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Among the hottest of the hotly debated issues facing Oklahomans right now, nothing may be more of a flash point than the recent pay raises passed for teachers. Those raises are set to be funded by the largest tax increase in state history.
A package of Oklahoma tax hikes aimed at generating hundreds of millions of new dollars for teacher pay and averting statewide school closures received final legislative approval Wednesday night. The Senate voted 36-10 to increase taxes on oil and gas production, cigarettes, fuel and lodging - narrowly receiving the three-fourth's majority needed to pass - and the chamber broke into applause afterward.
Borrowing a phrase from Winston Churchill, Keith Olbermann said on Monday's episode of "The Resistance" that it appears America is at the end of the beginning of President Donald Trump's downfall - and what happens next has never been more unclear. With last week's indictments of one-time Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates, Olbermann mused whether we're also at "the end of whatever control of himself Donald Trump has."
As Deborah Ross sharpens her criticisms this week of U.S. Sen. Richard Burr's plan for Medicare, the North Carolina Republican incumbent's office says he's no longer looking for a vote in Congress on the plan he helped draft four years ago. Ross has spent much of her time on the campaign trail recently talking about Social Security and Medicare and attacking the plan Burr promoted in 2012 with former Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.
All five Oklahoma Republican U.S. House members face primary opponents on Tuesday but ousting an incumbent is easier said than done, even in a year of voter anger directed at Washington. Most of those Oklahoma challengers are underfunded and the track record of insurgents nationally is not good.
Oklahoma voters sent three new congressmen to Washington in the past four years, and Republicans are considering whether it is time to switch again. Navy pilot Jim Bridenstine upset a five-term GOP congressman in 2012, the same year plumber Markwayne Mullin won a House seat from eastern Oklahoma.
When one of Donald Trump's most outspoken Republican opponents proposed a little-known conservative writer as the long-awaited alternative to the party's presumptive nominee, the "Never Trump" movement, such as it was, appeared lifeless. The failure to draft a party star to wage an independent bid was considered the nail in the coffin.