NEWS: Rep. Salinas Secures Amendments to Strengthen Wildfire Response and Expand Oregon STEM Jobs in NASA Reauthorization Act of 2026

Watch Rep. Salinas' Remarks

Washington, D.C. - Today, Congresswoman Andrea Salinas (OR-06) joined her colleagues on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee to pass the bipartisan NASA Reauthorization Act of 2026, which will ensure continued American leadership in space science and exploration while supporting good jobs in Oregon. She secured unanimous support for two amendments aimed at improving the bill for Oregonians.

The first amendment directed NASA to provide recommendations to improve coordination between government agencies on wildfire response and mitigation. This data-sharing and planning can strengthen wildfire preparedness and response, protecting Oregon communities, farms, and natural resources. The second amendment encourages NASA to partner with the private sector to bring more young people into STEM pathways. If signed into law, Rep. Salinas' amendment would create more direct pipelines to good-paying, local manufacturing and skilled trade jobs, supporting workforce development and economic opportunity in districts like OR-06.

Additionally, Rep. Salinas spoke about her amendment, which would have required NASA to analyze how President Trump's immigration enforcement tactics are affecting the STEM workforce and international research collaborations. Losing foreign-born scientists and engineers can weaken U.S. innovation, slow space and science progress, and undermine NASA's global competitiveness. This amendment was not included in the final bill.

A transcript of Salinas' remarks is available below:

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Ranking Member Lofgren.

I want to share my appreciation for the strong attention to wildfire response and mitigation in this bipartisan NASA bill.

NASA's FireSense project plays a critical role in developing and deploying technologies that can improve wildfire response and mitigation.

Difficulty coordinating across the many agencies and levels of government involved in wildfire management can make it challenging to maximize the on-the-ground benefits of NASA's work in this area.

As NASA comes across barriers to effective coordination with federal, state, and local partners, my amendment is quite simple.

It just ensures that the agency provides actionable recommendations for improvement.

Thank you, and I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. I yield back.

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Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm committed to ensuring young people across the country have access to the tools they need to pursue skilled technical careers that support NASA and its commercial partners.

In Oregon, we have a robust ecosystem of small businesses, from machinists to electronics and software companies, that contribute to NASA's work and the space economy more broadly.

My amendment would encourage NASA, through its STEM outreach programs, to partner with the private sector across the supply chain to help bring more young people into these career pathways.

While it may not be obvious from the outside, there are opportunities for workers across America to participate in literal moonshots.

I hope that my amendment can help us make those opportunities more visible for our constituents and tap into the incredible wealth of talent across all of our communities.

For these reasons, I urge my colleagues to support the amendment, and I yield back.

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Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My amendment would direct NASA to study the impacts that this Administration has had on immigration enforcement tactics and how that has impacted our nation's competitiveness.

In the past year, we've seen the Administration and its agents terrorize people, violate their rights, and, as we just saw in Minnesota, kill American citizens in broad daylight.

We've seen the President's masked agents drag graduate students off the street into unmarked cars.

And we've seen them weaponize the student visa process to punish people for First Amendment protected speech.

A recent report in science indicates that over 10,000 PhDs left the federal government last year.

How many of those were foreign-born workers who took the fork in the road because they were afraid for themselves or their family members?

Immigrants play a critical role in our STEM economy.

They make up over half of PhDs in key STEM fields like engineering.

They make up about a third of U.S. Nobel Prize winners in STEM.

They have filed over a quarter of U.S. patents.

Our job in this Committee is to support the federal research and development that will drive the economy of the future and ensure America's competitiveness on the global stage.

The President's tactics are pushing away talent and undermining the good bipartisan work, like we are seeing today in this NASA bill, that we all work so hard to move forward.

These unhinged and self-defeating tactics need to end.

I am withdrawing this amendment to make sure that we can move forward with our markup today, but I urge my colleagues to stand against the sweeping damage that this Administration is doing to our space research industry.

Thank you, and I yield back.

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