Sen. Wyden prepares for virtual town hall on Monday

Also discusses recent racial tensions across the U.S.

Ask him some questions on the hot topics that are happening right now.

Newswatch 12's adam schumes has more.

Oregon senator ron wyden was going to host a virtual town hall for southern oregon will be on monday and we'll cover jackson, josephine, klamath, and lake counties.

Senator ron wyden, joining us now, senator how these virtual town hall has been going, they've been going well.

They're just not as wonderful as being there in person and being able to hear from oregonians on the ground, i've had 970 of those.

But we run these with the town hall project.

They're a nonprofit in washington dc, and they make sure that nobody knows what the questions are going to be.

I'm sure there's going to be a heavy focus on healthcare issues on small business, on questions.

Uh, we just want to make sure that everybody can put their digital footprint in this whole debate.

What will your message be to southern oregonians?

My message is that i'm sitting behind my desk in the dirksen senate office building, trying to follow up on the priorities.

They tell me are most important to them.

For example, i'm sure we're going to hear about the cost of prescription drugs that always comes up in southern oregon, where there's such a large senior population.

I have the bipartisan bill with senator grassley, republican of iowa to take away the subsidies.

From pharmaceutical companies that rip people off, i'm sure we'll hear a lot about small business concerns of the ppp program.

I and others have worked to extend it, to make it more flexible, to make it easier for, uh, businesses to, uh, be able to get the loans forgiven, completely self i'm.

Sure.

There'll be a lot of focus in southern oregon on healthcare and small business.

Over the past week, we've seen an outbreak of cases at work places around the state, in your opinion, and the people you talk to, what needs to be done to prevent the outbreaks from continuing the key to dealing with those outbreaks is testing.

And then following up with contact tracy, we've been able to get some additional money in order to do that follow up work.

But there's a lot more left to do.

Obviously oregon has done really well compared to a lot of other states, both in terms of the number of infections and deaths, but these outbreaks are very serious and the key is improving testing and also contact tracing.

I've also made it very clear that the federal government has got to do better.

In terms of helping our courageous firefighters, because this is going to be a tough fire season.

They're going to need help with testing ppe and the kind of proper precautions that they deserve when they're doing so much to keep us all safe.

What our shift now to the protest surrounding the death of george floyd, what do you think needs to be done to make sure something like that?

Doesn't happen again.

What people saw on television in terms of the repugnant murder of george flood must never ever happen again.

One of the reasons i'm so pleased that we're seeing these peaceful protests, so many young people insisting that there be real changes.

Now i've introduced along with a number of colleagues of major.

A reform bill to make it clear that we're going to start seeing the fundamental changes we ought to ban choke holds and no knock warrants and drug cases.

We ought to have a misconduct registry so that if somebody has been involved in misconduct in one place, they can't just go to another jurisdiction.

We need some standards in terms of the use of force.

But what i want to do is send the message.

That this is not just going to be well, let's phone it in and make a couple of cosmetic changes.

There needs to be an effort to deal with these profound injustices.

And the bottom line is for a parent.

They know that if a black child has an interaction with police, it can be a lot riskier than if a