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Former Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) died Tuesday at the age of 89, multiple reports confirmed.
Inhofe was Oklahoma’s longest serving senator from 1994 to 2023 and passed away peacefully this morning surrounded by his wife Kay, his children and other family members, a former senior aide told Fox News.
Inhofe, a GOP stalwart who was elected to a fifth Senate term in 2020, stepped down in early 2023.
File/Rep. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., is a tour guide and a story teller as well as a pilot. Here, we are airborne to Bartlesville, Oklahoma, on Oct. 14, 1994. ( Chris Martin/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images)
AP reports as Oklahoma’s senior U.S. senator, Inhofe was a staunch supporter of the state’s five military installations and a vocal fan of congressional earmarks.
The Army veteran and licensed pilot, who would fly himself to and from Washington, secured the federal money to fund local road and bridge projects, and criticized House Republicans who wanted a one-year moratorium on such pet projects in 2010.
“Defeating an earmark doesn’t save a nickel,” Inhofe told the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce that August, the AP report notes. “It merely means that within the budget process, it goes right back to the bureaucracy.”
File/Kathleen Turner and Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., at a press conference on child abuse, sponsored by Childheld USA, in April, 1994. (Maureen Keating/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images)
Inhofe frequently challenged those who argued human activity contributed to changes in the Earth’s climate, once calling it “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”
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