Ryan Walters, State Superintendent of Oklahoma, decided that he needed some out-of-state assistance in banning books from school libraries, so he appointed Chaya Raichik, who runs a far-right social media group, to help him.
NBC News reported:
A far-right influencer who was accused of instigating bomb threats against a school library in Tulsa, Oklahoma, last year has been named an adviser to a state library committee, the head of the state Education Department announced Tuesday.
Chaya Raichik, who runs the incendiary Libs of TikTok social media accounts and is not an Oklahoma resident, was appointed to the Education Department’s Library Media Advisory Committee.
“Chaya is on the front lines showing the world exactly what the radical left is all about — lowering standards, porn in schools, and pushing woke indoctrination on our kids,” state Superintendent Ryan Walters said in a statement. “Because of her work, families across the country know just what is going on in schools around the country.”
Raichik’s Libs of TikTok accounts have more than 3 million combined followers on X and Instagram. Its content — which is often laced with bigoted rhetoric — generally singles out LGBTQ people, drag queens and their employers, and it criticizes them for promoting diversity, inclusion and equity efforts.
In addition to last year’s scare in Tulsa, posts by the account have preceded several bomb threats to schools, libraries and hospitalsacross the country in recent years.
Raichik did not respond to a set of questions. The Libs of TikTok account replied to a request for comment on X with a compilation of drawings seemingly from young adult novels that depict sexual encounters and asked: “Do you think this is appropriate for kids in school?”
Walters said in a statement, “Chaya Raichik and I have developed a strong working relationship to rid schools of liberal, woke values.”
In August, Union Public Schools, a school district that covers parts of Tulsa and some of its suburbs, said it received bomb threats for six consecutive days. The threats came after Raichik shared a critical video about one of its school librarians.
The video Raichik posted showed a school librarian walking next to a bookshelf, and it was captioned: “POV: teachers in your state are dropping like flies but you are still just not quite finished pushing your woke agenda at the public school.” The video replaced the librarian’s original caption, which read: “My radical liberal agenda is teaching kids to love books and be kind — hbu??”

Beyond parody.
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So former real estate agents with no visible qualifications get to work in education?
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Well, a home schooler is running the New Hampshire Department of Education. The MAGA crowd despises folks with credentials.
I feel sorry for the children of Oklahoma. Wasn’t it only recently that we saw the news coverage of Tulsan schoolchildren having to use outdated, dilapidated textbooks?
The MGA goal is destroy our foundation of democracy, public education.
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Oklahoma lawmakers, educators concerned over ‘Libs of TikTok’ creator’s appointment to education committee
State Representative Mark McBride (R-Moore), the chair for the Oklahoma House Committee on Education, says the move to appoint Raichik to the committee didn’t sit well with him and educators he knows.
“I have not had any—ANY positive feedback from it at all,” McBride told News 4. “I mean, from anywhere from superintendents to teachers, parents, legislators. I haven’t seen anything positive.”
“We’ve appointed a 28-year-old from New York that’s a realtor that has no children and has no education background,” McBride said.
https://kfor.com/news/local/oklahoma-lawmakers-educators-concerned-over-libs-of-tiktok-creators-appointment-to-education-committee/
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Raichik may be part of a network described by the SPLC, “Group Dynamics and Division of Labor within the Anti-LGBTQ and Pseudo-Science Network (12-12-2023)… part of the historical legacy of White supremacy and the political aims of the religious right.”
For those who read the article, it should be disconcerting to note the omission of right wing Catholic activism from the narrative. Only the labeling, protestant Christian, finds space in the lengthy article, despite the noting of EPPC, John Eastman, the Federalist Society (associated with Leonard Leo), the Heritage Foundation (led by the former President of Wyoming Catholic College), the APP (co-founded by Robert P. George), etc. The omission is not surprising given the experts quoted for the research. Prominent experts have an established omission pattern and come from the liberal religionist side of the Catholic sect.
By the way, AEI, CNP (scandal-embroiled Southern Baptist Conference leader, Paul Pressler, was president 1988-1990) and, the Leadership Institute (Bridget Ziegler) were also mentioned in SPLC’s paper.
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