Your Oregon Legislature called it quits for the 2025 regular session shortly before midnight Friday, and while it usually takes years to fully assess the results of any particular session, it’s hard to avoid this immediate reaction: Lawmakers (and Democrats in particular) whiffed on what everyone thought was one of their top goals this year: finding more money to pay for the state’s basic transportation needs. If Gov. Tina Kotek is true to her word, expect layoffs at the Oregon Department of Transportation as early as Monday. And it was a particularly rough week for Julie Fahey, the new speaker of the House, who crafted a slimmed-down stopgap funding measure — but couldn’t get it onto the House floor on the final day of the session.

Here’s a story from The Oregonian/OregonLive on the failure of the transportation bills, which the news outlet terms “a stunning loss for Democrats.”

And here’s a story from the Oregon Capital Chronicle, which writes about the transportation issue but also includes some of the other notable items from the session.

On Saturday, Kotek said she might call the Legislature into a special session to work on transportation funding.

Meanwhile, it’s possible as I write that the U.S. Senate could vote Saturday on a reworked 940-page version of President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill Act.” The Senate vote is expected to be close — and if you’re wondering who on Earth could be expected to understand, let alone vote on, a bill that was released less than 24 hours before, well, let me introduce you to the members of today’s United States Senate, “the greatest deliberative body on Earth.” I expect the bill eventually will pass, and that as we go along, we’ll discover that it offers huge benefits to the rich and considerably less help to everybody else — but I guess we knew that already. You can follow along with the Times’ live coverage (no one does this kind of live reporting better than the Times) by clicking here.

Everyone’s first take on the U.S. Supreme Court’s Friday ruling in the birthright citizenship case is that the decision severely weakens the judicial branch’s ability to keep a check on the executive branch. And that’s true, Charlie Savage says in this New York Times analysis, but it’s worth thinking about the ruling as just the latest step in the executive branch’s growing power — a trend that’s been apparent well before even the first Trump administration. And I wonder if Amy Coney Barrett’s decision in the case — which doesn’t rule on the issue of birthright citizenship at all — is a signal to the administration that the court is poised to find that Trump’s executive order attacking birthright citizenship is flat-out unconstitutional. Maybe we’ll find out in the court’s next term.

But here’s a law professor at the University of Notre Dame who says the high court made the right call in the case — and I include a link to his argument here in an attempt to offer at least one piece in each edition of the Weekend Reader that we disagree with. Let’s call it “The Contrarian Corner.” (In fact, maybe we should trademark the phrase “The Contrarian Corner.”)

The Atlantic’s  Zoë Schlanger has a new story in The Atlantic about the long-term effects of exposure to wildfire smoke. One startling suggestion: The full effects of that exposure may take years to develop. The good news here is that those of us in the West will be able to provide plenty of data to researchers as fires burn more frequently and with more intensity. (The shocking fact is that we know very little about the health effects of smoke.) An added bonus: Schlanger’s story starts in Seeley Lake, just north of my old stomping grounds in Missoula.

Speaking of the climate, The Atlantic’s Ross Andersen argues that if we gave names to heat waves — the same way we name hurricanes — we’d be more likely to remember just how dangerous these events can be.

The Pac-12 Conference announced part of its media-rights deal Monday, and Jon Wilner (who is still covering the Pac-12, thank goodness) explains here how the big winner in the deal with CBS may be basketball, not football. And speaking of the Pac-12, it has, as expected, extended an offer to Texas State to join the conference. Texas State would be the eighth all-sports college to join the conference, thus meeting a critical NCAA requirement. (Gonzaga has joined the conference, but it doesn’t play football and thus doesn’t help the Pac-12 reach that mark.)

My previous employer, the Carpenter Media Group, continues to lay off journalists at some of the Oregon newspapers it’s purchased in the last year or so. The latest layoffs, The Oregonian reports, have occurred at the Portland Tribune, which used to be the flagship publication of the Pamplin Media Group. Carpenter also owns the papers that used to be part of the EO Media Group, including the Bend Bulletin.

Summer and movies go together, even if you choose to avoid an overly air-conditioned metroplex in favor of stretching out on your living room couch. So you might be interested in a pair of summertime movie projects suggested by my friends at The New York Times and The Atlantic. First up: the Times surveyed 500 or so directors, writers, actors and other experts to try to determine the 100 best movies of the 21st century so far. (At No. 1 — and not a bad choice at all — is “Parasite.”) Here’s the full Times list. To supplement the list, here’s David Sims in The Atlantic, with a considerably more esoteric but still intriguing list of movies that would make for a fulfilling season of viewing. (The only downside I can see to the Sims list is that many of his choices require a subscription to The Criterion Channel — and I know I should sign up, but which streamer am I going to drop to make room for that?)

Finally this week: Following on the heels of the James Webb Space Telescope, the first images from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory were released this week, and they are as spectacular as promised. Take a deep dive into these images, and you might find that our other issues — as dire as they are — fade away, even if for just a few moments.

That’s it for this busy weekend. Let’s gather here next weekend, when most of the news will revolve around when those kids will stop setting off those fireworks in our front yard.