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San Francisco Chronicle
2 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Oklahoma to test teachers from New York, California to guard against ‘radical leftist ideology'
Oklahoma will require applicants for teacher jobs coming from California and New York to pass an exam that the Republican-dominated state's top education official says is designed to safeguard against 'radical leftist ideology,' but which opponents decry as a 'MAGA loyalty test.' Ryan Walters, Oklahoma's public schools superintendent, said Monday that any teacher coming from the two blue states will be required to pass an assessment exam administered by PragerU, an Oklahoma-based conservative nonprofit, before getting a state certification. 'As long as I am superintendent, Oklahoma classrooms will be safeguarded from the radical leftist ideology fostered in places like California and New York,' Walters said in a statement. PragerU, short for Prager University, puts out short videos with a conservative perspective on politics and economics. It promotes itself as 'focused on changing minds through the creative use of digital media.' Quinton Hitchcock, a spokesperson for the state's education department, said the Prager test for teacher applicants has been finalized and will be rolling out 'very soon.' The state did not release the entire 50-question test to The Associated Press but did provide the first five questions, which include asking what the first three words of the U.S. Constitution are and why freedom of religion is 'important to America's identity.' Prager didn't immediately respond to a phone message or email seeking comment. But Marissa Streit, CEO of PragerU, told CNN that several questions on the assessment relate to 'undoing the damage of gender ideology.' Jonathan Zimmerman, who teaches history of education at the University of Pennsylvania, said Oklahoma's contract with PragerU to test out-of-state would-be teachers 'is a watershed moment.' 'Instead of Prager simply being a resource that you can draw in an optional way, Prager has become institutionalized as part of the state system,' he said. 'There's no other way to describe it.' Zimmerman said the American Historical Association did a survey last year of 7th- to 12th-grade teachers and found that only a minority were relying on textbooks for day-to-day instruction. He said the upside to that is that most history books are 'deadly boring.' But he said that means history teachers are relying on online resources, such as those from Prager. 'I think what we're now seeing in Oklahoma is something different, which is actually empowering Prager as a kind of gatekeeper for future teachers,' Zimmerman said. One of the nation's largest teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers, has often been at odds with the Donald Trump administration and the crackdown on teacher autonomy in the classroom. 'This MAGA loyalty test will be yet another turnoff for teachers in a state already struggling with a huge shortage," said AFT President Randi Weingarten. She was critical of Walters, who pushed for the state's curriculum standards to be revised to include conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. 'His priority should be educating students, but instead, it's getting Donald Trump and other MAGA politicians to notice him,' Weingarten said in a statement. Tina Ellsworth, president of the nonprofit National Council for the Social Studies, also raised concerns that the test would prevent teachers from applying for jobs. 'State boards of education should stay true to the values and principles of the U.S. Constitution,' Ellsworth said. 'Imposing an ideology test to become a teacher in our great democracy is antithetical to those principles.' State Rep. John Waldron, the Oklahoma Democratic Party chairman, decried the test as 'political posturing.' 'If you want to see a textbook definition of indoctrination, how about a loyalty test for teachers,' said Waldron. 'It's a sad echo of a more paranoid past.' Waldron, a New Jersey native, said he would have been in the target demographic for this kind of test when he moved from Washington, D.C., to Oklahoma to teach social studies in 1999. He said it would have struck him as an indication that the state 'wasn't serious about attracting quality teachers.' 'Teachers are not rushing here from other states to teach. We've got an enormous teacher shortage and it's not like we have a giant supply of teachers coming in from blue states anyway,' he said.
CNN
3 hours ago
- CNN
Bakari Sellers to Republican: Name one threat Trump's followed through on against Putin
President Donald Trump didn't rule out using US troops to help guarantee Ukraine's security while he hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House along with several European leaders. CNN political commentator Bakari Sellers criticized MAGA supporters who he says are ok with boots on the ground now, but would have been adamantly against it months ago.
Politico
4 hours ago
- Politico
The GOP spent millions supporting mail ballots. Now Trump's attacking them again.
But Reilly said he agrees with Trump that mail-in voting is 'impossible to police for fraud' and would prefer a return to restricted absentee voting. He is, however, open to expanding early in-person voting. (Pennsylvania did not allow most voters to use mail ballots until 2020, and it has a form of limited in-person early voting.) Trump has long attacked mail voting even as he has availed himself of the system, heaping baseless blame on it for his 2020 election loss and goading GOP voters into spurning them in subsequent elections. He continued to vilify mail voting through the 2024 election, even as Republicans launched expensive efforts to encourage their voters to take advantage of it — falsely claiming that 20 percent of mail ballots in Pennsylvania were 'fraudulent' and suggesting that mail carriers would 'lose hundreds of thousands of ballots, maybe purposefully.' Now Trump is back to blasting mail voting as a 'hoax' that begets 'massive voter fraud' — and is also railing against voting machines — as he hunts for ways to protect Republicans heading into a midterm cycle that is historically bad for the party in power. After his Truth Social post Monday, the president urged Republicans to 'get tough and stop it' and said he has lawyers crafting him an executive order on the subject while taking questions from reporters in the Oval Office with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. 'If you don't have mail-in voting, you're not going to have many Democrats get elected. That's bigger than anything having to do with redistricting, believe me,' Trump said. 'Republicans have to get smart.' Republicans such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk were quick on Monday to amplify Trump's renewed offensive on mail voting — and his unfounded claims of fraud. It has never been clear that offering mail voting sways election outcomes, as voters who cast mail ballots may have voted other ways. States that have expanded access to early or mail voting have seen no obvious benefit for either party. But party operatives generally like to get their voters to cast ballots early because it frees up resources for them to focus on the voters that remain. Trump also has no power to simply end mail voting. The Constitution gives states the power to set the 'times, places and manner' for federal elections and stipulates that only Congress can override state election laws. Any executive order Trump signs to change how votes are cast would likely be met with legal challenges. Still, his scaremongering alone could sway his base away from the practice and erase Republicans' gains. Voting by mail 'historically has been an advantage for Republicans' in Arizona and is a 'safe and secure way to vote and has been for a generation in Arizona,' said Barrett Marson, a longtime GOP consultant in the state. But 'the president has sown distrust in the early balloting and mail-in ballot process, and Democrats have stepped up their game on the early voting efforts,' Marson said. 'And that's not good.' Reilly, the RNC committeeman from Pennsylvania, acknowledged it could be 'confusing' for voters to 'have party officials telling you to use [mail voting] and then calling for it to be eliminated,' but he downplayed any concern. 'Voters are smart,' he said.
