SCOOP: Oklahoma gubernatorial race heats up early with $1.6M ad buy for 'America First' candidate
Starting on Wednesday, July 9, the Oklahoma Conservative Coalition is making an eight-week, $1.6 million advertising investment in broadcast, cable, satellite and streaming statewide, Fox News Digital has learned.
"Charles McCall is the only America First and Oklahoma First candidate in this race with a proven conservative record," Erinn Mahathey, spokesperson for Oklahoma Conservative Coalition, told Fox News Digital. "This is just the beginning. With the right experience, real momentum, and a winning message, McCall is built to go the distance and deliver real results for Oklahoma."
With less than one year until the Republican primary, two candidates have emerged as potential front-runners in the race for Oklahoma's highest office. As a reliably red state, the winner of the Republican primary will largely be expected to win the general election that November.
McCall announced his gubernatorial bid earlier this year, running on his record of "working hand-in-hand with Governor Stitt and President Trump" to build a "stronger Oklahoma rooted in an America First agenda."
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond has announced his own campaign for governor, running a conservative platform touting his leadership as attorney general against the "Biden Administration's radical overreach" and promising to stand "strong with President Trump."
However, the McCall campaign has criticized Drummond for donating to the newly elected Oklahoma Democrat Party Chair John Waldron and for voting to delay enforcement of a new ban on transgender surgery for minors amid a pending preliminary hearing in a federal lawsuit.
According to The Oklahoman, Drummond said the agreement "simply allows more time to mount the strongest possible defense" and "should in no way be interpreted as a concession of any kind."
In a 4-4 vote earlier this summer, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Oklahoma State Supreme Court's decision that St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in Oklahoma City, a religious charter school, receiving public funds would be unconstitutional.
Incumbent Gov. Kevin Stitt, R-Okla., and Drummond were locked in a feud over the landmark case, as the two continued a long-standing clash over policy and politics in Oklahoma, including debates over constitutional authority and local policy initiatives.
Stitt, who serves as vice chair of the National Governors Association, is term-limited as Oklahoma governor in 2026.
Earlier this year, the Conservative Political Action Conference endorsed McCall's campaign, and his super PAC highlighted his conservative policy as House speaker, on issues like protecting American farmland, school choice, tax cuts and pro-life bills.
Oklahoma House Rep. Cyndi Munson, small business owner Leisa Mitchell Haynes and former Oklahoma State Senator Mike Mazzei have also declared their gubernatorial campaigns.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Engadget
10 minutes ago
- Engadget
China calls for the creation of a global AI organization
China wants to work with other countries and has laid out its plans for the global governance of artificial intelligence at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai. Li Qiang, the country's premier, warned about "technological monopolies" and said that AI could become "an exclusive game for a few countries and companies." As such, he proposed the creation of a "world AI cooperation organization" during the event. Li didn't specifically mention the United States when he talked about monopolies, but the US restricts AI chip exports to his country. NVIDIA had to develop chips that are only meant for China and conform to export rules so it wouldn't lose the Chinese market completely. Meanwhile, Chinese companies like Huawei are developing their own AI systems to make up for China's lack of access to more advanced AI chips from American firms. Li also made the statement a few days after the Trump administration revealed its AI Action Plan, which seeks to limit state regulation of AI companies and which aims to ensure that the US can beat China in the AI race. The Chinese premier said his country would "actively promote" the development of open source artificial intelligence and that China is "willing to provide more Chinese solutions to the international community" when it comes to AI. He also said that his country was eager to share AI technologies with developing countries in the global south. "Currently, overall global AI governance is still fragmented. Countries have great differences, particularly in terms of areas such as regulatory concepts [and] institutional rules," Li said. "We should strengthen coordination to form a global AI governance framework that has broad consensus as soon as possible."
Boston Globe
10 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Harvard nemesis wants Trump's college crusade to reach every campus
Advertisement The Trump administration has used federal funding as leverage to press schools to align with its priorities, from battling campus antisemitism to reassessing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. This week, the White House finalized a $221 million agreement with Columbia that imposes new conditions tied to these issues, the first such deal with an Ivy League school. Harvard, a primary target, is fighting the administration's efforts in court even as it negotiates a possible settlement. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Talks are underway with Cornell University, Northwestern and Brown to reinstate previously frozen funds, while institutions such as Duke and Johns Hopkins are facing mounting pressure as grant suspensions threaten to disrupt research programs and international student pipelines. Under Rufo's proposal, schools would be subject to demands including purging their institutions of diversity initiatives or other programs focused on specific minority groups; harsh and swift disciplinary measures for student protesters; the publicization of demographic data in admissions decisions; and hiring conservative faculty. Advertisement The terms would be baked into universities' contracts with federal agencies for research funding — and, if taken a step further, could be incorporated into the powerful accreditation system that determines colleges' eligibility to receive federal financial aid. 'Columbia has its unique issues, Harvard has its own unique issues. But after you go through the list of the next six or seven universities, there has to be a point where there's a general, blanket policy,' said Rufo, 40. 'The particular negotiations, in that sense, are just the opening bid.' Education Secretary Linda McMahon walked toward the West Wing of the White House, following an TV interview on Tuesday, July 15. Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press Secretary of Education Linda McMahon appeared to endorse the proposal last week when she congratulated Rufo in a post on X and called the plan 'a compelling roadmap to restore integrity and rigor to the American academy.' When reached for comment, an Education Department spokesperson referred Bloomberg to McMahon's post and said there was no mention of implementation plans. But Rufo said he is optimistic that the statement will turn into policy sometime in the next few months. 'This set of principles is a fairly reasonable compromise,' Rufo said. 'I think the president should just impose it as a condition.' The efforts are already spreading piecemeal to an increasingly broad swath of higher education. On Wednesday, the Education Department announced civil rights investigations into scholarship programs at five colleges, including the University of Michigan, the University of Miami and the University of Nebraska Omaha. A series of federal investigations at George Mason University, a regional public college in Virginia, seem aimed at forcing out president Gregory Washington over his past support for DEI initiatives — a move that successfully led to University of Virginia president Jim Ryan's resignation last month. Advertisement But while they've been indirectly affected by the chaos, most of the country's patchwork of 4,000 colleges and universities have escaped direct federal threats. Robert Kelchen, a professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, said the administration is clearly laying the groundwork for a more wide-ranging attack on higher education. 'I think they're trying to move in that direction, especially on things like DEI,' he said. 'It's clear the administration is using every lever they can think of.' Rufo isn't a White House adviser or a federal employee, but he has strong influence among conservative education reformers, including many currently working for the Trump administration. He rose to prominence crusading against DEI programs and played an instrumental role in Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' education agenda in 2023. The gates to Harvard Yard on June 5. Heather Diehl for the Boston Globe His profile rose higher still after he spearheaded a public campaign to oust former Harvard president Claudine Gay over plagiarism allegations — one of the initial seismic reverberations of the campaign to change higher education. One of Rufo's main proposals is tied to accreditors, historically powerful but until recently largely uncontroversial entities that focus on ensuring educational quality and financial health. They also are responsible for determining if institutions are eligible for federal student aid. Rufo said the White House should 'turn the screws' on accreditors and then use them as a proxy for reform. 'We want to say that every accreditor needs to have these minimum principles and enforce them at universities,' he said. Advertisement Trump has called accreditation his 'secret weapon,' and in April he issued an executive order calling for reform. He threatened to strip federal recognition from accreditors 'engaging in unlawful discrimination in violation of federal law.' For Rufo, the stakes of that order are clear: Accreditors must enforce the conservative view of antidiscrimination law, including by ensuring colleges aren't engaging in DEI initiatives. Almost every accreditor has already eliminated language in their standards around diversity and inclusion, but Rufo said they should go a step further and adopt some version of the standards laid out in his proposal. 'The goal is to extend all of this basically to federal financial aid,' Kelchen said. 'The administration so far has not gone after that, maybe because it could be seen as political overreach. But they can work through the accreditors to do that.' If that happens, Rufo said it would 'shift the whole university sector on a new course.' 'That's my goal: To change the culture of the institutions as a whole,' he said.
New York Post
10 minutes ago
- New York Post
Smithsonian exhibit monkeys around with the scientific evidence on human origins
The Trump Administration recently called out the Smithsonian Institution for pushing 'one-sided, divisive political narratives,' leading GOP Sen. Jim Banks last week to introduce a bill prohibiting the Smithsonian from promoting woke ideology, as The Post exclusively reported. But American history isn't the only domain in which the Smithsonian, with an ideological ax to grind, advances misinformation. The National Museum of Natural History's Hall of Human Origins vastly distorts the scientific evidence on human evolution, seeking to convince visitors that there's nothing special about us as human beings. 'There is only about a 1.2% genetic difference between modern humans and chimpanzees,' the exhibit starts, with large photos of a human and apes. 'You and chimpanzees [are] 98.8% genetically similar.' 6 The Trump Administration recently called out the Smithsonian Institution for pushing 'one-sided, divisive political narratives.' Shutterstock / Paulm1993 No doubt you've heard this statistic before because many science popularizers say the same thing. Yet it's been known for years that these numbers are inaccurate. Thanks to a groundbreaking April paper in the journal Nature, we know just how wrong they are. For the first time, the paper reports 'complete' sequences of the genomes of chimpanzees and other apes done from scratch. When we compare them to humans, we find our genomes are more like 15% genetically different from chimpanzees'. That means the true genetic differences between humans and chimps are more than 10 times greater than what the Smithsonian tells us. The museum distorts human origins in other areas, too. Again, the purpose is to diminish the exceptional place of humans in nature. 6 The David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins exhibit is seen at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington. AP The museum's Human Origins fossil hall claims the ancient species Sahelanthropus tchadensis was an 'early human' that walked 'on two legs.' But leading paleoanthropologists sharply dispute this claim. A Nature article found that 'Sahelanthropus was an ape,' and many features 'link the specimen with chimpanzees, gorillas or both, to the exclusion of hominids.' A 2020 Journal of Human Evolution paper showed that Sahelanthropus' femur was like that of a chimp-like quadruped — in other words, it didn't walk upright, and it wasn't a human ancestor. 6 The Smithsonian exhibit presents ape-like australopithecines as 'early humans' who walked upright 'on the ground' much like us, but many scientists don't agree with this characterization, according to reports. Courtesy of Casey Luskin Similarly, the Human Origins exhibit presents the ape-like australopithecines as 'early humans' who walked upright 'on the ground' much like us. Some paleoanthropologists agree. But other scientists strongly disagree, pointing out that some australopithecines showed evidence of ape-like knuckle-walking and only limited capacity for running. Their upright-walking ability was likely best suited for walking along tree limbs, not 'on the ground' exactly like we do. Large questions remain about how they walked, and the Smithsonian gives no hint of the scientific controversy. 6 The museum had a display of *Australopithecus africanus* bust in 2010. Courtesy of Casey Luskin The museum's hominid reconstructions also humanize apes while ape-ifying humans. Australopithecus afarensis (the iconic 'Lucy') is portrayed thoughtfully gazing up at the sky, while Australopithecus africanus is presented smiling, perhaps at a friend's wry remark. Yet australopithecines had brains about the size of a chimp's, and there's no fossil evidence they were capable of abstract thought — or humor. We should remember the famed Harvard anthropologist Earnest Hooton's declaration that 'alleged restorations of ancient types of man have very little, if any, scientific value and are likely only to mislead the public.' 6 The exhibit asserts that humans and chimpanzees are '98.8% genetically similar,' but recently published research found our genomes are more like 15% different from chimpanzees. Courtesy of Casey Luskin The Smithsonian's exhibit also gives scientifically misleading support to the idea humans evolved slowly — saying 'we became human gradually,' much as Darwin imagined, from 'earlier primates.' Again, the result is to blur distinctions between us and other creatures. Yet the great Harvard evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr acknowledged there is a 'large, unbridged gap' in the fossil record between the australopithecines and the first humanlike members of our genus, Homo. In his words, we're in a position of 'not having any fossils that can serve as missing links.' One scientific commentator even said this evidence calls for a 'big bang theory of human evolution.' Why doesn't the Smithsonian disclose any of this information? 6 July marks the 100th anniversary of the Scopes 'monkey' trial. AP This month is the centennial of the Scopes 'monkey' trial, remembered as a warning against hiding scientific information about human evolution. How ironic that 100 years later, the nation's premier science museum obscures scientifically objective data on the very same subject. To fail to correct this exhibit is to use taxpayer money to miseducate the public about a question of profound scientific, sociological, and philosophical importance. Casey Luskin is the Discovery Institute Center for Science and Culture's associate director and co-author of the book 'Science and Human Origins.' He holds a geology Ph.D. from the University of Johannesburg.
