www.youtube.com – KFOR Oklahoma’s News 4 – 2025-02-21 06:28:39

SUMMARY: Oklahoma City FAA employees affected by recent federal layoffs express feelings of betrayal and concern. Many, including those still in probationary periods, received shocking termination emails late Friday night. Former employees, who believed they were performing well and had received positive feedback, were taken aback by the abrupt decision, which they felt lacked thoughtfulness and could compromise national airspace safety. Union representatives criticized the layoffs as rash and stressed that they would add to the workload of an already strained workforce. The overall sentiment among laid-off employees is one of disappointment and frustration, especially given the perceived negative public perception of federal workers.

Former FAA employees in Oklahoma City, now among those laid off as part of the federal government’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) job cuts, say they feel betrayed and abandoned, and that they are not faceless bureaucrats, but everyday people—your friends, your neighbors—who are now without a paycheck.

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oklahomawatch.org – Em Luetkemeyer – 2025-02-21 06:00:00

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Markwayne Mullin Has Made Trump Administration Nominees His Social Media Brand

by Em Luetkemeyer, Oklahoma Watch
February 21, 2025

Sen. Markwayne Mullin has been ceaselessly tweeting the last few weeks, providing real-time updates on nominees confirmed to President Donald Trump’s administration.

“It gives me something to do,” Mullin told NOTUS on Thursday, before the Senate confirmed Kash Patel and after he’d posted a video about Patel’s nomination on Instagram.

“I’m not kidding … It gives me a purpose, a drive, but I’m more personally connected than I’d say most people are,” Mullin said.

Mullin was elected to the Senate in 2022, making this the first time he’s gone through the process of confirming nominees at the start of a new administration. He’s voted yes on every Trump pick to come through so far, and he’s gone out of his way — and beyond what most senators do — to cheer the nominees across the finish line.

He’s been consistent in that role: talking with other senators about them, boosting them in media interviews, inviting them to his office and posting a promotional video or picture.

Mullin’s X posts read like Senate cloakroom scheduling announcements, detailing when the Senate would vote on them.

Sen. John Cornyn told NOTUS he’s seen Mullin’s frequent posts.

“If I want to know what the schedule is, I can check out my Twitter feed, but obviously we all kind of do our own thing when it comes to social media. And [Mullin]’s found a niche that he seems to enjoy, and I think it can prove to be useful,” Cornyn said.

In Mullin’s telling, his relationships with many of the major nominees, like Tulsi Gabbard — who he calls his “sister” — and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who he said he got to know while traveling on behalf of the Trump campaign — go back further than their relationships with many other senators. It’s given him a head start in advocating for them, he said, when some of his colleagues are only sitting down to talk to them for the first time after they’re announced as up for their jobs.

Mullin told NOTUS on Thursday there are “very few” nominees he didn’t know “way before this.”

He said conversations he had on the 2024 campaign trail have been formative for his approach to confirmation season in the Senate.

“President Trump never wanted to put the cart before the horse, so he never talked about cabinet positions at all, but us on the plane did,” Mullin said to NOTUS. “Just a group of us talking just about it. ‘Who do you think would be good at this one?’ It was a constant conversation. And I’m not saying everybody we discussed, obviously, got in, but a lot of them we just — like I said, it’s been an intriguing nomination process my first time to go through it.”

Mullin told NOTUS that the Teamsters union leader, Sean O’Brien, came to him with the idea of nominating Lori Chavez-DeRemer as secretary of labor — a step in reconciling with O’Brien, whom he challenged to a fight at a Senate hearing in 2023. The senator said he and O’Brien separately pitched her to the president, and Trump apparently liked the idea so much he nominated her.

The White House and the Teamsters union did not respond to a request for comment.

Several of Trump’s nominees have faced steep odds, and Mullin has stuck his neck out for them. Mullin advocated for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth when many senators were agonizing over whether his past conduct was disqualifying — or trying to figure out who Hegseth was in the first place. Mullin even pushed back during Hegseth’s hearing, accusing some of his colleagues of voting while drunk and cheating on their partners.

As of now, he’s not showing any signs of stopping until every nominee is through.

“He’s been very active in cabinet nominees, and that’s good,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville told NOTUS. “He’s helped President Trump, as we all have tried to, and he’s done a good job as well as everybody else in our conference.”

This article first appeared on Oklahoma Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The post Markwayne Mullin Has Made Trump Administration Nominees His Social Media Brand appeared first on oklahomawatch.org

www.youtube.com – KFOR Oklahoma’s News 4 – 2025-02-20 18:26:11

SUMMARY: Dozens of Oklahoma families who lost loved ones to impaired drivers gathered at the state capitol to advocate for stricter DUI penalties. Their mission, born from personal tragedy, aims to honor those they lost and prevent similar heartbreak for others. Among them, Kimmel Elkhorn shared her heartbreaking story of losing her husband and son in a crash caused by a drunk driver. They’re joining forces with the nonprofit group Avoid Victims of Impaired Drivers to lobby lawmakers for tougher DUI legislation. Efforts include a bill by Senator Darryl Weaver focused on increasing consequences for DUI offenses to discourage recidivism.

The nonprofit group VOID: Victims of Impaired Drivers spent Monday morning sharing stories with lawmakers, hoping to get stricter DUI laws in Oklahoma. 

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