It’s Memorial Day weekend, which, of course, marks the unofficial start of summer. But sometimes it’s easy to forget that the purpose of the holiday is to memorialize the members of the American armed forces who have put themselves in harm’s way over the course of U.S. history to help protect us and our freedoms. It seems particularly important this year to acknowledge the reasons why the day is named “Memorial Day.”

And with that, let’s get to the news.

If it’s not clear yet to U.S. universities that the Trump administration has declared war on higher education, its action Thursday to end Harvard’s international enrollment should dispel all doubt. Said one academic: “While Harvard is the victim of the moment, it’s a warning and unprecedented attempt of a hostile federal government to erode the autonomy of all major universities in the U.S.” Need more evidence? The Big Beautiful Bill Act passed by the House this week includes a 21% tax on endowments at major universities.

The GOP’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (yes, that’s what the bill actually is named) calls for about $300 billion in cuts over the next 10 years to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The program serves 1 in 6 Oregon residents, Ted Sickinger reports for The Oregonian/OregonLive. The federal government currently covers all food benefit costs and shares administrative costs with the states, so the cost shift called for in the bill could cost Oregon up to $1 billion in each of its two-year budget cycles; this, at a time when the state seems ill-equipped to handle any sort of additional cost. It’s expected that the Senate will want to make major changes to this particular part of this big and beautiful bill, but we’ll see.

Samaritan Health Services is pondering the possible closure of its birth centers in Lebanon and Lincoln City. This week, the Gazette-Times reported that Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley have issued pleas to Samaritan to keep the centers open. This all probably sounds familiar to residents of eastern Oregon; Wyden and Merkley made similar pleas in 2023, to no avail, to St. Alphonsus Health System officials in Baker City when that hospital closed its birth center. The bigger story here is that Oregon hospitals — especially rural hospitals — are in real financial trouble.

We’re still waiting to see what the Oregon Legislature’s Joint Committee on Transportation Reinvestment comes up with in the final weeks of the session. You’ll recall that the committee is charged with crafting a plan to pay for the state’s mounting transportation needs. So it was interesting to learn this week that the two legislators in charge of the committee said they were thinking about scuttling Oregon’s Climate Protection Program and replacing it with a market-based emissions-reduction program — in other words, cap-and-trade. As you remember, debate over a cap-and-trade proposal triggered walkouts by Republican lawmakers in 2019 and 2020. The committee chairs suggested that proceeds from a cap-and-trade program could be used for highway maintenance and other needs. It’s hard to read the tea leaves here just yet, but here are two possibilities: Republicans might be open now to the prospect of cap-and-trade. Or the committee is starting to feel pressure to come up with adequate funding for transportation needs. Julia Shumway covered the story for the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

I started last week’s Reader by urging you to vote in Tuesday’s special election, and I assume that all of you did. Benton County turnout was 28%, which was better than the statewide average (just under 23%, at this writing). But before we organize the celebratory parade, consider this: Better than 7 out of every 10 county voters didn’t bother to return a ballot. I understand that these off-year elections don’t draw big turnouts — and that many of the races on the ballot were unopposed (another issue entirely). Still, as I have argued with numbing regularity, these very local elections for school boards and fire districts and the occasional funding request often have more impact on our daily lives and pocketbooks than higher-profile elections. So, because I can do this now for my job at Lookout Eugene-Springfield, I tracked down Chandler James, a political science professor at the University of Oregon and talked to him about it. I’m biased, but I thought James said some interesting things.

Speaking of Lookout Eugene-Springfield, if you’re curious about where I’m working now, Sarah Scire of the Nieman Lab recently dropped by (she was in town to run the Eugene Marathon) and filed this story. We’ve been live for about six weeks now, and all of the content on the site is free for the first 90 days.

“Un Simple Accident,” the new movie from Iranian dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi, is the top winner at the Cannes Film Festival. Like many of Panahi’s films, he filmed it in secret, in part because of his uneasy relationship with Iran’s regime, which has included stints behind bars. Nevertheless, he planned to return to Iran on Sunday. (The movie title translates to “It Was Just an Accident.”) It’s been picked up for U.S. distribution by Neon, which now has backed the last six Palme d’Or winners, including last year’s “Anora.”

Tom Cruise was at Cannes as well, hyping “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,” which premiered out of competition at the festival.

I plan to spend some of this weekend watching “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,” because I have a soft spot for the franchise. The film is off to a solid start at the box office, but a surprise will be lurking when we finally tally up the weekend numbers: “The Final Reckoning” will finish No. 2, behind the live-action remake of Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch.” It won’t even be that close. The problem for Tom Cruise’s film is that — with a budget estimated at $400 million — the movie needs to make nearly $1 billion to break even during its theatrical run. But by the time the weekend is over, “Lilo,” with an estimated $100 million budget, will be in the black. Maybe for its ninth installment, the Impossible Mission Force will need to locate and neutralize a certain mischievous blue alien.

By the way: Sometime this weekend, I will post, for your reading enjoyment, my ranking of the “Mission: Impossible” films from best to worst. I can tell you this right now: “The Final Reckoning” will have to be mighty good to knock “Ghost Protocol” from my top slot. (And it’s not just because “Ghost Protocol” was directed by Brad Bird, who graduated from Corvallis High School.)

I also hope to have my annual list of summer movies suitable for adults up on the blog this weekend; it was scheduled for last weekend, but other events intervened.

That’s it for this week. Let’s gather here next week to review your bitter objections to my “Mission: Impossible” ranking.