America is officially shut down, and that includes Oklahoma. Except for, you know, a poor response to the global pandemic, the state legislature amending the Open Meeting Act, elections being delayed, Senator Infofe suspiciously selling some stock, and people from Maine knitting llama wool. Special guest Effie Rorke joins us as we cover all of that and more in this week's episode!  Show notes are below.

Coronavirus update

• OU & OSU, many others online-only for remainder of semester, graduations postponed
• OSDE expected to do same for public schools - school meals will still be served and Supt Hofmeister waived all state testing for this school year
• State epidemiologist replaced (presumably because he’s better at epidemiology than at press conferences)
• State has a critical shortage of coronavirus testing supplies, so only the most sick or at-risk are being tested
• As testing expands, the number of cases diagnoses WILL increase dramatically over the next several weeks. Officials expecting a surge. [The Frontier] ⅔ of current positive cases are in the OKC metro
• Just to reiterate: it at all possible, STAY HOME
• A word about death and severity rates: 
• US 1.3%
• SK 1.0%
• Worldwide 4.1%
• A word about exponential growth
• We had our first COVID-19 death; a Tulsan 

Oklahoma Government Stuff

• Legislature passed two bills on Tuesday: one to allow money to be transferred out of the Lengthy Trial Fund (that most of us probably didn’t know existed)
• State Senate is recessing until March 27th 
• Legislature made changes to the state’s Open Meeting Act to allow public entities to meet via teleconference or video conference. FOI Oklahoma weighed in, AG is helping clarify rules
• Governor Stitt continues to pursue his plan for Medicaid
• Terrible time for a public comment period, and yet, they’re still doing it
• Campaign against it: https://coverok.org/
• Future elections:
• Election Board declared an “election emergency,” clearing the way for April elections to be rescheduled
• Will this impact candidate filings and June primaries? 

Run down on federal legislation that has been passed / what is being worked on 

• Initial appropriation
• Families First Coronavirus Response Act
• Stimulus bill 

Senator James Inhofe

• Voted against coronavirus package (as did Lankford)
• NYT reporting Inhofe was among a group of US senators who dumped stocks ahead of pandemic really taking off