Weekly Wrap, January 22-26

How do you even begin to describe this week?

It’s been a doozy of a week in Oklahoma politics. There appears to be no bottom to this barrel of monkeys. But monkey business it is, greasing the outrage machine ahead of the 2024 national elections where partisan control of the presidency and Congress and that little thing called “democracy” hang in the balance.

Wreckin’ Ball Ryan Walters this week “appointed” the nefarious “L*bs of TikT*k” creator (she who will not be named) to an indeterminate board that sets library and media standards for Oklahoma public schools. Both a “hatemonger” and stochastic terrorist, you may recall she was responsible for the days of bomb threats to a Tulsa-area school earlier this academic year after she ginned up outrage and doctored a TikTok from a Tulsa school librarian.

Part of the legacy of malicious selective editing and proverbial deep fakes that began with douchebag extraordinaire James O’Keefe (no offense to douchebags) and his war against ACORN in days past, we all know this is Walters’ latest attempt to wrest attention in the national spotlight and the extremist rightwing news media, riding trashy coattails of an individual who (I hope) will quickly be relegated to the trash heap of history.

But! Not to be outdone! All Hat No Cattle Governor Kevin Stitt hitched his wagon to the political quagmire over the U.S.’s southern border with fifteen other governors, most of whom, like our fair state, are hundreds and even thousands of miles from the border with Mexico up here in flyover country.

Maybe we should be frightened that 16 governors in the U.S. have no problem igniting the highly armed libertarian tinder box that is the U.S. border with Mexico by openly discussing armed confrontation with U.S. federal forces. That’s what Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is saying, and Stitt opined on Newsmax this week about bearing arms with Texas against the Biden administration’s Border Patrol (you know, a regular bastion of human rights?) cutting the razorwire that Abbott placed along border crossings and subsequently drowned a migrant woman and two children.

Stitt couldn’t even look at the needle when he magnanimously received the COVID vaccine on camera. I mean, this is the paper tiger who’s gonna flex on the Southern border?

We really have a peculiar setup here, folks, like a classic Southern Great Plains severe weather pattern where a cold front of fascism is about the hit a warm front characteristic of a human rights regime. It’s an election year and the moldiest chicken nuggets in the basket of deplorables are loudly cock-a-doodle-doing the White nationalist Christofascist armed insurrection rhetoric.

Keep in mind there are three other states that border Mexico that really aren’t fussing too much about their neighbor to the south. It’s possible they recognize the billions of dollars of commerce and trade that go across that border every single day..and no, it’s not fentanyl. It’s the produce and products Americans use every single day of their lives, and closing that border would absolutely decimate the U.S. and possibly the global economy.

Remember Stitt was careful to pencil in exclusions and carve-outs in the December “review” of DEI program executive order for programs tied to federal dollars.

No one is closing that border.

They’re also not going to sever the pipeline for cheap agricultural labor that these 16 states all benefit from. See, we also have a big long northern border with this other country called “Canada.” But my goodness, those people are mostly white descendants of colonial settler groups from Western Europe, like these fools causing a ruckus about the U.S./Mexico border. Just gonna point out that many of these 16 governors are also in states (Kay Ivey, Tate Reeves, Brian Kemp) that probably never would have ended slavery had it not been for federal government intervention and a little amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

But we’re selective about which parts of the Constitution we acknowledge. Mostly just the 2nd Amendment. Definitely not the First.

Unless we’re the hatemonger behind L*bsofT*ktok yelling fire in a movie theater or that yuppie yahoo making car videos to stoke fear in Oklahoma’s 75 and up population about “transgender games” and such. Then the First Amendment absolutely applies.

So, what else happened this week?

One of those 16 states mentioned above executed a prisoner using nitrogen gas.

Three teachers (that we know of) in Oklahoma who received Walters’ big bonus were notified they were incorrectly awarded the money and told to give it all back to OSDE.

This bonus program is working so well that OSDE has awarded a record number of emergency certifications.

Gov. Stitt’s special session this Monday is already dead in the water after Senate President Pro Tem Greg Treat said his chamber would gavel in and adjourn immediately without taking action. With no votes on a bill and nothing to send to the House, nothing will come of the special session.

The senator from Jay, Okla., Michael Bergstrom won Stitt’s accolades this week by filing legislation to lower the income tax. Let’s see where this bill goes. Watch it closely, folks- I expect if this legislation moves at all, it will not be carried by Bergstrom. Stitt also threatened that he would not consider pay raises for state employees until the legislature passes tax cuts.

Make it make sense. Please.

Sen. Treat also filed a bill requiring clear communication of the Governor’s whereabouts after Stitt left the state during a natural disaster and no one else in the line of succession knew he was gone or who was in charge.

And in a bit of good news, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip’s appeal. We talked with Collen McCarty of the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice in May about the Glossip case. Listen to our conversation here.

Be sure to check out the Frontier’s piece on how OSDE expensed Walters’ out-of-state travel, despite the governor’s travel ban.

Arnold Hamilton and I spoke with investigative journalist Clifton Adcock, one of the authors in that Frontier piece, to get a read on the legislation being teed up for this year’s legislative session. Be sure to listen to have a sense of bills we should all pay attention to in the coming weeks.

Also check out the Observer’s latest here on Substack: editor Arnold Hamilton’s latest, Cal Hobson’s always witty and incisive analysis of the state’s goings-on, and the incomparable writing of Gary Edmondson.

If you get a moment, be sure to share our work here on Substack and help sustain the independent, one-of-a-kind analysis and commentary that only the Observer can provide.

Have a good week!