in Bentz’s district, the numbers are even higher. In Malheur, Klamath and Josephine counties, more than 40% of residents rely on Medicaid, according to the Oregon Health Authority. In Jefferson County, where Bentz is from, half of all residents are covered by Medicaid.
But, Bentz said, his office’s analysis of Congressional Budget Office data shows it would cut federal spending on the program by $76 billion to $88 billion a year.
“The most important thing that I was focused on is our economy, and making sure that we don’t damage the economy, while at the same time trying to reduce the deficit,” he told the Capital Chronicle about the law.
Alex Baumhardt has been a national radio producer focusing on education for American Public Media since 2017. She has reported from the Arctic to the Antarctic for national and international media, and from Minnesota and Oregon for The Washington Post. This story first appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.
