Stay in touch
Sign up for our free newsletter, The Talegate
Sure, the Trump administration’s been shaking down elite schools left and right, but what if it did the same for the Bureau of Indian Education?
That seems to be precisely what’s going on, according to this recent story in the New York Times. Reporter Alan Blinder provides a nice overview of how the administration’s negotiation tactics are creating dread and uncertainty all over the country as kids return to school from summer break.
Interestingly, this could create an opportunity for Rep. Tom Cole from Oklahoma, a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, to fight back from his position as the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. The committee voted last month to recommend spending the same amount of money on tribal education it did last year, which would seem to directly conflict with the $161 million budget cut that Trump is calling for. Will Cole stand up to defend tribal education? Remains to be seen!
What’s Going On At The Black Wall Street Times?
Yesterday the Black Wall Street Times announced a sprint to raise $25,000 over the next 60 days, an ambitious effort that its editor, Nehemiah Frank, detailed on Substack. From that post:
The funding we saw during the George Floyd protests and during the Centennial of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre has dried up,” Frank wrote. “Everyone has been given the choice to stay in their roles or leave during this difficult time. I gave them this option because I know they care about the work that we do at The Black Wall Street Times just as much as I do. They decided to stay and weather the storm; however, you can’t push through if your lights, car, and roof are gone — and I get it.
Meanwhile, BWST managing editor Deon Osborne took to Facebook to say that he hasn’t been paid on time for months now.
The Reverse Grapes Of Wrath Trend Doesn’t Seem To Be Slowing Down Anytime Soon
By now you’ve probably seen enough stories from media outlets in larger markets spreading the word about Tulsa Remote to last a lifetime. They usually hit the same notes: Tulsa’s like a smaller Austin, the people who relocate here enjoy a better quality of life than whatever city they came from and—hoo boy!—would you believe how cheap it is to buy a house!
The latest such story comes from SFGate, and touts Tulsa’s appeal to Californians, who make up the second largest cohort of participants in the program (15%) after participants relocating from Texas. It’s interesting reading mainly because you can see in it the contours of the pitch that Tulsa Remote is making to these Reverse Tom Joads: that we’ve got museums, parks and a good community, and you’ll save so much time not commuting that you can indulge a side gig, hobby or volunteerism.
More and more, Tulsa Remote seems to have instilled itself as a fact of Tulsa life. It’s over six years into operation now and has relocated 3,475 people, according to its most recent annual report. Also in that report is the claim that Tulsa Remote’s brought $30.5M in tax revenue to city, county and state coffers, dollars that local governments would be loath to see dry up.
But perhaps the surest sign that Tulsa Remote isn’t going anywhere anytime soon is that this broader trend of domestic in-migration (people relocating from one American city to another) appears to be holding. Remoters are moving to Tulsa, yes, but that’s only because, on the whole, they’re moving out of the country’s mega-metropolises at scale.
One way you can tell that the out-of-state flow into Tulsa’s gotten steady is that more than one realtor’s taken to YouTube to get in front of potential out-of-state homebuyers, and they’re stretching the fabric of reality to make their pitches. In this 54-minute long video realtor Sabrina Shaw claims we don’t have crazy politics (???) and calls Tulsa “our little mini-LA” (?????).
Maybe this YouTube video is a peek into our increasingly weird future?
