A courageous Oklahoma team finds himself entangled in a legal battle against the state's educational
system, led by the controversial superintended of bigotry, Ryan Walters. Walterers uses
influence to have their petition denied by the Oklahoma State Board of Education. Under
walters influence, an emergency rule demanded state approval for such changes was passed.
A lawsuit now accuses Walter a personal, biased discrimination and blatant violation of due
process and pronal rights. The class sheds light on the broader challenges faced by
transgender people and navigating conservative led policies that, in this case, appear to
be driven by Walterers' biggotest stance on transgender issues. This story is from NBC
News by Tyler Kincaid on January ninth, twenty twenty four. Oklahoma, Oklahoma,
Oh, Oklahoma. What do we do with Oklahoma? What do we
do with Oklahomer? What do we do with Ryan Walter's or what do we
do with Ryan Wolf? He is a real problem. He is a genuine
issue in this day and age. I mean from dance scholarship, theft to
Bibles in classrooms, to not knowing the first thing about actual education. To
what we see here is analogous to Oklahoma creating a bill of a tainder.
Those you who don't know what a bill are attainder is. It was medieval
Britain used to use bill of attainders. Henry the Eighth's liked quite a lot.
He would have his parliament past legislation to remove civil rights and in some
cases, the right to life from people he didn't like. They were.
Mainly you could mainly tell who they were because they were Catholic. You could
mainly tell those people because they'd slept with his wife or something, or he
wanted a new wife. You could usually tell things like that. But Oklahoma,
and you know, good old Riah Walters is doing the same thing here,
taking a group of people and removing the civil rights and declaring them guilty
of existing incorrectly, which is absolute pettiness, an absurdity. I mean,
Kansas has been to the punch on some of these bill of attainers. I
mean Kansas passed an entire piece of legislation to stop one person playing sports,
one person playing sports. It's absolute utter CODs. What policies we see coming
from Superintendent Wishy Washy Walter's here. It's absolute fast. Shall we say,
he comes along not knowing the first thing about what he's supposed to be doing.
As I say, he is the superintendent of the education system, the
title should give him some clue that he's supposed to be doing. Education.
Doesn't do that. He does religion. Religion, that's what he does.
He does bigod tree. The word that's missing there is education. It's missing
here. But the problem that Ray Walters has created here is that he's created
an Oklahoma education system that's laughable. Out of the fifty states in the Union,
Oklahoma sits forty fifth for educational attainment, just Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi,
and West Virginia, not the least religious of places on earth. In
fact, probably as not as religious, if not more religious than Oklahoma,
all below them. So I'm sensing a correlation here, not necessarily a causation,
but I'm sensing a definite correlation here. Kelly, Yeah, there is
definitely a correlation. And I noticed that all of those states tend to be
in a certain geographical area of the United States too, at which I find
West Virginia is not saying it's a conversation of West Virginia is fiftieth. Yeah,
And I don't know if anybody knows who who mister Ryan Walters is.
But I did do a little dig into finding out exactly what he stands for
some of the things he's done in his political career, and in nineteen or
in nineteen, in twenty Book of Me in twenty twenty two, he probably
he is from the part yes, and sometimes my brain gets stuck back there.
So but while he was campaigning in twenty twenty two, he did promagate
the old litter boxes in high school bathrooms Hopes, which I thought was really
funny because I've made it no secret that I live in an area where there's
very few people, and in like a twenty five mile radius, we have
three small towns. All three towns have their own high school, and that
rumor was going around, but it was always at that other two high schools.
It was never at the high school that they of the town you were
in, you know, So if you were in my town, it was
in the other two high schools, And I thought that was really funny.
None of the high schools actually had it happening. It was the other high
schools that were but almost as soon as he got into office. Because I'm
just digressing here, so let's get back. He did fire two teachers because
they were They were very critical publicly of a bill that had just been passed
by the Oklahoma legislature that was what they could teach about gender and race,
sex and race. So they were kind of pissed off about that and wanted
to change it, and sure enough he fired them. In twenty twenty three,
he spoke at a Mom's for Liberty you may have heard of them,
at their national summit in Philadelphia, and he advocated eliminading, eliminating the United
States Department of Education, and he also criticized teachers' unions. Then then in
a July just a month later, town hall, he was asked, how
does the Tulsa race massacre not fall under the definition of being taught as critical
for a critical as an example of critical race theory, and he responded,
let's not tie it to skin color and say that skin color determined what happened
at the Tulsa that in that incident. Yes, yes, you're right,
he is a bigot. Yes, people did vote for him. Hey,
you know what, you can't use that word on here, even if it
does rime with dark get out of here. So this guy has got a
long, a long history of being bigoted, and not only bigoted against gender,
but of race as well. So I mean, what we're seeing here
this time, it doesn't surprise me at all. I mean, it's just
powerful the course of what this guy is like. I've got some more things,
but I don't want to take up all the time, So I'm going
to pass it on to Jimmy and I'll go over some more when it comes
back to me. You're you're quite the thespian you and your your duck acting
partner. I don't know how I'll follow that, but I don't think that
there's a whole lot I would disagree with all of you on either. I
think I found my own correlation and perhaps not causation. And I don't know
if the timing of this law is a coincidence or not. But you know,
on the very same meeting agenda, in fact, the very the very
item preceding discussion of this law at the September twenty eighth, twenty twenty three
meeting of the State Board of Education, it was that the Tulsa Board of
Education was still accepting Chinese government funding after the Confucius Institute program had been deemed
a subversive Chinese foreign mission by the State Department in two thousand and nine.
And so the real problem with this funding, which I don't know if it's
necessarily illegal, but I certainly frowned upon, in that all one hundred and
almost all one hundred and forty three recipients of this funding have ceased their contracts
except for seven. And not only that, but the Tulsa Board of Education
was covering up receiving these funds and not informing parents, and instead they were
receiving funds from a kind of through a shadow organization in Texas. And this
report, there was a report done by Parents Defending Education that found that this
funding was being masked. And I just think it's significant because this discussion,
the discussion of passing this law took place kind of right after this. Walters
had to justify why the Tulsa Board was still accepting money. He actually had
to answer to Congress because of this due to in depth investigation that was taking
place there. And I think that we're seeing the transgender community perhaps be a
scapegoat. We've seen that before. Minorities or disparaged groups just kind of thrown
under the bus to take the heat off of government officials for I don't know
other reasons, and so I don't know if this is correlation. It's probably
not causation. But being under fire for accepting funds from a foreign shadow organization
through a domestic shadow organization that aimed to indoctrinate children should not be met with
more harm to other children by denying them their rights. And so all in
all, the Oklahoma education system just seems to be falling apart in multiple facets
and just can't get anything right. So, Infidel, what do you say?
Ryan Walters has demonstrated himself to be quite usedless character on more than one
occasion. We've covered him on nonprofits. But I think you really nailed something
there, Jimmy, when you're talking about how you know, we okay,
we had a mistake, we're having to answer far it let me distract you
with something else. I see this time and again with even family members who
you know, it's like, yeah, but what about you know, Europe
or Hillary's emails or whatever little popular distraction that can get someone away from their
own shortcoming. And obviously he's not going to want to approach that. But
one thing I did listen to very carefully was one thing that Walters made a
comment on Real America's Voice. It's a rather right wing media organization, but
he said, parents absolutely know what's best for kids, and anyone who doesn't
understand has no business being involved in education whatsoever. Ryan Walters, there,
a man, I'm with you. This coming sup you there, because in
the article itself, the parents of this child, one a conservative political leaning
father and one a god fearing church going mother, both support him. So
Ryan Waters the doors over there, don't let it hit you on the way
out. Absolutely. I mean, this is a guy. And when we
think about an emergency rule, this is six grown people sitting in a room
making a decision that's going to impact this teen boy. And they're overriding not
only a parent's decision, but a court order. What could possibly be so
important? I do know that in their statement they claim that they wanted to
protect the accuracy of historic records for future use. Were damn y. Let's
let's let's let's see some let's see some literacy. Let's see some literacy in
Oklahoma. So someone could even read those records. But seriously, what could
be the result if a student in Oklahoma was allowed to update their records.
That would require six people to make this such a priority. And if they've
been with the schools at forty fifth in the nation, how many people could
read those records. Yes, absolutely, let's focus on teaching your kids,
and let's not worry about six people who are being paid by the state to
bully a young kid without even seeing him. You know, so much for
knowing what's best for the parents, knowing absolutely what's best for their child.
You know, I think that only applies when the parents agree with Walters.
But you know another thing that I found totally sickening is quoting Walters again.
He said, we're not going to do the transgender game of back and forth,
back and forth. That is such a dishonest statement. You know,
you would think that people got up and said, well, what kind of
cereal and what gender do you want to go through the courts today to decide
you're going to be this This is so dishonest on so many levels. But
this puts Ryan Walters right back where it belongs, and that is where he
thinks what he knows is best is the right one. Brian Waters doesn't care
about children. He's busy. I think to remember here, though, is
who do these documents affect apart from the student themselves, who in this day
and age, no one on this panel, nobody watching unless the actual students
themselves is watching, or is an educator that's going to receive their high school
transcripts is watching. Is affected by this in any way, not even in
the slightest. But for him it is more important about his grandstanding than him
and his unwillingness to accept people not as they are, but how he decides
they need to be. You know, it was touched on the Tulsa Race
massacre and how let's not bring color into that. And he's even said that
separation of church and state is a myth, so it's in the titles occurred.
But then again, the religion foundation is this state sponsored atheism according to
him. So in Ryan Walters World ran the world is what Ryan Walters wanted
it to be and what his supporters wanted to be in their delusion to well,
essentially run scared and insidious thing here though, the most insidious thing that
I picked up this was the echoes that you hear from the same people who
said you will want a slave, I don't recognize you as a free post
to trans people who say I don't recognize you as the sex that you actually
are. What they're saying is you were once assigned to be the property of
somebody else, and they're saying to trans people, you will once assigned a
sex of birth. Don't matter if it was accurate, don't if you had
any choice in it. Those are the same rhetorics, and people need to
realize racism and transphobia go hand in hand, and until people like Ryan Walters
are chased away from the education system and chased away from ruining people's lives,
it's going to continue because you're going to have court orders that are defied.
You're going to have lives ruined because THERESO if we watched protective, historically accurate
records, because you were assigning something that you had no choice in in the
same way that slaves were assigned property at birth of somebody else. And what
makes it even more egregious is that trans people were denied the right to get
married for years, and slaves were also denied the right to get married in
the same way that free people were because it wasn't just their vows that said
till death do us part, it was till death or distance to us part.
Because they weren't seen as having been assigned correctly within the system. And
when you see these parallels, I am physically sick that it is still going
on in the twenty first century in the most industrialized nation on earth. Yep.
I wanted to, you know, Jimmy mentioned the whole thing that was
going on with China, and he actually opposed that a lot. He was
very outspoken about that Chinese funding from what I understood. However, when he
did give an okay too. And we just mentioned this earlier this week in
an earlier story, Prager you came to Oklahoma school districts and wanted to provide
curriculum with funding from gas and oil companies that had a little bit of propaganda
in it. And during congressional hearings, Representative rolb Riyalva I always have a
hard time saying his name as to Walter's about allowing the oil and gas industry
to influens climate change curriculum through prager you, and he responded, these are
American companies that are a benefit to the American economy. So I don't see
any issue with them having influence on our education system. So it kind of
was like to me, it was like this two face thing. We don't
want these people having influence, but it's okay to let these people do it.
And he also he also wanted to sue the FFRF the Freedom from Religion
for a Foundation for sending a letter to an Oklahoma school district asking them to
stop using prayer in the school curriculum. The FFRF then issued an open letter
to Walters saying, you regularly misuse the official governmental social media afforded to your
public office and treat it as a pulpit from which to preach your personal or
religious views and Christian nationalist propaganda. And that was just seven weeks ago than
weeks ago that they issued that statement. So this is not a nice guy.
This is not the kind of guy that we want in charge of our
children. So yeah, I just don't I don't even know why these people
in Oklahoma would have this guy there. So I think his opposition to receiving
international funding from a competitor country came after he was after he was confronted about
it, in which he had to kind of stand up and save face continue
his grandstanding. You know, the Tulsa School District makes a million dollars a
year through this program, and having found other donors to take that place is
not a surprise at all. And I still stand by the idea that,
you know, it's probably it's probably pretty likely that you know, he kind
of replaced this one scandal with another one that I think he can get a
lot more political support for. And so I want to I want to go
to answering Phoebe's question about you know, do we think education is being forgotten.
I don't think it's being forgotten. I think it's being weaponized. I
think it's very much on the front burner. I think everybody has their eye
on education and they're trying to find a way to manipulate it, to use
it in their favor, at least at least where I think, you know,
white Christian nationalism excuse me, white Christian nationalism is concerned. I would
have to say that I agree with the thought that education is very much a
priority for people like this. More accurately, perhaps I should say miseducation.
But there is a goal, there is very much an agenda and a plan
that they have an effect with this. This isn't just idle chitchat now.
Admittedly I think they bounce from target to target because in this type of environment
you always need somebody to say the them to somebody else's to somebody. We
can disparage and as Phoebe pointed out, quite literally dehumanize, And that's what's
going on there. You need that enemy. In nineteen eighty four, Europo
was friends with this one and enemies with that one. Up now it's where
friends with you know, Eurasia and enemies with you know. They always bounced
around and then that's what they're doing. They're they're bouncing from enemy to enemy
here. And really, at the end of the day, education shouldn't be
a weapon, but it has become that. And Phoebe I will just say
this to Ryan Walter's directly. If you want to teach religion, go and
teach at your local Sunday school,