This state wants to brainwash kids about Trump’s 2020 election lie

Oklahoma's Department of Education, led by far-right Superintendent Ryan Walters, tried to sneak a provision into the state's social studies curriculum that would force teachers to teach students that there were "discrepancies" in the 2020 presidential election, the Oklahoma Voice reported on Friday.

President Donald Trump and the Republican Party have been lying for years that the 2020 election was stolen from Dear Leader. Republicans have made baseless allegations of fraud they’ve never provided any evidence for, election deniers have run for office explicitly on the platform of making sure future elections aren’t “stolen,” and Trump himself has led a successful purge of GOP lawmakers who dared admit that he was wrong for saying the election was stolen and inciting an insurrection over it. 

But the move by the state’s Education Department takes that lie to the next level, forcing it into the school’s curriculum so that impressionable kids view the Big Lie as canon, rather than being taught the actual history that Trump and his GOP defenders lied about fraud and incited a riot to help Trump remain in power despite his defeat

An election board inspector Pat Cook readies "I Voted" stickers for voters during early voting in Oklahoma City on Oct. 29, 2010.

According to the Oklahoma Voice, the new curriculum would make high school students “identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results,” including “sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states, sudden batch dumps, an unforeseen record number of voters and the unprecedented contradiction of ‘bellwether county’ trends.”

The Oklahoma Voice reported that Walters absurdly claimed that the new curriculum is “not set up to either support or negate a specific outcome in the 2020 Presidential Election.”

“Our standards are designed to teach students how to investigate and calculate the specific details surrounding that (or any) election,” Walters said in a statement to the outlet. “In order to oppose or support the outcome, a well rounded student should be able to make their own conclusions using publicly available data and details.”

However, even putting the idea into kids’ heads that there were “discrepancies” in the 2020 election is a disgusting distortion of the truth and history. 

The only thing students should be taught is that Trump and his GOP defenders lied about fraud in order to explain away his loss and to spur an uprising to help keep him in office.

The new curriculum is not yet in place. According to the Oklahoma Voice, the Oklahoma Legislature has 30 legislative days to either approve or reject the change.

"If they do nothing, the proposal would take effect as written, according to state law. Gov. Kevin Stitt would have veto power if a legislative resolution lands on his desk. The current social studies standards remain in effect until new standards are approved," the Oklahoma Voice reported.

But the Oklahoma Voice reported that GOP leaders in the Legislature aren’t objecting to the new curriculum.

Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters prays on behalf of Donald Trump in a video that his administration requested in November 2024 that state schools play for students.

“As far as what’s in that curriculum, I have not looked at it yet, and so we’ll circle back and look at it and see exactly what it says,” Senate Pro Tem Lonnie Paxton said, according to the Oklahoma Voice. “But that is history. We can always talk about what happened in 2020 and why people felt like they were disenfranchised and also talk about what was good about it, what was bad about it but it’s all part of the discussion.”

Walters has a long history of using the state’s school system to pander to Trump.

In November, Walters tried to force schools to show a video in which he criticized the “radical left” and “woke teachers’ unions,” and asked students to pray for Trump—a blatant violation of the separation of church and state. 

And in another violation of the separation of church and state, Walters also tried to purchase 55,000 Bibles for Oklahoma schools, and ensure that one of the Bibles the state could purchase was the Bible that Trump endorsed and profited off of. On Monday, the Oklahoma State Supreme Court blocked Walters from being able to purchase the books.   

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Oklahoma schools chief shared misleading TikTok. It led to bomb threats

Oklahoma Democrats are demanding that Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters be subjected to an impeachment probe due to fallout from his hate- and disinformation-filled social media posts. In a statement, they called on the Republican speaker of the House to investigate possible charges against Walters, and said, ”The safety of Oklahoma’s students and families depends on changes to the current situation.”

Walters recently retweeted a selectively cropped TikTok video posted by the hatemonger and conwoman behind a social media account called Libs of TikTok. The video showed a Union Public School District librarian Kirby Mackenzie with an overlay reading, “POV: teachers in your state are dropping like flies but you are still just not quite finished pushing your woke agenda at the public school.” Walters retweeted the post, adding: “The liberal media denies the issue. Even some Republicans hide from it. Woke ideology is real and I am here to stop it.”

That led to bomb threats on six consecutive days.

Of course, Libs of TikTok had cropped the original video to exclude the caption, which provided crucial context. The excluded text read, “My radical agenda is teaching kids to love books and be kind hbu?? I think I’m going to make one of these every year until i die or end my teaching era.” Mackenzie also included an emoji showing two hands making the shape of a heart.

RELATED STORY: Oklahoma school head wants to leave race out of the Tulsa Race Massacre

Libs of TikTok’s account is operated by Chaya Raichik. There were good reasons Raichik’s account was suspended multiple times by what was then called Twitter, but it has found a new life being amplified on the X platform by billionaire Elon Musk. While Raichik’s bread and butter is spreading hate and endangering the lives of the LGBTQ+ community by harassing and doxxing educators she doesn’t agree with, she isn’t just homophobic: She’s bigoted across the board. Her recent work characterizing a get-together for families of color at an Oakland elementary school as some kind of attack on white people led to bomb threats at that school, as well.

The chances that the Republican supermajority in Oklahoma opens up an impeachment probe into Walter for helping provoke bomb threats against 16,000 Oklahoma children are nil. Republican House Speaker Charles McCall told NBC News, “Impeachment is not something that should be taken lightly, and the call by a group of House Democrats seems to be more of a ready, fire, aim approach.”

Before Walters sicced the world’s most grotesque social media account on Oklahoma’s children, he was openly posting about his intentions to defy Supreme Court decisions separating church and state in order to fund private religious schools. He recently embarrassed himself by trying to talk about Oklahoma history while pretending that race had nothing to do with the Tulsa Race Massacre.

He has spent his political career as a theocratic culture warrior. Unsurprisingly, he has been saving his biggest attacks for the predominantly Black Tulsa Public Schools system by threatening to take away its accreditation. Tulsa Public Schools is the largest school district in the state.

Here’s a video posted by davidhth showing Tulsa Public Schools Board President Stacey Woolley’s public statement about the matter.

Ryan Walters accusing teachers of a woke agenda is stirring hatred. Today, there was a third bomb threat after Walters retweeted a TikTok video made by a Tulsa librarian as a joke. Here TPS board president Stacey Woolley pleads with him to stop. A lawmaker wants him impeached. pic.twitter.com/JQNafK2SIj

— David Heath (@davidhth) August 24, 2023

And the posts that gave domestic terrorists a target for their anger.

OK’s state superintendent shared a doctored video of an OK librarian. who joked about pushing a woke agenda. The doctored video cut out the caption-“my radical liberal agenda is teaching kids to love books & be kind.” The district received bomb threats for 6 consecutive days. https://t.co/OtkRVYPyOp pic.twitter.com/dkh1RzI1GN

— Laura Burkhardt 🧡 (@LauraAnnSTL) August 30, 2023

Sign the petition: Stop book bans.

The far-right justices on Wisconsin's Supreme Court just can't handle the fact that liberals now have the majority for the first time in 15 years, so they're in the throes of an ongoing meltdown—and their tears are delicious. On this week's episode of "The Downballot," co-hosts David Nir and David Beard drink up all the schadenfreude they can handle as they puncture conservative claims that their progressive colleagues are "partisan hacks" (try looking in the mirror) or are breaking the law (try reading the state constitution). Elections do indeed have consequences!