Oklahoma Plans to Test Out-of-State Teachers for Wokeness

Oklahoma’s Education Department has approved plans to force teachers from California or New York to pass an ideology test to ensure that they aren’t too “woke” before they hire them.

The test was created by right-wing think-tank Prager University, which has made headlines recently for developing education material that minimizes American slavery. It features 50 questions about the government, gender, and religion. The Education Department posted five sample questions from the exam, including, “What are the first three words of the Constitution?” and a question about the biological differences between men and women. 

Teaching applicants from California and New York were notified that they will not be accepted without completing the test.  

“We’re not bringing in woke indoctrinators into the classroom,” said Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters. “It’s a very America-first approach.”

Walters hopes to release the exam “soon.” He has also blocked Board of Education members from viewing the exam before potential teachers receive it. 

Oklahoma Education Association president Cari Elledge told USA Today that she believes the move will only exacerbate Oklahoma’s public school teacher shortage. The state teachers union wrote in a letter that Walters “has no legal authority to vet certified teachers based on political ideology.” 

Walters has made headlines previously for trying to force Trump Bibles and prayer into classrooms, reportedly watching pornography during a school board meeting, and inviting ICE to perform raids on the children of his state while they were at school.  

In short, he appears to be a loyal MAGA soldier who happens to have an alarming amount of power over the teachers and students of Oklahoma, and this test only reaffirms that. 

Summer recess is turning out to be a crude wake-up call for Republican lawmakers, who appear to be learning just how much their constituents hate the Trumpian policies they’ve voted for.

Wyoming Representative Harriet Hageman had her own rude awakening at a Natrona County town hall on Monday when she was pressed to explain her ongoing support for Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariff plan.

“Who is responsible for establishing tariffs in our country?” asked a male attendee.

“Well right now, the president has taken that authority,” Hageman said, cut off by a loud “boo” from the audience.

“Why did he take that authority? You guys gave it to him. The House of Representatives are responsible for establishing tariffs. You gave that to him,” the attendee continued, urged on by cheers and applause from the crowd.

“The next thing I’d like to ask you, when you look at the bigger picture—” he continued, before Hageman cut him off to claim that the tariffs had “raised over $150 billion.” But that only further incensed the crowd, who began to shout at their elected lawmaker.

“Who pays for them? Who pays for them? We pay for them,” the attendee on the microphone retorted.

“Inflation has not gone up,” Hageman said.

It was the third event in a matter of weeks that Hageman had bombed onstage in front of her constituents. In a heated exchange with a female attendee at a Casper town hall earlier Monday, the 62-year-old’s stated belief that mail-in ballots are not “foundational tools” of democratic elections was practically met with screams from the irate crowd.

The Wyoming Republican was also practically roasted in the rural town of Pinedale on July 29  when she justified the planned repeal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s landmark “endangerment finding,” which required corporations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. 

“The endangerment finding is absolutely based upon false science,” Hageman told the crowd, who jeered back at her. “Lie, lie!” they chanted over her.

“CO2 is not a pollutant,” Hageman shouted. “As far as the validity and the science that was the foundation for that, they cooked the books.”

Hageman isn’t the only MAGA legislator who has gotten scorched during the last few weeks for voting against the interests of her constituents. New York Representative Elise Stefanik was roundly booed by a feisty crowd when she emerged in Plattsburg Monday to rename a county building, and Nebraska Representative Mike Flood was excoriated during a town hall earlier this month for failing to protect SNAP benefits, veterans’ programs, and health care access, combined with voters’ simmering resentment for the GOP’s lagging on the release of the Epstein files.

In response to a perfectly reasonable query from a New York Times reporter, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday lashed out at the paper while dodging the question.

Earlier, President Trump—who, in recent days, has conducted a bilateral summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a multilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and other European leaders, and a one-on-one phone call with Putin—told Fox News that he’d stepped away from his meeting with the European leaders to speak with the Russian president.

“I didn’t [call Putin] in front of them. I thought that would be disrespectful to President Putin,” Trump said. “You know, I wouldn’t do that because they have not had the warmest relations.”

At a press conference later Tuesday, the Times’ Shawn McCreesh asked an obvious question: If the current objective of ongoing Russia-Ukraine peace efforts is to “get everybody on the same page,” then, “why wouldn’t Trump just take the call from Putin while the other leaders were in the room? He said it would be ‘disrespectful’ to do that. Why is it disrespectful?”

In response, Leavitt said, “With all due respect, only a reporter from The New York Times would ask a question like that, Shawn.”

Trump’s 27-year-old press secretary, who recently claimed that a Nobel Peace Prize for the president is “well past time,” went on to tout Trump’s diplomacy with Putin and the European leaders. (McCreesh’s question—however vapid Leavitt considered it to be—was left glaringly unanswered.)

Leavitt has a habit of verbally assailing reporters and condescending to them rather than answering their questions.

In March, Andrew Feinberg of The Independent asked about the government haphazardly classifying people as members of the gang Tren de Aragua based on their tattoos and clothing. “Shame on you,” she replied, “and shame on the mainstream media for trying to cover for these individuals who have—this is a vicious gang, Andrew!”

In June, Jasmine Wright of NOTUS asked Leavitt whether Trump would tolerate peaceful protest during his then-upcoming military parade, in light of the president warning that “any protester [who] wants to come out … will be met with very big force.”

“Of course the president supports peaceful protests. What a stupid question,” Leavitt said.

Fellas, is it “woke” to say slavery was bad? President Donald Trump seems to think so.

The president unleashed a lengthy tirade Tuesday against the Smithsonian Institution, and all museums across the country, claiming that they were “the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE.’”

“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been,” Trump wrote. “Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”

Trump has criticized education efforts that focus on racism and slavery since 2020. Instead, he prefers a white nationalist vision of the future of history that focuses on the role of white Americans above all others and diminishes the sins of slavery, segregation, and violence as mere bumps on the path toward a future that Americans ought to spend a lot more time celebrating.

In fact, the Smithsonian Institute celebrates a wide variety of accomplishments by a range of historical figures from different backgrounds. For example, the Tuskegee Airmen are immortalized alongside Neil Armstrong’s first walk on the moon at the National Air and Space Museum.

But Trump can’t seem to see past the variety of skin tones shown in the backward-looking lens of a history museum, and wants to tell a different, “brighter” story. Trump’s efforts to rewrite history are not only despotic, they’re plainly racist.

“I have instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made,” Trump said in his post.

Earlier this month, White House officials laid out detailed plans to eliminate exhibits that they determined represented “improper ideology,” threatening to yank funding if they refused. The memo accused the Smithsonian directly of advancing a “divisive, race-centered ideology.” The White House had previously notified the Smithsonian of a White House initiative to ensure its museums’ “alignment” with a history-whitewashing executive order that Trump signed in March.

Clearly, the president considers teaching the reality of United States history to be fundamentally unpatriotic—when just the opposite is true.

The Trump administration no longer believes the crime statistics provided by the Metropolitan Police Department.

The Justice Department announced a criminal investigation into the Washington police department Tuesday to determine whether the law enforcement bureau had manipulated data to make crime in the city seem lower than officers have claimed, reported The Washington Post.

Donald Trump had highlighted the conspiracy the night before. “D.C. gave Fake Crime numbers in order to create a false illusion of safety,” he wrote on Truth Social Monday night, confirming the existence of the probe.

“This is a very bad and dangerous thing to do, and they are under serious investigation for so doing!” he continued. “Until 4 days ago, Washington, D.C., was the most unsafe ‘city’ in the United States, and perhaps the World. Now, in just a short period of time, it is perhaps the safest, and getting better every single hour!”

Trump deployed 800 National Guard members to Washington and federalized the capital’s police department last week to combat what he described as a crime-riddled hellscape. To justify the government infringement, the president pointed to rising crime rates, immigrant populations, and homelessness—though the figures he used were from 2023, before violent crime plummeted across the country.

More recent numbers from the Metropolitan Police Department told a remarkably different story: Crime in the nation’s capital was actually down 35 percent in 2024 compared to the year prior. The decline tracked with a nationwide crime drop that saw homicide rates plummet across the country. They have continued to descend this year.

“According to local police data, violent crime is down 27 percent over this time last year, with homicides down 11 percent,” reported the Post.

Those digits were sunny enough that FBI Director Kash Patel used them to pat the Trump administration on the back during a press conference last week, claiming that the “plummeting” homicide numbers were thanks to the president’s policies.

“We are now able to report that the murder rate is on track to be the lowest in U.S. history,” Patel said at the time, unraveling Trump’s rationale for forcing MPD and the D.C. National Guard to take over the nation’s capital moments after the president announced the directive.

On Monday, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the administration had made nearly 400 arrests since the beginning of the operation. At least 160 of those arrests were undocumented immigrants, reported ABC News.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is no stranger to manipulating data. Another branch of the government—the Bureau of Labor Statistics—is on its own quest to cook up flattering jobs numbers after its July report indicated that the job market had steadily lost employment since Trump announced his “liberation day” tariff plan.

On Monday, President Donald Trump was caught on a hot mic saying that he thought Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to make a deal “for him,” to end the war on Ukraine. 

When a reporter asked Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday what led Trump to that conclusion, she offered a meandering nonanswer. 

‘Well, the president has learned a lot, which is part of the reason he opened up this dialogue,” Leavitt responded. “The previous administration who oversaw the beginning of this war refused to talk, and President Trump has always said ‘in order to learn, in order to move the ball forward with diplomacy and towards peace, you have to have open dialogue. And so that’s why the president has had several conversations by phone, and of course an in-person meeting last Friday with President Putin … he’s understanding what both sides want, what both sides are going to have to give up. And he has always said, ‘in order to get a good deal, both sides are going to have to walk away a little bit unhappy.” 

In short, Leavitt once again entirely avoided answering a very direct question. 

Putin has not significantly changed his behavior or goals recently, as far as we can tell. And he has consistently shirked the idea of a ceasefire, while continuing to batter Ukraine and encroach upon more of its territory. Any “deal” that happens under these circumstances would only leave one side “unhappy.”   

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was forced Tuesday to walk back Donald Trump’s claim that he had gotten Russian President Vladimir Putin to agree to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Delivering a readout at a White House press briefing, Leavitt claimed that Putin had “agreed to begin the next phase of the peace process, a meeting between President Putin and President Zelenskiy” during a phone call with Trump the day before. Trump had made similar claims himself on Monday.

But when one reporter pointed out that Moscow hadn’t voiced any such commitment, Leavitt was left to explain that the Trump administration was still working to secure the second summit.

“The Kremlin seemed to indicate that Putin did not firmly agree to a bilateral. Did he agree to have a sit-down with just Zelenskiy on the phone yesterday?” asked a reporter.

“I can assure you that the U.S. government and the Trump administration is working with both Russia and Ukraine to make that bilateral happen as we speak,” Leavitt replied, before quickly moving on.

The Kremlin was quick to dump cold water on Trump’s meager wins from his meeting with European leaders this week. Following Putin and Trump’s purportedly productive conversation, Moscow released a statement claiming that the leaders had merely discussed “the idea of raising the level of Russian and Ukrainian representation in the negotiations,” and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also refused to commit to a meeting.

Trump said Monday that he “sort of” set up a meeting between the two leaders but added that ultimately, “they’re the ones that have to call the shots.” Still, the president hopes that a bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelenskiy would be followed by a trilateral meeting, this time including himself.

New court records indicate that the high-profile arrest of Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Ras Baraka at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in May was a top-down directive from the Trump administration.

President Trump’s Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche reportedly
ordered the arrest personally.

Baraka was arrested on May 9, as he and other New Jersey lawmakers, including Representative LaMonica McIver, attempted to conduct oversight at an ICE facility. Baraka and company received mixed messages from the agents there: The mayor was reportedly invited onto the property, left when he was requested to do so, but was nonetheless arrested, in a chaotic event, for trespassing.

McIver is fighting assault charges related to the incident, which she claims are politically motivated. The Newark mayor’s case, on the other hand, was dismissed in May.

But a question remained: Had the order for Baraka’s arrest come down from on high? The answer—apparently, yes—came in a filing by McIver’s defense team, citing “video evidence” produced by the government in discovery, which was first reported by Politico Tuesday.

At 2:37 p.m. on the day of the incident, a Homeland Security Investigations special agent at the facility reportedly took a phone call, “then immediately announced that Mayor Baraka, and anyone who was not a Member of Congress, must leave or be arrested.” The agent told the mayor to leave, and he complied.

The lawmakers eventually came to believe they would, in fact, be permitted to conduct oversight. But minutes later, the HSI agent had another phone call, in which he told his interlocutor: “I am arresting the mayor.… Even though he stepped out, I am going to put him in cuffs.”

Turning to his fellow federal officers, the agent declared, “We are arresting the mayor right now, per the deputy attorney general of the United States. Anyone that gets in our way, I need you guys to give me a perimeter so I can cuff him.”

This revelation about Baraka’s arrest—which the federal judge who dismissed the case described as a “worrying misstep”—comes amid heightened concerns about the president weaponizing federal agents, including from ICE, against his political opponents.

The Department of Homeland Security blamed local officials in Maine for using the department’s federal database to determine the employment eligibility of a police officer who was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month, according to NBC News.  

ICE arrested Old Orchard Beach Police Department reserve Officer Jon Luke Evans late last month, shocking local law enforcement officials who had been told by the federal government that their colleague was permitted to work in the United States. ICE told the Associated Press Monday that Evans, who is originally from Jamaica, would be given the opportunity to voluntarily leave the country immediately. 

Evans has agreed to leave the United States.

As Donald Trump ramps up his purported crackdown on crime in the nation’s capital (and elsewhere), the removal of a law enforcement officer strikes a particularly ironic note—but Evans’s removal hits on yet another crucial issue. 

Old Orchard Beach had previously confirmed Evans’s immigration status by using E-Verify, DHS’s online system for employers to quickly certify whether a potential employee can legally work legally in the U.S. based on records at the Social Security Administration and DHS. 

But apparently that’s not good enough for the Trump administration. Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin accused Old Orchard Beach of “reckless reliance” on her own department’s program, according to NBC News. Critics of the program had said that it’s easy to fool the E-Verify system with fake I-9 documents and stolen IDs. 

But employers have few alternatives to E-Verify. Nine states have even implemented laws requiring private-sector employers to use the fast and free program. Some opponents to the program have said that stricter enforcement could lead to discrimination and worker shortages. 

In the wake of Trump’s sweeping deportation scheme, employers who use E-Verify have not been spared from immigration raids. In June, a food-packaging company in Omaha saw more than half of its workforce arrested, though the employer said he’d used E-Verify to check the work status of all of his employees. 

DHS recently added a new tool to notify employers when someone’s employment authorization is revoked and must be reverified. If employees cannot provide new evidence of valid employment authorization, they will be terminated immediately. 

The Trump administration has been snatching delivery drivers off the street mid-order as part of its sweeping federal effort to make Washington, D.C. “safer,” as multiple residents have reported.

“Yesterday, my UberEats driver got arrested by ICE while he was delivering my food. I walked downstairs to pick it up and I noticed his location hadn’t changed in two or three minutes, and it was like two or three blocks away from my house,” said D.C. resident Tyler DeSue in a TikTok he posted on Sunday that went viral. “I stepped into the streets and I saw police lights … he was being questioned by eight or nine ICE officers.”

The officers claimed that they had pulled over the delivery driver—whose name is “Sidi” on the app—because his moped plates didn’t show up in their index, before conceding that there wasn’t a single issue with the vehicle. The driver’s first language was Arabic, and when they asked how he arrived in the United States, he struggled, and the ICE officers arrested him.

“He doesn’t understand what you’re saying bro, just use Google Translate on your phone, it takes two seconds,” DeSue can be heard saying on video as two officers confront the clearly distressed driver. Then they cuff and arrest him.

This is just one of many recent anecdotes, as residents who were told that the city would be cracking down on “violent crime” report they have observed several people being detained with no probable cause.

D.C. residents are reporting that they’re seeing fewer delivery drivers out and about, and Trump’s crackdown is also having a larger impact. The popular Irving Street corridor in D.C.’s Columbia Heights neighborhood, usually bustling with vendors and drivers, is now quiet. And restaurants across the city saw a 25 percent drop in reservations in the days immediately after Trump federalized the city’s police forces and deployed the FBI, DEA, HSI, ATF, and the National Guard—even as the president claimed business was booming.

“People who haven’t gone out to dinner in Washington D.C. in two years are going out to dinner,” he said on Monday. That was an outright lie.

This federal takeover was supposed to make residents feel safe. However, for many, it’s had the reverse effect.

“What I am seeing, personally, is widespread fear amongst community members,” Atenas Estrada, deputy program director for the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights told NBC Washington. “People [are], you know, making decisions or avoiding places that they perhaps would not otherwise avoid or leave.”