Oklahoma superintendent announces Turning Point USA chapter at every state school
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma - Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters has announced plans to establish Turning Point USA chapters at every public high school in the state.
"I'm excited to announce today that every Oklahoma high school will have a Turning Point USA chapter," Walters said in a video on X on Tuesday.
"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," he claimed.
The announcement came in the wake of the shooting of the far-right group's co-founder Charlie Kirk, which has sparked a wave of repressive actions from the Trump administration down aimed at stifling left-leaning political activity.
Walters told a reporter the state would "go after their accreditation" if a school decided it wouldn't open a chapter of the group.
"They would be in danger of not being a school district if they decided to reject a club that is here to promote civic engagement," he said, adding that "everything would be on the table in that scenario."
Walters vows to "destroy teachers' unions"
Walters on Wednesday announced he was resigning his position to become CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance, a partner organization of the Freedom Foundation.
"We're going to destroy the teachers' unions," he said during an interview on FOX News. "We will build an army of teachers to defeat the teachers' unions once and for all."
The move brings to an imminent close Walters' contentious tenure in the state's Department of Education, during which time he became known nationwide for his far-right views and political stunts.
Under his leadership, Oklahoma green lit the use of rightwing PragerU materials in public school classrooms. The platform's "edutainment" videos are notorious for promoting climate change denialism, false narratives about slavery and racism, and anti-LGBTQ+ views.
Walters also made headlines for pushing book bans and whitewashed accounts of US history, including suggesting that the infamous 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre wasn't about race.
He has mandated that schools incorporate the Bible into their curricula and was at the forefront of efforts to establish the country's first Catholic public charter school – a move rejected by the Supreme Court earlier this year.
This summer, Walters was mired in scandal after Oklahoma State Board of Education members reported seeing a video featuring naked women pop up on a TV in the superintendent's office during a meeting.
After making his resignation announcement at the KOKH FOX 25 studio, Walters was captured exiting the building while refusing to answer questions from a reporter about the motivation and timing of his move.
Cover photo: IMAGO / Imagn Images