Oklahoma voters select new state senator, determine House candidate slate
OKLAHOMA CITY – Republican Bryan Logan will be sworn in on May 21 to represent Senate District 8.
Logan, of Paden, on Tuesday defeated Democrat Nathan Brewer and independent Steve Sanford, both of Henryetta, in a special election.
Logan garnered 62% of the vote and once sworn in will represent constituents living in a five-county area that includes Okmulgee, Okfuskee and McIntosh counties and portions of Creek and Muskogee counties.
Logan, who is self-employed and a pastor at Paden Holiness Church, replaces Roger Thompson, R-Okemah, who resigned.
In the Republican runoff for House District 71, Beverly A. Attebury garnered 66% of the vote, besting Tania Garza. Both are from Tulsa.
Attebury faces Democrat Amanda Clinton of Tulsa in the June 10 special election.
The post became vacant when former Rep. Amanda Swope, D-Tulsa, left to serve in the administration of Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols.
In the Republican runoff for House District 74, Kevin Wayne Norwood garnered 51% to Sheila Vancuren's 49%. Both are from Owasso.
Norwood faces Democrat Amy Hossain, of Owasso, in the June 10 special election.
The seat became open when former Rep. Mark Vancuren, R-Owasso, left to serve as deputy commissioner for Tulsa County Commissioner Lonnie Simms.
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NBC News
15 minutes ago
- NBC News
Black mayors and leaders decry Trump's threats to deploy National Guard in cities
Black civil rights leaders and the mayors of several cities on Tuesday denounced the deployment of the National Guard to the nation's capital to combat crime, calling it 'fundamentally grandstanding' and 'a federal coup.' And by suggesting that other cities, also run by Black mayors, may be next, President Donald Trump was 'playing the worst game of racially divisive politics,' one rights leader said. Trump announced Monday that he would deploy 800 guard members to Washington, D.C., suggesting that the same could happen in New York City, Baltimore, Chicago and Oakland, California. 'When you walk down the street, you're going to see police or you're going to see FBI agents,' Trump said about Washington on Monday. 'And we will bring in the military if it's needed.' Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, said the president's actions and words were racially polarizing, considering crime rates in these cities are largely declining. 'This is a distraction at a time when these cities deserve credit because crime and violence are down in most American cities right now, and this is trying to distract from that success, and in effect, create a de facto police state in these cities,' Morial told NBC News. 'He's playing the worst game of racially divisive politics, and that's all it is,' Morial said. The Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader and head of the National Action Network, said in a statement that 'the people of Washington, D.C. ‒ especially those living on the streets, who need the most care ‒ will suffer, alongside the core principles of our Democracy.' And NAACP president Derrick Johnson questioned the declaration of an emergency in D.C., calling it a 'federal coup.' The White House responded to the criticisms in a statement to NBC News: 'There is nothing divisive about cracking down on crime in our nation's capital to make it safer and more beautiful for all residents and visitors from all around the world,' said White House assistant press secretary Taylor Rogers. 'Instead of criticizing the President's lawful actions to Make DC Safe Again, Democrat-run cities plagued by violent crime should focus on cleaning up their own streets. This is why Democrats continue to be so unpopular among everyday Americans — they think the President of the United States cracking down on crime in our nation's capital is a bad thing.' Trump federalized the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department over the weekend and called the nation's capital 'one of the most dangerous cities in the world.' It followed the fatal shooting of a congressional intern in July and the carjacking of a former Department of Government Efficiency staffer in D.C. last week, resulting in the arrest of two teenagers. Even with these violent acts, crime in D.C., has been declining for years and is currently at a 30-year low, according to the Justice Department. Nationwide, violent crime has declined, specifically murders, rape, aggravated assault and robbery, according to data released last week by the FBI. Black Americans are four times more likely to experience homelessness in their lifetimes than white Americans, according to a 2023 study published in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. The D.C. police union, citing staffing shortages and 'mismanagement,' said it supported the federal takeover, but only in a limited, temporary capacity that resulted in a better resourced department. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said Trump's move, which he had hinted at for months, is 'unsettling and unprecedented.' The administration forced the removal of the Black Lives Matter street painting that had been prominent in the city since 2020 by threatening to hold back millions in funding if it remained. On Monday, Bowser said that the city's police chief maintains authority over the police force. But Trump said that he had appointed the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Agency, Terry Cole, as the head of the Metropolitan Police Department. Morial said that while many National Guards are his friends, 'this is not an assignment they were trained for. This is not an assignment they signed up for. They're being used as political pawns. 'What the White House should be doing is restoring the SNAP cuts and restoring the Medicaid cuts, which are going to do damage to Washington, D.C., and other urban communities,' Morial said. Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott was not happy Trump mentioned his city as a potential place where the National Guard would be deployed. 'This is the latest effort by the president to distract from the issues he should be focused on — including the roller coaster of the U.S. economy thanks to his policies,' Scott said in a statement Monday. 'When it comes to public safety in Baltimore, he should turn off the right-wing propaganda and look at the facts.' Homicides are down 28% in Baltimore this year alone, reaching the lowest level of any year on record, with overall crime rates lower than it's been in more than 50 years. 'We still have real work to do to build on this progress—but that work starts and ends here in Baltimore with the local, state, and federal partners who have gotten us this far.' And as Scott pointed out, 'it's not just Baltimore.' In Chicago, violent crime also is down by more than 30% and shootings almost 40%. Mayor Brandon Johnson said the dramatic reductions occurred even as Trump cut ' $158 million in funding for violence prevention programs in cities like Chicago,' as well as Los Angeles, New York, D.C. and Baltimore. Those cuts, he said, are on top of the Trump administration dismantling the Office of Gun Violence Prevention and terminating hundreds of grants for anti-violence programs across the country. 'If President Trump wants to help make Chicago safer, he can start by releasing the funds for anti-violence programs that have been critical to our work to drive down crime and violence,' Johnson said. 'Sending in the National Guard would only serve to destabilize our city and undermine our public safety efforts.' The mayor of Savannah, Georgia, Van R. Johnson II, president of the African American Mayors Association, said that while he respects the federal government's responsibility over ensuring national security, deploying the National Guard in D.C. 'may not be the most productive approach, especially when local leaders and law enforcement are already making significant strides in reducing crime and improving community trust.' Johnson implored the Trump administration to work with mayors and to 'support solutions that strengthen law enforcement partnerships and community engagement.' Republicans backed Trump's move. Rep. James Comer, of Kentucky, chair of the House oversight committee, said in a statement: 'For years, the D.C. Council's radical soft-on-crime agenda has emboldened criminals and put public safety at risk in our nation's capital.' Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, of New York, the House Democratic leader, vehemently disagreed, saying the action will be a negative force against 'the city's youth and homeless population.'
Atlantic
15 minutes ago
- Atlantic
Trump Forces His Opponents to Choose Between Bad Options
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker has made himself a spokesperson for Democratic resistance to Republican plans for a brazen mid-decade gerrymander, and on Sunday, he appeared on Meet the Press to state his case. 'It's cheating,' Pritzker said of the Texas redistricting that the president has demanded. 'Donald Trump is a cheater. He cheats on his wives. He cheats at golf. And now he's trying to cheat the American people out of their votes.' It's a clever line. But it would have been better if not for the fact that some of Pritzker's fellow Democrats, including the governors of New York and California, are now trying to redraw their state's maps to squeeze Republicans. (It might also have landed better if Illinois' maps weren't already gerrymandered, as Representative Mike Quigley, a Chicago Democrat, recently acknowledged.) If they're going to strike back, Democrats in some of these states don't just have to draw new maps—they have to find ways to circumvent structures they enacted in recent years to make maps fairer. Former Attorney General Eric Holder has been the driving force behind Democrats' work for fairer districts, but he's now in the awkward position of calling for cutthroat maps. 'My hope would be you have these temporary measures,' he told The New York Times. Of course, everyone always hopes that. The political scientist Sara Sadhwani, who helped draw the Golden State's current maps, argued for tossing them, telling Politico 's California Playbook, 'These are extraordinary times, and extraordinary times often call for extraordinary measures.' This reasoning feels both dangerous and alluring. Democrats pushed for fairer districts to bolster democracy; if they remain pure and Republicans rig the system, then it was all for naught. Yet if they abandon the push for fairness, what are they preserving? Saying that Americans should resist tyranny is all well and good, but the past decade has shown that resisting involves a lot of risky judgment calls. Part of Trump's political genius, and his threat, is that he forces his opponents to choose between bad options. During the first Trump administration, for example, some of his aides simply refused to execute on things the president told them to do—or, in one case, reportedly even swiped a draft letter from his desk to prevent it from being signed. On the one hand, they were probably right on the merits: Trump has lots of bad ideas, some of which might have endangered the country if enacted. On the other hand, they were unelected officials refusing lawful commands from the elected president. What's right in the short term can set perilous precedents in the long run. This week, Trump dispatched the D.C. National Guard and federal officers to the streets of the capital. Five summers ago, amid major protests, he did the same—and reportedly contemplated calling in active-duty soldiers. Then–Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley was able to talk Trump out of that, but the price he paid was participation in a photo op with the president as he walked across Lafayette Square from the White House. The resulting images 'created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics,' as Milley put it. He quickly came to regret that decision and apologized. Knowing which choice was better is nearly impossible. Once Trump left office, federal prosecutors had to grapple with how to handle both his attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election and his hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Trump's misdeeds were not especially murky or covert: Everyone watched him try to subvert the election in real time, culminating in the January 6 insurrection; the documents in question were demonstrably at Mar-a-Lago, and the government had subpoenaed them. Declining to prosecute Trump for these actions would have encouraged his own further abuses and also fostered the impression that not everyone is equal under the law. Yet political leaders in functioning democracies generally do not charge their political rivals who have left office with crimes, because it injects partisanship into the system, eroding it for the future. Trump falsely accused President Joe Biden of engaging in banana-republic-style politics, but now that Trump is in power, his government is reportedly pursuing an absurd investigation against former President Barack Obama. Once criminal charges were set in motion, the judges presiding over the cases had their own challenges. Would they give Trump a gag order—standard procedure to prevent a defendant from attacking witnesses publicly—and create an opportunity for him to claim 'election interference,' or would they allow attacks that no other defendant could get away with? (They mostly tried to split the difference.) The country ended up with perhaps the worst outcome: Trump faced charges, he reaped political benefit from claiming persecution, and now he has avoided convictions or even trials in all but one case, evading accountability by running out the clock. Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser is now facing her own tough choice: If she forcefully opposes the president's temporary takeover of the city's police force, as well as other measures that he says he is taking to fight crime, then she risks inviting even more aggressive action from an angry Trump. If, however, she mostly acquiesces, then she is yielding the city's powers and surrendering her constituency's preferences to his. Meanwhile, university presidents are weighing whether to give in to Trump's attempts to seize control over their operations. Is it better to strike a costly settlement and regain some limited autonomy, or to fight the administration and risk even greater damage? 'Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,' Republican Senator Barry Goldwater said during his 1964 presidential bid. 'Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.' Americans resoundingly rejected that vision at the time, but now many of Trump's opponents and targets are adopting it as a philosophy. Forcing Americans who care about democracy into these dilemmas is part of what gives him such power. Trump's dreams for D.C. could soon hit reality. Vladimir Putin could be laying a trap. Today's News About 800 National Guard troops have arrived in Washington, D.C., to support local law enforcement in carrying out President Donald Trump's order to deal with crime. Trump is considering filing a lawsuit against Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell over the Fed's building renovation, amid ongoing tensions over interest rates. Inflation remained steady in July despite price increases on some goods caused by Trump's tariffs. Evening Read Americans Are All In on Cow-Based Wellness By Yasmin Tayag A not-insignificant number of TikToks aim to convince the viewer that beef-tallow moisturizer will not make your face smell like cow. The beauty influencers who tend to appear in these videos—usually clear-skinned women rubbing tallow into their face as they detail their previous dermatological woes—describe the scent as 'buttery' or 'earthy' or grass-like. Many of them come to the same conclusion: Okay, even if the tallow does smell a little bit, the smooth skin it leaves behind is well worth it. Beef tallow (as both a moisturizer and an alternative to seed oils) is one of many cow-based products that have crowded the wellness market in the past five or so years. Beef-bone broth is a grocery-store staple. Demand for raw milk has grown, despite numerous cases of illness and warnings from public-health officials that drinking it can be fatal. In certain circles, raw cow organs—heart, liver, kidney—are prized superfoods … More From The Atlantic Culture Break Look. In the 1980s and '90s, Adrienne Salinger photographed American teenagers in their natural habitat: their bedroom.
Politico
15 minutes ago
- Politico
Good government group backtracks amid redistricting fight, won't oppose efforts ‘counterbalancing' Texas
In the statement, Common Cause said it will not endorse partisan gerrymandering in any case, but is deciding now to not condemn actions taken by states like California given the context of Trump's efforts to 'lock in unaccountable power and silence voters.' 'In this grave moment, we understand why some states, including California, are considering counterbalancing measures in response,' the statement said. 'We will not endorse partisan gerrymandering even when its motive is to offset more extreme gerrymandering by a different party.' 'But a blanket condemnation in this moment would amount to a call for unilateral political disarmament in the face of authoritarian efforts to undermine fair representation and people-powered democracy,' the statement continued. As recently as last week, Common Cause's website featured a pop-up fundraising appeal equating Texas Republicans' redistricting push to Newsom, who they said is 'attempting to copy the GOP's playbook to boost his profile.' And a July 24 edition of Common Cause's 'Watchdog' newsletter said Newsom and other Democrats who 'claimed Democrats should fire back, gerrymandering in states they can' are 'wrong' and that 'all of it is anti-democratic.' A spokesperson for Newsom did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Common Cause is a decades-old watchdog group that has advocated for good governance reform like independent redistricting and campaign finance limits. It was on the losing side of the 2019 Supreme Court case Rucho v. Common Cause, where the organization sued in an effort to block a gerrymandered North Carolina congressional map. A conservative majority of justices ruled that federal courts could not police partisan gerrymandering. California has yet to officially propose any new lines, but new maps could yield Democrats five additional friendly districts in the state. If approved, California's new maps could offset the nationwide push by Trump and Republican allies to draw new maps in states beyond Texas. The Texas map could yield as many as five red seats, and the White House has spoken to Republicans in Indiana, Florida and Missouri as part of their push. Common Cause said any partisan mid-cycle redistricting proposal must meet a set of criteria to ensure they are as fair as possible to avoid their condemnation. New redistricting efforts must be 'proportional to the threat posed by mid-decade gerrymanders in other states,' approved by voters, and expire once the 2030 census takes effect. The group said it will condemn any proposals that dilutes voting power for non-white voters, and is calling on leaders to endorse independent redistricting and other voting rights measures first passed by House Democrats after the 2018 midterms and then unsuccessfully brought back up again during the Biden administration.
