Jim Inhofe, Longest-Serving U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, Passes Away at 89

Jim Inhofe, the longest-serving U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, has surpassed away on the age of 89, his circle of relatives announced.

Inhofe died early Tuesday after struggling a stroke over the July 4 excursion, his own family said in a announcement.

“He exceeded peacefully, surrounded by way of his spouse Kay, and his three surviving kids, Molly, Jimmy, and Katy,” the statement stated. “His son Perry handed away several years ago in a non-public aircraft twist of fate in Tulsa.”

The Republican congressman served inside the U.S. Senate from 1994 till his retirement in 2023. During his tenure, he chaired the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and the Armed Services Committee.

Inhofe was acknowledged for his opposition to weather science because it pertained to human-triggered climate exchange, famously bringing a snowball onto the Senate floor in 2015 to indicate that global warming isn’t real.

He was also a steadfast opponent of LGBT rights rules, presenting a constitutional amendment to ban same-intercourse marriage, balloting in opposition to adding sexual orientation to hate crimes laws, and opposing a regulation to prohibit process discrimination based on sexual orientation.

In 2006, he delivered the Inhofe Amendment to an immigration bill, which sought to curtail multilingual offerings furnished with the aid of the federal authorities and to make English the national language of the U.S. The amendment passed the Senate but failed within the House.

Inhofe also served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1987 to 1994. Prior to his congressional service, he held various elected places of work in Oklahoma, consisting of within the nation Senate, the kingdom House of Representatives, and because the mayor of Tulsa.

James Mountain Inhofe changed into born in Des Moines, Iowa, on Nov. 17, 1934, and moved together with his own family to Oklahoma as a baby. He served in the U.S. Army from 1957 to 1958 and obtained a degree in economics from the University of Tulsa. Before getting into politics, he labored for his father’s lifestyles insurance organisation.

An avid aviator, Inhofe added the Pilot’s Bill of Rights in 2012, which turned into passed with the aid of Congress and signed into regulation by then-President Barack Obama. The invoice accelerated the rights of pilots in FAA investigations and enforcement moves.

“I was saddened to research this morning that our longtime former colleague, and my correct pal, Jim Inhofe, surpassed away in a single day,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell stated in a announcement Tuesday. “For almost 3 decades, the Senator for Oklahoma lived as much as his specific and outstanding center name: Jim became a Mountain of a man.”