Oklahoma has seen extreme and painful weather this spring. High winds in Tulsa County last weekend took out power for more than 200,000 customers, and trees, power lines, fences, and more are down all over Green Country. Lawton, Duncan, Laverne, Norman, and many others also saw high winds and tornadoes and continue to see high temperatures. Statewide over 350,000 people lost power.
Thank you to our first responders who were out immediately working to help, to the line workers from all over the country who immediately stepped up to help restore power, to the neighbors and community organizations who have started cooling and charging centers for neighbors displaced by the power outages and damage, and to everyone else who is living the Oklahoma Standard this week.
My staff and I stand ready to assist the state and local communities as we all clean up the debris and work to get life back to normal. If the state seeks a federal disaster declaration, I will lead the Oklahoma delegation in sending a letter to President Biden urging him to quickly approve the request to get additional resources to our state for clean-up reimbursement.
Standing for Life
Tomorrow marks one year since the Supreme Court released its opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and paved the way for conversations on life to move back to the American people.
That is something to celebrate. I held a pro-life rally in Washington, DC, this week to encourage those of us who continue to stand for life. There are children alive today because of the support of thousands of people who stand with families facing an unexpected pregnancy.
The Biden Administration remains the most pro-abortion White House in American history. Since the Dobbs decision, the White House has taken funds from veteran care in our veterans’ hospitals to provide abortions, which is against federal law. They ignored federal law to allow dangerous chemical abortion drugs to be mailed to women without the women ever having to see or talk to a doctor, which puts the health and safety of women, girls, and unborn babies at risk.
In Oklahoma, the White House is trying to cut off federal grant dollars for family planning and health screening for women, if the state will not promote abortion services, which is also against federal law.
This needs to stop. Oklahomans do not all agree on protecting the lives of every child in America, but “pro-choice” for some in our nation has now moved to “pro-abortion.” That is not who we are as a nation, and it certainly isn’t who we are as Oklahomans.
As we work to take care of moms and young families, we need to encourage dialogue about life. I continue to ask one simple question: when is a child a child? I believe life begins at conception when there is separate DNA from the mom and the dad. The only difference between that baby at conception and that same baby in their mom’s and dad’s arms is time.
It is time we all answer the question: when are children valuable and when are children disposable?
What’s Really Going on at the Southern Border The latest border crossing numbers are out this week, and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported there were 204,561 illegal encounters at the southern border in May, which is one of the highest numbers for May in history. Only May 2022 had more encounters in the past decade, and this May was only slightly lower than last May. Border law enforcement announced they had seized nearly 10,000 pounds of deadly fentanyl over the course of the last two months—and that’s just what they caught.
But remarkably, the Biden Administration recently patted themselves on the back and told the American people their border plan “is working as intended” and that the “numbers were down.” There is more to this story in the numbers.
The numbers are even higher because the Department of Homeland Security now does not count someone as an illegal “encounter,” if they register online in advance before they cross the border. If they fill out their forms online early, they also get faster processing into the country when they claim asylum (which almost every person claims asylum). Remember: very few people claiming asylum actually qualify for asylum, but if they claim it, they know they will be released into the country to await their hearing years into the future.
So, even their recordhigh numbers are fudged.