The quest to obliterate Oklahoma’s strict constitutional prohibition against spending public tax dollars for religious purposes goes to the U.S. Supreme Court this week. State courts ruled the proposed St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School would violate the Oklahoma Constitution’s strict church-state separation that was enshrined at statehood and reaffirmed by a 2016 statewide […]

There are good bills. Bad bills. And bills best described as, well, Grade A cow patties, flies buzzing all around them, the stench wafting across the state. On today’s Observercast, Oklahoma City Rep. Mickey Dollens helps unpack one of the 2025 legislative session’s worst – SB 1027 – in which a power-hungry Republican supermajority seeks […]

The 2025 Legislature’s final eight weeks begin today with a daunting list of constitutionally mandated tasks and oft-inane or diabolical...

Across the land, Democrats are engaged in soul-searching. On a national level, it’s the fallout from Donald Trump reclaiming the White House. In Oklahoma, it’s the party’s superminority status in the Legislature and the fact not a single Democrat holds statewide office. What can – indeed, what must – Democrats do to get back in […]

Gov. Kevin Stitt rode into office in 2019 having rarely voted and with little idea how government worked. Separation of powers?

Oklahoma’s public health infrastructure worked hand in glove with the first Trump presidency’s public health response, complete with the botched unemployment software and rollout as well as preemptively reopening businesses in the spring of 2020. But we might consider something else is going on with the state government’s poor oversight of our public health systems: […]

To say Donald Trump is obsessed with immigrants would be an epic understatement. From the moment he rode down the escalator at Trump Tower to announce his 2016 presidential campaign through his 2024 bid to reclaim the White House, The Donald hasn’t hidden his racism and bigotry and devotion to white nationalism. As he prepares […]

It’s official: Oklahoma recorded the nation’s lowest age-eligible voter turnout in the November general election – a Code Red warning that our body politic is on life support, if not in a death spiral. Can anything be done to restore the patient to health? One citizens’ group, Oklahoma United, thinks it has identified the antidote: […]

In a reality where the full spectrum of reproductive healthcare protections has been rolled back or eliminated nationwide by the disastrous Dobbs U.S. Supreme Court decision, Oklahoma legislators still manage to work overtime to reduce women’s rights from every angle possible. When the Oklahoma Commission on the Status of Women picked two of the hardest rightwing state […]

It’s difficult, if not impossible to keep up with state Superintendent Ryan Walters’ antics these days. But we know this much for certain: He’s doing everything he can to dismantle the State Department of Education and straight-jacket Oklahoma’s K-12 schools with his non-stop social media gaslighting and right-wing media appearances in which he uses public […]