[upbeat music] Welcome to Oklahoma Memo. My name is Ryan Welton, the founder and curator of Oklahoma Memo.
This is your Oklahoma news update for Friday, December the 19th, football night in Oklahoma, as the Oklahoma Sooners are set to take on Alabama in just a couple hours. It is 3:30 in the afternoon.
I'm sorry, it's 4:10 in the afternoon. Where does the time go? I'm late with this today, uh, but the explanation is good. I, uh, got to do the podcast with Grant Herms from Make It Make Sense with Grant Herms in person.
My in-laws are coming over for the game, and I'm going to grill, so I've been running errands ever since. But I'm committed to doing this every day.
Well, I want to walk you through what was big in the news on Thursday and still today, but also catch you up on breaking news from this afternoon. We do have some, but just real quick, uh, a weather update.
It feels nice out there. It's in the upper 50s, early- lower 60s. Uh, but next week it's going to get into the 70s.
It's going to be sort of a fake spring, 70 to 75 degrees with heavy winds and a wildfire risk before storms come back through, not this weekend, but next weekend.
This weekend will be nice and seasonable, upper 50s, lower 60s. Now to the breaking news. The Epstein files have been released, but not all of them.
R- remember, Congress told President Trump that he had to release the Epstein files, and for those of you who say Congress can't tell him what to do, they absolutely can.
The three branches are co-equal, and in this case, the Justice Department would do that work, and the Justice Department only released some of the Epstein files.
This from Politico, the lead, "The Department of Justice released a portion of the vast trove of documents related to the federal government's investigation into Jeffrey Epstein on Friday after months of infighting that tested the unity of the MAGA movement."
This happened within the past hour, and of course, we're Central Time right here, so this 4:10 is 5:10 on the East Coast. Their day is over. This is what we would call a Friday news dump.
Also from Politico, "The release comes after Congress passed a bill ordering the Justice Department to make all of its unclassified records related to Epstein's investigation and prosecution public by December the 19th, despite initial objections from President Donald Trump and Republican Party leaders."
Remember, later the president said, "Ah, whatever, I don't care."
Also, it has been suggested that the president or the federal government could just decide that anything that relates to President Trump or anywhere his name is could be considered classified or of national security importance, and so they redact it or remove it or just not release it.
So, uh, there's that. No word on any new photos in there at all. So nothing, uh... There was a picture on Drudge that had, uh, Ghislaine Maxwell and Bill Clinton in a pool but far apart from each other. Um,
I don't know. We knew that Bill Clinton was in the Epstein files to a certain extent. So that was that breaking news. Now let's get to the Oklahoma memo. In Oklahoma, the big story, it's a story from J.C.
Hallman, and you may have heard me if you follow me on TikTok talk about this one. It's the third story he's done in this series. It's not really a series.
He's just following up the news about the, uh, suit against, or the request to intervene in a case involving State Farm insurance.
Gentner Drummond, attorney general and gubernatorial candidate, is very interested in making sure that State Farm doesn't take advantage of Oklahomans, and, uh, he d- is doing that by asking to intervene.
That intervene, that request to intervene would a- if granted, would allow him to do discovery, and not just him, his, you know, the prosecution, his entire office. He is the chief legal officer of Oklahoma.
This from J.C.
Hallman at Oklahoma Watch, "On December the 4th, Attorney General Gentner Drummond filed a petition y- accusing State Farm of violating O-RICO, Oklahoma's version of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970, the so-called RICO laws that were passed to dismantle La Cosa Nostra, the Italian mafia."
Let's, let's full stop for a second here. There has been a lot of conversation and writing over the years connecting the insurance agency and how it,
not State Farm in particular, but insurance in general, and how it, uh, works with mafia tactics. Think about what you may have seen in a movie.
The guy comes around and says, "Ah, we'll protect your business if, uh, if you'll pay us a little bit of protection money." Well, what is insurance but that?
The only problem here is that State Farm is accused of not paying up when the actual damage happens, in this case accused of pre-denying hail damage claims. J.C.
Hallman's work on this from Oklahoma Watch is a must-read, and it was the top story I included in this morning's, Friday morning's Oklahoma memo.
The other story involves a bit of drama between the Attorney General Gentner Drummond and Governor Kevin Stitt, and this pertains to ticketing tribal citizens on reservations.
There have been stories and conversations about hunting rules and tribal citizens and the rules and who governs them, and those are conversations that I tend to tune out because I'm not a hunter. I don'tFish.
I don't hunt. I- heck, I might not even be a man. I may have to give up my man card. Uh, but I don't do any of that. I do own a truck. I do own a truck, so there's that.
The lead from Grayson Wheeler at KOSU, Attorney General Gentner Drummond says tribal wildlife plans in Oklahoma supersede the states on their reservations. This really falls within the theme of McGirt, right?
That tribes are able to self-determine for themselves, govern themselves.
Drummond issued a binding formal opinion on Thursday saying the state's wildlife code does not usurp tribes' sovereignty over wildlife management on their reservations.
Read that story from KOSU to get a little bit better understanding of what's going on there. Governor Stitt disagrees.
Gentner Drummond really is-- he controls what the law is in this state, so, uh, unless Governor Stitt wants to take that to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, that probably is what it is.
I don't even know where you would ta- if Governor Stitt wanted to challenge that, would it be the Oklahoma Supreme Court, or because of McGirt, would he have to actually take it through the Circuit Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court, what have you?
You know, run it up that ladder. I'm not sure. We always have some quick national links in the Oklahoma Memo. Uh, sad story about Greg Biffle. I am a NASCAR fan. I don't know how to change a tire.
I don't know how to change my oil. Um, I have changed a tire before, but I needed a lot of help. I'm just not, I'm not a car guy.
But I really love NASCAR, and I followed NASCAR pretty closely in the 2000s and was quite familiar with Greg Biffle, also known as a big-time humanitarian.
When the floods happened in the Asheville and the Tennessee area, uh, last year, he flew his own helicopter to get necessary resources to people in dire need who could not get out of that own area.
He and his entire family were killed in a plane crash in Statesville, North Carolina, north of Charlotte yesterday.
We don't know precisely what caused it, but apparently they took off, immediately had an issue, tried to come back and land, and it just didn't. So condolences to Greg Biffle and the entire NASCAR community. I--
that's just-- it was a real shock. Very sad to hear about that. President Trump, the day after his
speech on all three of the, all four of, I guess, of the major networks, signed an executive order Thursday easing marijuana restrictions by reclassifying the drug as a Schedule III.
Still illegal, but it will allow for more research on the medical side.
It is not a pathway to recreational, and I talked to a source today who tells me that the state of Oklahoma is going to wait to hear what the DEA specifically says about this before drawing any conclusions or making any plans with regard to President Trump's executive order.
So there's that. Uh, the Brown University shooting seems to have been solved, the suspect found dead. The motive, unknown just yet.
It is believed that the person involved in the Brown University shooting in which two people were killed, and I believe nine others injured, is also tied to a killing of an MIT professor.
From CBS News, TikTok has signed a deal, and I mean TikTok, the company ByteDance, has signed the deal for the sale of its US, of a US arm to American investors, including Larry Ellison, who apparently is just going to own everything in America now.
Then we have the Oklahoma Rundown with a whole bunch of local stories. That's the way we do every day. And I don't just dump every story that's out there to this list. I go out and read the story, and I ask myself,
"Did I learn something from that? Is it going to be valuable to this audience?" So it's, it's like I'm a taster. I taste it first to see if you would like it. A concierge. I'm bringing this to you.
Uh, the lead story in that is about the memorial site that's growing for the two Deer Creek High School students killed in the crash.
Uh, we now know that one of them, I believe her name was Jazlyn, Jazzy Jacobs, and the other student I believe was named Marley. I hope I have that correct. Condolences to their families.
It's just absolutely devastating. Two other people were hurt in that crash as well. Uh, a story about, um, AI in Oklahoma. Oklahoma lawmakers warning that President Trump's AI order could threaten state authority.
There's a big tug-of-war in the artificial intelligence world about who should be regulating AI. I talked to
District 1 congressional candidate John Croissant, a Democrat, who has to win his primary before he gets a chance to face Kevin Hern in District 1.
We talked about artificial intelligence and who exactly should be overseeing that. His answers may surprise you just a little bit. That is a tease. That will be included in Saturday's Oklahoma Memo newsletter.
If you're, if you're stuck with me at this point, go ahead and subscribe to the Oklahoma Memo at oklahomamemo.com/subscribe. The, um,
NonDoc has a story about Guardian 2.0, which I believe is the campaign finance website, which, breaking news, I believe it's back up. I believe it's back up this afternoon, so that may be new information there.
There is a-- this one, file this one under interesting, from KFOR. Judge's decision sparks outrage in noble neighbor dispute case. That one, I read that story, and I thought, "Thank goodness I have good neighbors."
I've got good neighbors on my left. I got good neighbors on my right. Ryan, Jaz, and their families, Sarah, Ashley, love them. They're fantastic. Get you some good neighbors.
And, uh, and then just a handful, including, uh, uh, more stories, including five ways to spend your weekend in Tulsa. That's from Tulsa Flyer. A great story from the Tulsa World. He's hard to kill.
Brett Venables is the gladiator his OU football team embodies. I'm so stoked for the game tonight. Also, um, OU quarterback John Matusiak without fear going into Alabama rematch.
And then a, a just a sweet story from Fox 25 about OU student Addy Trout making history as the first roughneck little sis with Down syndrome. So all of those stories available to you in the Oklahoma Rundown.
They link you to the proper newsroom so that you can go look at those stories on their sites. That's all we got for a Friday. I know it's late. I appreciate you watching. And, uh, go sign up, oklahomamemo.com/subscribe.
One more thing, Boomer Sooner. [upbeat music]