About 30,000 Oregonians work for federal agencies, including the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Bonneville Power Administration and many others.
If you’re a federal worker in the region, we’d like to hear from you about how recent directives from President Donald Trump are affecting your work. Are you among the 2 million federal workers nationwide who have been encouraged to resign? Has your agency been ordered to stop or change the work it does? Could hiring freezes at your agency affect people in Oregon or the rest of the Northwest?
Here’s how you can share your experiences with OPB
The most secure way to reach OPB is via the Signal app, at 1-503-208-4173 or through this link. Signal encrypts messages and does not collect metadata about you or who you’re messaging. Depending on your settings, Signal may reveal to OPB the phone number you are using to reach us. If that concerns you, you may want to adjust your settings or set up a separate phone number for your Signal communications.
We can also accept messages by email, phone or text — however, those methods of communication are less secure. We suggest you use a device not connected to your work as a federal employee. You can reach us at questions@opb.org, leave a voicemail at 503-977-7768, or text us at 503-208-4173.
We can arrange secure visits at OPB’s headquarters if you contact us in advance. Turn off location services and cell data when traveling to OPB if you are using an employer provided phone or are concerned about being tracked on your devices.
You can also bring documents to our headquarters during business hours and ask to leave them with the newsroom after ringing the bell, or send documents or tips to us via the postal mail. The most secure way to do this is to send us mail without a return address and to use a sidewalk mailbox instead of a mailroom. You can send us paper materials or digital files on a thumb drive or other storage device.
Use this address:
Newsroom tips, OPB
7140 S Macadam Avenue,
Portland, OR 97219
What we’d like to hear about
The more you’re able to share, the more your tip will help with our reporting. Here are some questions you might answer:
- What agency do you work for?
- What kind of work are you engaged in?
- Have you or your colleagues been encouraged to resign? How many people have accepted the offer?
- If you expect your agency will experience staffing shortages, what could that mean for the work it does? How will people in the Northwest be affected?
- Has your agency been ordered to stop or change the work it does? What has happened so far?
- What else should the public be aware of?
- Would you be willing to talk to a reporter about your experiences?
Please be as specific, detailed and clear as you can.
We take privacy seriously
OPB has a record of protecting whistleblowers and keeping source identities private. As one example, during the first Trump administration, we fought a subpoena from the Department of Justice to turn over reporting materials that could have identified sources — and won.
OPB will not publicly report on tips unless we are able to verify the details we receive. We may respond to your message to ask for more information, and to confirm that the details you’ve shared are accurate. A reporter or editor may ask you to verify your identity so that we know the details you’re sharing are accurate, but we will not share your identifiable details publicly unless you agree to be named. We would keep your identity confidential as we pursue other reporting to verify what you’ve shared.
