Oklahoma hires Libs of TikTok’s Chaya Raichik to help censor public school books

Ryan Walters, the right-wing superintendent of the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE), has appointed Chaya Raichik, an anti-LGBTQ+ activist who goes by Libs of TikTok on social media, to serve on the OSDE’s Library Media Advisory Committee. The committee decides what state public school students are allowed to read — Raichik doesn’t live in the state and has no experience working in education.

Raichik has achieved national infamy as her posts targeting LGBTQ+ educators and allies have led to multiple bomb and death threats against schools, teachers, students, and children’s hospitals — including two Oklahoma schools. She will likely support Walters’s continued crusade against LGBTQ+-inclusive books in public schools.

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Libs of TikTok connected to 11 recent school bombing threats

The woman behind the account, Chaya Raichik, has claimed that she’s merely sharing information and can’t control how people respond.

“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,” Walters wrote in a statement he issued on Tuesday morning via X.

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“Because of her work, families across the country know just what is going on in schools around the country,” his statement continued. “Her unique perspective is an invaluable part of my plan to make Oklahoma schools safer for kids and friendly to parents. Chaya has a much-needed and powerful voice as well as a tremendous platform that will benefit Oklahoma students and their families.”

Oklahoma currently ranks 48th in the nation for education, according to U.S. News and World Report. Numerous X commenters noted that the education chief’s X post included a grammatical mistake — he incorrectly punctuated the possessive “her’s” with an apostrophe.

Last October, Raichik’s posts accusing a Western Heights Public Schools principal of being a drag performer and various Oklahoma schools of having “pornographic” library books resulted in bomb threats against the schools. In August 2023, Walters came under criticism for re-posting a video of Raichik’s that resulted in bomb threats against Ellen Ochoa Elementary School in Tulsa.

Raichik has claimed that she is merely sharing information and can’t control how her social media followers respond to her posts. However, her account regularly echoes right-wing claims of LGBTQ+ people and allies “indoctrinating,” ”grooming,” and “sexualizing” kids — rhetoric that leads to violence against queer people and their allies. Her bio on X proudly touts her being labeled as a “stochastic terrorist,” a person who uses mass media to provoke random acts of ideologically motivated violence.

“Anything that will get [Walters] likes and shares and on Fox News or Newsmax, that’s what he’s going to do,” Western Heights parent Amy Boone told The Norman Transcript, criticizing his alliance with Raichik. “I don’t really care what your politics are, but when you start putting things out on the internet that endangers our kids, I have a problem with that.”

Walters, who wants to ban LGBTQ+ books but teach the Bible in public school history classes, has previously pushed the transphobic lie about schools providing litterboxes to students who identify as cats. He also referred to teachers’ unions as “terrorist organizations” and illegally tried to make rules banning LGBTQ+ books and transgender bathroom access in schools. He has appeared at events hosted by Moms for Liberty, a right-wing anti-LGBTQ+ “parent’s rights” group that has been called an extremist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

When running for his current office, Walters said he wanted his state’s teachers to “undergo patriotic education offered by a conservative Christian college” because “our students are not taught history but instead are taught indoctrination, instead taught this country is an evil place full of bigoted racists,” KOCO-TV reported.

Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) appointed Walters as his state’s education secretary in 2020. While serving in that post, Walters received approximately $120,000 in annual pay to serve as the executive director of Every Kid Counts Oklahoma, a group largely funded by advocates for expanding taxpayer-funded private charter schools.

The conservative-led charter school movement seeks to weaken public education in favor of for-profit private schools whose leaders can legally exclude any students or topics they disapprove of.