Ryan Walters, the controversial far-right Oklahoma state education chief, has put together a team to rewrite the school's history standards — including one of the key architects of Project 2025.
According to NBC reporter Tyler Kingkade, Walters' Executive Review Committee to reform the state's social studies directives includes Kevin Roberts, the leader of the right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank.
Project 2025, the group's 900-page blueprint for the next Republican president, outlines a strategy to replace the entire federal civil service with GOP loyalists, and enact a sweeping right-wing vision that includes codifying Christian nationalism into law and sharply scaling back everything from Social Security and Medicare to military family benefits.
President Joe Biden has hammered former President Donald Trump over the most unpopular aspects of the Project 2025 agenda on the campaign trail.
Trump has recently begun distancing himself from the proposal, falsely claiming that he doesn't have anything to do with it, even though some pro-Trump PACs are touting it, and some of the Heritage Foundation strategists crafting it, like John McEntee, worked for his previous administration.
Read also: Oklahoma now requires all public schools to teach from the Bible as 'historical' document
Also on Walters' task force are Dennis Prager, the namesake of the right-wing youth propaganda video mill known as PragerU which has, among other things, produced animated cartoons of abolitionist Fredrick Douglass calling slavery a "compromise;" and David Barton, a Texas-based activist who preaches that the First Amendment's guarantee of separation of church and state is a myth.
Walters has previously authorized the use of PragerU materials as classroom instructional content in Oklahoma, and gave a state library standards advisory position to Chaya Raichik, the operator of the anti-LGBTQ "LibsOfTikTok" account, despite her having no expertise in public education or libraries, and despite her social media activity having allegedly inspired domestic terrorism threats against schools and hospitals. He has also ordered schools to teach from the Bible as a "historical" document.
