Oregon — As Dr. Anthony Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times during a contentious Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on July 29, 2026, the national debate over COVID-19 origins, gain-of-function research, and the U.S. pandemic response has reignited questions about state-level policies.
The hearing, chaired by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), focused on Fauci’s role in the federal response across the Trump and Biden administrations, including NIH funding decisions and messaging that shaped lockdowns, school closures, and mandates nationwide. Fauci, who received a preemptive pardon from President Joe Biden covering actions through early 2025, declined to answer questions, citing what he called Paul’s “unhinged obsession” with prosecuting him. Paul has signaled a potential contempt of Congress vote.
The national reckoning draws fresh attention to Oregon, and questions of state policy, where Democratic leaders imposed some of the country’s most invasive and prolonged restrictions under then-Gov. Kate Brown. Tina Kotek, who served as House Speaker throughout the pandemic before succeeding Brown as governor in 2023, played a central legislative role in supporting those measures. Democratic leadership in Oregon also pushed substantial political changes through the period embedding DEI across agencies, programs, and in legislation.
Prolonged Closures and the Education Toll
Gov. Brown invoked emergency powers and closed K-12 schools statewide in mid-March 2020, extending the shutdown through the end of the 2019-20 academic year. Metrics for reopening in the following year were among the strictest in the nation, contributing to extended periods of remote or hybrid learning. Oregon ranked near the bottom nationally for in-person instruction time during key pandemic years, alongside states such as California and Washington.
The academic consequences were severe. Statewide test scores showed proficiency in reading and writing falling from 51% to 39% and math from 40% to 28% between 2019 and 2022. Harvard and Stanford researchers ranked Oregon fifth-worst for pandemic reading loss and eighth-worst for math, with average losses of roughly two-thirds of a grade level in reading and four-fifths in math.
Unlike most other states studied, Oregon students showed little to no rebound by 2023-24. Elementary and middle schoolers remained about two-thirds of a year behind in reading and three-fourths of a year behind in math relative to pre-pandemic levels, roughly two to three times the national deficit, despite $1.6 billion in federal recovery aid. Chronic absenteeism surged, public school enrollment dropped by more than 37,000 students since 2020, and a Brookings analysis found Oregon with the highest share of “unaccounted for” school-age children.
Former Oregon Health Authority Director Patrick Allen later acknowledged that schools “were closed for too long” and that prioritizing teachers for vaccines without tying it to reopening was “a big misstep.”
The harsh realities of these policies for many Oregonians included struggling to simultaneously fill the roles of parent and teacher while navigating work and trying to coordinate supervision of their children who were now home full-time. For some this included dealing with temporary layoffs or losing jobs because of COVID policies that shutdown businesses or forced people to get an injection approved via emergency authorization, not studied via standard processes including controlled longitudinal research.
As House Speaker, Kotek led Democratic majorities that repeatedly blocked Republican efforts to force earlier school reopenings on party-line votes. Critics, including 2022 gubernatorial rival Christine Drazan, argued Kotek’s close ties to teachers’ unions prolonged closures. During the campaign, Kotek defended the overall response, stating Oregonians “followed the science” and that the state “fared better than most of the country” on deaths, while later describing the learning data as “unacceptable.”
As governor, Kotek has shifted her tone toward recovery measures, including a 2025 executive order restricting student cell phone use during the school day to address mental health and focus, and a 2026 order aimed at protecting and restoring instructional time by limiting districts’ ability to cut school days for budget reasons. Oregon’s school year remains among the shortest nationally. To date, Kotek has not made any public statements taking accountability for her role in the decisions that caused the learning loss.
Economic Fallout
Oregon’s stay-at-home order began March 23, 2020, followed by capacity limits, mask mandates, and sector-specific closures that hit leisure, hospitality, and small businesses hardest. Nonfarm payroll employment plunged 14.5% early in the pandemic, with unemployment spiking to a record 13.2%.
Like the rest of the nation there was an initial bounce back in job openings following the end of the COVID policy era with businesses reopening and people getting back to pre-COVID activities. Oregon’s economy however has lagged well behind other states since with 2025 showing a clear plateau in jobs and ongoing issues with an elevated unemployment rate.
Portland’s recovery lagged the national average and other metro areas. Five years later, Multnomah County employment remained below 2020 levels in key sectors, downtown foot traffic stayed significantly depressed, and commercial vacancies and empty storefronts persisted longer than in peer cities. Economists and business leaders have linked the slower rebound partly to the duration of restrictions, alongside concurrent social unrest and remote-work shifts.
Kotek, as Speaker, supported legislative responses focused on relief funding, eviction and foreclosure protections, and public-health measures rather than rapid reopening. She joined Senate President Peter Courtney in limiting public access to the Capitol for extended periods and prioritized pandemic-related spending through the Emergency Board.
There were also substantial problems with the management of COVID-era program and funding under Brown and Kotek’s watch. In one case the Secretary of State found that Oregon Housing and Community Services (OHCS) was unable to verify a sizeable portion of the $426 million in Emergency Rental Assistance was distributed properly. The division managing the program was lead at the time by Andrea Bell, who was later promoted to be the agency’s Executive Director by Kate Brown.
Revisiting Accountability
Fauci’s refusal to testify has amplified calls for broader accountability over pandemic decision-making. In Oregon, the combination of extended school closures, among the nation’s longest, and the failure of students to recover lost ground has left measurable, multi-year deficits in achievement, enrollment, and attendance. Economic data show uneven recovery, with Portland’s core still nursing pandemic-era wounds in employment and commercial vitality.
Supporters of the original policies emphasize Oregon’s relatively lower COVID death rates compared with many states and the unprecedented uncertainty of early 2020. Critics, pointing to the educational and economic data, argue the costs to children and businesses were underweighted relative to the benefits.
Kotek’s administration continues to use executive actions on instructional time and student focus following the substantial learning loss. Yet the Senate hearing with Dr. Fauci has underscored that the full accounting of COVID-era choices, at both federal and state levels remains unfinished. Oregon’s experience offers a concrete case study of how prolonged restrictions translated into lasting human and economic costs that recovery efforts cannot simply unwind.
This article was written by Shawnn Hartley, M.A.
Shawnn’s journalism and research with Right Now Oregon focuses on civic affairs, public policy, and community impact stories. With a background in social services, program management and evaluation, data analysis, and state government, he focuses on clear, evidence-based reporting addressing complex issues.
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