Get Stupid
How dumb is Trump 2.0's education policy going to be? Look to states like Oklahoma, where trial runs are already proving unpopular, even with Republican voters.
In the two years before Donald Trump’s reelection, the head of Oklahoma’s public school system conducted a trial run of some of the right’s most ambitious education policies.
Ryan Walters, the superintendent of Oklahoma’s pubic schools, spoke at a Moms for Liberty summit and defended the anti-LGBT group from criticism. He threatened a takeover of a Tulsa school district that defied his directives, ultimately forcing out its superintendent. A veteran of billionaire-backed school privatization groups, Walters has used his post to funnel public money to charter schools, even attempting to establish the country’s first publicly funded religious charter school. He led crusades against inclusive education, and installed “Libs of TikTok” creator Chaya Raichik to a statewide library post even as her channel’s anti-gay content was accused of inspiring a series of bomb threats against Tulsa schools. He has called to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. In recent weeks, he has directed millions—some of it from unaccountable sources—toward the mass purchase of so-called “Trump Bibles” that enrich that incoming president. After Trump’s reelection this month, Walters attempted to mandate that Oklahoma schools show a video in which Walters prays for Trump and accuses “the radical left” and “woke teachers unions” of attacking religious freedoms.
The right’s education policy under a new Trump administration promises to be many things: corrupt, anti-child, anti-secular, and chiefly, very stupid. When I was halfway through writing this newsletter, Trump named Linda McMahon, a former World Wrestling Entertainment executive, as his choice to lead the federal Department of Education—a department Trump and allies have suggested disbanding altogether. We’re talking unvarnished stupidity, the strip-mining of public education by an unqualified cohort that barely cares to hide what it’s doing.
But enraging as the grift may get, education is one of the most viable battlegrounds on which to challenge the right. Public schools are among our last and greatest shared institutions in an era of alienation. And attacks on public schools, in Oklahoma and in nearby red states, reveal how communities can fight and win against prevailing political winds.
When Walters demanded Oklahoma schools air his Trump prayer video this month, leaders for at least seven districts refused outright. Some cited local rules suggesting that, legally, Walters has to shove it.
This kind of noncompliance can be daunting in a conservative state, especially when challenging a leader like Walters who has proved eager to purge insubordinate school leaders. But as liberal pundits suggest moving rightward on civil rights issues post-election, principled stances from local districts can help stop the ideological retreat. By refusing to air a short (and honestly, stupid) video, schools can refuse to participate in an encroachment on their rights, and ready themselves for future conflicts with higher offices.
Joining that fight are Oklahoma parents and civil rights organizations, several of which filed suit this year to challenge Walters’ demand that schools incorporate the Bible into lesson plans. Those lawsuits will join other cases, like an ongoing lawsuit in Louisiana, contesting the creep of enforced Christianity in public schools.
The Christian right isn’t just injecting religion into public schools. It’s siphoning resources from public schools into private, religious, and charter schools, even attempting to establish state-backed religious academies like the publicly funded Catholic charter that Walters has championed in Oklahoma. Trump signaled further support for school privatization this week, declaring that McMahon “will fight tirelessly to expand 'Choice' to every State in America.”
But school privatization has been unpopular in practice, even in red states, as voucher programs disproportionately drain the coffers of rural school districts, to the enrichment of private academies. This month’s elections Nebraska, Kentucky, and Colorado featured ballot measures that would have supported the school privatization movement. All three were soundly defeated. Those results were notable in solidly Republican Kentucky, where voters shut down a measure that would have modified the state’s constitution to allow private and religious schools to receive public funding and tax credits.
In conservative-leaning Nebraska, the anti-voucher outcome was even more dramatic, with voters choosing to outright repeal an unpopular $10 million voucher program that lawmakers had passed earlier in the year. Public schools belong to the people. People—as a matter of pride and survival—do not like to feel as if they are being robbed.
The right’s education policies are appealing to certain subsets of looters, anti-intellectuals, and religious hardliners. They’re appealing to bigots, revisionist historians, and parents who hope to treat children like property. But as exit polls indicate, these reactionary trends were seldom voters’ top issues when they went to the polls this month. Instead, voters tended to voice economic concerns, suggesting a perceived precarity that’s proved difficult to shake after the economic trauma and post-trauma of Covid and subsequent inflation. Many voters appear to have cast ballots for Trump seeking an economic system shock, not culture war. They’re likely to get both, and neither will be very well received.
We don’t need Trump to retake office to see his education vision in action. Politicians like Walters have already previewed it, and revealed it to be hugely unpopular. In Oklahoma this year, Walters polled at a 55 percent disapproval rate, with just 29 percent of respondents approving of his job performance.
In the lead-up to this month’s elections, I hoped Americans would reject Trump out of memory of how stupid his first term was. The horrors, yes, but also the steady drip of grating, pointless, polemical bullshit. Well it’s going to get really dumb again. The horrors, yes, but also a superintendent demanding that students watch his Trump prayer video.
The right is not striving for academic excellence here. (Walters personally struggles to issue simple press releases without errant apostrophes.) Nor is it striving for electoral popularity. It’s making crude plays for power, at the expense of public institutions. In doing so, it risks backlash from a broader coalition than the one that elected Trump. That strikes me as not very smart.
Hey MomLeft readers! This is the second-to-last newsletter until I take a hiatus through the end of the year. I’ll leave a big roundup of resources and reading material before I go. <3