Briefs for Jan. 6, 2026

Published 6:34 pm Monday, January 5, 2026

Ammon Bundy, center, speaks with a reporter at a news conference at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in January near Burns. Bundy, the leader of an armed group occupying the national wildlife refuge to protest federal land management policies, said he and his followers are not ready to leave even though the sheriff and many locals say the group has overstayed their welcome.

Landslide closes Oregon 6 to Tillamook on Sunday

Update: By 8 p.m., Sunday, the Oregon Department of Transportation had reopened the roadway with flaggers.

Oregon 6 connecting the Portland metro area to Tillamook was closed for several hours Sunday following a landslide that took out a portion of the road.

The Oregon Department of Transportation announced the closure around 11 a.m. Sunday. The Tillamook County Sheriff’s Office said the closure would likely last for at least eight hours while crews try to repair the road. Photos from the two agencies show half of the roadway collapsed.

The closure stretched for nine miles from milepost 33 to milepost 42, just west of the juncture of Oregon 6 and Oregon 8 near Banks and Forest Grove.

By Sunday evening, ODOT had reopened the road to traffic with the help of flagging crews and warned commuters to expect delays.

10 years ago: Malheur armed standoff shook Oregon and national politics

Most Americans had never heard of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon – until 10 years ago on Jan. 2, 2016, when a clutch of armed men and women stormed the birders’ paradise to make a point about the federal government, the state of the country, American history and themselves.

Law enforcement rushed to the out-of-the-way federal land in Harney County, but the media-savvy invaders – led by Ammon Bundy of Bunkerville, Nevada – remained holed up there for more than a month, talking to reporters about what they viewed as the unjust conviction of two Oregon ranchers for arson and about how they believed the U.S. government should turn over most of its vast property holdings in the American West to the states.

The standoff finally ended in mid-February of 2016, two weeks after one of the wildlife-refuge occupiers, Robert LaVoy Finicum, was shot to death during a confrontation with the FBI and Oregon State Police on U.S. 395 near the town of Burns.

The showdown in rural Oregon introduced millions of Americans to a burgeoning anti-government and “sovereign rights” movement in the country – and heralded the swift rise of the populist right in U.S. politics.

— The Oregonian