President of the United States: Donald Trump
Republican candidate Donald Trump was the first to reach 270 electoral votes last Tuesday, managing to take key battleground states like Florida and Ohio despite what many considered a narrow path to victory heading into Election Day. In Oklahoma, president-elect Trump won handily, with 65 percent of votes in the state going to him. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton received 29 percent of the overall vote and Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson received 6 percent of the vote. According to data from Tulsa World, 85 percent of voting precincts in Oklahoma went to Trump. Tulsa County precinct 33, containing TU, only cast 32.2 percent of its votes for Trump, though it doesn’t specify what percentage went to Clinton and what went to Johnson.
Trump’s election has been met with protest around the nation, including demonstrations in Tulsa (see the article by Trent Gibbons on page 2). Protesters argue that Trump is unfit to serve office and should not be elected on the basis that he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. Online, a change.org petition calling for the Electoral College to vote for Hillary Clinton (who won the popular vote by almost 400,000 votes) has garnered over 3 million signatures within three days of Trump’s election. The hashtag #NotMyPresident has also been trending on Twitter and Facebook, reflecting many people’s feeling that the result was undemocratic.
Despite protest and outrage surrounding his election, Trump is looking to the future, having recently released his “100-day action plan to Make America Great Again.” The first section of the plan details his efforts to handle corruption in D.C. This list included term limits for members of Congress, a ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for U.S. elections and a requirement that two existing federal regulations must be eliminated to create one new regulation.
The second section looks at the protection of American workers, including a renegotiation of NAFTA, a withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and cancelling U.S. payments to U.N. climate change programs. The third section is focused on “security and the constitutional rule of law.” Actions within this section include finding a replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, removing over 2 million criminal illegal immigrants and suspending immigration from “terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur.”
US Senator for Oklahoma: James Lankford
Last Tuesday, Republican James Lankford won his first complete term in the US Senate. Lankford received 68 percent of the vote, defeating Democrat Mike Workman, who received 25 percent, Libertarian Robert Murphy and Independent Sean Braddy, who both received three percent, and Independent Mark Beard, who received two percent.
After Senator Tom Coburn stepped down at the end of the 113th Congress in January 2015, Lankford was voted in to serve the last two years of Coburn’s six-year term, leaving the House of Representatives after four years. He is currently on four committees: Appropriations, Homeland Security, Intelligence and Indian Affairs. Lankford’s stances on major issues tend to be standard conservative fare: he has taken a pledge to endorse no new taxes, supports the Patriot Act and feels that federally funded health care is unconstitutional.
US Representatives for Oklahoma
All five of Oklahoma’s Republican representatives retained their positions in last Tuesday’s election. Most of Tulsa and its surrounding towns are in District 1, represented by Jim Bridenstine. Bridenstine, who began in the House in 2013 as a member of the Tea Party, ran unopposed in last week’s election, the only Representative to have that luxury. He is currently on two committees: Armed Forces (Bridenstine is a Navy veteran) and Science, Space and Technology. Much like Lankford, Bridenstine’s stances are fairly standard: he believes that marriage is between a man and a woman, personhood begins at conception and that “the Second Amendment is not negotiable to the people of Oklahoma’s First District.”
