[21] After admitting that the stories were true, Inhofe explained that he had been allowed to take part in graduation ceremonies in 1959 though he was a few credits short of completing his degree, and did not finish his coursework until 1973.

[29] During his first term, he spoke against federal regulation at the United States House Committee on Public Works Sub-committee on Roads and voted in favor of an abortion liberalization law.

[81] During the primary, Inhofe had called for Democratic incumbent James R. Jones to be expelled from Congress for his conviction while in office for failing to report campaign contributions.

[92] He initially denied he would run for any city office and instead insisted he was considering a rematch against Congressman Jones;[93] but, Inhofe announced his mayor campaign in February.

[111] He ran unopposed in the Republican primary and later won the general election, fending off Democratic nominee Richard Johnson and Independent candidate Robert Murphy.

[138] On March 6, 2019, Inhofe said he intended to put language in the next defense authorization act to reinforce President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement and reintroduce severe sanctions on Tehran.

[15] It was reported in February 2023 that the primary reason for Inhofe's retirement was related to him suffering symptoms of long COVID, which had severely limited his capacity to do day-to-day activities, after an initial infection he had described as "very mild".

[147] For 2019, he was ranked as the fifth-most conservative member of the U.S. Senate with a score of 0.91 out of 1, behind Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Mike Braun (R-IN), and Ted Cruz (R-TX).

[116][19] In December 1997, Inhofe called the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, a "political, economic, and national security fiasco.

"[149] Before the Republicans regained control of the Senate in the November 2002 elections, Inhofe had compared the United States Environmental Protection Agency to a Gestapo bureaucracy,[150][151] and EPA Administrator Carol Browner to Tokyo Rose.

[151] Beginning in 2003, when he was first elected Chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Inhofe was the foremost Republican promoting climate change denial.

As Environment and Public Works chairman, Inhofe gave a two-hour Senate floor speech on July 28, 2003, in the context of discussions on the McCain-Lieberman Bill.

[163][164] In a continuation of these themes, Inhofe had a 20-page brochure published under the Seal of the United States Senate reiterating his "hoax" statement and comparing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to a "Soviet style trial".

"[165][166] The brochure restated themes from Inhofe's Senate speech, and in December 2003 he distributed copies of it in Milan at a meeting about the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, where he met "green activists" with posters quoting him as saying that global warming "is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people".

Perhaps what has made this hoax so effective is that we hear over and over that the science is settled and there is a consensus that, unless we fundamentally change our way of life by limiting greenhouse gas emissions, we will cause catastrophic global warming.

"[165][167] In January 2005 Inhofe told Bloomberg News that global warming was "the second-largest hoax ever played on the American people, after the separation of church and state", and that carbon dioxide would not be restricted by the Clear Skies Act of 2003.

[175] In February 2007 he told Fox News that mainstream science increasingly attributed climate change to natural causes, and only "those individuals on the far left, such as Hollywood liberals and the United Nations", disagreed.

For example: "Exxon's beneficiaries in Congress include the Oklahoma senator Jim Inhofe, who called global warming a hoax, and who has received $20,500 since 2007, according to the Dirty Energy Money database maintained by Oil Change International.

[182] On the same day, Inhofe said he would lead a three-man "truth squad" consisting of himself and fellow senators Roger Wicker and John Barrasso to the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

[183][184][185][186] The minority group of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works prepared a report on "the CRU Controversy", published in February 2010, which listed as "Key Players" 17 scientists including Mann and Phil Jones.

In response to NOAA and NASA reports that 2014 had been the warmest year globally in the temperature record, he said, "we had the coldest in the western hemisphere in the same time frame", and attributed changes to a 30-year cycle, not human activities.

[198] In a debate on the same day about a bill for the Keystone XL pipeline, Inhofe endorsed an amendment proposed by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, "Climate change is real and not a hoax", which passed 98–1.

In 2017, Inhofe blocked the Trump administration's nomination of J. Peter Pham for Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, citing a disagreement over Western Sahara.

"[217][218] In 2008, his campaign was noted by the Associated Press for running an ad with "anti-gay overtones" featuring a wedding cake with two male figures on top, fading into his opponent's face.

[228] Four years later, on December 31, 2006, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) rated Inhofe at 7%, indicating that he held an anti-civil rights and anti-affirmative action record.

[230] The bill, which passed, removed the requirement that a person or party implementing an order to wiretap a private citizen's cellphone must ascertain that the target of the surveillance is present in the house or using the phone that has been tapped.

[234] Inhofe agreed to support legislation allowing military mental health specialists to talk with veterans about private firearms in an effort to reduce suicides.

[245] Inhofe was instrumental in securing millions of dollars of federal funds to clean up contamination at a former mining hub in northeast Oklahoma after the affected site had spent decades on the Environmental Protection Agency Superfund list.

He supported participation in the massive federal government buyout program for the Tar Creek Superfund site that purchased homes and businesses within a 40-square-mile (104-square-kilometer) region where for decades, children consistently tested positive for dangerous levels of lead in their blood.

[255] In September 2020, less than two months before the next presidential election, Inhofe supported an immediate vote on Trump's nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy caused by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death.