We Are Finally Free of Oklahoma’s Anti-Trans Superintendent Ryan Walters

From his culture war casualties to financial impropriety, Ryan Walters was a menace. Thank God he’s gone—for now, at least.

Public Domain - United States House Committee on Education and the Workforce

Yesterday, Ryan Walters finally began his transition from being Oklahoma’s top education official, to being a lobbying head for the Teachers Freedom Alliance, an arm of the Freedom Foundation, which is a far-right, anti-union group.

Some speculate he could be playing the long game, resigning so he can make a run for governor. A great deal of people don’t care why he’s gone, and are just happy for an excuse to celebrate. (Quite literally—several local businesses across the state threw anti-Ryan Walters parties after he announced his departure.) Either way, in this deeply divided nation, it seems Oklahomans—on both sides of the political aisle—are singing with joy (once again, not just rhetorically) as the reins of governmental authority are removed from Walters’ hands.

In a world teeming with anti-trans Republicans, it can be hard to stand out—but Walters’ seething hatred for queer youth constantly made national headlines, igniting violence in the very schools he was tasked with keeping safe. Transgender Oklahomans were arguably his top target. He bolstered dangerous lies, such as that trans-affirming policies led to students using litterboxes instead of bathrooms. He launched campaigns against school teachers, librarians and the very concept of inclusive literature, resulting in bomb threats. He censored textbooks that acknowledged the biological reality of gender and sexual diversity, dismissing it as “radical gender ideology” that “has no place in our classrooms.”

Walters’ Christian nationalist, culture warrior school policies have cost taxpayers potentially millions of dollars in legal costs associated with subsequent lawsuits. Meanwhile, Oklahoma ranks as one of the poorest states in the nation with one of the highest rates of illiteracy. In just over two and a half years as the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, after a previous appointment within the department by Governor Kevin Stitt, he has somehow managed to flagrantly embarrass the Stitt Administration during a political moment otherwise unburdened by shame and untethered to truth.

“After months of headlines followed by disappointing NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress] scores this month, it’s clear that our education infrastructure has fallen prey to needless political drama,” Governor Stitt said back in February, before abruptly removing three members from Walters’ board. This move caused a public rift with the Superintendent.

“Governor Stitt has joined the swampy political establishment that President Trump is fighting against,” Walters tweeted in response. “The board members that stood with us, working with the Trump Administration to make our schools safer and better, have been fired for political purposes.”

But Walters had other priorities. Over the summer of 2024, he sought to require public schools to force Trump-branded Christian Bible-Constitutions onto impressionable young schoolchildren, regardless of parental wishes about their child’s upbringing. A coalition of legal advocacy groups sued to stop the effort to use taxpayer dollars in an obvious ploy to desecrate separation of church and state. Tentative rollout of that initiative commenced anyway earlier last month, sparking controversy, as there was a notable omission from the Constitution section, or rather, 17: The 11th through the 27th Amendments, including those abolishing slavery and giving women the ability to vote. The Bible publisher told local news station KFOR that “The decision was made to only include the original founding fathers’ documents, as Amendments 11-27 were added at later dates.”

Around the same time, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ordered Walters’ Department of Education to cease a controversial new social studies standard that required educators emphasize “Judeo-Christian values” and promote debunked claims about election fraud and COVID-19.

“Many of the parent petitioners are raising their children in beliefs that are not religious or are raising their children in Christian or Jewish beliefs that are different from the theological doctrines advanced by the 2025 Standards,” one such lawsuit on that front notes. It warns that the move weaponizes public school teachers to “pressure” students to conform to religious ideals “contrary to the beliefs in which the children are being raised.”

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. He also used his governmental position to promote indoctrination, pledging to put a Turning Point USA chapter “on every high school campus” in the state after the assassination of the far-right group’s vitriolic talking head, Charlie Kirk; proposed a so-called “MAGA loyalty test” for teachers coming from blue states like New York and California, administered by PragerU, a far-right propaganda machine; and appointed Chaya Raichik, a real estate agent turned anti-LGBTQ+ extremist via her “Libs of TikTok” social media persona, to the state library committee. (Raichik does not and never has lived in Oklahoma and she has no background in education, library management or child development. She does have hands-on experience seemingly stoking the widescale doxxing and death threats of school teachers, children and librarians across the country.)

Upon Walters’ resignation announcement, even the state’s Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond expressed his non-condolences. “Ever since Gov. Stitt appointed Ryan Walters to serve as Secretary of Education, we have witnessed a stream of never-ending scandal and political drama,” he said. “It’s time for a State Superintendent of Public Instruction who will actually focus on quality instruction in our public schools.”

When Walters wasn’t pushing religion onto children or stoking the flames of a trans moral panic, he could be found mishandling government funds. According to a joint statement from Republican lawmakers this August, Walters “has violated the Open Meetings Act, denied legislators access to executive sessions, deprived districts of rolled-over money meant for school safety [and put] children’s lives at risk by withholding appropriated funds for emergency asthma inhalers.”

Although Walters has stepped down, Oklahoma students, families and educators still face an uphill battle against conservative and anti-LGBTQ forces. However, in that regard, Walters may have one word of wisdom after all.

“This chapter may be closing,” his Tuesday goodbye letter reads. “But our fight for strong schools and strong families is far from over.”