After just more than a month of long meetings, sharp disagreements and hard-fought compromises, the Oregon Legislature must adjourn by 11:59 p.m. Sunday.
Capital Chronicle reporters have been at the Capitol tracking the action since it started Feb. 2, and they’ll be here until the end. As things move more quickly in the last few days, we’ll use this live blog to keep Oregonians updated.
Key Events
Mar. 5, 2026 6:15 pm
Senate adjourns until 9 a.m. Friday
Mar. 5, 2026 5:47 pm
Senate passes several bills to protect immigrants
Mar. 5, 2026 5:05 pm
House adjourned until 11 a.m. Friday
Mar. 5, 2026 5:02 pm
Oregon Legislature votes to give cities, counties flexibility in tourism revenue
Mar. 5, 2026 4:50 pm
House votes to stabilize rural hospital
Mar. 5, 2026 4:34 pm
Changes to campaign finance clear Senate
Mar. 5, 2026 12:54 pm
House passes campaign finance changes, recesses until 2:30
Mar. 5, 2026 12:30 pm
Senate recessed until 1 p.m.
Mar. 5, 2026 12:27 pm
Senate passes bill to protect care providers
Mar. 5, 2026 11:50 am
Oregon Senate waters down controversial gun control bill, winning Republican support
Mar. 5, 2026 11:40 am
More legal pathways for the wrongfully convicted passes House
Mar. 5, 2026 11:02 am
Bill targeting threats to public officials not moving forward, sponsor says
Mar. 5, 2026 10:38 am
Fate of campaign finance bill anyone’s guess
Mar. 5, 2026 10:18 am
Senate gavels in, starts thanking staff
Senate adjourns until 9 a.m. Friday
The Senate adjourned shortly after 6 p.m. Thursday. It will return at 9 a.m. Friday, with nearly 20 bills left to vote on before senators can adjourn for the year.
“We are looking good for bills for tomorrow,” Senate President Rob Wagner said.
The House will return at 11 a.m. Friday.
Last updated: 6:16 pm
Senate passes several bills to protect immigrants
The Oregon Senate has passed legislation to outlaw law enforcement using face coverings, empower individuals to sue law enforcement who enter their property without a warrant and ensure immigrants in civil proceedings cannot have their citizenship status used as evidence against them.
The bills allowing suits against law enforcement and protections during court proceedings now head to Gov. Tina Kotek’s desk. House Bill 4138, which directs law enforcement agencies operating in the state to adopt public policies that generally prohibit masking, heads back to the House for a re-vote after the Senate added amendments encouraging Oregon authorities to obtain statements from federal agents that they are in compliance with the legislation should they collaborate.
“Participation in our democracy should feel secure, orderly and free from intimidation,” said Sen. WInsvey Campos, D-Aloha. “This bill reinforces Oregon’s longstanding commitment to constitutional protections. It draws a clear line between Oregon and unconstitutional overreach while preserving lawful cooperation.”
The Trump administration and Republicans contend that masks are necessary because officers have been subject to doxing and a rise in threats.
Democrats voted in favor of the bills, with Sen. Dick Anderson, R-Lincoln City, joining them in support of the civil proceedings bill. The legislation would also prohibit employers from firing their employees for lawfully updating their federal work authorization status, and Anderson has been publicly mulling a run for labor commissioner to lead Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries. He has until March 10 to file with the state.
The bills’ passage is yet another reflection of Democrats’ priorities in this short legislative session, during which they have stressed the importance of testing the limits on the state’s ability and authority to respond to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
The supremacy clause in the U.S. Constitution allows for federal law to usurp conflicting state laws, though Democrats have said they believe their legislation could stand in court on the grounds that their bills apply across the board to all forms of law enforcement, not just federal agents. However, similar measures are currently being litigated in federal court due to legal challenges from the U.S. Department of Justice
House adjourned until 11 a.m. Friday
The Oregon House adjourned just before 5 p.m. Thursday. It’s set to return Friday at 11 a.m to take up 10 more pieces of legislation, including the resolution to end this year’s legislative session.
Oregon Legislature votes to give cities, counties flexibility in tourism revenue
Most of the year, the coastal city of Newport, Oregon, is home to 11,000 residents. In peak tourist season, the number of people staying overnight can rise as high as 40,000.
The same drastic swing in population is true in cities up and down the Oregon coast, while small cities in the state’s wine country and mountains see similar influxes of tourists. Cities and counties that welcome large numbers of tourists benefit from higher spending at local businesses and from state and local transient lodging taxes, charged when people stay overnight at hotels, short-term rentals and campsites.
But for more than two decades, state law has required most of the proceeds of those taxes go toward attracting more tourists. Tourism-heavy cities for years have argued for more flexibility, reasoning that visitors are more likely to return to cities with pothole-free streets, clean and well-lit parks and enough police, fire and emergency medical personnel to respond quickly to incidents.
“My communities are drowning,” Sen. Suzanne Weber, R-Tillamook, said on the Senate floor Thursday. “We’ve had consistent reductions of revenue and simultaneous massive increases to demands on services.”
Read more.
House votes to stabilize rural hospital
The Oregon House in a 42-15 bipartisan vote passed House Bill 4075A to help the Bay Area Hospital in Coos Bay.
It would allow a $44 million loan from the Unclaimed Property and Estates Fund — where the Oregon State Treasury holds millions from uncashed checks, forgotten bank accounts, security deposits and other accounts until claimed.
Without assistance, the Bay Area Hospital in Coos Bay is at risk of downgrading to a Type B facility. That would mean cuts to staff, beds and services for residents.
Changes to campaign finance clear Senate
A controversial bill that changes campaign contribution limits in Oregon established in 2024 and delays implementation of strict disclosure requirements, passed its final Senate vote on Thursday in a 20-9 vote. House Bill 4018 passed in the House earlier in the day and now goes to Gov. Tina Kotek.
Lawmakers in both chambers described the bill as imperfect but insisted it was needed to ensure the Secretary of State’s Office can enforce political spending limits by January of next year.
Opponents said it was written with the input of business industry and union lobbyists and explicitly cut out campaign finance reform advocates who had agreed in 2024 to shelve a ballot measure on political spending limits and to work with lawmakers on a legislative solution.
Leaders from the groups have vowed to take the bill to Oregon voters in a ballot referendum in 2028 if Kotek signs it.
“It would have to be a constitutional amendment, and would have to be a very detailed constitutional amendment so the Legislature can’t change it,” said Dan Meek, a Portland attorney representing Honest Elections Oregon, at a Wednesday news conference.
Sen. Jeff Golden, a Democrat from Ashland, gave an impassioned speech urging his colleagues to vote against the bill. He said it would likely be his last campaign finance speech on the floor, and maybe his last speech ever. Golden is retiring at the end of 2026.
“Very few legislators understand what is actually in these bills, the mass of content we’re voting on,” he said. “We’re relying mostly on what the most powerful organizations in the current finance system — those with the least interest in significant reform — are telling us.”
Another related proposal, Senate Bill 1502, also passed the Senate Thursday afternoon. It would require the Secretary of State’s Office to propose solutions to addressing campaign finance reform issues in the 2027 legislative session.
The Senate is in recess until 5 p.m., with more than a dozen bills left on today’s calendar.
House passes campaign finance changes, recesses until 2:30
The House on a 39-19 vote passed a controversial bill that would change parts of Oregon’s historic 2024 campaign finance law related to contribution limits, and that would delay enforcement of some disclosure requirements. It now goes to the Senate, which must pass the measure before the Legislature adjourns for the year by Sunday.
Lawmakers continued to bemoan the imperfections of the bill on the floor before the vote but insisted it was needed to ensure the Secretary of State’s Office can enforce political spending limits by January of next year.
“Colleagues, If there were no cameras and the lights were off, I think most people would agree this is not the bill we wanted,” said Rep. Paul Evans, D-Monmouth, before the vote. “But in our process, we as elected legislators on the floor today, especially those who haven’t been involved in the committee process related to this bill, have one choice. The choice is: vote for a bill that does a little more good than harm, that tries to keep faith in the program that’s been put in place or today at the end of the session, do nothing and know that the system will likely fail.”
Good government groups who said they’ve been shut out of the process have vowed to take the bill to Oregon voters in a ballot referendum in 2028 if the bill passes in both chambers and Gov. Tina Kotek signs it.
The House is now recessed until 2:30 p.m.
Senate recessed until 1 p.m.
The Senate is set to return to the floor at 1 p.m., with at least 17 bills remaining on today’s calendar. The House is still in session debating a controversial campaign finance measure but is expected to break for lunch soon.
Senate passes bill to protect care providers
Oregon Senate Democrats passed a bill that would further safeguard providers of reproductive and gender-affirming care, blocking an attempt by Republicans to turn the bill into a state-backed study on gender-affirming care for minors.
House Bill 4088 now heads to Gov. Tina Kotek’s desk. The bill would prohibit the governor from granting another state’s extradition request for a health care provider if they are engaged in providing reproductive or gender-affirming care in Oregon in a manner consistent with state law. That doesn’t apply if the person is a fugitive facing charges of treason or a felony, for instance.
It also contains new privacy protections for individual patients and blocks state licensing authorities from revoking a midwife’s license if they faced a criminal conviction or discipline in another state for health care services that are unlawful in other states but allowed in Oregon. The bill would prevent publicly-funded agencies and state employees from cooperating with investigations into legal reproductive and gender-affirming care.
The bill comes as opponents of gender-affirming care, including the Trump administration, have seized upon shifting guidance from other countries, some professional medical groups and a landmark New York civil malpractice suit finding doctors liable for a breast removal surgery a woman received as a minor and came to regret.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom in January rejected Louisiana’s extradition request for an abortion provider, and another doctor in the state is facing a federal lawsuit in Texas from the boyfriend of a woman who claims her doctor improperly sent her abortion medication.
Although Kotek hasn’t explicitly said she supports the bill, her office has previously suggested her policy is in alignment with the bill’s limitations on extraditions.
Oregon Senate waters down controversial gun control bill, winning Republican support
Oregon state senators on Thursday gutted this year’s legislation to bolster the rollout of a 2022 voter-approved gun control law currently being litigated, despite Democrats expending significant political capital to push a wide-ranging firearm safety bill through the House.
In a unanimous vote, the Senate passed the watered-down legislation on Thursday, sending it back to the House for reconsideration after its original vote on Feb. 25. Despite the GOP’s opposition to the bill in the House, several Republicans expressed support for the new bill’s push to solely delay implementation of Measure 114 until 2028, rather than beefing up the firearm permit or background check process.
“I want to thank the leadership and the Senate Republican Caucus and all the work that has gone into the amended version that we have here on the floor,” said Sen. David Brock Smith, R-Port Orford. “That frankly should have been what came over from the House.”
Read more.
More legal pathways for the wrongfully convicted passes House
A bill strengthening a 2022 Oregon law meant to streamline the payout process for exonerated Oregonians is a step closer to becoming law.
Senate Bill 1515, sponsored by the Senate Judiciary Committee, creates a legal pathway for people convicted of crimes using discredited science to have their convictions overturned and to receive compensation under Oregon’s 2022 law.
It passed the House 40-16 on Thursday morning after earlier passing the Senate. The bill still needs final approval in the Senate because the House amended it to specify that the discredited technique of bite mark analysis does not include DNA analysis of saliva or other genetic material in or around a bite mark.
The discredited forensic techniques include microscopic hair comparison, bite mark analysis and comparative bullet lead analysis.
Around 40% of Oregon’s 43 criminal cases involving an exoneration involve faulty or misleading forensic evidence, according to the National Registry of Exonerations run by researchers at the University of Michigan and University of California, Irvine.
Bill targeting threats to public officials not moving forward, sponsor says
A bill that would make it a felony to threaten public officials or their families with the intent to cause alarm appears to be dead, according to bill sponsor Sen. James Manning Jr., D-Eugene.
Manning told the Capital Chronicle via text that he was “throughly disappointed” that the House “chose” not to move the bill from a committee to the House floor.
Sen. James Manning Jr., D-Eugene, at the Oregon Legislature on Feb. 12, 2024. (Photo by Jordan Gale/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
Senate Bill 1530 would have made threatening a public official — including lawmakers, school board members, city councilors and county commissioners — a crime of aggravated harassment. That’s a Class C felony, which are considered the least severe category of felonies and punishable by up to five years in prison, a $125,000 fine, or both.
The bill came after several high-profile threats to public officials across the state, including a bomb threat Manning and two other Democratic state senators received a day after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in September.
Critics of the bill have raised questions about its constitutionality under free speech rights and questioned whether lawmakers should receive special protections, in comparison to other public-facing professions such as doctors and teachers.
A spokesperson for House Speaker Rep. Julie Fahey, D-Eugene, did not immediately respond to a text message seeking comment. The bill remains parked in the House Committee on Rules after it passed the Senate on Feb. 24.
Fate of campaign finance bill anyone’s guess
A controversial bill that would change parts of Oregon’s historic 2024 campaign finance law related to contribution limits, and that would delay enforcement of some disclosure requirements, is on ice following last-minute maneuvering.
The House sent House Bill 4018 Wednesday evening to a hastily scheduled 5 p.m. House Rules Committee that ultimately never met.
The committee instead met Thursday morning after an hour-long delay and voted to move the bill unchanged back to the House, where it has yet to be scheduled for a vote.
Senate gavels in, starts thanking staff
The Oregon Senate gaveled in shortly after 10 a.m., with more than 20 bills awaiting votes on today’s calendar. Among the most notable: House Bill 4114 would enable people to sue law enforcement agents who enter their homes without a warrant, House Bill 4148 would give local governments more flexibility to use lodging taxes and House Bill 4145 would change deadlines to enforce a citizen-approved gun control measure.
And in a sign that the end of session is near, several senators also gave short speeches thanking staff and interns.
