Railroad Crossing

Oklahoma’s “Blocked Crossing Statute,” which limits the amount of time that a train can block traffic at a railroad intersection with a highway or street, is “facially unconstitutional,” a federal court in the state ruled, finding that it is preempted by the Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act.

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Ex-Cop Faces Federal Murder Charge After Seeking Release Under High Court Ruling

Federal prosecutors announced Friday the murder indictment of a former Tulsa cop convicted in state court for killing his daughter’s boyfriend, but who is now demanding his release after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling invalidated Oklahoma’s criminal jurisdiction on Native American tribal lands.

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Remains Found in Search For 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Victims

At least 10 bodies were found Wednesday in an unmarked mass grave at a Tulsa cemetery where investigators are searching for the remains of victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, Oklahoma's state archaeologist said.

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Tulsa Digs Again for Victims of 1921 Race Massacre

A second excavation begins Monday at a cemetery in an effort to find and identify victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and shed light on violence that left hundreds dead and decimated an area that was once a cultural and economic mecca for African Americans.

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Ex-Jail Employees Charged for Playing ‘Baby Shark’ on Repeat

Two former Oklahoma jail employees and their supervisor face misdemeanor cruelty charges after investigators found they forced inmates to stand handcuffed for hours and listen to the children's song "Baby Shark" on repeat, a prosecutor said Monday.

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Federal Judge Upholds Oklahoma’s Absentee Voting Requirements

A federal judge declined Thursday evening to block Oklahoma’s photo identification and notarized signature requirements for absentee ballots during the Covid-19 pandemic, ignoring Democrats’ arguments that the law suppresses voters.

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Anti-Panhandling Law

Oklahoma City’s law restricting panhandling on street medians is unconstitutional, the Tenth Circuit ruled, finding that the city did not show that the ordinance is a “constitutionally permissible time, place, and manner restriction.”

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Absentee Ballots

Arguing the rules are not significant barriers to voting, Oklahoma fired back against a lawsuit filed by Democrats challenging laws requiring absentee ballots to be notarized or verified with a copy of photo ID.

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‘Tiger King’ Zoo Shut Down After Inspection by Feds

The roadside zoo formerly owned by Joe Exotic and featured in the hit Netflix true-crime docuseries “Tiger King” suddenly closed Thursday after federal authorities suspended the license of operator Jeff Lowe for alleged mistreatment of the housed animals.

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Kansas Sues Interior Department to Block Native American Casino

The State of Kansas asked a federal court Monday to set aside a U.S. Department of Interior decision that allows the Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma to develop a casino in the Wichita suburb of Park City.

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Oklahoma AG Seeks Guidance on Criminal Appeals After High Court Ruling

Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter asked the state’s highest criminal appeals court Monday for guidance on a flood of inmate appeals after the U.S. Supreme Court unexpectedly ruled last month the state has no criminal jurisdiction on large areas the justices found are still tribal lands.

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NBA Team Ignores Oklahoma Lawmaker’s Threat to Revoke Tax Breaks Over Kneeling for Anthem

Players for the Oklahoma City Thunder basketball team knelt during the national anthem Saturday, ignoring threats by a state representative to strip the team of its tax breaks for the next four years if they took part in the league-wide social justice protest.

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Virginia Man Accused of Threatening Tulsa Mayor Over Trump Rally

Federal prosecutors accused a Virginia man Friday of harassing and threatening Tulsa’s Republican mayor to halt President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in the city last month in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Oklahoma Tribes Reach Deal With State on Case Jurisdiction

OKLAHOMA CITY (CN) — Oklahoma’s Five Tribes and state leaders announced an agreement Thursday to clarify the state’s criminal and

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High Court Backs Tribal Designation for Wide Swath of Oklahoma Land

In a decision that reclassifies a large swath of eastern Oklahoma as land belonging to Native Americans driven from their ancestral home during the Trail of Tears, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Tuesday that a Seminole man sentenced to 500 years in prison for rape and sodomy should have been tried in federal court.

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Trump Ally Herman Cain Hospitalized With Covid After Attending Rally

Herman Cain, a former 2012 Republican presidential candidate who attended President Trump’s comeback rally in Oklahoma last month, has been hospitalized in Atlanta after testing positive for Covid-19.

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Oklahoma Voters Approve Medicaid Expansion

Oklahoma primary voters Tuesday narrowly approved an expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, rejecting arguments by Republican state leaders that the measure will result in deep budget cuts for state agencies.

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Trump’s Campaign Comeback Rally Fails to Fill Arena

A substantially smaller than expected crowd showed up to President Donald Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Saturday night, disappointing a trailing reelection campaign seeking to reset during the Covid-19 pandemic and its economic fallout.

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Top Eight

Top eight CNS stories for today including the Oklahoma Supreme Court declined to stop President Donald Trump’s weekend campaign rally in Tulsa; One of the three police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor has been fired from the Louisville Metro Police Department; A federal bankruptcy judge will confirm Pacific Gas and Electric’s $59 billion plan for exiting Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and more.

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Oklahoma High Court Refuses to Block Trump Rally in Tulsa

The Oklahoma Supreme Court declined Friday to stop President Donald Trump’s campaign rally on Saturday in Tulsa, in spite of no social distancing measures being enforced during the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Tulsa Covid-19 Cases Hit a New High

Oklahoma has a big surge in new coronavirus cases, to a new daily high double the previous record-setting number two days earlier.

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Judge Denies Bid to Require Social Distancing at Trump’s Tulsa Campaign Rally

An Oklahoma judge Tuesday evening refused to halt President Trump’s campaign from holding its first mass campaign rally during the Covid-19 pandemic in Tulsa, even though social distancing will not be observed at the event.

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Trump Campaign Promises Safety Precautions at Controversial Rally

President Donald Trump brushed aside mounting criticism Monday for his plans to hold a mass campaign rally in Tulsa this weekend during the Covid-19 pandemic, promising to have health safeguards in place for attendees.

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Trump Rally on Juneteenth in Tulsa Called ‘Slap in the Face’

Black community and political leaders are calling on President Trump to at least change the date of an Oklahoma rally kick-starting his return to public campaigning, saying that holding the event on Juneteenth, the day that celebrates the end of slavery in America, is a "slap in the face."

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‘Tiger King’ Star Slams Court Order Giving Zoo to Rival

Netflix star Joe Exotic lamented behind bars Tuesday a court order turning over his former Oklahoma zoo to nemesis Carole Baskin to satisfy a $1 million trademark judgment.

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Foe of ‘Tiger King’ Zookeeper Granted Oklahoma Property

A federal judge granted Carole Baskin’s Big Cat Rescue control Monday of imprisoned reality TV star Joe Exotic’s former zoo properties in Oklahoma, finding they were fraudulently transferred to avoid paying her under a $1 million trademark judgment.

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US Closes Probes of 3 Senators’ Stock Trades

The Justice Department has closed investigations into stock trading by Senators Dianne Feinstein of California, Kelly Loeffler of Georgia and Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, according to people familiar with notifications sent to the senators. The senators came under scrutiny for transactions made in the weeks before the coronavirus sent markets tumbling.

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Oklahoma High Court Rules State Must Accept Signatures on Sentencing Ballot Measure

The Oklahoma Supreme Court ordered the state Tuesday to accept over 260,000 in signatures collected for a criminal justice reform ballot question that seeks to end sentence enhancements for nonviolent crimes.

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Oklahoma Man Gets 32 Years for Shooting Process Server

An Oklahoma man who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2018 was sentenced Friday to 32 years in state prison for shooting a process server who was trying to give him notice of a civil lawsuit.

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New Oklahoma Law Reclassifies Some Domestic Abuse Charges as Violent Crimes

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt signed into law Tuesday a reclassification of several domestic abuse charges as violent crimes, even though an unrelated criminal justice reform ballot measure threatens to mitigate its effects.

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Colloidal Silver

A federal court in Oklahoma entered a temporary restraining order against Xephyr LLC dba N-Ergetics and its owners requiring them to stop distributing colloidal silver, which they were selling as a treatment for Covid-19 and other diseases. 

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Justices Hear Fight Over Tribal Land in Criminal Appeal

The Supreme Court appeared unwilling Monday to side with a Native American convict who argued that most of eastern Oklahoma should be classified as protected tribal land.

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Top Eight

Top eight CNS stories for today including California’s pandemic-induced recession could lead to a record $54 billion budget shortfall; The 22.6 million Americans receiving unemployment insurance benefits represents 15.5% of the country’s workforce; The Oklahoma Senate voted along party lines to reinstate a requirement that absentee ballots must be notarized, and more.

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Oklahoma Senate Votes to Bring Back Notary Mandate for Absentee Voting

Only three days after it was struck down by the state’s high court, the Republican-controlled Oklahoma Senate voted along party lines Thursday to reinstate a requirement that absentee ballots must be notarized.

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Oklahoma Lawmakers Move to Revive Notary Rule for Absentee Voting

Republican legislators in Oklahoma pushed Wednesday to vote on reinstating a requirement that absentee ballots must be notarized in spite of the Covid-19 pandemic – two days after the requirement was rejected by the state’s high court.

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Oklahoma High Court Strikes Down Notary Mandate for Absentee Ballots

The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Monday struck down a requirement that absentee ballots must be notarized, removing an obstacle for elderly and medically compromised voters during the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Oklahoma Mayor Retracts Face Covering Order Following Threats

An Oklahoma mayor hastily retracted an order late Friday requiring residents to wear face coverings after businesses reported verbal and physical threats from customers refusing to comply, including one involving a firearm.

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Virus Outbreak Slams Town as Texas Reopens

Barely a week ago, rural Lamar County could make a pretty good argument for Texas’ reopening on Friday. Only a handful of the 50,000 residents here, right on the border with Oklahoma, had tested positive for the coronavirus. None had died.

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GOP Leaders Face Scrutiny for Malaria Drug Purchases

Republican state leaders in Oklahoma and Utah are facing scrutiny for spending millions of dollars to purchase malaria drugs promoted by President Trump to treat Covid-19 patients that many other states obtained for free and that doctors warned should not be used without more testing.

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Oklahoma Asks Trump to Declare Pandemic an Act of God to Shield Oil Companies

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt asked President Donald Trump Saturday to declare the Covid-19 pandemic an “act of God” to shield the oil and gas industry as it grapples with the dual shocks of collapsed demand and surging supply as U.S. oil futures contracts briefly went negative this week.

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Absentee Voting

A voting rights group argues in a lawsuit against Oklahoma’s election board that voters should not be required to mail a notarized affidavit along with their absentee ballots.

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Death Toll From Twisters Rises to 7

Severe weather blew through the South again Thursday, raising the death toll to at least seven people in Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana, including a man whose car was blown off the road and a man who went outside to grab a trash can and was swept away in a flood.

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Abortion in Oklahoma

The Tenth Circuit rejected Oklahoma’s request to reinstate a ban on abortion established in a recent executive order postponing elective surgeries and certain other medical procedures. The state says the order is necessary to preserve personal protective equipment for health care workers treating Covid-19 patients.

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Oklahoma Governor Commutes 450 Sentences to Reduce Prison Overcrowding

Bowing to public pressure, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt issued commutations late Friday for 452 inmates to blunt the spread of Covid-19 in state prisons and to ease overcrowding.

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Trump Says He Will ‘Take a Look’ at Pardon for ‘Tiger King’ Star

President Donald Trump joked late Wednesday that he would “take a look” at pardoning Joe Exotic, the flamboyant star of Netflix’s true-crime docuseries “Tiger King,” hours after the federal judge in Exotic’s $94 million lawsuit against federal officials rejected a recusal demand.

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‘Tiger King’ Joe Exotic Demands New Judge in $93 Million Civil Suit

“Tiger King” docuseries star Joe Exotic demanded Monday that the federal judge overseeing his $93 million civil lawsuit against the federal government step aside, accusing him of being biased, homophobic and an animal rights supporter.

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Abortion Ban

A federal judge in Oklahoma ruled Monday that state officials cannot use the Covid-19 pandemic to effectively ban most abortions, clearing the way for medication abortions to resume as well as procedures for women who would lose their right to a lawful abortion by the time the ban was lifted.

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Abortion

Planned Parenthood of the Heartland et al. sued Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds et al. in federal court, claiming she cited the Covid-19 pandemic to issue an unconstitutional proclamation effectively banning abortion; a similar complaint was filed in Oklahoma City Federal Court.

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‘Tiger King’ Zookeeper Files $93M Lawsuit From Prison

Blonde-mulleted zookeeper Joe Exotic, star of the Netflix docuseries “Tiger King,” filed a $93 million lawsuit claiming authorities selectively prosecuted him while turning a blind eye to other violations of the Endangered Species Act.

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Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations Sue Insurers to Pay on Claims for Covid-19 Closure of Casinos

The Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations sued a group of commercial insurers Tuesday, demanding payment on business interruption claims for the closure of their Oklahoma casinos due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

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