The Oklahoma Observercast

With all the pomp and circumstance they could muster, Gov. Kevin Stitt, House Speaker Kyle Hilbert and other statehouse luminaries gathered recently with students at an OKC charter school celebrate Stitt’s signing of SB 1778 – the state’s greatest education reform package since … what? … the invention of the alphabet? OK … so it […]

Remember when Republicans vowed to run government like a business if they ever got in charge at NE 23rd and Lincoln Blvd. The implication was: Unlike free-spending Democrats, GOPers would squeeze every penny, ensuring taxpayers got way more bang for their bucks. In the two decades since they seized the statehouse levers of power, Republicans […]

It’s a good bet not very many had Markwayne Mullin leaving a safe U.S. Senate seat to become Donald Trump’s Homeland Security guru on their Bingo cards. But here we are. Markwayne Mullin officially on Team Trump. So many questions … Who knew Trump would go all Richard Nixon on us and appoint his own […]

Across Oklahoma, in urban areas and rural, students alarmed by the Trump administration’s sometimes deadly anti-immigrant crackdown are walking out of Sooner classrooms to make clear their opposition. Unsurprisingly, the fact students are exercising their First Amendment right to free speech and assembly alarms the Oklahoma Legislature’s Freedom Caucus. Those hard-right ideologues are not only […]

Masked federal immigration officers assaulting people in the streets. Two American citizens murdered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis. An internal ICE memo authorizing armed agents to forcibly enter homes with only an administrative search warrant – a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment. President Trump’s immigration crackdown hasn’t been as visible in […]

In the wake of nearly a decade of sketchy leadership and fiscal mismanagement, the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services recently one-upped itself, suddenly announcing it may seek to privatize four of the state’s behavioral health facilities. More disconcerting, its request for proposals gave interested suitors all of one month [deadline is […]

As the nights get colder … and as the growing number of unhoused Oklahomans becomes evident on sidewalks, in alleyways and in shanty towns … business at county courthouses across Oklahoma is booming. At least when it comes to evictions. The recent federal shutdown forced some Oklahoma families to choose between food and rent. A […]

Gov. Kevin Stitt’s recent expansion of his inaptly named Operation SAFE is proof yet again that he is more show pony than workhorse. All his roundup of unhoused folks from public byways first in Tulsa and now in Oklahoma City does is temporarily conceal a long festering problem: thousands of the least among us do […]

What triggered state Superintendent Ryan Walters’ abrupt resignation? What does it mean for an already reeling Oklahoma public school system, ranked dead last nationally? Sandra Valentine and Sean Cummings, two “Resisters” who showed up at every State Board of Education meeting to challenge Walters’ bloviating and lying, join us for this week’s Observercast — A […]

It’s one of those surely-it-can’t-happen-here worries that awakens many of us in the dead of night: Fearing the 2026 midterms won’t go his way, Donald Trump imposes martial law and calls off the elections “in the interest of national security.” Alarmist? Preposterous? This is the U.S. of A. after all! Maybe it’s not so far-fetched […]