Oklahoma Will Require Schools to Teach Disproven Conspiracy Theory That Democrats Stole 2020 Election from Trump
Ryan Walters, the Oklahoma schools superintendent, has made major changes to the state’s public school curriculum, including mandating Bibles in every classroom
Oklahoma is making more controversial changes to its public school curriculum, including teaching debunked information about the 2020 presidential election.
Several additions to the newly updated Oklahoma Academic Standards for Social Studies are facing public scrutiny, including a directive for high school students to learn disproven conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being “stolen” from Donald Trump by the Democratic Party — a theory the president himself has frequently promoted.
According to the guidelines, high school students should be able to “identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results by looking at graphs and other information, including the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states, the security risks of mail-in balloting, sudden batch dumps, an unforeseen record number of voters, and the unprecedented contradiction of ‘bellwether county’ trends.”
Trump’s claims of election fraud have been refuted multiple times by election officials, cybersecurity experts and even members of his own administration. Then-Attorney General William Barr said in December 2020 that U.S. attorneys and the F.B.I. had investigated, but had “not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election.”
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency echoed that sentiment in their November 2020 statement: “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history… There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised.”
To revise Oklahoma’s curriculum, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters — a strong Trump supporter — sought help from other MAGA devotees like Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts and PragerU co-founder Dennis Prager.
The Heritage Foundation was behind Project 2025, and PragerU is a right-wing media organization accused of publishing false or misleading information about climate change, slavery, racism, immigration, LGBTQ+ issues and more.
“After months of Democrats and the teachers unions lying and attacking, the most unapologetically conservative, pro-America social studies standards in the nation are moving forward,” Walters wrote in a post on X on April 29.
“For nearly a year, we engaged in a thoughtful, transparent process to deliver standards that teach students factual history, including the realities of the 2020 election, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the threat posed by Communist China,” he continued, referencing conspiracy theories that are not supported by facts.
Walters’ admitted conservative bias is evident in other areas of the high school curriculum. In the section about Trump’s first administration, the president is praised for the “successful avoidance of new wars.” President George W. Bush’s curriculum includes the study of “examples of heroism and efforts to combat terrorism” in the wake of 9/11.
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama’s section begins with a focus on the conservative Tea Party movement. In the section about the Affordable Care Act, the standards merely ask students to spotlight “challenges to its enactment.”
The new standards also say that students must “identify the source of the COVID-19 pandemic from a Chinese lab.” The “lab leak” is part of many popular conspiracy theories about the pandemic, however, most scientists believe that the virus originated in humans through contact with an infected animal, like SARS, MERS, and other pandemics throughout history.
The revised guidelines are the latest attempt by Walters to make conservative values and Christianity the standard in Oklahoma’s public schools. In June 2024, he ordered that the Bible, including the “Ten Commandments,” be taught in classrooms from grades 5 through 12.
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In 2025, he’s declared that the state’s public schools will soon have a Bible in every classroom — despite Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt dismissing his $3 million request to pay for the religious texts.
“The Legislature can put the money there or not. We’re going to have a Bible in every classroom this fall. So that’s going to happen. So we’re doing that. We’ve been very straightforward on how we’re doing that,” he said in a May 16 press conference, without providing specifics.
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