Weekly Wrap, January 15-19

Iowa caucuses are over, now onto New Hampshire

Oh yeah. We vote for president this year. The Iowa caucuses happened this week. Now, attention turns from one small, majority-white state to another.

Congress managed to pass a bill to keep the government open at least through March after Republicans threatened to hold the budget hostage without border control reform (despite Republicans never passing legislation that would have increased funding for the border patrol). Of course, GOP extremists are (kinda sorta) calling for the Republican speaker’s head for working with Democrats. We’ll see what happens.

And in Oklahoma, Gov. Kevin Stitt called for a special session one week before regular session to—you guessed it—reduce the income tax. Farewell, eliminating the grocery tax. We barely knew ye.

Relative silence from Oklahoma House of Representatives Speaker Charles McCall, but the special session has been panned by Senate Republicans and, of course, House and Senate Democrats. As Senate Minority Leader Kay Floyd said, the special session will put politics over policy. Sen. Greg Treat called it a waste of time. Let’s see if this dog can hunt, shall we?

In Wrecking Ball Ryan Walters news, the Frontier reported this week that the State Superintendent used state dollars for out-of-state travel to “mission critical” events like a horror movie premiere in Dallas and a M*ms for Liberty conference. This, despite the governor’s 2019 ban against out-of-state travel for government business.

I typed that last sentence and just remembered Stitt’s trips in office to Paris, Israel, and Azerbaijan. Paris was conceivably state business.

And it wouldn’t be an election year without the election year crazy pants legislation. We’ve got animal control coming for kids dressed as furries at school, Latino gang members (and only Latino gang members) being designated as terrorists, and gun education in schools. You know, all the really important stuff we need to take care of in Oklahoma.

Arnold and I will be talking with Frontier investigative reporter Clifton Adcock next week about these bills and more to come for the legislative session kicking off in February. Be sure to listen to our last two Observercast episodes on the impact of Stitt’s refusal to offer new summer meal benefits for low-income Oklahoma students and another with the four state representatives from Norman and Stillwater to discuss the governor’s anti-DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) executive order in December.

Read the Observer’s latest substack content from Cal Hobson and Gary Edmondson, and keep an eye on your inbox for new content in the days to come.

Have a good weekend!