Kate Brown: Last News

Republicans are currently threatening their political careers in an ongoing protest to block a number of Democrat-led proposals to protect access to abortion and gender-affirming care and impose new gun controls they claim are too extreme to accept.As of last week, approximately one-third of the Oregon state senate had been ruled ineligible to serve another term under recently enacted bylaws disqualifying any members who'd missed their tenth unexcused day of voting.Those rules, passed during the 2022 legislative session, were drafted after Republican lawmakers abandoned the state several years ago to rob Democrats of the lawmakers necessary to establish a quorum ahead of a vote on a piece of climate legislation, prompting then-Governor Kate Brown to send state troopers out of state to retrieve them.To those boycotting, the effort is worth even potential expulsion.Now entering its third week, the Republican-led boycott was originally begun as a protest against members of the Democratic majority allegedly abandoning a 1979 law requiring bill summaries be written at an eighth-grade reading level—an obscure bylaw Democrats say has rarely been followed.Republicans, however, argue that because the law is on the books it must be followed. It also just so happens that many of the bills that could be impacted by the law happen to be ones Republicans in the state adamantly oppose.We will not sit idly by and facilitate your extreme, unlawful, and unconstitutional agenda.