Southwest
Oklahoma's oldest Native American college faces uncertain future due to financial woes
- Founded in 1880, Bacone College evolved into an Indigenous-led institution, fostering an intertribal community and offering degrees.
- Currently, the college is grappling with financial woes after struggles with mismanagement, leadership instability and lawsuits.
- In response to financial difficulties, Bacone has suspended classes, facing the risk of permanent closure.
The hallways of Bacone College are cold and dark. In the main hall, there are no lectures to be heard, only the steady hum of the space heater keeping the administrative offices warm.
Students aren’t attending classes here this semester, but work still needs to be done. In the college’s historic buildings, there are leaks to plug, mold to purge and priceless works of Native American art to save from ruin. Not to mention devising a plan to keep the college from shuttering for good. It’s a daunting task for the nine remaining employees.
But on this rainy December morning, the college’s president is running a DoorDash order. “If we have the money, we can pay,” Interim President Nicky Michael said regarding salaries. Even she has to find a way to make ends meet.
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Founded in 1880 as a Baptist missionary college focused on assimilation, Bacone College transformed into an Indigenous-led institution that provided an intertribal community, as well as a degree. With the permission of the Muscogee Nation Tribal Council, Bacone’s founders used a treaty right to establish the college at the confluence of three rivers, where tribal nations had been meeting for generations.
A statue of a Chickasaw warrior sits on display at Bacone College on Jan. 8, 2024, in Muskogee, Oklahoma. The Native American school is nearing the brink of closure as years of poor financial decisions, inconsistent leadership and disrepair threaten what was once a haven for Indigenous academics. (AP Photo/Nick Oxford)
Throughout the 20th century, the center of this was Bacone’s Native American art program, which produced some of the most important Indigenous artists of their time, including Woody Crumbo, Fred Beaver, Joan Hill and Ruthe Blalock Jones.
They and their contemporaries pushed the boundaries of what was considered “Native American art.” During a period of intense hostility against tribal sovereignty by the U.S., Bacone became defined by the exchange of ideas its Native faculty and students created and represented a new opportunity for Indigenous education and academic thought.
“Bacone was the only place in the world where that could happen for Native people,” said Robin Mayes, a Cherokee and Muscogee man who attended Bacone in the ’70s and taught silversmithing there in the ’90s. “It’s a tragedy to think that it’s going to be discontinued.”
For decades, the college has been plagued by poor financial choices and inconsistent leadership, triggering flashpoints between administration, students and staff over the mission and cultural direction of the college.
Some have accused recent administrations of embezzlement, fraud and intimidation, resulting in multiple lawsuits. Students expressed frustration with a lack of resources and cultural competency among some school leaders. The college also has had trouble maintaining its accreditation.
Last year, a lawsuit crippled Bacone’s finances. Ultimately, Michael made the decision to suspend classes for the spring semester. She hopes the deferment is temporary, but if the college can’t muster up millions of dollars, Oklahoma’s oldest continually operating college likely will close its doors.
“It has endured for over 140 years through terrible decisions,” said Gerald Cournoyer, an instructor who was hired in 2019 to restart the college’s art program.
“Providing oversight for Bacone has been a struggle because of the leadership or lack thereof,” said Cournoyer, who also is a renowned Lakota artist. Some presidents focused time and money on athletic programs, others on Bacone’s Baptist missionary roots. “When you put absolutely no money, nothing, not $20, not $10, into your fundraising efforts, this is what you get.”
During the time Patti Jo King was the director of the Center for American Indians at Bacone from 2012 to 2018, leadership wanted to build a state-of-the-art museum to replace the 80-year-old building housing many priceless pieces of Native art.
“We didn’t even have the money to keep it open seven days a week,” said King, now a retired Cherokee professor, writer and academic.
Even when she first arrived on campus, King said Bacone’s financial debts already had caught up to it. The student dorms didn’t have hot water, staff were severely underpaid and graduation rates among the college’s remaining students were low.
Still, she and other faculty endeavored to make it a place where Native students could find community, but Bacone’s old problems never went away. Like Cournoyer, after years of working toward rebuilding, she left in frustration.
Today, the old museum is empty. Its artifacts were moved to another location so they wouldn’t be exposed to extreme temperatures.
The remaining staff act as caretakers of the historic stone buildings that predate Oklahoma, themselves important pieces of the past. In the museum, Ataloa Lodge, the fireplace is made of stones sent to the college from Indigenous communities across the country: one from the birthplace of Sequoyah, one from the grave of Sitting Bull, another from the field where Custer died. Five hundred in all, each stone a memory.
Michael, the interim president, and others have been cleaning up buildings in hopes they might soon host graduation banquets and student gatherings. Other staff chase off looters. Rare paintings still hang across campus, including pieces by members of the Kiowa Six, who became internationally famous a century ago, and Johnnie Diacon, a Muscogee painter and alumnus whose work can be seen in the background of several episodes of the television show Reservation Dogs.
A few years ago, experts from a museum in Tulsa warned that many of the paintings are contaminated with mold, which will spread to other nearby works of art. Leslie Hannah, a Cherokee educator who sits on the college’s board of trustees, said he’s concerned, but the cost of restoring them falls far down the list, behind broken gas lines, flooded basements and a mountain of debt.
Bacone’s current financial crisis stems partially from a lawsuit brought by Midgley-Huber Energy Concepts, a Utah-based heating and air company that sued the college over more than $1 million in unpaid construction and service fees. Twice last year, the Muskogee County Sheriff’s Office put Bacone’s property up for sale to settle the debt. Both times the auction was called off, most recently in December.
MHEC owner Chris Oberle told KOSU last month that he intended to purchase the historic property. Attorneys for MHEC have not returned repeated requests for comment from the Associated Press.
Alumni have called the validity of any sale of the property into question, pointing to the treaty right that established the campus and its listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Attorneys for the college declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.
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Michael said she doesn’t know what stalled the auction, but she is grateful for more time to try to save Bacone.
Across the country, there are only a few dozen tribal colleges, according to the American Indian College Fund, a nonprofit that supports Native American access to higher education. Tribal colleges must be sponsored by a federally recognized tribe and have a majority Native student enrollment. But unlike most of those colleges, Bacone was built on its identity as an intertribal school, a quality that former staff and alumni say made it special.
Now a private institution, Bacone no longer receives state or federal assistance. Its finances have long relied heavily on student tuition, and now it has no students. Michael said judging from the finances, it’s a miracle the college managed to keep its doors open this long.
“Now I’m looking back on this thinking this was set up for failure,” she said.
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TUCSON, Ariz. — A 34-year-old man was arrested late Thursday night outside the Arizona home where Nancy Guthrie went missing earlier this month, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department told Fox News Digital.
Shortly before 8 p.m. Thursday, deputies arrested 34-year-old Antonio De Jesus Pena-Campos in front of Guthrie’s home on misdemeanor DUI charges, the department said.
The arrest is not related to the Guthrie investigation, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department added.
Pima County sheriff’s deputies stopped a blue Chevrolet Equinox compact SUV near Nancy Guthrie’s Tucson home late Thursday night. A man was later taken into custody after what appeared to be field sobriety testing. (Fox News)
Footage shows Pima County sheriff’s deputies shining a flashlight into the driver’s side of what appeared to be a blue Chevrolet Equinox compact SUV parked near the home where Guthrie was last seen Feb. 1.
Moments later, deputies spoke with Pena-Campos near a white canopy tent set up along the roadside as a deputy shined a flashlight toward the man’s face.
In another sequence, Pena-Campos walks in a straight line in what appears to be part of a field sobriety test. In subsequent footage, he is placed in the back of a sheriff’s pickup truck.
The man was detained as investigators continue searching for Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie, who was reported missing Feb. 1 after authorities said she was taken during a home invasion. Investigators have said her pacemaker last synced with her iPhone around 2:30 a.m. that morning.
Her family has since offered a $1 million reward for information leading to her safe return as authorities continue to pursue leads.
NANCY GUTHRIE’S NEIGHBOR SAW SUSPICIOUS MAN WALKING NEARBY 2 WEEKS BEFORE SUSPECTED ABDUCTION
A deputy shines a flashlight toward a man’s face during what appears to be field sobriety testing outside Nancy Guthrie’s Tucson home late Thursday night. The man was later taken into custody. (Fox News)
The development comes after a Catalina Foothills resident’s street-facing Ring camera captured 12 vehicles passing by between midnight and 6 a.m. on Feb. 1, the morning Guthrie is believed to have been abducted.
Some of the activity occurred around the 2:30 a.m. mark, roughly when authorities said the 84-year-old’s pacemaker last synced with her iPhone.
A man walks in a straight line under the direction of deputies during what appears to be field sobriety testing outside Nancy Guthrie’s Tucson home late Thursday night. (Fox News)
Homeowners Elias and Danielle Stratigouleas told Fox News Digital that police had not canvassed their neighborhood in the 25 days since Guthrie was allegedly taken from her bed in what authorities have described as a home invasion kidnapping.
The couple said they alerted both the FBI and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department to the footage. It was not immediately clear whether the video would prove useful to investigators or whether any of the vehicles had traveled on Guthrie’s street.
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Pima County sheriff’s deputies speak with a man near a white canopy tent set up along the roadside outside Nancy Guthrie’s Tucson home late Thursday night. (Fox News)
The Stratigouleas home sits on a back road that leads out of Guthrie’s neighborhood and avoids major intersections. The property is approximately 2½ miles — or about a seven-minute drive — from the crime scene, according to Google Maps.
One of the videos was recorded at approximately 2:36 a.m., roughly eight minutes after Guthrie’s pacemaker last synced with her iPhone, based on the sheriff’s timeline.
Fox News’ Michael Ruiz and Olivia Palombo contributed to this report.
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The Texas Senate primary for Republicans is a bloodbath, and President Donald Trump isn’t wading in.
Trump, who appeared in Corpus Christi, Texas, to tout his energy agenda Friday, had the opportunity to stake his claim in the contentious race and endorse a candidate.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, is the longtime incumbent fending off seven challengers.
But the real race is between Cornyn, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas.
President Donald Trump stops to speak to the media as he departs from Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House Feb. 27, 2026, in Washington, D.C. ( Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
All three were in attendance at Trump’s rally, reminiscent of the made-for-TV spectacles that dominated his successful 2024 election campaign. Yet Trump didn’t endorse any of them as Election Day in the primary fast approaches.
Trump acknowledged all three — he paired Cornyn and Paxton and mentioned Hunt later in his remarks. He noted that they were all engaged in an “interesting election.”
“They’re in a little race together,” Trump said of Cornyn and Paxton. “You know that, right? A little bit of a race. It’s going to be an interesting one, right? They’re both great people, too.”
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and John Cornyn, R-Texas (Getty Images)
Cornyn is running for a fifth term in the Senate and fighting for his political life in a nasty primary election that Trump has time and again refused to weigh in on. He’s got the full weight of Senate Republican leadership behind him, too.
Paxton, who has faced headwinds with scandals over the years, has strongly aligned himself with the president and built a coalition of conservative backers in the House, including Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, who brought him to Trump’s State of the Union earlier this week.
And while the trio duke it out, money is being burned at a record pace. So far, a whopping $110 million has been spent on the Senate primaries, and $88 million of that has been dumped into the GOP contest, according to data from AdImpact.
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Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas, walks up the House steps for a vote on the budget resolution in the U.S. Capitol April 10, 2025. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Given the crowded field, it’s likely the race will head to a runoff, which will turn into a brutal sprint until late May. Paxton believes he could come out on top with at least 50% of the vote come March 3, while Cornyn is eying the long game.
The coveted Trump endorsement could put either over the top in ruby red Texas. And he may be close to picking his favorite.
Ahead of the event, Trump was asked if he had decided who to endorse.
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“Pretty much,” he told reporters.
But when asked if he would say who, he said, “No.”
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Southwest
Jasmine Crockett reveals Colbert hasn’t invited her on show since furor over Talarico interview
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Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, revealed Friday she’s still not been asked to appear on Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show,” days after the host claimed pressure from the Federal Communications Commission effectively censored an interview with her Senate primary political opponent, James Talarico.
Earlier this week, Colbert said CBS prevented the broadcast of Talarico’s appearance due to guidance from the FCC requiring shows to provide “equal time” to opposing candidates.
In response, the late-night host criticized the FCC and his own network. The Talarico interview was posted online, where it has garnered more than 8 million views on YouTube alone. The tumult and extra attention to the interview helped raise more than $2.5 million for Talarico’s campaign.
“No, I’ve not been invited on Colbert prior to his interview nor post his interview,” Crockett said on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” Friday.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett speaks to members of the media following a House Oversight and Accountability Committee deposition in New Albany, Ohio, on Wednesday, Feb. 18. (Dustin Franz/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Crockett explained that while she has appeared on Colbert’s show twice before, she has not been invited since she launched her candidacy for the U.S. Senate.
“The only information that I got was after this debacle took place, I did receive a phone call from the parent company,” Crockett said.
She said that CBS representatives told her they did not tell Colbert he couldn’t air the Talarico segment. Instead, they said that if he had Talarico on, he had to offer the same time to Crockett.
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Texas state Rep. James Talarico, left, and Rep. Jasmine Crockett, both Democrats and U.S. Senate candidates, participate in a debate during the 2026 Texas AFL-CIO COPE Convention in Georgetown, Texas, on Jan. 24. (Bob Daemmrich/The Texas Tribune/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“They just said, if you air it, just make sure that you offer the representative equal time. Now, obviously, I wasn’t engaged in that conversation, so I cannot confirm the veracity of any statements,” she said.
“But I can confirm that I had never been asked to go on as it relates to kind of talking about the Senate race,” Crockett added.
CBS released a statement denying it censored Colbert, insisting the show chose to share the interview on YouTube instead to avoid the equal-time requirement.
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Texas state Rep. James Talarico appears with Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” in New York on Feb. 16. (Scott Kowalchyk/CBS via Getty Images)
However, during Monday night’s broadcast, Colbert insisted he and his guest were being censored, telling his audience, “[Talarico] was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast.”
The media attention and Colbert’s multiple segments this week about the controversy provided a boon to Talarico’s campaign. On Tuesday, Colbert crumpled up the CBS statement denying it had forced the comedian not to air the interview and put it into a dog waste bag before throwing it away.
On Wednesday, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr dismissed the controversy as a “hoax,” stating that Talarico “took advantage of all of your sort of prior conceptions to run the hoax, apparently for the purpose of raising money and getting clicks. And the news media played right into it.”
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A spokesperson for Colbert’s show didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
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