Oklahoma House Passes Bill Renaming State Highway After Former President Trump
The Oklahoma House of Representatives has recently passed a bill that would rename a state highway after former President Donald Trump.
A local report said the state’s GOP-led legislature added a provision in an omnibus bridge and highway naming bill that would name a 20-mile stretch of US 287 in the Oklahoma Panhandle as “President Donald J. Trump Highway.”
“Republican lawmakers slipped two paragraphs about the highway into the Oklahoma Senate’s omnibus bridge and highway naming bill, in which lawmakers typically seek to memorialize notable Oklahomans,” it said.
Breaking! Oklahoma House just passed SB624, a bill that would name an Oklahoma highway the “President Donald J. Trump Highway”.
I’m Proud to say I was born and raised in the great state of Oklahoma pic.twitter.com/XI4zrYOLmX
— Terrence K. Williams (@w_terrence) April 23, 2021
The proposed Trump highway would be located in the stretch from Boise City to the Oklahoma-Texas border in Cimarron County.
The state’s GOP lawmakers who supported the provision will reportedly pay for the signage to display the highway’s name as they quashed attempts by their Democratic colleagues to take the former president’s name out of the measure before it was passed.
Aside from plans to name a segment of the highway after Trump, currently Oklahoma has bridges named after Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and George W. Bush and a highway named after Lyndon Johnson.
Republican state lawmakers — Senators Nathan Dahm and Marty Quinn — made a similar push to name a segment of Route 66 after Trump in 2019, but the plan faced pushback over concerns about politicizing the highway and naming it after a president who is still in office that time.
The report noted that typically, roads or bridges are named after notable presidents once a president is out of office and their legacy becomes more apparent.
Meanwhile, in Ohio — won by former President Trump in both the 2016 and 2020 elections — GOP lawmakers are also moving to name a state park after the 45th president.
Some Ohio Republicans want to rename a park for ex-prez Donald Trump, @FarnoushAmiri reports for @AP
The park's current name is Mosquito Lake State Park:https://t.co/dFxQJ9as1Z— Dan Sewell (@dansewell) April 20, 2021
On the contrary, Democrats across the country have been attempting to remove the former president’s name from signs and monuments, including in New York, where state legislators plan to rename Donald J. Trump State Park.
“Our parklands should be reflective of New Yorkers that we can be proud of, New Yorkers that have expressed our values,” Assembly woman Nily Rozic, a Democrat, said of her proposal to strip the park of Trump’s name.
“There are a lot of other New Yorkers who are worthy of the honor of having a park named after themselves,” she claimed.
New York lawmakers advance bill to rename Donald J. Trump State Park https://t.co/GtSu5jn3hW pic.twitter.com/WHKz5K5uqZ
— The Hill (@thehill) February 10, 2021
Reports said the land was acquired by the state in 2006 when former President Trump donated it after first considering building a golf course on the property.
“This is my way of trying to give back,” the former Republican president, a New York native, said then.
