Republican Report Card: Oklahoma Edition

 Oklahoma Has Had Unified Republican Government Since 2011. Here is their Report Card.

Oklahoma voters are being told that changing political direction would put the state at risk.

Before accepting or rejecting that argument, it is worth looking at the measurable results of the direction Oklahoma has followed.

Republicans have controlled the governor’s office and both chambers of the Oklahoma Legislature continuously since 2011.

That period gives Oklahoma a long record to examine.

THE OKLAHOMA POCKETBOOK

• Oklahoma median household income is $65,039, compared with $80,734 nationally—a gap of nearly $15,700 a year.

• Colorado, a neighboring state that competes with Oklahoma for businesses and workers, has median household income of $95,470—more than $30,000 above Oklahoma using the same Census measure.

• 14.9% of Oklahomans live below the poverty line, compared with 10.6% nationally.

These numbers tell us that the typical Oklahoma household has substantially less income than the typical American household.

HOW MANY OKLAHOMA FAMILIES ARE STRUGGLING?

• In 2024, 23,694 Oklahoma births—49.7% of all births—were paid by Medicaid through SoonerCare.Nationally, Medicaid finances roughly four in ten births. In plain English, approximately one out of every two babies born in Oklahoma was born with Medicaid paying for the delivery.

• 13.7% of Oklahomans under age 65 lack health insurance, compared with 9.6% nationally. Oklahoma's uninsured rate is about 43% higher than the national rate.

• USDA found that 16.9% of Oklahoma households experienced food insecurity during 2022–2024, compared with 13.3% nationally over the same three-year period.

The number of Oklahomans who need this assistance tells us something important about the economic circumstances of Oklahoma households compared with the rest of the country.

HEALTH, HOSPITALS AND HOW LONG OKLAHOMANS LIVE

• Oklahoma life expectancy was 73.8 years in 2022. U.S. life expectancy was 77.5 years—a difference of 3.7 years.

• Oklahoma's 2024 infant mortality rate was 7.42 deaths per 1,000 live births, compared with 5.52 nationally—about 34% higher. Only five states had higher infant mortality rates, giving Oklahoma the sixth-highest rate among the 50 states.

• Oklahoma has 73 open rural inpatient hospitals. The Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform identifies 45—62%—as at risk of closing, including 18 at immediate risk. Seven rural hospitals have closed since 2015, while six additional facilities have ended inpatient services or converted.

The consequences do not stop at the county line. When rural services disappear, patients have to travel farther for care and other hospitals must absorb those patients.

Federal law requires hospital emergency departments covered by EMTALA to screen and stabilize patients with emergency medical conditions regardless of whether they have insurance or can pay.

That makes access to primary care, health insurance and financially stable local hospitals more than rural health issues. They are part of the economics of Oklahoma's entire health-care system.

EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE PIPELINE

• On the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, Oklahoma fourth graders averaged 233 in mathematics versus 237 nationally and 207 in reading versus 214 nationally.

• Oklahoma eighth graders averaged 264 in mathematics versus 272 nationally and 249 in reading versus 257 nationally.

• Only 28.3% of Oklahomans age 25 and older have a bachelor's degree or higher, compared with 35.7% nationally.

These are not simply school statistics. They are economic-development statistics.

Major employers such as Boeing have emphasized the importance of Oklahoma producing more career-ready workers with strong technical skills. Todd Pauley, who handles government and community relations for Boeing in Oklahoma, put the issue plainly:

“Businesses will look elsewhere for the talent they need.”

That raises a basic economic-development question:

Is Oklahoma putting enough of its economic-development resources into producing the skilled workers employers say they need—or relying too heavily on tax incentives to attract and retain businesses?

Oklahoma's education funding history makes that question more important.

By 2018, inflation-adjusted state aid per student had fallen 28.2% from its 2008 level—the largest reduction in the country on that measure.

At the same time, Oklahoma's reliance on emergency-certified teachers exploded.

The State Department of Education reported just 32 emergency teacher certificates in 2011–12. That number had reached 2,153 by 2017–18 and 2,852 by December of the following school year. OSDE counted 3,721 emergency-certified teachers in 2023–24 and 3,329 in 2024–25.

Student results weakened over much of the same period. Oklahoma's fourth-grade reading score is now below the national average, as are its fourth-grade mathematics and eighth-grade reading scores.

Those trends do not require us to claim that one budget cut caused one test score. They do show what was happening to Oklahoma's education system while employers were telling the state they needed more highly trained workers.

SAFETY AND SOCIAL WELL-BEING

• Oklahoma's suicide rate was 21.79 deaths per 100,000 people, compared with about 14.1 nationally—roughly 55% higher.

• At the end of 2023, Oklahoma had 545 sentenced state prisoners per 100,000 residents, compared with 318 per 100,000 across state prison systems nationally. Oklahoma's rate was about 71% higher, and only Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas had higher state imprisonment rates.

• The CDC's latest National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey found that 41.6% of Oklahoma womenreported lifetime contact sexual violence, physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner, compared with 34.0% nationally. Among Oklahoma men, the figure was 25.5%, compared with 17.0% nationally.

Again, these are different measures of well-being, with different causes. But taken together, they are part of Oklahoma's report card.

STATE FISCAL AND ECONOMIC-DEVELOPMENT CHOICES

Oklahoma did not refuse to use government to shape the economy.

It made choices about where government would intervene and where public resources would go.

The Parental Choice Tax Credit

The Parental Choice Tax Credit was promoted as a way to expand educational choice. The state's own September 2026 report gives us a way to measure how much new choice it is actually producing.

• Oklahoma had approved 41,466 students for $264.8 million in private-school tax credits for the 2026–27 school year as of September 3.

• Only 3,515 of those students—8.5%—had attended a public school the previous semester. More than 91% were not coming directly from public schools.

• About 73% of approved students were in households reporting adjusted gross income above $75,000.

• Those households received about $183 million—69% of the approved dollars.

• Households reporting income above $250,000 alone were approved for more than $54 million.

• Geographic concentration is also significant. In the previous school year, Tulsa and its surrounding suburbs alone accounted for nearly $96 million in private-school tax credits.

If the purpose is to expand educational choice, the relevant question is straightforward:

How much of this spending is creating a choice families did not previously have—and how much is subsidizing choices that had already been made?

The Shadow Budget

There is a larger issue.

Our reconstruction of Oklahoma's major economic-development tax expenditures and incentive commitments puts the comparable Shadow Budget at roughly $200 million around the beginning of unified Republican government in 2011.

Today, recurring commitments approach approximately $1.3 billion a year. When the state's $200 million taxpayer-endowment commitment is included, the broader Shadow Budget approaches $1.5 billion—roughly 12 cents for every dollar in Oklahoma's appropriated budget.

Those commitments include tax credits, rebates, reduced tax rates, exemptions and economic-development incentives.

During much of the same period, Oklahoma was also reducing income-tax rates. The top individual rate was 5.5% in 2011, fell to 5.25% in 2012, later to 5%, then 4.75%, and is 4.5% for tax year 2026.

Oklahoma's Constitution also makes raising revenue unusually difficult. A revenue bill generally requires either voter approval or a three-fourths vote in both houses of the Legislature.

That matters because Oklahoma has to make choices with the revenue it has.

Oklahoma cannot spend the same dollar twice.

A dollar committed through a tax preference or tax reduction is a dollar that is not available for another purpose unless additional revenue replaces it.

That means decisions about tax incentives are also decisions about the resources available for education, health care, rural hospitals, workforce development, infrastructure and the other measures of well-being discussed above.

And that brings us back to what employers themselves are saying.

If employers say their constraint is skilled labor, workforce development is economic development.

If rural hospitals are financially vulnerable, health-care infrastructure is economic development.

If household incomes substantially trail the country, raising the earning power of Oklahoma workers is economic development.

And if businesses cannot find enough trained workers, education is economic development.

The question is not whether every tax incentive is bad.

The question is whether Oklahoma has been putting its economic-development dollars where they produce the greatest return for the people who live here.

THE RECORD

When one party has controlled the governor's office and both chambers of the Legislature since 2011, voters have a record they can examine.

Household income matters.

Nearly half of births being financed by Medicaid matters.

A 43% higher uninsured rate matters.

Food insecurity matters.

Rural hospitals matter.

A life expectancy 3.7 years below the nation matters.

An infant mortality rate 34% above the nation matters.

Reading and mathematics matter.

The workforce employers say they need matters.

How Oklahoma chooses to spend $1.3 billion to $1.5 billion in tax preferences and economic-development commitments matters.

Those are not partisan statistics.

They describe the Oklahoma in which people actually live.

Wanting Oklahoma to do better is not the same as disliking Oklahoma.

I criticize its leaders because I care about the people who live here—and because “love it or leave it” has never fixed a single problem.

Follow the money at wlangdon.substack.com

Sources

U.S. Census Bureau, QuickFacts: Oklahoma, United States and Colorado—median household income, poverty, educational attainment and uninsured population. Oklahoma's uninsured rate is 13.7% versus 9.6% nationally. (Census.gov)

CDC/National Center for Health Statistics, Oklahoma—Stats of the States—life expectancy and state health statistics. (CDC)

CDC/National Center for Health Statistics, Infant Mortality in the United States, 2024. The final data report a U.S. rate of 5.52 and Oklahoma rate of 7.42; the state table shows only five states with higher rates. (CDC)

National Center for Health Statistics/March of Dimes PeriStats—Medicaid/SoonerCare coverage of Oklahoma births.

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Household Food Security in the United States in 2024. Oklahoma: 16.9%; U.S.: 13.3% for the 2022–2024 state-comparison period. (Economic Research Service)

Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, Rural Hospitals at Risk of Closing, May 2026. (Rural Hospitals)

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act guidance.

National Center for Education Statistics, The Nation's Report Card: Oklahoma, 2024. (Nation's Report Card)

Oklahoma State Department of Education, Teacher Shortage Legislative Brief—32 emergency certificates in 2011–12 and rapid subsequent growth. (Welcome to Oklahoma's Official Web Site)

Oklahoma State Department of Education, OSDE Fast Facts—3,721 emergency-certified teachers in 2023–24 and 3,329 in 2024–25. (Welcome to Oklahoma's Official Web Site)

Oklahoma education-funding data summarized by the Oklahoma Policy Institute from the national state-aid comparison—28.2% inflation-adjusted reduction in per-pupil state aid from 2008, the largest decline nationally at the time. (OK Policy Institute)

Oklahoma Business Voice, interview with Todd Pauley, Boeing government and community relations, January 2026.

CDC, National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, 2023/2024 Intimate Partner Violence Data Brief. U.S. women: 34.0%; Oklahoma women: 41.6%. U.S. men: 17.0%; Oklahoma men: 25.5%. (CDC)

U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2023—Statistical Tables. (Bureau of Justice Statistics)

CDC, Suicide Rates by State. Oklahoma: 21.79 deaths per 100,000. (CDC)

Oklahoma Tax Commission, Parental Choice Tax Credit Report for School Year 2026–2027, September 3, 2026. The report shows 41,466 approved students, 3,515 who previously attended public school and $264,788,333 approved. (Welcome to Oklahoma's Official Web Site)

Oklahoma Tax Commission, Parental Choice Tax Credit program and HB 3705—statutory program cap increased to $275 million for 2026–27. (Welcome to Oklahoma's Official Web Site)

Tulsa Flyer, Thousands of Tulsa families received $70M in private school tax credits last year, August 3, 2026—Tulsa plus surrounding suburbs accounted for nearly $96 million. (Tulsa Flyer)

Oklahoma Tax Commission, Tax Expenditure Reports, including 2011–12 and 2023–24, and Oklahoma economic-development program reports used in the Shadow Budget reconstruction. (Welcome to Oklahoma's Official Web Site)

Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services—historical individual income-tax rates. (Welcome to Oklahoma's Official Web Site)

Oklahoma Statutes—4.5% top individual income-tax rate for tax year 2026. (Westlaw Government)

Oklahoma Constitution, Article V, Section 33—three-fourths legislative requirement for revenue bills not submitted to voters.

The Christian Nationalist Hydra (TPM)

The Christian Nationalist Hydra: In Era of Trump, Christian Nationalism Has Many Faces

 From traditional Christian-right figures to secret societies envisioning a ‘national divorce,’ a growing contingent of radical activists is planning for Christian supremacy.

By Sarah Posner     April 12, 2024 9:54 a.m.

I am a journalist who has covered the Christian right for two decades. Over the past three years, I began to more frequently use the term “Christian nationalism” to describe the movement I cover. But I did not start using a new term to suggest its proponents’ ideology had changed. Instead, the term had come into more common usage in the Trump era, now regularly used by academics, journalists, and pro-democracy activists to describe a movement that insists America is a “Christian nation” — that is, an illiberal, nominally democratic theocracy, rather than a pluralistic secular democracy.

To me, the phrase was highly descriptive of the movement I’ve dedicated my career to covering, and neatly encapsulates the core threat the Christian right poses to freedom and equality. From its top leaders and influencers down to the grassroots — politically mobilized white evangelicals, the foot soldiers of the Christian right — its proponents believe that God divinely ordained America to be a Christian nation; that this Christian nation has come under attack by liberals and secularists; and that patriotic Christians must engage in spiritual warfare to rid America of demonic forces, and in political action to restore its Christian heritage. That includes taking political steps — as a voter, as an elected official, as a lawyer, as a judge — to ensure that America is governed according to a “biblical worldview.”

If you want to see that definition in action, look no further than the career of House Speaker Mike Johnson. Seventeen years ago, when I interviewed Johnson, then a lawyer with the Christian right legal powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom, I would have labeled him a loyal soldier in the Christian right’s legal army trying to bring down the separation of church and state. He is a product of and a participant in a sprawling religious and political infrastructure that has made the movement’s successes possible, from politically active megachurches, to culture-shaping organizations like Focus on the Family, to political players like the Family Research Council, to the legal force in his former employer ADF. 

In today’s parlance, Johnson is a Christian nationalist — although he, like most of his compatriots, has certainly not embraced the label. But Mike Johnson the House Speaker is still Mike Johnson the lawyer I interviewed all those years ago: an evangelical called to politics to be a “servant leader” to a Christian nation, dedicated to its governance according to a biblical worldview: against church-state separation, for expanded rights for conservative Christians, adamantly against abortion and LGBTQ rights, and especially, currently, trans rights.

That mindset is still the beating heart of the Christian right, even as the movement, and other movements in the far-right space, have radicalized in the Trump era, taking on new forms and embracing a range of solutions to the apocalyptic trajectory they see America to be on. Different movements imagining a version of Christian supremacy exist side by side — different strains that often borrow ideas from one another, and that fit comfortably under the banner of Christian nationalism.  

The term “Christian nationalism” became popularized during Trump’s presidency for a few reasons. First, Trump, who first ran in 2016 on a nativist platform with the nationalist slogan “Make America Great Again,” was and still is dependent on white evangelicals to win elections and maintain a hold on power. He is consequently willing to carry out their goals, bringing their ambitions closer to fruition than they’ve ever been in their 45-year marriage to the Republican Party. They have been clear, for example, in crediting him for the downfall of Roe v. Wade, among other assaults on other peoples’ rights.

Second, the prominence of Christian iconography at the January 6 insurrection, and the support for Trump’s stolen election lie before, during, and after January 6 by both Christian right influencers and the grassroots, brought into stark relief that Christian nationalist motivations helped fuel his attempted coup.  

Finally, sociologists studying the belief systems of Christian nationalists pushed the term into public usage, as did anti-nationalist Christians, especially after January 6, in order to elevate awareness of the threats Christian nationalism poses to democracy. (The paperback edition of my book, Unholy, which was published in mid-2021 and included a post-January 6 afterword, reflected the increasing usage of the term Christian nationalists by including the term in a fresh subtitle.)

The Trump era, along with the rise of openly Christian nationalist social media sites like Gab, and Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, have given space for otherwise unknown figures, like the rabidly antisemitic Gab founder Andrew Torba, co-author of the book Christian Nationalism: A Biblical Guide For Taking Dominion And Discipling Nations, and Stephen Wolfe, author of the racist book The Case for Christian Nationalism, to enter the Christian nationalism discourse. Although Torba and Wolfe have made waves online, and extremism watchers are rightly alarmed that their tracts could prove influential and radicalizing, they remain distinct from the Christian right. Torba’s antisemitism is so extreme, for example, that Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano — himself extreme — was forced to create some daylight between himself and his supporter Torba in his 2022 run. Torba’s site platformed the antisemitic rantings of the shooter in the 2018 massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue, and Torba himself has said Jews aren’t welcome in his envisioned Christian nation. The Republican Jewish Coalition called Gab “a cesspool of bigotry and antisemitism.” Mastriano’s move seemed motivated more by self-preservation than contrition (and he lost the race anyway). 

That’s not to say, of course, that the Christian right and the conservative movement more broadly haven’t tolerated racists and other extremists in their midst — Trump’s endurance as their savior itself proves just how much that tolerance persists. Their entire alliance with Trump is one of sharing political and ideological space with the overtly antisemitic, racist, Islamophobic, nativist extremists he elevated to mainstream status in the GOP. But the Christian right is also committed to Christian Zionism, an ideology that claims to love the state of Israel while imagining it as the locus of Jesus’s violent return, and which is, in its philosemitism and bloody apocalyptic fantasies, antisemitic. Still, it would make it difficult for them to form explicit alliances with someone like Torba, a self-described Christian nationalist who repeatedly and unabashedly promotes some of the world’s oldest and ugliest antisemitic tropes like the Jews killed Jesus and secretly control the world. 

What’s more, Torba advocates for a “parallel society” for Christians to escape the supposedly debauched America he deplores. This is not unlike the Benedict Option advocated by conservative Christian (and Viktor Orbán admirer) Rod Dreher, or the secret, hyper-patriarchal Society for Civic American Renewal exposed by TPM’s Josh Kovensky, which is recruiting “unhyphenated” men of only certain denominations to run a Christian government after an anticipated “national divorce.” The language of SACR’s internal documents, to me, as a student of evangelicalism, is quite distinct from the sort of statement of faith you’d see from a church or evangelical organization, which would emphasize one’s salvation in Jesus Christ, commitment to the Bible as the literal, inerrant word of God, and the imperative for Christians to preach the gospel around the world.

The conventional Christian right does not want a parallel society or a divorce. They believe they are restoring, and will run, the Christian nation God intended America to be — from the inside. They will do that, in their view, through faith (evangelizing others and bringing them to salvation through Jesus Christ); through spiritual warfare (using prayer to battle satanic enemies of Christian America); and through politics and the law (governing and lawmaking from a “biblical worldview” after eviscerating church-state separation). Changes in the evangelical world, particularly the emphasis in the growing charismatic movement on prophecy, signs and wonders, spiritual warfare, the prosperity gospel, and Trumpism, has intensified the prominence of the supernatural in their politics, giving their Christian nationalism its own unmistakable brand.

For decades, Christian right has been completely open about their beliefs and goals. Their quest to take dominion over American institutions by openly evangelizing and instituting Christian supremacist policies sets the Christian right apart from other types of Christian nationalists who might operate in secret, or imagine utopian communities as the ideal way to save themselves from a secular, debauched nation. 

The fact that far-right extremists like Torba or Wolfe embrace the Christian nationalist label gives the more conventional Christian right leaders and organizations space to disassociate themselves from it. Some also berate journalists who use it to describe them, accusing them of hurling a left-wing slur at Christians. 

The bottom line is that Christian nationalism takes on different forms, and despite organizational or even ideological differences, ideas can penetrate the often porous borders between different camps. Someone who receives the daily email blast from the Family Research Council might also be drawn to Wolfe’s book, for example. On a more unnerving, macro level, major right-wing and GOP figures, including Marjorie Taylor Greene and the CEO of the Daily Wire, the podcast consortium run by conservative influencer Ben Shapiro, have embraced the rabidly antisemitic, Hitler-admiring antagonist Nick Fuentes, who is Catholic but also is accurately described as a Christian nationalist. The increasingly influential Catholic integralist movement, which seeks a Catholic-inflected replacement for the “liberal order,” is yet another unique form of Christian nationalism.

Christian nationalism is a serious threat to democracy, because it is premised on the supremacy of Christianity and rejects the democratic values of freedom and equality for all. It is crucial to understand that it takes various forms, how its numerous proponents differ, and how they intersect. Some pose a threat because of their proximity to political and legal power; others because they accelerate racist and antisemitic rhetoric; and still others because they might incite violence. These distinctions show how Christian nationalism is varied, very combustible, and critical to combat.

 

Dear Republicans: We Tried Your Way and It Does Not Work 

Their "Reaganism" sales pitch was effective, and we’ve now had 42 years of the so-called Reagan Revolution: It’s time to say out loud that it hasn’t worked.

Thom Hartmann

The 1970s were a pivotal decade, and not just because it saw the end of the Vietnam War, the resignation of Nixon, and the death of both the psychedelic hippie movement and the very political (and sometimes violent) SDS.  Most consequentially, the 1970s were when the modern-day Republican Party was birthed.

Prior to that, the nation had hummed along for 40 years on a top income tax bracket of 91% and a corporate income tax that topped out around 50%. Business leaders ran their companies, which were growing faster than at any time in the history of America, and avoided participating in politics.

Democrat Franklin Roosevelt and Republican Dwight Eisenhower renewed America with modern, state-of-the-art public labs, schools, and public hospitals across the nation; nearly free college, trade school, and research support; healthy small and family businesses; unions protecting a third of America’s workers so two-thirds had a living wage and benefits; and an interstate highway system, rail system, and network of new airports that transformed the nation’s commerce.

When we handed America over to Ronald Reagan in 1981 it was a brand, gleaming new country with a prosperous and thriving middle class.

The seeds of today’s American crisis were planted just ten years earlier, in 1971, when Lewis Powell, then a lawyer for the tobacco industry, wrote his infamous “Powell Memo.” It became a blueprint for the morbidly rich and big corporations to take over the weakened remnants of Nixon’s Republican Party and then America.

They then moved on to infiltrate our universities, seize our media, pack our courts, integrate themselves into a large religious movement to add millions of votes, and turn upside down our tax, labor, and gun laws.

That effort burst onto the American scene with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan.

By 1982 America was agog at the “new ideas” this newly-invented GOP was putting forward. They included radical tax cuts, pollution deregulation, destroying unions, and slashing the support services the New Deal and Great Society once offered people (because, Republicans said, feeding, educating, or providing healthcare to people made them dependent).

Their sales pitch was effective, and we’ve now had 42 years of the so-called Reagan Revolution.

It’s time to simply say out loud that it hasn’t worked:

Republicans told us if we just cut the top tax rate on the morbidly rich from the 74% it was at in 1980 down to 27% it would “trickle down” benefits to everybody else as, they said, the “job creators” would be unleashed on our economy.

Instead of a more general prosperity, we’ve now ended up with the greatest wealth and income inequality in the world, as over $50 trillion was transferred over 40 years from the bottom 90% to the top 1%, where it remains to this day. The middle class has gone from over 60% of us to fewer than half of us. It now takes 2 full-time wage earners to sustain the same lifestyle one could in 1980.

Republicans told us if we just deregulated guns and let anybody buy and carry as many as they wanted wherever they wanted it would clean up our crime problem and put the fear of God into our politicians.

“An armed society is a polite society” was the bumper sticker back during Reagan’s time, the NRA relentlessly promoting the lie that the Founders and Framers put the 2nd Amendment into the Constitution so “patriots” could kill politicians. Five Republicans on the Supreme Court even got into the act by twisting the law and lying about history to make guns more widely available.

Instead of a “polite” society or politicians who listened better to their constituents, we ended up with school shootings and a daily rate of gun carnage unmatched anywhere else in the developed world.

Republicans told us that if we just ended sex education in our schools and outlawed abortion, we’d return to “the good old days” when, they argued, every child was wanted and every marriage was happy.

Instead of helping young Americans, we’ve ended up with epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, and — now that abortion is illegal in state after state — a return to deadly back-alley abortions.

Republicans told us that if we just killed off Civics and History classes in our schools, we’d “liberate” our young people to focus instead on science and math.

Instead, we’ve raised two generations of Americans that can’t even name the three branches of government, much less understand the meaning of the Constitution’s reference to the “General Welfare.”

Republicans told us that if we cut state and federal aid to higher education — which in 1980 paid for about 80% of a student’s tuition — so that students would have what they told us was “skin in the game,” we’d see students take their studies more seriously and produce a new generation of engineers and scientists to prepare us for the 21st century.

Instead of happy students, since we cut that 80% government support down to around 20% (with the 80% now covered by student’s tuition), our nation is groaning under a $2 trillion dollar student debt burden, preventing young people from buying homes, starting businesses, or beginning families. While students are underwater, banksters who donate to Republican politicians are making billions in profits every single week of the year from these bizarrely non-negotiable loans .

Republicans told us that if we just stopped enforcing the anti-monopoly and anti-trust laws that had protected small businesses for nearly 100 years, there would be an explosion of innovation and opportunity as companies got bigger and better.

Instead, we’ve seen every industry in America become so consolidated that competition is dead, price gouging and profiteering reign, and it’s impossible to start or find small family-owned businesses anymore in downtowns, malls, and the suburbs. It’s all giant chains, many now owed by hedge funds or private equity. Few family or local businesses can compete against such giants.

Republicans told us that if we just changed the laws to let corporations pay their senior executives with stock (in addition to cash) they’d be “more invested” in the fate and future of the company and business would generally become healthier.

Instead, nearly every time a corporation initiates a stock buyback program, millions and often billions of dollars flow directly into the pockets of the main shareholders and executives — while workers, the company, and society suffer the loss.

Republicans told us that if we just let a handful of individual companies and billionaires buy most of our media, a thousand flowers would grow and we’d have the most diverse media landscape in the world. At first, as the internet was opening in the 90s, they even giddily claimed it was happening.

Now a small group of often-rightwing companies own our major media/internet companies, radio and TV stations, as well as local newspapers across the country. In such a landscape, progressive voices, as you can imagine, are generally absent.

Republicans told us we should hand all our healthcare decisions not to our doctors but to bureaucratic insurance industry middlemen who would decide which of our doctor’s suggestions they’d approve and which they’d reject. They said this will “lower costs and increase choice.”

In all of the entire developed world — all the OECD countries on 4 continents — there are only 500,000 medical bankruptcies a year. Every single one of them is here in America.

Republicans told us if we just got rid of our unions, then our bosses and the companies that employ them would give us better pay, more benefits, and real job security.

As everybody can see, they lied. And are working as hard as they can to prevent America from returning to the levels of unionization we had before Reagan’s Great Republican Experiment.

Republicans told us if we went with the trade agreement the GHW Bush administration had negotiated — NAFTA — and then signed off on the WTO, that we’d see an explosion of jobs.

There was an explosion; lots of them, in fact, as over 60,000 American factories were torn down or left vacant because their products were moved to China or elsewhere. Over 10 million good-paying jobs went overseas along with those 60,000 factories.

Republicans told us global warming was a hoax: they’re still telling us that, in fact. And therefore, they say, we shouldn’t do anything to interfere with the profits of their friends in the American fossil fuel industry and the Middle East.

The hoax, it turns out, was the lie that there was no global warming — a lie that the industry spent hundreds of millions over decades to pull off. They succeeded in delaying action on global warming by at least three decades and maybe as many as five. That lie produced trillions in profits and brought us the climate crisis that is today killing millions and threatens all life on Earth.

And then, of course, there’s the biggest GOP lie of them all: “Money is the same thing as Free Speech.”

Five Republicans on the Supreme Court told us that if we threw out around 1000 anti-corruption and anti-bribery laws at both the state and federal level so politicians and political PACs could take unaccountable billions, even from foreign powers, it would “strengthen and diversify” the range of voices heard in America.

It’s diversified it, for sure. We’re now regularly hearing from racists and open Nazis, many of them elected Republican officials, who would have been driven out of decent society before the Reagan Revolution. American political discourse hasn’t been this filled with conflict and violence since the Civil War, and much of it can be traced straight back to the power and influence of dark money unleashed by five Republicans on the Supreme Court.

The bottom line is that we — as a nation, voluntarily or involuntarily — have now had the full Republican experience.

And now that we know what it is, we’re no longer listening to the Republican politicians who are continuing to try to sell us this bullshit.

We don’t want to hear Republicans sermonizing about deficits (that they themselves caused).

Or welfare (that they damaged and then exploited).

Or even whatever they’re calling “faith” these days, be it the death penalty, forcing raped women to give birth at the barrel of a gun, or burning books.

We’re over it, Republicans. A new America is being birthed from the ashes of the Reagan Revolution and you can’t stop it much longer.