Miami News-Digest

EDITORIAL | MIAMI NEWS-DIGEST Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1944 proposal for a “Second Bill of Rights” raised a question that remains unsettled: What does freedom mean when political rights exist on paper, but economic insecurity limits a citizen’s ability to exercise them in practice? By Miami News-Digest In January 1944, with the United States still fighting the Second World War, President Franklin D. Roosevelt placed before the country an idea that remains remarkably unsettled more than eight decades later. Americans, he argued, had inherited indispensable political rights—freedom of speech, freedom of worship, trial by jury, protection against unreasonable searches—but an industrial society had revealed another problem. A citizen could possess those liberties in law and still lack the practical independence necessary to exercise them. R...

Deep Fission Sets Oct. 20 Update as Parsons Nuclear Project Moves Toward Next Phase Business call could provide new details on drilling, regulatory approvals and the timetable for commercial operation By Miami News-Digest PARSONS, Kan. — Deep Fission Inc. has scheduled a public business update for Tuesday, Oct. 20, offering what could be the next important look at how quickly its unusual underground nuclear project near Parsons is moving from engineering concept toward an operating reactor. The company announced Oct. 1 that management will hold the call at 11 a.m. Eastern — 10 a.m. Central — and provide an update on progress toward commercial deployment, followed by a question-and-answer session. A live webcast and subsequent replay will be available through Deep Fission’s investor-relations website. For readers of Miami News-Digest, the announcement follows our October feature, “A Mile Beneath Kansas: The Nuclear Experiment Taking Shape in the Four-State Region.” That repo...

Federal and state records show Oklahoma is pursuing a full nuclear-fuel-cycle campus involving reactors, fuel recycling, interim storage and deep-borehole disposal. Officials have not identified six interested Oklahoma communities, although Mangum public records confirm that city considered pursuing the project.  Miami News-Digest  Oct. 1, 2026 OKLAHOMA CITY — Six Oklahoma communities have expressed interest in hosting a proposed federal nuclear-energy campus, according to state officials, but their identities remain undisclosed as Oklahoma competes for a project that its own federal filing says could include nuclear reactors, spent-fuel recycling, interim storage and permanent disposal of high-level radioactive waste thousands of feet underground. A review by Miami News-Digest of U.S. Department of Energy records, Oklahoma's application, state public-information materials and municipal records also found that at least one Oklahoma community — Mangum, in Greer Coun...

Grand Lake welcomes the pelicans back as 43rd annual festival returns to Grove GROVE, Okla. — One of northeast Oklahoma’s most recognizable signs of autumn is returning to Grand Lake — and this weekend, an entire festival is being held in its honor. The 43rd Annual Pelican Festival runs Thursday through Sunday, Oct. 1-4, at Wolf Creek Park in Grove, bringing together carnival rides, live music, food trucks, arts and crafts, classic vehicles and excursions onto Grand Lake to see the enormous white birds that inspired the celebration. The festival is organized around the seasonal migration of the American White Pelican, which passes through the Grand Lake region during the spring and fall. Festival organizers say the birds can be seen around the lake from roughly September through November during their fall movement. They are difficult birds to overlook. American White Pelicans are among the largest flying birds in North America. Cornell Lab of Ornithology measurements put th...

The Doctor, the Country Star, and the Family That Never Stopped Making Music William “Doc” McCready built one life out of science, surgery, wildlife, teaching, and country music. His son Rich took that music to Nashville. Beside them was Ramona, a scientist, Choctaw woman, educator, volunteer, and the center of a family whose story has been unfolding for more than six decades. At 88, William “Doc” McCready possesses the sort of biography that sounds, at first, as though several different lives have been accidentally combined. There was the young man from Sand Springs, Oklahoma, who played professional softball. There was the worker who remembers jobs with Sinclair and Pepsi, layoffs during the Eisenhower years, and industrial and defense work connected with tanks and the Titan missile program. There was the biology student who considered becoming a federal biologist, the chemist, the outdoorsman, the herpetologist and falconer, the hunter and fisherman. Eventual...

Grand Jury Petition Seeks Investigation of Tulsa County District Attorney’s Office; Public Records Document Several Underlying Disputes TULSA, Okla. — A citizens’ grand-jury petition filed Sept. 23 in Tulsa County District Court is asking for an investigation into Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler and the operation of his office, raising questions that range from the handling of criminal cases and public records to juvenile detention, campaign activity, and the exercise of prosecutorial discretion. The petition, filed as Tulsa County Case No. GJ-26-2, does not itself establish that Kunzweiler or anyone in his office committed a crime or engaged in removable misconduct. In fact, the petition expressly acknowledges that point, stating that no named person has been “adjudicated guilty” of the misconduct described and that the requested grand jury would be responsible for obtaining evidence and determining what, if anything, occurred. It likewise states that a jud...