Former Sen. Jim Inhofe, who went to lengths as a lawmaker to deny that climate change is exacerbated by human activity, died this week at 89 following a stroke, his family said.
Oklahoma’s longest-serving senator, Inhofe was first elected to the Senate in 1994. He resigned in 2023, saying at the time that he wanted to spend more time with his wife. After he left office, however, he told the Tulsa World in an interview that he had stepped down because he had long Covid.
Inhofe’s views often reflected the extreme leanings of his party. He was intensely homophobic (in opposing same-sex marriage, he once boasted to the Senate that in the “recorded history” of his family “we’ve never had a divorce or any kind of a homosexual relationship”), he was rabidly pro-gun (he once blamed mass shootings on “permissive laws” in sanctuary cities) and opposed abortion rights.
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