“CBS Sunday Morning” Correspondent Lee Cowan drives along Route 66, which we all know is celebrating its 100th birthday this year. This report includes a stop in Tulsa and features some Tulsans.
President Donald Trump believes a former Oklahoma Highway Patrol major should lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Tulsa World’s Randy Krehbiel reports ICE has not had a permanent director confirmed by the Senate since the end of the Obama administration.
Oklahomans spent $30 million on OnlyFans in 2025. Reporter Josh Kelly of The Oklahoman with the findings of a report made by a site that tracks how much is spent on the platform, which lets fans have direct relationships with creators known to offer adult content. Fans in Oklahoma City ranked first with $7.3 million spent. Tulsans spent about $3 million. Fans in Broken Arrow cracked the top five.
Quotable quotes
On the topic of OnlyFans
“If you look at OnlyFans, it is making as much money as Hollywood. I mean, essentially it’s on par. It’s not a niche business, it is a massive enterprise. And so if you’re young, you’re going, ‘I don’t want to go work in a 9-to-5 at this place or that thing. Well, maybe I can just start taking photos of myself.’ … we caught a lot of criticism for it, but there’s a part of me that wonders, if the show kind of affirmed this life and how empowering it was, whether we would get the same criticism. You know, we take a fairly critical look at it. It hollows out the individual. You know, you’re constantly just depending on the likes and external validation.”
– Sam Levinson, creator of the HBO Max series “Euphoria,” now the second most-watched show in the company’s history after Games of Thrones. The last season of the show included characters as OnlyFans creators.
On what the new OSU football coach believes
“… our big three: (quarterback) Drew Mestemaker, (wide receiver) Wyatt Young and (running back) Caleb Hawkins. Those guys didn’t have other offers (out of high school). We believed in them. That translated to them having great success on the field. As we continue to evaluate people, we’re not afraid to take the small-town kid who doesn’t have any stars or offers. We believe our eyes.”
– OSU football coach Eric Morris to Sports Animal host Gideon Hamilton.
On going back to the office all the time
“Some leaders say they insist on full-time in-person work because it boosts productivity, despite clear evidence that it does not. Others claim it’s about collaboration, creativity or culture. Our new research reveals that the objection to any work from home is more likely to be driven by something else entirely: ego.”
– Organizational psychologist and author Adam Grant in an NYT op-ed. The unlocked article’s headline is The Secret Reason Bosses Want Everyone Back in the Office, Every Day of the Week.
Notable numbers
$125,000
– The amount paid by Thomas Gilcrease, whom the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa is named for, for a 1777 handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence. He found it in 1948 aboard the Freedom Train, a traveling museum exhibit that was full of rare, primary documents related to the country’s founding. That’s more than $1.7 million in today’s dollars. It was available for public view recently, something the Tulsa World’s Bella Casey and Stephen Pingry reported on this week.
Every 30 seconds
– The rate that a Taser is fired by somebody in the U.S., according to the company’s owner, who now is focused on making “AI the future of policing,” in this unlocked Wall Street Journal article.
342,541,458
– The current U.S. population estimate as the country celebrates its 250th birthday. It’s never decreased year by year since 1776, except for 1918, when it went down about 0.06% due to the combined impact of deaths from World War I and the Spanish Flu pandemic.
49 times in the past two years
– The number of times people have been entrapped in the elevators at the John F. Kennedy Federal Building in Boston, just one of many examples in the backlog of $50 billion in deferred maintenance across the country mentioned in this unlocked article. Think twice before going into a federal building.
Every 4 minutes on average
– The rate that a gambling reference, promotion or commercial occurred during 50 hours of televised professional and college hockey, football and basketball games, according to a recent Washington Post analysis, available to read in this unlocked article.
Elementary school
– When Lia Nower, the director of the Center for Gambling Studies at the Rutgers School of Social Work, is now seeing gambling issues begin, mentioned in this unlocked New York Times article.
More than $8 billion
– The economic impact of the Chickasaw Nation after 10 terms served by Gov. Bill Anoatubby. Lt. Gov. Chris Anoatubby, the governor’s son, will finish out the remaining year in his father’s term, reports the Tulsa World’s Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton.
This & That
One of my favorite places, Bramble Breakfast & Bar, closed its doors in the Pearl District in May to move to a new space on Cherry Street. The Tulsa Flyer’s Raynee Howell checks in with owner Johnna Hayes.
2 Tulsa community advocates featured in Obama Presidential Center exhibit. Ashley Philippsen, formerly of ImpactTulsa, and Jen Loren, senior director of Cherokee Film, are featured in the Obama Center’s Imagine Your Impact interactive art exhibit. The Oklahoma Eagle’s Shaunicy Muhammad explains.
Older adults aren’t staying in “empty shell” marriages. Rates of gray divorce have risen sharply over the past few decades, explained in this unlocked NYT article.
On our 250th birthday (allegedly)
“Nations reel and stagger on their way; they make hideous mistakes; they commit frightful wrongs; they do great and beautiful things. And shall we not best guide humanity by telling the truth about all this, so far as the truth is ascertainable?”
– W.E.B. Du Bois quote on the first page of historian Jon Meacham’s newest book “American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union.”
Meacham came to Tulsa recently at a Magic City Book event to promote that book. He told the packed crowd that while everyone talks about 1776, it wasn’t until 1965 that America really began. That hit me. Here is him proving his point.
The quote by Du Bois, who visited and documented the Greenwood district before the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921, is a nice reminder as we watch the fireworks this weekend.
“Telling the truth about all this” is what legitimate journalists have tried to do the last 250 years. For you, the public. The electorate. The ones who are actually in charge if they vote.
I started the Collington Index as a movement toward truth and understanding in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Thanks to your support, I will keep it moving.
I will repeat what I have said at the end of each issue. But this time with an American flag in my front yard, thanks to the local Boy Scout troop that has placed one in almost every yard in our neighborhood. But this time, with meaning.
There is no cavalry.
It’s up to us.
All together now. jc
Collington Index 