I have tried to stay away from Ryan Walters news, mostly because he is just so damned thirsty, and it's not just that he wants Donald Trump to tell him he's a special boy, but he seems to want his name on everyone's lips. But he's just so awful, and awful in ways that illuminate the moment we're living through. This education dudebro-in-chief for the state is one sad story.
Walters is under investigation by the ethics commission for so many bits of misbehavior, but they all fall under the same category--using his office and the resources of the state department of education to push political positions. He tweets under his official-not-personal account were MAGA electioneering and promotion of himself campaigning for Trump. There's also an ethics investigation under way concerning his use of campaign funds.
And he's drawn criticism from many sides:
Honestly, with everything that’s transpired in the past several months, I’m not surprised. In 2024, we saw time after time where Superintendent Walters was focused on trying to increase his name I.D. Many of the provocative instances were to generate headlines… When it comes to a matter of one’s ethics, we should be held to a high standard.
That's State Representative Daniel Pae-- a Republican-- quoted by KFOR. In the same report, a former Assistant Oklahoma Attorney General points out that if the state's under-resourced, under-staffed ethics commission is bothering to open two investigations on Walters, that's a big deal.
But Walters is still a busy guy. He has proposed rules that would require parents to provide proof of citizenship or legal immigration status when registering students. The law still says (so far) that students who are undocumented must still be given an education, but Walters rule would essentially require each school to keep a list of undocumented families. That list would be super-handy when ICE comes to mount raids in schools, a prospect that Walters enthusiastically supports.
His stated justification is a special brand of--well...
“For years the liberal media has been vilifying Republicans for separating illegal immigrant children from their parents,” Walters said in a news release Friday afternoon. “Now they want us to explain why we’d let ICE agents into schools. The answer is simple: we want to ensure that deported parents are reconnected with their children and keep families together.”
Apologies to my mother, but this is a special brand of bullshit. It captures the petulant own-the-libs neenerism of the MAGA faithful-- "You want to keep the families of These People together, so we'll just throw their kids out of the country, too. Howzabout that?" What elevates it to bullshit levels is the complete lack of honesty, without even the pretense that he's trying to come up with a plausible fig leaf for the policy. He doesn't believe this, and he doesn't expect anyone else to believe it, either. Nor does it have the MAGA troll deniability factor, the chance to say, "Haw! You really believed that I was doing a fascist thing. You sure look stupid now!" There's nothing here but a guy who doesn't quite have the guts to come out and say, "I want brown kids out of my state, and I want all the brown people we throw out to be so miserable and hurt by the whole experience that they tell all their brown friends and brown family to stay away from Oklahoma."
How any of the MAGA faithful manage to hold onto such anger and meanness without burning up, and still manage to convince themselves that they are following Jesus-- it's a mystery. But Oklahomans voted for this guy and the governor who thinks he's just swell. Maybe Walters will wear out how welcome, or maybe Dear Leader will finally notice him and call him up to do damage on a national scale.
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