FOLKS. Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters is GONE. Lydia breaks down the final few things he pushed before he abruptly resigned with 15 months still left in his term, the bizarre happenings of that resignation and where he's headed next, and finally, what we've learned in the aftermath. This Is Ground Zero in the Conservative Quest for More Patriotic and Christian Public Schools, Jennifer Smith Richards/ProPublica (10/22/2025) Fox25's Wendy Suares Attempts to Question Walters After His Resignation Announcement If you enjoy our work, please consider leaving a 5-star review! You can always email questions, comments, and leads to lydia@seriouspod.com. Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke!
What's so scary about the woke mob, how often you just don't see them coming Anywhere you see diversity equity and inclusion you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down The woke monster is here and it's coming for
everything Instead of go-go boots, the seductress green Eminem will now wear sneakers Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke.
This is episode 96.
Hey, that's my hockey number.
No, it is.
What does it mean?
Doesn't mean anything, except that we've done a lot of episodes, kind of.
Oh, gosh, we're getting close to 100.
We should do something special.
Yeah.
Based on how we do things, we could be at 100 tomorrow, yesterday.
It could be the middle part of an episode series we weren't planning on.
Honestly.
That's going to be fun, though.
We'll do an episode.
I'll tell you what.
We'll at least say it's episode 100.
We'll at least give it a name.
We'll name it episode 100 to celebrate.
We shouldn't have.
Yep.
I'm Thomas.
That over there is, and we're both, by the way, freshly super jet lagged and back from QED.
The final QED.
It was the best.
I'm going to miss it.
Yeah.
Long may it something and something.
I'm dead.
Anyway, I'm Thomas.
That over there is Lydia Smith.
How you doing?
Doing okay.
Eight-hour time difference between where we were and where we are now.
So adjusting to that a little bit, but I think I'm doing a little bit better than you, so I'm going to take the reins on this one.
I don't think that.
Are you sure?
Because I prime.
So I'm prepped.
I'm all taking over.
Yeah, I guess.
I mean, I'm ready.
I could do it.
It's in everyone's interest that I take over today.
Yeah, I'm going to do the thing I normally do, which doesn't require much brain power.
Yeah, no, today I wanted to talk about my arch nemesis, Ryan Walters.
Folks who have been listening to the pod or see me on Facebook know that this guy has been on my shit list for a long time, and I hate him with a deep, fiery passion.
Actually, speaking of Ryan Walters, we saw Seth Andrews recently, who lives in Oklahoma.
Ryan Walters from Oklahoma.
We also fucking hate.
Fuck that guy.
No, I'm just kidding.
And so I got a chance to talk to Seth a little bit about Ryan Walters and the goings-on that's been happening in Oklahoma, a state I have nothing to do with.
Yeah, I'm still confused by this.
You declared someone your nemesis.
I don't know if you're allowed to do that, like a non-consensual nemesis thing.
I think there has to be like a gentleman's, forgive the gendered language, but a gentleman's agreement on the on the nemesis.
It's just how it works.
Like you don't.
He'll find out.
Right.
He'll find out eventually.
Like every single superhero thing, it's not like, ah, my arch nemesis.
And they're like, what?
We barely know each other.
Come on.
It's inappropriate, you know?
Well, I know him and he's going to know me.
So it does have to start somewhere.
You know, I guess every movie has the benefit of like, there's this big history that we didn't see.
This is our origin story.
Yeah, that's true.
It's got to start somewhere.
Okay.
Fair enough.
You know what?
You make a good point.
So we're going to hear all about your nemesis.
And I forgot what else was happening and if we're recording and what time it is and what day.
Oh boy.
Wow.
And with that, we should probably thank our patrons and go to a break, which you can avoid if you go to patreon.com slash where there's woke.
That sounds right.
Get all the stuff.
Sounds like what we do.
All the good things.
No ads, bonuses, extra special goodies, some inside scoop.
Sometimes we share like behind the scenes information.
You also support the show.
Nemesis announcements.
Yep.
Yep.
And you support me and all the work I do to keep the show going when we're doing it.
We could do a poll, vote on the next nemesis.
Yeah, that's a good idea.
Yeah, who's going to be next on my list?
Yeah, America's Next Hub.
It's my ARIA list.
Yeah.
And we can all vote on it.
I like that idea.
Okay.
Let's see.
I've covered up with great stuff.
I'm doing fine.
Yeah.
You lower the inhibitions and you just like the brainstorm session is good.
They can't be any low.
They're already as low as they get.
All right.
Well, I suppose I should push this go to break button.
So, Nemesis, remind us.
Yeah.
Let me give you guys a brief reminder of who this guy is or an initial reminder if you've never heard of this guy in your life, which I would be surprised if you listen to the show and you're not going to be able to do that.
An initial reminder now I thought it was funny.
That's why I said it.
No, that is funny.
Thank you.
Ryan Walters is the was actually spoiler alert was the superintendent over the education department in Oklahoma.
He oversaw K through 12 in the state of Oklahoma.
Right winger, big surprise, right?
Some of his big moves include mandating the Bible and biblical curriculum in schools.
Yeah, that's what, how everybody will remember.
He's the guy who was going to mandate the Trump Bible.
It's pretty much cue most people.
Specifically, he tried to get Oklahomans to pay for it using, you know, it was taxpayer dollars, part of his regular budget requests.
And the only Bible that met his criteria, he didn't specifically say it was the Trump Bible that would be placed in schools, but the only Bible that met the criteria that they laid out happened to be the Trump Bible.
Yay, high.
It's orange.
Yeah, I don't know.
So he just tried to do everything that would, that would get it to be that without saying it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thankfully, the legislature did not approve that and they said, we're not paying for that.
Even for the Republicans, they were like, this is a bridge too far.
Yeah.
So we have all our own Bibles we want to sell.
So instead, he ended up partnering with Lee Greenwood, Trump's favorite musical act, for his version of the Bible, which is basically the Trump Bible.
And people could buy that and donate them to Oklahoma schools.
So there was like an entire webpage, like buy an Oklahoma school, their very own Bible kind of thing.
It was very ridiculous.
He's rapidly anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ.
He formed the library media advisory committee that he appointed Haya Raichik, also known as Libs of TikTok too, even though she's not from Oklahoma.
She's not a parent.
She's not an educator.
He's been mad about this and justifiably so, don't get me wrong, but mad about this for a long time and would just be like, I can't, you just bring it up all the time.
Yeah.
Well, and it was the month after that, a non-binary kid at a school in Oklahoma ended up dying by suicide after getting in a fight because of the bathroom situation that had been going on in their school.
They've been incessantly bullied and ended up getting in a big fight at school, got beat up pretty badly, and then overdosed, I think is what the final report was from the medical examiner the day after.
Was that the one we covered and it wasn't 100% clear?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
And this was that asked to do more just trying to cue everybody and remind everybody.
Haya Raichik's the one who, when somebody did an interview with her, it was like she was ruining everyone's life and she barely cared or like knew much about it.
Yeah.
It was the most bizarrely evil thing.
Like J.K. Rowling, you ask her about trans people.
She'll, she has notes.
Like she knows what's going on.
She's got a whole list of people whose lives she's going to ruin, which like is at least feels more dignified than like this higher chick who's like ruining people's lives and doesn't even care, like barely, barely registers what she's doing.
Yeah, you know, like the YouTube thumbnails that right wing does a lot of times where it's like, it's just uncomfortable looking, like cartoonish faces and stuff like that.
And then like ridiculous language, that's libs of TikTok all the time.
Like it's just that feeling constantly.
She doesn't care.
She has no interest in it.
She just barfs out, vomits out, right-wing talking points.
And she has so many followers.
So anything that gets connected to her account ever is going to be seen by a lot of people.
She's like a meaningful amount of the government.
Yes.
Yes, that's 100% true.
And so when she was involved in the Oklahoma education system, very, very concerning for a lot of people.
All of those things were happening when Ryan Walters, it seemed like he could kind of do whatever he wanted.
But then earlier in 2025, earlier this year, Governor Stitt appointed new members to the board, the State Board of Education, which meant that he lost control of the board.
And this is still a Republican governor.
It's a Republican.
He also sucks.
But Ryan Walters, I think, pissed off Stit enough in a variety of different ways that Stitt was like, oh, this is becoming political.
This is becoming like.
It's becoming political.
Yeah.
This is becoming like a ridiculous show, you know, and I want us to focus on the kids and yada, yada, yada, which I don't 100% believe from him necessarily.
I think Ryan Walters did enough.
Yeah.
I think Ryan Walters did enough to piss him off.
And Ryan Walters was like actively jockeying for the Secretary of Education position under the Trump administration that ended up going to Linda McMahon.
So when he didn't have that way out, he made some moves to try and impress Trump that hurt Oklahoma in a lot of ways.
And I think when that didn't work out, then Governor Smith.
Section losing a Secretary of Education position to Linda McMahon.
Oh, I know.
So earlier this year, he had lost control of the board and started getting some more pushback.
And then this kind of culminated at one point, this pretty big scandal over the summer that some people might have heard of as well related to Ryan Walters.
We didn't end up talking about it on this show, but I'll just briefly touch on it now because the investigation is over.
So we do know that there isn't a lot of there there, but there was a meeting happening with the board and in one of the offices in Ryan Walters area of the education building.
And there was a TV in the room.
And as they turned on the TV, it showed fully nude women.
And one of the board members said, there's a naked woman on the TV.
And then other people reacted.
And Ryan Walters turned it off, continued on with the meeting as if, you know, like nothing really happened.
No one really knew what happened.
Initially, people were like, oh my gosh, did it connect with one of his devices?
And he was like watching porn.
Was he watching porn on the TV directly?
Even though he recognized during that meeting that something had happened and he turned off the TV and he continued with the meeting, he went on later to deny that anything happened to the media.
Hey, worth a shot in this day and age.
And then called on the board members who were saying, hey, something popped up and happened and probably should be looked into.
He said that they were lying and they needed to resign.
So, there was an entire investigation, including the Oklahoma County Sheriff.
So, it wasn't just, yeah, because they were looking into potential criminal violations.
What?
I don't know.
I don't know Oklahoma.
Perhaps.
I don't know about that.
Okay.
But they were looking into it.
They were taking it seriously as far as I can tell.
They worried it was like a student or something?
Or no?
I don't know.
I think, I don't know.
I think that they weren't sure.
And so they were just involving the state itself and also the sheriff to investigate this.
I don't know.
That seems, that's something seems weird about that.
Are you sure there wasn't some other like possible accusation or something going on?
I don't know.
Nothing that has been identified publicly.
I'm not sure.
But the Oklahoma County Sheriff, Tommy Johnson III, get it right, said that the investigation that he conducted corroborated the accounts of the board members, but also said what happened was a Jackie Chan movie that included nudity was showing on the television.
A movie from 1985 happened to be like.
Sure seems like if that was it, he would have just said that.
Like that's pretty innocent explanation.
Yeah.
What it feels like to me is there are probably instances where that might not have been the case and he lucked out in this one, maybe.
I don't know.
But, you know, like when you turn on the TV and it just, I know this happens with RTV.
It randomly decides it's going to go over to like the Samsung channel guide and it just pulls up a random channel sometimes, even though we tell it not to.
And we just want to be on the hospital.
Right now that I've been caught with porn on the TV and Lydia's like, yeah, you know, sometimes that happens with you.
Like it'll just weird.
Our TV just like it's porn all the time.
This is me just starting my investigation.
Guys, be chill.
I agree.
Essentially, that's what they were saying happened here because Ryan Walters admitted to like, yes, he uses the TV in that conference room and in other conference rooms usually to watch Fox News.
He explicitly said that during the investigation, but that it appeared to be unintentional on Walter's part, just like the most insane bad luck, I guess.
Bad luck.
I don't know.
That is why.
It just seems like you could really do that.
That's the questionable part of this.
And that was kind of the beginning of this downfall, I think.
You know, he was on thin ice, it seemed anyway.
And I'm sure he was getting frustrated.
He couldn't just do whatever he wanted because the board membership had changed.
And so the following weeks after these accusations and the investigation, he canceled a state board of education meeting.
And then the next one, he just skipped.
And apparently, that's the first time in decades that a superintendent has skipped the board meeting.
That is a big, big deal.
And so a lot of people were saying, we can't trust that he actually cares about this.
We will do the nothing.
We'll do the Lee Greenwood Bible Project.
That's gone undone now.
Yeah.
Well, there were a number of things that were kind of outstanding that needed to be addressed that like the board members were getting frustrated about.
They were like, we can't make.
We need answers on the Kid Rock Bible.
Come on.
No, they have pending investigations into teachers that couldn't be resolved.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, they had real things that they wanted to take care of, real business that they needed to address that just was because of his will, never got to be addressed for that period of time.
And then the next time that they met, September 25th, was right after he went on TV to announce his resignation.
Wow.
Okay.
Yeah.
The week leading up to that is really interesting too.
And so before we talk about his resignation specifically, I just want to lay this out here because he didn't stop trying to make changes after what people in Oklahoma were calling like pornogate.
He was still fairly actively working on the policy angle of things, obviously the social media angle of things.
Charlie Kirk died September 10th.
And the week after, every time.
The week after he announced that his team would be investigating 12 Oklahoma school districts for not honoring Kirk's death appropriately because he had called on school districts across Oklahoma to lower their flags or to hold a moment of silence to honor the death of Charlie Kirk.
And several school districts declined.
And they said that they already hold moments of silence every morning for student reflection for students to use as they wish.
And that made Ryan Walters mad.
And so they announced that they were investigating 12 districts as a result.
He also announced on September 23rd, just four days after that announcement, that he would be starting Turning Point USA chapters at all Oklahoma high schools.
Oh my God.
This is a student club that students are able to start if they want.
And then he announced that he would lead the effort to make sure that there would be a chapter at every single high school across Oklahoma.
Wow.
That's as insane or more than the Trump Bible thing.
Like it's hard to compare, but that like I miss that because that just mandating the local propaganda for the fucking regime club at schools is that's a lot.
Yeah, actually, I forgot I had a video of this.
Why don't you pull up what I sent you right now and we'll hear him announce it?
This is just a Naked Woman and Jackie Chan movie.
I'm excited to announce today that every Oklahoma high school will have a Turning Point USA chapter.
We have seen the outpouring from parents, teachers, and students that want to be engaged in the meaningful work going on at Turning Point.
They want their young people to be engaged in a process that understands free speech, open engagement, dialogue about American greatness, a dialogue around American values.
We're so excited to partner with Turning Point USA with this initiative.
For far too long, we have seen radical leftists with the teachers' union dominate classrooms and push woke indoctrination on our kids.
They fight parents' rights.
They push parents out of the classroom and they lie to our kids about American history.
Hell yeah.
What we're going to continue to do is make sure that our kids understand American greatness, engage in civic dialogue, and have that open discussion.
We will continue to do all that we can to make sure Oklahoma students have the best education possible.
Cool.
He looks exactly like what you think.
Yeah.
And that was September 23rd.
His resting college Republican days.
Two days later, September 25th, he announced his intention to resign on Fox News.
Nobody knew it was coming.
The board members had no idea.
They met with him later that day and after he had announced on Fox News.
We'll listen to that in a second.
Keep in mind, he's in elected position.
His term is not up until January 2027.
He's leaving with over a year left of his term.
Something happened.
I mean, it could just be that he was pissed that he couldn't do whatever he wanted anymore.
But I feel like there's something else going on that we don't know about.
We'll talk about some of the things that we've learned in the aftermath.
But yeah, there's something deeper potentially going on.
I see what you're saying with like maybe like maybe the weirdest thing happened.
And he normally watches porn on that TV, but also watches Jackie Chan movies.
He was like, his fingers were just crossed like as the investigation was happening.
Yeah.
And he's like, oh my God, it happened to be a Jackie Chan.
Thank God.
He turned it off so fast that he didn't even know.
Yeah.
He wasn't sure.
They didn't press the channel up button.
Thank God.
So why don't we hear him announce his resignation directly on Fox News where all the important information comes from your elected officials.
Yeah.
And Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters, it was kind of a swipe at you, Superintendent Walters, there, but it's interesting because you've got a little bit of breaking news for us and some big news coming out of Oklahoma.
Tell us what's going on in your state and with you, sir.
Yes, sir.
I'm excited to announce I'll be stepping down Superintendent and taking on the role as a CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance.
We're going to destroy the teachers' unions.
We have seen the teachers' unions use money and power to corrupt our schools, to undermine our schools.
We are one of the biggest grassroots organizations.
We often say we will be no one's as powerful as teachers.
The most powerful, rich, wealthy money and power.
What are the two things I associate most with teachers, with public school teachers?
Money and power.
You know how I had to buy like a pack of markers for our kids teacher because they have no money.
That's yeah, no money and power.
They have to beg us for money so they don't have to use their own way too small wages to buy supplies for the classrooms.
Yep.
Money and power.
That's fantastic.
We are one of the biggest grassroots organizations in the country.
We will build an army of teachers to defeat the teachers' unions once and for all.
So this fight's going national and we will get our schools back on track.
We will not allow.
The only way to stop a bad guy with a teacher is a good guy with a teacher.
Plow any further union control.
And we hope to still have you back on the show occasionally, Superintendent.
So we appreciate that.
But thank you and best of luck to you.
That is so funny.
Yeah.
I just love that guy having the host having no fucking idea.
You got a big announcement.
You're resigning in disgrace and going to a bullshit organization.
They'll probably launder some billionaire money over to you.
Yep.
So the Teacher Freedom Alliance is kind of a new organization.
They got their tax exempt status in December 2024.
And I think a lot of the coverage has been really focused on this.
Like, why is Ryan Walters leaving a pretty visible position as a superintendent of Oklahoma's education?
But even still, like he was on Fox News a lot.
He had, I think there have been some folks looking into this like as an investigation, over 400 media appearances.
Jesus.
That's not normal for a superintendent, by the way, for a state, for a state to have that many appearances.
Anything Moms for Liberty events, conferences, things like that, he was attending all of those things, usually on taxpayer dollars.
There's been a lot of a look into how that money's been handled with that.
But that question remains, why is he leaving this fine paid position, but with a lot of, with a lot of space on the national stage for a very small, brand new nonprofit organization to supposedly take down teachers' unions?
I think what's being missed often is that this is like a sub organization of something bigger.
And this is an offset of something called the Freedom Foundation, which if anyone looks this up on, you know, like ProPublica's nonprofit search or anything like that, it's actually titled Evergreen Freedom Foundation.
It's based out of Washington originally.
And it's an anti-labor union think tank funded by some big right-wing folks, like you would expect.
We got some Koch money in there.
We got Bradley Foundation money in there, pretty, you know, sizable amount.
The Freedom Foundation has been around actually for quite some time.
And they've recently like made a lot of headway because wouldn't you know it, the U.S. Supreme Court decided a few years ago that workers can stop paying union fees.
A lot of people in the public sector no longer have to pay union fees.
Is that Janice?
Janice v.
Axisme or whatever.
Well, that makes sense.
Yeah.
And that really like reinvigorated the mission for this group.
And they've pledged to build on that ruling to further, you know, marginalize employee representation.
So you have them canvassing workplaces.
It's so egregious in certain areas of the country, primarily like Washington, where they're based, that there was actually a website called FreedomFoundationCanvassers.com that no longer exists.
I pulled it up on way back and it's pretty intense.
They're basically saying like, here's who you need to be on the lookout for because they're going to approach you like it's not a big deal, but I'll just read it.
Some Freedom Foundation staff members have openly made racist, homophobic, and misogynistic statements, including blaming immigrant parents for their children being taken away and mocking survivors of domestic abuse.
The Freedom Foundation even hired a convicted violence felon who once joked about bringing a gun to the homes of union members.
Some of the canvassers are college students with no previous experience in labor, no real knowledge of the movement, no understanding of the repercussions their actions can have on the livelihoods of working people.
And then they included pictures of the folks you might see that might approach you at your work.
They're Jehovah's Witnesses, but yes.
Even worse.
Yes.
And I understand why they took this down because, you know, they were including like home addresses of people, birth dates, images, work history.
And I could see that being a little problematic, but it's still available on Wayback.
And obviously, even though they insist that their goal is small government, they don't like unions.
They don't like, you know, all of these things.
It's very just your typical right-wing talking points.
Obviously, they took COVID money.
They received assistance, quite a decent amount of paycheck protection program assistance.
And they said, you know, that it was going to allow them to retain 82 jobs.
82 jobs.
Their loan was seen as particularly notable because of their incessant campaigning against excess government spending and how much they advocate for small government.
Small government for thee, but not for me.
They've been saying that stuff since the early 90s.
And then all of a sudden, like they're like, oh, but give us that money.
The website even states we accept no government support.
Really?
Yeah, but it does.
So now, when people are thinking about like what Ryan Walters' payday might look like for this organization that's housed underneath the Freedom Foundation, because the Teacher Freedom Alliance is new, they don't have any tax records.
We don't know what he's going to be making right now until that stuff gets filed.
But you can look at the Freedom Foundation's tax records to get an idea.
And the CEO of the Freedom Foundation is the president of the Teacher Freedom Alliance.
I don't think he'll receive an income from both, but right now I do know what he makes as CEO for the Freedom Foundation.
His name is Aaron Wife, and he is from England and he makes over $500,000 a year.
Wow.
Yeah.
Sorry, this is, I lost track of the organization.
This is the one that Ryan Walters is joining.
So this is the parent organization for the one that he's joining.
Yes.
Oh, okay.
That's launching like a new startup.
Right, exactly.
This is the answer to teachers' unions.
It's called the Teacher Freedom Alliance, where they're saying, like, we're a union without being a union.
And we want to destroy the teachers' unions.
So join us.
We'll provide legal support if you run into any issues, just trying to like pick the things that they think are going to appeal to teachers the most without giving money to rival unions.
That's right.
Because they said the only good, as I joked, he's trying to assemble the other side of you.
What's in it for those teachers?
Good question.
I don't know.
Because like a union is usually like, hey, you know how Thomas had to buy markers for you the other day?
Maybe we should get together and fight for like something, some morsels of something.
This one's like, hey, you know how you have too much?
We got to get together and join this anti-teachers union union and we'll make sure you have even less.
Yeah.
Well, and not only that, you know, one of the things that I had recognized when I was represented by a union while I worked for the state, you could opt in or opt out of political spending, right, related to the union.
Something to keep in mind is that the Freedom Foundation, that parent organization for the Teacher Freedom Alliance, this non-union teachers union, most of the money that they get in a year, I mean, like most recent tax records, I was looking at like 17 million, 18 million, nearly all of that money is spent on lobbying efforts.
Yeah, what else would it be?
Exactly.
It's just salaries and wages.
We greenwood for the money.
For the few people.
Yeah.
And lobbying efforts.
So, if your concern for your union is like that they're not representing you politically, like then, okay, now you join this thing where all they're doing, anything that they're doing is just political.
It's just Ryan Walters' paycheck and political lobbying.
Do we have any info on like if this has worked, if anyone's actually joined this?
No, I don't see that.
I've seen like testimonials on their website from supposed teachers.
Yeah, um, but I haven't been able to like verify anything exactly.
I think a lot of information will come out like after their first year as a nonprofit and they're having to like file some stuff, you know, but we'll see because it just seems like the front of the organization.
This is nothing like it's yeah, it very well could be.
It very well could be.
The other folks that are affiliated with it are people that were either previously with Turning Point USA or the Young Americas Foundation, you know, another little conservative right-wing group.
So, we'll see.
I mean, like, the money might be really, really good for Ryan Walters, and maybe that makes sense.
Yeah, but it's that combined with like an easy way out.
And as we talk about the aftermath, I think we're going to also see another potential connection here.
Um, so I'm excited to get to that because this sounds like a Barry Weiss-esque move.
Yes, yeah, it's like leaving the institutional power for like a kind of a nothing, but has billionaire money because you're doing things for billionaires.
And then he'll probably end up owning the New York Times.
Yeah, it's just, you know, give it five years.
Yeah.
So that's where Ryan Walters is now.
It's been very interesting on his Facebook page.
He posts, you know, things that you would expect here and there and then randomly like reposts things that are months old that people are like, why are you posting about this?
Like, this isn't new.
This isn't news.
Are you trying to like cover some bad news that's going to be coming out soon?
You know, it's, it's very strange.
I would encourage people if they are interested in like following this even more.
There is a reporter with Fox 25 out of Oklahoma named Wendy Suarez who's doing great coverage.
Maybe I'll link to a couple of things there that I've watched of hers.
Love those local reporters who are actually like, hey, do we maybe want to cover the massive corruption?
And then okay, just me.
So I will mention, I will mention actually while we're on while we're on Wendy, when Ryan Walters was making his resignation announcement on Fox News, I don't know if you've noticed like the image behind him was kind of weird.
It was like a flag.
It looked a little fake, sort of.
He was actually doing it out of Fox 25's area, right?
Out of like their building.
Oh, he's like at the studio?
Because he couldn't do that from the education department building.
He doesn't give a shit anymore.
I guess.
Yeah, actually, as we talk about aftermath, I don't know why he gives a shit actually.
But his team had reached out.
Fox 25 agreed with the understanding that they would get to, you know, maybe get an exclusive with him after.
And instead, he like ran out of the building with his current press secretary.
This guy.
And Wendy chased him down.
She was following after him.
And she was like, what do you have to say to the people of Oklahoma who view this as you abandoning them in the middle of your term and the students, you know, that rely on a strong education department?
What, who?
What are you talking about?
He just like didn't respond to anything.
He just kept walking outdoors, walking outdoors.
She just keeps going after him, keeps going after him.
He doesn't respond to anything, unfortunately, but she's not letting it die.
And people have been sending her like documents and things like that.
So I think there's been a lot of really good investigative journalism behind the scenes that's happening right now.
And we should know more soon.
So yeah, crazy stuff.
Something's going on because, yeah, a lot of this doesn't add up.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Well, why don't I give you like more crazy things?
Because with the aftermath, we've learned some things already.
There's plenty we don't know, but there are some things we do know.
Oh, okay.
So we're still in a, in a, like, this wasn't all you had.
We're going to a bit of a reveal phase.
Yes.
Yes.
There's some interesting things happening.
Maybe we should tease people with a break.
Oh, that's a good idea.
We so rarely remember to do that.
Yeah.
After this, Lydia's going to blow the lid off of this nemesis, weird Jackie Chan movie watching nemesis.
I should look up that movie and find out who the nemesis of Jackie Chan was.
Would I be Jackie Chan and then he?
I missed that.
Maybe some of the early ones because I remember 85.
All of those.
Oh, is that what it was?
And nobody has called it.
I was questioning all the ones in the 90s because they were all PG-13.
I don't know if he was just going for the kid mark.
It was probably smart.
Like I was a great target market.
Any kid who was like 10 in the 90s was like, we didn't have karate kid anymore.
Although we did eventually, there was a karate kid that came out.
The reboot.
Don't remember what it was.
Yeah.
Hillary Records.
I loved it.
Yeah.
I can't.
Oh, really?
Oh, Hillary Channel.
I loved whoever that was.
No, I believe you.
I just was a kid.
I didn't know.
I didn't know who did anything and had a crush on her.
Love karate.
And so maybe you figured, I got to get the Thomas market.
Yeah.
Jackie Chan, the only movie I've, I think I've ever seen of Jackie Chan's is Rush Hour.
So fantastic film.
It is great.
It's so funny.
It's so funny and so fun.
Anyway, that's not what we're here to talk about.
Yes, it is.
So I want to give a quick shout out to Lindell Fields, who is the interim superintendent that's been appointed by Stit.
I don't trust Governor Stitt.
Stit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Stit, Republican governor.
I thought you were saying, like, you know, he's been appointed by Fiat.
I was like, yeah, he's been appointed by Stit.
Okay.
Yeah, but Lindell Fields, from what I can tell, is handling this as well as anybody could.
You know, I think he's being really reasonable.
He's really connected with the students and just trying to focus back on education, which is the whole purpose of this freaking department that was lost with Ryan Walters at the helm.
So he has had his work cut out for him.
The day after Ryan Walters stepped down, the attorney general in Oklahoma called for a financial investigation.
Oh, okay.
Like maybe made out with a bunch of student lunch money or something.
It's pretty bad.
Oh.
So he wants a financial audit of the entire department from Walter's first day as superintendent to his very last.
Now we're making sense.
There are multiple Department of Education employees that have brought forward concerns about the spending practices while Walters was superintendent.
What's this line?
I am $10,000 in overdue blockbuster fees.
And here are some things that we know about already.
So good thing for the Attorney General Gertner Drummond, who, by the way, we're in Oklahoma.
Okay.
I guess I didn't think that's how people's names were there.
I don't know.
Look, I may be a bigot, but my name's Thomas Smith.
You know, it's hard.
It's hard equipped to handle these names.
Yeah.
Now, Drummond had opportunities throughout Walter's time as superintendent to investigate, and he didn't.
And he refused on multiple occasions to look into certain things.
But at least we're here now, I guess.
I don't know exactly what can be done if they find severe misdeeds, if money can be retrieved at all.
I don't know.
But the other issue that Ryan Walters had, I mean, there's a million, but under his tenure at education, they just didn't respond to FOIA requests.
So now that we have someone new and their staff overseeing it and their policies being implemented.
Who don't know they can just not do what people want.
Uh-huh.
So now FOIA records are finally being released.
And what we're seeing.
Surprising because I know with Trump and I mean, they just don't care anymore.
It's actually interesting to see what's going to happen because there's a lot of FOIA requests about ICE and about other stuff that just don't, they just don't do it.
Like no one's ever wanted to comply with FOIA.
You know, like no government, apart from a few like saintly workers or something, broadly speaking, like nobody wants to comply, but they do and they're made to.
And so I like, you got to think there's some way that the something, court system, something will get back to them.
But I am surprised that whoever's coming in, as you're saying, like actually does care.
That's nice.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, I think a lot of this has to do also with public sector employees.
Like there are so many people at the federal level and the state level who do care and are trying to make this right.
Also, I bet you it's going to be the, no, no, sorry, my, my apologies for interrupting, but I bet you it could be the case, if I'm understanding this correctly, where it's like, hey, we're coming into what was clearly an avid porn-watching embezzler.
Let's not become an accessory to his crimes.
Like, I don't, you don't want to like go in and now you're covering for whatever the fuck was happening, right?
Yeah.
You'd rather be seen as like, oh, no, we're turning over a new leaf here in case there was some really shady shit going on.
Yeah, it could be because I mean, it's even under Lyndon McMahon, right?
The educate federal education department apparently sent a letter to Oklahoma Education back in February of 2025.
And they said, hey, it looks like you gave some COVID money to schools that weren't eligible to receive it.
It was a specific program that was intended for schools where 40% of the school had, if it's a private school that's receiving this funding, 40% of the enrolled students needed to come from low-income families.
And so they highlighted, I think it was, oh man, I want to say like nine different schools where they said, hey, it looks like you guys gave money to the following schools and they don't meet the requirements.
You know, here's the percentage of low-income students that we see are enrolled.
Let us know if like you gave us inaccurate data and you need to correct it or what happened here.
Doing any embezzling.
We're cool with destroying our literal department, but no, but follow the rules.
So that email came through via a FOIA request.
And when it was released, then the news station that got it let the new folks know at the Department of Education in Oklahoma, hey, by the way, this was the FOIA request that we had fulfilled.
Looks like there's something happening, but we don't know if they ever responded.
The spokesperson for the Department of Education thanked them for bringing the letter to their attention and said that they did not know this happened.
It was another surprise.
And they said, among many.
If we are to take their word for it, which I kind of do, I kind of just from what limited information I know, it does seem like whatever administration this is, I'm sure we're not in love with them, but it seems like they're at least operating at a slightly better level.
But to not even know or have record of what FOIA requests came in under the previous guy, that's got to be like illegal.
They also don't know if they ever responded because the federal education department said, like, you need to respond by March 7th.
There's no indication if they ever actually responded.
Wow.
So now you're talking about federal money.
And this is worrying the Oklahoma legislature too.
Like even the Republicans, they're like, this could mean that they claw back money to make it right or they withhold money from the future to make up for it.
We don't know.
And so it's frustrating for them to feel like they can't plan for this.
Most folks say like, yeah, the second you get something like that from the federal government, you inform the legislature immediately so you can make plans and figure out what's going on.
Nothing happened.
Wow.
So I mentioned, you know, the attorney general is looking into some financial questions here.
There's also the Oklahoma Ethics Commission that launched an investigation a couple of weeks ago.
We technically don't know specifics about, but I kind of do.
So just piecing together news reports.
Get your story straight, lady.
So the Ethics Commission will not release what this is about.
And they specifically say in their press release that Release of any information that they find out may be deemed that it needs to remain confidential.
Um, it just sort of depends.
So, yeah, we're kind of like reiterating.
Um, but they were looking into conflict of interest.
The reason why we know what this is about is because an Oklahoma representative, Ellen Pogemiller, had filed an ethics complaint against Walters back in March over his use of state resources to endorse the Teacher Freedom Alliance.
This is before he's connected with them at all, supposedly.
March in 2025.
Yeah.
And saying that he violated rules governing state officers and private economic interests.
The ethics commission let that one go.
And they're like, We don't have enough information here to deem this irresponsible or unethical or anything.
But then when he announced he was resigning and becoming the CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance, she renewed her complaint and was like, Told you so.
Yeah.
And she's like, Case closed?
Do I just win or whatever?
Yeah, but it was so egregious when it wasn't just that he was like touting the Teacher Freedom Alliance on his social media.
He was using Letterhead, like Department of Education Letterhead to issue memos and news releases about the Teacher Freedom Alliance being an alternative to woke teachers unions.
And she said that public records show that he and his staff use state funds and time to travel to Teacher Freedom Alliance related events.
And he was a keynote speaker at one of those things.
So I feel like there's something like legitimate here happening.
It sounds like he just was entirely a grifter out for his own profit.
Yeah, it just seems like he's he's tried to grift all he could grift.
And then the way he left is so funny as you're talking like, all right, well, anyway, I got to go.
Like as the police are knocking down the door, kind of.
It feels like it could be a meme almost.
Like it's just, it's so incredible.
So I want to talk a little bit now about how he just didn't grift for himself.
He was grifting for other people.
That's nice.
So let's talk about all the paydays for Walters' cronies when they all left immediately after he left.
So there are joined his Patreon at the crony level.
That should be one of ours.
Yeah, it should be.
It should be.
Matt Langston was the chief policy advisor under Walters.
And Oklahoma Watch is an organization that does like little investigations about public workers and, you know, sort of like the use of state funds, et cetera.
They did a report and they found that from the time he was hired to the point that they did their reports, just a couple of years, he used his key card at the office 42 times.
Wow.
Total.
Like that would include like going out for lunch breaks and coming back.
Yep.
Wow.
Yep.
Okay.
That's not surprising when you realize that he lives in Texas.
He doesn't live in Oklahoma.
Wait, is that?
He's an Oklahoma state worker.
I don't think so, but he's registered to vote in Texas.
He is.
Yeah.
He ran his campaign for superintendent.
So, you know, it's just his buddy and he's a CEO of.
Sorry, whose buddy?
I'm sorry.
I missed that.
Wait, who was the pronouns here?
What are you talking about?
Matt Langston is the chief policy advisor, was the chief policy advisor under Ryan Walters for the state of Oklahoma.
Oh, you weren't talking about Ryan Walters.
I thought you were.
Right.
Matt Langston is registered to vote in Texas.
He is a Texas resident.
So you're saying he got a do-nothing job.
Yes.
He was CEO of a political consulting firm called Engage Right.
He ran his campaign for superintendent in 2022.
So when Ryan Walters won, he appointed Matt Langston as his chief policy advisor and he used his key card 42 times total.
Now, it's not just that he did nothing.
He got a paycheck, but then he also got a bonus last Christmas of more than $40,000.
A bone?
Wait.
He's a state worker.
Yeah.
He's a state worker.
You can't just dish out a bonus.
It's unthinkable to me as a former state worker.
That's usually not how.
And by the way, I really deserved a bonus.
Like, I'm not just saying that.
Like, I redid their entire office and changed everything and made it.
And they tried.
They're like, we think if we pull the right strings, we can give you like a few hundred dollars or something.
Like, for real with government, it is a problem when you do have a good employee that you want to reward.
It can be very difficult.
Yep.
It's kind of thankless work in some ways.
Yeah.
His final paycheck, because he left right after Ryan Walters left, of course, was $27,500.
Yeah.
Nobody makes that much.
No, I mean, no, it's significantly more than the other months that he made.
So we're looking at a bonus of more than $40,000 in December.
This is just a criminal.
This is just a thief.
This is a bank robber.
That's not where it stops.
Matt Moeller was the chief of staff for Walters and was hired.
Do you know who that is?
No, I don't think so.
Hired earlier this year.
That's a dark guy I should know it.
No, I'm just, I'm naming Matt Moeller.
No, I'm just naming names.
He was hired earlier this year.
And when he was hired, he got a $50,000 bonus.
No, that's not, no.
Yep.
No.
And then in September, when he left after Ryan Walters left, he walked away with a paycheck of $28,300.
This guy's got to be in jail.
This is, this is nuts.
It's so crazy.
Now, we've also just learned just a few days ago that there are other performance bonuses that he gave to other folks on his staff.
Wow.
So his executive assistant, Lexi Flanagan, who, by the way, graduated from the high school he taught at in 2016.
What's going on here?
Yeah.
She received a $9,000 bonus earlier this year.
And then she got an additional $15,000 performance bonus.
No.
All of this stuff is also has been coded as regular pay in their financial system.
You don't.
This is, I look, I'm sure people get it, but if you don't, like, this is this state government or I don't know.
We don't know about federal.
It's probably the same, but there aren't bonuses.
Like that just doesn't.
And like, hey, I'm going to give my executive assistant, did you say?
Yeah, executive assistant.
A $9,000 bonus.
And then $15,000.
That does, that does not work.
None of them deserve it, but like this is just, wow.
So that's just theft.
This is just a guy who went in and stole everything that wasn't nailed down.
That $9,000, by the way, was about 13% worth of her salary.
So she got a 13% bonus just because.
Wow.
Christmas, I guess.
I don't know.
Then his press secretary, who, by the way, I think is his fourth press secretary during his term, Madison Cersei.
During his term, how long was his term?
It was like five minutes.
2022.
Yeah.
So not that long.
She only joined the department in July.
She graduated college a year ago and she got a $10,000 performance bonus.
Okay.
Yeah.
Holy crap.
Yeah.
This is something he has done all the time.
I mean, it's egregious all the time, but it feels like particularly heartbreaking for Oklahoma taxpayers when you see it's all the people that are running out as he's running out and he's just signing checks of tax money to them.
It's disgusting.
How are they doing on education?
They got to be number 50.
50th too.
Oh, 50th.
How many states are there?
Yeah.
I went to Oklahoma Public Schools.
I don't know.
It's not great.
I think they're technically above New Mexico on like one metric and above like Arizona and like two other states for purpose.
People sending it to like it's always, it's usually like Alabama, Mississippi, blah, blah, blah.
They're even worse than that.
I think so.
I think like, yeah, he's been trying to say that they pulled 130-something schools off of the failing list from the federal department of education's tracker or whatever.
And people are looking at that and they're like, there's no possible way.
So now there's a question about data manipulation.
That's another thing that Wendy Suarez with Fox 25 covered.
So again, check out her page for details on that.
But all of that is, God, it's so bad.
That's just, that's money that's gone.
It's money that's gone.
And there's, I don't know.
I mean, you could prosecute him.
Yes, I don't know.
I guess I'm not feeling hopeful about like getting that money back for folks.
Yeah, we won't.
But don't take on it.
Lydia takes on a lot.
You don't need to get the money back.
I want to close this out by talking about the things that have affected the students in a lot of ways.
Obviously, the taking money from the students and giving it to your yes men and yes women is really, really awful.
But then there's been all of these policies that he's instituted that have been really focused on trying to turn Oklahoma as right-wing as possible, take over the public education system, dismantle it in some ways.
And these are the things that Lindell Fields' office is really trying to address and fix right now as much as they possibly can.
So one of those areas is one of the things that we first started talking about when I was reminding folks who Ryan Walters was was about the Bibles required in the classrooms.
Lindell Fields has come out and explicitly said they're not required in classrooms.
I just need to make sure I've been too afraid to ask.
What are you saying?
Lindell Fields?
Yes.
Lindell?
Yes.
Lindell.
Lynn?
Lindell Fields.
Is it the right name?
Lyndell?
No.
Lindell.
One first name.
Yes.
Lindell Fields.
Yes.
Okay.
Who is that?
The superintendent right now.
Okay.
Thank you.
But when he announced that the Bible would not, you know, need to be in every single classroom and that biblical curriculum is no longer expected pursuing this.
He made the decision pretty quickly.
First of all, because I think it's just illegal.
But second of all, there was a pending case with the Oklahoma Supreme Court, and they explicitly just asked and said, you guys need to make a decision if you're moving forward with this or not, because we need to make decisions on our end about working on our cases that are on our docket.
And so are you continuing to pursue this?
So we know that this needs to stay on the docket.
His team made a decision and said that they're no longer requiring this.
And so the case is now moot.
When that happened, Ryan Walters crawled out of his wherever and posted a tweet.
Pile stolen money from the yeah, exactly.
And he said, I could not be more disappointed in the decision to move away from empowering our teachers in Oklahoma to use a foundational document like the Bible in the classroom.
The war on Christianity is real.
Because of course, he would come out and what about the war on Islam and just basically every other religion that also doesn't get to have their book in the schools.
Yeah, yeah.
But he could use this, right?
He can use this for his own purposes.
You know, there was talk about him running for governor.
So, you know, now he's completely unencumbered, I guess, in those ways, if that's something he wants to do in Oklahoma.
But yeah, it's a chance to use that talking point.
So he's going to freaking use it.
The way that Fields handled that decision, too, was he basically said, you know, and this is actually really good timing because if there are resources related to the, you know, the Bibles in schools that the department was looking at, it's pretty good timing because we're redoing the budget anyway.
So we'll find ways to use that money elsewhere.
They also took down that Bible donation page I mentioned, the Lee Greenwood page where it was like, buy a Bible, send it to a school in need kind of thing.
So that's completely gone.
Oh, no one needs that fucking shit.
Solved.
Yeah.
And Fields had also just reiterated: hey, the Bibles, if people need them, they remain accessible like they always do because libraries often have a copy.
Go to anything.
There's the internet.
You know, there's plenty of things.
Yeah.
And that districts are more than allowed to include biblical education wherever it's deemed appropriate by the individual school boards.
So it is something that is, you know, left to that more local entity, depending on the curriculum that they're looking at, but would no longer be governed by the state.
So there's like going to be a separation between church and state kind of thing.
Is that yes?
That's a little bit a little bit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Why has no one ever thought of that?
Now, here's one that we actually did on the show: the Prager U test to determine if you are too woke.
Where's my certificate, by the way?
I want it.
I need it.
Yeah.
You know, I don't know.
I think we're on our own now.
That was another element of the, you know, I had mentioned on that episode a while back, you know, this is part of the state website.
It is now no longer part of the state website.
It was scrubbed pretty early after Ryan Walters had resigned.
Now, what they've been learning, though, is I think this is comforting in some ways and then also concerning in other ways.
So as they were taking a look at this, and I think Fields is trying to be really methodical with like how he's undoing things, this was an easy thing for him to get rid of because he said no contract actually exists between the Oklahoma State Department of Education and Prager U.
No state contract covered the work of that particular test, nor did anything exist when Ryan Walters was encouraging folks to use Prager U's resources online in the classroom.
Interesting.
Prager U did not receive any state funding.
So this was something really, really easy for him to say, well, we're not doing that anymore because there's, you know, we didn't sign anything.
What was going on there?
Was it just still in the works or was it like a handshake deal or was it just like they never do we know?
We talked about this a little bit on the episode.
I don't think PragerU cares about this for the money, right?
I don't think that they stepped into that partnership with Ryan Walters and Oklahoma Education.
They're always just doing money for them.
Right.
They're moving into the classroom.
They're infiltrating.
They're kind of reshaping the narrative.
So there's elements of this where I'm like, oh, good.
They didn't get anybody's money.
And then other elements of it where it's like, well, that wasn't what they were there for anyway.
So it still feels like a little nefarious.
And I don't know.
Oh, it's for sure nefarious.
Yeah.
But on the plus side, made it really, really easy for Fields to say, we're not doing that anymore.
Now, when we took the test, I had mentioned that I had to fill out a few things in order for them to give me the certificate.
Right.
And his team has come out to say because there's no contract in place, there's nothing like formalized or anything like that.
They don't know what PragerU is going to do with the data that they receive from everybody who took the test.
So that's something to keep in mind.
If other folks decided they wanted to do it for fun, like we did, PragerU does have your address or whatever address, I guess, you gave it, your email, your phone number, potentially your name, et cetera.
And Oklahoma has no idea what PragerU is planning to do with that.
Similar to that, we had, and I don't know that we talked about this at all exactly, but there were elements of their social studies core standards that they were able to change that Ryan Walters and his PAC, I guess, were able to change.
And this gained a lot of attention.
Oh, maybe we did talk about this a little bit because part of what the curriculum that they were changing was they wanted to incorporate 2020 election denial into their social studies curriculum, which is remarkable.
But one thing that I learned from this research is the way that this material came to be wasn't just Ryan Walters saying, okay, here are my talking points, put them in the curriculum.
He actually formed an executive review committee.
And that committee included Dennis Prager, literally Dennis Prager, as well as Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation.
We had someone high-level, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, another conservative think tank, very, very right wing, the former university president of Wesleyan University, and the president of the Association of Classical Christian Schools, David Goodwin.
Like that, that was the team assembled to rewrite these standards.
This is something that is going to be harder to undo.
I'm just going to say that up front because it's not something where the department issued these and it comes directly from them.
This was accepted by the Oklahoma state legislature.
So now this is something that is codified in law in a lot of ways.
That's going to take a lot more time to undo.
Hey, sorry.
I'm not saying anyone there deserves it, but it's, yeah, it is tough when a state votes to just be stupid.
I don't know what to do about that.
Yeah.
And man, there are elements of this that are like so shocking too, because the way that Ryan Walters got this stuff through the board is he just outright lied.
Wow.
And let me just share a little bit of that.
The Oklahoman covered this in their reporting.
I've been, I've consumed so much reporting out of Oklahoma.
There's some really, really good journalism out there.
Keep it up, everybody.
But what they found was the standards that were written, Ryan Walters sent out a draft version of those in December.
And then he had a final version in February that he did not send out until 4 p.m. the day before the 9:30 a.m. meeting.
Then during that meeting, remember I said that Governor Stitt had switched out board members in January.
So this is February.
Okay.
During that meeting, three of those new members all asked for more time to review the new standards before voting on them.
One of those members is dyslexic and specifically asked to table the motion for a month because of needing more time based off of his disability.
And that ended up being voted down because Walters incorrectly told board members that the standards needed to be approved that day in order to meet legislative deadlines.
The deadline wasn't for more than two months later.
Just outright lied to these people.
He also didn't say any of the last minute changes that he had made to the standards.
He basically said it's, you know, it's essentially what you reviewed before.
Everything else, you know, it's minor.
But the election denial language was not included in that first draft.
So that was something that was just added to the final.
What is so this is in the school standards?
They're putting election denial stuff.
Yes.
Yeah.
And COVID-19 lab leak hypotheses and any right-wing talking point you could think of.
I know we don't have time, but like, I don't know, how does normal these work?
Do you get to put in like political positions of stuff?
No.
Know how this whole thing just fell apart so spectacularly on this set of standards.
Well, but this is the thing you said will still be there, right?
Yes.
So there is litigation right now tackling this.
I think it was kind of improper in terms of the notice.
those board members found out that the material had been sent to the legislature that they hadn't actually gotten to review.
There were two resolutions that would have rejected the standards.
They didn't receive a vote in the state senate, one of them.
And then another one didn't receive a vote in the House of Representatives because wouldn't you know it, Ryan Walters and his buddies at Moms for Liberty lobbied across the House and the Senate.
Moms for Liberty said that they would threaten any GOP legislator who voted for one of those resolutions.
They would threaten to challenge those people.
And so the legislature just wasn't able to act on what the board was requesting.
And they took effect with the current school year.
They just kind of ran out of time, but they are on hold right now because it's in limbo with the court, I guess.
But that's not something that Fields and his team can just say those are gone.
They have to kind of piece by piece tackle that.
And it is going to be a little bit more of a challenge.
That's something that could be on the books for six years if they're not able to overturn it via the Supreme Court in Oklahoma.
There are things that they're doing to undo right away.
There are things that are going to take a longer time.
There are things that they might not be able to undo at all.
And ProPublica just issued an article I think that they'd probably been working on for a while.
And then Walters just disappeared.
But I'll link that in the show notes as well because there's some good stuff in there.
And they interviewed Jenna Nelson, who is the person who ran against Ryan Walters for superintendent a few years ago, who lost, a moderate Democrat.
And she said about Oklahoma, quote, we are the testing ground.
Every single state needs to pay attention.
What happened in Oklahoma is the plan for what the right wants to do in other states.
It's not just school choice.
It's not just calling out woke policies.
It is literally shaking the ground from underneath public education.
And if it exists, it exists to tell their story, like we're seeing with the social studies curriculum changes that Oklahoma was duped into making, or it's to just eradicate completely as much as possible.
So a lesson to be learned in so many ways if anyone's willing to pay attention.
I know all our listeners are paying attention, but these are bad things for even if you are on the right as well.
Well, it's also, I think, a lesson of there's a reason there's so much grift on the right.
It doesn't mean that everyone's a grifter.
Like I think some people are, you know, just genuinely evil and want bad things to happen.
Like, you know, Stephen Miller, I don't think he's a grifter.
I think he's genuinely evil.
There are a lot of people who use like the kind of moral certainty of that side, you know, and use the language of religion, all that.
There are a lot of people who just use that to just rob people blind.
I mean, it's a tale as old as time.
There's a few examples on the left.
I think maybe that Sean King guy might be an example of that.
But like for the most part, these people tend to be more on the right.
And it's a combination two of incompetence because it's harder to fleece people on the left because they're not as stupid, broadly speaking.
I mean, I don't mean to be, you know, insulting everybody on the right, but broadly speaking, the left is, especially as Trump has taken over the party, anyone with a brain can't handle Donald Trump.
Like it's just impossible to handle that unless you find ways of getting rid of the cognitive dissonance.
And just in general, people with standards, people who are educated, people who are slightly smarter are on the left.
It's harder to rob those people by conning them in these ways, you know, like there's a reason the right is gutting, you know, DOJ, the FBI, like all those things.
They want to be able to get away with their crimes.
You know, it's all connected in that way.
And I think that this guy sounds like a real grifter.
I mean, it sounds like solid, solid grift.
The way he just like resigned.
Yeah, I'm out of here.
You know, as after he signed all those changes.
He's got a bunch of bags with like dollar signs on them, you know, and the Oklahoma flag or whatever the hell.
You know, he's just like walking out.
All right.
Well, news, I've got to resign.
Very weird.
Yeah.
Very weird.
There's certainly a lot more that's going to come out.
I'm sure of it because of just hearing all of these missing pieces that people are desperately trying to figure out.
That his executive assistant is someone that was like potentially a student of his when he was teaching history in high school.
I don't know.
There's just so many strange things going on here.
Ryan Walters thinks that he's out of my line of sight.
He thinks he's gotten away from Smith.
He's not.
I'm just glad he's no longer affecting the public as directly and as immediately as he could from his position before.
He certainly has less power now.
And maybe he'll get way less airtime because Fox News, even Fox News was like, huh.
We'll see.
But he's not off my shit list.
I'll be following him over to his next where there's woke.
Yeah.
Especially as we get closer to filing deadlines for their first fiscal year.
So I'll be watching you.
Oh, man.
Well, good stuff.
Very interesting.
And what a piece of crap, everybody.
God, he's the worst.
Amazing.
Well, thanks for listening, Wokies.
We really appreciate you.
Thanks for supporting the show.
We got some good stuff coming up for you.
And patrons get access to that poll voting for my next nemesis.
Next non-consensual nemesising.
Nemesizing of Lady Smith.
Do I need a nemesis?
Nah.
I don't know.
I got plenty.
Yeah.
Do I have any?
I'm sure you do.
Yeah.
These days.
Yeah, I guess I do.
I think so.
That is fun.
Bill Maher.
Bill Maher's yours.
Oh, God.
All right.
Thanks, Wokies.
And we'll see you real soon.
Patreon.com/slash where there's woke if you want to get that stuff.
